ATU629 – Slinger with Steven Shaw and Michael Grayson

Hi, this is Steven Shaw and I’m the CEO of Slinger LLC.

And this is Michael Grayson, and I’m the Director of Sales and Marketing Operations.

And this is your Assistive Technology Update.

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 629 of Assistive Technology Update, it is scheduled to be released on June 16th, 2023. On today’s show we’re super excited to welcome Steven Shaw and Mike Grayson, they are on to tell us all about Slinger, and how this little lanyard can really help you keep track of your phone and keep it right where you need it for all your accessibility needs. We got a story about a boom in assistive technology coming out of Israel. And as always, folks, we want to thank you very much for listening. Don’t forget if you ever do have questions or comments, please reach out to us at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org, or call our listener line at (317) 721-7124. But for now, let’s go ahead and get on with the show.

If you’re out there and you’re looking for more great content on assistive technology, head over to our website at eastersealstech.com. Over at eastersealstech.com you can find not just this podcast along with transcripts of it, but also our sister podcast ATFAQ and Accessibility Minute. Accessibility Minute hosted by Laura Metcalf is just a very quick little taste about something assistive technology based, while ATFAQ is a question and answer show where we do rely on your questions. So be sure if you do have questions about assistive technology, definitely get those over so maybe we can actually answer those on the show. But there’s so much more than just the podcast there, you can also find links to our YouTube channel, where you’ll find tech tips that come out every Monday about different pieces of assistive technology. These short little three to five minute videos will just show you what a piece of technology is, how it works, and how it might benefit an individual with a disability.

You can find consumer highlight stories, blog posts, as well as all the services of INDATA and our clinical assistive technology outlined right there on the page. If you’re looking to find your local Assistive Technology Act here in the United States, you can go to eastersealstech.com/states and it’ll get you over there and find it. So really, for a lot of the things you might need assistive technology-wise, check us out at eastersealstech.com for more shows like this, for videos, for blog posts, for consumer stories. Heck, even for pictures of the whole darn team, you can find those over there as well. So thanks as always for listening, and don’t forget, if you’re looking for even more content, check us out at eastersealstech.com.

Listeners our first story today comes from the Jewish News, and it’s titled Assistive Technology Startups, Helping to Transform Lives. It’s written by Candice Krieger, and basically what it talks about is three different AT startups from the country of Israel, and just kind of how assistive technology is beginning to kind of flourish and come out of there a little bit. And as I said, they actually highlight three different ones, and we’ll talk a little bit about them. I don’t want to get too much into her interviews, because I will put a link so you can go check it out for yourself. But essentially she interviews the CEO’s, presidents, kind of the people that run these three different startups, and just ask them some questions about, “Why is Israel kind of becoming a hotbed for new assistive technology? What leads it to be that way?” And just some other things to maybe kind of get an idea for why.

Actually it says that in Israel there are around 100 assistive technology startups addressing vision, hearing, mobility services, assisted living communication, and cognitive needs among others. Now, the three different ones that it actually kind of highlights on here, and talks to the folks that run them is accessibleGO, UPnRIDE, and OrCam. I personally didn’t even know that OrCam was based in Israel, and I’ve been using the darn thing forever. So it’s always nice to get, I guess, a little bit more kind of information.

So to talk about these things a little bit. So the first one is UPnRIDE, and what UPnRIDE is, is it’s a vertical wheelchair, you might kind of say. It’s actually able to change to a standing position, can be used in almost any urban environment, even on slopes and uneven surfaces, both indoor and outdoor. And it says there’s three factors that really differentiate UPnRIDE from other similar kind of things. So it says, “Unique mechanical design that maintains the center of gravity when transferring from sitting to standing, and has a auto balancing mechanism that keeps the user vertical to earth despite slanted or uneven surfaces. And tons of safety algorithms embedded in the proprietary computer to detect hazardous situations and to solve them.”

