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Your weekly dose of information that keeps you up to date on the latest developments in the field of technology designed to assist people with disabilities and special needs.
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Speaker 1:
Happy holidays from the Assistive Technology Center at Easterseals Crossroads. This is your Assistive Technology Update.
Josh Anderson:
Well, that music can mean only one thing. Here we are again at our annual holiday gift giving guide show. This year I’m joined, unfortunately remotely, by some very special guests. I have Nikol Prieto, Brian Norton, and new to the show this year, Mr. David Dreith.
Josh Anderson:
I want to be the first to welcome you all to the show today, and hopefully, maybe next year we can do this in person, but we are doing this remote. So before we get started, could you take a little bit of time and just introduce yourselves to our listeners? Nikol, since I know this is your favorite time of year, I will go ahead and let you introduce yourself first.
Nikol Prieto:
I was trying to think about how many of these we’ve done. It’s been, I think I’ve been a guest on every single one since we started. So I’m not sure, but I’m happy to be here. Although I think it’s a little soon to celebrate Christmas since we have not hit Halloween yet, but glad to be with you guys.
Nikol Prieto:
I am Nikol Prieto. I’m the community outreach coordinator for the INDATA Project at Easterseals Crossroads. My job is to educate people about our services and get the word out about assistive technology.
Josh Anderson:
We love having you here, Nikol. I think, now this is my third or fourth one, but I believe this is the ninth maybe or somewhere in there. So yeah, it’s been going on quite a while. Well, David, we’ll let you go ahead and go next. Can you introduce yourselves to our listeners?
David Dreith:
Yes, I’m David Dreith. I’m the relatively new, as Josh mentioned, CEO here at Easterseals Crossroads. Started on March 2nd, so it’s been an interesting journey since I’ve started here. But I have some background in tech and even actually my first job in 1992 involved assistive technology. So this is a subject near and dear to my heart.
Josh Anderson:
We’re very happy to have you on the show. I can only imagine what it’s like starting at a new organization during these odd times, but you’ve done great and we love having you here, and we’re very happy to have you on the show. Brian, we’ll go ahead and end with you. Can you go ahead and introduce yourself to our listeners?
Brian Norton:
Sure, yeah. Again, Brian Norton, I’m the director of assistive technology here at Easterseals Crossroads. With the INDATA project, I’ve been here at Easterseals for 24 years, going on 24 years, this February and great place to be. Love what we get to do, assistive technology is a passion of mine. Finding ways to make tech help people be more independent in their everyday lives.
Brian Norton:
So really excited about this show. This is one of my favorite times of the year. I’ve not been involved with as many as Nikol has, but certainly been involved in a few. It’s just a really great opportunity to hear about a lot of great products.
Josh Anderson:
Well, to start off the show today, let’s talk about a little bit of actual assistive technology. Nikol, could you start off by talking a little bit about ZoomText and the new annual license they have available?
Nikol Prieto:
Absolutely. Many of our listeners probably already know, but I’ll just give a little background. ZoomText is a magnification and screen reading software for individuals who have low vision. It’s used to magnify and enlarge everything you see on your computer screen, and it also has a reader that can automatically read documents, webpages, and emails.
Nikol Prieto:
That software has tons of great features. It can magnify print 36 times the size, has image reading options. It actually has typing echo, which will echo and say what you’re typing and my mouse echo, which automatically reads the text beneath the mouse pointer. So just a lot of cool things that you can do with that.
Nikol Prieto:
It’s usually pretty expensive, the software is usually 500 to $700 for the software. But now they’ve started this really cool option of annual licensures. You can get an annual license, They have two different ones. They have a home annual license and a student annual license, and they’re both $80 per year. I will let you know that they’re only available to users in the United States.
Nikol Prieto:
The difference between those is the home annual license can be used on a personal non-commercial PC, and that can be installed on three PCs. Then the student annual license can be used for school or home use, and it can be installed on one PC. So that software is through Freedom Scientific. You can find more information on their website, which is Freedom Scientific.com.
Nikol Prieto:
What’s really cool about that is, during your annual license period, it will always give you the updates, no additional charge for that. So really cool software and they do have perpetual licenses as well and license for colleges and employers. But the really neat thing about that is they’ve started that annual license and that’s $80 per year.
