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Panel: Brian Norton, Josh Anderson, Belva Smith and Tracy Castillo. Q1. ScreenReaders for non-visually impaired, Q2. Text-to-Speech and Speech-to-Text options for Mac, Q3. Mirror Android Devices, Q4. When to transition from ScreenMag to ScreenReader, Q5. iOS Trackpads and Mice, Q6. Wildcard: What do you use for AntiVirus?
——————- Transcript Starts Here ————————
Intro:
I have a question. Huh? Like what? I’ve always wondered. What about? Do you know? I have a question. I’ve always wondered. I have a question. I have a question. Oh, I have a question. I have a question. I have a question.
Brian Norton:
Welcome to ATFAQ, Assistive Technology Frequently Asked Questions with your host Brian Norton, director of Assistive Technology at Easterseals 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 130. My name is Brian Norton and I’m the host of the show. And we’re so happy that you’ve taken some time to tune in with us this week. We’ve got a great lineup of assistive technology questions for you today. But before we jump in, just want to take a moment to go around the room and introduce the folks who are here with me remotely. And so I want to welcome Belva. Belva Smith is the vision team lead with our clinical assistive technology team. Belva, you want to say hey to folks.
Belva Smith:
Hello. I am not the host of the show, but I am the vision team lead, and I’m happy to be here with you guys.
Brian Norton:
Excellent. We also have Tracy Castillo. Tracy is our in data program manager. Tracy, do you want to say hi?
Tracy Castillo:
Yes. Hey everyone. Keep on sending us your great questions. Thanks.
Brian Norton:
Excellent. And then we also have Josh Anderson. Josh is the manager of our clinical assistive technology team, but also the popular host of AT Update, one of our other podcast here at Easterseals Crossroads, and with the in data project. Josh, you want to say hi.
Josh Anderson:
Hi everybody.
Brian Norton:
Excellent. I want to take a moment before we jump into our show and talk about how our show works for our new listeners. We receive feedback and come across various assistive technology related questions throughout the week, and we have some ways that you can get us your questions. The first is our listener line, that’s (317) 721-7124, or an email that could be at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org, or with a tweet that’s hashtag ATFAQ. Just great ways for you to send us your questions. But what makes our show great is the opportunity for folks to also provide feedback. As we go through the questions we have for today’s show, we would love to hear from you and get your feedback. If you have any, maybe you have some experience or some firsthand experience or some more information to share about particular questions that get asked during our show today, we would love to hear your feedback and you can provide those and those very same ways that you can ask your questions.
Brian Norton:
Also want to just share with you different ways to be able to tell folks where to find our show. You can find us on iTunes atfaqshow.com, on Stitcher, the Google Play store, really anywhere you can find a podcast, you should be able to find ATFAQ, love for you to tell your friends about us, have them start listening to the show. And so thank you so much for that. And without further ado, we’re going to jump into the questions that we have for today.
Belva Smith:
Hey Brian.
Brian Norton:
Yeah.
Belva Smith:
Did you tell people how they can get us their questions?
Brian Norton:
I did.
Belva Smith:
Oh, okay. I’m sorry. I was sleeping through that then.
Brian Norton:
Excellent. So yeah, without further ado, we’re going to jump into our first question today. And this is, I would like your opinion regarding an AT question. I have an employee who is interested in JAWS as a screen reader, but is not visually impaired. Have you recommended JAWS for a similar situation or is there another screen reader that you recommend? The employee has tried Microsoft options, I’m assuming Narrator, and states they don’t stay on track. And so basically JAWS as a screen reader for someone who is not visually impaired and I’m assuming they just need that text to speech feature.
Belva Smith:
Yeah. I would definitely like more information, but I can see where having that verbal information could be helpful for others who may not be blind. However I think using JAWS, if you are sighted, can be pretty challenging. And especially if you’re trying to use JAWS visually with the mouse pointer, because crazy things can happen when you’re using JAWS and then you start pointing and clicking around on the screen at the same time. Again, I mean, I could see other situations other than just being blind where it could be helpful, but I would really like to know more about what the specific situation is. Because if it’s just a situation of where maybe they want to have the information read to them from an email or from a PDF document or something like that, there are other ways to try to do that without using a screen reader.
