ATFAQ184 – Q1. Mobile Accessibility featurers for hard of hearing, Q2. Reading and Comprehension Software and Apps, Q3. Windows Magnifier compared to Zoomtext, Q4. Voice Control TV solutions, Q5. Large Print Alarm Clocks, Q6. Wildcard: What if AT never existed?

I have a question.

Huh?

Like what?

I’ve always wondered.

What about?

Do you know?

I have a question.

I’ve always wondered.

Like I have a question.

I have a question.

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I have a question.

I have a question.

Welcome to ATFAQ, Assistive Technology Frequently Asked Questions with your host, Brian Norton, director of Assistive Technology at Easterseals Crossroads. This is a show where we address your questions about assistive technology, the hardware, software, tools, and gadgets that help people with disabilities lead more independent and fulfilling lives.

Have a question you’d like to answer it on our show? Send us a tweet with the hashtag ATFAQ. Call our listener line at 317-721-7124 or send us an email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org. The world of assistive technology has questions and we have answers. And now let’s jump into today’s show.

Hello and welcome to ATFAQ episode 184. My name is Brian Norton and I’m the host of the show. We’re so happy that you’ve taken some time to tune in with us this week. We’ve got a great lineup of assistive technology questions for today. But before we jump in, I just want to take a moment to go around the room and introduce the folks who are here with me. First is Belva. Belva is the vision team lead for our clinical assistive technology team. Belva, you want to say hi?

Hi, everybody.

That is correct. Excellent, excellent. And then next is Josh. Josh Anderson is the popular host of AT Update, one of our other podcasts here at Easterseals Crossroads and the INDATA Project and also is the manager of our clinical assistive technology program here. And so Josh, you want to say hi?

Hi everybody. Welcome, welcome. Hopefully we all get to learn something today.

Excellent, excellent. Well, hey, I just want to take a moment to mention to the new folks who might be new listeners today. Just a little bit about our show. Throughout the week, we come across various assistive technology related questions and we group them together as best we can. And then we as a team sit around in a group and try to answer those as best we can here on the radio or over podcasts to be able to get you guys answers to some of these questions. We do also look for feedback and so as we answer questions, we want to be able to provide well-rounded answers to everybody.

As a part of that, we’re looking for your answers as well. So if you have any type of feedback regarding the questions, things that you’ve tried, things that you’ve experienced that would lend any additional information to the person who called in with that question, we’d love to hear from you. We’ve got a variety of ways for you to ask the questions, ask your questions or provide us your feedback. And those would be a listener line that we’ve gotten set up. That’s 317-721-7124. And email address at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org. Or you can send us a tweet with the hashtag ATFAQ and we look for those and that’s the way for us to get your feedback and your questions.

Without further ado, we’re going to jump into our questions for today. The first one is an email and it says, “My mother is getting older and has started to lose her hearing. She has an appointment with an audiologist coming up and I was wondering if there were any helpful features on her iPhone or apps that might help her stay engaged and follow conversations better?” And so looks like an iPhone, maybe some helpful accessibility features on the iPhone and or different types of apps that would be helpful. So I’ll leave this open for the group.

So then we’re assuming or safe to assume, I guess that mom is using the iPhone already. So she’s probably already familiar with the screen and all that kind of stuff. But if you go into your settings and then go to accessibility, you’ll see broken into different divisions, the different accessibilities that they have, and if you scroll down the screen a little bit, you’ll get to the hearing section.

So they do have the hearing devices where you can connect your phone to hearing aids if you have the appropriate hearing aids. They also have the live caption, which mine still says beta.

Mine too.

Okay. So I guess it is obviously then still in beta. Now, I would also think that it’s going to be one of the newer iPhones where you’re going to see the live captioning as well as the subtitles and captioning. I still have a lot of consumers that are using the SE versions of the phone and I’m not sure if you will find the same types of features available in those phones as you do in these others.

Currently, I have some consumers that are having difficulty with just their phone hearing as they’re dictating their text or giving it a voice command and I’m blaming it on the fact that they are using the SE phones because we all know that those are lower cost because they have cheaper hardware inside of them, I guess. I’ve not used any of these things, I just happen to know that they’re there. And again, that’s in your settings under accessibility, scroll down almost to the bottom to the hearing section.

