ATU625 – See Me Cane with Kelvin Crosby – The Deaf Blind Potter

I am Kelvin Crosby. You might know me as the DeafBlind Potter. I am the founder and the CEO of Smart Guider, Inc where we build navigation technology to help deafblind individuals to travel fully independently and safely. And here is your Assistive Technology Update.

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 625 of Assistive Technology Update. It is scheduled to be released on May 19th, 2023.

On today’s show, we are super excited to have Kelvin Crosby, the DeafBlind Potter, and founder and CEO of Smart Guider, Inc. He is here to tell us all about the See Me Cane. We also have Amy Berry from BridgingApps with an app worth mentioning. So let’s go ahead and get on with the show.

Maybe you’re looking for some new podcast to listen to. Well, 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, so that you’re able to get your Assistive Technology fixed without taking up the whole day.

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. So remember, if you’re looking for more Assistive Technology podcasts to check out, you can check out our sister shows Accessibility Minute, and ATFAQ, wherever you get your podcast, now including Spotify and Amazon Music.

Listeners, up next, we are very excited to welcome back Amy Berry from BridgingApps to the show with an app worth mentioning. Take it away, Amy.

This is Amy Berry with BridgingApps, and this is an app worth mentioning. This week’s featured app is called One-Moment Meditation. Meditation Apps are an excellent example of how mobile devices can be an incredibly helpful tool beyond its typical phone or text use, whether it’s helping others to tackle anxiety, improve focus and productivity, overcome fear, or to take a much-needed time out. There’s no short supply of available meditation apps on the market.

The One-Moment Meditation app is one of these apps except that it is missing something. It’s missing all the bells and whistles, which makes it feel uncluttered, easy to use, and fantastic. The One-Moment Meditation app is brilliant in its simplicity. There’s a quick tutorial that makes its mission clear, the importance of taking a moment. It encourages the user to take time for a moment because it takes just a minute, and we all have time for just a minute.

BridgingApps sees great value in this clear and clutter-free meditation app. Its versatility for use with persons of all ages and abilities is excellent. It would work well in both school and therapeutic environments and then, it transitions wonderfully to a home environment. Because it’s very friendly, non-intimidating, and not too zen, it may be especially useful when working with persons who might resist the concept and practice of meditation. There’s something about opening your eyes and seeing that stick figure with a calm blue aura around him that just makes one smile.

One-Moment Meditation is currently available for iOS and Android devices and is free to download. For more information on this app and others like it, visit BridgingApps.org.

Listeners, when someone sends me information about a device that’s a cross between a white mobility cane and a lightsaber, I have to scramble to have them on the show. Combining Assistive Technology and Star Wars is kind of a meeting of two of my favorite things, and when it can really help individuals with disabilities, well, that’s just a little bit of a bonus. So our guest today is Kelvin Crosby, founder, and CEO of Smart Guider Inc. He’s here to tell us all about the See Me Cane, and about himself, and the DeafBlind Potter. Kelvin, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much, Josh, for having me on your podcast.

Yeah, I am really excited to get into talking about the See Me Cane and about you and a bunch of other stuff. Can you just start off with telling our listeners a little bit about yourself?

Yeah, so I live with Usher Syndrome Type II, so I’m actually considered deafblind. I’m working on being able to communicate and I have no more clarity in my vision. How I get into this field shortly after I turned 19 and become legally blind and realized I had to do something with my life and dove into the technology field, and did some job development, and did some assistive technology training and doing different things like that. And then, when I got into solving problems for people who are deafblind, I found that people with deafblindness, they kind of get the short end of the stick when it comes to Assistive Technology because a lot of people innovate things for the blind, and a lot of people innovate for the deaf, but they never innovate products for the deafblind. And I thought, why can’t I start a company and really focus on solving those problems?

Oh, that’s awesome. I’m glad you did. And yeah, you’re right. Things are made pretty well for maybe the deaf community or maybe the blind community, but you’re right, there’s not a whole lot of overlap. So the number one reason we had you on today, I know we’ll get into a bunch more stuff, but tell me about the See Me Cane.

