ATU731 – LVI America Updates with Kimberly Cline – Part 2

Hi, this is Kimberly Cline. I’m the Director of Sales for North America for Low Vision International, 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 at beautiful Indianapolis, Indiana.

Welcome to episode 731 of Assistive Technology Update. It is scheduled to be released on May 30th, 2025. On today’s show, we are super excited to bring you the second half of our interview with Kimberly Cline, the Director of Sales for USA and Canada for LVI America as she walks us through some of the other really great new products that they have available. Let’s go ahead and get on with the show.

Kimberly, we’re also got to talk about a few more things while I’ve got you on here. So one of them is a partnership with Inside Vision, working with some Braille products. Can you tell us about those?

Yeah. So I’m really excited about this too. As I mentioned in the beginning, we are Low Vision, so Braille, I’ve had people come to us and say, “Oh, you guys have such great products. You should do Braille. You should create Braille products.” And we didn’t create these, as you mentioned. It is a partnership with insidevision. They are from France. They are a company I was not familiar with. They have been around for some time. They have had several different products out; one of them was called the insideONE. The insideONE now is the insideONE+, but it really is not the same product. They’ve revamped the whole thing. They kind of launched it before, and they were some issues. It was a bit underpowered. There were some things with the glass that was on it before, so they really just gutted it and it’s a total redesign.

So we are very happy to be the master reseller for them for North America for these amazing products. I was a little nervous at first, because in all the years I’ve been doing work in the industry, I’ve never sold Braille, which is kind of weird. I worked for companies that sold Braille. I worked for a short stint for, well, they were Freedom Scientific. At the time, they were a VFO. Now they’re Vispero. But we had a separate department that handled Braille and we had enough fine folks that were amazing at it. And so, they didn’t need me because I don’t even know Braille. So in all the years I’ve never sold Braille.

But we are excited. For one, I am most excited because these are Windows. They’re Windows 11 and they’re very, very powerful. So not only are they Windows 11, and I had somebody already say to me, “Well, I know, but the problem with these are when Windows 12 comes out,” I go, “You put on Windows 12.” These are powerful computers. They’re not note-takers. I always try to correct people. They’re like, “Well, can you take notes with them?” Well, yeah, you can take notes with them. They’re computers. They’re powerful, they’re exciting.

So first of all, let’s talk about the ONE+ because that’s the one I started with. So it’s a very unique product. Think of when laptop computers first came out, we were so excited. So now you have basically a laptop computer for somebody that’s blind because of the fact that does have the glass on it, and in the glass, in where you put your hands on the glass, there is a Perkins-style keyboard that’s kind of like think if you put your hands like you were going to type on a Brailler or put them into the sand. And when you move your hands away from the sand, it left an indentation where your fingers were. Well, that’s how it is, but it’s on the glass. It’s a special glass that’s actually handcrafted in Germany. It is called Gorilla Glass, like the glass that’s on your phone, but it’s thicker and very specialized because it’s got the indentations where your fingers go.

But it doesn’t just have that. It actually has where you can do gestures and slide bars on the left and on the right and on the bottom as well. So it’s really amazing. It has two cameras on it. So again, think of it as just a computer, a regular computer. But this is a computer that someone that is low vision or legally blind has the ability to use.

You can do functions with it three different ways. You can put your fingers on the Perkins Brailler that’s there and you can type. You can type just like you would. So that’s one way to interact with it. You also can do a gesture on the screen, and then it will open up a QWERTY keyboard. And you can visibly see all these things. So you can actually see the QWERTY keyboard come up and it will announce. Also, you could then do everything with gestures as well, so it’s like a touchscreen. You’d be able to touch an icon, you can scroll through them, you can double tap on them just like you would on your phone or an iPad or anything like that.

So it’s very unique in all of those ways. So let’s kind of go back a little bit because both of them, the SUPRA and the insideONE+, they both are exactly the same, except one has the glass, one has all of that and the cameras. But the insides, the guts, the powerful part of them is the same. So both of them have an Intel Core i7 processor. It’s a Quad-Core 8 thread processor. It’s got an Intel HD graphic card, and they both also have 16 gigabyte of memory. The battery allows you to be able to use it up to 10 hours, which that’s pretty cool. I don’t even get that out of my own computer. Now, it depends on the one with touch. If you’re doing, let’s say you’ve got it now plugged into a monitor and you’re just maxing it out, everything that you can do with it, you might get that down to eight hours. But still that’s really cool.