And there’s some other things that are available in there as well. But I think probably in mom’s situation, the live captioning or the subtitles in captioning would be the two most helpful.

Yeah, I would agree with that. Yeah, live captions, like you said, that’s kind of new. And I would bet with the iPhone SE version. It would probably depend on its upgradeability to see what version of iOS is available for that particular version. I’m not sure if those are compatible all the way up to the most recent iOS update. And so you might need to check that.

If you don’t see it, that’s maybe the reason why it’s not there. A couple other things that are available that some folks should be also aware of would be Conversation Boost. This is a feature if you have AirPods. Now, I know this is an older person and they may not be comfortable wearing things in their ears all the time. They may also already have a hearing aid since they’re going to see an audiologist.

But some features with the AirPod Pros or the AirPods would be Conversation Boost. That basically helps you stay connected in crowded or noisy environments where you can focus on the voice of the person directly in front of you, making it easier to distinguish their speech from all the background noise that’s in and around you. So really helpful when having face-to-face conversations. That’s something called Conversation Boost.

There’s also something called Live Listen and that allows you to use the microphone on your device, so your phone itself and you can point that to a person and then that basically through that microphone sends it to your headphones or you’re made for iPhone hearing aids if you have hearing aids.

So a lot of hearing aids are made to be compatible with iPhone these days. And so if you have hearing aids, you might check with your audiologist to see if they are compatible with the iPhone if you’re not fully sure already. So whether it’s a made for iPhone hearing aids or the headphones that you have, it will use that microphone on your device to be able to send that audio directly to your headset so that you can then pick up on what people are saying and make it easier to follow conversations as well. So just a couple other options for folks too.

Well, another thing. I know it said that they are going to the audiologist here coming up. So as Brian and Belva said, there are different kinds of hearing aids that can connect straight to an iPhone and give you all kinds of great settings and help you with that. But also a lot of them, even if they aren’t the… I can’t remember MFI or MFI, whatever they call it, the ones that connect to the iPhone, most newer hearing aids, as long as they have Bluetooth, have some sort of app that you can connect to your phone. And depending on the app usually you can adjust the sound, you can adjust maybe what all kinds of sound it comes in. And then a lot of them you can actually end up using the iPhone as a microphone kind of device thing.

So basically if I was talking to Brian, he’s sitting across the table from me, but we’re in a quiet place. If I have that app or the special ones, I could set my phone in front of him and essentially it’s going to pick up the sound and send it to my ears. So it makes it a little bit easier, especially in those noisy situations, it can really help. And that’s talking to the audiologist at that point for those kind of things. But most hearing aids these days have those kinds of capabilities built into them.

Also, if mom is having a little bit of trouble hearing the phone ring, sometimes changing the ringtone. The one ringtone that I have found most of my consumers really like is the old phone. It’s not anything fancy, it’s just the ring of an old phone, but the tone, it seems to be louder than some of the other ones. And then also under the sounds and visuals, is that right, audio and visual? Yeah, under audio and visual you can turn on the LED flash so that your light on the back of the phone will flash when the phone is ringing. So sometimes if you can’t necessarily hear it ring, but you’ll be able to tell that that light is flashing. That’s also something that seems to be helpful.

I’ll also just mention just a couple apps as well, and so a lot of the things that we’ve spoken of already are kind of built in features through the accessibility settings. A couple of apps that I’ve used in the past for situations like this, there’s one called Petralex and it’s basically a hearing aid app and allows you to use, I believe, either wireless or corded headset. So you can really use any headset with this particular one, but it does use your device’s microphone. It can pick up on the sound in the room and I think, Josh, you mentioned just being able to amplify that sound so you can kind of hear it even in quiet environments.

It’s a hearing aid app that basically acts as a personal amplifier for you, so that you can just enhance what’s being spoken around you to be able to hear it a little bit better, make it a little bit louder so you can hear it better. That’s Petralex. It’s available for iOS and Android. Pricing does vary. I believe there’s a subscription fee for some of the more advanced features, but something to think about and to look into.

