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Your weekly dose of information that keeps you up to date on the latest developments in the field of technology designed to assist people with disabilities and special needs.
Show Notes:
Scott Fogo, Nikol Prieto, Wendy Miers, and Wade Wingler discuss holiday memories, traditions, and many assistive technology gift ideas:
Transcript follows:
–start of transcript—
CROWD: Happy Holidays from the Assistive Technology Center at Easter Seals Crossroads. This is your Assistive Technology Update.
[Music]WADE WINGLER: Hi, this is Wade Wingler with the Indata Project at Easter Seals Crossroads in Indiana with 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 people with disabilities and special needs. Welcome to episode number 132 of us at the technology update. This is part two of our holiday shopping episode. I’m joined by Nicole, Wendy, and Scott, and we talk about holiday memories, ideas, and get ideas for assistive technology. Without further delay, here’s part two of our holiday shopping show.
[Music]
WADE WINGLER: And welcome to part two of our Assistive Technology Updates holiday shopping episode podcast. I’m joined here in the studio with Scott Fogo, Wendy Miers, and Nikol Prieto. Scott, how are you today?
SCOTT FOGO: Doing great, thanks. How are you?
WADE WINGLER: Good, hey, Scott, would you remind folks what you do here at Easter Seals crossroads? And then the question we want to start with is what was your favorite holiday movie?
SCOTT FOGO: Nice. Scott Fogo, and the vice president of clinical services here at Easter Seals crossroads. I had to say my all-time favorite Christmas movie would have to be A Christmas Story. There’s so many wonderful images for childhood kind of things through A Christmas Story.
NIKOL PRIETO: Just popped into my head, the bunny.
WADE WINGLER: For me it’s the flagpole. And then there’s that lovely scene with the lamp. Who doesn’t want a lamp like that? Wendy, tell folks if you want what you do here at Easter Seals crossroads, and how about your holiday movie?
WENDY MIERS: I’m Wendy Miers, I’m the equipment lens specialist here. My favorite holiday movie is the Grinch. So I like both versions, but I think the newer Jim Carrey version is probably our favorite.
WADE WINGLER: Really? Excellent. Nicole, have you gotten your screwed on yet?
NIKOL PRIETO: I don’t like to celebrate and talk about Christmas until the day after Thanksgiving, and it should stop the first day of the year.
WADE WINGLER: Folks probably realize we’re recording this before Thanksgiving so it’s a big deal to get Nicole to participate.
NIKOL PRIETO: And we are now staring at a little Christmas tree, and we’ve had a little bit of Christmas music.
WADE WINGLER: That’s right.
NIKOL PRIETO: Very festive in here. My name is Nikol Prieto, I’m the community outreach coordinator for the Indata Project at Easter Seals crossroads. I just love all the Christmas movies went is the appropriate time between that they enter things giving and New Year’s Day. But just want that just crack you up his Christmas Vacation. It’s just a classic.
WENDY MIERS:
WADE WINGLER: Love it. Everything about it.
SCOTT FOGO: That’s a good one. Chevy Chase is funny anyways, but those Christmas lights.
WADE WINGLER: And was at the aunt that wraps up the?
SCOTT FOGO:
NIKOL PRIETO: Just everything about it.
WADE WINGLER: That’s great. We’re going to start out our gift and product idea section with this time, with gifts for folks who are deaf or hard of hearing. Got a couple of interesting things here. But before we jump into that, I want to remind folks that just starting recently, we now offer transcript of the podcast. If you look back to the last several weeks of Assistive Technology Update, when you go to the show notes, to go to eastersealstech.com click on the link to get over to the show notes, at the bottom of each set of show notes now there’s a full transcript of every show. If your deaf or hard of hearing or otherwise benefit from having transcripts, it’s kind of like captions, you can get access to our show that way. We invite you to check those out. Nicole, I know you got a handful of items here related to folks who are deaf or hard of hearing.
