ATU758 – Holiday Gift Guide 2025 Part 2

Merry Christmas, happy holidays. This is Nikol Allee. I’m the education and outreach lead for the INDATA Project at Easterseals Crossroads.

Hey, everybody. Happy holidays. My name is Brian Norton. I’m VP of Adult Services here at Easterseals Crossroads.

And I’m Josh Anderson, your host, and welcome to our special Gift Giving Guide, 2025, on Assistive Technology Update.

Hello, listeners, and welcome back for part two of our holiday gift giving guide for 2025. For folks that listened last week, we welcomed Nikol Allee and Brian Norton here to the show in order to talk about some really cool things that maybe they’re excited about this holiday season. Today, we’re excited to bring you part two of our conversation with some other devices as well as just some of our favorite holiday things. We’re also very excited to be joined by BridgingApps with An App Worth Mentioning today, and when we get towards the end of the show, we’ve also got a replay of some of our interviews from the last few years with other members of our team as well as some outtakes and bloopers from the recording of this year’s holiday show.

We’ll be back to our regular format next week, and don’t forget, listeners, you can always give us a call at (317) 721-7124, or send us an email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org. We’re always looking for your suggestions, for guests, for topics, or for other things to make the show even better. And we’ll go ahead and start the show with our friends from BridgingApps, with An App Worth Mentioning.

This is Ale Gonzalez with BridgingApps, and this is An App Worth Mentioning. This week’s featured app is called Remember The Milk To-Do List. Remember the Milk is a task management app. It is helpful for individuals who struggle with organization. The interface makes it easy to set up and manage time and task in a fun way. You can make lists for all sorts of things, errands, doctor appointments, birthdays, household chores, medications, or even grocery shopping. A favorite feature is the ability to have your task list handy at all times on your mobile device. It also allows the user to set reminders and have them sent via email or text message. The basic version is completely free and perfectly useful on its own. There is a paid version if you want extra features, but most users will find the free version more than enough. Remember The Milk is a great helping hand that is reliable and user-friendly.

It can help you stay organized and feel more in control of daily life. Remember The Milk To Do List is currently available for both iOS and Android and is free to download. For more information on this app and others like it, visit www.bridgingapps.org.

That’s super cool. Yeah, I love it and I love that we got music and gaming out there, but I want to talk about some of the maybe popular standalone devices from here in our librariy. So Nikol, one of the most popular devices in our loan library this year and something that might make a great gift for folks could be the Meta Ray Ban glasses. Can you tell us about these?

For sure. The most popular thing that I’ve heard lately is the excitement around what they do now and what they’re going to do in the future. So the Meta Ban Ray smart glasses, they just look like regular, like the old sunglasses actually, which they have a clear lens in it, and you can also put your own prescription lens in it, and they have a tiny camera with a speaker in it to give you audio feedback. And what started out as just being a cool thing to be able to be hands-free and take video and then immediately post that to social media, they started to see how that could enhance independence in the disability world and started to add a lot of different features in that.

So for people with low vision, they’re great because they can describe what’s around you, like what object’s in front of you, the people in front of you. It can be used as a remote assistance. There’s an app, a service called Be My Eyes, and it provides real-time support from a sighted volunteer, so you can use the glasses to access that platform to get someone who’s sighted on there to help you with the situation you’re in and just help you out, figure out what’s in front of you, what’s in your hand. They’re going to have new versions of that that are actually going to have a screen in them, so that’s the premium. I guess they’re now out now, and they are quite a bit more expensive but the screen’s going to add a lot of different features, like you’re going to be able to have the live captioning on it. If someone’s speaking to you, it can caption right there, so that’s great for someone with hearing difficulties. The voice can be amplified in noisy environments, so that’s also going to help with that.

You have translation features. In the first generations, you can have that with the audio, but then later on, you’ll get to have that on the screen if you get that more premium purchase package, so that’s really cool. They’re adding different languages to that, so that’s a really neat feature. It’s also great for cognitive things. It can give you daily task reminders, appointment reminders, just things like that. Also, just being hands-free, just being able to access with all voice commands is really helpful.