So really, really cool. And I mean, I’ve talked to individuals that maybe use a wheelchair, and just being eye to eye with folks they said is one of the things that they really miss, especially for folks that maybe had an injury and had to be moved to a wheelchair and use that to ambulate. They said they know that people aren’t looking down on them, to use air quotes and kind of say that. But at the same time they said, “Whenever I’m having a conversation and I’m making eye contact with somebody, I’m looking up.” There’s also the health factor, of sitting for long periods of time can cause pressure sores, all other kinds of different medical conditions. So standing could actually have some real benefit beyond just the social part of it. So very, very cool, hopefully we’ll get to learn more about UPnRIDE and some of the things that they do.

Next thing it talks about is accessibleGo, and I think I’ve talked about this on the show before. Essentially it is a travel platform for individuals with disabilities. So different travel tips, you can book accessible travel, it has a community where members can share their experience and reviews, and it’s mostly focused on the US market. And this is kind of big thing going on in the states, as they talk about more accessible air travel and some of the issues with that, especially surrounding wheelchairs, always being able to find an accessible Airbnb or even hotel isn’t always that easy. And I mean, hotels do have rules, they have the ADA and things like that. But that doesn’t 100% mean that they’ve kept up on those things or actually done a very good job, and there’s nothing worse than getting somewhere on a trip with all these plans and finding out the place you’re in is not accessible.

Of course, with Airbnb, Vrbo, and other services like this with different kinds of timeshare type things, you really don’t know what you’re walking into. You don’t know if that place is going to be accessible for you and your needs, so having a one-stop shop where you can find this information, as well as a community of folks who can share data and really talk about their experience, can make a huge difference, especially when booking a trip and really planning on doing things.

And then the last one that it highlights is OrCam. Now, we’ve had OrCam on the show before, they’ve been around for quite some time with their different OCR devices. You have the OrCam, the OrCam Read, and it looks like they’ve got something new coming out called the OrCam Learn as well, which is going to be able to not only do the text-to-speech information to assist with reading. But actually going to be able to read along with you, and have you read out loud, and upload that information so that teachers, professors, and everyone else can really help folks on their journey of learning how to read. So very cool stuff. Again, I will put a link to this over in the show notes so that you can go and actually check out the interviews for yourself. I don’t want to get into what a bunch of folks say, but I did want to just highlight these and just say that we’ll definitely try to keep an eye out for all the cool things coming out of Israel in the assistive technology space.

Listeners, I have a confession. I drop my phone a lot. Not on purpose, mind you, but I usually have my hands full with kids, other things, I’m a little bit clumsy, I trip a lot, but sometimes it just drops. Well, our guests today are here to tell us about Slinger, and how it can assist with keeping your phone off the floor along with a lot of other great things. So please join me in welcoming Michael Grayson and Steven Shaw to the show. Gentlemen, welcome to the show.

Glad to be here.

Happy to be here.

Yeah, guys, I am really excited to get into talking about Slinger, but before we do that, could you tell our listeners a little bit about yourselves?

Sure. So my name is Steven Shaw, I’m the CEO of Slinger LLC. I’m a founder of the company, I’m a co-inventor, and I am a former naval officer. I was a pilot in the Navy for about 12 years, and I’m a service-disabled veteran.

And again, my name’s Michael Grayson, I’m the Director of Sales and Marketing Operations at Slinger. Prior to Slinger I was also a Navy veteran, I flew in the S3A Viking hunting subs on board USS Forrestal. And I am also a visually impaired, legally blind disabled vet.

Glad that you took your experience as a veteran and everything, and turned it into Slinger. So let’s get on to kind of talking about the tech, what is slinger?

Well, Slinger at its most basic level is the world’s first and only retractable lanyard for your phone. That is what we set out to design, that is its core, we have patented technology that provides that functionality. And then on top of that we added other features, an integrated [inaudible 00:10:03] that doubles as a kickstand, and the ability to hang your phone vertically and horizontally.

