ATU727 – What’s New at Westminster Technology with Heather Maydak

Hi, this is Heather Maydak and I am the director of Assistive Technology at Westminster Technologies, 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 727 of Assistive Technology Update. It is scheduled to be released on May 2nd, 2025.

Today’s show, we are super excited to welcome back Heather Maydak. Heather is the director of Assistive Technology for Westminster Technologies, and she’s here to tell us about some of their new things that she’s excited about.

A huge thank you to anyone that came to our open house last week for Assistive Technology Awareness Day. We really appreciate you coming out, learning more about our programs and thanks so much for helping us make the day a huge success. If you weren’t able to make it out, maybe you’re not in Indiana, maybe you just couldn’t come out that afternoon, don’t forget, you can always reach out to us. Send us an email at Tech@EastersealsCrossroads.org or call our listener line at (317) 721-7124. We always love hearing from you.

As always, listeners, thank you so much for listening. Let’s go ahead and get on with the show.

Listeners, today we are super excited to welcome Heather Maydak back to the show. Heather is the director of Assistive Technologies for Westminster Technologies and she’s returned to the show to tell us about some of their cool new technology that she’s really excited about, and we can’t wait to hear all about it. Heather, welcome back to the show.

Thank you. It’s great to be back.

It’s great to have you. For our listeners who are new or maybe haven’t heard you on here before, could you tell them a little bit about yourself?

I work as the director of Assistive Technology for Westminster Technologies, providing services mostly at this point to school districts, but I have been in the field since the 90s and I’ve worked for a couple different United Cerebral Palsies, a couple different universities where I taught, developed curriculum, and now really, I service schools by helping them learn how to do assessments and implement the technology, but I also go into the districts to do assessments as well.

Nice, nice. So a little bit of everything, I guess. You mentioned Westminster Technologies. Can you tell us a little bit about your company?

Sure. Westminster Technologies is a small woman owned business. On our side, there’s two divisions, but on the assistive technology side, it’s Erica Klopp, Ted Klopp, and then myself. And we provide… We’re a reseller for assistive technology products, and we really take a look at those, decide what we really think is useful. We just don’t carry anything and everything. We’re not a catalog store. We really want to carry the things that we believe will make a big impact for our users.

And then I do, again, like I said, the services side, so training assessments.

Awesome. Awesome. Well, we got you on the show today to maybe talk about some of the new tech that you have that you’re excited about. I guess what’s the first thing you wanted to talk about today?

The first one is actually a complete assistive technology kit for low vision individuals. Yes.

Nice. What all is in the kit?

It is the SuperNova Connect and Learn. It’s really cool. It’s a Windows Surface Pro with a really nice protective case. It has a tablet stand, a digital video magnifier, so like a document camera, a wireless low vision keyboard, a wireless mouse. It comes with a USB-C hub, so you can plug in that digital video magnifier, but then anything else you need to plug in that’s USB, and it all comes in a backpack.

Oh, nice.

So it’s ready to go. And it’s a nice big backpack, so you can just slide everything in there and have tons of room for everything else you need.

As part of that kit it also has software included. So with that software you can choose from either the SuperNova Magnifier software or the SuperNova Magnifier & Speech, depending on if you need that scan and read capability. So screen reader and text-to-speech capabilities. It also comes with EasyReader Premium, which is a flexible reading accommodation app, and it allows users to access accessible curriculum materials. They can access their Bookshare account if they have one, Google Classroom, Microsoft Education, pretty much anything on any of the devices that they have. What’s really cool for, if we’re using it in schools, teachers and therapists then have access to insights into the student’s reading activity, which is pretty cool.

Oh, nice.

It also comes with the Whiteboard Wizard. So the student can use the built-in webcam with the Surface Pro, the document, the digital video magnifier to magnify near or far, both of those. If they also have a CCTV, they can actually connect that as well to the Surface Pro. But the Whiteboard Wizard provides a wireless connection to the interactive whiteboards. For example, teachers can just immediately share content directly to the student’s Surface Pro, so they can then use their magnification settings, they can use their high contrast settings, they can use keyboard commands, the mouse, or even touch gestures to do all that magnification. And if they have the Magnifier & Speech, then they have those speech capabilities for that screen reading and text to speech. What’s really nice is that it automatically includes two years worth of upgrades for any of those programs.

Very cool. So it kind of gives them access to darn near anything the classroom can throw at them.

Correct, correct, yeah. Because accessibility for individuals with low vision, that can be a real struggle for some of the schools, making sure that they have all of those accessible education materials, and this is just a great solution for teams to make it just so much easier on everybody.