Belva Smith:
And then are there other screen readers that are similar to JAWS? Well, yeah, there’s, NVDA, Non-Visual Desktop Application, that functions just like JAWS, but it is free. That could be an option to look at before possibly spending $12 or $1,500 depending upon the situation to have JAWS. But also I just think it’s really important to point out too that Microsoft has, as does Mac, they have a lot of options for reading information without necessarily using the screen reader. For example, in Microsoft Office now, I know in Word and Outlook and I believe in some of the other programs as well, they include the read aloud for just reading the information. That’s my 2 cents on it. Josh, what’s your thoughts?
Josh Anderson:
I kind of have to go with you Belva. I mean, I guess I could see sometimes when the screen reader would be helpful to someone who’s accessing things visually. But I mean, what you got to realize is it’s not, a screen reader is not a text to speech program. It’s not just going to read everything on the screen to you. It’s going to read everything on the screen to you, tell you where it is, tell you what it is, tell you why it is. And I mean, it’s going to tell you everything and go through every single thing on the screen. So like here’s Belva, it’s not as easy as taking your mouse down, highlighting some texts and having it read to you, it’s going to tell you everything on the reader, it’s going to tell you everything here. It’s going to tell you a link, a picture, what the picture-
Belva Smith:
And how to interact with it.
Josh Anderson:
And how to interact with it. And I mean, if you think, let’s say you’re reading a news article online. Well, just to read the news article might take, I don’t know, two minutes, let’s say two minutes for the text to speech. JAW’s going to take three or four, because it’s going to tell you every single thing going on on that page, how to access it. And unless you need that for some reason, the screen reader is going to be overkill, truthfully, because the screen reader is there because I can’t visually access it. Now, perhaps there’s a processing disorder or something where you need to have that, you need to know things or links or forms or headings maybe, then maybe it could be kind of helpful. But really and truthfully, I’ve never used a screen reader with someone who could access the screen visually. That is kind of where I would probably go.
Brian Norton:
In my opinion really the challenge with that as you guys have both stated is it takes over keyboard navigation, NVDA would be the same thing.
Belva Smith:
Absolutely.
Brian Norton:
You’re going to be using the keyboard and the mouse the same way, it’s going to provide way too much information more than you ever really want. If you’re just simply looking for text to speech, I would agree with Belva, the built-in tools that are now within Office 365, if the business is using Office 365, I think would be a really great option. It’s free, it’s built into most of Microsoft Office apps. You need something a little bit more universal, something to think about. They mentioned Narrator is not a good option that it was having difficulty staying on track. And I just don’t know what that would be in reference to, why it’s not staying on track would be a bigger issue for me.
Belva Smith:
I think that they would find that same issue with JAWS. Because I think what they’re thinking is they’re visually seeing, for example, an edit box. They’re visually seeing that edit box on the screen, but the screen reader isn’t at that edit box yet. Or better yet, maybe it’s stuck in that edit box. And that’s where it gets really confusing to be looking at the screen, trying to visually use it while also listening to the screen reader. It’s a big challenge. It’s kind of the same thing with Dragon naturally speaking. I say to folks, if you can physically type, using Dragon naturally speaking is not maybe the best answer for whatever it is you’re trying to do.
Brian Norton:
Yeah. It could be used as a compliment, but not as your tool, your access tool. Same thing with the built-in speech with Mac, much like Narrator is built into windows computers. Mac has the same kind of option, so you can have text read, anything that you highlight, you can have read to you. But more as a universal option, a software just to kind of … it’s kind of a useful tool, Natural Reader software, there’s a free version. It gives you unlimited free voices. Basically anything that you highlight, you can click a play button, it’ll read it to you. It doesn’t matter what program, you can be on the web, inside a product productivity tool. Anything, you can just have text read to you with natural reader software. There is a personal version, it’s $99 I believe to purchase it, gives you two more naturally sounding voices, and then will convert whatever it does read into MP3 files that you can listen to later.
