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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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Hi, my name is RJ Cooper and I’m a technologist specializing in special needs since 1983. Many people credit me with helping to create the field we now call assistive technology, and this is your Assistive Technology Update.Josh Anderson:
Hello and welcome to your Assistive Technology Update, a weekly dose of information that keeps you up to date on the latest developments in the field of technology designed to assist individuals with disabilities and special needs. I’m your host, Josh Anderson with the INDATA Project at Easterseals Crossroads in beautiful Indianapolis, Indiana. Welcome to episode 503 of Assistive Technology Update scheduled to be released on January 15th, 2021.
Josh Anderson:
On today’s show we could not be more excited to have a bit of a legend in the 80 biz. RJ Cooper is on from RJ Cooper & Associates to talk about, well, all kinds of different things AT related. Please remember that we always welcome your feedback and we always want to hear from you so you can send us an email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org, call our listener line at (317) 721-7124 or shoot us a line on Twitter @INDATAproject. Please contact us if you have a question, a comment, or perhaps someone that we should try to have on the show for an interview. We get some of our best ideas for guests from you, our listeners. So please reach out. Now, let’s go ahead and get on with the show.
Josh Anderson:
As I’ve told you before, one of my favorite events of the year is the ATIA Annual Conference. Every year I look forward to meeting with a global community of folks who use assistive technology to enhance their lives or the lives of their family, friends, students, or clients. Now, like so many other events, this year the conference will be held online. This virtual format means there’s more opportunities for flexible scheduling and registration options. And I hope that means each of you will join me online for ATIA this winter. ATIA 2021: AT Connected will be held online January 25th through the 28th and February 1st through the 4th of 2021. The conference will feature the same professional development opportunities we’ve all come to rely on with educational strands dedicated to AAC, vision and hearing technologies, education and learning, and AT for physical access and participation.
Josh Anderson:
Plus leading assistive technology companies will be showcasing the latest in AT. There will be CEUs available and more than 150 education courses. And there are a ton of flexible scheduling options. So you can attend some sessions live and catch up on recorded sessions that will be available through June of 2021. This year there’s also a range of registration options, including full conference, single strand, one day and even a free option. In addition, you can also join into the daily social activities with your friends and colleagues. I will be attending and I really hope to see all of you there. You can learn more by visiting atia.org/atupdate. Again, that’s atia.org/atupdate. And I’ll see you all ATIA in January.
Josh Anderson:
Folks, have you ever been interested in attending one of our INDATA full day trainings? Well, we have one coming up on January 19th from 9:00 AM to 2:00 PM where members of the PATINS Project here in Indiana will present on assistive technology tools and supports for remote learning. We will put a link over to the show notes where you can go and register for this trainings as well as a link to find out about our upcoming trainings for the rest of the year. Of course, due to COVID, all of these trainings will be completely online, but if you do register and attend the trainings you can get CEUs. So again, we’ll put links to these over in our show notes.
Josh Anderson:
Do you find yourself a little bit more time on your hands? Maybe you’re really busy and only have a little bit of time to listen to podcast or maybe listening to this has you thinking, well, what about this? What about that? Well, if you’re short on time, or if you have questions about assistive technology, we have other podcasts that might just fit your needs. The first one is Accessibility Minute. This one minute-long podcast gives you a little taste of assistive technology and really kind of wet your whistle to gather you go out and find out more about a piece of technology and how it might help those you work with yourself or maybe a friend or family member.
Josh Anderson:
If you happen to have questions about assistive technology, we have Assistive Technology Frequently Asked Questions or ATFAQ. The show is hosted by Brian Norton and features yours truly along with Belva Smith and Tracy Castillo as we all talk about assistive technology with questions that come in from email, phone calls, and other means. We also don’t always know the answer. So it’s very important that we have listeners that can help us out with some of those questions, because while we like to think every once in a while that we may know everything, we’re proven wrong, almost daily on that one. So if you’re looking for more podcasts to listen to, if you’re short on time and need a really quick podcast, or if you have questions about assistive technology, make sure to check out Accessibility Minute and Assistive Technology Frequently Asked Questions wherever you get your podcasts.
