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ATFAQ048-02-20-17
Panel – Brian Norton, Belva Smith, Josh Anderson, Craig Burns, & Wade Wingler Q1.Office 365 and JAWS Q2. Motherboard issues on a computer running Dragon Q3. Stands for Apple Watches Q4. Voice Banking Q5. Most interesting job accommodations Q6. Is free Assistive Technology enough?
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WADE WINGLER: Welcome to ATFAQ, Assistive Technology Frequently Asked Questions with your host Brian Norton, Director of Assistive Technology at Easter Seals Crossroads. This is a show in which we address your questions about assistive technology, the hardware, software, tools and gadgets that help people with disabilities lead more independent and fulfilling lives. Have a question you’d like answered on our show? Send a tweet with the hashtag #ATFAQ, call our listener line at 317-721-7124, or send us an email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org. The world of assistive technology has questions, and we have answers. And now here’s your host, Brian Norton.
BRIAN NORTON: Hello and welcome to ATFAQ episode 47. My name is Brian Norton and I’m the host of the show. Today I’m happy to be in a city with a few of my colleagues where we get into some of the questions that you have sent in. But before we do, let’s go around and let me introduce the folks that are with me. Belva?
BELVA SMITH: Hey Brian. Hey everybody.
BRIAN NORTON: Belva is our vision and sensory team lead here at Easter Seals crossroads. I mostly with Josh.
JOSH ANDERSON: Hey everybody.
BRIAN NORTON: Josh is the manager of clinical assistance technology here. Also Wade.
WADE WINGLER: Hello hello.
BRIAN NORTON: Wade is the host of the popular podcast assistive technology update. I’m happy to have him here with us today. Before we jump into questions, I just wanted to take time for new listeners of the show to tell you how it works and what our format is. One thing we do is we receive feedback and come across various assistive technology related questions. We gather up all the information, put it into a show format that’ll work for us, and try to answer, as best we can, the questions folks send in to us. If you are interested, and as you listen, if you have questions, there are a variety of ways to turn it into us. We have a listener line which is 317-721-7124. You can send us an email at tech at Easter Seals crossroads.org. Or you can send us a tweet with the hashtag ATFAQ. We monitor all of those lines of indication throughout the week to pull it together and put our shows together. If you’re looking for ways to find us I want to tell friends about us, you can look for us on iTunes. Go to our website which is ATFAQshow.com. You can also find us on stitcher and a variety of other places as well.
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The first thing I want to do today as we jump into feedback and questions, is we have some different feedback from a couple of folks. They left a voicemail message is for us, so we’re going to play those. These are about some questions we have tackled in the past. We’ll play that first question and talk about it a little bit.
SPEAKER: This is Chris in Utah. I’m a regular listener and I’m calling to make a comment about the latest episode of frequently asked questions. There was some conversation about the seven series of iPhones not having the tactile phone but any longer. Belva made the comment that she is able to just put her finger on the home button and does not need to press. In case this has caused some confusion, I would like to clear this up by saying in the settings, the accessibility settings down towards the bottom, there is a home button menu. If you push that, you have the option within that menu of turning on a feature where you can simply rest her finger on the home button to unlock your phone, not requiring you to put any pressure on it. I use the iPhone 5 SE which is been absolutely amazing for me since it came out, and I use this feature. It certainly makes it simpler for me to unlock my telephone. I’ll keep listening and you guys keep up the great work. We will see you on the radio.
BELVA SMITH: First I would like to say thanks for getting back to us with your input on that. I want to point out that I’m not using the seven. Brian is the one using the seven. I have the 6S Plus. I was not aware of the setting you pointed out, Chris, but I did check I don’t have the setting turned on my phone so I can go ahead and turn it on. I notice no difference so I went ahead and turned it back off. I still think the reason my phone is unlocking the way it is is because of the thumbprint reader because I’m using the thumbprint reader.
BRIAN NORTON: You added a finger print to it?