Otter.ai is another app that is also available for iOS and Android. You can also use it on your computer. And so pricing varies on that as well, depending on how much you’ll use it. But essentially it’s just a transcription app. It doesn’t do anything with hearing whatsoever. What it does do is it’s actually listening and transcribing what’s being said. So you’re still getting the same volume from the other person. So it may be difficult to understand what they’re actually saying, but it is actually transcribing what they’re saying to a relative… It’s not perfect, but you’ll be able to get the gist of the conversation from what it transcribes and allow you to be able to then make some assumptions and fill in the gaps on maybe what you did or did not hear.

And so Otter.ai is another one of those. I’ll also tell you one, it’s called Web Captioner. Web Captioner is a website that also provides real-time captioning for conversations. It wasn’t mentioned that the person had a computer, but if they do have a computer near them, Web Captioner works just like Otter.ai and some of these other transcription apps and it basically is just a web browser where you click a button, you start to speak and it’s transcribing what’s being said, and again, allowing folks to be able to see the conversation to be able to fill in the gaps of what they did or did not hear. And so just a couple other options for folks.

All right. So I’d love to open this up to our listeners. If you guys have any feedback for this particular question, love to hear from you. You can give us a call on our listener line that’s 317-721-7124 or send us an email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org. Thanks so much.

All right. So our next question is, “I have a student who struggles with reading and reading comprehension. Are there apps, software or extensions that would be helpful for her to try out? I think she would do better if the text was read aloud and she could follow along while it was reading. Any suggestions?”

So there’s a lot of different things out there. Some are pretty expensive, but I would start with free stuff. So I guess some of it starts with what are they using right now? So are they using… It says a student, so are we using a Windows computer? Probably not. Probably an iPad, Chromebook, maybe a MacBook. So it’s kind of hard to tell. If you’re using a Chromebook or really I guess any kind of internet device, I don’t think it works on tablets as well, but Google Chrome has extensions in there you can use.

There’s one called Read Aloud. It’s extremely simple. It just takes all the texts from the page, puts it up in a little box and it will read it to you as it follows along. There’s other ones as well. Helperbird can do that has a lot of other features. And then another one that’s free and you should be able to use on pretty much any device is Microsoft OneNote. Using Immersive Reader can be very helpful.

I was getting ready to say Immersive Reader.

Yeah. Yep. Immersive Reader is great. It’s built into OneNote. It’s built into newer versions of Word. I’m not sure what else all it’s built into, but they seem to be adding it to other stuff. But it not only allows you to read along. You can highlight the line as it’s reading. You can also increase the spacing between things, which can make it a little bit helpful. And even breakdown things via where’s the noun, where’s the verb, where’s the adverb? And that kind of stuff if you would need those things.

But all of those options are completely free, so they could be very, very helpful. There’s tons of others out there, but just usually no matter what device the student is using, they should be able to access at least some of those to try out and see if that kind of helps.

Did you mention Read Aloud? Was that one of the ones that you mentioned?

So I mentioned Read Aloud, the Chrome extension, but there are other things that are called Read Aloud that I thought I’d let someone else do.

Oh, okay.

So I don’t steal all the fun.

There is Read Aloud in Microsoft Edge as well. That’s the other browser and it’s built into that one. You don’t even have to load it as an extension. So if you’re on a Microsoft device and you’ve got the Edge browser, you should have an option called Read Aloud, which is free and goes ahead and reads as well. Definitely something to know about there as well.

A couple other ones. Josh, you mentioned several different apps, voice stream readers and other text to speech app, that basically lets you listen to written content. You can bring up E-pub books, PDFs, other different types of documents. It’ll do the follow the bouncing ball as it reads through whatever it’s reading. It’s available for iOS and Android. It’s about $14, $15, but it does offer quite a bit. I think there’s also Voice Dream scanner where you can actually just scan content if you don’t actually have the electronic text for that book. You can simply take a picture of the book and then have it start to read to you as well.

Couple things from the library. Libby is another app. It’s free. It allow you to borrow eBooks and audiobooks from your local library. And so it’s easy to look through and find titles, place holds on books, those kinds of things. And once you have that book, it’ll actually do the reading for you as well.

I know Bard Mobile is one for folks who are blind or print disabled. It’s available through the National Library Service, NLS. It’s free. It’s available for iOS and Android as well, but allow you to be able to read text. Learning Ally is a website and it’s a great website that can provide audio books for individuals with dyslexia, blindness or other visual impairments, learning disabilities as well, and offering kind of a wide variety of titles, textbooks, literature, popular fiction, all sorts of different types of books that you can get through that.