Brian Norton:
There’s also a professional version, which is for natural voices, it’s 129.50, still does the conversion for MP3 files. And then there’s an ultimate version which is more expensive than that, or they’ll give you six natural sounding voices. And what that means is it’s just a better voice. It’s not one of the free ones that you download. But then with the ultimate, you can also OCR images and get text stripped out of there and have that read to you as well, so something to think about. There’s also a Chrome extension and then an online website that you can use. If you go to naturalreaders.com/online, you can drag and drop files into the text field and then hit the play button and have it read to you. You can use that unlimitedly with free voices and then you can actually then pay for it. It’s a monthly fee of $9 and 99 cents a month or $60 a year to use it for free. And you simply just say, I want to upload this document to the web. It’ll go ahead and upload that document and start reading it to you, really works well.
Brian Norton:
If you’re in Chrome as well, maybe you’re using an online application chrome box, also works really well. It’s a little bit more [inaudible 00:11:57] in the way it works, but it’s a text to speech reader just like Narrator or the built-in speech in Mac and may work well for you as well.
Belva Smith:
There’s also Access To Go, Brian. We don’t talk much about that. But Serotek has the screen reader Access To Go and you can literally load that on any computer. It’s not even really a download. You just go to the address bar and type Access To Go and then click the run button and it’ll start acting as a screen reader for you.
Brian Norton:
That’s really cool. Excellent. I just want to open this up to our listeners. If you had some experience, I think ultimately what we’re kind of saying in response to this question is maybe not necessarily, probably need a little bit more information about the situation, but maybe not necessarily the best tool for a sighted user. Simply because it’ll be very verbose. It’ll give you lots of information that may be not very relevant to what you’re needing. But then also it changes the way you navigate with the keyboard and the mouse. And that can become problematic depending on the applications that the person is using. And so probably not a great idea, but would definitely want to hear from other folks and what their experience, if they’ve done that before, recommended JAWS for a non-visually impaired person. Love to hear from you. You can do that by calling our listener line, that’s (317) 721-7124, or sending us an email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org, would love to hear from you. Thanks.
Brian Norton:
All right. Our next question is, I have three children with dyslexia and dysgraphia, a barrier to learning for us is reading and writing even when typing, what are some of the best user-friendly dictate to scribe? So voice input or text to speech, voice output programs that we can put on our home computer and laptops. We are Mac users. And so just kind of open that up to the group.
Tracy Castillo:
Right. I just want to tell you that you showed me this option when I first started my online schooling and I was having to do a lot of reading. That was the built-in stuff in Mac. Now I have a little shortcut. I just use one finger, I highlight this what I want read, two fingers to click it and I just, hits speech and it reads it to me. I think it’s amazing. It’s really helping me out and I’m able to follow along as it’s speaking. And I’m acing these classes, Brian, watch out.
Brian Norton:
Excellent. Yeah, that’s really, really helpful too. Other text to speech options, we kind of covered some of those things up there. We talked about Natural Reader in our last question, Chrome box would be an option. Read and write has some tools. Those are things that you have to pay for. And so those are available from Texthelp. A couple of Chrome extensions that I find really helpful and they’re pretty clean interfaces and they make it really useful. VoiceNote II would be one. O 365 Immersive Reader is another option. And then within the Edge browser itself read aloud is a feature within that one, so that it would read really anything on your web browser. A couple of different options with those.
Tracy Castillo:
It did. There’s also, I believe Adobe DC has a speech to text feature, or text to speech feature as well.
Brian Norton:
Right. I think Read Aloud is available within Adobe. I think that’s the speech engine it uses.
Tracy Castillo:
Okay.
Brian Norton:
Yeah. Perfect.
Tracy Castillo:
To be able to upload PDFs into the web to Edge and it would read them. There was an update and I don’t know where it is now, but that was a feature that’s still available on some Edge browsers.
Brian Norton:
Yeah, absolutely.
Belva Smith:
What do you mean on some? Did they take it away?
Tracy Castillo:
Yeah. I caught myself lying to someone the other day, because I uploaded a PDF into Edge and went over to file, to drop down and see all the different features I could get to. And the Read Aloud wasn’t there. Now, it was there if I went to the web page and I could find the Read Aloud feature. But now when you upload or open a PDF with Edge it doesn’t work.
Belva Smith:
Huh.
Brian Norton:
Good to know. What about built-in dictation and voice control? That was the other side to what they were talking about as far as using that on a Mac. Any thoughts on that?
Belva Smith:
I’ve not used the dictation on my Mac at all, but I do know that the dictation with windows is pretty darn good.
Tracy Castillo:
That’s good.