Nice. And Steven, I got to kind of ask you, why was Slinger created?

Well, that’s a good question. So my partner, who’s a co-inventor, his name is Mark. And he’s a very mechanical person, he’s been involved in designing and manufacturing plastic molded products for over 20 years. And his mother-in-law was working in her garden, and she liked to keep her phone around her neck in a pink fuzzy sock with a shoestring. And she was working in her garden one day, and there’s sort of a steep hill in her backyard against the fence. And she actually [inaudible 00:10:55] and was pinned between the hill and the fence, and was not able to roll over to access pockets, and was not able to stand back up. And only because she had her phone around her neck in her pink fuzzy sock was she able to call for help.

So after that incident, she went to Mark and she said, “Hey, can you make me something, can you design something that is better than this pink fuzzy sock?” Because had she not had her phone, who knows what would’ve happened, how long she would’ve been there, and it was summertime and in the heat. And so he started working on the original design for the patented system that allows for the retraction of the [inaudible 00:11:47].

And her fuzzy sock with a shoestring was not retractable, but Mark, he felt that it needed to be retractable because if the lanyard is always out, then it’s in the way. And if it’s a fixed length, then sometimes you may want it shorter, sometimes you may want it longer, you can’t do that very easily. And the only other lanyards that are out there, you either have to permanently affix them to your phone, so they’re always there. Or they clip on and off, and then you have to keep track of it when you don’t have it. So he set out right from the beginning of, we do this thing retractable, and that’s where we are with that foundational technology with Slinger today.

Nice. And this question’s kind of for both of you guys. How is Slinger beneficial to individuals with disabilities?

Well, Mike, I’ll let you start with this one.

Sure. So for me, it has a personal application and use that’s very dear to me. Again, I have contracted years ago retinitis pigmentosa, which means I’m a visually impaired person. I’ve been legally blind for the better part of 20 years, and there is unfortunately no cure for retinitis pigmentosa, so eventually I will lose all my sight. Like most Americans, I am attached to my phone personally, and for business purposes, it’s a permanent fixture in our daily lives. And for me, I carry a stick, and soon I will be carrying a guide dog, a service dog. Well, you only have two hands, and my boss on the phone here, Steve, calls me about 20 times a day. So if you can imagine me walking down the street sweeping with my white cane and potentially carrying a dog in the very near future, if I’m going to conduct business or talk with someone personally or professionally, I can use my Slinger.

It’s hanging around my neck right under my chin, I can hit the speakerphone and operate my phone hands free. And in fact, I tell you, Steve does the same thing to me. The quality of the voice is much better than Bluetooth or speakerphone in a person’s car because it’s the authentic speakerphone, it’s not going through a third party filter. So the quality is really remarkable. If you have a windy day or crazy traffic in the background, the ambulance, of course you hear that, but you would hear that anyway. So for me, it allows me to operate my phone hands free safely while still being visually impaired. I can do texting, I can pull the lanyard out a little longer and actually send and receive texts. I can use all the native functions of my iPhone for assistive technology, and so voice to text and text to voice very easily with it right around my neck.

And so additionally, what we are learning more about, and what we are aware of, is that the assistive technology industry, the field, is rapidly growing with artificial intelligence, and robotics, and integration into biointegration and things like that. But a lot of really valuable and functional assistive capabilities are just right through the smartphone, and there are valuable features, and apps, and software that allow people with disabilities to navigate their day-to-day lives. And so the phone is critically important for that purpose, but then having to hold it, or if you drop it and it gets broken, or if you lose it because you set it down, you misplace it, you lose all that functionality. So what Slinger really allows people who use wheelchairs, or people like Mike who have low vision, it allows them to be able to hang onto their phone and to utilize the applications without having to hold it all the time.

Oh, most definitely. And yeah, like you said, a lot of folks are using them for still phone calls, but so much assistive technology, so many tools you can have on there. So having it kind of close at hand, but not taking up the hand can make a huge difference for folks. Now, I know this is always kind of hard on a podcast because we can’t really kind of see it, but can you kind of describe what Slinger looks like, maybe how big it is or how much room it kind of takes up on the phone?