It’s got a full stereo system in it, a four speaker audio system. It has microphones where you of course can talk. It’s got a headset jack. It’s got a micro HDMI. So both of them, you can plug them into, excuse me, a monitor if you choose to. And both of them, you can either use a Bluetooth keyboard with it and/or plug in a keyboard.

So I love it because you can use it as a communication device. So think if you’re working with someone that’s deaf and there’s not a signer there. Well, they put their hands on, they start typing. With Perkins, I can see what’s happening. If I’m using the ONE+, I can actually see it on the screen what they’re writing to me. And now if I want to type a message back to them, I can do that with my Bluetooth keyboard and I can type. And then, they have the ability to have, I didn’t mention, but there was a 32-cell Braille display at the bottom, so they could be actually being able to feel what I’m saying because it’s going to be, of course, coming up on the Braille.

The Braille is very crisp. It’s a special type of material that they’re using. And I was kind of being silly with them, but again, I haven’t sold Braille. They like, “Oh, they’re very crisp Braille cells.” And I’m like, “Is that good? Is it going to poke their fingers? Are there soggy Braille cells? That’s the term? It’s really called crisp?” And it was so funny because they’re like, “Oh no, Kimberly, this is a thing. Crisp Braille is very important.” And every single person would come and try the, they’d go, “Oh, these are really crisp Braille cells.” I’m like, “Wow, I guess it’s really a thing.” So it has that.

And then above that, it actually has the cursor movement key. So if you’re wanting to be able to move to letter number 15 or whatever, you touch that and it will automatically be able to route the cursor to that as well.

They come preloaded with NVDA talking, but you also of course can switch to JAWS. It does come with the 40-minute demo of JAWS, and with a keystroke you can switch back and forth between NVDA and JAWS as well, but they’re powerful. You can install anything that you want to install on that’s Windows based. But they’ve also put on some special folders on the desktop for you to have quick access to different things that might take a little bit longer to be able to get to if you were just trying to go through every icon and that type of thing. And to be able to get the Hot Key guide up to be able to get the manual, different things like that, they’ve made it very quick and easy access for all of those things as well. So do you have questions before I keep going or jump over to the SUPRA?

Nope. I think you can go ahead and jump right over to the SUPRA. You keep answering my questions before I can even get them out, so perfect, absolutely perfect. Keep going.

Yeah, I’m really excited about these products. And the reason I’m so excited is, first of all, I think they’re amazing, Windows 11. I think what I’ve seen in the past when people have came out with these similar type of products, they haven’t been powerful enough, to be honest. Even when they first released it, when they released the ONE, it wasn’t powerful enough. It wasn’t. And now you have something that’s got enough memory. You’ve got something that you can keep adding the updates to Windows. You’re not stuck with, “Okay, now you’re using Windows 10 and you’re going to be there forever.” You can keep adding programs to it and applications.

It does come with TeamViewer. So if I need to be able to log in and help someone at a distance. Or even better yet, if I can’t answer the question and France needs to log in, I was just at Texas AER a couple weeks ago, and it was my first big debut with them because there was a lot of folks coming up that knew a lot about Braille and they were asking me a lot of questions that I did not have the answers to.

And I finally just got to a point, I said, “You guys, We’re going to get a hold of France.” They’re like, “Ha.” “I don’t know. I don’t know. You’re asking really good questions.” And plus there was something I couldn’t quite make work, so I reached out to them in an email and they said, “Oh. Well, are you at the conference now?” I said, “I’m right here in front of people. Yeah, I need help.” And they’re like, “Well, log onto TeamViewer first of all, and we’ll take control and you can see what we’re doing. You can tell people. And then, we’ll do a WhatsApp and I can talk to people.” And it was just amazing. It was just boom, they were just there live from France. I was like, “Whoa, this is really cool.” So the support from them is amazing. They’re very excited to release this in North America. It’s another game changer, I feel.

