ATFAQ128 – Q1. Double-Clicking issue w/ iPhone, Q2. Teaching ZoomText Remotely, Q3. Computer Repair Concerns, Q4. Graphing Calculator for Blind and Visually Impaired, Q5. Text-to-Audio program for Tablet, Q6: Wildcard: What will replace the handshake?

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Panel: Brian Norton, Josh Anderson, Belva Smith and Tracy Castillo. Q1. Double-Clicking issue w/ iPhone, Q2. Teaching ZoomText Remotely, Q3. Computer Repair Concerns, Q4. Graphing Calculator for Blind and Visually Impaired, Q5. Text-to-Audio program for Tablet, Q6: Wildcard: What will replace the handshake?

—————– Transcript Starts Here ———————-

Brian Norton:
Welcome to ATFAQ, Assistive Technology Frequently Asked Questions, with your host, Brian Norton, Director of Assistive Technology at Easter Seals Crossroads. This is a show 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 the hashtag #ATFAQ. Call our listener line at (317) 721-7124, or send us an email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org. The world of assistive technology has questions and we have answers. Now, let’s jump into today’s show.

Brian Norton:
Hello, and welcome to ATFAQ, episode 128. My name is Brian Norton, and I’m the host of the show. We’re so happy that you’ve taken some time to tune in with us this week. We have a great lineup of assistive technology questions today. But before we jump in, I just want to take a moment to go around our virtual room. We’re still meeting online here, using Zoom. So I can see everybody, but we’re very socially distanced at this point, probably all over the city of Indianapolis, Indiana, which is where we are located. But I want to take a moment to introduce you to the folks that are around here with me. The first is Tracy Castillo. Tracy is the Indata program manager. Tracy, do you want to say, “Hey,” to folks?

Tracy Castillo:
I do. Hey, everyone. How we doing today? Can’t wait to start these questions.

Brian Norton:
Excellent. Excellent. Next is Belva Smith. Belva is the vision team lead for our clinical assistive technology center. Belva, you want to say, “Hey?”

Belva Smith:
Hey, guys. Thanks for listening.

Brian Norton:
And what-

Belva Smith:
Wait, that’s my good-bye call, right?

Brian Norton:
Excellent. Josh, we also have Josh here. Josh is the manager of our clinical assistive technology program, and also the host of AT Update, our flagship podcast show. Josh, you want to say, “Hi”?

Josh Anderson:
Welcome back, everybody.

Brian Norton:
Great, great. For new listeners, I just want to give you a few pointers about our show, and give you a little bit of information about how it works. We come across various assistive technology questions and then we also solicit your feedback on the questions we try to answer today. So if you have feedback, let us know. We have a variety of ways for you to be able to get us your questions and to get us your feedback. The first is through our listener line, that is (317) 721-7124. Or you can send us an email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org. Or, send us a Tweet with the hashtag #ATFAQ. We would love to hear from you, questions or feedback. Be a part of our show. We love to be able to talk with you, answer the questions that you have, so be a part of that.

Brian Norton:
Without further ado, we’re going to jump into the first question of the day. Our first question is, I have an iPhone, and sometimes have trouble double clicking the side button to confirm purchases, usually. Is there a way to use assistive touch instead?

Tracy Castillo:
I went through this question. I actually spent a lot of time on it. I worked on it for quite a while. I Googled for an answer. I went to Apple. I asked those questions there. I didn’t have any luck. So I went to my old tried and true, YouTube, and what I learned is that, if you don’t want to use the double click to purchase when you’re in the store or on an app, you can just disable it. This feature, it was once, it was located in the … like, if you go into your phone and go to the General Settings tab, once it was located in the iTunes and App Store settings. But now, in iOS 13, you can find it this feature in the Face ID and Passcode settings. So what you do is, you go into the Face ID Passcode settings and you will find the iTunes and App Store there. And when you open that up, you will see a lot of little radio buttons, and you can turn off and on the Face ID. So what happens is when you double click it, it looks for your face. And that’s how it notifies that you’re going to be able to make that purchase.

