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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:
Jerry Weisman president of ATSolutions.org
More Holiday Gift Ideas for People with Visual Impairments – AccessWorld® – December 2015 http://buff.ly/1RSfqlo
Apple TV App Store Growing Quickly… In the Wrong Direction? http://buff.ly/1lQamlF
On the Hill with Audrey: www.ATAPorg.org
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JERRY WEISMAN: Hi, this is Jerry Weisman, and I’m the President of Assistive Technology Solutions, and this is your Assistance Technology Update.
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 238 of Assistive Technology Update. It’s scheduled to be released on December 18 of 2015.
Happy holidays! We are right up on the holiday season, and I’m excited today to spend some time on the phone with Jerry Weisman who is the president of ATSolutions.org, and he has some advice for users and also inventors of assistive technology. We’re going to talk about an exciting project that he’s part of.
We have some last-minute holiday gift ideas for people who are blind or visually impaired; a question about what’s happening with the Apple TV app store; and a legislative update with Audrey Hill has some good news for the assistive technology community.
This is part one of Jerry’s interview, by the way. We will have part two next week. Next week’s show will come out on December 25, Christmas Day, and we hope people who are getting new devices, tablets, smartphones, and are new to podcasting, check out our show and enjoyed part two, advice for inventors of assistive technology solutions.
We hope you’ll check out our website at www.eastersealstech.com, shoot us a note on Twitter at INDATA Project, or call our listener line at 317-721-7124.
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AFB Access World Magazine is a great place to learn about all kinds of things related to services and technology especially for people who are blind or visually impaired. Janet Ingber has an installment here that’s entitled “More holiday gift ideas for people with vision impairments.” We actually did an episode not too long ago, our fifth annual holiday shopping show that was a two-part episode that came out the day after things giving here in the US and then followed the next Friday, and even showed up on our subsequent episode of ATFAQ, or Assistive Technology Frequently Asked Questions. We spent a lot of time going through dozens and dozens of gift ideas for folks with all kinds of disabilities, so I’ll encourage you to check our show notes. I’ll pop a link to the show notes for this show back to those shows so you can catch the holiday shopping gift show episodes if you didn’t get to them.
However, Janet ideas here are also very good. She talks about one of those opportunities as being Audible in the Audible accessible site where you can get audiobooks that you can play on your phone, your tablet, or those kinds of things. She talks about the FitBit Flex which is about a $100 wearable piece of technology that will help you keep track of exercise and weight and all those health things. She even mentions the fact that there is a free accessible iOS app that syncs right with the FitBit that gives you a lot of information about what it’s doing.
One of the things she recommends is the Jawbone Jambox wireless Bluetooth speakers that’s actually something that I use. It’s a very nice sounding portable device that allows you to connect to your device via Bluetooth and listen to music or your screen reader.
She mentions the Pen Friend 2 voice labeling system that makes it easy to label items in your environment. You can point a pen-like device at them and get these voice labels read back to you.
She even talks about L’Occitane en Provence which is a French company that does skincare, health, body and those kinds of things. One of the things that’s interesting is they put braille labels on their products and they also donate to the American Foundation for the Blind. She mentions in her article here that they recently donated $100,000 to the AFB.
Among other things she talks about our reader programs like the KNFB reader that works on your smartphone, Abbyy TextGrabber and Translator that works on Android and iOS, the Giraffe Reader which is a stand that holds your iPhone so that it makes it easy to steady that device when you use it to take pictures and recognize text.
She says that even if you need last-minute gift options for people who are blind or visually impaired, there are lots of options. A lot of the things on this list are things you can do in a last-minute way. At the very bottom of her article, she lists links to some other list of holiday gift guides that include lots of other disability, blindness, and assistive technology related gifts. Thank you, Janet, for doing this article. I would encourage you guys to listen to our shows about holiday shopping where we talk about the gifts and also reminiscent talk about what we are going to do during the holidays. I’ll pop links to all that stuff in our show notes.
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From the tidbits newsletter, there’s a headline that reads, “Apple TV app store growing quickly…in the wrong direction?” It’s interesting that the new Apple TV came out not all that long ago, and only a month after its opening with an app store, there are over 2600 apps. Some sources estimate that there is almost 500 new apps added every week and there might be as many as 10,000 apps available by early 2016. However, although there’s lots of growth, this article points out the fact that it’s not in the areas that you might think. Out of those 2600 or so apps that are there, over 1000 are games, and in the second category are streaming apps, entertainment apps like Netflix and HBO now and those kinds of things. Where that gets interesting is when you look at the 50 most popular apps, 28 of them are entertainment apps, things that are going to stream content, and only eight of them are videogames. 1000 of the apps are videogames, but only eight of them make the top 50 list.
