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Panel: Brian Norton, Josh Anderson, Belva Smith, Tracy Castillo – Q1. Centering your camera view in on-line meetings for blind and visually impaired, Q2. Transitioning from Jaws to NVDA where do I begin, Q3. Backup iPod without Mac, Q4, Hobbies for blind and visually impaired, Q5. embedded captions for on-line meetings, Q6. Wildcard: What do I do with all my pictures?
——————— Transcript Starts Here —————————-
Brian Norton:
Welcome to ATFAQ, Assistive Technology Frequently Asked Questions with your host, Brian Norton. Director of Assistive Technology at Easterseals Crossroads.
Brian Norton:
This is a show where 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 us a Tweet with a 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.
Brian Norton:
And now, let’s jump in to today’s show.
Brian Norton:
Hello, and welcome to ATFAQ, episode 127. My name is Brian Norton, and I’m the host of the show. And we’re so happy that you taken some time to tune in with us this week. We have a great lineup of assistive technology questions for you today, but before we jump in, I just want to take a moment to go around our virtual room, because we are still on Zoom here with ATFAQ.
Brian Norton:
Just introduced the folks who are here with me to answer your questions. And so the first is Belva. Belva is our vision team lead with our clinical assistive technology team. Belva, do you want to say, “Hi?”
Belva Smith:
Hi everybody.
Brian Norton:
We also have Tracy Castillo. She’s the Indata program manager. Tracy, do you want to say, “Hey” to folks?
Tracy Castillo:
I do. Hey, everyone.
Brian Norton:
And we also have Josh. Josh is the manager of our clinical assistive technology program, and the host of AT Update. Josh, you want to say, “Hey” to folks? Say, “Hey” to our listeners?
Josh Anderson:
Hi, everybody.
Brian Norton:
Excellent. Hey so, before we get jump into our questions, I just want to take a minute to talk about how our show works. So if we have any new listeners, they have a good understanding of how we go about putting our show together.
Brian Norton:
Throughout the week, or couple of weeks, we receive feedback and come across various assistive technology related questions, and we have a variety of ways that we collect those, the first being our listener line. We love when folks give us a call. That phone number is 317-721-7124. We also have folks email us, that email address is tech@eastersealscrossroads.org. Or you can send us Tweet with a hashtag ATFAQ. All great ways to get us your questions about assistive technology, or really any accommodation question. We try to answer anything and everything that comes our way within reason.
Brian Norton:
We also get feedback, too. As we try to answer questions, we always ask our listeners to be listening carefully. And if you have something to chime, in as far as the answer goes, let us know. We’d love to be able to play that the air and be able to contribute more than what just what we have to offer to the folks that call in and ask us those questions. And so, you can give us your feedback in those same ways, our listener line through our email address, and/or sending us a Tweet with a hashtag ATFAQ. We would love to hear from you.
Brian Norton:
Without further ado, we’re going to jump in to our questions today, and the first question we have is, “I’m blind and I’m working from home doing a lot of Zoom meetings with folks that are not blind. And I’m usually using my iPhone or iPad for these meetings. And the question I have is, how can I setup my camera so that my face is centered correctly when I attend these meetings?”
Brian Norton:
I would imagine that’s difficult, because you’re not actually seeing the screen most of the time, and so are you center or off-center, and just making sure that you are presenting well in front of the folks that you’re presenting to. And so, throw that out to our group.
Belva Smith:
Brian, I actually had a client that had asked this question, and together in just a few minutes we came up with the idea of if you’re using the iPhone or the iPad, opening up the camera app, the default camera app and centering your face, and once you got your face centered with the camera app, instead of you moving, you put the phone or the iPad in a position where you have that one face centered. And if you’ve got voice over on, it does tell you when the face is centered.
Belva Smith:
And then you can simply close the camera app and go back to your Zoom meeting, and voila, then you’re centered in the screen just like anybody else would be.
Brian Norton:
That’s great. I was thinking, we do a lot of things. When we talk about scanning documents and those types of things, we come up with different document stands, ScanJig, or there’s things you purchase for that as well. And I’m just wondering if you have something to be able to put your iPad or iPhone on consistently, to be able to line yourself up, I wonder if that would work too? I know we do that a lot with folks with those types of accommodations.
Belva Smith:
Yeah, if you’ve got, I think it’s called a Spider Monkey-
Brian Norton:
It’s like a mount, right?
Belva Smith:
Yeah, that’s very flexible and adjustable. So yes, you probably could find a position that is just right. As long as you don’t move it, then you could use that over again. And I’m guessing that probably like the ScanJig, you could probably find a centered setting with that as well.
Brian Norton:
Yeah, there’re a lot of different mounts out there, and you can mount it horizontally or straight up and down, like in landscape or what’s the other one, in portrait view.
Belva Smith:
Portrait, yeah.
Brian Norton:
And so lots of different mounts out there. Amazon.com, [Remout 00:05:57] seems to be one that I’ve used a lot. They’re a little more expensive, they suction cup directly to the surface so you can be portable with it. And so they seem to work really well.
Brian Norton:
But great question. Something that I’ve never really considered, and so, that’s a really good question about how do you go about presenting yourself if you’re not actually seeing the screen. That’s great.
Belva Smith:
Yeah.
