ATU575 – Westminster Technologies Service Offerings with Heather Koren, ATP

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Heather Koren:
Hi, this is Heather Koren, and I’m the director of assistive technology at Westminster Technologies. 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 Easter Seals Crossroads in beautiful Indianapolis, Indiana. Welcome to episode 575 of Assistive Technology Update. It is scheduled to be released on June 3rd, 2022.

Josh Anderson:
On today’s show, we’re very excited to have Heather Koren back on from Westminster Technologies to talk about some of the great services they offer. We also have a quick story about some students using 3D printing to make some new accommodations. So let’s go ahead and get on with the show. Make sure to check out our sister podcast, Accessibility Minute, and ATFAQ, or Assistive Technology Frequently Asked Questions. If you’re super busy and don’t have time to listen to a full podcast, be sure to check out Accessibility Minute, our one-minute long podcast that gives you just a little taste of something assistive technology based. This show comes out weekly.

Josh Anderson:
Our other show is Assistive Technology Frequently Asked Questions, or ATFAQ. On Assistive Technology Frequently Asked Questions, Brian Norton leads our panel of experts, including myself, Belva Smith, and our own, Tracy Castillo, as we try to answer your assistive technology questions. This show does rely on you. So we’re always looking for new questions, comments, or even your answers on assistive technology questions. Check out our sister shows, Accessibility Minute and ATFAQ wherever you get your podcast, now including Spotify and Amazon Music.

Josh Anderson:
Listeners, our story today comes to us from the Cardinal & Cream, which is the student paper over at Union University. It’s written by Eva Grace Bedell, and it’s titled, Union University Engineering Department Helps Community Through Assistive Technologies. The story talks about the Union University department of engineering, and they’ve been working with some different students on the makeable assistive technology design program for the last six months. They just presented some of their different ideas and some of the different things that they have, so I thought we’d talk about them just a little bit.

Josh Anderson:
So the challenge this year had the intent to use 3D printing to design and create a product or prototype that improves the day-to-day life of someone who struggles with mobility in their hands. It says that four students from Union University’s engineering program teamed up with a total of 16 middle and high school students throughout the challenge. So the first team created a fishing rod holder and reel grip for a child with cerebral palsy. The child had a lot of difficulty and wasn’t really able to grip the rod and reel with both hands, so the device propped the rod up so that it was able to turn the reel using only the left hand, which allowed a much greater ability and accessibility.

Josh Anderson:
The second project created a way for a child to easily communicate with a smart speaker device to play and control music. This project created an assistive switch with eight large textured buttons that allowed the kid to easily press the buttons and give commands like volume up and skip song. It says that the professor of engineering has encouraged the students to produce a how-to manual and then publish this online so that others could potentially produce similar projects on a larger scale. So actually put all these ideas out there online so other folks with access to 3D printers can make some of these things also.

Josh Anderson:
Says there’s a third project, created a type of prosthetic attachment piece that was able to latch onto a child’s hand and allow them to better use, kind of grab and hold motions. The intent of this was to give the child the opportunity to play games with friends that involve utensils and holding pieces. And then the fourth project created a colorful assistive switch that connects to a bubble gun and helped the child activate the switch to blow bubbles on their own. So they’re pretty cool stuff. It’s always fun to see these makers fairs or this makeable assistive technology design program and see what the students really do come up with when they get to meet folks with some different abilities and then try to figure out a way to help them overcome some of the barriers that they’re having.

Josh Anderson:
And then, of course, 3D printing and being able to do it has really just opened up a whole world of things that can be created quickly and pretty inexpensively. So very cool. Kudos to the Union University engineering department for those students reaching out, working with middle schoolers and high schoolers to make some of this cool stuff. Let’s hope they put all those designs online so the other folks can try them out, maybe make them on their own, or even make them on mass scale to help out even more folks. So we’ll, again, put a link to this story over in our show notes.

Josh Anderson:
Listeners, please join me in welcoming Heather Koren from Westminster Technologies back to Assistive Technology Update to talk about some of their new and exciting things that they have available. Heather, welcome back to the show.

Heather Koren:
Thank you, Josh. I’m glad to be back.