NIKOL PRIETO: I do. I think when we talk about the holidays, our most important thing we talked about his family and reconnecting with loved ones and catching up with people. This is a great time to remove to do that. For people who are hard of hearing or deaf and are not going to travel to see someone, they might want to do that by telephone, and that might present some problems for them. One thing that would be really helpful in that situation is CapTel, in the captioned telephone. This is ideal for anybody with any type of hearing loss. In a telephone that hasn’t display window, and it displays everywhere the caller says. So you make a call just like you would a standard phone, then when you dial the phone, the CapTel phone automatically connects to the captioning service. Then when the other party answers the call, you can hear everything you say, and you can also hear what they’re saying on the display window. The great thing also about this if you go to captel.com, it’s free or reduced priced based on income.
WADE WINGLER: One of the things that I wanted to talk about is a Silent Call Watch and charger docking station. Imagine if you’re somebody who is deaf or hard of hearing, and you’re working on fixing the holiday meal, and you know that you have guests coming and maybe the baby is in the other room, and he wants to make sure that you’re able to respond to the auditory signals, this thing allows you to have a watch that you wear on your wrist, and it’s connected to the silent call series of sensors and other things and transmitters that you can put around the house for you can put one in the baby’s room, and when the baby cries it will vibrate in such a way that you look at your watch, and you realize, oh, there’s some noise in the baby’s room. Or you can connect it through another sensor at the doorbell, so one somebody hits the button on the doorbell, it vibrates, and there’s a visual indicator on the watch that lets you know, hey, there’s somebody at the front door. You can do that with smoke alarms, and all kinds of things. This particular system is $284, but that gets you not only watch I will connect to the sound call systems, but also is sort of a bedside that time recharging docking station. The cool thing about that is you take your watch off at night while you’re going to go to sleep and you want to recharge it, it will also connect to a bed shaker so that while you’re asleep and your watch is a charging, you put anything under your pillow and it will vibrates to let you know those same things happen, the baby cries or the doorbell rings or those sort of things. Pretty cool system really.
Wendy, I know that you have an item in this category for us.
WENDY MIERS: Sure. The Sonic Super Ear Plus. It’s a personal amplification system, and I know a lot of people are going to holiday parties or holiday shows, church and things like that that they might need some additional amplification so they can hear better, what’s being said. So this is something that’s lightweight, they can either an earbud or headphones to – it also helps to block out the white noise in the room, so you can hear better was going on.
WADE WINGLER: Excellent, cool. So in the next session, we’re going to come back and were going to talk a little bit about kind of a catchall category. Some technologies for people who might be in the autism spectrum or some gifts that have to do with all sorts of different things. Even some stuff for service animals. But before we jump in to that, do you guys like toys or practical gifts during the holiday season?
SCOTT FOGO: please don’t give me underwear.
NIKOL PRIETO: Yeah, it depends on your definition of practical I think. No vacuums.
WENDY MIERS: Nothing that’s work.
SCOTT FOGO: My grandmother can’t always have us soap on a rope. Still not sure it works.
NIKOL PRIETO: We got a handheld towels with the doily end where you crochet the end of it, but it’s a towel. We were kids with no kitchen. Okay, thanks grandma.
WADE WINGLER: Did your grandmother cell Amway too?
SCOTT FOGO: That would be Avon. Although deodorants, all the sprays.
SCOTT FOGO: Remember the colognes and things that were in like a banana ball or a car?
WADE WINGLER: Okay, let’s go practical. Abraham Lincoln Cologne.
SCOTT FOGO: Oh my, that’s wrong.
WADE WINGLER: That’s both practical and fun.
SCOTT FOGO: You have to pull his head off and sprayed?
NIKOL PRIETO: Messy if he saved all those as those are now vintage items you could be selling.
WADE WINGLER: Right.
SCOTT FOGO: That’s what you tell an eight-year-old kid that got soap on a rope.
NIKOL PRIETO: So was your answer practical?
WADE WINGLER: Toys. I’ve got to have some of each. I like some practical gifts, but I had to have at least one play on Christmas to play with. Because what else are you going to do after you’ve eaten the food and everybody’s falling asleep on the couch, you did something to entertain is a. I’ve got to have at least one toy on Christmas time.
