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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:
Orcam’s Number: 866-796-7226
Aliza’s Number: 612-940-9037
Welcome App Story: http://bit.ly/31ZUcKX
BrightSign Glove Update Story: http://bit.ly/2MYtZIg
Google Maps Story: http://bit.ly/2PudeGy
Chrome AI Descriptions Story: http://bit.ly/2ONQu48
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If you have an AT question, leave us a voice mail at: 317-721-7124 or email tech@eastersealscrossroads.org
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————– Transcript Starts Here——————————
Aliza Olenick:
Hi, this is Aliza Olenick and I am the Area Sales Manager for the Lakes region of the Midwest at Orcam Technologies and this is your Assistive Technology Update.
Josh Anderson:
Hello and welcome to 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 individuals with disabilities and special needs. I’m your host Josh Anderson with the Indiana Project at Easter Seals Crossroads in beautiful Indianapolis, Indiana. Welcome to Episode 440 of Assistive Technology Update. It’s scheduled to be released on November 1st, 2019. On today’s show we’re very excited to have a Aliza Olenick on. She’s going to come on and talk all about Orcam and tell us all the great things they can do. We’ve got a quick story about the welcome app, an update on the BrightSign glove, story about some new accessibility features built into Google maps as well as Google using some artificial intelligence in Chrome to describe pictures to individuals. So without any further ado, let’s go ahead and get on with the show.
Josh Anderson:
Are you looking for more podcast to listen to? Do you have questions about assistive technology? Are you really busy and only have a minute to listen to podcast? Well guess what? You’re in luck. Because we have a few other podcasts that you should really check out. The first one is assistive technology frequently asked questions or ATFAQ hosted by Brian Norton and featuring myself, Bella Smith and a bunch of other guests. What we do is we sit around and take questions about assistive technology, either about accommodations, about different things that are out there or about different ways to use things. We get those questions from Twitter, online, on the phone and in many other ways. We’re also trying to build a little bit of a community as sometimes, believe it or not, we don’t have all the answers. So we reach out to you to answer some of those questions and help us along.
Josh Anderson:
You can check that out anywhere that you get your podcast and wherever you find this podcast. We also have Accessibility Minute. So Accessibility Minute is hosted by Laura Metcalf and if you’ve never heard her voice, it is smooth as silk and you should really listen to that podcast. She’s going to give you just a one minute blurb about some different kinds of assistive technology. Kind of a wet your whistle a little bit and just let you know some of the new things that are out there so that you can go out and find out a little bit more about them yourself. So again, check out our other shows, Assistive Technology Frequently Asked Questions and Accessibility Minute, available wherever you get your podcasts.
Josh Anderson:
First story comes to us from accessandmobilityprofessional.com. It’s written by Alex Douglas and it says DoubleTree by Hilton takes on tech to improve disabled customers stay. And it talks about a hotel in Edinburg, Scotland, the DoubleTree Estates by Hilton and it looks like it’s become the newest place to use the Welcome app. Now the Welcome app is made by Neatebox and it is an app made to kind of help individuals with disabilities communicate with hotels or other places to let them know about accommodations that they might need, but it really opens up that kind of level of communication. Most of the article actually is talking to the people at the hotel and how much it’s been able to help them out in just making sure that their guests have everything that they need should they need anything special before their visit. Actually says that the app itself has really helped to improve staff morale as the employees can feel more comfortable in interacting with individuals with disabilities. It goes on to talk about how this can also be helpful for individuals with hidden disabilities.
Josh Anderson:
It’s sometimes it’s a little easier to maybe ask someone if they need an accommodation if they’re using a seeing eye dog or white cane, a wheelchair or something like that, but if individual has autism, a hearing impairment or some other things that aren’t as visible to someone else, it can be a little bit harder to ask for accommodations. And of course, you’re probably not going to walk up and just ask someone if they might need one. So pretty darn cool story. We’ll go ahead and put a link to that over in our show notes.
Josh Anderson:
So a little over two years ago on Assistive Technology Update, Episode 325, Wade had on some individuals talking about the BrightSign glove. Well I found an update on the glove here in a news story from the dailytimes.uk.pk and it says that the glove is actually getting closer and closer to being commercially ready. But not only that, it talks a little bit more about kind of maybe some changes that have come to it. The glove itself was actually using machine learning in order to learn sign language. They changed a few things. For one thing, it is not shipped with any actual sign language in the glove. It still has a number of motion position sensors and things like that.