Josh Anderson:
Yeah. I’m really excited to talk about all the cool things that y’all have, but for our listeners and others who may not have heard you on the show before, could you tell us a little bit about yourself and your background?

Heather Koren:
Sure. So my name is Heather Koren, and I’m a resident certified assistive technology professional. I’ve been in the field since the mid to late ’90s. I have my background in speech therapy and my Master’s in Rehab Science and Technology from the University of Pittsburgh. I have worked for a few different United Cerebral Palsies in the past. I’ve worked at University of Washington as well as East Carolina university. So I’ve done training, teaching, direct service to all kinds of different things in my background, and now I am excited to be working with Westminster Technologies, wow, geez, over five years now.

Josh Anderson:
Nice, nice. And I almost hate asking you about your background because it makes me feel like I didn’t do much for the last however many years, but that’s okay. That’s okay. Well, Heather, you started telling us about it. What is Westminster Technologies?

Heather Koren:
So Westminster Technologies is a small family-owned and also female-owned assisted technology company based out of Cleveland, Ohio. Erica Klopp is the president and Ted Klopp is, I guess you would say director of everything. He does pretty much a little bit of everything for us, and I am their assistive technology professional. We provide lots of different products in different categories, such as access, communication, low vision, different learning curriculums. And then we also do lots of different services, which is what I’m actually going to be talking to you about today.

Josh Anderson:
Well, let’s get right into it. Let’s talk about these really cool services that you have available. What are they?

Heather Koren:
Sure. So I’m going to start with two of the services that we provide that are free to our customers. The first is our remote demonstrations. So we started conducting the online remote product demonstrations a couple years ago that we provide … Right now, we’ve been kind of on a little bit of hiatus just because my schedule has been extremely busy, but we will be starting those back up shortly so that everybody will need to keep an eye out for those. So those will be, typically, a weekly or even biweekly where we will say, “Hey, we’re going to be talking about these types of products this week.”

Heather Koren:
So for example, this week, we’re going to talk about communication devices, and next week we’ll talk about low vision devices. The week after that, we might do access devices. And we’ll go through talking about the different products that we carry, demonstrating some of those, and answering any specific questions that the attendees do. We tend to do more individualized sessions for our clients so they can really just feel comfortable in asking whatever questions that they have that are specific to their needs. So that’s the first of our free.

Heather Koren:
The second free one is what we call a classroom consultation, but it doesn’t have to be for just a specific classroom. It can be for day programs or a vocational setting or even a residential setting. But these are consultations where the individual team member would fill out a form to give me some additional information. Then we would set up a time to do an online conference, to learn more about their specific setup and their clients, their current challenges, and discuss their specific needs, not only within this setting, whether it’s a classroom or day program or vocational setting, and they’re in each individual that they serve, each of their specific needs. What happens then is I put together an assistive technology solution plan for the team to work on, developing a highly effective, all-inclusive environment.

Josh Anderson:
So Heather, that’s a big thing. Can you give me an example of this? Because you mentioned classrooms, day programs, and stuff like that. But just a hypothetical or even maybe one that you have, can you give me an example of what that report would look like or what kind of information might be in there?

Heather Koren:
Yeah, so it’s an informal report. So it basically just recaps those specific challenges that they’re experiencing, the room setup, what their specific goals are, what they’re working on, and then I provide a list of effective solutions, whether it’s low tech, mid tech, or high tech that are going to help them with those specific challenges that they’re meeting. So for example, I did one for a classroom with students with multiple disabilities, and they were really struggling on what they needed to do, what technology they need to be implementing.

Heather Koren:
And what we found out from our conversation is that a lot of the challenges were actually communication challenges. So I set up a solution for them so that they could basically immerse all of the students in communication opportunities with a lot of low and mid-tech solutions. So very inexpensive solutions for communication opportunities throughout the entire classroom that all of the students could benefit from.

Josh Anderson:
Very nice. Yeah, it’s amazing how sometimes just not redesigning, but just changing the way you do something is actually as important as any of the technology that could be implemented.

Heather Koren:
Correct. Correct.

Josh Anderson:
Very cool. And what are some of the other new service offerings that you have?