BELVA SMITH: Correct. I think that’s why mine is working the way it is.
BRIAN NORTON: Interesting. I think back when we tackled this question in a previous show, I think the real issue was a lot of folks who are blind or visually impaired were getting confused with how it used to be on older phones where you have to swipe across and do some different things. Now with the new buttons and fingerprint recognition, it has change a little bit. Great feedback. Thanks for calling in and letting us know about the future. That’ll be good to know as we meet with more folks.
BELVA SMITH: Keep listening.
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BRIAN NORTON: Our next feedback is from a listener named Ron. There is quite a bit of feedback so it’s spread across a couple of different messages. But there is some good stuff in here so I want to be able to play it all for you. We’ll play this.
SPEAKER: My name is Ron and I’m calling with a comment to the show that recently aired around Christmas with ATFAQ question and answer period. I’m referring to an episode at Christmas time where there was a comment in the show regarding is there going to be an interface device, app, communication method that will join together several ways of indication such as text, email, Skype, and so on. I just want to continue to say that for years it frustrated me to no end that I did not want to be an individual that had all these clips around my belt of different devices that only did one thing. If I wanted to do something else, I wanted to clip that on my belt and try another device. It was very frustrating. I think the technology Doctor concept where a device prescribed for whatever needs you have is going to die away. I think we are going to see where things start coming together in a uniform method and accessing something by voice whether it be in a car or in a room. You can just say, call this group and inform them of blah blah blah, and a voicemail for someone by phone or text message or email will be sent to those individuals informing them at the same time. I think Siri has access to different apps on your phone where you can access stuff through the second or software. Even with hands-free, this is given me the ability to access the five boys without touching the phone. This will be neat to see how things developed through the years. I appreciate your show and whatever you put on your shows in the future.
BRIAN NORTON: I want to thank Ron for calling in with his opinion and information that he had about that stuff. I think specifically we were talking about Alexa and Google voice and where the technology is going in terms of being able to voice activate and pull lots of different technologies together. I believe there is a Siri Kit now for app developers and also a home kit for app developers in the iOS environment. It’s amazing to see where that industry is going and where that technology is going as it makes not just controlling your Apple device with what they have is for a Siri control but being able to control everything because these apps allow you to get to other places as well. If you can tie in Siri to those apps as well, what a great tool for folks that makes it more efficient for them and more accessible to them as they try to get access to those things.
BELVA SMITH: I think Wade’s specific wildcard question that day was what were our thoughts as far as the possibility of having one method that we would receive all of our contacts. I’ve given thought to that and had a conversation with one of my doctors about it not too long ago. We both came to the conclusion that, the same way we get our Social Security number when we are born, eventually we will begin—
WADE WINGLER: Universal ID number?
BELVA SMITH: Exactly. That’s what we will use to stay in touch with people. It’s a possibility.
WADE WINGLER: It sounds apocalyptic to me. Back to our caller’s information. Think it’s interesting to think about Star Trek and the fact that in science fiction in the future, it’s primarily voice interfaces like that where you asked the computer for something and it gives you information back. But it’s also made me wonder about what happens with literacy and especially folks who are blind because people who are blind and have been screen reader users for many years, there is an argument that braille literacy is a problem because when you only hear and listen to the language all the time, that’s a different experience than writing and dealing with punctuation and spelling and other kind of stuff. I wonder if there are hints in this new series of interfaces as well.
BELVA SMITH: I just had a long conversation with a VRC about listening to a text message and reading a text message and why braille is so important. If you don’t see a word spelled out and you only hear a word pronounced—1
BRIAN NORTON: Punctuation gets me. With Dragon and voice input for software on computers, they have autopunctuation feature where it is supposed to put periods and commas and places. I’m dictating, and as I dictate it’s like, does the comment go there or not? It would be different when I’m typing because I feel like my fingers know. Maybe I’m just crazy that way. I feel like my fingers know better than my voice.
WADE WINGLER: It’s just a different expression, different experience.