Tracy Castillo:
So if you turn it off, what will happen is, and I did this and I went into the iTunes app and I downloaded an app before and when it asked for me to double click, but after I unchecked this option inside the iTunes Store, or the iTunes setting, what it did was ask for my passcode instead. And, I did notice that it was part of … Let me see, bring it back up … It was showing the Face ID, oh, it’s asking for a passcode now.

Belva Smith:
So, yeah, you’re right, Tracy. I just pulled it up on my phone and I have found that double click the side button to be quite annoying because I’ve had to use it any time I do anything in iTunes or the App Store and also with my Apple Pay. So I just turned both of those off [crosstalk 00:05:44]

Tracy Castillo:
The old way.

Belva Smith:
Okay, well that’s, I’ve got the latest IOS and that’s the way it told me to do it, so, I’ll try it and see if that works, but that’s interesting information.

Tracy Castillo:
I am so sorry if I’m stuttering. But I was so excited to find this answer because it did bother me too.

Belva Smith:
Yeah.

Tracy Castillo:
I don’t really want to click it. I don’t- [crosstalk 00:06:11] I’m sorry, Josh, what?

Josh Anderson:
That’s all right. Go ahead.

Tracy Castillo:
Yeah, so when I went into it, and I disabled it, I noticed it works for the Apple Store and what happens is it reverts it back to the old way of purchasing those apps. Like, the first time it asked me for my Apple ID passcode, so it goes back. And then within that setting, so it also, on my phone it says I have three other apps that are using this. So if I hit that, I can see that there’s three other apps I can turn on or off that Face recognition inside those apps.

Belva Smith:
Okay, wait a minute. I’m rushing back.

Tracy Castillo:
What’s that?

Belva Smith:
Because you’re telling me that if I don’t do that, it’s going to ask me when I make a purchase, okay, I would rather have to do that than put in my passcode. So I just turned it back on.

Tracy Castillo:
Oh and if you decided to never have it ask for your code, if you don’t have a credit card attached to it then it might be something you want to do. But if it’s just an Apple iStore purchase and it’s nothing that doesn’t cost anything, then it’s probably okay to just turn it off on that one because you could just say, don’t ask me for my passcode anymore. But if was like you bank account, you would definitely want to have some type of layer of protection on it. And you could make your decision within that setting to say, “Hey, ask me here. But don’t ask me there.”

Josh Anderson:
So if you’re not real worried about which ones are looking at it, if you go to accessibility, go to side button, there are two things you can do. One, you can change the click speed, so it defaults where you have to hit both of them quick. You can slow it down. So you can change it to slow or slowest. So if you have to double click, you can double click a lot slower and still access it.

Josh Anderson:
Also, at the bottom of that page with the side button, is a little tiny slider for use passcode for payment. So if you turn that on, you don’t have to use the double button for payment either. So it does the same thing as going into, Tracy what you’re going into, it’s just in the accessibility-

Tracy Castillo:
I didn’t see that setting. It was at the bottom?

Josh Anderson:
Yes. You have to slide it down, so click speed will be at top. The second feature on there is just, basically whenever you press and hold the home button, Siri will come up. You can change that to where it’s just classic voice control or you can turn that off, if you don’t want to have that at all. But then at the bottom, there’s a little slider for use passcode for payment which will require your passcode to make purchases instead of double clicking the side button, so it’s a way to turn it off. I did try to find a way to make assistive touch double tap it for me, but I didn’t have any luck making that work. Which is unfortunate if you’re already using assistive touch that you can’t just make that kind of do it for you.

Tracy Castillo:
Yeah. Because that is the lock button.

Josh Anderson:
Yeah.

Tracy Castillo:
And so, it just turns your phone off.

Josh Anderson:
Exactly, yeah. If you hit it way too slowly, but if you turn it to slowest, it gives you quite a bit of time, so if you do have the motor ability to at least hit the button, you can slow down how quickly you have to hit-

Brian Norton:
Interesting.

Tracy Castillo:
I really [inaudible 00:09:18] this question.

Brian Norton:
Yeah, I still double click because, Belva, I went from the passcode back to double clicking and I feel like it’s pretty good, but yeah, I’m sure it can get bothersome for some folks to be able to do that, so it’s always good to be able to go old school and do it the old way, so hopefully, that answers your question. If anybody has any feedback or any questions that, once you heard this one, makes another question pop up into your mind, get ahold of us. We’d love to hear from you. You can give us a call on our listener line. That’s (317) 721-7124 or you can send us an email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org. Great ways to get a hold of us. Thanks so much.

