ATU725 – Irie-AT with Cody Mitchell

Hi, this is Cody Mitchell and I’m the training manager of Irie-AT, 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 725 of Assistive Technology Update. It is scheduled to be released on April 18th, 2025.

On today’s show, we are super excited to welcome Cody Mitchell, training manager for Irie-AT to talk about the company and some of the great blind and low vision products that they offer. Thanks so much for giving us a listen today and let’s go on ahead and get on with the show. Today listeners, we are super excited to welcome Cody Mitchell from Irie-AT to the show to tell us all about the different technology they offer and how these devices, along with some great support and customer service can make a positive impact on the lives of individuals who are blind or low vision. Cody, welcome to the show.

Thanks, Josh. How are you doing?

I’m doing great today. How about yourself?

I’m doing all right. Thanks for asking.

Good, good, good. Hey, before we get into talking about Irie-AT, could you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself?

Sure. Yeah. So again, my name is Cody Mitchell. I have been working at Irie since 2016. I myself actually started in the shipping department and started answering phones when need be. We are a small family owned company, so occasionally I’ve even had to be the janitor. But basically, yeah, I’ve moved my way up, started answering phones, started doing sales, and as I mentioned now I am the national training manager for our company.

Awesome. Awesome. Well, speaking of the company, onto Irie-AT, can you tell me what is it?

Sure. So Irie-AT is an assistive technology company. We try to be a one-stop shop for individuals with all levels of visual impairment. We’ve been around since 2011. We are headquartered in Corvallis, Oregon, which is about 80 miles south of Portland, and we basically are a national distributor across the country, Canada and even down into the Americas. And yeah, again, we try to just provide all sorts of for individuals with all levels of visual impairment.

So we primarily started out selling Braille printers and we wanted to branch out into the low vision sector, if you will. So we now carry our own line of handheld video magnifiers and desktop video magnifiers. We carry some portable magnifiers such as maybe the Clover Book Pro, which many of you’ve probably heard of. We carry embossers, we carry the ViewPlus line of embossers as well as our own IRI embossers, and some document scanners, magnification, screen reading software, all that good stuff.

Awesome, awesome. Well, I know you guys definitely have a bunch of different solutions and we’ll try to get to as many of them as we can to today. I did want to start with one that members of my clinical at Vision team really liked when they got a see it at ATIA. They came back and talked about the b.book NoteTaker quite a bit. Could you tell me about it?

Yeah, and that’s actually something that I didn’t mention, so I’m glad you brought that up. So we do carry our… Well, we represent Euro Braille, which is a French company, and they have a full refreshable Braille line, if you will. Prior to jumping into the b.book, we also do carry their B Note Braille displays. We have a 20 cell, a 40 cell, a 64 cell, and even an 80 cell. But the neat thing, one of the neat things about the b.book is as many of you know, I’m sure that the traditional note takers out there are running Android and many of them are running outdated versions of Android. So what’s neat about the b.book is that it’s actually running Windows 11.

So you fire that thing up. It does have a micro HDMI port, so you can connect it to a display. So for sighted peers or sighted assistants, it looks like your laptop or your Windows PC. So it makes the learning curve much more doable, makes it much more easy to learn. So when you fire the thing up, of course it is in Windows, Windows 11, but we have our note-taking software that auto launches and it’s called Easy Suite. And what’s neat about that is that’s where you’re going to have your grade one, your grade two. It currently supports Nemeth math and we’re having UEB added by the end of the year. It even has its own music Braille translator built into it as well. And then for those who maybe want to dabble in the Windows environment and are comfortable with going outside of Easy Suite, you can minimize or close the program and it will automatically kick on whatever screen reader you have selected within the Windows environment.