BRIAN NORTON: Excellent. Thank you, Ron, for calling in. If other folks have feedback or as you are listening to our shows, going back and listening to other shows, if you have comments or anything like that, we love getting those. We would love to play those for folks. I think it gives our listeners a bigger view of the world than just what comes from here. Please continue to do that. I really appreciate you guys calling in.
BELVA SMITH: Just for my information, and I guess our listeners as well, when a person provides us a comment like that, it may be a week or two before it actually gets played on the show. When they have a question, they are not waiting two weeks to get the answer to the question until we record it, are they?
BRIAN NORTON: Sometimes. It depends on how the question was given. If it’s an email and I have an answer, I’ll try to community back and forth for folks to get them an answer as quickly as we can. And then asked them permission, can I put this on the show. Other times it’s a great question that comes to me a couple days before we are going to record the show, and I think we are going to throw that in there and try to tackle that in the next show. It’s a variety of different ways. You can send us an email at tech at Easter Seals crossroads.org. Our listener line is always great because people can hear your voice on the show. That’s 317-721-7124. Or if you just want to do something quick, down and dirty, send us a tweet with the hashtag ATFAQ. That filled his back to us as well.
BELVA SMITH: That’s good for them to know because that way if they are waiting, they are nothing that we have forgotten them.
BRIAN NORTON: And if your question isn’t answered, if it’s been a while, send it again. Sometimes things get buried a little bit. I want to say as far as the reach of our show, it’s in 120 different countries. We get lots of feedback. Sometimes things get buried. Send it again and I’ll try to keep that stuff organized as far as when I received it. That’s not to say something might fall through the crack sometimes.
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BRIAN NORTON: Our first question we will tackle today is from Carol. They came in through email. Her message reads like this. It says, a coworker of mine suggested I contact you. I believe he saw a webinar you did and also contacted you. In any case, I am transitioning from a computer, laptop, and software to mainly iPad and apps. Old dog, new tricks, so is going slowly. I’m looking for in app that will read text so it has to have some OCR, or optical character recognition; the ability to write either to answer questions to that text in the form of short answers or fill in the blanks, multiple-choice. She does mention that Kurzweil 3000 does that with firefly and it works on the iPad, but it’s really expensive and they are looking for some lower-cost alternatives to firefly. I’ll throw that out to folks.
BELVA SMITH: It’s very similar to a question that I just spent a lot of time trying to find a good solution for a person who wants to be able to edit specific forms on the iPad or tablet or smartphone and an app that will allow her to be able to do that. We did not come up with a good answer to her question. I have used voiceover to work in many different forms and many different places. I’m talking spin boxes and edit boxes and other boxes. I don’t know.
BRIAN NORTON: I’ve got a couple of solutions for you. There is a program, an app called snap type. Snap type is a great one for being able to fill out forms.
BELVA SMITH: With voiceover?
JOSH ANDERSON: It doesn’t say she’s using voiceover.
BELVA SMITH: She’s asking for OCR.
BRIAN NORTON: That’s taking a picture and have it recognize the text. A lot of times, even for cognitive issues, being able to have that read back to you. I think that’s the context.
BELVA SMITH: Okay. She is mentioning Kurzweil 3000. My specific situation was trying to use voiceover. The answer would be different.
BRIAN NORTON: Snap type, I’m sure with voiceover is challenging because you don’t know the layout. What snap type does is it allows you to snap a picture of a document, and it will come up on your iPad, and you can type where you want to put text. Wherever you tap they will put a text box. If you are filling in an answer or you’re trying to market a radio button or those things, it’ll let you do that thing very quickly. The other option is a couple of programs I have had success with, Claro PDF is a good one.
BETH ROSENBURG: We look at that one.