Brian Norton:
All right. So our next question is, is anyone teaching ZoomText remotely? My co-workers have found that they cannot see changes in the students screen when using ZoomText. For instance, things like magnification, color contrast, pointer enhancement, et cetera with Zoom. Does anyone have suggestions on how to view the students screen to see what he or she actually sees with the screen sharing software. Zoom isn’t working. Thank you very much.

Brian Norton:
I’ll say this and I’ll let others- [crosstalk 00:10:42]

Josh Anderson:
The short answer is no.

Brian Norton:
Yeah. Exactly. Yeah, that was gong to be my short answer. I don’t think you can see any of those visual enhancements. Josh, you were talking about this a little earlier.

Josh Anderson:
Yeah, and I’ve tried it with Zoom. I’ve tried it with Teams. I have not tried it with Google Meet, but I know a lot of those visual enhancements just don’t come through. And it’s not just Zoom Text. It’s built-ins, it’s, like I was telling them, on a Mac, if you shake the mouse pointer, it will get larger, well, it will get larger on my screen, but even if I’m screen sharing my normal screen, you will not see that visual enhancement. Those only seem to be locally, and I wish I could tell you the reason that that happens, but I don’t know and I’ve never really been able to get it to work. I mean, you can still help individuals, you can tell them what’s going on. You can tell them what to click or keystrokes to use to hit things. You’re just not going to be able to see what exactly it is they are seeing.

Brian Norton:
Yeah. Yeah. We have never found a really good solution. I think if the question, the first part of the question is anyone teaching Zoom Text remotely? I think you can do some teaching. Obviously you can’t see the visual enhancements, but you can still tell people where to go within the software to be able to change their settings. But I do think, as far as the training is concerned, it’s really important to see what the user’s seeing. Because if you can’t see what they’re seeing, they may be stuck someplace and, again, you can’t help them, especially if there aren’t any visual enhancements and they’ve got magnification up to four or five times magnification. They’re stuck up in the left, top left hand corner, you’re not going to see that. And so you’re not really going to be able to help them fix any issues concretely because it’s going to be out of context for you with what they’re trying to describe or trying to find and so that becomes a real challenge.

Brian Norton:
And, again, it’s all about how those online tools that we use are able to convey contextually what’s happening on the screen with colors, magnification, enhancements of any kind. Again, they just don’t come through. And, as far as I know, we haven’t been able to find a great option for folks.

Tracy Castillo:
I would suggest, if you’re on Zoom, you could just zoom in a webcam and just have a webcam so you can see the student’s set up.

Brian Norton:
Mm-hmm (affirmative)-

Tracy Castillo:
Maybe have it on the screen where you see the student and the screen at the same time.

Brian Norton:
Yeah. All right. I have heard of folks doing that, having their phone or an iPad or a tablet and joining in another user and having that camera of whatever that device is pointing at the screen of the person is using. So it’s just basically another user in the meeting, but it’s just a device looking at the person’s screen so that the person on the other side can see it. I think for a lot of folks though, they may not have that other device to be able to join into a meeting. And so that can become challenging for folks. But you’re right, I think a webcam might be useful and is low cost. [crosstalk 00:13:58]

Tracy Castillo:
Even a mirror would be okay if you had it set up so you could see the [inaudible 00:14:03].

Brian Norton:
That’s interesting. I hadn’t thought about that. That’s a good point. [crosstalk 00:14:11]

Tracy Castillo:
Well, over at ATI, i watched one of the first remote learning classrooms, and that was one of the things they were talking about was having those extra set ups because they would have students and they want to make sure that the student is in this right position and stuff.

Brian Norton:
All right. I would love to hear from folks. If you are a teacher for folks who are blind or visually impaired, perhaps you’ve found yourself in situations like this. Or maybe you’re a student and struggle with this and if you have found particular work arounds or tools that can be helpful, to be able to teach ZoomText, which is a screen magnification software, or learn ZoomText remotely, we’d love to be able to hear from you. You can call us on our listener line. That’s (317) 721-7124 or send us an email at tech@easetersealscrossroads.org. Love to hear from you. Thanks.

