ATU770 – ATIA26 Recap with Keri, Raine, Nikol and Blake

Hi, my name is Raine Sims and I’m an AT specialist with Atlas.

My name is Keri Bridges. I am the program manager of Atlas.

I am Nikol Allee. I am the education and outreach lead for the INDATA Project at Easterseals Crossroads.

Hi, this is Blake Allee. I’m the demo and loan lead with the INDATA Project, 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 770 of Assistive Technology Update. It is scheduled to be released on February 27th, 2026.

On today’s show, we take a trip down to Orlando for a recap of the 2026 ATIA Conference with our very own Raine Sims, Keri Bridges, Nikol Allee and Blake Allee as they tell us about their experience down at the annual conference last month. They’d recount some of the things that they saw, some of the things they learned, and just some of the experiences that they had. Listeners, if you ever have a question, a comment, or even a suggestion for somebody we should have on the show or maybe something you’d like to learn more about, please do not hesitate to reach out. You can send us an email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org or call our listener line at 317-721-7124. Also, don’t forget, if you would like a transcript of today’s show, you can go over find the show at eastersealstech.com and the transcript will be right there available for you. Our transcripts are generously sponsored by INTRAC. You can find out more about INTRAC at indianarelay.com.

As always, folks, we thank you so much for listening. As always, folks, we thank you so much for listening. Now let’s go ahead and get on with the show.

Listeners, I sadly was not able to attend the ATIA conference in Orlando late last month, but today I’m lucky enough to welcome members of our INDATA and Atlas teams to the show to tell us about their time down south and I cannot wait to live vicariously through their experiences. So we’re going to start off today with Keri Bridges and Raine Sims from our Atlas team. Keri, Raine, welcome to the show.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Yeah, I am excited to get into talking about your time at ATIA, but I guess start us off by telling our listeners just maybe a little bit about yourself. Keri?

Sure. My name is Keri Bridges. I am the program manager of Atlas. We provide assistive technology support to educators in K-12 schools in Indiana, so we provide items they can borrow. We provide AT specialist support, professional development and workshops, so really supporting educators in Indiana.

Awesome. And Raine?

Hi. Yes. My name is Raine Sims and I’m an AT specialist with Atlas, so I am one of the people providing the technical support, driving to different schools in Indiana and working one-on-one with educators and helping them implement assistive technologies.

Awesome. And you’ve both been to ATIA before, correct?

Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Excellent. Was there anything kind of new this year that you noticed, or maybe your initial impressions when you got there this year?

I’m not sure there was anything new, but the one thing that I always noticed about ATIA that I appreciate is it’s super organized. It’s easy to navigate, while large, and actually I thought this year things were a little bit more closer together, so it wasn’t as spread out, but you always know where the sessions are, who’s speaking. It’s easy to get information, so I always appreciate that and makes the experience a little bit better for me.

For sure. Raine, any thoughts on that?

Yeah, I mean, I totally agree and there’s so much to do, so much to learn and so many people to meet. It’s definitely a huge conference though, and I found myself wishing I could be in many places at once.

That’s always the hardest part for me. Whenever I go, it seems like all the sessions I want to see are at the same time, and then there’s a few times where it’s like, I guess I’ll go to this one, and have to make those decisions. Well, along those same lines, did you have a favorite session you were able to attend?

Yeah. So I mean, every year, ATIA hosts the Prentke Lecture, which is given by a different AAC user every year, and that’s definitely an absolute highlight for me. This year’s presenter, Matteo Moreno, gave a really excellent presentation on what it was like to grow up as a really extroverted kid who used an AAC device to communicate, so I really enjoyed that.

Nice.

Well, funny enough, I also had that as my favorite session. A lot of what Raine just said, and I think it was really interesting to hear him talk about how he started using his AAC device when he was really young, and then he also gave some information about how he used it academically in school, but also socially and how that helped him make social connections and not just be on the outside. And so it was really nice to hear about that as we are often helping students to get new device or their first device so that they can participate and be a part of school and friends and even family at home and have conversations. And I thought it was really interesting at the end, somebody asked him a question about what device he uses, and it was a device that we actually have in our library. So it wasn’t something big and beyond what we do. It’s a device that somebody tomorrow could ask us tomorrow.