NIKOL PRIETO: I like things that you’re going to do in the future. Concert tickets or tickets to replay or something that once that is over you know now this gift is to enjoy later on down the road. Something I’ve really appreciated about my family but the kids, because there’s so much plastic junk out there that kids get an consume, my family has been really good about taking my advice and asking what the kids need and pitching in together to get big-ticket items. So instead of just a bunch of junk that they’re going to tie her up, they might get a swing set from all the grandparents or something like that. I really appreciate that, especially being someone who has a little issue of OCD and like sentimental things.
WENDY MIERS: My mom was always good about she built on the next year the same thing. So maybe they will get a doll, and then the next year they might get a story that has to do with the same doll. So it built over years so she didn’t have to try and think every year also. When I going to do? So they really enjoyed every year looking forward to the next thing about the next dress, the next outfit or whatever that was coming for the doll.
NIKOL PRIETO: Something really special that my family has always done is they always buy a very nice Christmas book for both the kids, and then they inscribe them. Well my grandfather never wrote anything. My grandmother did everything, wrote checks. He never wrote anything ever on anything. She did all the cards and all of things. He inscribed his own book to Lily, and he’s now gone. That’s one of my most treasured things. Just little things you can make any gift personal like that, because you don’t know when they would be there.
WADE WINGLER: My grandmother did that for my kids, just to the grandkids. Same type of thing. You wonder if the kids are really getting it at this point, because grandma gave me a book, but to realize as they read it and nurture it, you’re right. Years later and looking at that, wow, grandma did listen to what I like and did understand what I was about.
NIKOL PRIETO: Absolutely. I can’t wait to say, you know, he was your favorite person, and he never wrote anything. So he especially took the time.
WADE WINGLER: When we talk about holidays and toys as gifts, Scott, I know that you have some ideas about selecting toys for children with disabilities and maybe some ideas along those lines?
SCOTT FOGO: Absolutely, first of all, you’ve already heard me say I like stories. One of the most important things is I would encourage all families and relatives as you’re thinking about getting gifts for kids, and a sound stupid, get what they like. There’s lots of questions, sometimes we have kids on the autism spectrum, and they think, oh my gosh, their super focused on dinosaurs, so I’m not going to get a dinosaur for Christmas. So you’re going to get them that fire truck, and that’s just not going to go over. Nothing around Christmas is going to make them like dinosaurs any less. What I encourage folks to think about is don’t leave a dinosaur theme, but let’s move out a little. Maybe not another stuffed dinosaur or covert dinosaur, but books about dinosaurs or exploration types things, games about dinosaurs.
WADE WINGLER: Dinosaur Train.
SCOTT FOGO: I don’t know if there is a Jurassic Park train. Certainly I always encourage families, regardless of a child’s ability, to think about what you’re trying to do. If you want your kids to socialize a little more, then some of the games that Nikol is talking about, card games, just the things that are dependent upon interacting with other people’s. Let’s go for those types of things. But if you have a creative kid, go for the colored pencils and the white paper. Those are gifts that are amazing. Don’t just force the holiday season to be on other therapeutic moment. First and foremost, it things that nurture your kids and grandkids and remind them that they are special and these are special guest.
If you are looking for those types of things that kind of help in those specific areas, there are some great resources. Toys “R” Us every year has a wonderful resource for kids with disabilities. They actually have their toys categorized by different areas. If you’re looking for auditory things or creativity, fine motor, gross motor, they actually categorize toys to help you if you’re not as familiar with what types of toys might do different things. Certainly there’s lots of packaging and labeling that’s going to help you that, but look at those things. Keep it simple. I know I’m hoping you computer folks don’t attack me, but sometimes that stuff gets really expensive. When we think, oh, we’ve got to get an iPad and do these different things, but sometimes the most simple guess as we talked about, books, time, during those types of things with kids can be very important.
But I do encourage folks to check out the Toys “R” Us website and catalog. I think that information will be available. They have lots of good information about specifically developmentally appropriate types of gifts. Sometimes we get questions about buying gifts that are age-appropriate. That’s a challenge as well as you have a person in your life that may have a developmental disability, pushing those adult years, but they like coloring. What’s the answer? Do you stick with the Hello Kitty coloring book or do you push along.
