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Your weekly dose of information that keeps you up to date on the latest developments in the field of technology designed to assist people with disabilities and special needs.
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Shelley Carter:
Hi, my name is Shelley Carter. I’m the founder and designer of BerkBloom and this is your Assistive Technology Update.
Josh Anderson:
Hello and welcome to your Assistive Technology Update, a weekly dose of information that keeps you up to date on the latest developments in the field of technology designed to assist individuals with disabilities and special needs. I’m your host, Josh Anderson, with the INDATA Project at Easterseals Crossroads in beautiful Indianapolis, Indiana. Welcome to Episode 493 of Assistive Technology Update. It’s scheduled to be released on November 6th, 2020. On today’s show, we’re super excited to have Shelley Carter and she’s on to talk about an accessible clothing line she’s developing called BerkBloom.
Josh Anderson:
We also have a story about a partnership between a hearing company and a visual aids company, a story about accessible voting, some of the barriers that are still out there and some of the things that are being done to correct them and a new feature coming to the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro that may be able to help individuals with visual impairments stay six feet away from everyone. Don’t forget, we encourage you to always reach out and let us know if you have any questions or anything like that. You can reach us on email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org. Call our listener line at 317-721-7124 or drop us a line on Twitter @INDATAproject. We thank you so much for listening today. Now let’s go ahead and get on with the show.
Josh Anderson:
Are you looking for more podcasts to listen to? Do you have questions about assistive technology? Are you really busy and only have a minute to listen to podcasts? Well, guess what? You’re in luck because we have a few other podcasts that you should really check out. The first one is Assistive Technology Frequently Asked Questions or ATFAQ hosted by Brian Norton and featuring myself and Belva Smith and a bunch of other guests. What we do is we sit around and take questions about assistive technology, either about accommodations, about different things that are out there or about different ways to use things. We get those questions from Twitter, online, on the phone and many other ways. We’re also trying to build a little bit of a community as sometimes, believe it or not, we don’t have all the answers, so we reach out to you to answer some of those questions and help us along.
Josh Anderson:
You can check that out anywhere that you get your podcasts and wherever you find this podcast. We also have Accessibility Minute. So Accessibility Minute is hosted by Laura Metcalf and if you’ve never heard her voice, it is smooth as silk. You should really listen to that podcast. She’s going to give you just a one-minute blurb about some different kinds of assistive technology, kind of wet your whistle a little bit and just let you know some of the new things that are out there so that you can go out and find out a little bit more about them yourself. So again, check out our other shows, Assistive Technology Frequently Asked Questions and Accessibility Minute, available wherever you get your podcasts. Before we get into today’s show, I wanted to let you all know about some really exciting shows that we have coming up.
Josh Anderson:
Coming up later here in November on Black Friday will be our annual holiday gift giving guide. I’ll have some very special guests from here at Easterseals Crossroads on the show to talk about some really neat, new technology. Some of it’s AT- based, some of it isn’t, but you know what? All of it’s pretty fun and we’ll talk about those. We’ll have a little bit of witty banter, talk a little bit about the holidays and really and truly get to just enjoy each other’s company remotely, I guess, as we don’t get to do that as much as we used to. Also, coming up in December, on December 25th we will have our 500th episode coming out. That is right, 500 episodes. So we have some surprises coming up for that show, but just make sure to look out for it. Of course, we have great interviews and great shows in between that you can check out as well, but I just wanted to let you know some of those special shows that are coming out soon. I thought we’d start off today’s show the story from over at AiThority.
Josh Anderson:
It’s written by their news desk and it talks about a partnership between two big AT providers, I guess. It’s titled Starkey and OrCam Partner to Provide Groundbreaking Assistive Technology to Hearing and Visually Impaired People. So if you don’t know, Starkey is a leader in the hearing industry. They make all different kinds of hearing aids and different hearing technology. Then you also have OrCam who makes the different wearables such as the MyEye device and some other ones. But basically, these two large companies are pairing to ensure that the OrCam MyEye device can connect wirelessly with the Starkey Livio Edge Ai hearing aids. So basically, all that information that OrCam is going to feed to you can be fed straight into your hearing aids. So this can be really helpful for folks who have not just a hearing impairment, but also a visual impairment and vice versa.