Brian Norton:
All right. Our next question is, I need to get my computer repaired and I’m thinking of bringing it to the Geek Squad. Any concerns I should have with my assistive technology? Will they leave those applications alone. I use Dragon and Kurzweil 3000 for school. Any thoughts?

Belva Smith:
Well, first, I mean, obviously it depends on what you’re taking it in for repair for. If they’re just putting in some new RAM or whatever, that’s probably not going to affect your programs. If you’re going for an upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10 or having a new hard drive put in or something like that then yes, you do have a reason to be concerned and the first thing you would want to do is make sure that they totally understand that you do have some adaptive technology on that computer that has files that are very important to you, for example, Dragon user files, those are very important.

Belva Smith:
It could mean starting all over again should they get messed up. But in most cases, you can ask them to make a back up of your hard drive and you should be okay getting any files that may exist. But with hat having been said, for example, with Dragon, you may be able to get your user profile backed up but you can’t really back up the program, isn’t that right, guys? I mean, I know that’s the way it was when I was a tech manager. You couldn’t back up the program itself, but you could back up the files for that program.

Tracy Castillo:
To add on to that, Dragon is through Nuance, correct?

Belva Smith:
Yes.

Tracy Castillo:
We had a lady borrow one of our computers and she purchased her own Dragon and put it on there. And so I had to have my computer back, but before doing so, she contacted Nuance and Nuance was able to send her another download link.

Belva Smith:
Right. So that’s what I’m saying. They may not be able to back up the program itself, but as long as you still have your activation information, you would be able to reinstall the program on, for example, a new hard drive. And then, install those back up user files or profiles that had been saved. And I’m sure that Kurzweil 3000, I’m not that familiar with Kurzweil 3000, but I’m sure that it’s got to have very important user profiles as well. So, again, depending upon what they’re going to be doing, I would just definitely make sure that you speak with the technician and let him know, “Look, I have this program. It’s very important to me.” And, then they will know if what they’re about to do is going to risk that program in any way. And they should be honest with you and tell you that, “Yes, there is a possibility we could lose something here.” Or, “Oh, no, we’re just adding more RAM. It’s not going to affect your programs at all.” And so just trust whatever they tell you.

Josh Anderson:
Belva, just to piggyback off what you said, yeah, make sure that you have your serial numbers in case you have to re-download them. Kurzweil, you can get legacy editions way back. I can’t even remember how long, but you can be six, seven versions back and still easily download it from their website. And, Belva, I will say it’s very important to let the person know, like you said, that you do have that stuff. But realize they may never tell that to the person who actually works on your computer, so have the backup [crosstalk 00:18:51]-

Belva Smith:
Notice I said talk to the technician-

Josh Anderson:
Well, yeah.

Belva Smith:
Not the person that’s taking the computer.

Josh Anderson:
True. True. True. True. But, when they go on lunch break and suddenly, Carl takes your computer and goes ahead and just wipes the whole hard drive off-

Tracy Castillo:
Yup. I believe they’re all certified there, and the first step in doing anything to a computer is backing it up, so they should already know to back it up. I just wanted to ask, what are they doing to the computer? Is it just going to be removing the Malware because some people will send their computers to Geek Squad for removing just those programs, and I wanted to say something.

Tracy Castillo:
If you go to eastersealstech.com/depotd, we have a list there of different programs that we put on our computers and we have Malwarebytes and we have a really nice link to Malwarebytes where you could go to that website, download Malwarebytes and that will help clean up your computer. So that’s something that we typically use on people’s computers when we are fixing them.

Brian Norton:
Right. Yeah. I think you guys have all mentioned it. I think the first thing is, there is no indication exactly why they’re bringing it to Geek Squad within the question that we have. It could be for a myriad of reasons, but I think it’s imperative for whoever is bringing the computer to the Geek Squad that they just don’t hand it off without any explanation and say they need a particular service. I think they really do need to have that conversation with them about here are the programs that are on my computer that I’m afraid and that you need to be careful with because it can be hard tog et all that stuff working again if you don’t have the disks, you don’t have files. They’re all downloads these days and you don’t want any of your assistive technology to not work because once it’s fixed, you’re going to be stuck.