Josh Anderson:
This feedback goes to a smartphone app and then the app learns what the person is saying. So people can personalize this, but also as somebody maybe doesn’t know how to sign real well or an individual is nonverbal and uses different kinds of hand gestures, it can still output speech for any of this or for any kind of sign language. A lot of people think that sign language is universal, but much like any other language or spoken language it changes depending upon where you are. So it actually says that the user themself is the one who trains this glove, who teaches it, the sign language and the verbal response that it gives out. Actually says the machine learning is good enough in here, there’s enough sensors and everything else that it only takes one, two, maybe three times at the most and the glove will remember what the voice output is for that sign. Looks like there’s a range of different voices that can be used for the voice output.
Josh Anderson:
It says that right now they’re taking preorders, shipping them out to their partners, but in terms of the full commercial launch, they’re hoping to have that ready by the new year. So maybe we can have them on the show here sometime again in the future to talk to them a little bit about some of the changes and things like that, but it looks like if you’ve been waiting for that BrightSign glove to come out to have that voice feedback for sign language, maybe that’s something that’ll be available in the not too distant future.
Josh Anderson:
Looks like Google maps is going to be getting a big accessibility upgrade by something called detailed voice guidance. And this was actually made in order to give detailed voice directions to individuals on their walks. It says it’ll say things like how far away the next turn is, which direction the individual is walking and also when they’re approaching intersections. It kind of reminds me a lot of the Trekker Breeze if anybody’s ever used or seen one of those devices. It would usually kind of tell you you need to turn left in 200 feet, coming up on an intersection, tell you the bus, the cross streets and things like that. So very cool. That’s going to be very, very helpful. Now it does say that it is not quite available yet. Says you’ll probably have to wait on a server site update, but it should be coming soon.
Josh Anderson:
But also it says that this is the first maps feature that was built from the ground up by people with visual impairments. So very cool that they’re actually thinking to kind of have individuals who are going to be users help build these things. That’s just going to make them a lot more accessible, user friendly and easier to use. So very great that Google maps is kind of coming out with this and Android looks like it’s going a little bit easier to use. Now it does not say whether this is only on Google maps on the Android or if this would also work on your iPhone or other kind of device if you were using it on there. But we look really forward to try that out.
Josh Anderson:
Been an interesting story over at Click Lancashire Independent News and it’s Chrome can use AI to generate image descriptions for the visually impaired. The story’s by Joanna Estrada and it talks about if you think about images on the computer. So a lot of times there will be all texts behind them. So that basically if I have rovered a tab to it, it will say, “a picture of a mountain goat on a hill” or something of that sort to try to describe what it is there. Now these have to usually be put in those pictures in order to make them accessible. And I’ve got to admit, it isn’t always completed in the correct way. It’s supposed to be, but I mean of course website accessibility, while it is a very important thing, it’s often an afterthought. So what this actually says is that the Google Chrome browser is starting to utilize AI to perceive pictures and offer content and descriptions of what they see of what it sees. So that’s very cool that it’s actually using this artificial intelligence to look at the picture, interpret what it is and then tell that back to the user.
Josh Anderson:
And it does say that the software, the artificial intelligence will before it tells you what it is, it will say “appears to be.” So it’s going to say “it appears to be this.” So at least it can give you some context and give you a good idea, but also doesn’t make you think that that’s definitely the gospel of what that actually might be. This of course isn’t an excuse to not make things accessible. Of course the AI is not going to probably be good as a human description, but hey, it’s a heck of a lot better than nothing. It does say that only users with screen readers will have access to this and in order to enable it, they have to go into Chrome, click on settings, advanced and then find the accessibility section. We’ll put a link to that over in our show notes, but very cool. Another company using their AI for the good of all.
Josh Anderson:
There’s all kinds of wearable technology out there that comes with tons of benefits. I mean for one thing, you don’t even have to take something out of your pocket to accomplish your goals and these devices can do everything from track our heart rate, our fitness, of course tell us the time, give us our messages. We can even use them as phones these days. Well I guess today is a Aliza Olenick and she is nice enough to come on and talk all about Orcam, which is a wearable device for individuals who are blind, visually impaired or maybe have some sort of print disability and need some voice feedback as well as some other really cool features that it can do. Aliza, welcome to Assistive Technology Update.
