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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.
Part 2 – What’s new with VFO – Eric Damery, JAWS, Zoomtext, Fusion and more
www.freedomscientific.com | www.aisquared.com
First nanoengineered retinal implant could help the blind regain functional vision | KurzweilAI http://buff.ly/2mtHCUg
Chairman’s Awards for Advancements in Accessibility http://buff.ly/2nD0Ir3
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ERIC DAMERY: Hi, this is Eric Damery, I am the Vice President of Software Product Management of VFO Group, 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 305 of assistive technology update. It’s scheduled to be released on March 31, 2017.
Today we have part two of my interview with Eric Damery over at Freedom Scientific where we talk about JAWS, ZoomText, Fusion, and all kinds of stuff.
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Information about the FCC Chairman Awards, those are coming up. We need you to nominate yourself or somebody else who is doing cool stuff in the world of accessibility.
And a fascinating story about the first nano engineered retinal implant. We learn about that from the folks over at Kurzweil AI.
We hope you’ll check out our website at www.eastersealstech.com, give us a call on our listener line at 317-721-7124. Or drop us a note on Twitter at INDATA Project.
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From the folks over at Kurzweil, accelerating intelligence, their headline reads, “First nano engineered retinal implant could help the blind regain functional vision.” This is a fascinating story and I don’t have time to cover it in detail. I will put a link in the show notes. There is a team of engineers over at the University of California, San Diego, who are working with a startup called nano vision biosciences. They are creating a system of nano wires and an induction power system that will sense light and transmit those images through a wire matrix to stimulate retinal neurons. That is a retinal prosthesis. We are talking about for the first time a nano -sized system that can detect light patterns and transmit them without some sort of an internal power source directly into the retina. This article is full of diagrams and lots of technical details but it’s fascinating. It’s interesting that they talk about the fact that it requires an outside power source that will use induction to get power into the eye to power the reception and transmission of this data. They also say that the resolution of the system is incredibly high, almost the same as a human eye. You need to check out this fascinating story. I will pop a link in the show notes over to KurzweilAI.net.
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A few weeks ago we interview the folks over at SOS QR. Coming up in a couple weeks, we will talk with the folks over at Unis Tactas [phonetic]. You wonder what those interviews have in common? I found both of those folks because they were winners of the FCC Chairman’s Award for Advancements in Accessibility, or the Chairman’s AAA. It’s a contest I pay attention to every year because I think I find some cool and interesting things every time I look. They are getting ready to do the 2017 awards. Nominations for those awards are going on through April 13 of 2017. I’ll read a little bit from the press release. It says that the FCC is interested in hearing from you. They are seeking nominations for the awards. It says the Chairman’s AAA program recognizes products, services, standards, or other innovative developments and accessible telecommunications and technology. If you will apply or nominate someone, you need to be able to provide details about the problem or challenge being addressed by the innovation. You need to have a description of the innovation including links to a video demo or detailed information. You need to tell them when it was introduced and how the award would impact continued success and progress of the program. And then an explanation about why the innovation qualifies for the award. Anybody can submit a nomination and self nominations are certainly encouraged. You can do that at FCC.gov/ChairmanAAA. I’ll pop a link in the show notes so that you can learn more about that but I know that listeners to the show are interested in assistive technology innovation and you guys probably either are or know some of the winners of the 2017 upcoming awards. Let’s get those nominations going. If you can think of someone who has created an assistive technology that you think deserves an award, or if you have done it yourself, check our show notes because we will have a link where you can go and nominate for those awards.
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Welcome back to part two of my interview with Eric Damery, Vice President of Software Product Management for the VFO group, the makers of ZoomText and JAWS and fusion and a bunch of great stuff. Last week we interrupted our interview with Eric. We had so much great stuff to talk about. We just talked about what happens if you don’t update your assistance technology and then Microsoft releases a new version of Windows. We asked that question last week and now we are going to allow Eric to enter that and go on to talk about some other new things happening with VFO group.
ERIC DAMERY: Make sure you update your assistance technology. When we come up with a update, please take those updates and take them away. We don’t want to interrupt your behavior.
You might say, what is the risk? What would happen if I don’t? There are two issues that came up with the creators version of Windows. Without trying to get to do all about it, one of them have to do with the login screen. That one turned out to be an issue that Microsoft had to make an adjustment that they had done. They went back and solved it. The newest versions of the Windows insiders builds, we are not seeing that login screen problem. That one was real bad but we believe they solved it.
