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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:
Carolyn Phillips & Martha Rust (Tools for Life) www.gatfl.org/
ATIA 2014 Orlando Pricing – Assistive Technology Industry Association http://bit.ly/1fEFQD1
Assistive Technology Blog: VoiceMyMail: One Seamless Web Email Interface For Blind Users http://bit.ly/1fmW7vr
Andrea Bocelli visits MIT in support of assistive technology development – Cambridge, Massachusetts – Cambridge Chronicle & Tab http://bit.ly/1fmRFNj
Apple: What to Expect in 2014 http://on.mash.to/1fmZimJ
How to watch YouTube videos on your TV | How To – CNET http://bit.ly/1c12ZPo
Teaching Learners with Multiple Special Needs: Make YouTube Switch Accessible for Special Needs Kids – using Specialbites! http://bit.ly/19xY6wD
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—-transcript follows —
CAROLYN PHILLIPS: Hi, this is Carolyn Phillips, director of Tools for Life at Georgia Tech.
MARTHA RUST: And hello, this Martha Rust. I’m the Assistive Technology Specialist with Tools for Life at Georgia Tech, and 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 134 of assistive technology update. It’s scheduled to be released on December 20 of 2013. Today’s guest are Carolyn Phillips and Martha Rust. They’re my friends from tools for life at Georgia Tech, and they are today going to talk about learning disabilities and discovering your own personal genius. I think you’ll enjoy the episode.
We hope you’re enjoying the holiday season. We are off for the next few days, and so we’ll ask you to think back if you haven’t heard our holiday shopping episode, head back to episode number 131 and 132 where we spent some time talking about great gifts for folks who need assistive technology and some cool and interesting devices that we uncovered as part of that.
Also today on the show, we’ve got some stories that are focused on Italy. There is a project from there called Voice My Mail which is designed to help folks who are blind or visually impaired access email. Also Andrea Bocelli from Italy visits MIT in his assistive technology development. Some interesting stuff about how to make YouTube videos more switch accessible, and there is still time to get discount pricing on your admission to the ATIA Orlando show. We hope you will check out our show at eastersealstech.com. Give us a call on our listener line at 317-721-7124, or shoot us a note on Twitter @Indataproject.
Can’t get enough assistive technology information? Head on over to assistivetechnologyradio.com. We broadcast 24 hours a day, seven days a week. All assistive technology, all the time.
Until January 10, there’s still an opportunity to get a discount on the recognition feet if you’re planning to attend the ATIA show in Orlando. It’s going to be on January 29 through February 1 at the Caribe Royale All Suites Resort and Convention Center in Orlando. Up until generate 10th, the registration fee, the standard fee, is $525. After that, it goes up to $550 up until the day of show. However, you also need to know that there are some opportunities to participate in ATIA for free. They have some exhibit hall admission only options that are free. They don’t cost anything, so on Wednesday evening, January 29; Thursday, January 30; Friday, January 31; or Saturday, February 1, you can get into the exhibit hall at no cost. I’ll stick a link in the show notes so that you can see all the different options for registering for ATIA Orlando paid check the show notes.
Many of us take email for granted. Being able to access our email via webmail interfaces like Yahoo and Gmail and outlook web access and those kinds of things are something we all often take for granted. There is a project out of Italy called Voice My Mail that’s looking for funding right now. They’re trying to make it universally accessible web mail for folks who are blind or visually impaired and rely on screen readers or other assistive technology. Check out this quick excerpt from their video.
NARRATOR: We would like to make the Internet, if not a better place, at least a comfortable place for everybody. This person is totally blind, resident of Sardinia. The Sardinian Association for blind, visually impaired, and recently affected people. As for today, to be able to make use of the email that is best? We need programs that guarantee us: ease, because the service has to be available everywhere from any access point connected to the net; speed, because the operation has to be accomplished in the least possible number of steps; privacy, so the consultation and transmission can guarantee that every single person keeps his own discretion.
WADE WINGLER: And if you’d like to learn more about the Voice My Mail project, check out our show notes. We’ll have a link over to the assistive technology blog where we first learned about this.