That’s a web app. It does cost quite a bit and you do have to have proof of your disability. It’s $135 per year, but it gives you unlimited access to all of those different materials in a variety of different formats. And they are specifically set up for folks who have either a visual or a learning disability, some sort of a print disability. I know that looks and sounds expensive, but they do have some really great options that come along with what they offer.

So, Brian, Bard, there’s two things that a person would want to know if they’re interested in using that. Number one, you do have to have whatever device you plan on using that on activated through the National Library Service. So you do have to have an account and they do have to activate your device. It’s just a simple phone call and usually I can get it done when I call them in 20 minutes or some.

It used to be that it would take 24 hours, but I guess with iPads and iPhones and tablets becoming so much more popular, they had to figure out a way to speed that up. But it is a great option and I do recommend it. Also, they’re not telling us the age of this student, so I’m not sure if we’re talking about a student that might be in the primary grades or in a higher up, but I found an app called Endless Reader. Endless Reader. And it seemed to be very highly recommended for the younger folks. So that might be also something worth checking out.

Yeah, that’s great. Just a couple other things. Just thinking about this topic of being able to read and people who struggle with reading and reading comprehension. A lot of times with the folks that I work with, it’s simply just the ability to make text a little bit larger. A lot of times when you try to read text, it’s super small, the words are as close together. It’s hard to separate those words. And so just spreading the words out, making them a little bit bigger, just changing some of your display settings to make that happen like iOS devices or smartphones tablets.

You can change the text size. You can manipulate the display settings. Josh, you mentioned Immersive Reader as an option. It offers some things like that as well to be able to spread the text out, making it easier to see, easier to read and those types of things. And so I would also just say, hey, think about the way the text is presented to you and maybe think about changing the way that it’s presented again to make it easier to see with the hope that even if it is going to read to you, whether by yourself or with the software, it might be easier to follow along just because it’s bigger, more spread out and just by changing some of those display settings.

So I’d like to just open this up to our listeners. If you have any feedback on this particular question, please let us know. You can give us a call on our listener line that’s 317-721-7124 or send us an email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org. Thanks so much.

All right. So our next question is, “I use ZoomText magnifier to help navigate my computer and I’m looking for a less expensive alternative. I’ve heard good things about the Windows Magnifier and thought I would ask what you guys think of it and whether or not it’s comparable to what ZoomText offers.

So I wonder if I’ve had a conversation with this individual.

Maybe.

I don’t even want to say that I used to love ZoomText, but anymore I’m really questioning a lot of times if it is the right solution. And I say this because what I have experienced recently, and by recently, I’m going to say within the last two or three years, we would put ZoomText on our computer and we would just deal with whatever came along with it. Meaning if it slowed the computer down, which often it does slow the computer down, especially with the boot up. Not necessarily going from one program to the next, but when you turn the computer on and you’ve got ZoomText loaded, there’s no doubt that it does take between 30 and 60 seconds, sometimes longer additional time for the computer to boot up.

And one of the things that I have found to be very frustrating with individuals that are trying to use ZoomText, sometimes they don’t notice it, but I do notice. The way that it breaks up the characters, it crackles them. There’s this paint that you can buy that’s called Crackle Paint. And a lot of times that’s what the characters on the screen will start to look like. They become so pixelated, and I’m not talking with a 15 times magnification, I’m talking with even just like as small as two or three times magnification.

If you are looking at a particular text… With the ZoomText, you’re going to see that those characters are not as clear as they could be. If you turn the ZoomText off, then they’re clear, they’re just smaller. So what I have noticed is that a lot of times with the Windows Magnifier, I’m able to get exactly what I was trying to get from ZoomText, but without the slowing down of the computer starting up and without having the characters be pixelated.

So what I would recommend to anybody who’s running a Windows machine, and this is oftentimes when I’m doing an evaluation for an individual that is low vision, so we’re deciding if ZoomText is what we need or not, I will first start them out with the Windows Magnifier and we’ll look at all the different settings and make adjustments and see if we can get them to go, “That looks really good.” And if not, then we have to start to take a look at the ZoomText.

