ATU794 – AssisT with Mark Jones

Hi, this is Mark Jones. I am the CEO and main developer of Fiavaion. 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 794 of Assistive Technology Update. It is scheduled to be released on August 14th, 2026. On today’s show, we are excited to welcome Mark Jones, and he’s here to tell us about Assist and how it is able to assist individuals with learning. We have a quick story about a new AT dispensing kiosk that was just filed for patent by Disney, and we are also joined by our friends from BridgingApps with an app worth mentioning. Listeners, if it’s your first time here, thank you so much for joining us. If you happen to need a transcript of today’s show, it can be found over at Eastersealstech.com.

While you’re over at Eastersealstech.com, you can check out all the other great things from the INDATA Project here at Easterseals Crossroads, including our tech tip videos, our blog posts and a lot of other content to help with your AT questions and needs. I just want to give a giant thank you out to listeners. I’ve had quite a few interviews scheduled here lately with your suggestions. If you happen to have a suggestion for the show, please shoot an email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org, and we’ll work at getting those folks on and those questions answered. But for now, let’s go ahead and get on with the show. 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, as you may know here at INDATA, we do full day trainings all throughout the year, and I’m very excited to announce that our next full day training is coming up on August 26th, 2026, and it is over wearable assistive technology. This training will be in-person here at Easterseals Crossroads in Indianapolis, Indiana, but we will be streaming it.

So if you are not able to make it here to our office, well, I’d say try to find a way, but if you’re not able to make it here to the office, you can log in online. You do have to register beforehand, and I will put a link down in the show notes so that you can easily get over and register. With that link, you can also get into the archive of our previous full day training. So if there’s something you want to learn more about or maybe a training that you attended that you want to watch again, you can always find them in there. But as far as our wearable AT training coming up on August 26th, this training will be over all kinds of different wearable assistive technology for health and wellness, for control, to help with vision, community access, work and a whole myriad of other needs. If you’re here in-person, you’ll get to try out some of these amazing accommodations.

And if you’re online, we’ll make sure to try to keep you as involved as possible. If you happen to need continuing education units for certifications or other needs, you can get CEUs by attending our trainings. So whether you’re new to Assistive Technology, an old pro or just looking to learn a little bit more, please do attend our INDATA full day training coming up on August 26th, 2026 over wearable assistive technology. The training will be from 9:00 AM to 3:00 PM Eastern Time. And again, it will be in-person here at Easterseals Crossroads and also online streamed via Zoom. You do have to register in order to attend the training, and I will put a link down in the show notes to go and get to the registration. All of us here INDATA look forward to seeing you there, either in-person or remotely on August 26th for wearable assistive technology, full day training.

We’ve got a story from over at Kiosk Marketplace. It’s titled Disney Patent’s Kiosk for Dispensing Assistive Devices. The story’s about something that’s not there yet, but it says that Disney has filed a patent application, method and apparatus for entitlement for an automated system that could distribute assistive devices to eligible theme park guests according to the US Patent and Trademark Office. So this kiosk would be able to authenticate a user’s identity and then dispense approved items to them. This could include assistive listening equipment, headphones, strollers, wheelchairs, walkers, canes, powered scooters and other things that could also accept the returned equipment for reuse or recycling. Without digging too deep, it does say that this could potentially help Disney manage its assistive device inventory more effectively.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that Disney is going to install these machines. Again, it’s just a patent application to get it in, but apparently there has been some changes to guests’ needs at Disney parks, as well as some potential misuse of folks trying to use assistive things to maybe get into line faster or get through other pieces of the park. And this would make it a little bit easier to ensure that folks have the accommodations that they need in order to be able to enjoy Disney parks, but also making sure that folks aren’t misusing those assistive devices. Of course, it does say there’s a lot of questions remaining, how do they determine eligibility? But then also just making sure that, again, these tools are getting to the correct folks. So I’ll put a link to the very short story over in the show notes, but still a pretty good idea, just making sure that there are ways that individuals can get access to devices. It’d probably also be helpful if there’s more than one kiosk.