Oh, most definitely. Most definitely. You mentioned that teachers can get information, insights about the students’ reading. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

For the EasyReader Premium app, yeah, it tracks what the students are reading, how long they’re reading, so they can keep track of what’s going on, making sure they’re reading their assigned texts. Are they reading more curriculum-based or more recreational? So just gives them an update on length and time and what they’re reading.

Awesome, awesome. Well, that’s a great tool and I love how it’s almost all in one. All put together, just a solution that can help in a lot of different ways and not have to try to piecemeal together a bunch of different pieces and parts, but have that whole big solution right there.

Exactly. That was the whole point is just putting it all in one, so it just makes it easier. You don’t have to piecemeal all these things and hope everything works. It’s all put together and comes in that backpack. [inaudible 00:07:44]

Yeah, it takes a lot of the guesswork out of it, a lot of the fear out of it, I know for teachers and educators for sure.

Correct, correct. And it’s at a really good price point too. So the magnifier, so if you just get the Supernova Magnifier, again, you get everything that we talked about, but it’s $2,999, so it’s just under $3,000. And then if you want the Supernova Magnifier & Speech, it’s $3,149. So I mean, you really can’t beat that price for all of those items, all that hardware and all that software.

Oh, yeah. And just knowing it’s all going to work together is just… Because otherwise it’s well, is this going to connect to this? Do I need something else? Do I need something else? And actually having all that I know can really help educators, just because there is that fear there, especially if you don’t have a real great low vision specialist on your team or in your district and everything.

And that Supernova software, it’s just so simple and easy and streamlined. So that’s the other great piece.

With the way kids are with tech, they’ll figure it out on their own probably even if you don’t really have it.

Exactly.

That’s awesome. Well, Heather, what else is out there that’s got you excited?

The other thing we just released this at the end of January and it’s called ATAG. It’s our own product, Assistive Technology Assessment Guides, and it’s four different eBooks that come with basically all the guides and forums that you’re going to need, and then you can bundle it with coaching.

The first one is building an assistive technology team. We put this together because of what I’m seeing in the schools. Seeing you have your revolving door of team members. This goes for any organization, so it’s just not for schools, but this is just where I… Seeing more issues. We have people rushing around, they have huge caseloads, and then when you add in these revolving door of team members being pulled out of the team and put somewhere else or staff members just leaving and going to another organization or another district, what we want is for them to succeed and to do that, they need to have predictability built into the system. They need to have as much as possible consistent team members, but if not, they have that predictability with all of these processes in place so they can distribute the workloads and be able to complete everything they need to do in a timely manner.

So that first guide, it helps them identify how to build an efficient and an effective assistive technology team. It’s things like making sure you have shared vision and mission statements so that everybody’s on the same page, which then means we have the same shared goals because if everybody’s on a different page, they have different priorities, we’re going to have issues and the team’s not going to work efficiently together. It’s also about creating team policies. So it’s just not these written guidelines of, okay, when we’re doing an assessment, we’re going to follow these steps and we’re going to use these forms. It’s beyond that. Team policies also help guide the team as to appropriate behavior during team meetings. Because how many times have you been in a meeting where there’s somebody on their phone, somebody on their laptop, checking email, people rolling their eyes or sighing or like, oh my gosh, I cannot believe we’re here. It’s been an hour and we’ve got nothing accomplished. We’ve all been there, done that, right?

I had one of those meetings earlier today, now that you mentioned that, but yeah, yeah, for sure.

So it’s all about making sure we have these policies in place so that everybody knows what’s expected of them. So that particular e-book comes with the forms to help you develop those statements, so the vision and mission statements, help you develop your goals, as well as doing all that policy setting, and explains how to put together your guidelines of steps A, B, C, and D for all of these different components within the system technology. So that e-book and all the forms, it’s $30.

Oh, nice.

Yeah, it’s a no-brainer of hey, for $30 you get all these tools to help you.

The next one then is the assessment guide. There’s so many different moving parts for an assessment. You have to review the information, you have to collect additional information, you have to go in and do your observations and interview as many people as you can, and then gather all that information so you can start matching technology options. Then you have to write a report.

And so this particular e-book and forms provides you with guides for considering assistive technology. There’s a checklist for the assessment process to make sure you’re hitting everything you need to hit. There’s a contact and meeting log to keep track of that communication. There’s two… So for students, and you could use this for adults too outside of the school district, but it would be more of a guardian input form, but they’re called Parent Input Forms, and we have them in both English and Spanish. There’s a student input form.