The other problem was something to do with UI automation. You would see this immediately once you went into your start menu. Things were not going to work right. It wasn’t just that the start menu was broken, it was tied to UI automation. It could’ve been tied to other places as well. We addressed the issue with Microsoft, sorted out what needed to be changed, made adjustments on our site and ported those changes back to each of our products.
If you do not do the updates, when you get the Microsoft update, I think you will run into problems with your screen reader as soon as you start trying to use it because right on the start menu you will run into some issues. The next thing you will have to do before this will work is update your screen reader at this time when it’s not working as you would expect. If you do the updates now, you will be good to go when the Windows update comes out. We are testing this aggressively. We are working on it very closely with Microsoft.
Microsoft is using our products in testing as well as they are testing with narrator. Narrator, the built-in screen reader from Microsoft, is a great tool for them because it’s forcing their engineers to exercise the assistive technology APIs that they built into their operating system. When they are making changes in the operating system, there are groups now that are having to run narrator against it. If it works and narrator can function, you’re going to be pretty safe that your assistance technology product is also going to be able to work with that.
Microsoft is identifying what the issues are before they get out to the public instead of after it gets out and then finding out the screen reader doesn’t work. This is a step in the right direction. This is a great change and I think it will benefit people in the long run.
WADE WINGLER: That makes perfect sense. As I was listening to talk about this, I assume that the VFO merger also probably positively impact your relation with Microsoft because you guys are more coordinated on your side, so that when you do go to work with Microsoft – not that they were bad before—but that is another more organized and courted a group to make these compatibility issues were got better.
ERIC DAMERY: It is, and it really helps because in the past, the assistive technology companies were very competitive with each other. We all thought we had our own secrets. Microsoft would have to do with each company individually. Now, when we have calls together with the Microsoft group and we are talking with them, we have the people that are working with JAWS, magic, ZoomText, image reader, all of our products, and all of the developers are on the call at the same time talking with Microsoft. It’s much easier because we have a much broader interest when we are talking with them.
WADE WINGLER: Streamlining, that’s great. I know that there is a lot going on with other products. I will turn you loose. What other things do you want to tell us about product development?
ERIC DAMERY: Let’s talk about ZoomText because JAWS is just going on. It keeps doing what it’s doing every year. We are adding new things in and adjusting constantly. If you happen to go to CSUN or happen to listen to any of the broadcasts, I think the biggest news at CSUN from my standpoint was the fact of what we were doing with office 365 and the changes that were happening at Microsoft as well as Google docs. If you haven’t looked at Google Docs in the past three or four weeks with the latest version of JAWS installed, you are in for a real surprise and should check this out. Make sure you read the release notes from the last JAWS update. There are some instructions in there. Google docs is really becoming a viable solution for the first time.
ZoomText, when 11 came out, there were several significant differences in how they’ve modified this product from what it was in the past. The first one you will notice right away is that the UI is different. It’s simplified, smaller, all keyboard accessible so everything you can do with a mouse can be done just through the keyboard very easily using standard Windows commands. Everything works as expected. You’ll also find that it’s not conflicting with Windows commands. They remapped their keyboard commands to turn on different functions and do different things within their own program which will take a little getting used to for people who are used to doing it the old way. But it won’t interfere with standard commands on a computer that you would use if you want running assistive technology. There are a lot of basic keystrokes that Windows and applications take advantage of and is so important that our assistive technology doesn’t stop on those.
We also paid very close attention as we were working on 11 to make sure that, if you decide to run ZoomText and JAWS together, that they don’t cause keyboard complex. We identified what were issues and make adjustments for that. It’s all documented very well and you can read the release notes and learn what the changes are and how that works. It’s always a change and challenge when keyboard commands are going to be different from the way they used to be. It will take a little getting used to in some cases, but I think overall you will see a huge benefit to this.
One of the other big features that was introduced in ZoomText 11 is something that we’ve been wanting to do on the magic side and never got to do. If you are in IE and you use inverse colors, which I think I heard the number is 50 percent of the people who are using AI Squared type of technology are using color enhancement of some sort, whether it is inverse or some other color combination. If you then go on Internet Explorer, you can re-text correctly, but if there are pictures that appear, they are all negatives. They are inverse and are very difficult to understand what the pictures are. You want to keep your pictures looking the way they normally do while just enforcing or changing the color backgrounds and so forth where text is located. That feature is now in. It’s on by default in ZoomText, so if you do inverse colors and start looking on Internet Explorer at pictures, you will see that they do not switch.