BRIAN NORTON: If you’re looking for a Kurzweil-esque program that’s very similar to Kurzweil 3000 – obviously not the house and whistles. Assign a full-featured software set like Kurzweil is on the computer. Claro PDF does offer you the ability to reach out to dropbox, box.net, and other storage places, pull in a PDF document and then have it read to you, but not just read to you but you can also annotate it as well with many of the same tools you’ll find on Kurzweil, like highlighters and text boxes and sticky notes and pictures and other kinds of things, much like your Kurzweil experience is. I’ve had a lot of success with Claro PDF. It’s a great app. I want to say it’s $10.
WADE WINGLER: Snap type and Claro are both in that $5-7 range.
BRIAN NORTON: I’ve had some real success with those.
BELVA SMITH: As far as just having the text read, they could possibly go into their settings under accessibility and turn on the text to speech to get the text read back to them. That’s not going to help them with any type of editing.
BRIAN NORTON: I think what’s really good about those two programs, snap type and Claro PDF, is that it maintains the form as it is. You don’t OCR it to change the way it looks, because that changes the way you fill out the form. When you bring a PDF file, you’re able to read it in its traditional format and then fill it out as is and not necessarily—
BELVA SMITH: In my particular situation, she was wanting to be able to send it back after she had edited it. Of course she needed it to stay in its format, not get in a crazy format.
BRIAN NORTON: I think another app I’ve used in the past used to be the one I would recommend more often before I knew about these other apps. The other one was notability. Notability also allows you to bring in a PDF form or a document and then fill out a document. Let’s say your teacher gives you an outline of a presentation. You could then import that presentation into notability and write notes all over top of it. It gave you the same effect that the other ones did but was more difficult to bring material in to make that useful for you. Notability was another option, but I would probably defer to snap type and Claro PDF now.
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BRIAN NORTON: Our next question is from Adam. This came in via email. The question is, I’m working with someone that has education and experience of producing videos but has difficulty using regular video cameras because of all the small, fine motor movements necessary to turn on and off the camera and features. Is there someplace you can find accessible camera technology? I’ve actually work on a couple of job accommodations where one person wanted to do photography at different landmarks here in Indianapolis and then sell those back to folks, so family photos and things like that. But he had very severe cerebral policy so obviously using that technology, fine motor movements are necessary. You got small switches and buttons and you have to turn on features. That was difficult for him.
BELVA SMITH: Different lenses, right? You have to switch lenses.
BRIAN NORTON: It became a real challenge for him. At that point I reached out, and there is an interesting place where you can find information and have some conversation with folks who deal with this all the time. It’s called the disabled photographer society. It’s not in the US. It’s out of the UK, but they talk about that all the time and would be able to provide some really good information about that. The other thing I’ve done in the situation where I worked on a particular job accommodation is I had to talk to somebody and figure out ways to adopt whatever equipment we would recommend. There are some industry partners that I work with, some friends of mine that have the ability to mess with the technology, electrical engineers and all these folks. They can tear things apart and switch adapted stuff and make things work for me. That’s on a case-by-case, really have to know what you’re trying to get access to. There is so much information we would have to have it for a specific equipment to see what we can and cannot do. Again, that disabled photography society is something that might be helpful.
JOSH ANDERSON: With video cameras, some of them have remote controls now and in the things that you can use. I’m not sure if there are some that have different input devices where you’re not manipulating those tiny buttons on the actual camera itself. If there is something that you can hold in your hand to use, that might be a little bit easier.
BELVA SMITH: That’s exactly where I was going. This would be a situation where someone like us would need to sit down with them and identify what are the specific areas that we need to address and how could we possibly address them. You are right, remote control or some sort of switch, mounts would probably be necessary.
WADE WINGLER: Ever think about this, I want to spin it in a different direction. There have been people bragging about how they have filmed full-length Hollywood movies on an iPad.
BELVA SMITH: I had thought about that.
WADE WINGLER: I don’t know exactly what they’re trying to do here, but with such adaptive stuff available for iPad and the interfaces and mount, to a wheelchair, a bicycle, to whatever you want, I would encourage them to research that. I don’t know if those Hollywood films were shot in such a way that the deck was stacked so that it worked on an iPad. I would suggest looking at that, the video capabilities on that is pretty good and you can edit it right there. Fully switch accessible. There is a lot of stuff happening on the iPad. That might be worth looking into.
