ATU768 – Blindshell Classic 3 with Diane Ducharme and Kamila Tljašova Part 2

Hi, this is Diane from BlindShell, and I am the user experience tester and product trainer.

Hi, this is Camilla. I’m from BlindShell, 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 768 of Assistive Technology Update. It is scheduled to be released on February 13th, 2026. On today’s show, we welcome back the folks from BlindShell to finish telling us all about the BlindShell Classic 3. We also have another app worth mentioning from our friends over at BridgingApps. Let’s go ahead and get on with the show.

If you find yourself with a little bit more time on your hands, or maybe listening to this has you thinking, “Well, what about this? Well, what about that?” Well, if you have questions about assistive technology, we have other podcasts that might just fit your needs. If you happen to have questions about assistive technology, we have Assistive Technology Frequently Asked Questions, or ATFAQ. The show is hosted by Brian Norton and features yours truly, along with Belva Smith, as we all talk about assistive technology with questions that come in from email, phone calls, and other means. We also don’t always know the answer, so it’s very important that we have listeners that can help us out with some of those questions because while we like to think every once in a while that we may know everything, we’re proven wrong almost daily on that one. So if you’re looking for more podcasts to listen to, or if you have questions about assistive technology, make sure to check out Assistive Technology Frequently Asked Questions wherever you get your podcasts.

Listeners next up on the show, we’re very excited to welcome back Ale Gonzalez from BridgingApps with an app worth mentioning.

This is Ale Gonzalez with Bridging Apps, and this is an app worth mentioning. This week’s featured app is called Cozi Family Organizer. Cozi Family Organizer is a family planning app that allows families or individuals to easily organize their calendar, list, recipes, and more all in one place. It is designed for adults and families, but could be used by individuals as well. The app is free to download and users are prompted to create an account when they open it for the first time. From there, users provide information about their family, which allows other family members to log into the family account. This is important because it allows the additional users to add events to the family calendar. The quick start setup then prompts the user to add tips and reminders to their calendar. One of these options include adding trash day to the family calendar. The app will send a reminder the night before so that users remember to take out the trash.

A favorite feature is that Cozi works in a browser so users can set up their schedule using a desktop or their mobile device. It helped reduce miscommunication between family members and could be used as a caregiving tool to ensure everyone knows what needs to be done, when it needs to be done, and who is doing it. Cozi Family Organizer is currently available for both Android and iOS devices and is free to download with optional in app purchases. For more information on this app and others like it, visit www.bridgingapps.org.

Listeners, as I said in the opening, today we have part two of our interview concerning the BlindShell Classic 3. Now, the very beginning part of this is a repeat from last week, just talking about some of the apps on there. If you’d like to fast-forward to the brand new content, you can go to the 12-minute mark of this podcast and get there. Otherwise, I thought it was good to maybe just revisit a couple of the apps that we were talking about as it really flows into today’s episode. So we’ll go ahead and take it away.

Let’s dig into some of the new kind of features. So I guess, as you said, the BlindShell Classic 3 does have artificial intelligence features and capabilities, let’s talk about those. How does that help the user with access?

The BlindShell’s version of AI is called Luna. And Luna is a way that you can, you can ask Luna all kinds of questions. She could do math problems. She could spell things for you. You also use Luna to open applications, to take a note, to do all kinds of things. But what I really like about Luna that I think is unique-

… with BlindShell, so I’m turning up my volume so you can hear it. I can ask Luna to add a contact. So I could do that just by my voice, so I could quickly just do a demo of that.

I listen after the beep.

Add a contact. So Luna is opening up into the contact section.

Luna, sure. Please provide the following. First name, last name, phone number, include country code if needed.

Edward Baker. 257-876-2187.

First name, Edward, one of nine.

So it opens up into a contact page, but everything is already filled in for us. So I forgot to mention in the very beginning that the BlindShell is menu-driven. There’s no swiping, there’s no tapping. So there’s tactile bars that allow me to go up and down through the menus. So I’m going to use my lower bar to go down.

Surname, Baker. Two of nine.

It’s already filled in there.

Mobile, 257-876-2187.

Phone number’s already in there.

Home, work, [inaudible 00:06:02] email address-

And you can add other things, but this is generally what people add.

… personal address, save contact. Nine of nine.

So the important thing to go down to save your contact by hitting the tactile okay button.

Contact saved. One new notification, 10 [inaudible 00:06:14].

And there it is. So now I have a contact in my phone.

Nice. And so basically I can kind of have, I don’t know, conversation’s not always the right kind of word, but almost a conversation with Luna and just ask it to do whatever it is I might need to do, be that make a call, send a message, make a contact, do all those kind of pieces?