NIKOL PRIETO: Absolutely, Hello Kitty. This is the time of year where it’s just supposed to be fun. It’s supposed to be a useless, but fun and appreciated.
SCOTT FOGO: Absolutely, that’s exactly where I was going. Go for the Hello Kitty and slip and a blank pad of paper and the crayons or whatever kind of pushes that creativity and that enjoyment along.
WADE WINGLER: Excellent, I think those are some good points to make holidays fun for everybody. When you come back, we have a last listing of gifts that will go to talk about that kind of fit several different categories. I like to remind everybody, if you hear us talk about something that you are interested in or would like to learn more about, our show notes are pretty common answer. If you head on over to eastersealstech.com and click on the link that says live, you’ll find our show notes and you can find links to all the items that were talking about today. We’ll be back in just a second.
[Music]WADE WINGLER: In this last segment, we’ve got all kinds of gifts, even stuff for service animals. Nikol, I know that you got some interesting items you want to cover here.
NIKOL PRIETO: I do something I think would be great for just anybody. It’s an Amazon Prime gift membership. For someone who can’t get out and shop, someone who doesn’t want to get out and fight with people, for people who are just looking for us as a technology devices. There’s access to all kinds of everything you could imagine on Amazon. The nice thing about this is its $79, and with that you get a year membership, he get free two day shipping, you also have instant streaming of movies, I think 41,000 movies and TV episodes, you have access to Kindle titles for free them about 350,000 of those. If it’s someone who can’t get out and travel or somebody who likes to do Internet shopping or that might use their load by letting them shop on the Internet, that might be a great way to get them started on that. Also, if you buy that gift and find out that they are already an Amazon Prime gift membership, Amazon would just turn that into an Amazon gift card.
WADE WINGLER: That’s great. I have lots of friends with disabilities who really rely on that Amazon Prime gift membership year round not just during the holidays. Some of those folks are going to buy an iPad.
NIKOL PRIETO: That is probably the hot item of the year. The new one coming out is the iPad Air. That’s something new we’ve seen with iPad. They’re going to be much lighter and thinner. I think this one is 7.5 millimeters thin, and it weighs one pound. Really tiny. The nice thing about an iPad for anyone is the ease of carrying it around and using it and all the built and exploded preachers are really so cool. They have put in different things like voice over and you can change contrast and you can and Logitech. There’s so many options and great apps out there to cover anybody with any type of disability. All tablets are becoming very popular, so it’s not just iPad. It could be the Microsoft Windows Surface, or something like an android product like the Nexus. So there’s a lot of tablet options, but I think I would be a hot item under the Christmas tree. The probably put a smile on anybody’s face.
WADE WINGLER: I think that’s a great idea. Scott, something that you have unique experience with is you spent a lot of time with different kinds of service animals over the year. In the teasers, I’ve mentioned that we have service animal gift ideas.
SCOTT FOGO: Absolutely. I was honored to work with a facility service dog for years and realize a couple of things. First of all, the expensive service dog is still there, so I’m going to promote first and foremost gift cards. If you have a friend or family member that has a service animal, don’t be ashamed of getting a gift card. Dog food still cost money for service animals. Don’t get that. Then there’s just tons of stuff. I would add in there if you’re a pet owner was some challenges, maybe physical limitations, there’s all kinds of really cold thing.
A couple of things just specifically, maybe you’ve seen these. This one that’s really fun. Our lab at home loves it. It’s called a Chuck-It. It really allows you to float up that tennis ball and throw it perfect to make sure that dog is getting good exercise. It’s great for a person with limited range or some mobility. It allows you to play and interact with your animal despite some physical limitations perhaps. There’s all kinds of really cool stuff. I know it’s not very fun, but if you’re a pet owner, and you want to keep that service animal happy and healthy, things like easy to hold nail clippers and things that are necessary – I know it’s not very fun – but maybe it’s a stocking stuffer for the dog. I don’t know, whatever. It’s also this really cool, I love this, because sometimes folks may have some arthritis or other mobility challenges. There’s actually no bend pet bowl, okay, really inexpensive. Has a long handle on it so you can actually keep all the food and water at waist height. Fill it up and you just lower it. There’s nothing more important than that bond between a pet owner and that service animal or other pets. Don’t forget the pets around this time of year, answer only help those who have service animals. Again, I can’t stress enough the coupon for grooming if you’re a teenager looking for a gift item being willing to walk and animal or exercise a pet or do some of that grooming. That goes a long way.