Josh Anderson:
I know after working in this field for a long time, not much disability happens in a vacuum. So a lot of times, especially in older individuals, you may have where your vision and your hearing start to both kind of go. So this way, you’re not trying to listen to that little tiny speaker talk to you. Not only that, also just the privacy aspect of it because that information is coming straight from that MyEye device. So if it’s reading signs to you or the newspaper or perhaps telling you whose face is in front of you. You don’t have to have that information relayed to everyone around you, but just straight into those hearing aids to make it a little bit easier to understand the world around you. I put a link to the story over in our show notes so that you can check it out ourselves.
Josh Anderson:
It does say if it’s something you’re interested in, you would want to contact your hearing or eyecare professional and then they can contact their local assistive technology distributor. So we will go ahead and put again, put that over in the show notes so that you can go check it out for yourself. Folks, this show is coming out on Friday after our Tuesday elections here in the United States. Since this is a little bit pre-recorded, I’m not 100% sure that all the votes have been tallied, but I do want to put a story in here talking about the accessibility of voting. A story comes to us from over at CNET and it’s called How Tech is Slowly Working to Make Elections More Accessible. It’s written by Abrar Al-Heeti and it talks about a little bit of kind of, well, really just accessible voting. Accessible voting is a little bit more than just being able to vote.
Josh Anderson:
If you really want to vote and be an informed voter, well you need to know all the information that there is out there. So it starts off really by just talking about all the issues with web accessibility and how this can kind of lead in to making it harder for individuals to vote. It says here in the story that looking at the websites for the main contenders for president and vice-president, they found a total of 44 violations for digital accessibility. So this said that these violations could prevent 61 million voters with a disability from accessing critical information. So if you really think about all the information that’s out there, whenever it’s time to vote, a lot of it might come from Facebook or from other social media sites. A lot of times, that’s not really vetted or who knows who’s really kind of behind that information?
Josh Anderson:
But the information that’s out on these websites that the candidates put out, a lot of times is at least the information that they want to get out. It’s where you find out about where they stand on certain policies and other things and you’re getting it straight from them and not so much from a second or third party. But if you can’t get there, then just think how much information you’re actually losing. It actually says that Vox reported last year that not a single 2020 presidential candidate had an accessible campaign website. So just think about that. You’re not able to get the information that you really need to make informed decisions about who you’re going to vote for and whose policies actually line up with the way that you feel to make sure that you’re really getting this person that you need.
Josh Anderson:
Now of course, we all know that this is an ongoing problem with website accessibility. Some of that’s really been exacerbated by the pandemic and people having to be online a whole lot more and it also gets into some numbers. It shows that in 2012 elections, 30% of people with disabilities had trouble voting at their polling places and that’s actually compared to 8% of individuals without disabilities. Some of the common reasons it states here are not being able to read or see the ballot and trouble understanding or using the voting equipment. I know you think the disability community makes up a huge portion of the United States and not only that, they’re just as varied and diverse as every other population across the United States. So it’s very important for them to be able to get out and really get their voices heard, because this is the really the one time in America that the one in this country can go out and have their voices heard.
Josh Anderson:
So to kind of cut out a whole population is just kind of ludicrous to not have their voices heard and not make things accessible for them so that they can vote, so that they can get the information that they need. I also started talking about some of the tech that’s out there to improve access, some of the things that they’re working on. Of course, this is something that is getting better, from separate lines to different kinds of voting machines to expanded access to absentee ballots. All kinds of different things are being put in place just to be able to help individuals with disabilities be better equipped and able to vote and just make sure that their voice does get heard. We’ll put a link to this story over in our show notes and I’m sure we’ll see a heck of a lot more of them. But really and truly it is important that here in America, and really all around the world, that everyone has access to be able to vote so they can participate in the vote and really have their voices heard and exercise that right that they have as Americans.
Josh Anderson:
Our final story today comes to us from Digital Information World and it’s titled Apple’s New Feature Uses LiDAR Technology and its Wide-angle Camera to Help People With Visual Impairments. It’s written by Arooj Ahmed and this story talks about a new feature that’s going to be available on Apple’s latest iPhones 12 and 12 Pro and it’s L-I-D-A-R technology. Now that stands for light detection and ranging. What it is, it’s a system through which a laser emits pulse light and a receiver then receives that pulse light and measures the time it took to get back. So you’ve probably seen people maybe on the side of the road doing this for different surveying and things like that. But anyway, what this does is it actually emits this light through the camera, bounces it back and it can tell you how far an object is from that camera.