I’m the big music fan and really enjoy the music of Andrea Bocelli who is a famous Italian tenor, happens to be a person who is blind. He lost his sight in a childhood accident. Also a fan of technology, I was excited to learn that Andrea Bocelli visited MIT, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology not too long ago. They have a foundation there that’s called the Andrea Bocelli Foundation, and they are working on researching assistive technology for folks who are blind with a goal to reducing global poverty. Apparently Bocelli met after a concert with Professor Munther Dahleh a few years ago, and they talked about the idea of creating a device that would act as a substitute for Bocelli’s vision. The answer is that he got from Professor Dahleh was, “Yes, we can.” They can create that technology. So he visited MIT to see how their moving along with that project and got some information on all kinds of assistive technologies. I’m going to stick a link in the show notes to wicked local which talks about the news that’s happening locally in the Cambridge area, and you can read more about Bocelli’s visit and see what’s going on with the Andrea Bocelli Foundation there at MIT. Check our show notes.
Regular listeners to the show notes that I really enjoy Apple products, and I also get excited about the prognostication about what might be coming up with technology development in the upcoming year. I found an article here on Mashable that says “Apple: What to Expect in 2014,” and it’s written by Lance Ulanoff who has some interesting productions about what Apple may do in the upcoming year. He talks about the fact that Apple is no longer the company of Steve Jobs, and that we are starting to see some of the to go down effect from his departure. The things that they anticipate seeing in the next year or something related to the area of wearable technology. Several companies came out with smart watches this year. He predicts that Apple may sit back on that a little bit longer, but the fact that they are doing a lot in the area of movements technology and motion processor in the new iPhone 5S May allude to the fact that something is coming in the area of a smart watch or more wearable technology. He also talks about the fact that he predicts that Apple may do something different with a larger screen, perhaps in iPhone with a larger screen or more tablet devices that are in that in-between size. There are lots of four and seven and nine inch tablet out there, and although we have the iPad in the iPad mini the iPhone and the iPod touch, all these different sizes, he predicts that there may be more sizes coming. He also talks about a little bit about motion sensors and Apple TVs and how there may be something happening with Apple in that area. One of their acquisitions is a company who has expertise in that area. There’s an Israeli-based company called Primesense that does a lot with gesture technology. He expects some things related to that. Even talks about a their new corporate headquarter design and how the Cupertino city Council has approved some motion in that area. Lots of interesting stuff right if you’re like me and interested in prognosticating and seeing what’s predicted with Apple technology, check out the Mashable link that I’ll stick in the show notes and you can chime in on what you think about what Apple may do in 2014. Check the show notes.
With the holidays coming up, we may have a little bit more free time on her hands. You may end up watching some YouTube videos. Lots of educational, inspirational and funny stuff going on the YouTube these days. I got a couple of stories here is that have to do with you two. The first one here is how to watch YouTube videos on your TV. This comes from CNET, and Rick Broida writes about how you can use an Apple TV or various game consoles, Google Chromecast, or a Roku box or even your computer to get the big screen effect on a YouTube video. This article is pretty good. It goes through and talks about the different kinds of devices, the different price points that will let you watch YouTube videos on your TV. So as you’re sitting around the holiday season and wanted to show funny stuff to family members off of YouTube, check out this blog post because it might teach you a way to get those videos up in front of the whole family.
Whether it’s a “What Does a Fox Say” or a baby monkey, a lot of folks really enjoy some YouTube videos for entertainment. If you’re talking about working with a child or a person with a disability who is motivated by watching YouTube videos, sometimes switch access to those videos might be a very helpful thing. The folks over at Teaching Learners with Multiple Special Needs have done a blog post where they give a tutorial on how to use a website that is specifically designed to make YouTube videos switch accessible. It’s set up so that when you have a switch set up to do a command on a YouTube video, you can preset the number of seconds the video will play before the user has to hit the switch again to get it to go. As a reward situation or as a cause and effect tool, kind of an interesting thing to learn how to use this website to play YouTube videos with switch. I’ll stick a link in the show notes over to the Teaching Learners with Multiple Special Needs blog, and you can watch this video and learn how to switch access YouTube.
And you won’t be able to imagine the surprise that I had when I found that Santa Claus had left a call on our listener line. He’s talking about Brian Norton who is the manager of our clinical assistive technology services here. Some bad news for Brian, but some good news for everybody else, because Santa has a great tip for how to get the time to reset on your iPhone very easily when you’re traveling from time zone to time zone. Check out this voicemail from Santa.