Yes, and I tell you, the See Me Cane is one of those products where it should have been here years ago. It’s one of those tools where you’re like, “Why hadn’t this been invented before?” To quickly describe what the See Me Cane is all about, it literally is a lightsaber, but it’s not a lightsaber, but it looks like a lightsaber. It lights up the whole shaft of the blind cane, allowing people to see it from 100 yards away. The See Me Cane really with the design, because I’ve been hit by a car three times.

Oh, gosh.

And with that in mind, I was realizing when I started talking to other blind people and they’re like, “Oh yeah, I got hit by a car too.” At CSUN 2023, it was amazing to see people in tears coming to my booth saying, “Thank you. You’ve now given me a tool that gives me defensive walking for the first time in my life. I can ask to use my cane, not only to help me navigate but to do defensive walking and allowing people to see me from 100 yards away.”

Now, that’s awesome. And yeah, you’re right. Why hasn’t there been a light-up cane before? Because especially, I think of metropolitan areas where there’s a lot of people going around, you don’t always see that cane on an individual with a visual impairment.

Yeah. The main reason, the technology to make a cane like this, the electronics and all that, that’s been here for a long time. But the technology in the shaft to be able to keep the light inside the cane didn’t exist until about six years ago. I had to put my chemistry hat on and learn how to make the specific type of tubes and how to do all of that and combine a bunch of different properties and make this tube that is strong enough, but lightweight, and be able to allow light through, and because of that, the technology didn’t exist. Here we are, about five years later with the See Me Cane available to the market.

Nice. Kelvin, I know, from knowing a little bit about you and stuff, that you ran into some roadblocks and setbacks while you were developing the See Me Cane. Can you tell us about those and maybe how you overcame them?

Yeah, so originally, I told one of my investors, I said to him, “I’ll have a cane for you in 90 days. I’ll have a cane that fully lights up. I’ve got a solution, I’ll do it.”

I go home, I start working on the prototype and I tried to get the right cane size for the See Me Cane, and I started working on it and I said, “I’ll put a flashlight in there, and put some cellophane in there and shoot the light through. You know, we would make a lightsaber, and I’ll do that. What I come to find out, to make it stiff enough, we had a one-inch tube that was way too big for most people’s hands, and it totally looks like a lightsaber sword that you would actually fight with. It was great, but way too heavy. So I really made it my mission. I looked at all these properties that are out there already, and I said, “If I can combine several of these properties into one system, then I can lower the weight and I can increase the strength in the tube. And I would be able to create that formula, that special sauce, and literally make it happen.”

One of the other challenges that we faced was, how do we make this accessible to all people, both deafblind and blind individuals. A lot of people would’ve said, “Oh, just put a beeper in there.” How would the deafblind person be able to access that? So we really set off for a mission to figure out how are we going to make this cane communicate all the information that a deafblind person needs, as well as still meet the demand for blind people and allow them to have the same access.

That’s why, when you have a See Me Cane in your hand, it doesn’t beep at you, it just vibrates. It tells you that the light’s on or off. It has an on and off button, and it makes it super easy for somebody that’s deafblind, just to be able to pick it up and know what to do with it.

Nice. Sometimes, I feel like in Assistive Technology, we try to overcomplicate things and add too many bells and whistles, so I’m glad you kept it simple, and it’s funny when you said, well, that it just make a beep and you’re deafblind. I said deafblind. It doesn’t really help there because I know when I think we’ve all working in disability services or being around, we all have met the person who talks to the person who’s blind louder because they think it helps them hear them or other things like that. So I’m glad you kind of nixed that one right off the bat.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. One of the things for me is, I’ve been in the field for so long that I just kept seeing more problems. I was like, when we over-innovate a product, does the community really adopt the product? One other thing is, and I didn’t talk about this earlier, but originally, when I started my company, we were building a robotic blind cane. This way, you use brain technology, so you use your brain to talk to your cane, and then it would guide you to point A or point B. This literally took you out of the navigation and the whole navigating the world from your perspective. It literally put your life in the hands of the robot. So I showed them to a few people. Some people liked it, but the majority of the people were way too scared because it took away so much of their independence.

I realized as a deafblind person and as a blind person, I wanted to make sure that whatever I produce, was being produced to allow you to still have your independence, but to enhance your independence, rather than take over your independence. I feel like a lot of this technology that’s coming out today, especially in, I call it artificial haptics, where you’re using vibration motors or you’re using buttons that poke you, or whatever. I have found those are great and it’s awesome to have that information, but what happens when you’re in an environment that is overstimulating for the senses that you still have, and you’re getting artificial information, are you really safe in that environment? That’s why I saw the See Me Cane as a way where I can empower your independence and enhance your independence, but also allow you to have full control of your own environment.