Josh Anderson:
So if you kind of think about the world we live in today, so let’s see, what is it now, the beginning of November? I know some countries and different municipalities are starting to kind of impose some of those restrictions that were there as some numbers spike with the COVID-19 crisis. So one thing that a lot of places, the CDC, the WHO and many others have said is a good idea to help kind of limit the spread is to stay six feet apart. If you have 20/20 vision, well, it can be pretty easy to kind of gauge what about six feet is. But if you have a visual impairment, depth perception can be one of the first things to go, depending upon what kind of visual impairment you might have, so gauging that six feet might be nearly impossible. So if you think about it, this LiDAR technology that’s built in to these phones could easily be used to not just know that someone is in front of you or is coming, but to know the distance between you and them.
Josh Anderson:
It says here, “This feature is currently in beta testing, but it is planned to come out in iOS 14.2,” so in the next iteration. It said the new feature will be part of the iPhone’s magnifier and there are several different ways that it will alert the user about other people in their surroundings. It says, “First, it has a sound correspondence that will help visually-impaired user get alerted if someone moves into the surroundings and whether they’re moving closer or further away. The user can actually set specific tones for different set distances.” For instance, if you want people to stay six feet away, you can hear a noise whenever they get to that six feet and kind of change that tone. If you happen to have a hearing impairment as well, you can actually use a haptic pulse feature in order to know when somebody is getting closer.
Josh Anderson:
If you don’t have total loss of vision, there’s actually an arrow that will help you detect the presence and distance of other people on the screen. It does say right here that it is important to know that the camera end of this feature does not work in the dark. So you would actually need to have some sort of light in order to allow it to be able to do this kind of measurement, but pretty cool, again, something that’s being built into the iPhone that can have some really great assistive technology and accessibility uses. We’ll put a link to the story over in our show notes so you can go check it out yourself, but again, that’s a new feature that might be coming out on the new iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro.
Josh Anderson:
Folks, on today’s Assistive Technology Update, we take a look at something that we all use every day without really thinking about it, clothing. There’s an old saying that goes, “Well, they put their pants on one leg at a time, just like the rest of us,” but that might not be completely true. For individuals with disabilities, their families and caregivers, getting dressed can be a much larger chore and can even be a major cause of frustration. Luckily, our guest today is Shelley Carter and she’s working to make this whole process a little easier, a little more enjoyable and maybe even a little bit more fashionable. Shelley, welcome to the show.
Shelley Carter:
Thank you so much for having me.
Josh Anderson:
I’m really excited to have you on and really get to talk about this topic and all the cool things you’re doing, but could you start off by telling our listeners a little bit about yourself?
Shelley Carter:
I sure will. I have three little girls and my middle daughter, Berkley, had a non-fatal drowning in 2017 and that drowning left her extremely disabled. She is wheelchair- bound. She is G-tube fed, so she is not mouth fed and she is not mobile. So I have been her sole caretaker since her accident. It happened two days before she turned three. She is now five, almost six and over the almost three years of taking care of her, it has just gotten harder and harder to dress her. She has dystonia in her arms, so her arms are extremely tight and she has spastic movements, meaning that she’ll randomly kick or kick her arms. So getting her dressed, we both end up really sweaty and frustrated and I have a hard time just getting things over her head, around her arms, things that fit her thin body, but she’s also very tall.
Shelley Carter:
So about six months ago, I started thinking, “Okay, this should be so much easier because the disabled population is huge.” I tried to find clothes for her online. They’re either too expensive, but they’re not something that are aesthetically pleasing that I would want her to wear because I work for a fashion company. Fashion, to me, is extremely important. It’s your first impression of kind of telling your personality without talking. So my idea was to start a clothing line for these kids that is easy to put on to access any adaptive things they have such as G-tubes, AFOs, hand braces and just to be able to dress these kids in fashionable clothes that’s also easy to get them in and out of.
Shelley Carter:
So that is where this kind of started for me and just every day I think of something else and it’s just kind of turned into my passion project and something that I am so excited about. So that’s what I’ve been working on. I’m at the beginning stages of getting it launched and funding for it so that we can really get this going. I’m super excited and I found a partner that wants to go in with me and she is an occupational therapist of 25 years. So with her knowledge of these kids with disabilities and I think my fashion sense and also having a disabled kiddo of my own, I think we will really be able to get BerkBloom off and going.