Sure. So it’s about four inches long, and it’s a little over two inches wide. And we actually have two models. So our Slinger model is just under a half inch thick, and we have what we call a Slinger Slim, which is about a quarter inch thick, it’s about half of this Slinger, a little bit smaller than a deck of cards, and it sticks to the back of your phone or your case. And we have a portion of the lanyard we call the strap or the neck strap, it wraps around the outer edge. So you essentially just unwrap the strap, just pull it out, and it locks automatically at the length that you want it. And then when you want to put it away, there’s two buttons on the side, you press them, it retracts back inside the unit, and then you can wrap up the strap.

And the top of the Slinger has the card holder that sort of hinges open like a door, and then that also is the kickstand. So it can provide a horizontal, vertical kickstand, and I think like I said before, it can hold up to four cards or some folded cash. The difference between the Slinger and the Slinger Slim, is it does not have the card holder kickstand on top, and so it’s thinner, it’s slim. The Slim provides options for two things. One, it’s thinner, so if you don’t want the card holder and the kickstand functionality, then you can have a somewhat more streamlined lanyard on the phone. Or it’s a really nice platform for other phone accessories. So if someone’s got a wallet that they really like or some sort of grip that they’re already using, you just can put it right on top of the Slim and it perfectly integrates into the interior use of it.

It’s very customizable. So the neck strap, we have nine different colors, two different materials. We have a short strap and a long strap. We have black, silver, gold, and a rainbow chain, a metal chain, and they’re completely interchangeable so you can swap them in and out in a couple seconds. And the card holder comes clear so that you could use it as an ID display, but we also have a solid black and a solid white one, very easy to change out. And so we tried to also design this thing from the beginning to be very customizable so you can personalize it and make it your own. We’ve seen people decorate the top, the top is… I sort of describe it as a billboard, it’s a four by two inch flat rectangle. So people put stickers on it, they draw on it, they do artwork on it. So not only is it designed to have a tremendous amount of utility and functionality, but there’s a lot of customizability thought into it as well.

Nice. I’m glad you give folks different choices, as well as as you said, if there’s other kind of tools they might need. Because I know a lot of folks put their phone in holders maybe on a wheelchair or something like that, if they need it in another spot besides just being around their neck maybe for different uses. So it’s nice that I can keep Slinger on there and still be able to maybe use some of the other tools I have as well, because it’s not a giant, bulky apparatus on the back. I can see how that can really and truly help folks. And again, it just allow them to use whatever they’re used to in conjunction with it.

And we designed this from day one to be as small and as streamlined as possible. One, to fit on as many different phone models as possible. And also two, like you mentioned, [inaudible 00:20:14] bulky and not add to the phone. And I’ll add, that pretty much every person that we’ve had use a Slinger and then we talked to about their experience afterwards has said that it helps them hold their phone, it’s a better grip when they’re holding their phone than without it on. We found the same thing. So not only have we achieved our objective to not be bulky, but it actually just by being there makes the phone itself easy to hold.

Nice. And you guys kind of bring up a good point there as you kind of talk about feedback, and maybe what individuals have told you as they’ve been kind of using Slinger. Do you have a story or something that kind of maybe sticks out a little bit to you about someone’s experience using Slinger?

Well, there’s a couple, let me see if I can think of… There’s one that immediately pops into my head that I just recently heard from one of our customers. He’d been using Slinger. So what we find is once you start using Slinger, it very quickly becomes a part of… It’s sort of an extension of yourself, and so it’s hard to go back to not using it. And one story is he had set his phone on top of his wife’s car, and she ended up driving off with the phone on top of the car, and it fell off the car a mile later, and he ultimately was able to retrieve it. He said that the case was essentially destroyed and unusable, but the Slinger was still intact and he’s moving it to a new phone.