BELVA SMITH: I think for the average guy, whatever video or picture you get from a smart tablet that has a good camera will be good enough. I think every photographer is going to be more picky and want to be able to zoom and highlight things in a different way.
WADE WINGLER: Then again, the iPhone seven, there are billboard photographs for people taking pictures with an iPhone seven and followed it up to billboard size and it still looks good.
BELVA SMITH: Remember when Mark got married, they use those flip video cameras and did a lot of his. To me, it was beautiful and worked great.
BRIAN NORTON: On the backend of the photography piece, once you do photography, a lot of times the stuff is going to come out on your SD card instead of 35mm film. I don’t think we ever use that anymore.
BELVA SMITH: Yes we do.
JOSH ANDERSON: It’s expensive if you try to find it.
BRIAN NORTON: I did this in one situation. We want to find a way for folks to be able to, once they have their photos taken, to manipulate those photos and choose which ones they want. We are able to find those at Kodak. If you go to a pharmacy, you stick your SD card, and have filters and options as far as sizes and glossy prints or matte prints to choose from. We ended up working with the company to get him one of those so that processing of photos became much easier for him. That’s a touchscreen kiosk. We are able to interface with that much easier than either paying someone to do it or some of the more sophisticate a processing technology that is out there. Great question.
BELVA SMITH: Good information.
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BRIAN NORTON: Don’t forget, if you want to ask as a question or provide additional feedback about some of the questions we’ve had on the show so far, you can give us a call on our listener line. That’s 317-721-7124. Or email us at tech at Easter Seals crossroads.org. Or send us a tweet with the hashtag ATFAQ. We would love to hear from you.
Our next question is from Darren via voicemail. We’ll play that voicemail.
SPEAKER: This is Darren from Indianapolis. First of all, all three podcasts are great, accessibility minute, ATFAQ, and accessibility update. They are all really good. My question probably is going to be best for the ATFAQ. My question is, for someone who has low hearing and they sometimes use hearing aids, what type of your phones would you guys recommend. They need something that is not going in the ear or over the ear. The two brands have used in the past our aftershock and ear shield. They’re looking for something else that might be less expensive. Those can get pretty expensive, those two brands. They have had those in the past. Those go around the ear to reflect the sound because they need their ears open when they are walking. They are totally bylined so the need to have their ears totally open when they are walking but still be able to listen to music and things like that. Any recommendations on that would be greatly appreciated. Thanks a lot.
BRIAN NORTON: I dug in and did research. He mentioned ear shield and aftershock. Those are headphones that use bone conduction. They don’t necessarily fit into your ear. They are around the back of your head and come up and over but don’t rest where hearing it rest.
WADE WINGLER: If you take your finger and put it behind your ear and find a bony area, that’s the way bone connectivity headphones work. They lie up against that vibrate sound through. I just had a hearing test not too long ago and they used that. They put regular earphones on me and played sounds and then they put it on the bone connectivity section of my brain and I could hear the same thing. It totally freaked me out because you don’t hear through your ear. You hear through the bone. That’s what these are all about but they can be expensive.
BRIAN NORTON: I did price research a little bit. I found that the aftershocks and ear shield essentially look exactly the same. I’m not sure if it’s the same headset but through different avenues of purchase. They look similar. I think the ear shield is around $79.99, and the aftershock are about $130.
BELVA SMITH: You can get them cheaper than that.
JOSH ANDERSON: It depends on what kind you want. Those aftershocks, if you don’t mind plugging it in, you can look at around $40. They still have everything else. But if you want Bluetooth and different kinds of specifications, they jump up a little bit. You can do some of the lower end ones for $35.
BELVA SMITH: I think I just seen the Bluetooth ones for $50. I just ordered it for a client not too long ago.