Brian Norton:
You’re not going to be able to use the tools that you need for school or work or whatever, so have a conversation with hem. I think they do a great job. I think they’ve gotten better over the years with that. I used to encourage my consumers to, before they brought it to the Geek Squad, or if they were going to the Geek Squad, to give those folks, put my phone number with their computer so that before they start messing with the computer, they call me and I can help them understand that. But I think nowadays, if you just have a conversation with hem and tell them, “Here are the programs I use. They’re assistive technology. They’re needed for whatever I do on the computer.” And make sure they’re just careful with them. I think they will be. And so I think those are all great suggestions, great points.

Tracy Castillo:
As recently as last week, had a consumer who took her laptop into the Geek Squad to get upgraded from Windows 7 to Windows 10 and she is a screen reader user, and she was very surprised that the upgrade affected her screen reader in no way whatsoever. She just got the computer back, and it had Windows 10 and everything was everything. I do think, especially, and I’m sure that she made sure that they knew that she had this screen reader, so I do think taking the time to make sure that you have that discussion with them is valuable and I agree with you, Brian, I think they want to do a good job, so if you point that out to them, they’re going to do their best. There is no guarantee that something’s not going to … Especially if they’re removing Malware. It’s very possible that in removing the Malware, a very important file gets deleted.

Brian Norton:
Sure.

Tracy Castillo:
So it’s just a risk that has to be taken sometimes.

Brian Norton:
Sure. Absolutely. I would love to hear from folks if they’ve had any experience with third party services on their computer. If they have had any issues with that, any other suggestions they might have for someone who’s considering needing to bring their computer in for repair and what to do with their assistive technology. 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 so much.

Brian Norton:
All right. So our next question is, I am seeking recommendations for a graphing calculator for a low vision student. We’re looking for something that’s large print and has a large screen. Any ideas? Thank you so much.

Belva Smith:
Well, first of all, I would suggest going to MaxiAids or LS&S Products and putting in calculator and it’s going to bring back a whole list of different calculators that are available and then I’m going to let Tracy throw the spiel in for the Technology Act in the area.

Tracy Castillo:
Exactly. So you might want to check with your state’s Technology Act to see if they may or may not have one inside of their lending library so you can borrow one from them and see if it will work best for you. You can find your state’s Act by going to our website, eastersealstech.com/states. Thank you, Belva.

Brian Norton:
Yup. I think, Belva, did you mention Perkins as well?

Belva Smith:
I didn’t mention Perkins, Brian.

Brian Norton:
Yeah, so Perkins e-learning, they have a website and if you go there, they actually have a graphing calculator. I’m not so sure it’s any bigger screen or larger text than what you’re typical graphing calculators have, but they do include a talking version of it and so it’s called the SciPlus 2500 Talking Graphing Calculator. There’s also an Orion TI-84 Talking Graphing Calculator. So go to Perkinselearning.org, put in calculator into their search box and it’s going to bring up a bunch for you. All different ones, there’s three or four of them in there and so some good options to be able to look at as far as graphing calculators for students with low vision. They seem to have quite a nice assortment of them with some different features.

Tracy Castillo:
And, Brian, I can tell you that first one that you mentioned, what was the name of the first one?

Brian Norton:
SciPlus?

Tracy Castillo:
The SciPlus, the SciPlus 2500, right?

Brian Norton:
Yup.

Tracy Castillo:
That one we have recommended several times. I’m laughing because Josh has this thermometer behind him now. He’s overheating. It’s very hot here in Indiana today.

Josh Anderson:
It’s very, very hot.

Brian Norton:
Excellent. Excellent. Well, hey, I would love to hear from folks. It’s a short question, or, not a short question, but a short answer because there are some really great calculators, definitely look at LS&S and MaxiAids, and perkinselearning.org. Those are great places to be able to find some tools for folks. We’d love to hear from you. Maybe you guys have used a graphing calculator or have some experience with a scientific calculator that does graphing and has those enhancements of large text and large screens with folks for visual impairments. Love to be able to share those with our listeners. Our phone number is (317) 721-7124. Our email address is tech@eastersealscrossroads.org or send us a Tween with #ATFAQ, all great ways to get a hold of us. Thanks so much.