So the prices are varied and it depends on if you want different generations. There’s a generation 1 is 299, generation 2 is 379, and the premium model is 799. Like I said, it has that display, so it has a display on one eye and then a regular screen on the other eye, and that’s so you can just need to know what’s going on in your physical world as well.

The differences between just the ones and twos are a lot with the battery life. The first has got four hours, the second generation has eight. Enhanced resolution of your video, some different gesture controls and things like that. I think they’ve added a wristband for some different gesture controls as well that you can use with it. So really, that big difference is if you want that screen or not, but really exciting to see, and every time there’s a new generation, it seems like new accessible features are added, so it’s really cool.

Yeah, for sure. And I love that at least the original ones weren’t made for that purpose. It was an afterthought, maybe something they didn’t even think of, and folks jumped in. And they’re definitely not perfect but I can definitely say, especially for reading text, they’re great, at least whenever I’ve been able to demo them and stuff. And I don’t rely on them every day, but I know we have some folks through our clinical and other programs that are power users that use them for just tons of stuff and are just finding new uses for them all the time, so super-duper cool.

Well, folks, we’ve got a few more devices to talk about, and one of them I wanted to talk about was another very popular device in our loan library, and this has been The Guided Hands by ImaginAble Solutions. I’m not going to lie, when we very first got this in, we thought it was very cool. We thought it’d be great, we thought it’d be wonderful for demos, but we weren’t really sure if anyone would borrow it. But really, since then, I think we’ve got at least two now and they’re pretty well always out of the library. Nikol, I think you even did a story on one of our demo and loan individuals that use the Guiding Hands.

Yes, sweet Lydia. We didn’t intend it initially for art, I don’t think. We hadn’t thought it through with that, and her mother contacted us and was so interested in her being able to… She had CP and limited dexterity in her arms and she was so interested in being able to create art, and we just thought out of the box with that device and were able to get her to be able to paint with that. And, oh gosh, I’ve actually got a piece of her art up in the hat in the house. It just lit up her world to be able to do that again since she was losing some of her ability.

Super, super cool. And yeah, the Guided Hands is an assistive device. It was created by ImaginAble Solutions and it allows individuals with limited fine motor skills to paint, write, draw, use a stylus, and really just open up accessibility to art, painting, like Nikol said, drawing, or also accessing technology. It uses this big sliding system that encourages basically the use of motor skills in the shoulders instead of those fine motor controls in the hands. So even though you’re controlling in a different way, it actually allows more control than individuals might be able to get if they don’t have that fine motor control.

The handle itself is interchangeable and the device comes with different handles for different needs, including a spherical, a joystick, and a flat hand piece to accommodate individuals with different grip strength, pronation or spasticity. You can also get an adaptations kit that can be purchased separately or as part of a bundle that includes a slant board for enhanced visibility and to provide elbow support, a wrist weight to help support steady movements and reduce involuntary motions. It also comes with mats, suction cups, bungee cords and a bunch of other stuff, just to be able to keep it level, keep it put and be able to help folks with all different kinds of stuff. And we also have one of these over in our program over at Noble that we talked to a few weeks ago, and so we’re really excited for folks to be using that also.

Brian, another new device to our loan library is the BrailleDoodle, and it has a pretty nice price point, especially for any device with the word braille in it, which I feel like just automatically makes things go into the thousands of dollars, but could you tell us a little bit more about the BrailleDoodle?

Yeah. Yeah. The BrailleDoodle is a pretty cool device. It helps folks make tactile graphics, and as far as the price point is concerned, it’s about 150 bucks. You can go to AT Guys or My Tools for Living Retail Store. It varies in price from place to place. I think on AT Guides, it’s $149, on My Tools for Living, it’s $179, but basically, it’s a two-sided tactile tablet that basically lets the user write in braille and create tactile drawings. So if you’re familiar with braille at all, there’s individual cells, and in those cells, on this particular device, there are magnetic gears or balls inside those holes where the braille pops up and pops down. And the student or the person who’s using the device will use a magnetic stylus to be able to pull those up, and so as they drag that stylus across the BrailleDoodle, it’ll actually pull those up and create a tactile graphic.