Aliza Olenick:
Thank you.
Josh Anderson:
Before we get into talking about Orcam, can you start off by telling our listeners a little about yourself?
Aliza Olenick:
Sure. So I am the Area Sales Manager for the Lakes region or the upper Midwest of Orcam in the US. I have been with the company since we launched the product and have been lucky enough to be able to grow with the company and watch the product grow and meet so many people who are using this product and have had their lives made easier. They’ve gained independence in a really beautiful way.
Josh Anderson:
And we’re going to talk about them a little bit more. So when was Orcam started?
Aliza Olenick:
Well we launched our original product in the US almost five years ago.
Josh Anderson:
Wow, it doesn’t seem like that long. So you have been in the US for five years, but I know there’s some folks out there that have still never heard of Orcam. So tell us what is Orcam?
Aliza Olenick:
So Orcam is wearable assistive technology for people who are blind, people who are visually impaired, people who just cannot process text to speech, people who cannot recognize faces and what it is is it’s a tiny device about the size of your thumb that sits on your glasses and it talks to you. So it will talk to you. It will review any printed texts in real time. It will recognize faces, products, money, colors, barcodes. It has a watch built in. It is artificial intelligence and it works with hand gestures. So you don’t have to carry around a box or a speaker or anything at all. It’s just this tiny device that is sitting right next to your ear on a pair of glasses and talking to you and letting you know what’s happening around you.
Josh Anderson:
Nice. Can you describe the hand gestures to me?
Aliza Olenick:
Absolutely. So you can have Orcam read to you by pointing to texts. You put your finger straight up and down and you point to a piece of text and it takes a picture or it scans it and it processes it and it very quickly, almost in real time, tells you what it says. You can put your hand up as if to say, “Stop,” five fingers straight out in front of you and it will stop the reading.
Josh Anderson:
Nice. You don’t even have to access it at all, just with those hand gestures right out front. It figures out exactly what you need.
Aliza Olenick:
Exactly. And actually it’s so smart that you don’t have to do anything at all. You can reach up and tap the device to get it to do what you want it to do, but you can program everything on automatic so that you can literally look at something and it will recognize a face, it will read a text. You don’t have to do anything at all. So it’s really for people of all abilities and really is suited to your once. You have a choice of how you’re going to make it work for you.
Josh Anderson:
And the text that it’s reading, does that have to be really close or can it kind of read things a little farther away?
Aliza Olenick:
So it really depends on the size of the text Orcam has 20/20 vision.
Josh Anderson:
Perfect. So anything that somebody with 20/20 vision could make out and read Orcam should probably be able to read as well.
Aliza Olenick:
Yes, so as long as you can find it, it can read it. If it’s too far in the distance, it might have trouble finding it like across the street or something, but it just really depends on the size of the text and if there’s a glare, anything like that.
Josh Anderson:
I got you, that makes sense. And you said it could recognize faces as well?
Aliza Olenick:
Absolutely. So it can let you know without you’re doing anything at all to the device, but there are people in the room and it can say, “A man is in front of you, a woman is in front of you, a child is in front of you. Five people are in front of you.” And that is without doing anything, you can very, very quickly and easily in just a matter of seconds teach it a person’s name. So that whenever it sees that person, you just have to look at that person and it will announce their name quietly in your ear.
Josh Anderson:
Nice. So I mean as a manager, I could walk into a meeting and know if all my team members are there? It could say-
Aliza Olenick:
Yes.
Josh Anderson:
… “So and so is here and so and so.” That’s very nice. That can be extremely helpful.
Aliza Olenick:
Absolutely.
Josh Anderson:
And then you said it could read barcodes as well. About how many barcodes are available for it to read?
Aliza Olenick:
So right now we have over a million barcodes programed into the device. So you can just stare at a barcode, even if your barcode is moving slowly if you have no vision at all, you don’t know where the barcode is. You can move the box or the product very slowly, and it will find the barcode and announce that barcode to you. If there are barcodes that are not mainstream barcodes, I realized over a million is a lot of barcodes, but we still find barcodes that we don’t have in our device. We are able to program some barcodes into the device. So if you have special products, you can program those into the device.