Brian Norton:
And that obviously goes for all of your other online meeting tools as well, whether you’re using Zoom or Teams or Google MeetUp. Is it Google Meet? That’s right, Google Meet. And so, great, great question. Thank you for that.
Brian Norton:
I’d love to open that up to our listeners. If they have anything that they’ve done, creatively to help make sure that they’re centered on the screen, or to be able to use those online meeting tools successfully, we’d love to hear from you. Get your feedback on that.
Brian Norton:
You can give us a call on our listener line, that’s 317-721-7124, or send us an email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org. Love to hear from you. Thanks.
Brian Norton:
All right, so our next question is from Tom, and this is a voicemail, so I’ll go ahead and play that.
Tom:
This is Tom from Long Island, New York. I hope everybody is healthy, be safe. I have a question. I’m finding it necessary to have to learn to use a screen reader with my Windows 10 computer. I am thinking of using either Windows Narrator or NVDA. I’m wondering what your opinion is. Also, whichever one I start, how would you suggest I get started? It seems to be a plethora of commands used on the keyboard in order to use it. Is there a systematic way of starting to learn the initial command and then add to it as I go along.
Tom:
Thanks for all your help. Stay healthy, take care of yourself. Bye.
Brian Norton:
Okay, yeah. Great question, Tom. That’s really good, I’m really interested to see what our folks have as far as an answer to that.
Brian Norton:
Both Windows Narrator and NVDA are free. Windows Narrator is built into Windows, and it’s better than it’s been. I’m interested to see what Belva will say about those, because Narrator in my mind isn’t a full fledged screen reader. And NVDA is, although it’s a free shareware or freeware program available for folks. It probably gets pretty close to some of the paid-for versions, JAWS or some of these other screen readers that you use. But I know it’s a little bit different and has some disadvantages as well, I believe, when compared to JAWS, in some situations. But yeah, just interested to hear what folks have to say.
Belva Smith:
Well Tom, thank for listening in. I hope that all is well with you as well. I know you’ve been a long time listener. And honestly, it depends on what your reason for learning the screen reader is. If you’re just learning the screen reader to be able to interact with your Windows 10 environment, learning the included screen reader with that software if probably good enough. But if you think that there’s a possibility that you’re learning for the purposes of maybe happen to grow your environment, or possibly use it for work or something, I would probably encourage learning NVDA.
Belva Smith:
And the reason for that would be that NVDA is more like the paid-for version of JAWS, which most offices would prefer that you use JAWS rather than NVDA. And also I think you would find the transition to go from NVDA to a full blown screen reader to be easier, because NVDA is a full blown screen reader.
Belva Smith:
But where do you get started? I always recommend the basic desktop navigation, because when you’re learning to use a computer, whether it’s sighted or not, the first you have to do is to learn the environment, which is your desktop, your start menus, and how to open and close your programs, and things like that.
Belva Smith:
And also, if you go to the nvaccess.org website, so it’s nvaccess.org. They do have a training auditorial thing that you can buy from there, for like 50 bucks. I’ve never used it, but they also have in that same area, a demo, so you can get a feel for what the training materials would be like. And that would probably pretty helpful to get going.
Belva Smith:
Independently, it’s good to be a challenge, because yeah, you’re right, there is a plethora keystrokes that you got to learn. And I’ll tell you right now, you’ll never learn them all, but you’ll learn the ones that are most important for you to use. And that is probably another reason why NVDA might be a better option, because finding a list of keystrokes for NVDA is going to be easier that it is to find a full list, I’m not talking a list of 10 or 12, but I’m talking a full list, if you do a Google search for it or whatever, it’s probably going to be easier to find those for NVDA rather than Narrator.
Brian Norton:
Hey, Belva.
Belva Smith:
Yeah?
Brian Norton:
I found it interesting. Belva and I were talking with someone earlier this morning who has been a screen reader user for a long, long time. And she started using JAWS, I want to say 10 years ago, and her comment to us this morning, just even this morning was, “I’m still learning.” You talk about a plethora of keystrokes, I mean, Windows programs are changing all the time, and the keystrokes keep multiplying to be able to keep up with all those changes. And so it is, be committed for the long haul on these kinds of things, because there are a lot of keystrokes, and it takes a long, long time.
Brian Norton:
I remember back, when I learned how to start using JAWS, they stuck me in our assistive technology lab and they turned off the monitor, they took the mouse away from me and was for two weeks they said, “You’re going to go out in two weeks and train somebody on how to use the software, learn it.”
Brian Norton:
I’ll echo what you said, Belva. Start with the basics. The desktop, how to use files, how to open files, how to find documents, open programs, close programs. Those real basics are going to get you a long, long way, because those are pretty universal keystrokes across all programs. Alt + F4 closes whatever window’s open on your desktop. That’s going to be a universal key. And then you’ll start to learn these more specific keys for specific programs down the road. But universally and getting really the basics of Windows navigation, desktop, system tray, start menu, is really, really important.
Belva Smith:
Yeah Brian, because you bring up a good point there. You’re basically required to learn a set of Windows keystrokes that work for any users, sighted or not. And then the specific keystrokes that work for your screen reader. And there are so many keystrokes that they now have what they call layered keystrokes. So you have a special command that you use to go into a third layer of keys, because they ran out of standard two or three key keystrokes that they could use.