Heather Koren:
Okay. So another option that we do, obviously, is our professional development and consultation, our consultation, this one is not free. But we all understand ongoing training is important, but it’s very difficult and it can be a significant undertaking for administration to put all that together. So we work to customize both half-day and full-day training opportunities in assist technology. They can be in person or remote, through Zoom, so that we can help better prepare staff to support their clients. And we will work with the district or the organization to really customize training to their specific needs.

Heather Koren:
And then the consultation piece, this is where, on an hourly consultation charge, we assist teams with specific challenges that they are meeting. So I’ll give you a couple examples for the professional development. I just recently worked with a district where, in the morning, I actually went up and assisted their staff, helped them with doing an assessment, which I’ll talk about our assessment services here in a minute, and then in the afternoon we did a half-day training, just all on augmentative and alternative communication, because that was their largest need at the time and understanding, because they were all still pretty new to implementing AAC devices. So we talked about just the specifics of, “How do you select vocabulary. How do you set up or decide on a grid size for these devices? How do we effectively implement communication device use into the curriculum?” So we customize it to their specific needs.

Heather Koren:
And then for consultation, an example I can give you is I’m getting ready to work with a district. I’ve just met with their team, and they’re a wonderful team. They do great work, but they’re really struggling with … They probably have about six students with more complex needs. So they really just need help in identifying more of those challenges, how to implement the technology, how to effectively motivate the students to use the technology, as well as just some specific training needs that they have.

Josh Anderson:
Very nice, very nice. And you mentioned the assessment services. Do you want to go ahead and get into those?

Heather Koren:
Sure. Yep. So we do offer comprehensive assistive technology assessments to help find the right technology. It consists of observations, meeting with teachers and therapists, talking with the client, whenever that’s appropriate, collecting specific information about them, and then developing a thorough recommendation report. And as part of that assessment, the team receives three consultation hours with myself, and they can use that for assistance and trialing the technology or implementing the technology, any followups.

Heather Koren:
I do a lot of assessments in the school districts. They keep me very, very busy. I’m traveling usually every other week to do these, and a lot of times what they’ll actually use the consultation services for is training for either the parent and/or the students. So they can use those consultations forever, if they want, and it’s included in the cost of the assessments.

Josh Anderson:
Very nice. And I got to just check because I know, Heather, you said that you guys are based in Cleveland. Now are you just covering Ohio, or where is all the areas you can go?

Heather Koren:
Right. So I do assessments in Ohio, but I’ve actually been doing majority of my assessments in New York State.

Josh Anderson:
Oh, wow. Okay.

Heather Koren:
Yep. So we have a contract with one of the BOCES north of New York City that I go to on a very regular basis for their schools. I have a few districts up in the Buffalo, New York area as well that I service with the assessments, and then I also do remote assessments. With all the lockdowns, we became very proficient with the remote assessments that are appropriate in some situations. Others, it’s not. So we need to determine whether the needs of the student is appropriate to do the remote assessment or not. So that’s been very, very successful as well.

Josh Anderson:
Nice. And I know we started doing some AT assessments remote, too. And you’re right, sometimes it just fits perfectly. For some individuals, they tell me more when I’m not actually in their physical space. But yeah, but you do hit those ones where it’s like, “No, no, I got to see it. I got to be there. I got to be one-on-one.”

Heather Koren:
Right.

Josh Anderson:
I’m sure those dries to Buffalo and upstate New York are getting much better now that spring time is here as well.

Heather Koren:
Yes. Yes. Luckily, we try not to do any of those in-person in winter.

Josh Anderson:
I don’t blame you. I don’t blame you. I don’t even think I’d make the drive to Cleveland for that during that time of year. But Heather, what else is going on at Westminster? What else are you guys doing now?

Heather Koren:
Okay. So the other thing we do is training teams on how to do their own assistive technology assessments because it’s great to have a third party like myself come in and do the assessments, but what’s even better is for the team to know how to do it themselves.

Josh Anderson:
Sure.