And you can always progress into the ZoomText should you need to. But if you press on any Windows machine, any Windows machine, the Windows key, the control and M. That will bring up the Windows Magnifier window where you can scroll through there and see all of the different things that you can do with the Windows Magnifier. So just like with ZoomText, you can first decide, “Do I want to turn it on automatically or do I want to turn it on when I want to turn it on?”

Do I need to invert the colors or do I want to leave the colors alone? Do I want it to be full screen or do I want it to be just a lens or do I want it to be docked? All of those options. And then also, what do I want the Magnifier to follow? Do I want it to follow the points or the focus, the text cursor, whatever? On and on and on. Also, I can choose to have reading accompany the magnification. So if I know that I need the magnification and I may from time to time need to have some reading to go along with that, then I can also enable that at that point.

I know I kind of rambled there and I’m sorry, but for anybody who is looking for magnification, there used to absolutely be one option, one option only, and that was ZoomText if you were using a Windows computer. I now have to say that I feel like the Windows Magnifier is the low cost, no cost magnification option for individuals that do need a certain level of magnification or screen enhancement is what I like to call it.

Because most of the time it’s more about what can I do with the screen other than just make it bigger. Because sometimes bigger isn’t the answer, but being able to just enhance the pointer size or the colors, or the text will make the magnification the way that I need it to be to accommodate my needs. So that was my short answer. Sometimes just not compatible. Especially if you’re in a work environment, oftentimes you’ll be working on a database or in a particular webpage or whatever where the ZoomText may not just be fully compatible, but the Windows magnifier pretty much, I’ve not really ran into a situation where it’s not compatible.

I would also just mention because we’ve actually been setting up some public workstations with the local libraries here in Indiana, and Windows Magnifier was our choice because it’s a public access workstation. It’s one of those things where you don’t need to worry about upgrades. So ongoing costs is not an issue. You don’t have to upgrade it periodically. Whenever they upgrade the operating system, it’s going to get upgraded as well.

And to be quite honest, to your point, Belva, Tracy, I’ve looked at what’s available with the Windows Magnifier and I’m just blown away with all of the different features that come with it nowadays. It used to be a pretty basic tool and there wasn’t a whole lot to it, but you can really do a lot of the enhancements that you can do with ZoomText. So cursor enhancements, the insertion point enhancements, helping you find those things that are really difficult to find on your computer, specifically with visual impairments.

It’s connected to narrator, so it also gives you a speech option most places. And so I’m just really impressed with what they’ve done. And you’re right, for what I’ve been doing and what I’ve been working on as far as public access workstations, it makes it for a great solution for folks with low vision because whoever’s making that available to folks on their public workstation, it just works. It’s with the operating system. It’s a part of the operating system. They just need to pull it forward from the ease of access center and make sure it’s available on the desktop for folks to start it up and to turn it off if they don’t need it. But it does offer you all of those features and tools that ZoomText was far and away. It used to be better with so that folks with visual impairments can see it, but now they are. They’re available for free, built in. So I would agree.

Yeah. And it’s that three easy keystrokes too. I know I say easy and there’s somebody sitting out there right now going, “Yeah, sure. It’s easy for you.” But Windows control M, once you’ve had to use it, you’ll remember the next time you need to use it. And the beauty is it’s going to bring it up on any Windows machine, any Windows machine. It doesn’t even matter if it’s 10, 11 desktop, laptop, doesn’t matter.

Yep. And only one caveat to that is if you’re on a work laptop or your company has any kind of, I don’t know, security or permissions, restrictions, sometimes you may have to talk with them to get permissions for that to launch. I wouldn’t think so. It’s a pretty basic feature. It’s available on all computers, all Windows computers, and so you shouldn’t have to ask for that.

But if you’re finding that it’s not launching for you, maybe the keystroke doesn’t work for you, you may also open up the start menu, type in Magnifier into the start menu and find it that way. And if you’re not able to find it that way, it’s probably because your work has locked your computer down and isn’t allowing you to get to some of those features that are in the behind the scenes area. So you may talk to your IT program to be able to see if they can’t allow you to have access to some of those things. But Windows 10 is great.