Josh Anderson:
Folks, for those in the assistive technology and accessibility community, my guest today will need no introduction. He was a guest on this show back in 2016 and has been a fixture and innovator in technology to assist individuals with disabilities for many years before that. I’ve been aware of his work and I’m super excited to have RJ Cooper from RJ Cooper & Associates on the show today. RJ, welcome to the show.
RJ Cooper:
Thank you very much, Josh. I’m excited to be here.
Josh Anderson:
And I’m really excited to get to talk to you just because your experience and everything is a great resource to folks. So let’s start off by just learning a little bit about you, kind of what’s your background and how did you end up in this wonderful world of assistive technology?
RJ Cooper:
I was in computer science with electrical engineering at the University of Utah in the early ’80s, and I wanted to do something different with it. And after racking my brains a bit, I came up with the novel idea at the time of using technology for people with disabilities. I visited the Department of Voc Rehab in Utah and then ended up working up at the U of U Medical Center where I was put in touch with a young lady named Sarah, who was the victim of a drunk driving accident right after prom. And she was in a coma for seven years.
Josh Anderson:
My gosh.
RJ Cooper:
And I happened to walk in asking them about computers and special needs. And they said, “What can you do with Sarah?” So I rigged up an old Apple IIe, an echo speech synthesizer, a large TASH King Keyboard. And within two weeks I had her creatively spelling out some very simple messages that everybody was impressed with. After a little while, Utah, the whole state climbed on board, and then I moved to California and then it became national and then international. And thankfully I’m still thought of as an innovator and a creative sort of guy in coming up with solutions for people with severe special needs.
Josh Anderson:
I love that you got to help Sarah, but just think that that little bit that helped her is now able to help so many. That is super cool. RJ, tell us a little bit about your work. What is RJ Cooper & Associates?
RJ Cooper:
I started creating software for the Apple IIe, then the Apple IIGS and then Windows and Mac in the ’90s. This was learning software for people with very early minds. Then I started branching out a little into more literacy, very early literacy though. I’ve always been interested in that non-traditional population, that normal, typical, whatever word you’d like to use software addresses and mine from the get-go always addressed a little earlier than that. Other companies have joined that within the last 10 years, especially since the iPad came out and everybody’s making their own apps because there’s an app for that. So I switched over to hardware when the iPad came out and we came out with iPad accessories cases, mounts stands, music apps, different ways for people to control their home environment all through the iPad. I still continue to offer the PC products and the Mac products, but by and large, the special needs community has turned towards the iPad as the tool of choice. And so I continued to make accessories for the iPad specifically for special needs.
Josh Anderson:
Excellent. I do have to agree with you that the iPad was definitely a big step in kind of consumer good that could be accessible and things. And you’ve been doing this for quite a while. So I kind of love to get just some of your opinions on what do you think kind of the biggest steps forward that the world has made in the world of assistive technology?
RJ Cooper:
Well, sadly the diagnosis, as well as prognosis, it’s not all that positive, even though I’m a pro of this field. If you walk around your daily life, you rarely see any assistive technology employed in everyday situations. In other words, if you walk into Albertsons or whatever your supermarket is, if ever you’ve seen anybody using an actual communication device, an AAC device, I’d be very surprised. Now we’ve been in this field for over 40 years now, and the fact that it hasn’t penetrated to everyday life, that’s sort of disturbing. I continue to do what I do because I really believe in quality of life. But as far as the world changing as per assistive technology, it’s very pocketed. You have little pockets here and there, there are some special needs camps, of course, where the technology is prevalent. But other than that in regular, everyday life, it’s rare that you see any type of assistive technology employed, but we continue, as I say, because quality of life is very important.
RJ Cooper:
I wish that we had more. We had several TV shows over the course of the past, maybe 20 years that dealt with special needs on TV. They didn’t last long. And one proclaim that it was about special needs technology, which lasted even shorter. So we really haven’t seen real media blitzes of assistive technology either, even though, Josh, you and I know that we’ve individually made great breakthroughs with individuals around the world where they were not doing something before, and then we apply assistive technology and all of a sudden they’re able to do that thing. So those are very exciting things, but as far as the world changing and seeing assistive technology as an everyday thing, that just doesn’t happen as we figured it would.