Belva Smith:
So yes, it is quite challenging and it’s one of those things that if you are a screen reader user, you will continually be learning as you use it.
Brian Norton:
It makes me laugh a lot. I talked to some of my consumers as well. Learn to be limber in your fingers, because those multiple key keystrokes aren’t always the easiest thing to hit, on one hand, and sometimes even with two hands. And so you do learn a lot of combination keystrokes for different features. And again, there’s basic Windows keystrokes, there’s program specific keystrokes, there’s JAWS specific keystrokes. And so there’s a whole lot thrown in there and it can take some time to get used to all of that and to learn that.
Belva Smith:
And again, if you did … I’m sorry Josh. If you do a quick Google search, Microsoft does have a complete guide to learning their screen reader. So you can find plenty of online material to get yourself started.
Brian Norton:
That’s great.
Josh Anderson:
Yeah, I was going to say another good free resource is if you do decide to go to NVDA, and kind of like Belva said, if you just accessing your computer and going around, Narrator will probably work. If you want to be on the internet or do anything extensive, I say you got to go with NVDA, because it’s just going to help you a little bit more.
Josh Anderson:
Narrator is better than it used to be, but it’s still not quite there to full-on kind of screen reader thing. American Federation for the Blind or afb.org actually has a full learning VDA series on there. And they’re all audio made. But it has hot keys and commands, Windows basics and some other things on there.
Josh Anderson:
So it’s not going to get you in-depth, but that’d be a great place to start, just give you some of the basics and things. Like I said, it is audio too. So you can sit there and actually listen to it while you’re playing around and learning things.
Brian Norton:
That’s great. That’s really good. That’s a great resource, I didn’t know about that one. I’ll also throughout there as well, I’m not sure if Belva mentioned this earlier, but especially, depending on where you’re going with things, if you’re looking at employment, you may be using a screen reader at home right now, just to learn the basics, because you’re moving to a different type of computer system, those kinds of things. Narrator, I’m sorry, not Narrator. NVDA is going to allow you to transition, should you need to, to JAWS a lot easier.
Brian Norton:
A lot of the keystrokes that you would use in JAWS, which is a very popular screen reading software, you will learn some of those same keystrokes exist in NVDA and so the learning curve from NVDA to JAWS, versus Narrator to JAWS … I’m not even sure there is a learning curve from Narrator to JAWS, but there is from NVDA.
Belva Smith:
That’s exactly right, Brian. There is a very few differences in using NVDA and JAWS. But to go from Narrator to JAWS is a major difference.
Brian Norton:
So I would love to hear from our listeners just what your experience is. If you can go back in time, if you’re a screen reader user, just to think about, and maybe think about what Tom was asking as far as NVDA versus Narrator. But then where do you start? I think that’s always a good question about where do people start when they started using their screen reader, and how did they progress through it, and were there helpful tips that they’ve learned to be able to share with others? I’d love to hear from some folks just about where they started and how they progressed through that.
Brian Norton:
So I’d love to hear from you. You can do that on our listener line. That’s 317-721-7124 or you can send us an email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org or send us a Tweet with a hashtag ATFAQ. All great ways to get in touch with us and we would love to hear from you. Thanks.
Brian Norton:
Right. So our next question is, “Can I backup my iPod without a Mac?” And then a secondary question is, “How often should I backup?”
Belva Smith:
Well, I guess how often you should backup has a lot to do with how often you’re adding music to your iPod, but the answer to the first part of that question is, yes you can.
Belva Smith:
I know a lot of people think that you have to have a Mac to be able to backup your iPod, but actually using a Windows PC, you can, I think you still can anyway, download iTunes. Or there is also a program available for Windows that’s free and it can be downloaded from the Windows store, and it’s called YamiPod, and that’s Y-A-M-I-P-O-D. And that’s just a free app that works similar to iTunes.
Belva Smith:
Now, I’m not sure how well that’s going to work with a screen reader, because I’ve not attempted to use it with a screen reader. But I’ve had heard of people using it, and saying that it’s very easy to use and some even like it better that iTunes.
Brian Norton:
That’s excellent. I was wondering about iPod Touches. iPod Touches look to me to be very iPhone-esque. And I’m just wondering, do regular iPod’s connect to iCloud, or is that different?
Belva Smith:
No, your iPhone typically uses iCloud. Now, you can force it to use the iTunes, which I have done that in the past, because I just started using the Cloud not too long ago myself, like six, seven months ago started using the Cloud. I did everything on the PC. But yes, iPod Touch is very similar to the iPhone and the iPhone can be done with iTunes, but if you just connect it by default, it’s going to try to Cloud.
Tracy Castillo:
Right. I have both. I have the iPhone and I also have iPod Touch. That was Christopher’s first iPhone and I back it up to the computer. And I found that just backing up to my computer actually save space on my iCloud. So I’m not always using up all that space, but for the longest time I was backing it up, like you said, I was backing it up on my Windows PC. I didn’t have a fancy Mac.
Belva Smith:
Yeah. So when you did it on the Windows PC, were you using iTunes or were you using something special?
Tracy Castillo:
No, I was just using iTunes.
Belva Smith:
Yeah? Wasn’t there a rumor that iTunes was going to go away?