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. No, I always enjoy that too, just to get to hear the user story. I mean, we all hear from experts, we all hear from all this, but to hear from the actual users and how it can affect them, especially over that long of a span. Unfortunately, I know in your work and even in the work I’ve always done, it seems like you work with somebody in a small piece of time and that’s about it. You never really know just how far they get to go or where they really end up. So the vendor hall is also always a really great thing. Was there maybe a coolest thing you got to see while you were touring around the vendor hall?

Yeah. For me, I’m really excited about the Optaro and the Optaro XL, which are two magnification devices by Eschenbach I believe, and those devices use your existing iPhone or iPad and then they turn them into a fully functional magnifier. I believe for the iPhone specifically, it’s a case that you put on your iPhone and it’s about the size of an external battery and it turns it into a fully functional magnifier. I think those are really cool.

Nice. Very nice. Keri, do you have anything that really kind of caught your eye or maybe something you knew about or learned something about?

Sure. Actually, I think I have two that kind of are things that we already are using or have kind of learned about in the past, but we have a Modmath app that I was just kind of getting more information about and seeing how it works. I think as having a math background and not having any supports like that when I was in the classroom, I get really excited about it and want people to use it, but then also I spoke to the Guided Hands Expo and was getting information about how it’s now an approved Apple accessibility device and seeing how you could use a iPad on there and actually using what Guided Hands has to be able to access the iPad. So I thought that was really interesting how they could do two together, because when they said they’re an Apple accessibility feature now, I was like, “I don’t understand how that works. You’re a physical piece of equipment,” but it makes a lot of sense and how they would be able to access an iPad or something like that.

Super cool. Now, did you have a favorite part of the conference? I mean, maybe beyond those. And it could even be the food. I guess this is one of the few years where it was, I know it was not warm down there, but trust me, it was so much warmer than it was up here, so you can’t complain about the weather. I’m so sorry. But did you have a favorite part of the conference or some highlight?

I think what I like is just interacting with people and honestly hearing too how different states use their assistive technology programs or who is running them or some are by county in a state where we’re statewide. So it’s just interesting to see how different states are utilizing that support and then taking what they’re doing and saying, “How could we do that? What pieces of those programs could we take and implement to improve our systems?” Because everything is so different, sometimes there are ideas that I’m like, oh, I never would’ve thought of that, because of how we run our program, but they can be really beneficial to our educators.

Oh, yeah. Raine, what about you?

Yeah, I completely agree with Keri. I was also going to say, talking with other educators and practitioners in other states, I really found it interesting to hear how they’ve tackled the big problems in their own contexts and environments, and so it really made me think about how we can improve access to assistive technology in Indiana as well.

Very cool. Now, if there was something you could change about the ATIA conference to make it even better, what would that be?

For me, I would love a bigger focus on behavior in the K-12 classroom. That’s one thing that I actually presented on this year, but I found in talking with other educators and other attendees that a lot of educators are looking for assistive technology tools and techniques that can help them with their students who exhibit challenging behaviors, including AT supports for students with emotional disturbance. I think there’s a lot of demand for more of that in the future.

Keri, what about you?

Yeah, I agree with Raine, I think that is a huge sector that’s kind of missing now, because I think ATI could be a good support there. One of the things that I kind of wish would happen, there is a time or a place for people with similar roles to get together and kind of brainstorm. It’s also really hard because we’re all called different things, so I don’t necessarily know, do you oversee a statewide project or county project? So trying to collaborate or find people in similar roles could be really hard. So if there is a statewide assistive tech programs kind of brainstorming session and people are coming together to kind of figure out who those people are, because it is really hard sometimes to find those programs all called something different. All the people running them are called something different. So just being able to have that ability to brainstorm with them and ask questions would be really great.

Yeah, no, that’d be great.

I completely agree.

Yeah, no, that would be good. I always forget that I have, there’s the ATX, while we’re all housed in different places, we have the same kind of goals, so I do get to meet with all them, but the way schools are handled, sometimes it’s handled by the ATX kind of as ours sort of is, I guess as a sister kind of program. Sometimes it’s under it. And then like you said, sometimes it’s county by county and it’s just kind of the wild west out there.

It is.