So the AT user is going to provide their input, and then it goes into feature matching as well as the report format. So we provide you with a report format that you can customize with your own logo. But the important part of that is how do you write those reports? I’ve seen recommendation reports out there, I’m like, what? Where I look at it, I’m going, I don’t know what you’re trying to tell me. So we provide sample recommendation reports, and the reason we do this, we’ve gotten a lot of compliments on our recommendation reports because we’re very thorough and we don’t just list a bunch of technology. We provide the justification as to why. We’re choosing the technology with all the information, links to things so the teams can make informed choices. And then finally included fillable PDFs of standard forms that are out there that I use for my assessments, and I converted them all to fillable PDFs just to make it easier for team members. So The SETT Framework by Joy Zabala, so that’s included the converted one. So it’s just the set framework just converted to fillable PDFs.

And then all of the great Wisconsin Assistive Technology Initiatives, the WADI student information guides, I use them for every single assessment, those WADI forms. So I took a long time converting them to fillable PDFs. Eventually they’ll also be Google Docs, Google Forms or Google Docs, haven’t decided yet. But all of those fillable forms, those have been included for the assessment guide. So you get all of that for $40.

The next one’s the trial guide. So without trying technology, what happens?

Just abandonment, you’re not going to know what’s going to work. You’re not going to know what they actually like and what’s going to really work in their hands for their needs.

Right. So on paper, it might be the perfect match, but as soon as they start using it, you might see why it’s not working. So there’s a trial guide that walks them through making those selections. How do you implement a trial? Why is that important? Because trials are time constrained. If you get a free software trial, it’s 30 days, and if you’re working with somebody Monday through Friday, you don’t get a full 30 days. Those are calendar days, not your work days. If it’s a product loaner, so an actual piece of equipment, how long are those trials? They can be two weeks, if you’re lucky, three, four weeks. So you really need to prioritize what you’re doing during those trials, and you have to do quick training, quick prioritization, collect that data so you can then make an informed decision. So it walks you through all of those steps along with what’s next once you’ve trialed. So you get the e-book and a planning guide that encompasses everything you need for $10.

Wow, nice.

Then the last one is implementation. If I was going to quiz you of let’s say assessment, trialing and implementation, which one do you think schools, organizations who do assistive technology, which of those three steps do you think they spend more time on?

Oh, I mean, it should be implementation because you need to train the person how to use it, you need to make sure that everything works, you need to make sure it all works in their environment. I mean, hopefully you did the homework beforehand, but it should be in implementation, but I’m going to guess that’s not right.

Should be. Correct. That is the correct answer. Unfortunately, if they spend more time on the assessment and then that’s it, they’re done. They do their list of recommendations, I’m out, and there’s no implementation plan. So guess what increases? Abandonment. So they’ve now wasted valuable time and money. So an implementation plan needs to be written.

And in the infinite words of Winston Churchill, “He who fails to plan is planning to fail.” And I see this all the time. We need to define success. We need to identify all the sister technology systems the person’s going to use, all of the access methods, strategies that need to be used, the training timelines, equipment maintenance, and what are those procedures for getting maintenance, especially when you need IT involved. Because how many times have I got into a situation and I said, “Well, I heard that the person I’m assessing already has, let’s say a communication device. Where is it?”

“Oh, it’s up on the shelf over there.”

“Why? That’s their voice.” I’m like, “Why is it up there?”

“Oh, well, I don’t know. It’s not working so we just put it up on the shelf.” Okay, great. Because they have no clue what to do with it if it’s not working. So we need to know, and it establishes those specific team roles and responsibilities so everybody knows what they’re supposed to be doing and when and how.

So that guide, again, it’s the e-book, and then it comes with an AT implementation plan. It also comes with an AAC implementation plan because those are a little bit different. There’s coaching tools, so there’s planning tools, consult notes for the tea, there’s AT user self assessments, there’s a visual goal timeline for the AT user, and there’s weekly AT planners to keep track of everything that’s going on. So you get all of that for $30.

And then what’s really cool is you can bundle any of those with remote coaching. So if you get the book or the e-books and the forms, you’re like, okay, this is great, but we really need somebody to be our buffer, be our third party to come in and say, here’s what you need to do and guide us through the processes. Then you can add on three months, six months, or 12 months worth of coaching. The AT trials is an exception, that one only has three or six months because you really don’t need 12 months of trialing for learning how to do the AT trials. And then you can just add on for three months, it’s $300, six months, it’s $500, and then for 12 months it’s an extra $1000 for that remote coaching.

Nice. I love the way that you give them not just the information, but also the tools to use, but also, I mean in the long run, you’re giving them the tools to build something that even the leader of that AT team leaves, all the pieces are still in place, that the next people can come along and they’re not really starting from scratch.