Yeah, sure. Would you like me to show you a conversation that I had with Luna?

Most definitely.

Okay.

Volume seven, volume eight, volume nine.

So I also want to mention that the BlindShell has a tactile, dedicated answer the phone button, which is also your okay button. So it’s funny because that is something that people with a standard smartphone can struggle with is, “Do I one tap to answer? Do I double tap the answer?” We have this nice designated answer the phone button. And we also have ta-da, a designated hang up the call button, which if anybody has had a hard time with that on a smartphone, you thought you hung up the call and you found out you didn’t. You will definitely be able to do that easily with the BlindShell because we have a designated hang up the call button.

So now I’m going to talk to Luna about one of my favorite subjects, which are beagles. So I’m going to ask her, how much do beagles weigh? So she’s processing.

Beagles are a medium-sized breed. Most adult beagles weigh about 20 to 25 pounds, 9-11 kilograms. Some larger individuals can be up to around 30 pounds, 14 kilogram. If you’re tracking a puppy’s growth, a vet can give you a good growth chart.

How tall are they?

Luna, beagles are about 13 to 15 inches tall at the shoulder, roughly 33 to 38 CM. Males and females are similar in height. There can be slight variations.

Do they like to play?

Luna, yes. Beagles are usually very playful, social, and full of energy. They especially enjoy nose-based games, sniffing adventures, fetch, and gentle tug of war. Quick ideas, scent hunts or treat finding games, short fetch session.

So I’ll turn this down, but what I wanted to demonstrate is how I could carry on a conversation with Luna. I didn’t have to keep repeating the subject of the conversation. And then I’m able to also save this and share it. So if it’s something that I think somebody else would find interesting, it could be a recipe, or I could ask Luna to create a story about my friend, Cindy and her guide dog. And Luna would make this story and then I could save that and I could share it with Cindy through email or messages or Tandem or WhatsApp as well.

Nice. Nice. No, that’s super cool. And I love, like you said, you can just continue the conversation. I feel like the learning curve of technology is so much lower for maybe folks who aren’t used to using technology or things like that, just because you were just having a conversation. You weren’t completely restating the question. You started off with asking about beagles and then, well, how tall are they? Do they like to play? And it wasn’t asking you just what like to play.

Exactly. Yeah.

It wasn’t making you go all the way back there. Diane, you mentioned Tandem. And in looking at the BlindShell Classic 3, I saw the Tandem app. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Oh, so Tandem is amazing because Tandem allows a BlindShell user, now it’s only available on the BlindShell Classic 3, the newest version, and it allows the user to connect with someone, they could either use a iPhone, they can use an Android phone, or they could be using another BlindShell Classic 3. As long as that other person has the tandem app, the BlindShell user can request that that person takes remote control over their phone. So this is great for trainers. If somebody has an issue, they don’t know how to do something or they need help with their email, you can remotely take over their device only though if they send you the invite, so then once they do that, you accept it, you have control over their BlindShell so you can fix their issue or add a contact or set an alarm for somebody. Whatever it is they need help with through Tandem, somebody can now remotely assist them without having to be in the same room.

So you can only request help from people you trust and you have previously invited them before, so this way it’s a very secure connection because you’re giving remote access, complete remote access of your phone to help you with your settings, only to someone you know. I mean, that’s quite important. So I was just making sure it was clear.

Basically the blind person would either choose somebody from their contacts list or they can add somebody themselves. So I understand what Camilla is saying, it’s somebody who’s trusted, but it doesn’t necessarily need to be a social worker or a family member, it could be anybody that they choose, but they are the ones who are initiating the contact.

No random person’s going to end up getting control of their phone or anything like that.

No. No. No.

Oh, that’s awesome. And I bet even if it’s not used, that’s got to be great peace of mind. And looking at all the other kind of amazing new things that it can do, I also found Observo. What is that?

Again, Observo is another new app from BlindShell available on the BlindShell Classic 3. So let me get into that.

Five, six, seven-

Now what I like about Observo is it’s a quick way to get at information.

… volume, 9, 10.

So I’m going to hold down that same dictation button that I did for Luna. Open Observo. So what happens is the camera opens and-

Press the confirmation button to take a picture.

… you’ll hear clicking to let you know that the camera has opened. So what I’m going to do is just take the picture outside my window here by hitting that tactile okay button.

Image description, one of five.

So now I could get an image description. I can-

Text recognition, two of five.

Just get some text, if I took a picture of say a box that was delivered to me and I wanted to know who it was for, I could just get the text description of that.