Tracy Castillo:
I did hear this, and I notice on this computer that I’m on, that it’s not really there, they’re putting your iTunes backups with, is it Music? Do they-
Belva Smith:
Yeah.
Josh Anderson:
Yeah, I think so. So yeah, they got rid of iTunes and now you have Music and they split it into some different apps to just separate it a little bit. But really, you can do the same thing, it’s just not called iTunes if you’re on a Apple device.
Belva Smith:
And I think that that was where this question may have originated from, because I think the person had heard that iTunes was going to go away and so then they were thinking, “Oh my gosh, if I don’t have iTunes, how will I backup to my Windows PC?”
Tracy Castillo:
Yeah, I didn’t think of it that way. I have actually had a hard time. And sometimes when I do plug it in to my computer without iTunes, I don’t know if maybe I have actually told the computer not to recognize my phone, but it doesn’t really do that automatic pop-up, here’s your phone. I’ve had a little bit of problems like learning the new system on it. It doesn’t really show you that Tracy’s iPhone is connected to this computer. It doesn’t really do that. If it does, I can’t see it.
Brian Norton:
I need to jump back in the conversation just a second, because I didn’t realize iTunes was gone. I must not have upgraded my operating system, because I still have iTunes on my computer. When did this happen? Was this the latest Mac operating system upgrade?
Tracy Castillo:
I remember hearing this about six months ago.
Belva Smith:
I was going to say the same, about six or eight months ago is when I first heard it.
Brian Norton:
Okay.
Josh Anderson:
Yeah, it’s been a while. Look at your computer again. I don’t think I don’t think iTunes is on there, Brian.
Brian Norton:
Well, shoot. I am looking at it now.
Belva Smith:
Brian, are you on a Mac or are you on a PC?
Brian Norton:
I’m on a Mac.
Belva Smith:
You’re on a Mac?
Brian Norton:
I’m on a Mac.
Belva Smith:
Okay.
Josh Anderson:
Yeah, I know, because you used to get all your podcast on iTunes but now they’re on Podcast.
Belva Smith:
Right, exactly.
Josh Anderson:
Okay.
Belva Smith:
Music used to be on iTunes, now it’s in Music. So everything just split up in the different places.
Brian Norton:
Okay. You’re right. It looks like iTunes old icon, but it’s music. You’re right.
Josh Anderson:
Yeah.
Brian Norton:
Got you. Well, that’s interesting.
Josh Anderson:
Look at that, if no listener is learning anything today, at least Brian Norton did.
Belva Smith:
All right.
Brian Norton:
That’s my one goal, I wake up in the morning and my one goal is to learn something, one thing new each day. And I’m surprised, I learned like a hundred things every day.
Belva Smith:
That’s my goal too, Brian.
Brian Norton:
Love it. Excellent. Well hey, I would love to hear from listeners, if you have any feedback on this particular question. Maybe you guys use a product to be able to backup your iPod, Apple phone, Apple device let’s say. Let us know about those. If there’s a really good accessible one, let us know about that as well. We’d love to be able to share that with our listeners. You can give us a call on our listener line, that’s 317-721-7124, or send us and email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org. We’d love to hear from you.
Brian Norton:
All right, so our next question is from Jonathan. Jonathan called in and left us a voicemail. Basically, kind of an open ended question for us on hobbies for folks who are visually impaired. He loves to play video games when he was younger, and for a number of years loves riding a bike, but he’s having issues doing those types of things anymore. And he was just curious about ideas for things that folks have found firsthand worked for them, who have visual impairments. I think he and his wife, he’s mentioned, have gotten creative with certain things like Rubik’s cubes and putting stickers on them so they can figure those things out. Jigsaw puzzles and other kinds of things. And again, was just wanting to find out just in general, what other hobbies are there for folks who are visually impaired? So I’ll open that up to the group.
Belva Smith:
Well, there’s and endless list of things that a person can do as a hobby. The first thing that I thought of when I was looking at those question is playing games with your personal assistant. I’m going to say her name and she’ll probably wake up, but Alexa and Google both will play games with you. Some of them can be quite fun, I got to say. And of course, that’s all auditory.
Belva Smith:
And then also, if you go to YouTube and look for video games for the blind, there are some folks out there that produce games for your different devices like your iPhone, your tablets and stuff, that are made specifically for people that are visually impaired.
Belva Smith:
One of the things about biking, often that’s something that I hear, is that I used to love to ride my bike. And I’ve even had clients that have build their own stationary bike. But a stationary bike with your iPod, playing your favorite music or whatever, is a great idea. You can even put a fan in front of you if you want to feel the wind blowing in your face.
Belva Smith:
And then cooking can be a great hobby. And there’s plenty of things available to help an individual who might be visually impaired to do cooking.
Belva Smith:
And crocheting is another big thing, and I know you probably think, “Well I’m a guy, I’m not necessarily into crocheting”, but I know plenty of guys that do.
Belva Smith:
And then painting also came to my mind. Do you guys remember we had, what was his name? Babbit? No, what was his name?
Brian Norton:
I know who you’re talking about.
Belva Smith:
So one of the things that, the speaker that we had who’s a very good artist, one of the things that he did to identify his paint colors, I remember this, is he put bird seed in there, remember? To change the consistency so he could tell when he had red and when he had blue.