I know a lot of theme parks do offer some kind of different assistive devices, but actually finding where that place is, hoping somebody actually working in there at the time and everything else could be a little bit challenging. So maybe this can help streamline that, especially like I said, if they’re available at different places, at different stations throughout the area. I must admit though, I do love the idea of an AT kiosk where you can go and get the accommodations that you might need, but I do wonder just what exactly would it look like to ensure that these are going to the right folks and ensure that people are getting what they need without having to maybe disclose too much personal information to Disney itself. Anyway, go check out the story for yourself. The link is down in the show notes. 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 BridgingApps, and this is an app worth mentioning. This week’s featured app is called Pocket: Stay Informed. Pocket is a read it later app that allows users to save articles, stories, recipes and videos from across the internet so they can access them later in a distraction-free reading environment. Content can be saved from websites, apps, or browsers and organized into a personal library for easy access. Pocket also offers offline reading and audio playback, allowing users to listen to articles while on the go. Our favorite features were the clean reading experience and text-to-speech option. Pocket removes many of the ads and distractions that can make online content difficult to read, helping users stay focused on the information that matters most. The app can be especially helpful for individuals who enjoy learning online, but want a more organized and accessible way to save and revisit content. Pocket is available for iOS devices. For more information on this app and others like it, visit www.bridgingapps.org.

Listeners today, we welcome Mark Jones to this show to tell us all about AssisT. And that is with a capital T at the end, just in case you go looking for it, and how this tool is able to assist with learning for individuals with disabilities and other learning styles. And I, for one, am looking forward to learning more. Mark, welcome to the show.

Oh, hi, that’s great. Hi, Josh. How is things?

Oh, doing great, doing great. I am looking forward to talking about the tech and how it can help, but before we do that, could you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself?

Yeah, I suppose I’d classify myself as a nerd, so I might be in the same category as some of your listeners. So yeah, I’ve been in advertising and areas like that for the start of my life. And in the last 20 years I’ve been working at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin. I spent a couple of years working in assistive technology, which is the main reason why I’ve developed a passion for those types of tools to democratize learning.

Very, very cool. Well, we’re very glad that you did. And Mark, we’ve got you on here to talk about AssisT. So I guess just a big picture, what is it?

It’s a Chrome extension that I developed for people with neurodivergent issues and other people who require assistance. I suppose the motivation for generating it was from my time in Assistive Technology where we would have very, very broken up landscape for tools for students to be able to get the support that they needed. And then the tools were subscription-based as well, which meant that when they left the institution, the support pretty much ended. So I decided that creating an extension that was completely free would solve that issue for a lot of students and just normal everyday people.

Oh, definitely, definitely. And yeah, I know what you mean. Yeah, once that tool goes away that you’ve been relying on for so long. And also sometimes I’ve got to use so many different tools and which one does what? How do I do that? So I know AssisT has a lot of features, but luckily we’ve got some time here. So I guess what are some of the different features built into AssisT that are able to assist, I guess?

Yeah, well, we have the standard tools that you would expect. So line highlighting, color adjustment for the background, adjusting the formatting of the text, having specific, say, dyslexia type fonts like OpenDyslexic. What else? There’s speech-to-text, text-to-speech. There’s also a few AI tools that we have that are probably leaning more towards the academic side of things, so it might necessarily be relevant for your users. I’m trying to think now. I think there’s about 30-some tools in it. I just have to open it up here so I can remember. So yeah, we have things like sticky notes as well.

Oh, nice.

So when people forget about things that are embedded into the website, dictionaries, translations, annotations. One of the ones that I like quite a lot is the speed read functionality, which basically just puts up the text and cycles through it really quickly so that you can read quite quickly without moving your eyes. That’s quite useful for people with visual impairments as well, I find. There’s also reading guides and reading progress. There’s a few tools specifically for people with visual impairments, like the magnifying lens, which follows your mouse around, so it zooms in on the page. And then there’s custom cursors and things like focus modes and reducing things like motion and autoplaying videos, just stopping that as well. So they’d probably be leaning more towards the ADHD side of the neurodivergent space.

Nice. So yeah, a lot of features for a lot of different needs, and that’s awesome. As you know, because you’ve been doing this, disability doesn’t happen in a vacuum.

Absolutely.

Yeah, just because I am neurodivergent doesn’t mean I can’t also be low vision or have other needs in there. So I love that you’re really putting them all in there. I know you said it is a Chrome extension, so does this work pretty much all across Chrome?

Yeah, all Chrome browsers on Mac and PC. So the plan is at some stage in the future to hopefully open it up to things like Firefox and Safari. But because Chrome is Chrome and Chromium browsers, so that would include Edge and Brave and other browsers like that, it covers pretty much 85 to 90% of the marketplace. So that’s the reason why I focused on that at the start.