So yeah, I think… So if ATIA, you are listening, just maybe kind of a meetup for some folks with some similar roles out there that they might be able to do. And Keri, Raine, thank you so much for representing us there. Raine, thank you for presenting. I heard you had a very full room for your presentation, and we’ll have you-

It was fantastic.

Awesome. And we’ll have you back on the show to talk a little bit more about that as well. So did you have any final thoughts or-

Perfect. Thank you.

… anything else you wanted to share about ATIA?

Yeah, I mean, ATIA is a really incredible conference. I highly recommend it to any educator or admin, SLP, AT professional who wants to learn about assistive technology and talk with others who are interested in that too. I think it’s a really great resource.

Yeah, I do think it is a great place to learn not only about what we’re doing in our program, but kind of some outside programs and different pieces that maybe are relevant but we don’t know about. So I always learn something new and meet some new people and I appreciate that.

Awesome. Thank you both so much.

Yeah, thank you.

Thank you.

So next up on this show I have Blake and Nikol Allee from our INDATA project here to talk about their experiences at ATIA. Blake, Nikol, welcome to the show.

Thank you.

Hello. Hello.

Yeah, I’m excited to get into talking about it. For folks who maybe haven’t heard you on here before, could you just let us know a little bit about yourself?

Sure. I am Nikol Allee am the education and outreach lead for the INDATA project at Easterseals Crossroads. So I spend a lot of time just cheerleading and bragging about our programs, making sure we get the word out throughout the state of Indiana about assistive technology.

Awesome. Blake?

And I’m the demo and loan lead here at Easter Seals Crossroads with the INDATA project. The demo and loan lead, we have a lending library and I work in there and we get new stuff all the time, so I get to learn a lot of cool new devices and see how they work and then show those for people who are interested in demonstrations.

Awesome. And you are both old pros at ATIA. You’ve been going since it was at the old place. Of course, it’s at the new place now. I guess, did you notice anything new or different this year?

Yeah, I’ve been going since 2010, and so we’ve been at this Marriott location, which coincidentally, it’s the world’s largest Marriott. And you feel that when you first get in, first time finding a room and all of that. But they’ve got a nice big conference room and I spend all of my time in the ballroom area where they have all the vendors. So they have, oh gosh, hundreds of vendors there exhibiting their products. And since we do weekly tech tips on Mondays on our blog, we will post a weekly tech tip that lives on our YouTube channel and we are usually highlighting a product. While I’m there at ATIA, take the opportunity to meet with the vendors and do a little recording of their product that they’re showing off during the conference. So it’s a nice opportunity for us to let people be there who couldn’t attend.

Most definitely. And Nikol, stalks the folks in there is kind of I guess the way we could do it, but yeah.

Yes, there’s a lot of standing and waiting as they’re talking to a lot of attendees through there, so stand and wait a lot and carry around a camera and my feet are aching by the end of the days, but I think we come back with a lot of good content. Sometimes it’s folks that we’ve seen a lot of years. We’ll see if they have updates, we’ll get them on our podcast. Just a great networking opportunity. So I didn’t see much that was new-new to me to speak… Well, there were some glasses, they hadn’t come out. They were called Luna Glasses, and they sound like they’re going to work with someone who has really dim vision like Lightwise to make it more like a light night vision experience so it would lighten up the sky for you. So it sounded like it was just in pre-production now and they’re kind of working on it. I don’t know when it’s going to come out and they weren’t sure quite then, but it’s just something that I hadn’t seen before that they’re just interesting idea, kind of night vision for us regular people.

Oh, heck yeah. Or maybe for folks where everything’s just a little bit too dim, to bring some of that light in and be able to help.

Yeah, yeah. Absolutely.

Blake, what about you? Did you see anything cool and new there?

Yeah, as far as the actual ATIA, it was laid out like it usually is, so pretty similar in that respect, and a lot of the same people that I’ve seen in the past, but a lot of their stuff has something new about it or an update. So it was neat to see stuff that I’m kind of already somewhat familiar with, but seeing the new updates on that. But then on top of that, there was a couple of devices I thought were kind of stood out or were cool, and one was the IntegraMouse Air, which is for the most part, it’s a hands-free control for people who need help basically using a mouse. So you can control it, it has a little tip that you put in your mouth so you can do left up and down, but it also has puff control on that. But on top of that, it also has two little buttons underneath for lip movement.