Josh Anderson:
That’s an excellent thing because I know especially for a lot of the folks we work with who might use some of this assistive technology at work, trying to get this stuff for home is almost impossible. Along with that annual license for ZoomText, they’re also offering annual licenses for JAWS and ZoomText fusion.
Josh Anderson:
JAWS is $90 a year and Fusion is 160. JAWS is a full-on screen reader, and then Fusion is actually a mixture of JAWS and ZoomText. So it kind of gives you the features of both of those. Now, if you were to buy this software outright, it’d cost you $1000 or more for JAWS and $1400 or more for Fusion. With that, you’re kind of stuck with the version you got, unless you buy an SMA, which is a software maintenance agreement, which gets you the three next versions.
Josh Anderson:
But with this yearly license, you can get the newest version the whole time. So much more cost-effective and really kind of opens this up for folks to get their hands on the software at home at a price that they can actually afford.
Josh Anderson:
I believe these all can all be purchased in a one, three, or a five-year license. So you could go ahead and buy five years and not have to worry about it for quite a while. As Nikol said, those are all available at Freedom Scientific.com.
Josh Anderson:
Brian, you found something pretty cool that I really want to hear about. It’s called the Upsee Mobility Harness. Tell us about that.
Brian Norton:
Yeah, so the Upsee Mobility Harness, it’s really a great tool, is really designed for kids with special needs and allow their parents to kind of assist them with gradual weight-bearing, standing, and walking. I have a nephew who has some neuromuscular issues, and so it’s been great for his parents, my sister-in-law and brother-in-law, to be able to work with him, to be able to help him with some of those needs.
Brian Norton:
So it’s suitable for children aged one through eight. It has a maximum user weight of about 55 pounds. You can kind of refer to the online, if you go to Firefly Friends.com, there’s lots of great information about that. You can kind of choose between different sizes and they kind of help sort that out for you. It’s durable. It’s machine washable, it’s lightweight, it’s portable.
Brian Norton:
Really, I think it’s just an amazing tool to be able to help with some of those therapy needs that kids might have. For parents to be able to kind of be involved in that process, to be able to help facilitate some of that stuff. So I know for my nephew, it’s been something that we’ve been looking at and considering, and it just seems like a really great tool.
Brian Norton:
It is a little expensive. It’s about $535. Again, available from Firefly Friends.com. They got a lot of different products up there. We’ve seen some of their products. We knew some of their products as a family, and they’re really, really great. Durable and really can help again, parents get involved in that therapy process with their kids. This is just a great way for kids to be able to kind of practice with that weight-bearing, standing, and walking with again, the assistance of an adult.
Josh Anderson:
Well, that’s especially great at this time, because everything we went through with lockdowns and PT, OT, all that stuff, having to be remote and kids not being able to actually get in to use stuff. That’d be great to have something like that at home to be able to continue working towards your goals and in mobility.
Brian Norton:
Yeah, absolutely. If you go to their website, they’ve got videos and a lot of great customer reviews. So if you want to learn more about it, check out that website. Again, Firefly Friends.com. Again, really, really cool tool. I’m just very impressed with it, and I think it’d be a revelation for many kids who have those neuromuscular disorders.
Josh Anderson:
David, you found something new from OrCam, the OrCam Read. Could you tell us about that?
David Dreith:
Yeah, so I looked at the website OrCam.com and just was checking out the product and saw something in the way of text reading that I had never seen before. It’s a handheld device. It’s only about an ounce and a half, I mean, is what it weighs. It’s lightweight. It’ll scan entire pages of texts and read them out loud.
David Dreith:
If you watch the how to videos on their website, you can see that it has a lot of other capabilities. It can read signage for those that are out and about. What I found very impressive about it is the way it works, it is so versatile in who would want to use this. I mean, obviously your first thought is somebody with a visual impairment, especially those types of visual impairments that prevent people from reading for long periods of time, et cetera. But it also is a tool that can be used for people with very specific learning disabilities like dyslexia.