So we pre-install NVDA and we also have the JAWS free trial on there. So whatever you have selected, again, we’ll automatically kick on for yourself. We also install all Index embosser drivers, ViewPlus embosser drivers, and the Tiger Software Suite 30 day free trial. But again, it being Windows, you can install pretty much any other program you like on there. You can install Duxbury on there, you can install Braille 2000, Microsoft Office. Of course, we install browsers on there such as Chrome, we’ve got Firefox, we have Thunderbird installed on there. Of course being Windows, it has Microsoft Edge as well. So we try to give you all the options that are out there just for your personal preference. In addition to that, we also do install the TeamViewer remote support feature on there or remote support app, which of course with your permission will allow us to remote into the device and help troubleshoot or take care of things, do updates, all that jazz.

No, I think it was having Windows installed that kind of blew them away a little bit just because that always seemed to be… I mean, note takers are a great thing. They can do so much, but that always seemed to be the limitation, was they could do what they could do, but they couldn’t do everything you really needed them to. And that was always seemed to be kind of the disconnect or the issue that a lot of folks would have or they need a NoteTaker and a computer running JAWS or some kind of other tertiary thing, not just have everything all in once. So that’s awesome.

Sure. Sure.

Something else, and you mentioned this a little bit as you were talking about the different things you offer we’re the Cloverbooks. So I know there’s a couple of different ones, but I guess just start with kind of what are the Cloverbooks?

Sure. So the Cloverbook line, if you will, we have… Well, there’s three different versions or models of the Cloverbook. We also have the Cloverbook XL, but basically the Cloverbook, our most popular one again, is the Cloverbook Pro. It has a 12 and a half inch screen, corner to corner. It is a matte touch screen. In addition to the touch screen, which will allow you to pinch and zoom and pan around, we also have your tactile knobs and dials. So if you prefer kind of the old school method if you will, of turning a knob clockwise, it’ll zoom in. Counterclockwise, it’ll zoom out. And the nice thing about… Well, one of the nice things about the Cloverbook is it is portable. It does run on a rechargeable battery. It also is a user replaceable battery. So for those who might be in a higher ed setting or be moving around to different locations, if you ever lose juice on the thing, you can just pop in your own battery.

In addition to that, with service, as we all know, lithium ion batteries lose their charge over time. So rather than having to send the device in or scrap the thing, you can simply just buy a new battery and pop that in and you’re rocking and rolling again. So another neat thing about the Cloverbook Pro that really separates it from the competition is that it has a split screen feature in which it’ll allow you to not only view at a distance, but also on your desk simultaneously. So the idea is that a student or a professional can be looking at the front of the classroom or conference room while simultaneously be taking notes on their desk.

In addition to that, so it has the optional CloverView external screen, which if you can imagine if you do the split screen feature, that’s great and all, but you lose half your real estate on that single 12 and a half inch screen. So by adding on the CloverView external screen, which not only does it mount to the device, there’s no additional footprint, it’s also powered by the device, so it doesn’t require an external power source. But when you connect that Clover view external screen, it will dedicate the upper screen or one of the screens for distance view while simultaneously dedicating the other screen for near view. So you get the best of both worlds with that thing. In addition to that, it also does have full page OCR or optical character recognition or just a fancy term for it, it’ll scan a document and read it back to you.

It does have three gigs of internal memory to store all of your documents on there. Of course, it does have an SD card slot if you need to add additional storage. We also have two other models. We have the CloverBook Plus and the CloverBook Lite, and they’re basically the same form factor. They just have not quite as many bells and whistles. So the main things between the three models is the CloverBook Pro has that split screen feature and the ability to connect to that external screen as well as OCR. The CloverBook Plus still has distance view and near view, but you just can’t do them simultaneously. So you’d toggle back and forth just like you would with the traditional video magnifier. And it also doesn’t have the OCR function. The CloverBook Lite is just the near view camera, no distance view, no OCR, so it’s a much simpler device.

It’s also a little bit more affordable than the other two models that we offer. We even have for the Lite and Plus models, we have a special firmware that can be preloaded for what we call simple mode. So for the individuals who just want basic stuff like just zooming in and zooming out, changing contrast, and I believe it also has the ability with the different reading aids, the horizontal line, vertical line, horizontal and vertical masking, those types of things, you can basically enable that simplified mode to simplify the interface. So that some individuals who might be intimidated or not as familiar with some of the more advanced features, you can just make it nice and simple and much easier to use.