Josh Anderson:
Yeah. And kind of same thing for the dictation for Mac, I really liked it. I’ve even tried using the voice control on some of it just to play around with it, it’s pretty good.
Brian Norton:
Yeah. I will also say, O 365, the Dictate in Office 365. So whether you’re on Mac or windows is going to work pretty well for you. Voice typing for Google Docs is a great one. If you’re using Google Docs, I’m not sure what her children’s school is using or what they’re using for schooling, but a lot of folks use Chrome as their kind of computer model. And so voice typing would be good. If you’re looking for a really nice website where you can do a lot with it, speechnotes.co is a website. It’s got a nice clean interface and allows you to be able to dictate into it. And then copy and paste whatever you’ve dictated into whatever program you want to. So speechnotes.co is a really nice user interface for that stuff. A couple of different options there for dictation and voice control, but also text to speech options, kind of in an educational setting.
Brian Norton:
I’d love to open this up to folks who are listening, or maybe just have some experience in the educational arena with basically voice input or text to speech, the voice output stuff, love to hear from you what your experiences are on that. 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:
Our next question is, hello, I’m looking for a way to mirror an Android smartphone, specifically a Motorola G5 smartphone to PC, to show use of different apps on a bigger screen. Any suggestions are welcome.
Josh Anderson:
Well, if it’s going to be like the iPhone when you mirror it, you’re still going to have that skinny, long area. Am I correct? Even if you put it on a 40 inch screen, you’re still not going to have 40 inch of real estate. You’re still going to have that small phone screen area basically. I mean, it would be bigger, but it’s not going to cover your whole 40 inches of real estate.
Brian Norton:
Usually you can flip it in landscape mode and get it to fill up more of your screen and just demonstrate things in a landscape mode. If the app you’re using allows you to use landscape mode that can be a challenge. Two apps that I’ve seen, used and seem to have worked pretty good. One was Mirror 360 and that works with Amazon Fire TV, windows, Mac, and Android devices. I did read some reviews more recent, I guess they had an update recently. And there are some connectivity issues with it. Some mixed reviews with that one. Another one that I’ve had some experience with and I feel is pretty good is Reflector.
Josh Anderson:
I’ve used that, yeah.
Brian Norton:
Yeah. It’s free for seven days. Again, if you want to try it out, try it out, but it costs about $17, $18. It runs on Mac, Windows, Android, Amazon Fire TV. You can also kind of mirror to Google Cast, AirPlay, Miracast, AirParrot 3, and then Ditto. So lots of different airplay options as well. But two pretty good ones, I’ve had some experience with those. And those will allow you to get your Android phone up on a bigger screen so that you can demonstrate it up in front of folks. Two other approaches or one other approach that you may look at as well. Vysor and AMIDuOS, A-M-I-D-U-O-S, our emulator apps.
Brian Norton:
And what makes these unique as they emulate what’s on the screen of your Android device. And why that’s important is if you’re using a touch screen as your 40 inch monitor, because it’s emulating, you should be able to use the touch screen on the 40 inch monitor to be able to then swipe or do different gestures on the bigger screen. And so that you’re not having to kind of hold your device, play around with it while it’s being just shown on the screen, you can actually interact with the app on the bigger screen itself. And so those are emulators, Vysor, V-Y-S-O-R, and AMIDuOS, A-M-I-D-U-O-S. And I’ve heard some good things about those. I haven’t had much experience with it myself. But I’ve heard some pretty good information about those emulators being able to run Android apps on windows computers. And so certainly something to look into there as well.
Tracy Castillo:
That’s pretty amazing, you could use the touch screen, I thought that was pretty cool.
Belva Smith:
Well, the key is though the 40 inch screen or the larger screen has to be a touch screen.
Tracy Castillo:
Of course.
Belva Smith:
Those apps are not going to make it be a touch screen.
Brian Norton:
Right. That’s exactly right.
Tracy Castillo:
If you didn’t have a touch screen, I bet it would work if you had maybe an AirBar. Do you know what that is?
Brian Norton:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Tracy Castillo:
That could turn your monitor into a touch screen. Did you guys … I was looking up … we’ve used AirParrots or, was that the name of it?
Brian Norton:
Uh-huh (affirmative).
Tracy Castillo:
But I think that streams only Apple devices, or does it go?