Josh Anderson:
Now you bring up a really good point. I think a lot of us in this field probably don’t even realize that because we are very, very pocketed and we do see it every day in our jobs, but yeah, you’re right. Whenever I’m out at the grocery store or anything like that, very, very rarely do I see it. And sometimes I do see people, individuals that maybe have a disability, I see a barrier that work there or shopping that can really benefit from that. And it’s sad that they don’t even know it exists. And I think that’s one of the worst parts.
RJ Cooper:
And that’s 40 years into it already. There’s really no excuse. I’m not sure where the failure lay, but 40 years into any field, you should see it out into the regular populations mainstream.
Josh Anderson:
Oh yeah. You know, when I first started in this industry, I started as a job coach and I didn’t know what assistive technology was until I worked with someone who used it. And I was like, Oh my God, how does this not even part of my training when I became a job coach to know that these things are there?
RJ Cooper:
I still get a phone call or email at least once a week, usually more for people that didn’t know it exists, had never heard of me, didn’t have any idea even what the initials AAC stood for. I was just contacted by somebody from Sweden’s with ALS yesterday. And he had no idea that these fields of AAC, alternative and augmentative communication and AT, assistive technology, he had no idea they existed. He was asking me to create something from scratch when in fact we’ve had commercial things of this nature for like I say, 40 years.
Josh Anderson:
Yeah. I wish that word would get out. I mean, especially, I think of a lot of folks who may be ALS or lose their vision or those kinds of things, and suddenly the whole world changes and they think there’s all these things they can’t do. What they don’t realize is that no, there are tools out there where you can do them. Yeah, there’ll be different. Yeah, they might be a little more difficult, but they can still be done. And to see that hope in them, whenever you can actually show them tools, it just, it’s sad to think of all the folks that don’t ever get that hope back and don’t ever know those things.
RJ Cooper:
There’s a series of expos or there was before COVID called the Abilities Expo. Not sure if you’ve ever heard of it, Josh?
Josh Anderson:
Mm-mm (negative) I don’t think I have.
RJ Cooper:
It’s the only convention/conference/expo of its type in the world. And they hold it in different cities across the country. And it usually brings over the course of three days, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, it brings around 12,000-15,000 people wherever they hold it. They’re mainstays have been Los Angeles, now in Anaheim, they hold it there. In the metro area, the New York metro area, they do it at Edison. They tried one in Boston. They tried a couple in Dallas. They liked going to Orlando. In other words, they’re taking technology products for the disabled out to the people, which is great.
RJ Cooper:
So we signed on board. We being a small group of assistive technology researchers, innovators, and vendors, a nice collaboration of friends and colleagues. And in the ’90s, we started going to those Abilities Expos because they gave us a whole area called the Assistive Technology Pavilion. We had a big sign above us and all the vendors that dealt with assistive technology were in the same area. It was like, have you ever heard of Closing the Gap?
Josh Anderson:
Oh yeah.
RJ Cooper:
It’s like a mini Closing the Gap at different cities across the country.
Josh Anderson:
Nice.
RJ Cooper:
So it’s the closest we’ve come to getting the word out about assistive technology to the consumers out there. And it was just the most fun. One weekend I got to work with 67 kids over the course of three days. That’s a lot of people that came across.
Josh Anderson:
Yeah, it is.
RJ Cooper:
And we really learned a lot by working with so many people so quickly and people, regular people learned about assistive technology at a very accessible trade show. Unfortunately, the show was purchased by another company. They took off the Assistive Technology Pavilion. And very few of us go to that anymore. It’s sad. So we only have the major conferences within our field that are specifically for professionals in our field. We don’t have anything for consumers anymore.
Josh Anderson:
Yeah, that’s always bad because you’re preaching to the choir. Yeah. You might be showing them something new, but it’s not like they weren’t aware that these tools exist.
RJ Cooper:
That’s it.
Josh Anderson:
And that can make it kind of, ah, like you said, it gets a little siloed or it kind of all exists in this bubble and getting that word out though is a hard thing, which we try to do with the podcast and with some other things. But again, people have to find it and even know that it’s there to be able to look for it.
RJ Cooper:
That’s so true. Josh.
Josh Anderson:
RJ, you brought up something that I’ve wanted to kind of ask you because I know you do a lot of work with the trade shows, vendor halls, those with the big conferences and stuff. What have you had to do this year, this last year to kind of change and adjust just because everything went virtual?