So you would kind of use either your lip or your tongue to your lip, which I thought that was cool, so that adds a right and a left click. It has a microphone on it for speech to text, so you don’t need a headset or anything like that. And it comes in three modes, what was it? Like mouse, keyboard, and game pad, I believe.

Oh, cool.

Yeah, I just thought it was, I’ve seen a lot of sip and puff stuff in the past, and this one just looked a little cleaner. It had an easy way to remove the mouthpiece so you could clean it easy. It didn’t have a long tube. It just… Something that we’ve seen in the past, but it just seemed like it put it in a nice, easy, just size and shape. So I really liked that device, yeah.

And I did a tech tip with her, so we’ll have that as well on there. I was able to see that as well. That’s neat.

Awesome. Awesome. Yeah, and it sounds like maybe it’s a little bit easier to use, maybe a little bit easier to set up. And there, I mean, hasn’t been that many changes to devices like that for a long time, so very cool. And Nikol, I know you hang out in the vendor hall the whole time, but Blake, you’ve attended some sessions while you’re there. Did you have a favorite session you got to attend?

Yeah, so I’ll probably be boring and say what I say most years, but I’m one of the few Android people here with the INDATA Project, so I always like to go to the Google sessions and see stuff that either I didn’t know about or maybe I’ve used in the past, but just kind of haven’t for a while and just to be reminded of. But I always really enjoy the Google sessions just to see where they’re headed, what their new stuff is, and a lot of times it’s not like a step-by-step of how you do something. It’s kind of like, here’s something new in this update or coming. So then I can do my own research and work with it and figure out how it works a little bit better, but more just to put that idea of what they have available.

Very cool. Anything new that you kind of learned there?

Yeah, so I have a Google Pixel, but I don’t have the Google Pixel Fold. And we have a couple of different devices here that we use, like a caption companion would be one, just for people that let’s say you speak two different languages would be one thing or maybe someone is unable to speak or maybe someone is unable to hear something, so they like to read captions. But with the Google Pixel Fold, you can just fold the phone and one side can do, let’s say English, and the other side could do Spanish, or you could just have English on both sides if it’s somebody who is unable to hear. So I thought that was kind of just an easy, because you can do that on your phone already, but you have to pass it back and forth. This is nice because you could just put it in between two people and have a conversation.

Wow, that’s really cool. And you were going to tell me it doesn’t even have to be connected to Wi-Fi to work, is that right?

Yeah, that’s what I remember them saying. If I’m wrong, I apologize, but I’m pretty sure I remembered that being kind of one of the last selling points where I was like, oh, okay, so it doesn’t have to be just some phone or something you have to have a service or Wi-Fi for. You can use it all the time.

Oh, that’s awesome. No, because that’s a great accommodation because yeah, you wouldn’t have to actually physically hand your phone back and forth to a stranger or somebody else just to kind of facilitate communication. For you to set it right up there in between you and be able to talk just plain and normally. So super, super cool. Well, I guess I got to ask you both, what was really your favorite part of the conference?

Do you have a favorite part? You go ahead.

Sure. I mean, probably my favorite part is just being around so many people that are either interested in telling you about their devices or learning about devices, because outside of work and a couple of things I do around the city, a lot of times I’m just with people that aren’t really-

Into this kind of thing? Yeah.

… looking into this kind of looking into this stuff. Yeah. So to be around people that have a lot of the same questions or are looking at new stuff, and then to be around all the vendors and just kind of pick their brain and just see what they’re up to, what’s new, what ideas they have and to bounce ideas off of. So I just really like that aspect of it a lot.

Very cool. Nikol?

Yeah, I think it’s, for me, building relationships in there. I see the same folks year after year getting content for our viewers, getting all the podcast content as well, getting folks scheduled for that. I thought it was really interesting when I was there, people were kind of making partnerships within the vendors. So for example, Daessy Mounts, they’re a company that has a lot of different mounts. They have working with Rifton that has activity chairs and things like that. So Rifton now has a mount that they’ve used from there that then can mount AAC devices on theirs. LVI has a new partnership with Dolphin. We’re going to talk about that in a tech tip. So it’s neat to see not only are we networking with folks, the vendors are networking. And you see it when they bring devices, I’ll use an example as the Brava Oven came last year. They had no idea that it was going to be a use for someone with a disability.