Oh, certainly. Well, and I know at least here in the States, a lot of schools are using Chromebooks and everything like that, so it really opens it up for a lot of schools and students in that kind of way. So I know you said your time in AT had inspired this, but what really led you to create it? Was there a catalyst or something you saw that really led you to know you had to make something like this?

Well, being honest about it’s a personal reason. So my son has CP and he has motor difficulties, but he loves playing on his computer. So there’s things, the likes of text-to-speech and speech-to-text help him massively because when he is trying to type on the computer, it’s quite slow. So with these type of tools, and certainly in the cerebral palsy space, I think it’s proven to be quite useful. That alongside the outline I gave you earlier in relation to seeing all the tools in assistive technology and the fact that students lose their support pretty much the minute they leave the college, which I found to be particularly unfair because obviously you’re in a space where you could end up paying thousands of euro a year or thousands of dollars a year to pay for these tools. And I just felt that it was something that deserved to be free and open for as many people as possible so that that wall isn’t there, that barrier, the financial barrier that a lot of people find isn’t there either.

Very, very cool. And Mark, I’ve got to ask you, because I know sometimes, especially just because you did say that there were some kind of AI tools in there, can I still use this with whatever my learning platform is if I’m using Canvas or Moodle, Google Classroom, those kind of things? Is it still allowed or could I implement and use it while I’m using those?

Yeah, absolutely. The default behavior for the extension is that the AI functionality is off by default. So you’ll get a notification when you first install it to see whether you want to have the AI functionality, but it’s just a matter of clicking skip and then you’ll just have the accessibility functionality.

Oh, nice. Very cool. Very cool. Yeah, because I know sometimes, especially you see it in the news, people are just worried about information getting out there. So I love that you’re able to turn that off so it’s still accessible and useful on the places where the students might have to use it.

Yeah, and just one other thing on that. The AI functionality, if you do decide that you want to use it, is pretty much set up to run locally on your own hardware.

Oh, nice.

So there’s no issue with data being sent to the cloud. If you do decide that you want to go down that route, there is the option to be able to do that, but the default is off, and then the second default would be to just be local. Again, data protection is something that’s quite important, certainly in the educational sector.

No, very cool. No, I love that you thought about that and actually put that part in there. Mark, I’m not sure when exactly AssisT came out, but how’s it changed since you first though of it or maybe first released it to where we are now?

Well, a lot of it has been background functionality and dealing with feedback from users. As somebody who’s not neurodivergent, I can only go so far with my own experience, and it’s only by getting users to use it that I can improve it and make it into a finally polished piece. Now, there’s a couple of things that I’m planning on releasing the… Sorry, it’s currently in beta. I’m planning on releasing the full release in the next month or so, and that will include a lot more functionality that’s going to be switched from beta to just being full release. So things like citation manager, the text-to-speech is a lot better in the latest version as well. It opens up more voices. And sometimes with the voices that you get on computers, they can be a little bit computery, not natural speaking. So some of the latest models are really good in that sense. So it sounds a lot more natural, and you can get stuff like tonality and timber and stuff like that in the thing.

So yeah, the speech-to-text I think is the main thing that I’m going to be focusing on for that as well, because that can be quite difficult, certainly for students or sorry, for users with say things like cerebral palsy or Parkinson’s or any, I think the technical term is dysarthria, which is an umbrella term for a speech impediment that’s effectively repeatable. So specifically for my son, I’ve built this where we can take about a hundred samples of his voice and that improves the ability of the computer to be able to understand what he’s saying because that can be a blocker, certainly in relation to people with speech impediments. And I think that’s an area that really isn’t covered in the free space at all. So I’m really looking forward to releasing that in the next month or so.

Nice, nice. No, that’s great. I know like you said, it’s not just a barrier to access. I know it’s just frustrating if you’re sitting there talking to your computer and it keeps bringing up the wrong darn thing. And it can really make the user experience bad. Mark, I know you said as you’ve built it, a lot of the changes, improvements and things have come from customer feedback, from user feedback and things like that. Do you have a story that maybe has stuck with you of some user feedback or somebody that has used AssisT and it’s been able to help him out that you could share with us?