Josh Anderson:
I know you will and you brought up a lot of good points there because I know a lot of times, if there is adaptive clothing available, most of the time, it’s kind of, I don’t know, I guess in the world of Zoom now, what people wear all the time, just because everybody lives in sweatpants anymore. But kind of like you said, it is kind of just ho-hum, there’s really not much to it. Some adaptive clothing, I don’t even think, is kind of available like swimsuits and things like that. Are you looking to have that kind of specialty clothing available?
Shelley Carter:
Yes. Swimsuits is huge for me. That’s one of the top of the things that I want to make because Berkeley, she does really well in water. So we do water therapy and she’s still in a diaper and she probably always will be and I don’t want to put her in a two-piece because she has a G-tube that goes into our stomach. It’s a very sensitive area and if I change her diaper, I have to take her whole bathing suit off. So these older kids need to have bathing suits that have snaps so that you can access the diaper. I also need to be able to access her G-tube, which is at her stomach. So for me, having a bathing suit line that’s adaptive is at the top of my list because I literally will cut things and tie things and do whatever I can to make it work for her and I, so that is a big one. Also, she has very skin, so I want to make sure all the bathing suits for these kids are the material that’s SPF- 50.
Josh Anderson:
Oh, definitely. You started kind of talking about some of the adaptations to the clothing, snaps and things like that. What are some of the adaptations you can put into clothing to make them easier to get on and off?
Shelley Carter:
So I posted a video not long ago on my social media of me just trying to take a shirt off of Berkeley and put one on. What happened to the shirt was I had to stretch it, pull it and by the time I took the shirt off of her, the neck was stretched out and the arms and it’s basically ruined after that. I can wash it, but it’s still going to be stretched out. So what I would like to do is have shirts that have snaps that go all the way down the back and you just unsnap the back and pull the shirt right off.
Shelley Carter:
Then I would like to have a G-tube flap on the front so that I can access her port and feed her because as she’s getting older, I wouldn’t want someone pulling up my shirt to access my port, just the dignity and privacy, it’s important. So for me, respecting her and her integrity, dignity is really important to me, not showing her in public when I have to access her port or change her diaper. So that is a big thing for me and this clothing line is just having the privacy when you have to change and do these things out in public, which we do all the time.
Josh Anderson:
I think that’s something a lot of people don’t think about is just that kind of that dignity, like you said. I know a lot of folks with G-tubes, it just kind of comes out of the t-shirt, maybe at the bottom or something, but, actually lifting that up is fine for probably a three or a five year old, but again, for a 14 year old, that’s kind of rough.
Shelley Carter:
Exactly, even Berkeley is five years old and she’s in a diaper so I would like to do diapers that look more like underwear and Berkeley’s five and her sisters are in underwear and I just don’t want her to ever feel left out. I’m all about inclusivity and a lot of these special needs kids will always be in a diaper. I just haven’t seen a lot of things that accommodates them and I’ve done so much research and looked for clothes and just plain things, white t-shirts, sweat pants and I want to change that. When we do family pictures, I get cute clothes for her sisters and I want Berkeley to have a matching outfit. I have to kind of put her in something different that’s similar. So it’s just important that these kids, just because they’re disabled doesn’t mean they don’t care about what they look like on the outside and making a statement. I always dress Berkeley how I knew her before, like the style that I remember. So that’s important to me.
Josh Anderson:
Oh, definitely and for some folks that’s been able to kind of find their own style and just to have choices, I think, is the very important thing.
Shelley Carter:
Choices, exactly. I know when I walk into a store, I have my style, I know what I’m going to like, I know what I’m going to wear and what works for me and I just want that for girls and boys. I’m kind of focusing probably up to age 10 right now, but it’s endless because Selma Blair said in a Vogue interview because she has multiple sclerosis that fashion is super important to her, but she can’t always find things that work. So it’s something these grownups, kids, I feel like they’re getting left out and I want to change that narrative.
Josh Anderson:
Definitely and I love that you’re working with an OT now because that’ll just really help with making sure that everything is not just accessible, but also going to be able to help the individual and not cause any other kind of issues because I know sometimes pressure sores, things like that have to be thought about as well.