Brian Norton:
I think it works with, Reflector 3 which we talked about works with AirParrot 3. I’m not sure if AirParrot is simply an iOS app. I’d have to look into that a little bit more, but that is a mirroring app. And again, I’m not sure if it just works with iOS or iPad iOS either, so interesting. Well, hey, I would love to open this up to our listeners. If you have any feedback on mirroring Android devices to a PC, we’d love to hear from you. 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. Our next question is, I am currently using a screen magnifier at three and a half times magnification with a 40 inch monitor to view my computer. I’ve been told that I should transition to a screen reader as it would help me be more productive, but I’m nervous about that. Any suggestions for how to best make this transition in helping me feel more comfortable in doing so.
Tracy Castillo:
I love this question, because I get this question a lot. First of all, 3.5, yeah, that’s getting right there at the border in my opinion to be productive. However, I have seen people using as much as five times and struggling with their productivity. You’ll have to be the one to really make the decision as to when you feel comfortable making that transition, but things that you can do right now. Number one, I would want to know if I were doing an evaluation with you is, is your vision stable. If it’s not stable, then you probably want to do some of these things sooner rather than later. However, if it is stable, then you may have a little more time to continue getting by with your 3.5. Some people get by a 3.5 forever. But others it happens a lot quicker. Ask yourself, is your vision stable? What’s the prognosis? Are you eventually not going to get by with magnification?
Tracy Castillo:
Then if so, some things that you can start doing now to help yourself make the transition a little bit more smoother is to, first of all, begin learning and using as many of the windows keyboard commands as possible, because you’re going to find that your screen reader is also going to use pretty much every single one of those windows commands along with additional commands. But just get yourself really comfortable with the keyboard, know your keyboard, let it be your best friend. Because you’re going to be, first of all, just more productive using the keyboard than you will be with the pointer. Because it’s so much easier to tap three times and get to that okay button sometimes, than it is to take the mouse and move around the screen up and down and left and right, eye strain like crazy finding that okay button. Make the keyboard your best friend, start to use those commands right now.
Tracy Castillo:
And then the whole idea between or behind the software program called Fusion is to help people make the transition from magnification to a screen reader as seamless as possible, because fusion combines a full blown screen reader and a full blown screen magnifier into one program. I don’t know what magnification program you’re using, also that could have a lot to do with what your 3.5 means. If you’re using the windows magnification at 3.5, well, that’s very different than using the Zoom checks at 3.5. Anyway, the Fusion software was developed to try to help you make that transition smoother. But if you don’t have access to Fusion, then really the best thing you can do is, as I said earlier, just start learning those keyboards, learn what tab does for you, learn what shift tab does for you, learn what the windows key does for you. So that you can begin using all of those windows commands before you began using the JAWS commands and the windows commands. Ta-da, I’m done.
Brian Norton:
That’s great. Perfect answer for that. Yeah, that’s a hard decision to make. I feel for folks who, they’re wanting to hang on to whatever remaining vision they have, and wanting to use the computer the way they always have used the computer. But knowing that you may be more productive moving into a screen reader environment, that’s a challenge. That’s a real challenge for folks. You’re right, that is a question we get all the time. And as professionals, we’re working with our consumers trying to figure out when is that right time, and helping them with that transition, walking them through that transition and making sure that they feel comfortable as we move forward, because it’s different. It’s a different way to access the computer. It’s very audible. You’re trying to listen for certain things.
Brian Norton:
Instead of really relying on the vision to help you kind of navigate through and see things in context. But I think, Belva, you may have mentioned this in your comments there. Things like Fusion are helpful because you can make that transition gradually. You don’t have to jump from one to the other right away. You can move and get some experience, put your feet in both arenas for a little while to rely on what you’re most comfortable with, and then dabble in the things that are a little less comfortable and get comfortable with those as time goes on. Definitely something that’s really a challenge. And that’s a question we get often.