Brian Norton:
All right. So our next question is, does anyone know of a good program for text to audio on a tablet? I can only find ones that translate a sentence or two to paste my e-books, long emails and such into and listen to them. And so e-text on a tablet, text to speech, essentially on a table where they can just take their e-books, their long emails, paste it in there and have it read to them.

Brian Norton:
I think for me as I was reading that question, my first question that rolls off my head is, what version of tablet are you using? Is it Android, IOS or Windows tablet? I think that’s something important to know. We’re familiar mostly with Apple products here. We do have some Android tablets, but I think as the productivity tool for a lot of our assistive technology specialist, we use iPads. And there are lots of different great programs for this.

Brian Norton:
The first and foremost, I would say, look at what’s built into your product already. So you can have your email program, I use Outlook, on my tablet and I can just use the speak screen or speak selection feature under the functions. So if i go under the settings menu, under accessibility, there’s a couple of options for that. Speak screen or speak selection, so I can just be in an email, have it up on my screen, swipe two fingers down from the top of the screen and it starts to read the whole email to me or whatever’s on that screen to me.

Brian Norton:
Same thing with Android as well. They have a select to speak option as well. You may need to download it from the Google Accessibility Suite, but they do have a feature that’s called select to speak that would do the very same thing. And with that one, basically, you select whatever you want, so you’ve got your email up in your email program, you select the text within the email and in the little menu system that pops up there, you will get an option for speak. And when you click that, it will actually start reading down through the email. So instead of having to have a third party app, just use the built in features would be the first thing I would suggest for folks.

Brian Norton:
Then secondly, I would say there are a couple of programs I would direct you to. The first would be Voice Dream. Voice Dream’s a real simple one, especially for your e-books. If you have this stored in an online hard drive like DropBox, Box.net, OneDrive, those types of places, with your e-books, especially you can just simply point that to whatever the online hard drive you’re using, download it to the application, and then it gives you all sorts of tools, not only to read it, but to actually bookmark it, highlight, all sorts of annotation tools that come with that, and so it’s a great tool, Voice Dream is a really great tool for folks to use.

Brian Norton:
Also ClaroPDF is another app that I just love. And what it allows you to do is do the very same thing. You can point it to your online hard drive someplace, again, Box.net, Dropbox, OneDrive, all those different places. Download your document to your tablet, and then start playing it again, and again, it gives you lots of different annotation tools. It gives you access to your camera. It gives you access to a pencil feature to highlight, annotate, all over the different document, make recordings, if you want voice notes, all sorts of things to be able to help you use your e-books and those types of things. So something just to think about with those.

Brian Norton:
Again, look first to probably your built-in tools. And then look at apps, and again, ClaroPDF and VoiceDream would be versions of text to speech apps that I think would make pretty good different for you. They’re inexpensive too. I think VoiceDream and ClaroPDF are both under $10. And they’re just feature packed. They have lots of great features for you, so I do believe they also have a free version for you to trial for a period of time, if you’d like to see if it’s really meeting your needs and make sure that it does with you think it’s going to do. So take a look at that and check those particular apps out.

Brian Norton:
One of the things that you can do, if you’re interested and you want to borrow a tablet with those apps, you may also, again, we think we’ve mentioned it a couple times during today’s show, but, you can go to eastersealstech.com/states, look up your local assistive technology act program. They all should have a device loan library. I’m not sure exactly what each program has in their device loan library. But I know in ours here in Indiana, you have the opportunity to borrow an iPad. We can stick that particular app on it and give you some opportunity to try it out for a period of time, just to make sure it’s going to meet your need, before you even invest in a tablet, possibly, or the app in and of itself and so a great way to be able to get your hands on it to try before you buy it.

Brian Norton:
I would love to hear from other folks. If you have other options or use other apps for text to audio on your tablet, especially folks with Android experience. That is something that I am not as familiar with and so we’d love to hear from you the different tools that you use, the apps that you use. 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.

Speaker 13:
And now it’s time for the wild card question.

Brian Norton:
Thanks. All right. So our next question is the wild card question. And this is where Belva typically has a question for us, but this time, we’re throwing the baton over to Josh. Josh has a question for us that we haven’t had any time to prepare for. And so, Josh, what do you got for us today?