Yeah, no, you’re right. If you have a ton of things vibrating at you, beeping at you, and everything else all the time, it can get a little bit overwhelming. And like you said, especially if you’re trying to maybe use those senses you still have left and still have to access the world. So yeah, you’re right.

I like the idea of the robot cane and things like that, but it’s like you said, it takes that independence out of it and just does it for you, and how’s that a lot different than a sighted guide? Do you know what I mean?

Yeah.

Then somebody just kind of taking your arm and taking you around. Is it helpful? Sure. Is it independence? Not really. So I like that you pivoted and moved onto this side. Kelvin, what kind of feedback have you received from some early adopters and maybe others who tried the See Me Cane?

Let’s put it this way, I have more feedback than I know what to do with. No pun intended. But it’s pretty incredible. I mean, we were at CSUN 2023 and just the stories of people that have had experiences because they weren’t seen.

There was somebody from the UK or somewhere over in Europe, and he was saying, “Yeah, I’ve never had so many challenges just walking through the street with the bikes. I put my cane out there and they get stuck in their spokes.” And I’m like, “I never thought about that before.” And I’m thinking, “Okay, I haven’t tested the See Me Cane for that, so I might have to go and jam one of these See Me Canes into a spoke and see if it works.” He was like, “Yeah, this would be so helpful for me to get this opportunity to be able to have them all stay out of my way.” I just laughed and it just cracked me up.

And I’ll never forget the lady that came up to the booth, and she had just started losing her vision, or realizing her vision had gotten to a point where she was going to have to migrate from just trying to use her vision to a blind cane, and I tell you, that journey is never easy. I mean, when you go from being able to see and then having to embrace a blind cane, it’s not something that happens overnight. She came to the booth and she was just hearing my story and hearing what we were all about, and she just had that moment when, as a blind person, when you have that moment where you’re like, “I can embrace a blind cane now.”

She had that moment at the booth. She was very vulnerable and I was able to talk her through it and say, “The See Me Cane’s going to empower you. It’s going to empower you,” and I let her use the See Me Cane the next night, and she literally came back in tears, and just like, “I was so empowered by the See Me Cane. I could use it in the elevator. I could use it to find my Uber or my Lyft. I could use it to see people’s feet when we were walking at night.” There were so many use cases that she was able to use the See Me Cane, not only for people to see her, but for her to be able to use the little vision she still had left and to empower herself.

It was a humbling moment for me to have that opportunity, to be a part of that journey for her and saying, “She’s going to be able to make the next step into having her independence using the See Me Cane.”

Yeah, so to answer your question, the buzz is pretty loud. I kind of say it’s like a bunch of bees running all over the place, trying to find the hive, and we’re just now showing you where the hive is, so you can bring your honey there.

Everybody’s excited, everybody wants one, and we’re trying to make as many as we can. When this comes out, I’m hoping that we’re able to do about 50 canes a month and be able to really start scaling to the masses and be able to hit the man.

Nice, nice. And talking about that, what phase of development and distribution are you currently in with the See Me Cane?

Yeah, so the really cool story here is, the person that is assembling all these canes, she’s a wounded veteran. She was wounded in the army and she’s also an engineer. So she’d been part of this journey of the See Me Cane since the beginning when we took it from just a concept to the first run in production. And Angie, her story’s incredible, and if you want to listen to her story, I’ll give you the link and you can put it in the description, to hear her story of how she had to persevere through all the things that she’s had to experience, but the short story, she’s currently able to handle 50 canes a month and producing these canes so that we can get them out the door as fast as we can.

So, by the time this comes out, we’ll probably have already gotten 100 canes out by the time this podcast airs, and we’ll be able to start getting the next 50 in. If you want a See Me Cane, I have a special promo code for this podcast only, and you get $50 off on your See Me Cane, and that is ATU, so Assistive Technology Update, and so ATU is your discount code. You can type it in any way, and it’ll work and you’ll get $50 off on your See Me Cane.