Color description, three of five.

I can get color.

Bank note recognition, four of five.

If I took a picture of Bill’s, I can find out, are they fives, tens? I don’t want to hand a cab driver 20s thinking it was ones. So now I have that ability to know what I’m handing them.

Translate text, [inaudible 00:13:25].

Or if it’s not in English, I can translate it. But I’m going to go to the image description.

Image description, one of five.

So I’m going to hit that tactile okay button.

Loading. Through a window screen, a sunny winter scene shows snow with footprints in the foreground, one of three. A white fence borders a dark path, two of three, a two-story house with a snow covered roof, light walls, and a dark car in its snowy driveway are seen under a blue sky, three of three.

So now I know my neighbors didn’t shovel their driveway. So what I like … I use Observo every day. I’ll use it to tell me what color my clothes are when I’m picking them out. I can use Observo to, “Oh, is this blueberry yogurt or strawberry yogurt? What is this package? Is it mac and cheese? What is this?” And what I like about it is, again, it’s quick. I just say, “Open Observo.” I snap a picture and it tells me what it’s looking at. And again, this is another thing that I could share with somebody. So if somebody says, “Hey, I’m going to the store. Do you need anything?” I can snap a picture of it and say, “Yeah, can you pick me up one of these because I’m almost out.”

Nice. Thinking beyond the really cool BlindShell apps, Observo, Luna and those, what are some other apps available on the BlindShell Classic 3?

We have YouTube. People love our YouTube because it is ad free and it is free and it’s simple to use. You can use your dictation button and say, “Open YouTube.” It comes right to the search button. Oh, and anytime an edit box opens, so it could be in YouTube, it could be in a text message, it could be on the internet. You can either use the keypad to do the old-fashioned way of texting and typing it in, or you can use the dictation button. So anytime a text box opens, you could dictate what you want to say.

Yeah. So we do have Aira, we have Be My Eyes. We have an email client on the phone, so you can get multiple email accounts on there. We have an internet browser. We have Alexa is built into it. So as long as you have your Amazon username and password, you can put that on your phone. We have a document reader. So if you get an email and you want to save the attachment, you do that. I love it because there’s many times where a PowerPoint is not exactly accessible on my computer, so I will download it onto my BlindShell in the document reader and it reads beautifully. And if there is an alt text, it will read that as well. You can also, for entertainment, go into Netflix and Prime Video. And again, if they are audio described movies or TV shows, it’ll start playing on your BlindShell with the audio description.

And there are many games also.

Oh, yeah.

We issue some new game as a Christmas present every year that they’re very much loved. There are many games. And actually our users are anywhere between 10 years old to 90, 90 plus. And I think the beauty of the device, it’s very simple to use and it’s customizable. So if you’re not tech-savvy and you just want a simple device just to make a phone call with one button press and send a text message with one press, you can do that and not go into settings. If you’re tech-savvy, we’ve had users who are able to file a tax return using their BlindShell and internet browser. So it’s really customizable and you can grow and expand your usage of apps and functions as you’re comfortable.

Oh, that’s awesome. And kind of beyond the really cool apps that are available on there, am I able to download other apps?

So Camilla do you want to cover that one?

Yeah, definitely. There is a third party app catalog of BlindShell. And as a BlindShell is used in dozens of countries by thousands of users throughout the world, there are lots of apps out there. You can download them and a lot of them would work. However, because not all apps are developed with accessibility in mind, BlindShell cannot guarantee their accessibility experience to be the same as BlindShell native apps. So a lot of apps would work such as, for example, Metaglass’ app is really popular or Uber or Zoom. However, when a user would be going to a third party app section, they would get a disclaimer exactly describing that these apps do not belong to BlindShell and our phone is designed with accessibility, we cannot guarantee that other developers are adhering to same accessibility guidelines. That’s why it may be a different experience. But users are welcome to try and a lot of the daily needs, what a typical user would need would work.

I would say Observo was actually the last app, BlindShell native app that was added and it quickly became one of the top 10 used apps around the world together with YouTube, which is also really cool. And radio, internet radio, FM radio, podcasts, things like BARD, I think Diane is using. So the usual apps that you would expect a user to use daily like email, weather, alarm, of course, is all out there.

Awesome. Super cool. Yeah, and really you named off most of the apps I was even thinking about that would be really beneficial. So I’m glad to know that folks are able to get them, even if maybe they’re used a little bit differently or maybe if they don’t take accessibility quite as seriously, maybe they don’t work. But that’s fine, we’ll look for ones that are much more accessible. So is the BlindShell Classic 3 limited to different carriers or can I use anyone that I want or how does that work?