Belva Smith:
I will say too, this particular listener is they specifically mentioned that they’re using a 40 inch monitor. And I also say that that’s really pushing the extreme there, because that much real estate to be panning back and forth and up and down with your eyes, especially in an eight hour workday, you are causing so much strain to your eyes that I’d almost be willing to bet you’re going home with a headache 90% of the time. Whereas if you start getting familiar with those keyboard commands, even using the magnification, you’re going to eliminate some of that eye strain and stress that you’re experiencing right now. If you don’t realize it until you’re actually watching someone try to do it. But if you watch someone who’s trying to find an okay button, that’s at the bottom middle of the screen, it can take a lot of work to get to that, where you might be able to press the tab key one time and you’re right there on it.
Belva Smith:
Again, just get familiar with the keyboard. I hear people all the time say that it’s more efficient to use the keyboard than it is the mouse, whether they are experiencing any kind of vision loss or not. And I know I do whenever I have the opportunity to use a keystroke rather than my mouse, I’ll do it, just because it’s quicker, it’s accurate. You never have to question whether or not am I in the right place to be able to click or to press enter, because it’s going to be a guarantee that you are.
Brian Norton:
Yeah. Great point. Excellent. Hey, I would love to open this up to folks who are listening. You can give us a call on our listener line, that’s (317) 721-7124, or send us an email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org. If you have any feedback on that question, we’d like to hear from you. Thank you so much.
Brian Norton:
All right. Our next question is, do you happen to know if there are any mouse slash trackpad devices that pair with an iPad? My understanding is that there is not one designed for the iPad, but was curious if you knew of anything that may be possible or compatible. And I think this question may be a little outdated. Josh, you were going to say.
Josh Anderson:
Yeah, any Bluetooth mouse will connect to an iPad now, but it has to be Bluetooth but not with a Bluetooth dongle. It has to just be Bluetooth on its own.
Belva Smith:
And your iPad has to be running a certain iOS version.
Josh Anderson:
13 or higher, I think. Is it 13, Brian? Is that when that came in.
Brian Norton:
Yeah, 13 or higher.
Josh Anderson:
This little guy, which I know listeners cannot see, I think it was $7 on Amazon and it works great.
Tracy Castillo:
If I’m running my fourth generation iPad and I can only get up to version 10, I cannot [crosstalk 00:31:55].
Brian Norton:
Yeah, then you’re out of luck.
Josh Anderson:
Then you’re out of luck. Yes. But yes, if your iPad will run version 13, iOS 13 or better, then yeah, you can use any Bluetooth mouse or trackpad.
Belva Smith:
Without a dongle.
Brian Norton:
Correct.
Tracy Castillo:
This is new information, because I think what they’re trying to do is make the iPad so powerful than it is your new mini computer.
Josh Anderson:
That’s the idea.
Belva Smith:
Yeah, that’s the whole idea. They want the iPad Pro to be the tool that everybody’s using rather than a computer and a tablet.
Brian Norton:
And I think we’ll see that kind of migration that way a little bit even more in the next month or so when iOS 14 comes out. They’re really kind of changing and putting widgets on the screen and other kinds of things. And so that’s going to really maybe even help us promote the iPad more and more as a computer system replacement than we have in the past too. Just for folks, if you’re interested in kind of figuring out where to connect a Bluetooth mouse or touch pad to your iPad, if you go to the settings menu, you go under accessibility, under accessibility you can click on touch. Under touch you can click under … go down the menu system. And you’re going to find an area where it talks about pointing devices. You click on devices there. You can click on Bluetooth devices and under there it’ll search for any Bluetooth enabled devices. If your mouse is in a pairing mode, it should show up underneath there and allow you to connect directly to it. It’s pretty simple.
Belva Smith:
No, wait a minute, Brian, that’s kind of new information for me. So you’re going to the Bluetooth.
Brian Norton:
No, you’re not going to go directly to the Bluetooth because it uses the assistive touch cursor, the little round dot that looks like assistive touch on there. That is actually your pointer that you’re moving around and clicking things on. That’s how they’ve gotten that to work for the iPad. It’s under assistive touch, under the accessibility options.
Tracy Castillo:
Interesting.
Brian Norton:
Just as I opened this up to listeners, if you have a favorite mouse or touch pad that you use, give us a call, I’d love to hear from you on that. What makes it really useful to you? Give us a call, we’d love to know about those devices so that we can share that information with our listeners. 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. Love to hear from you. Thanks so much.
Josh Anderson:
And now it’s time for the wild card question.