RJ Cooper:
Suffer. As a small business, just like every small business around the whole world, just suffer and hope that your savings can last through this. The virtual aspect of virtual conferences, virtual even webinars, these just haven’t been very successful. People can visit websites and they do. And they can make phone calls they could send emails and they do. And as far as a small business, the virtual experience is not any type of a motivational tool. So I’ve participated in several. The response has been near zero and I’m just not a big believer. And now I’m not even signing onto them anymore. I’m not a big believer in the virtual conference or virtual expo.
RJ Cooper:
The dividing line or delineation is when it gets academic and there are actual sessions. So for example, the Closing Gap had about probably 200 different sessions by people that really knew what they were doing and they had the technology in place and it was very nicely done. So for academics professionals, and like you said, these are people that almost always already know about something and they just want more information. And for those people, the virtual experience of a conference was really nice.
RJ Cooper:
But for the general consumer going into a session that’s really geared towards a professional, you don’t know how much they get out of it. I like to think that they’re there. They want to learn about it, but consumers are pretty finicky. They want things pretty much handed to them. They want, at a trade show, one person, a marketer told me you have seven seconds at a trade show to capture somebody’s attention. And now you’re talking about sitting through a webinar that’s 90 minutes long that’s fairly technical as far as the field of speech language pathology, for example, and the technology itself, that’s a hard sell.
Josh Anderson:
It really is. And you brought up a good point with those seven seconds. I mean, if you’re at a booth or anything like that, you actually have things there. People can touch them, can feel them, can kind of really interact with them. But yeah, if they’re just coming to a website, then, well there’s coming to a website. I mean, people do that all the time. So it just doesn’t quite draw them in about the same. So.
RJ Cooper:
Yeah. And I feel the same way about webinars. People do go to them, but the numbers that visit webinars, even ones from major sources like Closing the Gap 20 to 30 to 40 people is a big audience for a webinar. And the people that invented the concept webinar back in the ’80s, early ’90s, the idea was that thousands of people would be able to benefit from like a virtual experience like you were saying, but I’ve never found webinars to be very effective at marketing.
Josh Anderson:
They are good for that education part, but the marketing can kind of be a big challenge. RJ, you’ve been doing this for a long time and I got to ask just what is kind of the question or maybe solution that you get asked for the most?
RJ Cooper:
These days, it’s always about the iPad and my biggest offering my cases, my rugged cases with shoulder straps and screen protectors. That’s the number one thing that people call me about. And it makes me feel a little, not excluded, but remiss because I started making tools, software, and hardware for learning, taking somebody from a non-sentient level through cause and effect to understanding that they’re part of a living breathing world. And then further than that. So I felt very good about changing people’s lives. Selling people a case, an iPad case doesn’t give me that same gratification. I like getting pictures of people using my products, but the case just doesn’t offer me the gratification does when versus somebody buying one of my learning products and telling me that this person now 20 years later is doing X, Y, and Z because they used my blah, blah, blah when they were first starting out. I prefer those types of stories more than just sales stories.
Josh Anderson:
Well, and kind of along those same lines, can you tell me a story about someone that you’ve worked with and maybe how your solutions were able to have a positive impact on their lives?
RJ Cooper:
Well, now I’ve got to go back a little. As you get older, your memory doesn’t do as well. And we had COVID for the past year. And then before that, I actually took off from traveling. First, I’ll tell you the story of the road trips. Back in the late ’90s, I realized that my greatest gratification came from working one-on-one with people. So I opened up my road trip format where I would visit a geographical location. I would fly there on my own dime. They would set up a day for me at their special center, be it a small school or a hospital or university. And I would work with eight learners throughout the day, trying to make a difference in their life, right there with my technology. And they’d have a room from anywhere from about 30 to 100 people their of the parents, the grandparents, some administrators, the staff of that particular facility.