Josh Anderson:
Oh nice. And the user themself will be able to do that or do they have to kind of let you guys do that on the other end?
Aliza Olenick:
No, the user themselves can do that. It’s much like programming a face, it’s very simple.
Josh Anderson:
Oh perfect. That makes it very easy. Now does Orcam have to be online, connected to an app or something like that in order to function?
Aliza Olenick:
No. This is something that is really completely unique about Orcam is that you are not connected online. You’re not connected to a person at the other end. You don’t need internet connection at all. So you can be in a place with no internet connection. You can be in a setting where you’re not allowed to have internet connection, attorneys using it in a courtroom, using it in school or university for testing situations. Everything that you need to do with Orcam is programmed into the device. We do have an iOS compatible app. You can make Orcam work with an app, but it’s not at all necessary.
Josh Anderson:
What can the app do?
Aliza Olenick:
The app, you can trigger the device to read, to recognize faces. You can easily get into the user menu so you can adjust your settings in the app and you can also from the app, we have a lot of online tutorials. So if you forget how to do something or you have a question, you need a reminder, it’s just all right there in the app.
Josh Anderson:
I can see how that can be helpful in a lot of ways. I mean if maybe I can’t raise my arm up in order to point to things or something, but I could manipulate my fingers or something, I can keep the phone down there and be able to still access everything. And that’s kind of nice to be able to get to the menus and stuff like that so you don’t have to really learn even how to manipulate the device to do those.
Aliza Olenick:
Exactly, exactly. So the app is not a must, but it is definitely available and it’s, it’s easy to use.
Josh Anderson:
Very good. Now Orcam, since I know you said has been in the US for five years has had some updates and stuff. What happens if I would would get an Orcam and a new update would come out. Would I have to buy a whole new Orcam or how would that work?
Aliza Olenick:
No, not at all. It’s actually part of our warranty. We want you to have the updates. We want your Orcam to be as good as every update that comes out. So we ask you to connect your Orcam one time to your home wireless internet when you first get it and then if we have an update, we’ll send out a ping through the internet and when you plug your device in just to charge it, it would grab that update and update the device for you.
Josh Anderson:
Oh nice. You don’t really even have to do anything.
Aliza Olenick:
You don’t.
Josh Anderson:
Oh, that’s perfect. That’s perfect. That can be very, very helpful because I know sometimes that’s the biggest pain is trying to find the updates and get them to kind of go.
Aliza Olenick:
Yes.
Josh Anderson:
Aliza, if I was to get an Orcam, what comes with it?
Aliza Olenick:
So you have your Orcam, you have the device itself. We send along, we know that not everybody wears glasses and Orcam really needs to sit on a pair of glasses because it’s following the gaze of your eyes. So we send a pair of frames with a mount to put, a magnetic mount that the Orcam sits on that has no prescription. We also send along extra mounts so that if you want to mount your own glasses, if you want to mount your sunglasses, if you have a few pair of glasses that you like to change around, we send you extra mounts. We send you a charger so you can charge by plugging into the wall. You can charge by plugging into a USB port. We send you instructions and that’s what comes with your Orcam. You also have access to our online tutorials.
Josh Anderson:
Nice. And about how long would a charge last?
Aliza Olenick:
So the charge lasts about 90 minutes of continual use. The device will put itself to sleep, so it can last a lot longer. It goes down quickly because the device is tiny. So we can’t really can’t put a larger battery in there. It also charges up very quickly. So you can go from zero to 80% in about 20 minutes. So when you’re not wearing it and you can just use a portable charger you can throw it in your pocket and just charge it up, give it a little charge.
Josh Anderson:
Oh, nice. But really on a daily use you’re probably not, 90 minutes is actually quite a while of kind of continuous use. I mean I could see in maybe a work situation or something where you’re using it a lot it could really go down, but on a Saturday kind of going around, maybe getting stuff, that 90 minutes really would get you probably most of the day.
Aliza Olenick:
Absolutely, absolutely. And if you’re working or if you’re sitting in school you can have it plugged in. It works quite well plugged in.
Josh Anderson:
Oh okay, good. So it doesn’t have to go to sleep or anything like that when plugged in. So that’s very, very helpful. Well Aliza, I know you might not be able to talk about this, but are there big things on the horizon for Orcam?