David Dreith:
Then I also think about this as how much of assistive technology also has use by the general public. When I was in college, I was an engineering major, but I also had a major in history and the amounts of academic texts that I had to read was insane. You get to that late at night and you found yourself reading three pages without comprehending any of it. This would have been a very useful tool for me then.
David Dreith:
It’s a bit pricey at a little less than $2000, but it has different settings that you can scan headlines, you can read the whole page. Then it’s rechargeable and very portable.
Josh Anderson:
David, while I was actually kind of looking at this on OrCam, I find another new device that would kind of be a good help to me. I have the absolute hardest time remembering people’s names, and I’ve kind of tried all the tricks. They say, as soon as they tell you your name, go ahead and repeat it. Well, that works great, except for, I forget it by the time it leaves their lips, it seems like.
Josh Anderson:
So OrCam has a new device called the MyMe. The MyMe again is very small, kind of close to the size of the OrCam Read. It’s a wearable device, you kind of wear on your lapel or clip on somewhere, and it uses artificial intelligence to instantly recognize colleagues, clients, contacts, and really anyone’s face that it’s facing.
Josh Anderson:
Now I must admit, I did not find out if it can recognize them with masks on, which I guess is kind of a new thing that we might have to kind of think about. But it’s also able to tell you more information than just who that person is. It can tell you the last time you saw them and in what context you actually saw them the last.
Josh Anderson:
It can send all this information to your phone or to a smartwatch through an app. It features integration with LinkedIn, calendar tracking, face recognition, name tag capture, and probably my favorite part is it can even give you icebreakers. So I don’t really know if it knows which jokes are appropriate to tell to which person by the last time you saw them, but still it’s pretty cool.
Josh Anderson:
It’s currently about $399. So a little bit cheaper than kind of the Read, but of course, maybe not as useful for some different disabilities. But I could see how this could really help folks with different visual impairments. Also, maybe with some different anxiety disorders, just because I know again, for me remembering names is by far the hardest part.
Josh Anderson:
I can remember faces. I know I’ve met people. I could probably even tell you where I met them, but I’ll be darned if I can remember their name half the time. Always finding a name tag on somebody isn’t quite a possibility. So that’s the OrCam MyMe and you can find it over OrCam.com as well.
Brian Norton:
Josh, I’ll just throw in there. This is Brian. I’ve always been impressed with OrCam and the products that they have. I find them really useful because they’re a little bit more discreet than some of the other products that might be out there, attaching to your eyeglasses or something that’s handheld you can throw in your pocket, move around with. So I’m glad you guys are talked about these two particular products because it’s a great company and they have some great products.
Josh Anderson:
They really do. I know their original device, the OrCam oh, what is it? MyEye. Is that what?
Brian Norton:
MyEye, yup.
Josh Anderson:
Thank you so much. I was hoping I’d remember the name. But I know with it, a lot of the times if it had updates or anything like that, the person automatically got them. You know what I mean? It wasn’t like you bought this device and a year later, it was obsolete.
Josh Anderson:
Of course, they’ve come up with the new version since then, but they still pushed updates and I believe they still support some of the older versions. So in this world of technology where things change so darn fast, it’s nice to know that a company still kind of looks out for you and makes sure that you have what you need.
Josh Anderson:
All right, guys, we talked a little bit about technology, but this is also a holiday show. So we’ve got to ask some questions about the holidays, if nothing else, just to annoy Nikol. So we’ll start off with a question and we’ll just give this to Nikol first too. Nikol, what type of decorations are you putting up this year? When are you putting them up? Kind of more importantly, are you putting up more or less than in years past? We’re talking about Christmas, not Halloween, Nikol.
Nikol Prieto:
Well, once I take down the 22 tubs of Halloween decorations that I have, I will definitely put up a Christmas tree. That is my favorite. I love sitting in a dark room with the Christmas tree all lit up. So I would say a Christmas tree, stockings of course, and a few other things.
Nikol Prieto:
So about the same as usual, but I’ve got to get those Halloween decorations down first. I’ve enjoyed those September and October. I am a firm believer in not putting the decorations up until the day after Thanksgiving.
Josh Anderson:
I hear you there. David, what about you?