Exactly. And with the coaching, it really then helps customize and personalize any of these processes to meet their specific needs. Again, because every organization, every school district, every school building, whatever the entity is, they all operate differently. They have all different levels of skills and knowledge. So you really need to customize all of these steps to meet your specific needs because there is no one-size-fits-all. But that coaching really then helps narrow down and brainstorm and get around any specific barriers that you may be encountering.

Again, you’re setting them up for success, for success with the student too, which I mean really helps every student on down the road. Because when a school does have to buy a piece of assistive technology, some of it’s pretty expensive. And if they can see that student be successful with it, they’re much more apt to buy the next piece.

I hate to see them wasting money when they purchase equipment and then that whole implementation piece, they don’t do it.

Nope. That’s, trust me, in everything I’ve done in AT from working with folks on job sites, college schools, every little piece, that is the part that seems to be the most overlooked is just the implementation, the training. I mean, hopefully you’ve built the importance of the device during the rest of the phases, but then once the individual actually has it, they need to know how to use it. They need how to use it, use it effectively. Those around them need to know the importance. And it seems like if you do that correctly, that tool helps them until they need another tool or until something changes in some kind of way. So yeah, I’m very glad you brought that up. I stress that with my team, with funding sources, with everybody all the time. Just that’s the one part that seems to always fall through, but it’s really the most… I mean, if you did all the other pieces correctly, it is the most important part just because that’s how you really get it all together and it [inaudible 00:22:17] successful.

It really is. And I always teach that it’s a life cycle. Just because we’ve acquired the assistive technology does not mean we’re done. We need to obviously implement it, but then monitor that progress and keep an eye on, where are they still continuing to struggle? Do we need to add something else on? Whether it’s another piece of technology or just additional features, or is it they’ve been using it and now that maybe they’re, let’s say it’s a student who’s gone from elementary school into middle school, high school, and now they’re in high school and it’s no longer serving their purpose. It’s not fitting their specific needs anymore based on what their expected tasks are. So it is a lifecycle. We may have to go back to the drawing board and start all over and see what else is out there that they could use.

Yup. Heather, you probably have a ton of these, but could you tell me a story about someone’s experience, maybe using one of these tools or something else from Westminster or somebody maybe that you just worked with that really sticks with you, and just how they were able to use the different assistive technologies to meet their goals?

I mean, I can tell you a story about why I came up with these guides and e-books.

Yeah, definitely.

Because I do a lot of… Obviously I go out into the schools and do a lot of assessments, but I also go into districts and train them on how to do these assessments. And all my training includes some form of coaching afterwards because that’s a huge piece. Just keep them moving, otherwise, everybody kind of falls off. They’re busy.

But I kept seeing in budgets right now, budgets are always an issue. So my thought was, well, okay, the amount of inquiries we get about, for example, assessment training, how do we conduct assessments? And then you tell them the cost of the training, and we have three levels of that assessment training, but they’re like, oh my gosh, I don’t know if… I don’t think they would approve that. Or, we’re going to have to get a grant. I’m like, okay, you know what? We need something. Because the ultimate goal is to help individuals with disabilities, and in order to do that, we have to help the professionals in the field. So that’s how I came up with, okay, let’s put together some e-books with all the forms that they need to guide them through these processes, that’s affordable. It’s all about helping and providing those services. So let’s find some other ways to help with, especially these districts that really do have, or organizations that are just really struggling and can’t afford the full on maybe in-person training.

Yeah, most definitely. Make it accessible to the folks that need to access it is a very good idea.

Correct.

Well, Heather, if our listeners want to find out more about all these great tools, about Westminster Technologies, what’s a good way for them to do that?

If they go to our website, it’s WestminsterTech.com. That’s Westminster, and then T-E-C-H.com, right on the front page there that lists our new products, and they’ll see the ATAG tag, it’s a purple logo. It’s like a purple pinwheel logo, and then they’ll see a couple icons down is that Connect and Learn. But we have a lot of other new products and we have lots of different training and professional development opportunities in addition to all of our products in several different areas. So that’s the best way to get ahold of us is at WestminsterTech.com.

Awesome. We’ll put that down in the show notes. Heather, thank you so much for coming back on the show, for telling us about these great new things, and we look forward to getting to talk to you again next time.

Well, thank you so much.

Do you have a question about assistive technology? Do you have a suggestion for someone we should interview on 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 at INDATA Project.

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 Prieto for scheduling our amazing guests and making a mess of my schedule.

Today’s show was produced, edited, hosted, and fraught 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. 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.