There is a whole laundry list of changes in this product and I hope you get an opportunity to read the release notes. Go to AISquared.com, right on the homepage is a link to the release notes. If you haven’t updated to 11 yet, please do so and make sure you get the 11.2 build that just came out today. It’ll install right over top of the 11 released that you had.
I should probably talk about the numbering because this will change a bit. In the past, ZoomText used to come out with version 9, 9.1, version 10, version 10.1. Those were all individual paid-for updates. Starting with 11, the only paid-for upgrade will be the whole number changes. 11 was a paid-for upgrade, but 11.2 is going to be free for all “11” customers. You will also see an 11.3, 11.4 coming out soon. Those will also be free updates for everyone who is in the 11 cycle.
JAWS, we got away from the “dot” upgrades and want to build numbers. I think we will be changing and going into a similar pattern that ZoomText is using. We are also looking at trying to come up with a conformed naming convention so that you’ll know if you have this JAWS, that ZoomText goes with it, and some way of naming them so it’ll be very apparent in the future which version you should be trying to run at the same time.
WADE WINGLER: That makes a whole lot of sense to be more clear for everybody to understand what’s happening. What’s up with fusion?
ERIC DAMERY: Fusion is a product that AI Squared released for the first time at the end of 2015. They looked at what they had in ZoomText, and it was a very good low vision product. It did include some speech, but the speech was never at a screen reader level like a JAWS product or window eyes product. At the time, AI Squared built a product that included the ZoomText for magnification and window eyes for speech technology. When they built this product, they put in JAWS keystrokes for screen reading because window eyes had a JAWS layout. They tried to use the JAWS keystrokes because this is the product that most people know and are familiar with and like the keyboard layouts. There are lots of users using it.
They put this product together and called it Fusion. I love the concept. It’s a very good concept because there are lots of people that are either in transition with vision or they have a tremendous amount of vision loss and are running at a very high magnification level. Getting some assistance from powerful screen reading is a big plus for many of them. The agencies have really embraced it. The customers have told us they like it. What they would love to see is ZoomText and JAWS create that fusion product.
In Fusion 11 – and we’ll see this early in the second quarter of this year, Fusion 11 is going to be a coming together of ZoomText and JAWS. People purchasing a Fusion license, what they’ll find is a single install that will put ZoomText 11 product on their machine and a JAWS 18 product on their machine. It will put three icons on your desktop, one for ZoomText, one for JAWS, and one for Fusion. When they run the Fusion icon, it will launch both ZoomText and JAWS. It’ll run JAWS out of the system tray automatically by design so you’ll only Alt-Tab into the UI for ZoomText. All of the JAWS speech adjustments and setting center and features like link lists, things people know about JAWS, will all be available to you and at the same time all of ZoomText magnification and color adjustment features will be available. You’ll also be able to adjust your speech rate and the ZoomText UI, but all of the voice settings will be deferred to JAWS. Other things related to speech will be grayed out in the ZoomText UI.
If you make adjustments to things while you are running fusion, they will stick and remember that these are the things that matter when fusion is being run. If you shut fusion down and then click on ZoomText and just run ZoomText by itself, you’ll get what you always expected in a ZoomText product. Someone will be able to, on the same computer, sit down and run just ZoomText including its level of speech and have it settings, or they will be able to run ZoomText vision with the JAWS capabilities and speech set up the way you want it when you are running a fusion solution. And if you shut them both down and launched the JAWS, you will get traditional JAWS and all of its settings. They will know which way they are running when they’ve been launched and run the appropriate settings or however you’ve set them up. This will be really good in agencies and schools and businesses. It will also be good for users who have been doing testing and will be great for users who are trying to get the best of both worlds. They want to ZoomText solution but also want the power of a screen reader installed with all of its scripting and type ability. All of that capability is combined in one product.
WADE WINGLER: It makes sense you are separating the settings and icons out. It’s been my experience that if you are switching between one or the other of those products, it’s because you are moving into a new use case and need stuff to be set up for that particular use case.
What about pricing?