What they are saying in this article is that people want to use their Apple TV to stream content and to do other things, not just necessarily play video games. The other point they make here is interesting is that there’s a whole lot of opportunity for innovation here. This is kind of a new platform or a newish platform, and definitely a new space to create apps and there’s lots of opportunity to be creative and make new stuff.
My question to you guys in the audience and the challenge that the issue is, what does that look like for assistive technology? What kinds of apps are assisted or accessible in the Apple TV app line up? What kind of opportunities are there to make that work a little bit better? I have to admit: I haven’t heard a ton about that and I’m fascinated and would like to learn more. If you know about assistive apps that are popular on Apple TV with their new app store, or if you have ideas for things you would be so bold as to share with us, I would love to talk to you. I would love to hear about that. I think that would make a great interview coming up.
Give us a call on our listener line at 317-721-7124, or shoot us a note over at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org, or even on Twitter @INDATAproject. I would love to hear what you think about the app store and Apple TV, especially as it relates to assist technology and accessibility. In the meantime, I’ll pop a link in the show notes over to the tidbits article and you can learn more about their opinion that maybe the app growth is in the wrong direction. Check our show notes.
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Each week, one of our partners tells us what’s happening in the ever-changing world of apps, so here’s an App Worth Mentioning.
I’m going to squeeze in a quick App Worth Mentioning segment here that’s kind of personal. I got a three-year-old girl who likes to wake up about three in the morning and come get in bed with her mother and me. The problem is we aren’t ready. We want her to sleep until at least five or six in the morning. We have an app that we found called Back to Sleep for $.99 by Harpers Ferry software. Basically it has a bunch of little digital sheep who are sleeping. Throughout the night, those sheep disappear one by one. When it’s time for her to wake up, they all come back and do a little party on the screen. We taught her that if she wakes up and there are still sheep asleep, she needs to stay in bed. But of the sheep are having a party, then she can get up and come get in bed with her mommy and me. It’s $.99. You’ll find it on the iOS App Store and is called Back to Sleep from Harpers Ferry.
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It’s time for on the Hill with Audrey. Audrey Busch is the Director of Policy and Advocacy for the Association of Assistive Technology Act Programs. In her update, she lets us know how the power of politics is impacting people with disabilities and their use of assistive technology. Learn more about Audrey and her work at ATAPorg.org.
AUDREY BUSCH: This is Audrey Bush, Policy Director for the Association of Assistive Technology Act Programs, coming to you with your monthly Washington update. While world events in Paris demanded much of Congress’s attention over the past few weeks, and justly so, Congress still had to pay attention to the fact that the current continuing resolution that is level funding the federal government and fiscal year 2050 levels expired on December 11 of this year, and a new fiscal year 2016 budget is required. There are 11 out of the 12 funding bills that Congress must consider in order to pass a new budget, and given the continuing resolution’s deadline of December 11 came and went with no final budget, Congress clearly had to extend the continuing resolution in order to provide them with more time to negotiate the budget. The final budget actually came out on Wednesday, December 16, in the form of an omnibus bill which means that all of the funding bills have been rolled into one piece of legislation. This $1.1 trillion omnibus appropriations bill provided several key programs with unexpected increases in funding, and one of those programs was the Assistive Technology Act, which did receive an additional $1 million in an increase which is very exciting news for the disability community. This funding measure is expected to be voted on by the House on Friday, December 18, with the Senate following suit shortly afterward. So it is fair to say Congress will be home for the holidays.
The other issue taking up much of Congress’s time is the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act, which is the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Both the House and the Senate passed this reauthorization bill with overwhelming support in both chambers, and the president agreeably assigned this bill into law the first week of December, stating that “For years I have called on Congress to come together and get a bipartisan effort to fix no Child Left Behind. This is really a good example of how bipartisanship can work.” While there is much left to be done as this law begins the implementation process, given that it gives much discretion and decision-making powers to the states, states will have much work ahead to determine how they’re going to implement the new accountability measures in the law.
As the year winds down, it is fair to say Congress was relatively productive for this year and has had several key wins, so to speak, under their belts. As Congress prepares to head out of town over the next few days, and is not planning to return until after the new year, I will say that that’s a wrap. I look forward to providing you with another update in January 2016.
WADE WINGLER: Today’s interview is a little unusual in that it is a two-parter. We are going to talk with Jerry Weisman who is the president and founder of AT solutions, and he’s going to share a whole lot of resources for people who are those assistive technology garage inventors or people who are developing things and want to know how they can take these amazing assistive technology ideas and turn them into a product or share them with the world, either to make money or to share them and make the world a better place. This conversation with Jerry was very enjoyable for me and ended up going a little bit long so I made the decision to create a two-part episode out of this. We’re going to have today part one of advice for users and inventors of assistive technology solutions. Here we go. We’ll do part one of the interview today and pick up with part two next week.