The SUPRA is really cool as well, but the SUPRA does not have a glass on it, so think of it as more of just a Perkins style keyboard that’s on it, and then it’s got the router keys. But it does have a joystick and it’s really easy to use. And that’s what I heard from everyone, whether they had full vision, low vision, or they were blind. It’s very, like when you move it to the left, you know. There’s no guessing what you’re doing. And so, it would literally go there and you would hear it go from icon to icon on the desktop. Because if you want to get to the desktop, you just do Windows D, just like we’ve been doing for years. And so, they love that because they were like, “Ooh, we know Windows. Oh.” And they were just up and running with these products instantly, both of them.

And somebody asked me, “Well, do you think you’ll sell more of the SUPRA? Do you think you’ll sell more of the ONE+?” And I said, “Well, originally we thought for every 10 that we sold, we would probably sell seven of the SUPRA,” which is the Perkins style without the glass. And I still think it might be a little higher, but I don’t know. Because one of the first places I went to, we had two people there that were legally blind. One had no vision and one had partial. But the one that had partial also was about 20 years younger in age than the other person. And the one that was younger, even though they could not really see everything that was on that glass, they didn’t care. Because they’re like, “Well, I use my iPhone and I can’t see what I’m doing.”

Yeah. Sure.

I just have to turn it on, and I just go and I do gestures. And they were just flying on the ONE+. They were just going crazy. “Oh my gosh, we can do this. Oh, we could double that. Oh.” And they were just… I was like, “Wait, what are you doing? Slow down. You need to teach me what you’re doing because I don’t even totally know everything about this yet.”

And then, the other person that had no vision, they put their hands on it and they tried that one and they went, “Yeah, it’s kind of cool.” But they loved the SUPRA, because they were just typing away instantly and they were able to again, do the Windows D and get to the desktop.

The SUPRA even has function keys at the top. It has eight function keys, but they’re not like F1, F2. Everyone does something different. One is the escape key, one is the control key, one is the alt key, one is the shift F10. All the magical keys that we use all the time in Windows, they’ve just made them as shortcut keys basically, function keys up at the top so you don’t have to do the Braille equivalent of hitting a shift and that type of thing.

Awesome.

On the inside, ONE+, the one with the glass, as someone’s typing with Braille or whatever’s going on, not only can you see the screen, but there’s a little line at the very bottom. And when they’re typing, you can see the letters literally before they even hit the screen. So if they typed “Hello” before they hit the space bar to make that actually go in, you’re going to see the letters H-E-L-L-O at the bottom of the screen.

Oh, nice.

So I think another benefit of that product is, I think of a teacher in a classroom and you’ve given a kiddo that’s an avid Braille typer an assignment, and now you’ve told them to take off with it. Well, if you had the ONE+, you could see everything they’re doing.

Yeah.

Now with the SUPRA, you could plug it into a monitor and you could see what they’re doing as well. But without having a monitor with the SUPRA, they could be ordering from Amazon and telling you they’re doing their homework. You’re not going to know, except of course if you can hear what they’re doing.

So both of them are great products. For me, I kind of like the SUPRA, because of the fact I did plug it into a monitor, and there was a little bit less for me to learn because with the insideONE+ you’ve got three options for everything. You’ve got the QWERTY keyboard if you do this, and oh, now you’re in Braille mode. Oh, now you’re in gestures. So it was just, I think they’re both great and I think they both have a purpose. But I’m going to start myself and get really good at the SUPRA, and then I will migrate into the other and get good at both. I think they both have a purpose, but they’re phenomenal products and we’re very proud to represent them in North America.

Well, I think you said it right there, is that they give folks options. You know what I mean? They kind of both have a little bit different things that they can do, and folks just having options for what might work for them, be it the younger person with a little bit of usable vision or the individual with no vision that’s a little bit older and just what’s going to work for them, what’s going to give them the features they need or want?

Absolutely. Yep, I agree. They both have three-year warranty, and we will be servicing them stateside. So Lou, at our service center, we’re actually have a meeting next week with the folks in France and their technician there to get him up and running and get over the parts that we need in case anything needs to be repaired or serviced. The insideONE+, we can talk about the dimensions. The depth of it is 7.87 inches, the width is 11.42 inches, and the thickness, it’s not even quite an inch, it’s 0.07. And then, the weight is 3.31 pounds.