Aliza Olenick:
I can’t wait until we can do another podcast and I can tell you everything. All I can say is yes, absolutely. We have over 200 engineers working full time on this device and we do have things on the horizon for Orcam And as soon as I can tell you, I will.
Josh Anderson:
And I will look forward to finding out that. I also really wish I knew a good engineer joke right now because I really feel like when you lead with 200 engineers, I wish there was a good engineer joke to throw in there, but maybe somebody at home listening can interject their own in there. And then, and I know you probably can’t talk about this, but you guys are also working on new hardware, is that right?
Aliza Olenick:
Yes we are. And again, I wish I could tell you everything I know because it’s exciting, but I can’t. So next time hopefully.
Josh Anderson:
You are teasing a show we haven’t even recorded yet and I really appreciate that because you’re doing a good job of keeping the listeners at bay so they’ll come back for that next one. Well, I know something you can do. Can you tell me a story of someone who’s been assisted by Orcam?
Aliza Olenick:
Absolutely. I tell a lot of stories because we have so many people across the spectrum of age, across the spectrum of ability and across the spectrum of what they’re using it for, using this device. So A, I can tell you that it is always emotional and beautiful when you’re with someone who’s able to get this device and all of a sudden they have some independence back that they thought was gone or they weren’t sure, “How am I going to do this? How am I going to take this next step in life?” But a lot of my favorite stories are about food and one of my all time favorite stories and I apologize for anyone out there who has heard me tell this story, is a friend of mine who was managing the UK, had a user, a young woman who called her often, I think daily, and said, “Hey, this is what I did was my Orcam today.”
Aliza Olenick:
And it was usually about school or homework or something, but one day she called her up and she said, “So today I learned that I like curry because of my Orcam.” So she said, “How did you learn that you like curry from your Orcam? I really want to know this. You have any on the edge of my seat.” And she learned that she liked curry because whenever she went to a restaurant, her mom only ordered her, told her about the things on the menu that she thought that she liked. So as soon as she could read her own menu, she saw curry something and she said, “What’s curry?” And she ordered it. And I don’t know why that remains one of my favorite stories because there’s so many of them, but I think it’s just the independence.
Josh Anderson:
Well, and I think that shows a good point of just how much bigger the world I guess can seem. Because like you said, the other person’s reading them the menu and the things that they think that they’ll probably like, but just think how much that leaves out and everything. So being able to access that on your own, like you said, independence, but also just how much bigger of a world it is to be able to access those things and know what all is out there.
Aliza Olenick:
It’s so true. I mean you really nailed that. It’s a really, really big world out there and we need every tool that we have to be able to be in it.
Josh Anderson:
Well, I bet after this many years you probably have heard quite a few of all the different ones and I know you guys always seem to kind of have something new or be changing the way that it works, making it smaller, more streamlined and kind of put new features in there. So we can’t wait to have you back on when you can tell us all the inside dirt that I was going to try to get out of here during this show, but-
Aliza Olenick:
Stay tuned. It will be soon. You won’t have to wait too long.
Josh Anderson:
Good, good, good. Well Aliza, thank you so much for coming on the show today. How can our listeners find out more about Orcam?
Aliza Olenick:
If you are in the Midwest, you’re welcome to call me directly at 612-940-9037. Anywhere in the US, you can call us at 866-796-7226 and you can also find us online. We are at www.orcam.com.
Josh Anderson:
And we’ll put both those phone numbers and that website into our show notes. Aliza, thank you so much again for coming on the show and we can’t wait to have you back on. So make sure you let us know as soon as those new features and new items are coming out and we’ll get you right back in.
Aliza Olenick:
Thank you Josh, it was great to talk to you.
Josh Anderson:
Do you have a question about assistive technology? Do you have a suggestion for someone we should interview on Assistive Technology Update? If you do, call our listener line at 317-721-7124. Shoot us a note on Twitter @EndDataProject or check us out on Facebook. Are you looking for a transcript or show notes? Head on over to our website at www.eastersealstech.com. Assistive Technology Update is a proud member of the Accessibility Channel. For more shows like this, plus so much more head over to accessibilitychannel.com. The views expressed by our guests are not necessarily that of this host or the end data project. This has been your assistive technology update. I’m Josh Anderson with the end data project at Easter Seals Crossroads in Indianapolis, Indiana. Thank you so much for listening and we’ll see you next time.