SANTA CLAUS: Ho, Ho, Ho! Wade, this is Santa just checking in. Mrs. Claus recently got me one of those iPhones, and I know a lot of your podcast listeners use the GPS on the iPhone, but I’m down here doing a test run here in the Indianapolis area. I’m supposed to drop off a big bag of cold too little Brian born in Indianapolis. I was doing a little preview to see how my GPS works. Of course, I know a lot of your podcast listeners are international, so I want to give you a little tip with your iPhone. If you are traveling in a different time zones, this will really help you a lot. If you go to settings, and then go to airplane mode, double-click that, turn it on and then turn it back off. You’ll be in that time zone. That helps me a lot as I travel all over the world. You know, Wade? I was going to check my list twice to make sure little Brian Norton wasn’t supposed to get a bag of coal, but one of the reindeer eight the list! Ho, Ho, Ho! well, I guess it looks like little Brian born in the Indianapolis area will be getting cold for Christmas this year. This is Santa, signing off. Ho, Ho, Ho!
WADE WINGLER: And if you’d like to leave your tip on our listener line, you can call at 317-721-7124.
Today on assistive technology update, I’m thrilled to have some friends in the studio. We don’t get people in the house all the time, but today my friends Martha rust and Carolyn Phillips are up from Georgia. Hey, ladies.
CAROLYN PHILLIPS: Hello.
MARTHA RUST: Hello.
WADE WINGLER: Can I get a “y,all” out of you?
CAROLYN PHILLIPS: How y’all doing?
MARTHA RUST: Hey, y’all!
WADE WINGLER: Good. Carolyn, you and I have known each other for a long time, and Martha and I have gone to know each other more recently. You guys are up here in Indianapolis from Georgia because you’re keynoting at a conference having to do with learning disabilities. We’re recording this in the middle of November. By the time this goes out, the conference will have happened, but we’ve asked you guys to stop in and spend a little time kind of giving our audience a glimpse as to the things are going to talk about during the conference.
Normally I don’t just turn over the interview and say here you go, but I think I’m going to do a little bit of that today with you guys, because I’m fascinated with the topic that you’re talking about. That’s called “Discovering Personal Genius,” and it has to do with technology and learning disabilities and all kinds of good stuff. So I’m going to say here in a couple of minutes tell me what you’re going to be talking about, but I want to hear a little bit first about what you guys are doing at Georgia Tech and who you are and those kinds of things.
Carolyn, can I ask you to go first and just tell folks just a couple of minutes about who you are and what you do?
CAROLYN PHILLIPS: Absolutely. I am Carolyn Phillips, and I am the director of Tools for Life. Tools for Life, just like Wade’s program here, we are a sister program. We are the assistive technology act program for Georgia, and were housed within Georgia check within AMAC which is all about accessibility, and so we do very similar services to the project here in Indiana. Device demonstration, loan, training, we do AT assessments, and we have areas of specialization and learning disabilities is definitely one of those we specialize in. It also done a great job with apps, and I’m going to turn this you Martha who is our app guru.
WADE WINGLER: Yeah, so Martha, what do you do in Georgia?
MARTHA RUST: Well, again, my name is Martha Rust, and I am the Assistive Technology Specialist with Tools for Life, so I get to do a lot of the fun stuff like assistive technology valuations and do demonstrations on new equipment and tablets and apps that are out there. I’m also very excited that we have an online app database, it’s our app finder, so one Carolyn says I’m the app guru, I just love that piece of technology in a scene the way mobile technology has opened a lot of doors for not only students or people with learning disabilities or other disabilities as well, so I really love the way technology is going and how it’s coming to mobile and helping a lot of people out.
CAROLYN PHILLIPS: You can get to that pretty easily if you go to our website which is www.gatfl.org, and that stands for Georgia Tools for Life, and the icon down at the lower right hand corner is our app finder.
MARTHA RUST: It looks like a little cell phone with apps coming out of it. You can’t miss it.
WADE WINGLER: They go. Excellent. I’ll stick a link in the show notes to so that folks who are on their computer or on the smartphone can just click it and go right there. I’ll pop that in there. Today we’re going to start a little bit with an interesting topic because you guys have been asked to come to Indiana, and you’re doing this and other places as well, keynoting for some learning disability conferences. What I’m going to do is just tell folks that the topic is discovering the personal genius, and I’m going to turn you guys loose and kind of tell folks what they’re going to hear when they hear your keynote.