All right. Cool.

So pretty lightweight and powerful. And now let’s go to the SUPRA, which is the one again that does not have the glass. And the depth is 7.87, the same. The width is 11.42, the same, and the thickness is the same.

Okay.

It’s 0.7. The weight of this one is a little bit less, because again you don’t have the glass and you don’t have all of that, so it’s 2.87 pounds. And they both come with carrying cases as well.

Nice.

Built in carrying cases.

I remember when just Braille displays by themselves weighed more than that.

Exactly.

I love that all that technology can be put in, be so just small, so compact, so portable for folks. And then, with being built on Windows, it’s all you need.

Exactly.

That can be for school, for work, for any of that stuff. You can have it right there with you on the go and do everything you need to do for those with that device, so super, super duper cool. Kimberly, we’ve got a little bit of time left so I do want to talk about the Splay. What is it?

So the Splay, and I’m going to actually spell it whenever I dictate it in my phone it always puts display, D-I-S-P-L-A-Y. It’s the Splay, and it’s S-P-L-A-Y. And so, I had heard about this product. Actually, you can go to Amazon right now, it’s up there and you can purchase it. It is a pop-up monitor. It’s right around 25 inches. It’s 24.5 inches, and it pops up kind of like an umbrella. I had seen them, I had heard about them, and then I was at a conference where the manufacturer was there. And I started talking to them and we plugged it into a MagniLink S. And it was like, “Oh my gosh.” Now we have this portable amazing camera, RS, and now I’ve plugged it into this monitor. And now it’s kind of like I have a video magnifier, like boom, just instant. And yet, it’s very portable.

So it is a projector that has, it’s called a shroud. Think of an umbrella-type material around it. And you literally pull the back part, and then you push the shroud out and it pops up and it makes a projector. It’s really pretty cool technology. They’ve spent quite a bit of time on the material that goes around it, because it’s like a nano type pack material that is specialized that has the ability to shrink up, to get large and be full capacity. But it also has that ability to take away that blue lighting that gives people problem, that they tell you don’t use your computer at night because you’re not going to be able to sleep because of that ray that comes through. So it’s really healthy for the eyes as well.

Why we got interested in it was yes, it does plug into a MagnaLink S. It would plug into any of our products that have the camera except the Mini. It does not work with the Mini because the Mini doesn’t have that ability. But that’s when I first got interested in it. But then, I started talking to them and I said, “This is not just cool for low vision folks. This is cool for TV eyes. This is cool for anybody really that’s helping low vision people as well.”

But I said, “Here’s my concern with this product. It’s very lightweight. It’s 2.5 pounds. So you now put a monitor on a desk that weighs nothing. What’s going to happen? You’re low vision. You’re going to just move your arm and you’re going to knock the whole thing on the floor.” I can see this just happening today. It does come on a little tiny tripod that makes it set up off the desk. That gives it a little bit more stability. I don’t care. I’m going to tell you, I don’t have low vision and I’m going to knock this thing off the desk tomorrow. This is going to happen.

So they said, “Yeah, it could happen.” And I said, “So I’m sure that’s got to affect not just the projector, but that’s got to affect the material. Because if I knock it off the desk, what if the floor is dirty? What if I have a guide dog on the floor and now that spooks them because it fell over, and they get up to get away from it. Now they step on it and they put their claw through it.” The worst of the worst is what I’m thinking of.

And they said, “Yeah, you’re right. There could be these issues.” So I said, “If we’re going to bring it on as a company, I need different things.” I said, “I want a low vision version. We want it to where it’s fully protected, meaning that if someone does spill something on the screen, I want to not just tell them how to clean it. I want to basically replace the screen for them.” And they’re like, “Okay. Well, we think we can work on a deal with you.”

So the ZT version, which is the low vision version, literally that’s what it is. It’s two year bumper-to-bumper warranty on it. That’s for the projector, that’s for the screen. If your screen gets damaged, if it gets soiled, you just unzip it. So this is the cool part for me. When I’m traveling, I’m constantly doing presentations. I’m doing it from hotel rooms. Sometimes just I’ll be at a conference and somebody will go, “Oh, can you go speak over here?” Or “Can you do this?” Or “Can you do a presentation?” Not everybody has the ability for me to project a PowerPoint up. So now I’ve got a pop-up monitor I can use anywhere. But if I unzip that shroud and take it off, I now have a projector that I can project on the wall with.