ERIC DAMERY: We’ve tried to simplify it by rounding things off. ZoomText mag reader is $600. It traditionally was $505 but it is $600. We are also changing mag reader, that when you buy it, you will get access to all of the nuanced voices and nuanced language. Every ZoomText customer is going to get access to all of the languages and voices, just like a JAWS customer would get.
There are two different versions for JAWS for Windows. There is home and Pro. Home remains at $900, and Pro is $1100. Fusion car the combined solution, will also have a home and Pro cop probing $1500 – so you’ll get a JAWS for Windows Pro license and a ZoomText reader license cut a $1700 value for $1500. Or you can get the home equivalent car JAWS for Windows home, a $900 product, and mag reader, a $600 product car and I believe the price point on that is for $1200.
WADE WINGLER: Excellent.
ERIC DAMERY: Of course there will be SMA’s for these things also. If you buy an SMA for fusion, you will be getting the upgrades for both JAWS and Zoom text included.
WADE WINGLER: We’ve got just a couple minutes left in the interview. We talked about this a little bit and insinuated these things, but what’s in your crystal ball as you look in the product lines that VFO is dealing with now. What do you think the future looks like?
ERIC DAMERY: It largely depends on where Microsoft and Google no. We are constantly trying to adjust for that. We know we’ve got an awful lot of work lined up just because of what Google and office 365 are going to be doing. We will continue to evolve that. I think we will get to the point where users will be able to easily move settings around from computer to computer based on when they log into something. It will be able to deduct who they are cut what their JAWS or ZoomText settings are, and automatically get pulled down to that device for them.
I believe we will get to a much more simplified insulation in the future so that when you walk out to a computer, you’ll be able to log in. It will send something down to the computer, see what’s there now, see what’s available to you, and then pulled down from the cloud exactly what you need and get it installed. That’s all some of the technology in the future that you will be seeing as we continue to grow and expand.
I also think that you will see more close interaction with our technology and some of the other new technology, hardware in particular that comes out. One of the exciting products that will go on sale here in the second quarter is a product called L Braille. It’s not something that we produced cost something made by one of our distributors outside the US. It’s essentially a Windows 10 computer running a four-core Intel-based Atom processor. It runs full-blown Windows 10 and gets all of the updates. It can run all of the applications like office 365 and Google docs that you would run on any other PC. They’ve got JAWS for Windows installed on this thing. It’s driven through a braille display. You take your focus 14 braille display, and it plugs right into the cradle, snaps right into the device, and now you have a device that is like the size of a big braille and speak. For today’s notetakers, it’s about the same size. It’s got stereo speakers, a microphone, and SD card slot, an HDMI port that you can plug into an external monitor or a projector so that you can do presentations from it running PowerPoint. It’s got a SIM card slot see you can plug in a micro SIM chip and get data. As I understand it, you’ll even be able to make phone calls from this device. It’s going to do everything. It’s like the notetaker people have always waited for. It’s all this technology that’s available today in mainstream devices, and our assistive technology will be able to both right onto it as we’re doing with braille displays and screen reading.
WADE WINGLER: That’s exciting. If people want to keep up with some of the things that are coming out across these product lines, tell us one more time websites that you would suggest they go to.
ERIC DAMERY: Certainly FreedomScientific.com and AISquared.com. I also encourage people to listen into our FS Cast. You can get to that right from our homepage. If you have JAWS for Windows, when an FS Cast comes out, you will get an announcement about it. These are MP3 files you can listen to. We’ve been doing it for 10 years and all of the broadcasts for the last 10 years are posted on our page. You can find that right from the Freedom Scientific homepage. Anything that this changes, the interviews that have been done with our staff and customers on the outside that are using our products to do things, they all show up on FS Cast.
WADE WINGLER: Eric Damery is the vice president of software product management at VFO and has been our guest today. Thank you so much for being on the show.
ERIC DAMERY: It was great to be here. I look forward to coming back.
WADE WINGLER: 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, shoot us a note on Twitter @INDATAProject, or check us out on Facebook. Looking for a transcript or show notes from today’s show? Head on over to www.EasterSealstech.com. Assistive Technology Update is a proud member of the Accessibility Channel. Find more shows like this plus much more over at AccessibilityChannel.com. That was your Assistance Technology Update. I’m Wade Wingler with the INDATA Project at Easter Seals Crossroads in Indiana.
***Transcript provided by TJ Cortopassi. For transcription requests and inquiries, contact tjcortopassi@gmail.com***