CAROLYN PHILLIPS: Sure, this is one of our favorite topics when it comes to looking at learning disabilities and really diving deep into this and also where learning disabilities connects with assistive technology. I’ve yet to meet somebody who’s truly successful with learning disabilities that doesn’t use assistive technology in some capacity, so I’m a big believer in it. What we’ve found is that a lot of the folks we work with, they don’t realize that part of the definition of having a learning disability is that you have average or above average IQ. I’m a big believer in that everyone has something to give, that there is personal genius within all of us. As a person with learning disabilities, 50 percent of our population has learning disabilities, trying to figure out how do we figure out where our strings really are and then also manage and accompanied for our weak spots.
When we’re talking about personal genius, and this is one of those questions that a lot of people ask me, I go back to Thomas Edison where he goes “Genius, nothing. Sticking to it is the genius. I failed my way to success.” And it’s true. A lot of times what we’re really talking about is dignity and failure in understanding that it’s okay, part of my success is failing. That understanding how to really reframe that and getting that understanding about yourself.
We also talk about the importance of having a plan in that part of discovering who you really are is knowing where you’re going, knowing where you’ve been. Also of knowing what’s your math, what’s your plan. Knowing what your learning style is, a lot of people don’t know. I asked that question all the time. How do you learn best? I know Martha asks the same question. How do you learn? Because that’s a key as far as figuring out what kind of assistive technology supports can we wrap around you.
Then of course looking at assistive technology and figuring out what are the best fits. A lot of times I think people don’t realize that we are living in an amazing time. We’re living in an area of revolution when it comes to us as a technology and technology in general. It’s changing at such a rapid rate, and so knowing that these solutions are devolving on a daily basis and trying to figure out what’s the next step and how do you make a good selection. That’s what we do. Do you want to add to that?
MARTHA RUST: I just wanted to reiterate what you said that I love this age that we are with technology. This is a personal topic for me, because my sister has gone back to school. She has a couple learning disabilities, and she’s gone back to school to become a vet, a vet that she wanted to do right after she graduated from high school. During that time, the technology wasn’t where it was, so she got a degree in interior design. So my sister and I are like, you’re going to have best looking at that office ever. Now she’s achieving, she’s using these mobile technologies. At any given time, she has probably five or six different things on her study table, and she’s using them all, and she succeeding. What she loves about it is she doesn’t have to go to a separate place to get help, she has it all back there. She has her smart phone. She’s not the only one in there that uses her smart phone. She’s not the only one there with the tablet. What she’s using, she calls me and says, tells so-and-so about the app that you told me. Now my classmate using it as well. It’s progressing and becoming more universal which is really cool.
CAROLYN PHILLIPS: And we meet folks just like your sister every day, and I’m thrilled to have had the honor to meet your sister and she how life has evolved for her as she’s learned more about how she learns. Just like me, I’ve learned a lot about how to learn and also where my strengths are and what technology can help me. It’s interesting, back in the 90s, the technology I remember, the personal computer was emerging and I was one of the first people at the University to get an email address. It was carolyn@uga.edu. That’s back in the day. Cell phones were really the size of toddlers, right? It’s amazing what we considered to be portable.
So these trends are emerging, and one of the things we focus a lot of our attention on is the whole concept of knowledge transfer. There are amazing things happening in labs but now when it comes to neural plasticity in understanding how our brains really work and also really understanding how we can use technology to support the next steps, keeping our brains healthy but also understanding how we can evolve. Trying to get something from the lab into the hands of folks with disabilities come into the classroom, so that a person can write using their voice. I use Dragon Naturally Speaking pretty much every day. It’s a day, you walked in and I was using it in my office writing an email. I write the reports that the rights to Congress using that voice, grants I’m using voice inputs. And also combining that with hearing what I’m saying, so having text to speech, something went back to me. Using something like Text Help in understanding how that can really help somebody like me have a job and really feel like I’m able to go to school and get my Master’s degree.
All of that was not really possible. It was stuff I dreamt about as a child, so the whole concept of carrying something in my pocket that helps me navigate to get to your office today all the way from Atlanta. Here I am. A lot of that has to do with technology and organization, so there’s so many solutions around that. Martha spent a lot of time helping folks figure some of these solutions out.
MARTHA RUST: I love it when someone comes to me and I like, I want to do this but I can’t. There’s not a way I can do that. I’m like, oh yes you can. I love it when they come to me and we can figure out the solutions together. It helps build up their self-confidence too once they see themselves achieving. And sometimes it’s just picking that one area and not looking at the whole big picture, but pick two or three things that I know that can achieve at, and once they see themselves achieving, they can move to the next step. That’s what assistive technology does for a lot of people with disability. It helps them see that they can achieve and that they can move onto the next step to reach their end goal.