Brian Norton:
All right. The next question is the wildcard question. And this is where Belva has come up with a question that we haven’t had any time to prepare for. And so, Belva, what do you got for us today?
Belva Smith:
My question today is, what advice, what do you recommend and what do you use for your antivirus? Whether you’re using Mac or windows.
Tracy Castillo:
I use a mask, a cloth mask. Boom.
Belva Smith:
Good answer.
Brian Norton:
Antivirus. To be honest, I don’t even know if I have an antivirus software on here other than what’s maybe pre-installed. I use a Mac, and to be honest with you, I haven’t worried about that much. I think I may have a Avast working in the background. I think that’s what our agency prescribes for us as far as making sure that you’re running Avast antivirus. But then they also make sure that your hard drive is encrypted. And so I’ve got the file encryption turned on with my MacBook Pro. And then I also, as far as just safety and security, everything needs to be password protected here as well. And so you have to have a password that’s unique, has a capital letter, has all the characters, has a number, has a symbol, all those kinds of things as far as being able to even just log into your computer. Avast runs in the background, but I don’t usually do a whole lot with it.
Belva Smith:
What would you tell your mom to put on her computer?
Josh Anderson:
I just tell her to stay off those websites Belva.
Tracy Castillo:
[inaudible 00:36:22].
Brian Norton:
Tell you what, I’ve told my mom … My mom has Windows Defender installed, and I think that does her pretty well.
Josh Anderson:
And then another one that I’ll use, so I’ll just kind of go with consumers a little bit. And what we use a lot is Windows Defender, if they’re using that, and then the free version of Malwarebytes. And I just teach them how to open Malwarebytes and how to run a scan, because really the main difference between the free one and the paid one is the paid one does everything for you. The free one does everything that the paid one does, you just have to do it yourself. But as far as finding things, I’ve had it find stuff that other things completely ignore.
Josh Anderson:
Again, it’s not going to protect you real time because you could still get stuff on your computer, but it does a good job of finding it and then kind of getting rid of it and it’s free. Now I used to use, I can’t remember the name of it. I don’t remember the name of it all, but I used to use a subscription kind of service that I paid for yearly on my home PC and it did great. But I really feel like some of the free tools are almost good enough now.
Tracy Castillo:
The computers that we give away through the depot. We just have the standard micro Windows Defender on them. Typically don’t give very much back for needing repair for viruses, it does a good job. What we do find is individuals not knowing what to do on the internet. And so just getting themselves in trouble with some of their internet safety. We use Malwarebytes and we have a link on our website to Malwarebytes, so you can get the good new version of it and you’re not mistyping it and get brought to something else and getting some bloatware. But we have that, we run those on computers.
Tracy Castillo:
Also, if you go to our website, eastersealstech.com/depotl for depot links. We have some links in there with tutorials on internet safety. We have a lot of videos that we show every consumer that gets a computer from us will have access to that site. We have it bookmarked in their web browser. We tell them, go to these website or go to the Comcast Internet Essentials, watch these videos, learn how to make yourself a safe password, understand some of just the basic stuff to keep your computer safe while they’re online.
Belva Smith:
This is kind of a repeat question. I think we’ve probably answered this question at least two or three times since we’ve been doing ATFAQ. And I remember, oh gosh, probably 10 years ago, I absolutely hated to set up a new computer that had Norton antivirus on it. One of the first things that I would do is start trying to figure out how to remove it. And then it became, what’s the next one? Not Norton, but the other one, basically the same thing-
Josh Anderson:
McAfee.
Belva Smith:
… [inaudible 00:39:23] on there. McAfee. I was trying to figure out-
Tracy Castillo:
Pop-up after pop-up.
Belva Smith:
… how to remove it. Because it used to be that they would interfere so much with any kind of adaptive software. They would never fail. They would always find an important file and consider it to be dangerous and want to remove it. But they also include a lot of bloatware. Personally I tell each and every person who ask me, if they say, “What antivirus programs should I buy?” I say, “What computer are you using, a Mac or Windows?” If you’re using windows, the internet security, the whatever they’re calling it today, because it seems like they change it from Windows Defender to Internet Security frequently, that’s more than enough.
Belva Smith:
I too will suggest if necessary the Malwarebytes. I am not a fan of Malwarebytes. Because Tracy, as you just mentioned, it’s very easy to end up getting yourself in trouble trying to download that, because there’s a lot of fake websites that make themselves look like Malwarebytes and they’re not.