BRIAN NORTON: That’s a unique issue and trying to make sure— he mentioned the person is blind but they also have low hearing and are hard of hearing. If you’re blind, you want to use your hearing to hear things that are around you. Putting a headset on to cover your ears will be a problem. I don’t know of any other one, unless you can find the less expensive bone connection headphones that they’ve been using, whether you would be able to address it any other way if you’re not trying to cover up or put something in your ears for that stuff.
WADE WINGLER: I think you’re looking at bone connectivity headphones, and it’s just about looking at Consumer Reports and Amazon reviews and finding the ones that will do the best job based on consumer feedback. Look through those reviews for people who might be using hearing aids with them as well. The other approach that you might consider is, if this person already has hearing aids and they happen to be Bluetooth compatible, you can use your hearing aids as your headphones in the situation. You just tell your iPhone or tablet or whatever to connect to your hearing aids as the headphones and you bypass that entire situation. That assumes the person has Bluetooth compatible hearing aids that compare with an iPhone. Those are pricey.
BELVA SMITH: That’s what I was going to point out. It depends on what device they are trying to use this with. It may be the device they are using is in Bluetooth. That would be the first thing.
JOSH ANDERSON: The less expensive one has the headphone jack, the iPhone seven doesn’t have that. You would need the adapter to pull that off.
BRIAN NORTON: It’s interesting. You mentioned the hearing aid piece with Bluetooth. I think that’s Overlook a lot of times when you go to your audiologist. You need to be able to have a widespread conversation with them about all the things you plan to do and we need access to. A lot of times I see, I think most of the major hearing aids manufacturers have a Bluetooth compatible version of their headset or hearing aids, and they have lots of tools that go with those as well. There is FM systems, things for phone act, Roger Penn and all kinds of things out there that help you capture the sound and filter it through your hearing aid. But if you’re not asking the right question or given the information, they aren’t thinking about the stuff when they make recommendations. You might not end up with something that may be best for you in that situation. It’s very interesting. I didn’t think about a hearing aid piece of that.
WADE WINGLER: That’s why keep me on the show. You can’t just beat the humor. It has to be something tangible once in a while.
BRIAN NORTON: Great question. Thanks for calling in.
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BRIAN NORTON: Don’t forget that if you have any feedback over this last question or questions that may have popped into your mind, you can give us a call at 317-721-7124, or send us an email at tech at Easter Seals crossroads.org, or a tweet with the hashtag ATFAQ.
Our next question is a question I was asked a long time ago about an app and with it works with voiceover. What we did is we reached out to BridgingApps who is a regular contributor to our assistive technology update show. They are awesome and have lots of information, one of the best places to go if you are looking for app reviews because their app reviews art from the manufacturer themselves or folks who are super advocates for particular apps. They are teachers, educators, special educators who take a critical look at the software and talk about the pros, the cons, and get into it with you. We love BridgingApps. Without we would let them try to answer this question. The question was, do you know if the Pillboxie app works with voiceover. We’ll play their response.
SPEAKER: Thank you so much for reaching out to BridgingApps and for your question about whether or not the medication reminder app called Pillboxie will work with voiceover. Unfortunately at the time of this recording, Pillboxie does not work with voiceover. The app developer who created Pillboxie is a former nurse, and he created this app to fill a need that he didn’t see in other medication reminder apps, and that was the visual component of being able to take pictures of a specific medication and types of pills. We’ve been in touch with Mister Sinclair to ask him if he plans to make Pillboxie voiceover compatible in future versions of the app, but we are not heard back from him. We would recommend contacting him directly at his email address, which is Pillboxie@gmail.com, or contact them through twitter @Pillboxie.
As to the second part of your question regarding other apps on the BridgingApps website, reviewed from the perspective of someone who is blind or visually impaired, we have a few that have been reviewed by professionals who work with these users. You can find this list called apps for people who are blind or visually impaired. We have recruited reviewers from all over the country who are professionals in their field of special education. We’ve got speech language pathologist, occupational therapists, dietitians, even a psychologist and others, but we have had a tough time finding certified teachers for the visually impaired or even certified orientation and mobility specialists or other professionals who work with users who are blind or visually impaired. If you know of anyone, or if you yourself would be interested in helping us get these apps reviewed, we would love to talk with you. Thank you so much for your question and your interest in BridgingApps.