Nice.

And I now have a built-in projector and a monitor that I’m traveling with. And it’s 2.5 pounds and a tiny little zip-up case.

Perfect.

Wow.

That is super cool. Yeah, I didn’t realize you could take the kind of shroud off of it and used it as an actual projector too.

You can.

That’s super cool.

Yeah. So that’s really cool too. So we said, “Okay, we’ve got that.” And I said, “What’s the battery life on it?” And he said, “Well, it’s about an hour and a half.” And I said, “Yeah, that doesn’t work.” I said, “For a low vision person, the worst thing they have to do is rummage around and try to put themselves in a classroom to where there’s power. Or at a job site, they’ve got to find extra power to plug all their low vision devices in.” I said, “We need a battery pack.” So now the low vision version comes with a six-hour battery, so they’re not hunting around for power. It also comes with a full-size tripod. It doesn’t just have a little tripod, because not only do they have the 25-inch one, but they’re getting ready to release a 35-inch one in June. And I said, “I might not want that on my desk. I might love it that it’s big, but I want it in the corner. I can see it really well, but I want it off my desk.” So we also do a full-sized tripod on that one as well.

And so, we’re really glad to partner with them. We’re glad that we now have the ZT version. Sam from The Blind Life did a little kind of a, I don’t know, like a five or 10-minute thing in regards to this product when it first came out. This is before we had the low vision version. And some of his comments were, this is the first time he’s ever been able, he travels, to go to a hotel room and watch a movie. Because he could never see the… You’re in bed, and now you’ve got the TV way across the room. He just popped the display up, had it right next to him on the bed, and he can watch whatever, because now he can see it. He can have it as close to him as he wants. So there’s so many different applications for this product. And so, we’re really happy to partner with them. We got our first shipment in. It’s already sold out. They’re already shipped out. We’ve got another order coming in. So we are the representative for this product for North America as well.

Nice.

And we’re really happy about that.

Very, very cool. And if you get a chance to look it up and check out, folks, it is very cool, just a great idea. Because yeah, traveling with that kind of thing for anybody is tough. But you’re right, for someone with low vision, you can’t really just carry around a large monitor, although I’ve seen plenty of people do it. So Kimberly, just before we get off here, what is a good way for folks to find out more about all these really cool things you talked about today?

Excellent. Well, the best way is for them to reach out to me direct because I have brochures. Some of these things are not up on our website yet. We are moving and a-shaking so fast, our team in Sweden hasn’t had the time to get high-res pictures and all the stuff that we’d like to do before we go live. So you might not find all these things on our website.

So first of all, just reach out to me. That’s the easiest way. You can email me at Kimberly, it’s K-I-M-B-E-R-L-Y, .Cline, it’s C-L-I-N-E, @LVIAmerica.com. I can send you brochures on each of these products. We’ve had people want user manuals on the Braille, and I can get you those. You don’t have to buy it to get the latest user manual because on their website for insidevision, I think they have the older. So we have the latest and greatest. I can get you that.

They can also call me or text me directly at (702) 468-6611. And then, our basic line and if you’re wanting to look on our website, our website is www.LVIAmerica.com. And then, we have an 800-number that you can call in. So if you’re trying to get ahold of me and you can’t get me our 800-number is best, and that goes into Lizzie Harris, who mainly is in the office. I’m on the road a lot. So you can reach that number at (888) 781-7811. That’s (888) 781-7811, and you would end up speaking with Lizzie Harris. And you can also, we have a generic email that between Lizzie and I, we answer that. And that’s info, it’s I-N-F-O @LVIAmerica.com.

We will put all of that information down in the show notes. Kimberly, it’s always a pleasure to have you on and get to learn about all the really cool new products. If you’re excited about it, I know a lot of other folks will be as well. So thank you so much for coming on the show and telling us about all these really great things.

Thank you for having me. I greatly 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.

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.