Heather Koren:
Because having that internal team, it’s just so much more effective and efficient because they can actually move with the individual from consideration through assessment, through the trialing, all those implementation steps and monitoring with that followup piece. They’re there with the client from start to finish so they can really hit all of those steps within that AT life cycle. So I’m always pushing, “You guys really should be doing this on your own,” and unfortunately, I have, for example, districts that say, “We would love to do this,” and they have a perfect team that could do it, but unfortunately, they need that third party coming in to do those for them just for consistency and peace of mind for the parents in these school districts to understand that the district is just not saying, “Here’s what we’re going to do just because we have it available to them.”

Heather Koren:
So we do this three different ways. So the first one is the in-person, and we call this the “Train The Trainer,” and it doesn’t have to be used as a Train The Trainer, but we call a Train The Trainer because we provide the district or organization with all of the training materials as part of this so they can take it and continue training when new staff comes on board, or when they have staff turnovers. They have all access to this so they can continue to train new team members coming on. But there’s an in-person, which is three days, and they learn about all the needed skills and knowledge to perform the assessments. It covers things like essential terminology, the AT cycle, how to use free frameworks for the assessment, such as set framework or the WATI, which is the Wisconsin Assistive Technology Initiative, as well as some other free resources.

Heather Koren:
We talk about how to perform feature matching, conducting trials of assistive technology, and then how to write the final assessment report. And part of that training, they complete case study practices, and on day three, they actually perform live assessments with mentoring and guidance, and then they write up their recommendations, create their report, and then they receive six months of mentoring.

Josh Anderson:
Oh, nice.

Heather Koren:
So every month, starting the month after their training, they meet with me to go through the next steps through this life cycle, because we can only do so much in those three days. So each month after that, we’re going through each additional phase. So we’re doing the assessment, the feature matching, and report writing, and then after that, we start talking about how to do the trials, where to find equipment for doing trials, how to implement it, and we also, through those six months, they have just access to me whenever they need to ask me questions or pick my brain with challenges or barriers that they’re encountering. We also do that Train The Trainer as a remote training as well, and we’ve had great success doing it that way as well.

Josh Anderson:
Awesome. You brought up a great point about just being able to have their team know how to do it because yeah, like you said, they’re no matter how much time you spend, they’re going to be able to spend so much more time with that student and not just through the AT cycle, but through their whole life cycle. I mean, whenever they get to high school, whenever they get to another grade or something changes or something breaks or new is available, they’re just going to have so much more information, so much more time. But I do also see the thing you brought up, and we run into this here sometimes, too, about just having that third party.

Josh Anderson:
I know sometimes that helps the school in a way because then, as you said, they’re not perceived as, “Well, this is what available. This is what you get.” And it also gives the parents that peace of mind. So I do see that from both sides. But man, it is great if the school, the school district, the area can really do those themselves because they’re just going to have so much more information than you can get as that third party set of eyes.

Heather Koren:
Correct, correct. Yeah. I was in one district a couple years ago doing an assessment and just talking with some of the teachers and therapists. I was like, “Oh man, you guys are great. You guys could do this on your own.” And they’re like, “Really?” I said, “Yeah. I mean, I could train you guys how to do this.” And they were all over it. They got it set up very quickly. I went out there, I trained them, and they’ve been just up and running, and they’ve been just really running with it ever since. And they, every once in a while, check in with me, like, “Hey, we ran into this …” Even past the six months, I’m not going to put in and be like, “Nope, I’m not working with you past the six months.” You know what I mean? It could be a year later. I’m like, “Hey, we just hit this. We don’t know what to do.”

Josh Anderson:
Sure.

Heather Koren:
And I am more than willing to assist than with that.

Josh Anderson:
Yeah. I think so many people get so scared because they’re like, “How am I going to know about all the technology? How do I know what’s all available?” And you don’t. You never will. It’s impossible. Really, it’s more the process and so many other things. Technology is a part of it, sure. But you don’t have to be Elon Musk and just amazing at technology to be able to get it.

Heather Koren:
Exactly.

Josh Anderson:
And I think that’s what scares so many darn people away.

Heather Koren:
Right. And I do provide them, actually, as part of the training, resources, like websites, where to go look for technology, how to search for technology, especially with apps. There’s so many apps out there now. honestly, it’s ridiculous how many are out there. So I show them a couple of different websites on how to search and do just a quick overview evaluation of that app to see if it’s something that would potentially work for an individual.