David Dreith:
Well, this is an interesting year. Not only starting a new job here, but living in a new city here in Indianapolis. My family still lives in Cincinnati while my son finishes high school. So I have a grand total of one Christmas ornament in my possession here in Indiana at this point.
David Dreith:
Typically, I like lights, there will be some lights figured in somehow, some way just in decorating. As far as when, I’m with Nikol, it has to be at least the day after Thanksgiving and probably a little later for me. I mean, I’m a December kid and always kind of grew up waiting until after my birthday before I did any decorations.
Josh Anderson:
Yeah. I imagine that it’s kind of hard and hopefully you find at least a little tree for that one ornament to go on. Brian, what about you?
Brian Norton:
Well, in honor of Lee Corso and the football season we’re in, not so fast because in my family, we start early. In fact, we put up our decorations actually this week. So right before Halloween, Nikol, sorry about that. We figure if we’re going to go through all the trouble, we might as well enjoy them as much as we can.
Brian Norton:
So much like you might have 22 tubs of Halloween decorations, we probably have about 22 tubs of Christmas decorations. So as far as the types of decorations we’re going to put up, it’s mostly on the outside. It’s mostly lights, maybe with a wreath or two.
Brian Norton:
Then on the inside of our house, we kind of go all out. We have the tree, we have the manger, we have garland, and so much more. It’s a little bit of overkill and it does take quite a bit of time to kind of put things away at the end of the season. But again, we had it up for three months. So it’ll be good to be able to take it down.
Brian Norton:
But really I don’t see this year being any different than past year. We’ll probably put up everything that we have always put up, especially now that we have the time because my kids are in a hybrid school season and that’s all they think about these days. Have been begging and prodding me to be able to pull that stuff out this week. So we’ll be getting started very, very soon.
Josh Anderson:
I think I am actually waiting until right around Thanksgiving time to put mine up. I’m not sure if I’ll get the lights up outside this year, just because we’re kind of looking to get a new roof and gutters, and the last thing I want is for them to replace the gutters while I have all those darn lights hung up there. That’s probably going to not make them too awful happy and I doubt they’ll put them back up for free, but I might check on that. That might not be a bad way to go.
Josh Anderson:
But we’re definitely doing the tree and all the kind of things inside. My daughter will be two by the time this show comes out. So I’m sure that once I can teach her not to pull the tree over on herself, it will be a very good holiday, but I’m looking forward to her actually seeing all the lights and everything. Because I’m sure she’ll really like those and it’ll be really great.
Josh Anderson:
We move on to our next section. We can’t really talk about technology without talking at least a little bit about smart home, smart home assistance, and those. Just because these things are always updated and there’s new ones coming out all the time. So, Nikol, you kind of found that Amazon has a new Echo Show 10 coming out. What’s that all about?
Nikol Prieto:
Well, it’s pretty cool. So for anyone who doesn’t know what an Amazon Echo Show is, it’s an Alexa enabled HD smart display. It’s got a built in camera. What’s really cool about the Echo Show 10 is that it has this motion sensor, so the screen will follow you around. So it will track you when you’re having a video call and that way they never lose you out of the screen and also moves around with you.
Nikol Prieto:
Let’s say, if you were cooking in the kitchen, so it can follow you around. It’s probably easier to ask what Amazon Echo can’t do than can do, but so many cool things you can do. You can look up recipes, it can do conversions of measurements in the kitchen. You can make video calls. Just that’s so wonderful, especially for someone using sign language. Someone with a physical limitation might not be able to look up a recipe in a book. But they can just use a verbal command to ask Alexa to tell them the recipe and kind of cook along with them.
Nikol Prieto:
Also, great to control your environment, to make it a smart home. You can control your lights and thermostat through that. So it’s just super neat. There are 249.99. Comes in both charcoal or white, and really the big new feature is a better speakers, a 10.1 inch screen, and the motion sensor that will follow, the screen will follow you around.
Josh Anderson:
That motion sensor’s great because I know for some folks who want to video call and things, especially if you’re in a wheelchair, or have any kind of mobility challenges, making sure that you’re lined up perfectly in front of that thing can be a bit of a challenge. So actually having it be able to follow you.