And Brian, let me clarify. The Windows control M, that’s going to open up the magnifying setting page where you can go through and make all of the adjustments that you need to make. If you’re just accessing the magnifier and you just want the magnifier to come on with whatever settings it has previously been used, then that is your Windows key and the plus sign on your numpad. So I just want to clarify that Windows plus turns the magnifier itself on, and then the control Windows M is what opens up the setting page where you can make your adjustment.

Awesome. Well, hey, I would love to open this up to our listeners. If you have any feedback or opinions about the Windows Magnifier, let us know. We’d love to hear from you. You can give us a call on our listener line, that’s 317-721-7124 or send us an email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org. We’d love to hear from you. Thanks so much.

All right. So our next question is, “I have a spinal cord injury C6, C7, and I would like to voice control my TV, change channels, change volume, et cetera. What do you suggest as the best solution?” And so just throw that out to folks and so wanting to be able to control their TV by voice. What are some different solutions for someone who’s in that situation?

So I remember I used to have a TiVo. I loved my TiVo, and I remember being so excited when Alexa introduced some TiVo features. So I was actually able to turn the volume up and turn the volume down, and I just thought that was awesome. But really, it’s kind of boring. Nowadays with your smarter TVs or your Fire Sticks, even with some of the Comcast remotes and stuff, there’s pretty much everything available with voice control.

So you can change the channel, you can search all the channels to find a specific show, all with a voice command. You can turn the TV on and off if you have one of the smart plugs now. So pretty much any of that. As I was trying to research for this, I couldn’t find any one thing that made me go, “Oh yes, that would be it,” because it seems like all the smart TVs have some capability of doing this whether it’s the Amazon Smart TV, or the Sony Smart TV, or the Samsung.

So what I would suggest is find out what brand you want to go with and go from there to figure out, do you want to Sony TV or do you want a Samsung TV? And then once you’ve decided that, what size screen do you want? Then after you’ve decided that, then you can start to decide what features is it that you’re needing to be able to do. To me, I would think being able to turn the TV on and off, which you could do with any TV. It doesn’t even have to be a new smart TV. I mean, you could have an older TV and have a smart plug and plug the TV into that smart plug and be able to turn it on and off by voice.

I would also think that controlling the volume would be important, and I think that’s going to be something that you’re not going to have any trouble finding. And then doing a voice search, I can do that with my Comcast remote. I don’t have anything smart set up on the TV or anything, but I can just say into my remote, find whatever show I’m looking for and it’ll go out and look at all that.

But I do know also I have the Fire Stick and it’s very compatible with voice control or voice commands. And then I would say maybe if you can check your Best Buy store because they have all that stuff set up in the store so they can show it to you. But if that’s not an option for you, then that’s when Google becomes a good friend and you just start Google searching for all the different models and what it can do for you.

Brian, do you remember when I was brand new, we were doing a home modification for a young lady and her TV was one of the big deal? Oh my gosh, all the technology that had to go into that poor girl’s TV to be able to get it to work. And then I remember having to go back many a times because the stuff just didn’t work right. Unfortunately, that’s the way it used to be when we had to just put everything together to try to get things to work.

But now that so many things have this stuff just built in, kind of like we were just talking earlier about the ZoomText just being built in part of the product itself.

Yeah, it’s definitely less expensive for sure. I remember in this job when I first started 20 plus years ago, it would be $15,000. You’d have a person in your home for multiple weeks at a time, setting up little IR pyramids so that we could get somehow program and voice control your TV to go up and down and those kinds of things. And now like you said, Belva, it is totally built in. So real simple, real easy to use for sure.

Well, I would say, Belva, all those are great things that you said. And really, if you’ve got a Comcast or whatever, all the other cable providers, if you’re already using them, call them. They’ll be able to tell you. They usually have an accessibility line. They might be able to tell you because it could be very simple as you don’t think it does it, but you just need a different remote or a different kind of box, or a different something else that may or may not be completely available through them already for no extra cost.

But yeah, like they said with voice control, there’s a lot of different options. A lot of them are going to make you push a button though is the only tricky part that you may have to try to get around is to get the voice control up. A lot of times there is a button that gets it listening. So you may need to talk to them to see if there’s a way to override that, but it shouldn’t be too awful hard to be able to get past that as well.