WADE WINGLER: One that built a lot of confidence. Confidence in themselves, confidence in the tools and technologies. Confidence is one of those things that tends to snowball once you get it going.
CAROLYN PHILLIPS: Exactly, Wade. Right on. That’s one of the points that we make as were talking with folks in groups of thousands for one-on-one. It’s that success breeds success. Helping somebody feel that sense of success. When we’re working with someone to do a demonstration or do an assistive technology evaluation, especially the one on ones, I always love that. Even though we end up speaking to groups literally of 600, 700 folks. It’s exciting to help them figure out what that is, what that point of success is. So we do sit down and work from a model of that the person with a disability knows their learning disability better than anybody else. So a lot of people think that is a cookie-cutter approach, though you have dyslexia – I have dyslexia – so we’re going to just wrap the solution around you. Maybe, maybe not. It’s one of those things of looking at what works best for the individual and then building on that. Let the person experience that success and then let’s try for organization if that’s an issue.
I have dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, and auditory processing. A lot of people have been in debates recently, our learning disabilities really disability? We could debate about that, that could be a whole show onto itself. Though what I do know is that when we apply assistive technology in a very intentional way and when we work on building those win-win relationships and help someone figure out their support system and help them understand their map and actually creating a visual map. I have one of those on my wall at home and my home office. I have a little one at my office that helps me figure out these are my goals. When we start putting those types of solution around somebody and those approaches, we find that that is a path to success.
MARTHA RUST: I was just thinking about my own vision board. After working with Carolyn for so many years, I have my own vision board as well and my sisters have one as well. It’s just amazing, I love the opportunity that we get to be keynotes and talking one-on-one, and then having these personal stories that we can share but achievements. I was doing a keynote recently in Des Moines come in a mother came up to me, she was crying and she said you gave me hope for my son. He’s a freshman in college and you’ve given me all of these strategies that I can tell him about, tablets and apps and stuff. She’s like, just hearing your stories of the students you’ve worked with and her own sister just give me hope that he’s going to make it. He’s going to be able to do what he wants to do. That part makes my day. Or seeing the end product of the student graduating or the person achieving and their employment.
CAROLYN PHILLIPS: You know, Martha, as you’re talking about hope, it makes me think of one of our teammates who often quotes Anne Lamott, “Hope begins in the darkness. That stubborn hope that if you just show up and do the right thing, the dawn will come.” I feel like that’s often where we are. We’re there bringing that helps. The cool thing is that we live in an age where it’s no longer just about hope, it’s also about the real solutions that assistive technology brings to the table. I’m so glad you shared that story, because that’s one of many folks who show up, and it’s that little idea that yes you can read, yes you may not be able to reach typically like everyone else, but if the idea of can you give the information in. Can you get it back out. Expression, how do you express it, also how do you receive it, and how do you store it. So we can wrap solutions around all of that. It’s very exciting.
WADE WINGLER: It sounds like it’s a combination of people and their goals and their stories, reading them where they are in the creative application of technology to help them get stuff done. It gets more, can you than that, but at the core, that’s what we’re trying to college. Ladies, and the time that we have left, would you let folks know one more time how to reach out to you if they want to have more conversation with you, if they’re interested in having you come speak to their group about learning disabilities technology in discovering their personal genius, how would they reach out to?
MARTHA RUST: Well, they can definitely reach out to us. Our contact information is on our website which is www.gatfl.org. On the left-hand side, you can find our contact information to email or give us a call. We have those really long Georgia Tech email addresses, but we can definitely give that to you too.
WADE WINGLER: And I can pop those into the show notes.
CAROLYN PHILLIPS: That would be excellent. We do hope that this is a conversation that will continue a dialogue. A lot of times I hear – and I’ve listen to your shows, I’m a big fan of them. It’s exciting to know that will be able to help more folks.
WADE WINGLER: Thank you very much. Carolyn Phillips is the director of tools for life at Georgia Tech. Martha Rust is an assistive technology specialist there and have been my guest here in Indianapolis. Thanks for stopping by, ladies.
CAROLYN PHILLIPS: Thank you. We appreciate it.
MARTHA RUST: Thank you.