So they can just simply draw like they typically would on a piece of paper and create different types of art, different types of graphics. They can use it for STEM activities, but it really gives them a blank grid for really doing whatever they really want to do. And what I love is it builds braille literacy, supports creativity, and really, it’s great for folks who are blind or who have low vision. You don’t have to be totally blind. Just having a tactile graphic if you really struggle to see as well is something that could be useful. And again, I think what we have found, it’s fun, it’s a meaningful tool that can promote learning and self-expression, and it might be a thoughtful gift that someone would want to be able to be more creative and show their ability and potential in that area. So again, about 150 bucks from different places online, but it’s called the BrailleDoodle.

Awesome. And from a lower tech, really great, a combination of some, a little higher tech. Finally, Nikol, we will end with our little friend, Ellie Q. Can you tell us about her?

Yeah. Is it a her or is it a him? I don’t know.

I don’t know. Her name’s Ellie and she has a feminine voice, so we’ll go with that for now.

We’ll go with that. Okay. Elli-Q, so that’s E-L-L-I, dash, Q, and ElliQ, it’s a companion tabletop robot. And I would say it’s more geared to senior citizens looking for some companionship. If you need help with reminders, just assistance with daily tasks, it’s going to use AI to have conversations with you. It tells really bad jokes, they’re terrible. It can turn on music, it can encourage you activity. I think we all need that. I think I need somebody at my desk to say, “Stand up now and stretch.” So it can tell you to go take a walk or just to support your wellness goals like, “Hey, it’s time to drink a glass of water or take your medications.” And again, so all those reminders are just that companionship, somebody to talk about what the weather’s like and what’s a good song to listen to and tell me that joke.

So you can also use it, if you don’t just want it for those companion features, to make video calls, so a way to stay connected to family or friends. You can send or receive messages or photos, and then in the newer versions, it can even send information to family and caregivers about changes in your sleep patterns or activity levels. And that’s nice for those older adults who can still somewhat live independently, but just need some supervision and just somebody’s loving eye on the situation. So it’s really cute. It’s offered for $249.99. That’s an enrollment fee, so it gets you the robot, the setup, the shipping and the installation support and then a warranty, and then you do have to have a subscription with that so it’s cheaper for how much longer you commit to that. So with the 24-month commitment, it’s $39. If it’s annual, it’s 49, and if it’s monthly, it’s $59 a month. But really great device, particularly if people don’t want to mess with something really high-tech like something getting into a smartphone.

Yeah. Yeah, and it does really try to get to know you. We have one here in our lab and poor ElliQ gets to know 25 people and thinks we’re all one person, because usually this is made for, like you said, a companion to sit there and get to know you, but it will ask you questions and will get to know and it remembers everything you tell it, which is definitely fun, and it is very outgoing too because it asks you as soon as you walk in.

Well, guys, just because we are doing this around the holidays, I guess this being 2025, what are you most looking forward to this holiday season?

My answer’s always the same, time off with the family.

Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

Always the same.

For sure. And Nikol, I guess since last time we had you on, your name has changed.

I changed, yes, my name. I married my longtime love in July, so we will get officially over. I’m going through all the social security processes and then changing. A woman’s job is never done. So many things to change. The wedding has long past, it’s a distant memory for him.

So true, so true, so true.

Yeah. So excited to spend time with our kiddos and with family and friends, and just try to make special dinners with family and get out and see each other more often than we normally do.

Awesome. Brian, what about you?

It’s a lot of the same stuff. Love time with the family, I love holiday food, so turkey around Thanksgiving, ham around Christmas. I know that just makes Nikol go, “Ooh, gross.” No.

There’s also mashed potatoes.

Yeah, yeah. [inaudible 00:16:20].