Now I also mentioned that we have the CloverBook XL line. Again, we have the Lite Plus and the Pro. And basically they all have similar features. Basically, again, the Lite version, the Lite XL is just the near view camera. No OCR, no split screen feature. The Plus has that split screen feature, or excuse me, has distance and near view, no split screen and no OCR, and the XL has all those features. Now, the neat thing about the XL is the screen has an additional hinge, the primary screen, so you can actually pivot it up towards you. So it makes it a little bit more ergonomical, makes it a little bit more… There’s much more reading positions with it. In addition to that, when you add on the external screen, which is also… I should mention it’s the XL, so it’s a 15.6 inch screen on both of those screens there.

When you add that on, so it will allow you to do an extended screen view or kind of like when you have an extended display or an external monitor. So you can extend the single view across both screens, so it doubles your real estate, which is something that you can’t do on the 12 and a half inch model. It’ll only allow you to mirror what’s on your lower screen or upper screen or do that split screen feature that I mentioned. The other thing that it has built into it, which is kind of neat, is that it does have that OCR function. But unlike the CloverBook Pro 12 and a half inch model, that’ll allow you to scan and read in an eight and a half by 11 inch document. The CloverBook Pro XL will let you do an 11 by 17 size document or two eight and a half by 11 pages side by side. So the idea is that a student could have an open textbook and scan both pages at once.

Very, very cool. I love all the different ones and just the different ways that you can really customize it for what your needs are and what you might actually be using. I’ve got one more to ask about that and then I promise I’ll give you time to highlight some of the ones you’re kind of excited about. Handheld magnifiers still make a big difference. And you guys had a super lightweight, pretty good size one. I believe it’s the CloverNote HD. Can you tell us about it?

Yeah, so the CloverNote HD, what’s nice about that one is the same company that makes it is SightCare. It’s the Clover line. So when we came out with the CloverBook Pro, basically people wanted the same screen size, but they wanted it in more of a traditional handheld video magnifier form factor. So basically what it does, it’s got a stand that kicks out, sits on your desk, sits on top of a document, and you can move it across. Still has that full HD touchscreen on there as well as the knobs and dials, very similar to the CloverBook Pro, but one of the neat things about it is it is a little bit more low profile.

It also has an optional distance camera that can be attached on the right-hand side. Of course it already has a distance camera, but what this allows you to do is extend this camera arm up much higher. And it’s kind of a low profile, so it doesn’t… With the CloverBook Pro, sometimes what can happen with that external screen is that it sits up so high that the peers in the room, it can be kind of in their way, so it might block their field of view, which can be a problem in some situations. But what’s nice about adding on this optional distance camera on the CloverNote is that, again, it’s very low profile, it is very tall and it will again allow you to view stuff at a distance but not necessarily or kind of minimize maybe disruption of peers in the classroom or in a conference room.

What you can also do with that is being that the CloverNote sits on top of a document, as a traditional magnet… If you can imagine a traditional magnifier, it’s a little bit hard to write under there, especially if you have to reach around behind it or something like that. So what you can do with this distance camera is you can pivot it down towards your desk and flip it to the right, and it’s on the right-hand side, I should mention. And what it’ll allow you to do is get a larger viewing area and it allows you to write under it on the right-hand side. And while even when you rotate the camera and flip it, it will auto-orient itself so that the document or physical material that you’re looking at is face-up on screen.

Cody, I can sit here all day and just ask you about things, but I want to give you a chance just because touching these and working with them every day and working with individuals every day. Do you have a couple of pieces that you’d like to highlight and talk about a little bit?