BRIAN NORTON: Great. Great answer. If you’re looking for a good place to find in-depth app reviews, BridgingApps is definitely a great place to go. Thank you Kristin for chiming in and answering the question for us.
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WADE WINGLER: And now it’s time for the wildcard question.
BRIAN NORTON: Our next question is about card question. That’s where I pass the mic to Wade and he asks a question that we are unprepared for or haven’t had a chance to see yet.
WADE WINGLER: Today’s topic is Lady Gaga.
BELVA SMITH: Oh wow.
WADE WINGLER: Not really. We are recording this after the ninth of Super Bowl 51 where the Patriots – oh, my gosh, we are not going to get to that because we could spend another show talking just about the Patriots. We are in Indianapolis, so we have a love/hate relationship with the New England Patriots. Last night Lady Gaga did a presentation where she had hundreds of drones flying above her in the background providing some sort of visual background. I haven’t seen it yet but I guess it was lights and all kinds of cool stuff. Interestingly enough, yesterday afternoon I went on a walk with my four-year-old daughter and she looked up in the sky and saw the trails of some jet airplanes that were flying over our neighborhood. She said daddy, look, drones. Twice in one day I’ve had drones come to my attention. My question is what is the role of drones going to be in the world of disability moving forward? 5 to 10 years ago, we didn’t think about drones and only heard about them usually in a military context. We are starting to hear about drones in lots of ways and are starting to see people with them and FAA regulations. What are drones going to mean for folks with disabilities?
BRIAN NORTON: That’s a great question.
JOSH ANDERSON: That’s a big question.
BELVA SMITH: Delivery, for one thing. We already have Amazon who is using drones to drop stuff.
WADE WINGLER: Are they actually doing it or just talking about it?
JOSH ANDERSON: Just talking about it. I don’t think they started it yet.
BELVA SMITH: Maybe I’m wrong. I thought they had started it. But it was just for certain items and in certain locations. Even if they haven’t, they are definitely talking about doing it. It is the wave of the future. I see it as a method to get things quicker and right to your door.
BRIAN NORTON: For a lot of folks with disabilities, time matters.
BELVA SMITH: Shopping. If you can’t get out to get toilet paper when you need for the paper, and nobody is coming for a week to go to the grocery store for you, that’s a big problem.
BRIAN NORTON: It sure is.
WADE WINGLER: Looking on Amazon’s website, it is still future but they are working on it.
BELVA SMITH: They supposedly just bought a big plot of land in Tennessee, Kentucky, someplace like that where they are going to start the one hour delivery.
BRIAN NORTON: That’s where I would jump to, the delivery of things medically that you rely on or consumer products that you rely on. I always think—what’s the Bruce Willis movie where he’s got that alien girl that goes with him. I just see the futuristic cities where—
WADE WINGLER: Fifth element.
BRIAN NORTON: There you go. There are roads that you go straight down on a road, on the ground, but you have the difference that levels of people. I wonder down the road would drones be able to transport people? Are they going to be big enough to transport people from place to place much like driverless cars? I don’t know. I think it’s a little bit to be decided as far as where that takes off.
WADE WINGLER: You are talking about fifth element and mile high cities. I heard that there are at least two restaurants, one on the East Coast, one on the West Coast, that are delivering foods via drones to high-rise apartments. I think the one on the West Coast is a tacos place and the one on the East Coast is a lobster roll place. You order it with your app on your phone and it will hover outside of your apartment window until you reach out and grab your lobster roll.
JOSH ANDERSON: Access, it could definitely help because of the cameras on them and everything. With different mobility challenges, you might not be able to go hiking at Yellowstone but a drone could easily fly and show you probably a much better view than you would see from the trails.