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More than once I’ve had somebody come into my office and say, “Hey, Wade, I’ve got this great idea for an assistive technology invention.” Or sometimes I’ve had people say, “Wow! That was really good solution you guys come up with. You should make a million of those and sell them and get rich.” When I’ve heard those things, I didn’t exactly know what to do or how to do with them. But today I’ve got a new friend on the line named Jerry Weisman who is the president of assistive technology solutions, and he does have some answers to some of these questions and is going to give us insight into that. Before we jump into this, Jerry, are you still on the line?
JERRY WEISMAN: I am.
WADE WINGLER: Thank you so much for taking time out of your busy day to be with us.
JERRY WEISMAN: Thank you for having me.
WADE WINGLER: Jerry, I said in the show lead in there that a lot of people have come to me with ideas and inventions, and I really didn’t know how to help them or what to suggest. I know that’s the main topic of our show today. I would like to start with asking you a little bit about your background and why you became interested in assistive technology, analyst talk about AT Solutions and what it does and that kind of stuff.
JERRY WEISMAN: My story is kind of long, but the short of it is I’ve been a rehabilitation engineer for 40 years, started out in a Masters program in bioengineering, and after that getting my masters work for the VA prosthetics center, a world-class research center in New York City that was a VA center. It later became the VA Rehabilitation Engineering Center. From there I went and worked for an outfit in Southern New Hampshire called Crotchet Mountain Rehab Center and then later work at the University of Vermont. I’ve been a clinician, a rehab engineering clinician primarily in worksite accommodations, but I’ve pretty much done all manner of assistive technology service delivery. I’ve also taught. I was the assistant director of rehab engineering technology program at Vermont Technical College and taught at the University of Vermont. I’ve done research. I was the assistant director of rehab engineering research Center at the University of Vermont for low back pain. Throughout my career, I’ve covered it.
I enjoyed your introduction. It’s exactly my story. Because of the worksite accommodations I’ve done and other assistive technology devices I’ve developed, people have always said why don’t you produce millions of those and get rich and retire to the Caribbean? I’ve always had to explain to them that that wasn’t going to happen and that I would give them the intellectual property, tell them exactly how to do it, tell them go off and do it and just send me a check. No one has ever taken me up on it. It doesn’t happen that way and that was part of the impetus for AT solutions.
WADE WINGLER: That sounds familiar and I’ll mention that I’m not Skyping you in from the Caribbean today. I can verify that.
JERRY WEISMAN: That’s right. You are not.
WADE WINGLER: Jerry, talk to me a little bit about AT Solutions and how it got started and who has been involved and how far along the process are you.
JERRY WEISMAN: It’s actually a longtime dream of mine. The idea for AT Solutions goes back quite a few years. I’m a hobbyist woodworker, and I’ve always gotten this magazine called Woodsmith Magazine. It’s a magazine for woodworkers that has no advertisement but just has plans for woodworking projects. I always thought that — and there were other people who were done similar things where, if you had a similar kind of magazine for assistive technology devices, where you had the instructions for how to build something, that people could either build it themselves or have someone build it for them, especially because so many assistive technology devices simply don’t make it to the market for all kinds of reasons, but mostly because the market is so small and so hard to make money in. I’ve always had this idea that it would be great to share this information. That idea was around even more the Internet was.
Over the years, we’ve had various bits and spurts of getting this project off the ground. At one point we had a grant from NIDER which is the National Institute of Disability Research, now called NIDILER with “independent living” stuck in there. Most recently we’ve been working with folks at TREAT in New Hampshire to develop AT solutions. With TREAT’s help we managed to get another website up, a more formal and more robust website, ATSolutions.org. We’re still working on that website. It’s not where we want it to be, but the elements are there. We have the ability to take people’s ideas and post them. We have the ability to share information about assistive technology devices and the engineering information needed to fabricate them. And we also have a shop where people can post their products and sell one-offs, sort of like an assistive technology Etsy.
WADE WINGLER: I haven’t found the shopping part. That’s kind of interesting. It sounds like a lot of stuff is moving along here. Can you tell me the kind of AT Solutions we are talking about here? High-tech, low-tech, certain kinds of disabilities? What’s going to be there? What is there and what’s going to be there?
JERRY WEISMAN: What’s happened is the world has kind of caught up with Assistive Technology Solutions. Like I said, it goes back to before the Internet. Now we have things like the maker community and new ways of manufacturing and fabricating stuff like that. What we would really like to be able to do with AT Solutions is create a community of people who are interested in assistive technology, people who use assistive technology, people who fabricate it, people who design it, and create this community of people who can share information and share ideas and share what they know about AT.