Belva Smith:
And then lastly I’ve worked with several people that are totally blind or visually impaired, that are wood workers. There is a whole blind, yeah I know, Tracy just was like, “What?” Their whole woodworking group of individuals that are blind and they do amazing things. There’s some guides on YouTube again, on how to get started with doing that.
Belva Smith:
So I think it just really comes down to thinking of something that you might find interesting and how deep you want to go into it.
Belva Smith:
But I really recommend talking to your personal assistant that you probably already have sitting in your home and asking her to play. I don’t even know, there’s like a list of hundreds of different games that she can play with you.
Josh Anderson:
I’ll go off some of the things you said, because you arts and crafts, anything, because you’re using your hands. It’s still like working with clay, if you can find a place where you can do that somewhere close to home. Those are great things, because you’re just using your hands. Visually it’s not as important to see those things visually.
Josh Anderson:
And then sports, is always a good one. Beep ball, which I know those guys are absolutely crazy about that game and probably the most competitive sports players I’ve ever see, but they also make beep soccer balls. Beep basket balls, so essentially you get that auditory feedback on those things. You can still play sports if that’s something you’re interested in and want to do.
Josh Anderson:
Of course we’re living in kind of a weird time, but I know a lot of folks I worked with a lot of visually impaired loved concerts, loved stuff like that. That’s not there right now, I guess, but hopefully maybe that will come back sometime in the future.
Josh Anderson:
But really, there’s a lot of things you can still do. And as Belva said, there’s tons of different games. Video games that you can do, but I think there’s also different versions of Monopoly and things like that, that are made specially for individuals who are blind or visually impaired. So just kind of seek those out. There’s a lot of stuff that you’re used to do and you can still do.
Josh Anderson:
And depending on how much vision you’ve lost, jigsaw puzzles, I’ve seen people put those things together under a large CCTV, and that’s their hobby. They do it all the time and can do it probably quicker than I can, because they’re using that magnification and blowing things up a little bit bigger.
Brian Norton:
Belva, you mentioned the painter that we worked with before. His name’s John Bramblitt.
Belva Smith:
Bramblitt. I was close.
Brian Norton:
Yeah. He is a very famous painter. Does a lot of painting. Uses a kind of a … I don’t know if it’s puff paint or what he does, but he works with that first so that he gets a feel for things, but then paints from those and make some just amazing art. So look him up. He’s fascinating. And again, echoing what you guys say, really crafts, sewing, painting.
Brian Norton:
The person that we’ve worked with here, as a consumer, she used to put different smelling types of things into her paint so she could tell what color was what. Vinegar would go in white, so she knew when she was painting white, it had a vinegar smell. And so she knew what color she was. And then lavender would go into purple to make it smell really differently from the other paints, and so there’s a lot with that.
Brian Norton:
I think for me, you can do really anything you put your mind to. I guess you do have to be creative in some respects, to be able to make sure that what you’re trying to do is possible, given the visual impairment. But I’ve seen people put their mind to something and they make it happen one way or another.
Belva Smith:
There’s adaptive fishing equipment out there too if you like to fish.
Brian Norton:
We’ve had an adaptive fishing pole in our library. Yeah, lots of great things. I don’t know what other AT AAC program loan libraries have, I know in our Indata’s loan library, we have a few adaptive game specifically for folks who are visually impaired. We’ve got adaptive Bingo, so for Braille on the cards that are handed out. We have Scrabble, so Braille Scrabble. We also have several card games that are made for folks with visual impairments and so lots of different types of things that …
Brian Norton:
It’s one thing to be all about making adaptations and accommodations for work and home and school, but I think play is also a big thing. What are you going to do for play? And so being creative about what we use and the tools we use for those areas. That’s a great, great question.
Tracy Castillo:
So Brian, since you did bring it up that we have those in our lending library, would it be wise for him to check out his AT AAC to see if they have items like that in their lending library?
Belva Smith:
Absolutely.
Brian Norton:
Absolutely, yeah.
Tracy Castillo:
If you go to eastersealstech.com/states you can put in your State and then you can look up your AT state’s AACs and pull up their lending library that way.
Brian Norton:
Yeah, thank you for mentioning that.
Belva Smith:
And I think the last thing I would say to this caller, to our listener, is to check for a low vision support group in your are, because if you can get involved with something like that, you can find out from them what are they doing for entertainment. What are they doing for past times and hobbies. And you maybe able to join into a group or something.
Brian Norton:
Excellent, yeah. Thank you guys, that’s a great answer. I would love to open it up to our listeners. If you guys have hobbies that you guys are involved in, we’d love to hear about those. And then how you’ve adapted to do those hobbies. You can give us a call on our listener line. That’s 317-721-7124 or send us and email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org. Love to hear from you. Thanks.
Brian Norton:
All right, so our next question is, “What online meeting tools allow for captions to be embedded in their video recordings?” And they gave a list of them, Zoom, WebEx, GoToMeeting, Adobe, House Party, Google Hangouts, et cetera. “There seems to be 100 different ones these days that we’ve all become aware of because of COVID-19 and everybody working from home, and those types of things. But this is a specific question about captions being allowed to be embedded into the video recordings. I’ll just kind of jump in on this one.
Brian Norton:
Captions being embedded into the video recordings, I believe most online tools that we use are going to allow you to do captions. In fact, a lot of them are moving to where it’s using artificial intelligence.