RJ Cooper:
And so I’d arrive at, for example, up in Albany, New York, and then I’d have to drive two hours out to Poughkeepsie or get the car someplace like that in the middle of the winter sometimes. And I did this for 20 solid years at my own dime. And I worked with literally thousands of kids during that time. And in short bursts, 30 minutes per kiddo, and the parent who was required to attend would have to answer the question in advance what is it that you’d like Terry to do, for example, that he’s not doing now. And then I would try to make that happen in real time, right in front of that audience. And then I would carry a small video cam around and then I’d make a nice video of that transition back when I got back to my offices and I send them a DVD of the day for their memories, then possibly as a marketing tool, but mostly because I wanted to feel appreciated.
RJ Cooper:
So the story really is going from commercial, trying to survive as a small business, doing well enough that I can afford to fund my own road trips for 20 years. So as I started aging, I realized that I really didn’t want to be driving around in rural America, by myself looking for small facilities that had invited me. So after 20 years, I stopped doing that and settled back into the commercial aspect only to be hit with COVID. So now it’s all small business-related items trying to survive and still trying to make a difference by coming up with unique products that people request that they just can’t find elsewhere. Even though we have more companies producing things, there’s still a lot of unique things that people need that they come to me for.
Josh Anderson:
Do you have a favorite, maybe one of those solutions?
RJ Cooper:
I’m always been a big on music, Josh. Music really gets through to people. And back when I was first starting out in the ’80s, that special needs schools in Utah, I realized that music really drew kids to pay attention to what was in front of them. So over the years, as soon as digital music came a reality, my software allowed people to record the parent or caregiver’s voice calling that person’s name. Even now is a huge difference in getting somebody’s attention, hearing your name. Even our earliest learners would orient themselves. They’d turn their head towards somebody saying their name.
RJ Cooper:
And then as digital music became popular, of course, with the iPod, the iPhone, and then the iPads, the ability to record your own music and import music from your music libraries into an app so that that can be used for reinforcement, that became a biggie. So I make several apps that are very music-oriented, and they’re meant for people with very big challenges, but still to be able to hear and use their music, select their music, enjoy their music, just like you and I do, but we take it for granted that other people can access it. And I provide that access.
Josh Anderson:
Well, I definitely can’t let you off the show today without asking you about the CooperCar.
RJ Cooper:
In 1991, I invented an adaptive vehicle called the CooperCar, and this is a vehicle that can be operated by somebody with real severe challenges only blink an eye, wiggle a toe, move a finger. Any button/switch that they can push, this car will operate with. I did that until the year 1999, we sold 848 of these CooperCars all over the world. And some of them are still out there working. So I let that sit since 1999. And someone asked me the other day about a CopperCar II. So I found a suitable vehicle to adapt and I’ve adapted it. I’ve resurrected my electronics. And now we have the CooperCar II. So we have a vehicle for kids age two to about seven, up to 50 pounds that are very challenged that are not power wheelchair candidates yet. They possibly could use some training or they just can’t get the funding for an actual power wheelchair. And we have the CooperCar II, and they can get information about that at rjcooper.com.
Josh Anderson:
I will have to let Wade who used to host this show know because I believe that was the first thing he saw when he started working here that made him really completely fall in love with assistive technology. So he will be very, very excited to hear about that.
RJ Cooper:
That’s neat. I love it.
Josh Anderson:
Well, RJ, if our listeners want to find out more about you and more about RJ Cooper & Associates, what’s the best way for them to do that?
RJ Cooper:
If I answer my own phone, small company, we have three people. When people call and they say, “Oh, this is RJ himself?” I always say the same thing, “Small company, big reputation.” 1-800-RJCooper, rjcooper.com, And the email is rj@rjcooper.com.
Josh Anderson:
Excellent. We will put all that information in our show notes so folks can listen. Now, RJ, it has been an absolute pleasure to have you on the show and get to talk to you some today. I learned a little bit about you and your experience, and we’ll have to have you back on sometime once the world gets back to a little bit more of a semblance of normal, or hopefully maybe I’ll get a catch you at one of the in-person real life shows sometime.
RJ Cooper:
Thank you, Josh.
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 @INDATAproject, or check us out on Facebook. Are you looking for a transcript or show notes? Head on over to our website at www.eastersealstech.com. Assistive Technology Update is a proud member of the Accessibility Channel. For more shows like this, plus so much more, head over to accessibilitychannel.com. The views expressed by our guests are not necessarily that of this host or the 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, I will see you next time.