Yeah, definitely. I appreciate that. One that has been… We just released it in January. We had a model prior to it called the CoaSt. It’s made by a company called VisionAid International, but now we have the CoaSt Duo. And basically the difference between the two is the CoaSt is a plug-and-play camera that will plug into an iPad, a Mac or a Windows PC. And we have a free software that’s called Readit Lite. And basically, it’s plug and play. It’s USB-C. It is powered by whatever device you have plugged into it, so there’s no charging of the device at all. And the CoaSt will look at stuff from a distance, and it’s very low profile.

CoaSt, it stands for… It’s pretty cute. It’s camera on a stick. It weighs less than one pound. And basically it kind of reminds me of a selfie camera or on a selfie stick. And so it does extend out. The handle on it will pivot out into a tripod, and so you could set it on your desk. And again, it’s just plug-and-play, USB-C. So it’s very simple to use. It’s very low profile. And then we have the CoaSt Duo, which will not only view stuff from a distance… And I should mention both of these will view stuff from a distance of nearly 150 feet away.

So it’s pretty crazy. I mean, kind of the idea is that traditionally a student or individual will have to sit front and center in a classroom to view stuff on the board or view the teacher. With this thing, it’s being that you can view stuff from so far away and it has different angle correction and whatnot, you can pretty much sit anywhere in the classroom or in the room and still have an awesome, crisp, clear view. Now again, the CoaSt Duo is the newer model that we have, which will allow you to not only view at a distance, but it can be pivoted down and view stuff on your desk. So you can have both near view and distance view with this guy. And it’s a super lightweight, affordable option for individuals. Again, the simplicity, all that stuff, the software, the Readit Lite software is free.

Now the Readit Lite software is kind of got your basic stuff in there. You can zoom in, zoom out, change contrast. Depending on which device you’re having it connect to, you can have it record video, you can have it capture, and it will of course save it to your device. It also has a very neat feature where you can adjust the frame rate and you can adjust the megapixels within the camera. And what it’ll allow you to do is if you’re looking into a darker setting or a lighter setting, it will be able to adjust and make the image or view brighter or darker. So the idea is that in different environments, if you’re in a classroom where they’ve got windows where it’s going to be much brighter, or if the lights are shut off, if they’re using some sort of projector or something like that, you can adjust the settings to optimize those scenarios.

Now the other thing that’s really neat is I mentioned the Readit Lite software, which is free. If you want a few more bells and whistles, we also have the full Readit software, which is currently only available for Windows, but we are coming out with a version for Mac soon, and we do plan to also have it available for Android as well as Chromebook, but that’s a bit down the road. Now the neat thing about the Readit software, the full version for Windows is that it has optical recognition built into it. So you can scan and read a document. It has a multipage scan function, so you can scan up to 20 pages per minute. Of course, it has the different views. You’ve got your different contrast modes. You can have it view one line at a time, one word at a time.

It even has a neat what they call overlay view. So if you’re looking at a document that has many pictures in it, it will scan for the text and highlight the text and give it a nice high contrast mode. And of course, you can change those contrast modes to whatever you prefer. But then in the images, it will keep them their true color. As I’m sure many of you know, if you have a true color image or an image and you try to use a high contrast mode with that image, it can sometimes wash it out. So it gives you the best of both worlds. It also has a fine feature. So if a student or an individual has scanned in a book and an instructor or someone has mentioned, “Oh, hey, turn to page 187,” student can hit control F for find on their keyboard.

And then of course, type 187 or whatever your keyword search is, and the idea is that the student who is using the software can get there faster than their fully sighted peers who are physically turning the pages. It also has an annotation feature, so you can add notes and click notes to each of your documents. It also allows you to import inaccessible documents, so you can import JPEGs, you can import PNGs, PDFs, of course DOCX, txt files. But the neat thing about if you’re importing inaccessible document, it will actually scan for text in there and read it aloud to you.

That’s super cool. I wish I had questions, but you did such a good job of that, and I love that CO stands for camera on a stick. I promise. That’s not all I took from that, but that’s just a great little kind of way of putting that together, especially in the world of all the acronyms that I know we all live in. Cody. What else?