BELVA SMITH: Or attend family weddings and stuff like that.
WADE WINGLER: I always wondered about college students who might be wheelchair users or folks who might have trouble with mobility on campus. Can you imagine on an icy day sending your drone to fly down the sidewalk to check what they look like, if they are clear. Or if you are new, visiting a college campus or someplace and you only have so much energy to get there. Could you send the drone ahead of you to look and see if that’s the right building I think I see 400 yards down the block.
BRIAN NORTON: That’s one of the things where there is virtual reality which will give you a virtual environment where you can be someplace that you aren’t really able to be, or a telepresence robot. And then you’ve got this drone world. I wonder if maybe there is a need that eccentric to all those that they are trying to meet. Telepresence allows you to be someplace you are not able to be. Virtual reality essentially does the same thing, can give you an experience hiking down the trail or doing stuff like that. So would drones. Drones would then give you access you wouldn’t have before.
BELVA SMITH: Maybe you could be sitting at home doing security for an event, having the drone flight over Lady Gaga and watching out to see what’s going on.
WADE WINGLER: It’s funny. Our maintenance guy has more technology than the rest of us. I always go to him to tell me what’s new with technology. Even though he’s our head of maintenance, he has every gadget there is. He has a drone that he plays a lot. It has two features that made me think of our conversation. One is he has an infrared laser pointer with it so you can tell who drone to fly, and he can point that the wall on the outside of the building with his laser pointer, and it will hover right next to that laser pointer and take pictures or whatever. Or it also has a hover mode where if he goes out on a hike or bike ride or whatever, he can tell the drone to hover 15 or 20 or 30 feet above him and follow him no matter where he goes so it can constantly hover above him and take pictures of his hike or walk. As I think about folks with disabilities, the ability to have a drone fly somewhere that you can point a laser at all to follow you as you are out and about and take video of where you’re going, those are pretty remarkable things.
BRIAN NORTON: Know more about the cameras. You can have your own drone follow you.
JOSH ANDERSON: Use it as a leader dog.
WADE WINGLER: Clearly we need to get some drones and put them in the library here.
BRIAN NORTON: Purchasing decisions. That’s a very interesting conversation. You really don’t know where they are going to go at this point. It’s one of those technologies you can play around with. It’s a little bit like virtual reality and other kinds of things like that. They are new and on the horizon. I’m not sure what developers will do to take that step further into the disability world.
WADE WINGLER: I would love to hear from our audience because I’m sure there are folks who are listening right now who have ideas or experiences that might relate to this. Give us a call and let us know what you are thinking about accessibility and drones and disability. I think it’s cool stuff.
BRIAN NORTON: Definitely send us your questions. You can give us a call on our listener line at 317-721-7124. You can send us a tweet with the hashtag ATFAQ. Or an email at tech at Easter Seals crossroads.org. Thank you for the questions that were sent in today. I thought they were really good questions. If you have feedback, the from the send it our way. We definitely want your questions, love your feedback. Without those things, we really don’t have a show. Definitely be a part of it. I want to thank the folks in the studio, Wade, Belva, and Josh, for taking time out of their day to help us get answers to these questions. Check us out on our next show as well. We are getting close to the 50 mark.
WADE WINGLER: Be there before you know it. We need to do something special for 50. If you have ideas—
BELVA SMITH: Cake.
BRIAN NORTON: We are on year two. We started the first Monday of February 2 years ago. It’s been two years. We are almost to 50. I’m super excited about that. Thank you to all of our listeners who have been part of the show. Again, you are the ones that make it happen. You are the ones that submit the questions and give us an opportunity—
WADE WINGLER: Give us something to talk about.
BELVA SMITH: Exactly. Keep listening and keep asking.
BRIAN NORTON: Everybody take care. We’ll talk to you later.
BELVA SMITH: Thanks.
JOSH ANDERSON: Thanks everybody.
WADE WINGLER: Bye.