Josh Anderson:
All right. So mine is not technologically based. And I’m sorry. But, with the whole way the world’s going right now, the handshake’s pretty much gone. No one’s going to probably shake hands, or hug, or high five-

Tracy Castillo:
Double kiss.

Josh Anderson:
So what’s going to replace that? I say it should be the curtsy, just because it’s going to be very hard for two men to argue with each other, get in a fight, if they’re made to curtsy when they first meet. But, that probably won’t happen. Anyway, what are you guys thoughts? What will replace the handshake, the high five, the hug-

Belva Smith:
I don’t really know, Josh. That’s interesting because I was in that position today when we were at the AT lab, when Brian was introducing me to, what was her name, Elise?

Brian Norton:
Angelie.

Belva Smith:
Angelie. I stood up to shake her hand and got my hand halfway out and then realized, “Oh, no, no, no.” I don’t know. And we can’t even give a person a good smile because we’re all under our masks. So I don’t know.

Brian Norton:
I’m thinking maybe the thumbs up.

Belva Smith:
I was getting ready to tell you, Josh. I’m giving quite a few thumbs up lately.

Josh Anderson:
Yeah. I think a lot of people are doing elbow bumps, but I always feel a little awkward with that. That just seems a little awkward to be able to do that.

Tracy Castillo:
And you’re too close. Your elbow- [crosstalk 00:34:04] You’re too close with the elbow bump.

Brian Norton:
Maybe we’ll just get six foot poles and we can clap them together in the middle of us. I don’t know.

Tracy Castillo:
I kind of like the thumbs up.

Josh Anderson:
The thumbs up, or maybe we all get reachers, with a little hand at the end of it. We can all high distance high five and shake hands. We got to carry around a fake hand all the time and I guess that’s kind of-

Tracy Castillo:
Belva, isn’t it the weirdest feeling when you realize, “Oh, I shouldn’t be doing this.” And then there’s an awkward space. I don’t know if it’s just silence because it’s always going to be silent, but there’s that awkward space where you just kind of look at each other.

Josh Anderson:
Yeah. Yeah.

Belva Smith:
Yeah. And my whole shopping experience has changed because Todd used to hate to go to the store with me because I’m a feeler. I want to touch everything and just see, what’s it feel like and I’m afraid to touch anything.

Brian Norton:
Glad you meant the products, Belva. I’m really glad you meant the products.

Tracy Castillo:
You’re not allowed to squeeze the bread anymore.

Belva Smith:
I can’t squeeze the Charmin, right?

Josh Anderson:
That’s hilarious.

Belva Smith:
But, wait, that’s probably over most people’s heads because that’s too old. [crosstalk 00:35:09]

Brian Norton:
We need to come up with an app that does something where we can do an app or something like that that does a virtual handshake or something like that. We could make money on that.

Belva Smith:
Yeah. [crosstalk 00:35:20]

Josh Anderson:
And, Belva, it’s funny because I was part of that same interview this morning and that’s what made me think of this question because, yeah, I did the same thing. Met her, and kind of went in for a handshake and it’s like the old days where someone goes in for a hug and the other person goes in for a handshake, that weirdness. But, there’s no hug involved. Yeah, but it’s just like, “Uh, hi.” So you just wave a little bit, but I don’t know. I was wondering what will replace it. I don’t see us moving on to the bow like they do in a lot of Asian countries, but I don’t know. Who knows what it will be.

Tracy Castillo:
Well, I’ll let you know because I do have a Dominican family and we greet each other with a kiss on the cheek, and we still greet each other with a kiss on the cheek.

Belva Smith:
Well, that’s what i said, a lot of people do, the French, especially, they do that double kiss, right? First of all, in the past, I’ve had different people, consumers, whatever, say, “Are you a hugger? Can I give you a hug?” Well, I’ve always said, “Yes” even though deep down inside, “No, I’m not a hugger.” But I don’t want to be rude and say, “No.” Well, now I would definitely be saying no because no, I don’t want to be hugged.

Tracy Castillo:
I was just thinking that. I think it’s gone more to we do a cheek touch.