WADE WINGLER: Those are great ideas. The thing I wanted to talk about and this kind of catch all category isn’t necessarily an assistant technology item, but I’m seeing it kind of turned into that. This time of the year, at least in the US, we’re talking about colder temperatures, and everybody is monkeying with the thermostat especially if you have people over for the holidays. There’s a new product on the market, it’s in the second generation now. It’s called Nest. It’s a smart thermostat. The thing that’s cool about this is it’s pretty easy to wire up and replace your regular analog or digital thermostat in the house. But it’s really smart.
The first thing that it is it looks like an old fashioned around thermostat where you can turn the temperature up or down. What you do is you install this thing, and you just adjust it up and adjust it down and it learns over time what your preferences are. It tries to figure out when you normally go to bed and when you normally get up. When you go to work and when you come home based on what you make those adjustments.
It monitors the outside temperature so that it knows it’s getting cold outside, we may want to make it warmer outside. It’s got a motion detector in it, so if nobody is moving in the house, it might turn the thermostat back a little bit to save you some money while you’re gone. But let’s say it’s Wednesday, your normally at work, it’s learned that you’re not there, but today there’s movement and the house, it will say let’s pretend it’s a Saturday when you’re home most of the day and adjust the thermostat so that it will suck to figure out when you’re there and how to do that kind of stuff.
The idea is that it’s going to reduce your energy bills. But the benefit I think is that if you’re in a chair and your home at an unusual time, it’s going to know that and adjust the temperature. Thermal control is really important for folks especially with spinal cord injuries and those kind of thing. The thing that I really like about this next thermostat is its Wi-Fi enabled and connects to your smart phone, so that if you’re in bed and want to adjust the thermostat, you just grab your smart phone and to adopt or turn it down, turn it off and on, so it’s fully controllable from your smartphone whether or not you’re at home. So if you know you’ve been gone for vacation, you’re on your way home, you want to bump the thermostat up a few degrees as your at the last few miles of your journey home. You can do that. It gives you lots of control.
SCOTT FOGO: now does it learn me or my wife?
WADE WINGLER: It’s going to learn whoever has control of the thermostat in your home, Scott.
SCOTT FOGO: Okay.
WADE WINGLER: That means your life.
SCOTT FOGO: Yes, sir.
WADE WINGLER: So the Nest thermostat costs around $250 come and you can get it at your home improvement stores. It’s kind of a cool not assistive technology item that I think kind of is an assistive technology item. Wendy, I know you’ve got a couple things in this category. What you got?
WENDY MIERS: Sure, not quite so high tech, but certainly something that will assist you with a thermostat too is the Kelvin Voice Interactive Talking Thermostat. One of the things I loved about this was that you don’t have to be able to see it. You can talk to it and tell at one temperature you want it to be at. If you’re like me and your thermostat is in a place where there is not much light, I have a difficult time reading that, so this will let me actually speak to it, it will speak back to me, and I can set it up that I can program it for seven days, four different temperature settings per day. You can set it for when you’re out of the home or when you’re in bed, you might want to have a different thermostat setting for the different kinds of days. It’s a little less. It’s $59.95. It gives you a little bit more flexibility if you have a difficult time seeing the thermostat itself.
WADE WINGLER: That’s cool, and you’ve got a couple of fun things to write?