Josh Anderson:
Nikol kind of brought up using sign language on there. And I’ve, I’ve worked with some folks with hearing impairments or maybe even kind of speech impairments who say, “I can’t really use an Amazon Echo because it’s all voice controlled.” Well, those touch screen ones actually do have a touch screen on it. So you can do everything you can do with your voice straight there from the screen.
Josh Anderson:
So they are very adaptive devices. They’re especially helpful in this world of social distancing and staying away from folks, being able to still connect and kind of stay as close to family as we can.
Brian Norton:
Yeah. Josh, I was going to also mention it’s a little creepy if you ask me too just to have that screen follow you around. Does anybody get creeped out with that?
Josh Anderson:
Brian, you’re talking to the person who owns two Echo Dots that are both unplugged and in drawers. I’m not the person to ask.
Nikol Prieto:
That’s a great point to point out, is that you can turn those things off. You can disconnect the microphone and the camera with just a press of the button. You also have a built-in shutter that you can just close. So the camera’s not on you, if you just want to use the voice commands.
Nikol Prieto:
So there’s some privacy things there. It is a little creepy. But I think with video calls, I know I like to multitask while I’m doing things. So if they can follow me around while I’m having a video chat with family, I can get two things done at once.
Brian Norton:
Gotcha.
Josh Anderson:
Definitely. Brian, they’re also changing the Echo Dot. Could you tell us about the new Echo Dot and the kids’ version of the new Echo Dot?
Brian Norton:
Yeah. I’m kind of excited about this. It’s a different look. So the all new fourth generation Echo Dot, and we’ll talk about the kids Echo Dot here in a second, but it no longer looks like a hockey puck. It’s now kind of more of a ball shaped device. So it’s got a little bit bigger speaker and you get a little bit more oomph when you’re listening to music and doing some other things. Maybe having it read a book to you.
Brian Norton:
It’s a little more expensive. It’s 49.99, much like what Nikol mentioned with that Amazon Echo 10 Show device. It is a little bit more expensive. You can get the third gen Echo devices for about 29.99 right now, but offers you all the same things that the other Echo Dots have and everything except for the screen that the Echo Show has, the one that Nikol mentioned.
Brian Norton:
The new kid’s edition is a little bit more expensive than just the regular fourth gen, because it’s a little bit different. Same design, it’s still ball shaped. It’s not a hockey puck or looks any different than the fourth gen one that we just described, but it’s 59.99. It actually has some fun designs built onto them. So you can get it where it has a panda face on it or a tiger face on it, but it comes with some things that are specific for kids.
Brian Norton:
So what it will do is it’ll come with a year free of Amazon Kids Plus, which will give your kids access to 1000s of hours of kid-friendly audio books, interactive games, educational skills. They can watch movies, other kinds of things through this Amazon Kids Plus.
Brian Norton:
That Amazon Kids Plus subscription is cross-platform too. So if they have a Fire tablet or some sort of table device, iPad, or Android tablet, they would be able to access Amazon Kids Plus through those as well, in addition to the Amazon Echo kid device.
Brian Norton:
I would assume parents are a little bit concerned just having those devices, which, Josh, you mentioned having yours unplugged in a drawer, we all have privacy concerns. Parental controls are important. One of the things that these devices do have, is they do come with some easy to use parental controls, where you can kind of set daily time limits. You can filter explicit songs.
Brian Norton:
Really you can review all of the activity because it gives you kind of what they’re calling as Amazon Parent Dashboard. So you can kind of see the different activities that your kids are using and doing with that particular device.
Brian Norton:
As far as the privacy is concerned, much like with the Echo Show, you’ve got some different things to be able to turn certain things off. What they describe as it comes with multiple layers of privacy and protection. One of those things is a button on the device that will electronically disconnect the microphone when it’s not in use. So if you’re not using it, press the button, the microphone shuts off. It doesn’t hear anything that you say until you want to interact with it again.
Brian Norton:
So really kind of excited about the different shape and design. I think it’s going to be better. The kids’ one is just really kind of cool looking. You got to go check it out. Amazon.com, look up the Kids Echo Dot. It’s a great, fantastic design. I think it would be really something that kids want to interact with and be able to kind of get access to a lot of great material.