Brian Norton:
And there are a lot of programs you might see. It’s Rev, which is an online tool that does transcription for you, and transcriptions. It’ll be Rev plus Zoom, so you kind of load up an API token into Zoom and it provides artificial intelligence renderings of your transcriptions as you go through those things.
Brian Norton:
You can also do live transcriptions as well, where you can give an attendee the ability to be able to do the captions for you. That’s what we do for our full-day trainings here through the Indata Project. So we actually have someone who is listening in live the whole day and typing up those captions for us. I think you get a greater degree of accuracy when you do that. You’re still not going to get 100% accuracy, or even probably pretty close.
Brian Norton:
I think most artificial intelligence engine transcription software programs are talking maybe around 80 to 85% accuracy when they’re working with those. So there’s something to consider with that.
Brian Norton:
But I think a lot of them, you can either have it built in through artificial intelligence or have a live person there captioning.
Brian Norton:
I think one of the challenges with captions though is a lot of the software, although they allow you to see captions in their program while you’re doing the meeting, if you’re recording the meeting, those captions don’t necessarily mean they’re going to be embedded into your recording. So when you’re done with the training, if you load up the recording and you start to watch it, you’re not going to see the captions. What happens, a lot of times, they’re going to send you a text file with the captions that need to be posted with the recording. So again, they’re not embedded, they’re not showing up in the video, but they’re there in a text file that you can read side by side. While the video’s playing in one window, you can have the text file open in another window.
Brian Norton:
We work with a company who does our full day trainings and does transcriptions with us, and that’s not always the easiest thing, right? To have two separate windows, you’re trying to read the text and follow along what’s being presented on the other screen. That’s not really the greatest way to do it.
Brian Norton:
I would hope in the future that the programs would start to embed it into the video. I’m not sure what all has to go on behind the scenes to make that happen. I do believe Adobe, their online meeting tool, does it. I’m not sure exactly how. We don’t use Adobe, we use Zoom.
Brian Norton:
Typically what we’re doing to be able to get the captions into our video, is I’m actually running a third party program. I run a program called Screen Flow, on a separate computer, that not only captures the Zoom window, but it also captures the captions that are coming up within the video, and it kind of links those two things together. So we’re capturing both of them simultaneously, which then allows us to be able to have, essentially, on our end, a video with captions embedded.
Brian Norton:
So it’s a little cumbersome to do, it required us to have a separate computer to do that. But again, that’s the way people are going to want to watch it, they’re going to want to be able to see the captions directly under what’s being presented, instead of having it in two separate windows, and to try to scroll down through your captions as the video plays.
Josh Anderson:
No, Brian, could use something like iMovie? I think that’s built into Macbooks and stuff, I don’t know if that’s something that might be able to be useful, the same way that you use Screen Flow?
Brian Norton:
Yeah, I believe so. Screen Flow is a Mac app that we downloaded. I’ve had that for years. It seems to be pretty easy. What I like about it is it’s really an easy program to use. But I believe iMovie can do that, to actually edit our video and do different things with our videos. We use a program that kind of does that for us. So when we’re editing our videos, we actually have software that allows us to kind of get in there and work with it. It’s a little more expensive, but it does a really good job for us, and it allows us to be able to capture that really easily.
Brian Norton:
But yeah, I think this is a big issue for folks who are deaf and hard of hearing. And with the accessibility of online meeting tools, I think they’ve done a lot over the last six months as our world has kind of shifted into a remote workplace for most folks. I think we’ve seen a lot of accessibility get built into these programs. And we continue to see that just kind of explode.
Brian Norton:
But I’m looking forward to see where they go with captions. Because I think that’s one thing, they’ve done a lot to support captions, but I think longer term, allowing those captions to be embedded into their video recording, natively within the program, is going to be really, really important.
Brian Norton:
I look forward to seeing where this goes and what they can do to make that happen within all those programs.
Brian Norton:
Josh and I were on a call in Google Meet last week, I believe. And what we found was interesting, is that’s what they use. They have artificial intelligence right there in the window, you press a CC button and it starts to caption it. It actually was surprisingly accurate. I kind of watched it for a few minutes while Josh and I talked and practiced and played with Google Meet. And it was actually doing a really good job of capturing stuff.
Brian Norton:
So I think artificial intelligence is going to go a long way for folks to give them access to captions when they’re listening to online meetings or trainings or those types of things.
Belva Smith:
So does the presenter have to press the CC or was that something that the attendees can do?
Brian Norton:
Mostly, it’s the attendees. [crosstalk 00:39:44] So you can turn captions on or off. The host has to assign captions, or actually turn captions on for the users. But if you as an attendee want to have captions displayed, you have to click the CC button which will appear in most of those online programs, you’ll see a CC button in the task bar of that particular program. Excellent.
Brian Norton:
I would love to hear from other folks, just what they know about captions, with online meeting tools. Love to hear from you, get your feedback on that. If you’ve found a program that works really well and does embed the captions into the video recordings, would love to know about that so we can get that back to our listeners. You can give us a call on our listener line, that’s 317-721-7124, or send us an email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org. Thanks so much.
Brian Norton:
And now it’s time for the wildcard question.
Brian Norton:
Our next question is the wildcard question, and this is where Belva asks us a question that we haven’t had any time to prepare for. So Belva, what do you have for us today?