Yeah, I mean I suppose it’s normally small things for a lot of people, and certainly in relation to neurodivergence, having the ability to be able to just hide a lot of the stuff, that was number one. Just jumping back to my son, because obviously he’s the main motivating factor. He now is able to do whatever he wants to on the computer as opposed to the way it was in the past where even typing out a sentence would take him 10, 15 minutes. Now we can just chat away. I’m getting emails from him left, right and center. In some ways it’s a blessing and in some ways it’s a curse.

Yeah, I mean you made something good because he can use it all the time, but it’s like, “Oh, maybe I don’t need that many emails or that much feedback.” That’s awesome. Mark, looking through, I know AssisT is the main thing that we’ve got you here to talk about, but you got some other things that you’re working on. Do you mind just telling us a little bit about them?

Yeah. Well, everything that I work on is front and center in the development as accessibility. That’s the first thing. So that’s pretty much what we stand for is making sure that everyone can use it without any barriers. So I have a number of products that are, well, I suppose they’re all open source. And again, that’s another thing about the company is that it’s pretty much all open source, self-funded. So one of the tools is an AI-driven child management system for computers, incorporating a bit of gamification into it so that they don’t feel like the restrictions you’re putting on the operating system is a bad thing. So they think that it’s all part of a game. “Oh, great. I scored these points today and I’ve gotten this medal or I’ve gotten this badge.”

So it’s tying into the whole gaming environment, which is again, something that my son loves. There’s a few tools as well. They’re more focused on academia, so there’s a piece of software that runs synchronized video. There’s another one that deals with projection mapping. There’s a tool which is called Dictate, which is like a webpage that you load up, and that’ll have all of the text-to-speech and speech-to-text functionality, but a lot more on top of that. And that’s web-based as well, so that’s quite useful. I’ve been getting reasonable feedback from Dictate. I think the AssisT side of things, we’re not really getting as much feedback as I’d like because it’s literally going to roll out properly to academia in September, so I expect that it will get a lot busier in relation to the feedback.

And obviously the extension will improve as well as we get that feedback. What else is there? There’s lots of tools that are ongoing. The tool for the improving of speech-to-text, I don’t know, it’s got a developer name, which I’m probably going to change. It’s called Prosodia. But yeah, I think that’s a bit difficult to pronounce, so I’m probably going to change it to something else. But that’ll be a self-contained thing where people can install it on their computer, go through the setup procedure, and then add it to their computer. And you’ll see, based on my son’s experience, you’ll see improvements. I don’t know whether you know the technical side of speech-to-text. There’s a thing called WER, which is word error rate. My son was getting somewhere along the area of 60 to 70% WER. After this, we’re down to about 7%.

Oh, wow.

So that makes a massive difference to his, because he’ll say something now and the computer will understand him. Previously, he’d have to repeat it over and over and over again. So I think just on that case alone, I’m quietly confident about the ability of this to be able to help people. And that is the goal, I suppose. But that will be rolling out next, I’d say. Once I get it properly tied down and set up so it’s easy to use. That’s the next step in relation to that is making the usability a lot easier for neurodivergent users.

Oh, that’s awesome. That’s awesome. Mark, if our listeners want to find out more about the new tools coming out, if they want to find out more about AssisT and everything else, what’s good ways for them to do that?

Well, you can go onto the website, which is, again, this name is based on my two children’s names, so that’s the reason why it’s a bit odd. It’s Fiavaion, so it’s F-I-A-V-A-I-O-N.com. And there’s a contact section there and you can add it there. Or if you go onto the Chrome web store, you’ll see the contact details on there as well. And I’m really looking forward to hearing people’s feedback and how we can improve the experience for the users.

Awesome. Awesome. Well, Mark, we will put all that information down in the show notes so that folks can easily get there, get you some feedback, and also just get these tools and try them out.

Absolutely.

See how they’re going to work for themselves, their students, their friends, their families, whoever might be able to benefit from them. Because looking at the tools and everything, I can see where these could even work and help folks who maybe don’t have a diagnosed disability. They’re just tools that could really help with productivity and be able to assist other folks as well.

Absolutely. Yeah, I’d hope so.

So we will make sure that folks do have access to that and can get all that. And then as Mark said, if you got suggestions, critiques, I’m sure he probably even also takes kudos if you do think it is working well too.

Absolutely. There’s no such thing as bad feedback from our perspective.

Very, very true. Well, Mark, thank you so much for coming on, for telling us all about it, for making this great tool and these great tools that are going to be able to assist folks in their digital lives.

That’s great, Josh. Thanks very much for having me.

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 Nikol 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.