We will definitely put that down in the show notes. Kelvin, I have to ask you, because I know the story of how you were funded, starting Smart Guider is an interesting one. So tell me about the DeafBlind Potter.

Yes. So if you’ve been on TikTok or you’ve heard this phrase, “I am the DeafBlind Potter,” and I tell you a story. DeafBlind Potter was born in December 2020. After the COVID come through, I lost all the funding for Smart Guider, and we pivoted to the See Me Cane. My life was in a really struggling situation, and my friend said, “Why don’t you get in the pottery field and let’s start healing?”

During this time, I lost the clarity in my right eye. I had already lost the clarity in my left eye, but I’ve also lost the clarity in my right eye, and at this point, I’m just having to grieve my loss. Because if you are somebody that has a visual impairment and you are gradually losing your vision, you have to grieve every pain that you’re going to feel because if you don’t grieve it, then you’re going to make the mistake I did. I did not grieve the loss of my left eye. So when I had to grieve the loss of my right eye, it was a double whammy.

So pottery was my healing. We put our first video up on TikTok and we went to bed that night, and I had over 10,000 followers. Then I had that video hit over 100,000 views in 10 hours. Then three days later, we have over 1.4 million views and over 50,000 followers, and I’m getting a request for pieces for pottery. I’m like, “I haven’t touched a pottery wheel in years, and I had just come back and I have zero inventory. People were just so in love with the DeafBlind Potter, and people were just starting to put in orders and I’m like, “Oh, I have a way to make money.” And so the orders were coming in out of the wazoo, people were wanting crazy stuff, but I had to get it specific of what I was capable of doing, and when I can meet on the demand.

The next thing you know, I am generating enough revenue to hire Angie, my engineer, to be able to have her build the See Me Cane to where it is today. I love to say I literally took mud, turned it into money, and built the See Me Cane. I always love to tell people, “You’ve got to find how you’re going to live beyond your challenges, but this is how I figured out how to live beyond my challenges.” So yeah, that’s the story of the DeafBlind Potter, and how we innovated to where we are today.

Oh, I love it. Thank goodness that your friend told you to get on that wheel because just think about, not the grieving, not just working through things that you talked about, how to help that way, but then look at what it led you to from there. So I guess if anything that you’ve learned from that, is that there’s always a way, and occasionally, listen to your friends because they do have good advice.

Exactly. Exactly. I still think about that journey. The DeafBlind Potter is still up there. There’s not a lot of pieces because my energy, right now, is heavily in the See Me Cane, and we’re trying to scale as fast as we can to meet the demand. Then, once we scaled, I’ll be getting back on the wheel and telling this beautiful story on how the wheel transformed my life, as well, now transforming millions of others’ lives through the See Me Cane.

Oh, that is awesome. That is awesome. If our listeners want to want to find out more or even be able to order their own See Me Cane, what’s the best way for them to do that?

So you can go to several different places. So if you want to learn all about the DeafBlind Potter, it’s at deafblindpotter.com. Then if you want to learn all about See Me Cane, go to SeeMeCane.com. So that’s like I see you and then me, and then I’m talking with me talking to you, and then cane.com. That’ll take you to everything you need to know about the See Me Cane, and both of those platforms have all the social media links. We are on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. We also have the Perseverance podcast, which is part of the DeafBlind Potter series, which is also at perseverancepodcast.com.

Excellent. We will put all that information down in the show notes along with that promo code, which we thank you so much for, and the link to Angie’s story.

Kelvin, thank you so much for coming on the show today, for telling us about your life, about the DeafBlind Potter, and then especially, about the See Me Kane and I can see how this can help a ton of people. Thank you so much again for taking the time out to come on and tell us about all these great things.

Yeah, for sure. You can also email me if you want to get a hold of me at sale@seemecane.com.

We will add that in those show notes as well. Kelvin, thank you again.

All right, well, I appreciate it, Josh. And like I always say, “Go live beyond your challenges.”

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 techeastersealscrossroads.org or shoot us a note on Twitter @indataproject.

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.

A special thanks to Nicole Preto 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, Easterseals Crossroads, our supporting partners, or this host. This was your Assistive Technology Update, and I’m Josh Anderson with the INDATA Project at Easterseals Crossroads in beautiful Indianapolis, Indiana.

We look forward to seeing you next time. Bye-bye.