WENDY MIERS: I do. One of the things I have is the Tangle Tat Relax Therapy. I’ve known these as a single toy in the past. There just things that are good to fidget with. If you’re somebody who likes to move around a lot or just have something to touch. They’re tactile, they can be made into all different kinds of shapes. They even suggest that someone who is trying to quit smoking, and might be a good way to keep their hands busy. They kind of recommend it for kids with autism that like to have these kind of things, but really I think anybody who likes to fidget or maybe need to keep their hands busy, it’s another way they can do that.
WADE WINGLER: So guys, as we wrap up the show, one of the last things I want to talk about, is there anything unusual that your family does during the holiday season that you’d like to talk about?
SCOTT FOGO: I’m giggling already. If you years ago, we learned as were coming back from which can come again traveling for family. We’re coming back over Thanksgiving. Typically we put up our Christmas tree, Nikol would be pleased with us, the Sunday after think giving. It was getting late, and we’re saying baby would put it off a little. One of my kids pointed out that we absolutely had to do that, because it is our tradition to do that while you watch White Christmas and eat pizza rolls.
WADE WINGLER: Gas stations and pizza rolls.
SCOTT FOGO: You know too much about the Fogos. We’re classy people. My wife and I were kind of dumbfounded. We didn’t realize this was a family tradition. It just came so endearing, that was probably five or six years ago, and now as we are watching our kids get older and they have boyfriends and girlfriends, it’s true. We continued that tradition, White Christmas, we do have to sing and dance to different sections of the movie. We not only eat pizza rolls, but everything else we can find that deep-fried or breaded. It’s just a great start to our season. That’s one of those it has to happen or it’s not the holiday season.
WADE WINGLER: That’s great. That’s fun stuff. Wendy, any unusual things you have?
WENDY MIERS: We don’t really have a lot of unusual things. I think you do learn from your kids that when you start to subtract something out of there, they say wait a minute, we do that every year. You can’t do that.
WADE WINGLER: Don’t change that.
WENDY MIERS: I certainly had the same experience with some of things with my children. One thing that we’ve done a little different as they’ve grown up is now when they come home from church on Christmas Eve, we stay up and open all are present and hang out together. We can all sleep in then on Christmas morning.
SCOTT FOGO: It’s the total opposite now, because my wife and I are making up things one should wake the kids up on Christmas morning. They won’t get up. It’s 10:30.
WENDY MIERS: So now we stay up really late, watch the movies, and we open our Christmas presents up and hang out together. Then we can all sleep and the next morning.
WADE WINGLER: That’s fun. One of the things that change for me a few years ago was I got for a Christmas gift a Santa suit. So now I spent a lot of time during the holiday season behind the beard in the red suit, being a helper and doing Mr. Claus’s work for the children.
SCOTT FOGO: Now when you get to suit like that, does it come with a number or the email? How do you get in touch with Santa himself?
WADE WINGLER: There’s an app.
SCOTT FOGO: Of course there is.
WADE WINGLER: There’s an app that allows me to have the access to the database that the kids relate care about.
SCOTT FOGO: That would be the naughty and nice list. I’m following along. I’ve got this.
WADE WINGLER: So it’s fun because I get to not only do a number of events where I get to go and have kids sit in my lap and tell me what they want for Christmas, but I even get to like the big Christmas tree on the town square.
SCOTT FOGO: Wow.
NIKOL PRIETO: That’s great.
WADE WINGLER: It’s been one of the most enjoyable parts of the holiday for me, to be the guy in the suit. It’s a lot of fun to do that kind of thing. We hope that you guys are thinking if you don’t have an unusual holiday tradition this year, you should start one. Fried food and Santa suits and all that kind of stuff obviously go together. One more time, if you’re looking for some of those things that we talked about in the show today, check our show notes. We’re going to have lots of links to the different products and think that we talked about. We hope that you enjoy Assistive Technology Update throughout the year. Asked week, we’ll get back to our regular format, and will be covering the news and talking with thought leaders in the field of assistive technology. Before we go, I’d like to thank Scott and Wendy and Nikol for being shared with us here today and wishing you guys the warmest of holidays.
SCOTT FOGO: Happy Holidays, thank you so much.
NIKOL PRIETO: Happy Holidays.
WENDY MIERS: Thank you.
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