Shelley Carter:
Oh yeah. Berkeley’s had pressure sores and her skin is very sensitive. I know I have a lot of friends with autistic kids and they have skin sensory issues, so you don’t want tags. It’ll bother them. We’re not going to do any tags. We’re going to do iron-on labels, soft clothing that’s not going to irritate the skin. In the winter time, I would take my kids outside and I would have to tie a blanket around Berkeley’s wheelchair and it felt like it was a straight jacket. So I’m going to make a line of blankets that velcro around and there’s access for her arms to come out, so it’s endless what can be done.
Josh Anderson:
You do have that advantage of you’ve went through this a little bit. So you’ve had those [crosstalk 00:22:30] issues you brought up.
Shelley Carter:
Yes and I struggle daily.
Josh Anderson:
Oh sure. I can only imagine. I can only imagine. Well, I know that you said that you’re kind of working with the OT and you’re getting all these designs together kind of where are you at in the process of being able to release the clothing line?
Shelley Carter:
So I have all my designs, I’ve drawn them. I have the name, I have a website. Nothing’s on there yet. I found a private label clothing manufacturer, so I have my partner. So our next step is right now, I’m just really looking for funding to get it going and then I have the manufacturer already. I’m going to do kind of a prototype run and get with a seamstress to adapt these clothes. I’m really looking to launch in December, so the wheels are really moving.
Josh Anderson:
If our listeners want to find out more about BerkBloom, what’s the best way for them to do that?
Shelley Carter:
So they did a write up in the American Statesman on it, but I also have a GoFundMe that explains kind of what I’m trying to do. Then my social media is BerkBloom on Facebook and Instagram as well. We have the website domain, but I think I’m going to do a write up on there just kind of explaining what’s to come like, “Coming soon,” because we’re looking to launch in a couple months and I’m so excited about this because I’ve had so many parents reach out to me and be like, “This is brilliant. We can’t find anything when we have so much trouble.” So I’ve had so much positive feedback and support and it’s just so motivating. I have to get this going.
Josh Anderson:
It’s a huge need for a lot of individuals and kind of like I kind of talked in the opening, it’s something that all of us use every day and really take for granted when it just seems second nature.
Shelley Carter:
Exactly. I had a mother tell me she has a 37 year old with cerebral palsy and he can’t put shoes on and they’re in their ’70s still taking care of him. They finally found a pair of shoes that he can put on himself because he wants to be able to dress himself. I want to wake up and dress myself. It’s like I said before, it’s a dignity thing, being independent, being able to do it and having a clothing line that’s just easier and snaps. A lot of kids will be able to dress themselves and they won’t feel left out and that is huge for me.
Josh Anderson:
Oh yeah. That independence, that sense of confidence and getting to wear what you want to wear, not just what mom or dad puts you in or kind of make you wear, actually having those choices and that independence can open a lot of other doors for those individuals in the future too.
Shelley Carter:
Exactly, because even my three-year-old always says, “Let Micah do it. Micah wants to do it.” So I let her dress herself, even if she puts her pants on backwards, that’s what she wants. So that is my goal. This is my passion. These kids, they’re so special. They’re so strong. I’m in such a large community of disabled kiddos and they deserve this, so I’m going to bring it to life no matter what I have to do.
Josh Anderson:
Excellent. Well Shelley, we’ll put all those links to BerkBloom so the folks can find out more and we really can’t wait. Hopefully, they do come out in December so we can actually take a look at them and kind of just see how they can help.
Shelley Carter:
Perfect. I’m super excited and I really appreciate it and just the more I can spread the word, I think, the quicker we can just get this going and get these kids outfitted.
Josh Anderson:
Thank you so much.
Shelley Carter:
Thank you so much, Josh. I really appreciate it.
Josh Anderson:
Do you have a question about assistive technology? Do you have a suggestion for someone we should interview on Assistive Technology Update? If you do, call our listener line at 317-721-7124. Shoot us a note on Twitter @INDATAproject or check us out on Facebook. Are you looking for a transcript or show notes? Head on over to our website at www.eastersealstech.com. Assistive Technology Update is a proud member of the Accessibility Channel. For more shows like this, plus so much more, head over to accessibilitychannel.com. The views expressed by our guests are not necessarily that of this host or the INDATA Project. This has been Your Assistive Technology Update. I’m Josh Anderson with the INDATA project at Easterseals Crossroads in Indianapolis, Indiana. Thank you so much for listening and we’ll see you next time.