But he said the first thing he thought of was, why wasn’t I wearing it? So I think is telling for what the purpose of it is. And I don’t think he has transferred it to a new case yet, or at least when I had spoken with him. And he’s leaving his house without his wallet all the time, he was very heavily relying on the kickstand. And so it’s sort of a situation where someone has gotten used to it and then they lose access to the functionality for some period of time and it becomes detrimental to their ability to use their phone and things like that. Mike, do you have any… I know you’ve got people that you’ve interacted with that have been using Slinger for a while now.

Oh, yeah. A couple of customers I have that come to mind are the Bling sisters here in Fairmount, Maryland. These are slightly older ladies who purchased Slinger a month or so ago. And one of the best features they love about it is the tap and go. They get questioned all the time, “How is it hanging around your neck?” And when they’re in Starbucks, they keep a credit card with the tap and go feature in their case, and they just tap and go. And people are just amazed they’re holding phone calls on the speakerphone, and they’re tapping and going, and they can hand somebody a business card if they want to. It’s just an all in one necessity that becomes, like you said, Steve, a part of everyone’s everyday lives.

I’ll add to that, one of… She turns on music on the phone while she’s wearing it, and then plays the flute along with the music. And so one of the other interesting things we found is that everybody has some sort of nuanced, unique way that they find to use Slinger for what they need. So there’s an example where she’s wearing the [inaudible 00:24:01] as she’s playing the flute.

Nice. Well, and kind of like you guys said, just being able to have it there at hand, not in a pocket, in a purse, somewhere out of the way that’s maybe hard to get to, or depending on mobility challenges almost impossible or a huge barrier to get to, can make a big difference. And I can think of all the different uses and things just running through my head for it, especially being able to retract the lanyard.

Because I know I’ve had things like that before. Maybe something to help hold the phone, and they always end up in the way. And so you take them off, you leave them, and Lord only knows where they end up then. So being able to actually retract it and get it back to where it’s just kind of a normal form factor phone when not in use, and then yank it right back out and have it when you need it is a big difference from anything I’ve kind of been able to see before. So that’s very, very cool. Guys, if our listeners want to find out more, or even get their own Slinger, what’s a good way for them to do that?

So the website is www.myslinger.com, and on the website you can see the retail pricing, you can place an order, there’s a video there that it showcases all the product features and benefits. And there’s also a page off the homepage for assistive technology and use case scenarios for people with disabilities.

Oh, nice. I love that you actually have the use cases there to just help people as they figured out, especially for OTs, PTs, the folks that this might be able to kind of help recommend for those folks that they serve, just to know that those tools are out there. Well, we’ll definitely put a link to that down in the show notes. But Michael, Steven, guys, thank you so much for coming on for telling us about Slinger. And I’m very excited in anything that kind of opens up access, and since our phones are such an integral part of our lives with assistive technology, or even without, it’s always great to have more tools to be able to use them more effectively and really just kind of keep them there safely at hand. So thank you again.

Thank you, Josh.

All right, thanks for having us.

Do you have a question about assistive technology? Do you have a suggestion for someone we should interview on an assistive technology update? If so, call our listener line at (317) 721-7124. Send us an email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org, or shoot us a note on Twitter @INDATAProject. Our captions and transcripts for the show are sponsored by the Indiana Telephone Relay Access Corporation or INTRAC, you can find out more about INTRAC at relayindiana.com. A special thanks to Nicole [inaudible 00:26:37] for scheduling our amazing guests and making a mess of my schedule. Today’s show is produced, edited, hosted, and [inaudible 00:26:44] over by yours truly. The opinions expressed by our guests are their own and may or may not reflect those of the INDATA Project, Easterseals Crossroads, our supporting partners, or this host. This was your Assistive Technology Update, and I’m Josh Anderson with the INDATA Project at Easterseals Crossroads in beautiful Indianapolis, Indiana. We look forward to seeing you next time, bye-bye.