So the other one that I would like to mention that we just released last week is a product that is also made by SightCare. It’s the same Clover line or company who makes the Cloverbook Pro and all the other video magnifiers that we offer. This one is called the MirrorPad Pro, and we’re really excited about this one because it has all the technology that the Cloverbook has in it. It’s running a user replaceable battery. It’s rechargeable, all that jazz. It is a 17… I believe it’s a 17.2 or 17.3 inch screen. I don’t recall the exact measurement. But it also has… It’s more of kind of like a traditional desktop magnifier, but it doesn’t have the XY table on it, but you can still put a document under it. It also has that awesome distance camera, similar to the Cloverbook Pro or the Clover Note that I previously mentioned. But each of these cameras are 48 megapixels.

It also has a full HD touchscreen just as the Cloverbook Pro. It has that split screen feature. Of course, it has OCR built into it as well. But the really neat thing that we’re excited about it is that you can actually plug in a smartphone or tablet and it will mirror it for you on the screen. So if you’re using an iPhone or an iPad, it will allow you to mirror it and you can zoom in on the screen. You can change contrast. You can even if you go into your gallery on your phone and you have a document or a picture of a document in there, it will use the text-to-speech or OCR function to scan that picture and read it back to you. Now if you have an Android phone or tablet and you download the Mirror Play app that is offered by SightCare and it’s available in the Google Play Store, that will not only allow you to mirror your Android phone or tablet, it will allow you to control it on the touchscreen.

So you can make phone calls with it. You can surf the web, if you want to watch YouTube, Netflix, all that stuff. And what’s also neat is, especially for videos, is that screen, I didn’t mention this, it actually can rotate 90 degrees. So you can move it for portrait orientation or landscape. So maybe on a phone, which is kind of if you’re just in the user interface, traditionally it’s more of a portrait orientation. But if you want to view a video or like I mentioned YouTube or something like that, you can rotate that baby for landscape. And then you have just like you would on your phone, a nice big old wide screen for viewing videos.

I’m so glad you brought that one up because that was the other one I needed to bring up today just because that was brought back from ATIA by a few of our members of our team as one of their more favorite things they saw. So Cody, I do have one more question kind of about Irie-AT. Where does the name Irie come from?

So Irie means to be happy. So when my boss started the company, my boss, Jeff Gardner, he wanted a happy, positive environment for his employees and for himself of course. And so that’s what we do at Irie. We are a happy company. Again, we’re a family owned and basically if you call our company, one thing that you mentioned in the beginning, Josh, too I believe is that we really pride ourselves in service and support. We understand that this stuff is complicated. It’s expensive. So if you call Irie, you’re going to get…

Well, one, you’ll get a human being. You’re not going to get a phone tree, which is always a plus. And anyone at my company can help you and they have a positive attitude. So you give us a call, you will get a live person. We are available Monday through Friday, eight to five Pacific time. You can reach us at 888 308-0059. Of course, if you want to shoot us an email to, you can just shoot us an email at sales, S-A-L-E-S at I-R-I-E dash A-T dot com. And also, if you want to check out our website too, you can go to W-W-W dot I-R-I-E dash A-T dot com. You should be able to check out all of our products. Of course, we’ve got all the nice features listed there. And I believe on all of our products now too, we do have demonstration videos. So for those of you who’d like to check those out, you can kind of get a better idea of what we have to offer.

We will put links to all that as well as the phone number down in the show notes so that folks can easily find those. Well, Cody, thank you so much for coming on today for telling us just some of the great ST things that Irie-AT offers. I mean, as far as product support, customer service, and all of those, as I said, we definitely had members of our clinical vision team that came back with nothing but good things to say. So very excited, always excited about new things, and just improvements on assistive technology and new ways for folks to be able to access the world around them and accomplish their goals. So thank you so much.

Thank you for having me, Josh. I appreciate it.

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. 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.