Tracy Castillo:
I give you the website for our website. If you go to eastersealstech.com/depotd for downloads, you’ll find a link to our Malwarebytes.
Belva Smith:
Well, and I would suggest to anyone who’s thinking about downloading it, do that because it is very easy to get yourself in trouble trying to get that program. But again [crosstalk 00:40:58].
Josh Anderson:
And Belva, I’ll jump in there. That’s true for everything.
Belva Smith:
Absolutely.
Josh Anderson:
Because I remember one fall I think I spent my entire time going to college kids who were visually impaired who had tried to download Google Chrome and had downloaded some weird adware thing that just over their whole freaking computer. And they were just trying to get Google Chrome. So yeah, be careful, take Belva’s advice, anything you’re downloading, double check the actual website you’re going to and everything, because that’s one of the easiest tricks or the oldest tricks in the book I guess that they have is to just mask their site and get you to download something bad.
Belva Smith:
I honestly, I mean, I’m by no means declaring myself any kind of security officer of any, because there’s a whole lot about internet security that I don’t know and don’t pretend to know. But what I do know is a whole lot of people that are running windows machines and they’re running Mac machines and they’re not paying for an antivirus program, they’re simply using what’s on the machine and it works pretty darn good for him. There’s absolutely none. I don’t care how expensive they are, whatever they are. There’s absolutely nothing that’s going to guarantee that you won’t get a virus or that you won’t get hacked or whatever, unless you just stay off the internet. As Tracy mentioned, and I would definitely … in fact, Tracy, I want you to tell us that again, because I will share that with a lot of my clients. I think internet safety is something that we should all be taught and yet none of us really are. We just get a computer, connect to the internet and take off. So yeah, that’s what I do. I use the free stuff and it works good.
Tracy Castillo:
Yeah. Those websites, again, our eastersealstech.com/depotd, that’s D-E-P-O-T-D. And that’ll give you all our downloads that we put on our free computers. You’re going to get Malwarebytes, you’ll see CCleaner and the few others that we have there. I think we may even have a Google Chrome link there, and these are all links to good sites. We have volunteers that installed the software on the computer, so we wanted to make an easy site where they could find these programs. And then if you do the same website, eastersealstech.com/depot, D-E-P-O-T-L, that’s links, the depot links, you’ll find all our links to a lot of the tutorials that are out there.
Belva Smith:
Thank you.
Tracy Castillo:
You’re welcome.
Brian Norton:
Yeah. Now that’s a really great question. I think it’s important to kind of revisit that because people’s creativity, sneakiness or whatever changes over the years and they get … it never seems to amaze me that these things continue to come out and there’s no way to really stop those things. And so being protected and being safe, making sure that you’re secure is super important. And so certainly something to kind of continue to talk about and keep top of mind as you guys use computers or tablets, or even in this mobile device world, what’s happening with those devices and can those be hacked. Smart digital assistants, everything’s going online, which opens up vulnerabilities to being hacked and to being taken advantage of in those ways, and so great question.
Brian Norton:
One, I let folks know that we would love to continue to hear from you. Give us your questions, leave us your feedback. You can do that on our listener line. That’s (317) 721-7124. Send us a tweet with the hashtag ATFAQ or email us at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org. Again, without your questions, we don’t have a show, so be a part of it. Love to thank you guys for being here with us today. Want to go around the room and just give folks a chance to say goodbye to everyone. Tracy, you want to say goodbye?
Tracy Castillo:
Yeah. Bye everyone, [inaudible 00:45:04].
Brian Norton:
Excellent. And then Belva.
Belva Smith:
See you guys in a couple of weeks, I guess.
Brian Norton:
Yeah. And then Josh.
Josh Anderson:
Till next time friends, can’t wait to see you.
Brian Norton:
And it seems like every week we have at least one blooper, so here you go.
Josh Anderson:
Any time you say interesting, you never sound like it’s actually interesting. I’m so intrigued.
Tracy Castillo:
All right, everybody hang up for Belva has anything to say. [inaudible 00:45:31].
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 in the Indata Project. ATFAQ is a proud member of the accessibility channel. Find more of our shows at www.accessibilitychannel.com.