Belva Smith:
Am I muted? No. Okay, so this is a tough one. Number one, do you own a camera, or do you use your phone to take all your pics? And do you back them up, do you print them?
Belva Smith:
The reason I ask this is because I have this chest that is, I don’t know, it’s huge, it’s big. And it’s totally full of printed photos. And I keep saying that I’m going to get in that chest one of these days and I’m going to organize all those photos. I got to be honest, I’m not sure it’s going to happen.
Belva Smith:
So what’s going to happen is people will be going through those photos some day after I’m long gone, and be like, “I wonder who this is, I wonder who that is?”
Belva Smith:
But since having my phone, and especially with the new and improved cameras on the phone, I can’t tell you the last time that I’ve actually used a camera. I don’t know. I do everything on my phone.
Belva Smith:
And I do print, and I do back up, and I backup in more than one place. So I’m just curious, what do y’all do? Because Josh, I know you’ve got a baby.
Tracy Castillo:
Yeah. You know Belva, I was thinking about this the other day, because I have several pictures of my older son and my daughter, but I don’t really have many printed out pictures of Christopher. And so I was going to have my phone to download the pictures, take it over to the CVS. But I always remember their quality is not always the greatest when you have them printed out there. So I was starting to look into different … Where I can send my pictures off and have them returned back to me.
Tracy Castillo:
And just recently, my daughter had a birthday, and she asked for a Polaroid camera. She got it, too. And her grandma was trying to tell her, you’re going to have to be careful with those Polaroids, because they’ll fade out. Kids, and they had no idea about this stuff.
Belva Smith:
Right. And they’re so expensive.
Tracy Castillo:
Oh my god.
Belva Smith:
That’s the thing with our video, we can just go snap, snap, snap. But I’m sure that I’ve got more money than I would want to think about in all those pictures in there. I need to get seven or 14 of the Instamatic ones, but you pay like $20 for those. [crosstalk 00:43:24] you have to be really careful taking pictures.
Tracy Castillo:
He was like, “I only get eight pictures?” Like yeah, that’s all it has room for. I really preferred back in the day, I’m sorry I shouldn’t have said that, when you would have the little disposable camera, and just take a bunch of pictures, drop your camera out, and then get your pictures back. I miss those days. Because I don’t want to lose the photos that are on Google, but now it’s like, how do I decide which ones I’m going to print out?
Belva Smith:
So you backup your photos to Google?
Tracy Castillo:
I do.
Belva Smith:
Is that the only place?
Tracy Castillo:
I will occasionally back them up. I try to do it at least once a year, I’ll download everything onto a hard drive, that way if something happens, then I’ll have access to my photos. But yeah.
Tracy Castillo:
I do have, and I’m in the room right now, there’s several boxes in this room, and it’s full of photos. But I’m so afraid if that’s going to get wet.
Josh Anderson:
Belva I kind of do the same thing as you, I back up mine whenever I back up my phone, I backup the photos too. And then I also keep them in a personal Dropbox account too, just so they’re in a few different places, so if something happens … I was going to put them on Amazon also, because they’ve got a free, $10 gift card if you did it. Since I use Fire Sticks at home, then all your pictures will play as your screen saver, which I thought was pretty cool. I just never actually got around to doing that.
Josh Anderson:
But I do own a camera. I have not seen it in probably three years. But I know it’s around there somewhere. But if that shows you how much I really and truly …
Josh Anderson:
I think somewhere I still have a disposable camera that I never developed that I may or may not want to develop sometime. Because back in the day, that’s all I usually had. I didn’t own a camera, so we just did the disposable ones. And you’d take them in and get them developed. Have what may about what those pictures actually were.
Josh Anderson:
And then a lot of my pictures are actually in Walgreens’s website too, because you can upload all your pictures to Walgreens and then just pick what you want to print. Plus I can give my mom access to the account, so she can print pictures if she wants. It’s pretty simple, they’re 10 cents a print usually, or give or take. Sometimes they’re even cheaper if you buy a bunch of them. It’s pretty cheap.
Josh Anderson:
But no, I’m not a professional photographer, so I don’t own a really nice camera. Because I really feel like those are the only kinds worth buying, is the really, really nice ones. And again, I’m not a professional photographer taking photos. The phone gets me where I need to be.
Josh Anderson:
It’s funny because we actually started off this meeting talking about how happy many of us were that there were not cameras and video recorders in everyone’s pockets when we were younger.
Belva Smith:
Yes.
Brian Norton:
Right.
Tracy Castillo:
If there was, you really saw it coming.
Josh Anderson:
Yeah. It was harder to sneak your camera in someplace. You knew that guy had it, because it was twice the size of his torso.
Brian Norton:
Yeah, I’d do the same thing. I don’t use anything but my phone these days, and it all backs up to iCloud. The camera on our phones, most of them are 10 pixels or more, I think the iPhone is like a 12 or 13 megapixel camera. You can’t even get close to that.
Brian Norton:
I have my old digital camera, I’m staring at it on a shelf that’s just next to me, I probably haven’t taken it out of the case in, I don’t know, probably 10 years. And that was a 3 megapixel camera back in the day. And it’s super nice, it’s super small, a very nice camera. But it doesn’t even get close to the phone.