No, I don’t even need it to resemble meat. I just…

Nikol, you do bring up a great point. I do love the meat, but man, the sides. I could probably be-

The sides.

Yeah, that’s true.

On about day four of leftovers, I don’t want meat anymore. I just want the sides to still be good so I can still have the-

No one goes hungry usually around the holidays at our house.

Yeah. I tell you what, go to Cracker Barrel. They’ve got a vegetable plate, like a veggie plate, and it is amazing. It’s all the sides, so anyways, I do that quite a bit. No, and then really, it’s again, time with family. My daughter, she’s going to have a baby here next spring and so we’re loving getting to spend time with her and the rest of the family, so it’s going to be super fun.

Nice. Well, congratulations, Brian. Congratulations, Nikol. I don’t have any new babies. Thank goodness I’m not going to be a gran-

No, are the baby’s excited for something? They’ve got something on their wishlist? Because I don’t have young ones so I don’t know what the new toy is.

Kind of. It changes a little bit. Penelope will be seven by the time the show comes out. She wants to start with Legos, so we got her a couple little ones for her birthday, which is in November. And then if those work out and the four-year-old, her little brother, doesn’t tear them apart, maybe we’ll get some of those for Christmas. So I don’t know, they don’t go without a whole heck of a lot. We usually, if we’re going to Walmart together, we’ll get a little toy or something, and she likes to make her own stuff. So really, it’s just more, kind of with you guys, having the time off, being able to enjoy them, where you get up and you don’t have to do anything that day except for maybe get dressed and go eat more food somewhere else, and just getting to really enjoy and spend time.

And I don’t know, every day, every month, every year, I realize how fast it completely goes, and before long, they’ll be the 17-year-old and the 24-year-old off doing their own thing and just be like, “Can we get this over so I can go do whatever the heck I want to do?” kind offeeling. So it’ll be really nice. Enjoying-

One day you’ll look up and you’ll be a grandpa like Grandpa Norton.

I know. I know.

That’s right.

And what’s weird because I swear I keep looking older and Norton doesn’t get any older, so I don’t know what’s really going on there. But no, congratulations to you guys. Thank you so much for coming on the show and for sharing some of these great things with us and sharing your time with us, and I’ll let you get on back to your day. So Brian, Nikol, thank you so much.

Thank you. Happy holidays, everyone.

Listeners, while we’ve got a little bit of time left, we’re going to go ahead and revisit some of our interviews from last year, so please join me in welcoming Justin, Blake and Kaitlin back to the show to talk about some of the things that they’re excited about.

Our next guest on the show today is Blake Elie. Blake, can you introduce yourself to the listeners?

Hi, my name’s Blake Allee. I am the demo and lone lead here at Easterseals Crossroads.

Well, Blake, what is a piece of technology or assistive technology that you’re excited about? Maybe who could it help and how?

Yeah, so something that I’ve… We’ve had it for a little while in our library, but recently I’ve been playing more with it. It’s called the Hable One. It’s by Hable. It’s for blind or low vision users that want to use a smartphone. So you just pair it with your smartphone. And then what’s nice is it has Perkins-style keys, and you can not only type with the Perkins-style keys but you can also program gestures and shortcuts, so you can really get to a point where you’re flying around your device. You do have to use it with, if you’re using a smartphone, you have to use it with talk back or voiceover, but that’s pretty much how it works.

Awesome. Well, that’s really cool. Yeah, because I know for some folks, just learning all the different gestures, all the swipes, the taps, everything can be a little bit challenging, so having a different way to access has got to be a really great kind of accommodation.

Yeah. Some people, just swiping on a screen or the gestures are a little difficult, so that is a nice thing to have actual buttons that you’re pressing to be able to use for, so yeah, I do enjoy it. It’s got the six keys to type with. It also has a key for backspace and space bar and things like that.

Awesome. That’s very, very cool. Well, Blake, what’s something maybe you’re looking forward to this holiday season?

This holiday season, I’m looking forward to turkey, definitely turkey, yes.