Josh Anderson:
And I’m so glad you teach them that because I know I’ve got tons of adaptive apps on my phone just so I can always demonstrate them to folks, if I’m meeting with them or if I happen to see somebody who could use it. But I’m not good at always going through them all, so I don’t know how many times I open one and I don’t know how long it hasn’t worked for, and I feel so bad. So I’m glad you’re giving them the tools so that, “Hey, this is wonderful. It’s perfect. Hey, it’s even free,” and the next operating system it’s gone. So I’m glad you’re giving him those tools because, for me, it’s annoying because I go and I’m trying to show someone, but for a kid who’s relying on it, oh, it’s a little bit more than annoying. So that’s good you’re able giving them those kind of tools to be able to keep up on those things.

Heather Koren:
Yes, definitely. Yep. And then the last piece is actually everybody shut down a couple years ago, so it was hard to get these trainings moving. So during that time, we actually took that AT assessment seminar that we would do in-person or remotely, and we converted it to an online self-paced version, and we call it the Assistive Technology Assessment Guide or ATAG. It covers all the same information. I recorded the presentations that I would normally be doing in person. Still includes all the case study practice. But what it does include, which is a little bit different than the in-person or remote version, is that it includes 12 months of mentoring because you’re not getting that live back-and-forth discussion with me. They still have access to me to ask questions through that online forum. They have to submit specific, assignments and take quizzes that are graded to pass each module in order to move on to the next module.

Heather Koren:
But I just felt that six months of mentoring, when you’re doing an online self-pace, I don’t think that’s as beneficial. So we increased that to 12 months of mentoring for the individuals or teams that decide to go through this training. And right now I’m in the middle of mentoring a couple of different individuals, and they are just flourishing with what they learned and being able to meet with me once a month with their current challenges or barriers or just questions on the individuals that they’re assessing. So that’s been a really fun endeavor that we most recently put together.

Josh Anderson:
Oh, that’s a great tool to be able to do the self-directed or at your own pace, or during your own time. I mean, especially … I feel so sorry. I complain about my schedule constantly, but I can’t imagine if I was actually in the K-12 environment. I mean, the bell rings and you’re just running around as fast as you can to get everything done. The bell rings again, and it’s over. So being able to actually work that into your own schedule has to open it up for a lot of folks that maybe couldn’t really work doing it in person into their schedules, at least with everything else they have to do.

Heather Koren:
Correct. And I’ve also worked with different districts, but also developmental disability organizations where, capacity-wise, they really only have maybe one or two individuals. They don’t have that team environment option yet. So this is also perfect solution for them to just grab those one or two or handful of individuals that they can just go through this online self-paced, and then work to develop their skills, their knowledge, and then eventually put together a full assessment team.

Josh Anderson:
That’s awesome. If our listeners want to find out more about all these different service offerings and maybe how to get involved with them, what’s the best way for them to do that?

Heather Koren:
So they can either check out our website. It’s Westminstertech.com, and that’s W-E-S-T M-I-N-S-T-E-R T-E-C-H.com, or they can send us an email at info@westminstertech.com.

Josh Anderson:
All right, perfect. We’ll put all that information down in the show notes. Well, Heather Koren, thank you so much for coming back on the show and just talking about the amazing things that you all do, and we’ll have to have you on here sometime soon, again, just to talk about some of the cool devices as well.

Heather Koren:
All right. Well, thank you so much, Josh. I really appreciate it.

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 so, call our listener line at 317-721-7124. Send us an email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org, or shoot us a note on Twitter at INDATA Project. Our captions and transcripts for the show are sponsored by the Indiana Telephone Relay Access Corporation, or Intrac. You can find out more about Intrac at relayindiana.com.

Josh Anderson:
A special thanks to Nicole Prieto for scheduling our amazing guests and making a mess of my schedule. Today’s show was produced, edited, hosted, and fraught over by yours truly. The opinions expressed by our guests are their own and may or may not reflect those of the INDATA project, Easter Seals Crossroads, are supporting partners, or this host. This was your Assistive Technology Update, and I’m Josh Anderson with the INDATA Project at Easter Seals Crossroads in beautiful Indianapolis, Indiana. We look forward to seeing you next time. Bye-bye.