It never came to their mind when they were inventing that. And then someone mentioned to that and then we saw them again there this year. But it’s just neat that people are like, even if they don’t know that their product is something that can help people with a disability, they’re there learning and then working with other vendors to see, oh, how can I benefit from your product or how can I improve mine? And saw a lot of improvements. All the screens on handheld CCTVs, they’re just getting-

Oh, yeah. It’s getting better and better.

I mean, the handheld device are getting… The screens are unreal. And so a lot of updates and a lot of good things coming.

Very, very cool. I guess just to kind of close this up, is there something that you would change about the conference to make it better, besides it actually being warm in Orlando? I know that was something you guys didn’t have, but as I told our last guest, it was still colder here, so you’re not allowed to complain.

Yeah, it was hard to complain when I could see it was negative here, but yeah, we were hoping for warmer skies. But no, I think it’s a great conference. I think a little more diversity in what products they show. There is a lot geared to, and a lot of teachers go, so I get it, but there’s a lot geared to AAC, so there are lots of different AAC devices there. So just more vision, more mobility, just more of an-

Just not as much kind of AAC?

Yeah, yeah.

Because I know the AAC, not only is there quite a bit of it, but they seem to have a big footprint. Usually, I didn’t get to go this year, but usually, yeah, they usually take up a big space.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think that’s really it. It’s really well run and it’s really well attended. And like I said, just making all those connections is wonderful when we’re there and I think they all do a good job. The vendor hall’s huge. It’s pretty exhausting to get through it for some of the attendees, so.

For sure. Blake, what about you?

Yeah, I mean, I kind of agree that it is a very cool event. There’s just so many different tables and so many different things to see, but things I guess that I would say that I’d improve or kind of work on, so if you have a device, like an actual device, you can kind of show it off and show what it does, but a lot of the software AAC apps or software, it felt like, and maybe it’s just me, but there was a lot of vagueness, like ideas for the future or something like that. And then they don’t have a large screen basically showing what the program does, so you have to go talk to the people.

And it’s not that you don’t want to talk, of course I want to go talk to a lot of these people, but sometimes you just want to have an idea of what it is, if it’s even worth something you want to talk about, because if it’s about some random scholarship or something, I don’t need to do that. But if it’s something about some type of AAC device, I want to see what’s different about theirs or why their app is something I should look into. So just a lot of vagueness that I wish that they would be more like, “This is why we’re special, this is what our device or this is what our app does or our program.” And I’d say that.

You also mentioned some of the trainings, even if they got deeper in the trainings, like you said, the Google, they’ll tell you something’s new, but you’d love even if they went deeper into it and showed you how to actually use that feature too.

Yeah, for the sessions. Yeah, that would be nice.

Yeah. A lot of times, they’re exposing you to it and you can go back and you’re great about going back and learning all that, but how great would it be if they really did that deep dive into it?

Oh, yeah.

Oh, for sure.

Yep, yep. And I know, sometimes I’ve attended the Google ones and the Apple ones, and yeah, sometimes it’s a wonderful, “Hey, here’s all the amazing things we’ve got,” and it’s kind of an overview, and then it just ends, and it’s like, okay, how do I get to that? How do I use that? How do I actually enable that and what does it look like in real world? Not so much the commercial kind of thing.

Yes. Yeah, absolutely.

Well, awesome. Well, thank you both for going there, for representing INDATA and for bringing back great stuff. Nikol is also the person who schedules all of our podcast interviews, so expect to hear a whole lot of folks from ATIA as she gets them all scheduled and everything. So we’re looking forward to that.

And watch all of our tech tips. If you’re not doing that, if you’re only listening to the podcast, you’re missing out on other content. So we do weekly tech tips and we do blogs on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, so we’ve got a lot of info coming out all the time.

And you can check out all that stuff at eastersealstech.com. You can also go to our staff page even and see Nikol and Blake right there on our staff page as well. So thank you both so much for coming on the show and telling us about your experience.

Yeah. Thanks, Josh.

Thanks, 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 at 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. 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.