Ah, nice.

Turkey, turkey, turkey.

Yes, for sure. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Oh, you’re very welcome. Thanks, Josh.

All right. Our next guest is Justin Amber. Justin, tell our listeners a little bit about yourself.

My name is Justin Amber, and I am an assistive technology technician on our clinical team, and I work on our blind and low vision team.

Justin, what’s a piece of technology, either assistive technology or other, that you’re excited about?

All right. A few things that I’m excited for have to revolve around cars, the first one being a scan tool and a code reader. So that’s just a tool, just like when you go to AutoZone and it checks out what kind of error messages are on your dash. The reason why I think this particular one is cool is because it is iOS and Android compatible, and so when you’re using voiceover, you can actually use this if you are blind or low vision. Same thing with the next device. It’s the multimeter and data logger. Same thing, it runs through your car and figures out what issues are, and it’s iOS and Android compatible as well. And then there’s also a talking tire gauge.

Oh, nice.

This opens up some avenues for blind and low vision users to work on cars, and something I’m a little bit passionate about.

Awesome. Awesome. Well, Justin, what’s something you’re looking forward to this holiday season?

I’m just looking forward to watching my six-year-old son open all of his gifts and just spending time with family.

That is the best. That is the best. Thanks so much for coming on, Justin.

Absolutely.

So our next guest today is Kaitlin Hill. Kaitlin, could you introduce yourself to our listeners?

Sure. I’m Kaitlin Hill. I’m an occupational therapist and I am the lead assistive technology specialist for Atlas. So I’ve worked with kids through adults, but right now, I’m focusing on assistive tech for kids in public schools in the state.

And we are so happy to have you, not just as part of the team but also on the show today. So Kaitlin, what is a piece of assistive technology or technology that you’re really excited about, and maybe whom could it help and how?

So I am actually wearing them today. These are Kiziks and they are hands-free shoes. So I love them because they are a really good example of universal design. They are helpful for a wide variety of folks, not just individuals that have disabilities but also anybody that just wants to be able to easily get their shoes on and off or has their hands full. I actually got these when I was pregnant so that I didn’t have to bend over to put my shoes on anymore, but they’re great because you can just slip your foot right in.

They have a patented heel design so that the heel doesn’t collapse when you slide your feet in. You can have them pre-tied so individuals that aren’t able to manage the laces themselves can have a caregiver do those for them, so they’re really handy for individuals that need a little bit of extra help getting their shoes on. Maybe they’re post-surgery, maybe they’re not able to bend their hips quite as well as they used to, or maybe they have a baby in their hands and they don’t want to have to put the baby down to slide their shoes on.

Ah, those are absolutely awesome, and thanks for bringing them too so I can actually see them. I know they don’t translate that well into the podcast. They can’t quite see them, but very, very cool. Well, Kaitlin, what’s something you’re looking forward to this holiday season?

Well, I have a six-month-old, so he is just starting to eat solid foods so we’re really excited for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners with him, and also to go to Winter Lights and see what he thinks of all the Christmas lights.

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing.

Absolutely. Thank you.

And finally, folks, we’re going to close out our Black Friday couple of shows here with just a few little bloopers taken from our interviews this year. So thank you so much for listening, have a great day and we’ll see you back next week.

Brian, can you start us off by telling us about the head and eye control and the improvements for those?

Sure. Yeah, absolutely. So in the latest version of iOS, they did come out, I think it’s iOS 18 now I think we’re all on.

26.

Are you kidding me?

Or 25 or something like that.

Let me start that over again. Okay. That’s when it started eye tracking. Yeah, okay.

That when it started. That’s when started. But yeah, the newest one is like, I can’t remember if it’s 25 or 26, but-

Really? Are we that far on that?

I think it’s 26.

It jumped from 18 to 26. It goes by year.

Okay. I’m like, “What?” I’m looking at my phone right now. Well, I’m still on 18.6, so apparently I need to update.

All right. Well, let me try that again.

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 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, 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.