So yeah, the BlindShell is unlocked and as far as carriers go, I always recommend that if you want it easy, get T-Mobile or anybody who uses T-Mobile Towers. So you could use like Mint or Tello and get a Microsized SIM card, you’ll pop it in there and your phone is going to work right away. Again, Metro, Consumer Cellular, pretty much you get the SIM card, it works right away. AT&T is a little tricky because sometimes you put the SIM card in and it works right away, other times you have to make some APN, they’re called APN changes in the phone and you can contact BlindShell and they can help you with that. I don’t know the rhyme or reason for that, why it works sometimes and not others. And Verizon, Verizon will often tell people it doesn’t work, but if you put a Verizon SIM card in the phone, it will work.

Well, and Camilla, I’m sure, and Diane, I’m sure you probably have more of these than anybody in the entire world, but can you tell me a story about someone’s experience using the BlindShell Classic 3 and maybe just how it was able to help them out?

Well, yeah, there are many stories. Oh, I’m trying to think. So there’s a lady who pretty much has been, actually not pretty much, but has been blind her entire life. She’s in her 60s now. And this was at the point when we just got Be My Eyes on BlindShell. So the Be My Eye AI feature. She went into her church and she took a picture of her church and she said she was in tears because nobody ever described it to her the way that Be My AI described it to her. And that was a very moving moment for her.

I have a customer who took a picture of his granddaughter that was graduating and he got to know what she was wearing, the cap, the gown, the little tassel. He said, he asked his grandson, “Oh, what is your sister wearing?” “She’s wearing a robe.” But when he took this picture of her, he got the color of the robe and how the light was reflecting off of the hat and the tassel, and it just made this beautiful image for him. So it’s allowing people to see things that they never saw before. And it’s allowing them to see them as they want to see them, not going through the lens of another person who may be leaving things out that they think the blind person doesn’t need to know.

Yeah, that’s with the Observo and you could also share immediately through messages, but actually Diane, I thought you would share our favorite story with the emojis.

Oh, yes, yes, yes. So we also have a customer who is, he’s a grandfather and his wife uses an iPhone. The other two grandparents, they use some other smartphone, but he now is the cool grandpa because with his BlindShell, he knows how to add emojis to text messages where the other grandparents can’t figure it out. So he is just so proud of what he can now do and send his grandkids emojis. And they get so excited when grandpa’s sending them text messages.

Oh my gosh, I love it.

Yep, you can search them by Luna.

Yep.

Yeah. Yeah. I love it. I love it. It makes it easier. But yeah, it also makes it where you’re able to connect. You’re able to do those things that were such a challenge or maybe even impossible before and already outdoing the other grandparents. So-

Yep, there you go.

… what an awesome accommodation. Well, if our listeners want to find out more or be able to get a BlindShell Classic 3 for themselves, what are good ways for them to do that?

BlindShell.com. BlindShell is present in the US, so it could be ordered on our eShop, BlindShell.com. There are also distributors that carry our phone, as well as multiple programs. So some of the VA programs for the Veterans offer issue BlindShell phones, as well as TEDPA programs. So just go to your local representative and ask. And it’s definitely present in every state. The reason why it’s also offered by the TEDPA programs is that BlindShell also has a very loud speaker. We even measured it by request by one of the TEDPA programs. It goes to up to 100 decibels, so it’s also good for users with hard of hearing and the device could be also connected to various hearing aids or headset and also for those with dexterity issues. So having another need, assistive technology need for your fingers touch, I mean, the tactile buttons certainly help. So that’s why a lot of assistive technology programs that serve users with multiple disabilities, they actually really like the device because it can match several needs.

Always happy to do a online demo for any group who’s interested. We’re definitely very flexible. We meet a lot of our users weekly and yeah, we talk to them about the phones.

To expand on what Camilla is saying, that if anybody belongs to one of the blind advocate chapters and you would like us to do a virtual demo for our chapter meeting, or if you’re having an event and you would like us to do a demo, just let us know.

Awesome. We will put all that information down in the show notes. Well, Diane, thank you for coming back on the show. Camilla, thanks for joining us today for telling us about the new BlindShell Classic 3 and just all the great new features. We can’t wait to try it out. And folks, if you do have questions, please do reach out to them just because it’s a great accommodation and really, really awesome new features. As we were talking earlier, you can definitely show that you are taking that user input and really putting it to work and making everything better. So thank you so much for coming on the show.

Thank you.

Thank you, Josh.

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 @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.