Belva Smith:
Yeah.

Tracy Castillo:
Well, it’s just like a cheek, you kiss the air, but still it’s rather close contact.

Belva Smith:
That’s a very good question though, Josh. I think right now, yeah, and I don’t think it’ll ever go back. I mean, I think once a handshake is gone away, I don’t think it will come back. And I think our older generation is going to have even more trouble breaking that habit. A lot of the 60, 70 year old people, they were raised that that’s what you do.

Tracy Castillo:
That’s how you judge the person.

Belva Smith:
Yeah. Exactly. [crosstalk 00:37:14] you got to have that nice firm handshake, right?

Josh Anderson:
Well, I think it’s- [crosstalk 00:37:19]

Tracy Castillo:
[crosstalk 00:37:19] too because the firm handshake, it goes women as well. But other cultures if a woman shakes another woman’s hand, you’ll notice it’s very soft and [inaudible 00:37:30] finger touch thing.

Belva Smith:
Yeah.

Brian Norton:
Yeah, I think for the older folks, it’s muscle memory. It’s muscle memory for me too. It’s what you did this morning, Belva. You went in for a handshake without even really even thinking about it.

Belva Smith:
Right.

Brian Norton:
It’s just what you do. And I don’t know. I really question what will happen in four or five years once this stuff has kind of gotten under control and we figure it out, if people will go back to what they’ve done or what they used to do. I don’t know. I could see that happening. But I think as we’re building habits now, I’m sure there’s a certain portion of our population that’ll move away from handshakes, but I don’t know if you’ll ever get it totally away from handshakes, so that’ll be interesting, for sure.

Belva Smith:
For now, we’ll thumbs up it.

Brian Norton:
That’s right.

Tracy Castillo:
Thumbs up, low high five, or a low five.

Josh Anderson:
Or #BringBacktheCursy.

Belva Smith:
There you go.

Tracy Castillo:
Have shirts made, Josh.

Josh Anderson:
Well, you can fake it. Do the fake little- [crosstalk 00:38:33] I’m glad we’re not on video for this, so no one else, none of our listeners have to see that.

Brian Norton:
Excellent. Excellent, well, hey, great question, Josh. Appreciate that. Want to make sure our listeners know that they can get a hold of us with their assistive technology questions. You can also send us your feedback. You can do that in a variety of way. Again, our listener line is (317) 721-7124. Send us an email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org or send us a Tweet with the #ATFAQ. We would love to hear from you. In fact, without you, we wouldn’t have a show. So be a part of it.

Brian Norton:
Want to thank the folks who are here in our virtual meeting today. Contributing to ATFAQ 128. Want to say thank you to Tracy, and Tracy give you the opportunity to say good-bye to folks.

Tracy Castillo:
Well, thank you. Thanks for listening everyone.

Brian Norton:
Excellent. And then also say thank you to Belva, Belva, do you want to say good-bye to folks?

Belva Smith:
Yes, be well and we’ll see you again in two weeks.

Brian Norton:
Perfect. And then Josh, thank you and then, we’ll give you the opportunity.

Josh Anderson:
Thank you everybody. Can’t wait to see you next time.

Brian Norton:
Excellent

Tracy Castillo:
Josh, go cool off.

Josh Anderson:
Yeah.

Brian Norton:
Excellent, well, hey, thanks everyone. Have a great, great week. And we’ll talk to you guys in a couple weeks. Thanks.

Speaker 13:
And it seems like every week we have at least one blooper, so here you go.

Tracy Castillo:
Am I on mike?

Speaker 13:
You are on mike. It’s hard.

Josh Anderson:
No, get closer.

Speaker 13:
It’s hard. I can’t see you guys.

Josh Anderson:
By the way, I hate to tell you, but it looks like you’re thinning in the back a little bit.

Speaker 13:
I’m thinning?

Belva Smith:
Oh my gosh, Josh. You didn’t just do that.

Josh Anderson:
I’m just kidding. I meant your hair, Brian, not, not-

Brian Norton:
Oh, oh-

Josh Anderson:
Not your waist.

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 Easter Seals Crossroads and the InData Project. ATFAQ is a proud member of the Accessibility Channel. Find more of our shows at www.AccessibilityChannel.com.