Brian Norton:
And the nice thing about phones is you’ve got not only the camera, but you’ve got video recording, it gives you lots of filters, portrait view. All sorts of great things that you can do with it. Now they’re really starting to come with some zoom options, to be able to zoom in, zoom out, to see things at a distance.
Brian Norton:
I just don’t see a real purpose unless you’re a photographer, and a photography fanatic, to use something any different. Because I think the nice things about our phones, is we always have them with us. And when you need to get that shot, it’s easy enough to pull it out of your purse, pull it out of your pocket, shoot that just with the phone that you have, instead of, “Man, I forgot my camera at home. I should have had that.” Now you can just grab your phone most of the time.
Brian Norton:
That’s what I use as well.
Belva Smith:
Even photographers are using their digital cameras. Last year when we had our family photos taken, our photographer used a digital camera, and everything became available at a website. We didn’t get any printed copies, we just went to the website and then chose what we wanted to do with the individual prints.
Belva Smith:
What made me think of this question was I was looking at that box in my room, thinking, “I really, really have got to get that done.” And then thought to myself, the advantage, just the opposite of what we were saying at the beginning of this, Josh, the advantage of digital photography, because you don’t have just that one chance to get the picture. You could take two or three until you get one just right. Because there’s no extra cost involved.
Belva Smith:
And I did buy myself a little printer that Bluetooths to my phone. So if I want to print a picture, I can print a picture. It’s a small one, but it’s just for fun and printed right then and there.
Tracy Castillo:
Does it look nice?
Belva Smith:
It only prints a very small picture. I’ll show it to you, Tracy.
Tracy Castillo:
Okay.
Belva Smith:
It was like $80, I think. But that way if I do want to print, usually I’ll take a picture of me and one of the grandkids and then print it and give it to them or whatever. But I do recommend, everyone, as you’re taking your pictures on your phone, make sure you’re backing them up. Back them up in more than one place, in case wherever you’ve got them backed up, if something happens and you do lose access to that account, because [crosstalk 00:49:31]. Yeah, some of those are our most important things that we probably keep on our phone. And when I was a technology manager for CompUSA many years ago, I can’t tell you how many people cried at my counter because all their pictures were gone. Not because my documents were gone or whatever, it was because their pictures were gone.
Josh Anderson:
And Belva, something you can do whenever you start going through those boxes, set your iPad up on a stand so it’s got a good view, and snap pictures of your pictures.
Belva Smith:
I’ve thought about that.
Josh Anderson:
Just make sure there’s no glare. That’s why I say use a stand, because then it’s much easier than trying to hold it over each one.
Belva Smith:
Yeah.
Josh Anderson:
Just slide them in there, snap. Slide them in there, snap. Slide them in there, snap. Make a folder, and then yeah, make sure you back them up. Because then if something does happen, like Tracy said, you get water in the house or anything like that. Yeah, sorry … [crosstalk 00:50:25] or something like that would happen, you’ve got backups of all those.
Josh Anderson:
And usually, since we keep talking about it, with how good those cameras are, I’ve done that before with some old photographs of folks and family and things, and they look almost as good as the originals.
Brian Norton:
Excellent. Great question, Belva. I really appreciate that. And a timely question too, because we all have photos hanging around, wondering what we’re going to do with all of those things.
Brian Norton:
I want to wrap things up for today, want to give folks here in our virtual room the opportunity to say goodbye. I want to thank you guys for hanging with us today and listening to our show. I want to remind you that you can get ahold of us and send us your questions or any feedback from the questions that we had today, to a couple of different things. You can do it to our listener line, that’s at 317-721-7124. You can send us a tweet with the hashtag ATFAQ, or emails us at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org. We wouldn’t have a show if it weren’t for you. So be a part of it.
Brian Norton:
I want to again say thank you to the folks here. Tracy do you want to give a shoutout?
Tracy Castillo:
Yeah, thanks everyone. Thanks for listening to us.
Brian Norton:
Excellent. Belva?
Belva Smith:
See you guys in two weeks.
Brian Norton:
Yup. And Josh?
Josh Anderson:
See you next time. Back up your videos.
Brian Norton:
Yeah, exactly. All right, hey, have a great one. And we’ll talk to you guys later.
Brian Norton:
And it seems like every week we have at least one blooper, so here you go.
Belva Smith:
You need to relax. You and your porcupine need to take a nap.
Josh Anderson:
I’d love to take a nap with the porcupine, Belva, but Brian’s making me contribute to the show.
Josh Anderson:
I like how you looked at us for comments.
Brian Norton:
I was sure you guys might have a comment.
Tracy Castillo:
[inaudible 00:52:17] That was beautiful.
Brian Norton:
Wonderful.
Josh Anderson:
That was really nice Brian. I’ve got a screamer in the hallway so hopefully I can do that.
Brian Norton:
Information provided on Assistive Technology FAQ does not constitute a product endorsement. Our comments are not intended as recommendations, nor is our show evaluative in nature. Assistive Technology FAQ is hosted and produced by Brian Norton, gets editorial help by Josh Anderson and Belva Smith, and receives support from Easterseals Crossroads, and the Indata Project.
Brian Norton:
ATFAQ is a proud member of the Accessibility Channel. Find more of our shows at www.accessibilitychannel.com.