Josh Anderson:
They’re just amazing access devices just because, Nikol said, you can control your entire home with these things and everything else. I remember one person telling me a story about their daughter had a very kind of thick speech impediment just due to their disability, but wanted to interact with the Amazon Echo.
Josh Anderson:
But no matter how many times she said the name of the device, it wouldn’t understand. So you just kept trying and trying and trying, and actually started speaking better because she was speaking slower, trying to enunciate more, so that the device would understand. So I always think it’s kind of funny that it worked as kind of a poor man’s SLP, I guess, just to kind of help out.
Josh Anderson:
So it’s amazing how some things you don’t think of as assistive technology can still maybe even have some different other uses. Nikol, you found, we’ve talked about Tile on here before, but you found some new ones, the Tile Stickers. Tell us about those.
Nikol Prieto:
Yeah. So Tiles, we have talked about before. They’re so cool and you attach them to anything you don’t want to lose, and they’re Bluetooth enabled trackers. So you can attach it to your phone, your wallet, your keys, your bicycle. You can stick it really anywhere.
Nikol Prieto:
So now they’ve come out with Tile Stickers. So they’re just much smaller than the original Tile and you can stick them anywhere. Once you stick them on there, you use the app and you’re able to then send a signal. It’s kind of like Find My Phone, same concept. You can send a signal to it and it will beep so you can start listening for the beep and track that down.
Nikol Prieto:
It also has the last known location that you can see through the app. It works with iOS and Android devices. I will let you know though that you do have a limit, like it’s a three-year battery life. So they’ll be good for three years and then you would need to buy them again.
Nikol Prieto:
But they’re pretty reasonable. There’s a two-pack of Tile for 39.99 and there’s a four-pack on sale for $59. They’re waterproof and like I said, have a three-year battery and you’re able to find all that information The Tile App.com.
David Dreith:
I have two teenagers. I can use these stickers on them?
Nikol Prieto:
Right. Absolutely.
Josh Anderson:
Yeah. I was about to bring that up, because, Brian, where did you put a Tile at?
Brian Norton:
I’ve put them lots of different places, which one are you referring to?
Josh Anderson:
The one in your daughter’s backpack.
Brian Norton:
Yeah. There you go. Yeah, I have since upgraded. So what I love about Tiles is initially I did put one in my daughter’s backpack, so I can kind of keep track with her. Especially because at that point, I was at work and my daughter would come home. She would get home before both my wife and I would get home. So we wanted to know that she had gotten home.
Brian Norton:
So we would then get a notification when she got to a certain place and we can be able to then kind of do a little bit of tracking if you will, just making sure she was safe, and we knew where she was. Now we use an app called Life 360, or to actually just to find my iPhone. She finally was of age enough to be able to get a phone. We waited until she was 13 and now got her a phone. So now we’re able to kind of track her that way.
Brian Norton:
But not to be one of those imposing parents, over the shoulder parents, but just really, in this day and age, safety. So we just wanted to be able to track her a little bit. But I’ve got them in my wallet. I’ve had them on my keys. I’m notorious for losing things and not being able to kind of remember where I put them. Even though when I put them where I did put them, it was because I would remember where they were. So I don’t know if anybody else is like that, but that’s definitely me.
Josh Anderson:
Well, folks, that’s all the time we have for today. Join us next week for more of our holiday gift guide.
Josh Anderson:
Do you have a question about assistive technology? Do you have a suggestion for someone we should interview on Assistive Technology Update? If you do, call our listener line at 317-721-7124. Shoot us a note on Twitter at INDATA Project, or check us out on Facebook.
Josh Anderson:
Are you looking for a transcript or show notes? Head on over to our website at www dot Easterseals Tech.com. Assistive Tech Update is a proud member of the Accessibility Channel. For more shows like this, plus so much more, head over to Accessibility Channel.com.
Josh Anderson:
The views expressed by our guests are not necessarily that of this host or the INDATA Project. This has been your Assistive Technology Update. I’m Josh Anderson with the INDATA Project at Easterseals Crossroads in Indianapolis, Indiana. Thank you so much for listening and we’ll see you next time.