As far as what kinds of assistive technology devices we have on site and what kinds we can have, we can theoretically have any kind of device. If you can build it and have the engineering information about it, no matter how complicated it is or how high-technology it is, if you have the engineering information and have the fabrication resources, you can build it. Right now most of the devices that are on that site right now are simple mechanical kinds of things. There are a few electronic things. There are relatively new submissions, 3-D printing solutions. Right now most of it is kind of simple devices, things that people make for themselves, things that — there was an old rehab engineering research center in Kansas that focus on worksite accommodations. They posted a lot of their submissions and their accommodations. There are quite a few simple jigs and fixtures that work for people in the workplace. A lot of them are made out of wood. Like I said, there are a few electronic things like a mat for a blind receptionist which, when someone stands on it, would alert the receptionist that someone is standing in front of her. Right now the answer to your question is most of it is pretty simple kinds of stuff. Theoretically, it can be as complicated as people want as long as you have the engineering information and the ability to fabricate it.
WADE WINGLER: When I was poking around the website before we had a chance to talk today, a couple of things jumped out at me were interesting. One seemed to be a metallic overlay for a touch panel for somebody who may have difficulty with their hands to hit the right places. Another one was a pipe that had been turned into a three ring binder opening tool just to make it easier to open a three ring binder.
JERRY WEISMAN: Yes.
WADE WINGLER: I noticed that, when you get there, the ones I looked at anyway, there was a PDF file that had a pattern and a good idea of how to do the fabrication of those items.
JERRY WEISMAN: Exactly. Right now you can compare AT Solutions to Instructables.com. It’s basically Instructables for assistive technology. If you go to Instructables.com, you’ll find some AT devices on there as well.
WADE WINGLER: That’s cool. Jerry, I know that this is still sort of baby, it’s a long-standing idea that’s starting to come to fruition here. How is the funding handled and how is AT Solutions different than TREAT? Because I know there is a little bit of a difference there.
JERRY WEISMAN: As far as funding for AT solutions, we are a 501(c)(3). We have no intention of making money — or profit, I should say — in this business. However, we do have a business model that hopefully will sustain the site. Part of that business model is, like I said, there is a shop on it that is sort of an Etsy shop where people who do have assistive technology devices and want to sell them are making one-offs or making them in their garage and are not — they don’t have the ability to start up a big company and have giant distribution and make millions of dollars, because generally speaking that doesn’t happen in this marketplace. They can sell it. What we would be able to do then is take a small percentage of the sale price and use that part to sustain the whole website. Because we are a 501(c)(3), we can accept donations. We are also pursuing different grant possibilities.
As far as our difference with TREAT, TREAT is an NIH-funded program that aims to help people working in the space of rehabilitation technology and assistive technology who have been, for instance, doing research, developing a product. You get to a certain point where you might have a prototype, you might have already proven the concept, and you want to get this into the marketplace. But there’s all kinds of barriers to getting into the market place, not the least of which is identifying the market.
The AT market or rehab technology market is very different from the consumer market. In the consumer market, generally speaking, the person who buys it uses it and evaluates it and decides on it. It’s all one person. In the AT market or the rehab market, you have one person who is prescribing the device, one person who’s funding the device, and you have another person who is using the device. And then there could be all other players and stakeholders in it. So the marketplace becomes much more complicated. Identifying how that product is sold, who it’s sold to, who actually purchases it, is something that needs to be figured out before you wind up putting something in the marketplace and commercializing it. That’s something that TREAT helps do, is identifying the market and making sure that it’s worth doing it. You can have the greatest things since sliced bread, but if no one’s going to buy it, you’re not going to be able to sell it, you won’t make any money, you won’t have a business. It’s the idea of trying to create the business around this device.
The other services that TREAT provides has to do with helping develop the product. There’s an industrial designer, engineers that actually help develop the product to a marketable product, the manufactured product. And then there’s the ability to help with clinical trials, to make sure that the product actually has efficacy and does what it’s supposed to do and proves it scientifically in something like a clinical trial.
WADE WINGLER: Thank you. That helps me understand a little bit more. I know it can be a fairly competent process. I’m going to ask you a real simple question. The next time someone walks into my office and says I had this great idea for this thing that’s going to make me $1 million or whatever, or at least I want to create an assistive technology and share it with the world. What am I supposed to tell them? What advice should I give them?
WADE WINGLER: And that’s a teaser because we are going to come back next week and let Jerry answer that question and give us some more advice and information about how you can take a product from an assistive technology idea or invention into something a little bit more. Come back next week for part two of this interview.
Do you have a question about assistive technology? Do you have a suggestion for someone we should interview on Assistive Technology Update? Call our listener line at 317-721-7124. Looking for show notes from today’s show? Head on over to EasterSealstech.com. Shoot us a note on Twitter @INDATAProject, or check us out on Facebook. That was your Assistance Technology Update. I’m Wade Wingler with the INDATA Project at Easter Seals Crossroads in Indiana.