All right. So I just want to open this up to our listeners. Give us a call on our listener line at 317-721-7124 or send us an email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org if you have any feedback regarding simply voice controlling your TV. I think to Belva’s point earlier, a lot of TVs, they’re smart TVs and they’ll do that for you. It’s built right in. But we’d love to be able to hear from you if you have other solutions that might be applicable for this particular question. And so thanks so much. Appreciate it.

All right. So our next question is, “I’m looking for a large print alarm clock. I have low vision, 20 over 100, so it will need to have very large numbers. Any suggestions for large print clocks?” Man, I can hardly say that. “Or places where I should look for this type of clock?” I think it’s a simpler question than we typically get, but much needed answers here for large print alarm clocks. And so I’ll open that up.

So MaxiAids would be one of the first places that I would hop off to take a look, and that’s maxiaids.com. And then also Amazon. They have a large number of them nowadays. And then also I might throw out there, maybe you just need to get yourself a Dot. I know maybe you don’t want to have to deal with all that goes into setting up a Dot or something like that. But if you are already a computer user and already have an Amazon account or whatever, and a Dot’s like $20 and it’ll set your alarm at whatever time you tell it to and it’ll tell you the time anytime night or day, you just have to ask it.

Before answering this question, I took a quick look on Amazon and put in large screen alarm clocks and there are literally just tons of them. Anywhere from $20 to $400. Some of the ginormous ones that are like wall size digital clocks can be a couple hundred dollars, but I don’t think that’s what you’re going for. But if you are, they’re out there and they’re available. MaxiAids is very reasonable with their pricing as well.

And they can talk, so if you need it to talk as you’re setting it up, sometimes those menus can be small and a little hard to access, especially if you’re low vision, so it can talk you through the setup. So that’s my two answers, Amazon and MaxiAids.

Yeah. And another one is LS&S products. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to their… They’re very similar to MaxiAids where they just wholesale different products for folks with low vision. And so you might check there. You should also note, when you think about large print clocks, there are different contrasts. And so I know there’s a lot of white text on black backgrounds. You can get it, the big red. On most clocks, you’ve got red on black. You’ve got some different contrasts to work with as well.

You can also find them in analog or digital. Lots of different options. I do love your suggestion about using an Echo Dot as a solution because then you just simply have to ask. It’s like you’re talking watch where you can just simply have it announce the time whenever you need it as well. But LS&S would also go along with MaxiAids and Amazon that you mentioned before.

Two that I have seen and really do like, I’ll just kind of throw these brands out there to folks. DreamSky and JALL. It’s J-A-L-L. They come with eight-inch tall letters and numbers. And so I think the DreamSky, they actually are just an analog clock. They’ve got eight inch white on black background clocks. And so they’re very, very large. Almost two thirds of a foot tall. And if you look at the JALL clock, the J-A-L-L clock, those actually not only give you the time, but it’ll also give you the day, the month, and some additional information about what time of day it is.

So take a look at that one as well. Those are also big, large eight-inch letter and number clocks as well. So just add a little bit of experience with some of those.

We might as well throw out there too to this individual if they already have a tablet or a smartphone, those could also be used for an alarm clock. You just ask your assistant, whether it’s Google or Siri or whoever to set the alarm for you.

Yeah, absolutely. That’s a good point. Well, hey, I’d love to open this up to our listeners. If you have any feedback regarding large print clocks, I’d love to hear from you. You can give us a call on our listener line. That’s 317-721-7124 or send us an email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org. Would love to hear from you. Thanks so much.

And now it’s time for the wild card question.

All right. So our next question is the wild card question. And this is a question that we haven’t had any time to prepare for, but we’re going to ask it anyways and see where the conversation goes. And so the question is, what would the world be like if assistive technology didn’t exist? And so again, what would the world be like if assistive technology didn’t exist? I’ll just kind of open that up to folks.

Well, I’m going to jump in first because I’m usually the one throwing the question out and I don’t get to go first. So wow, that’s a big question because that would really change the world, wouldn’t it? I think assistive technology has been around a lot longer than what any of us really realized and in many different forms and fashion.

But if I think just about my consumers that are visually impaired or blind, or hard of hearing, or deaf, I think, oh my goodness, we would be pulling the rug out from under them if we took away their technology. There would be so many things that they simply would not be able to do, that it’s just, wow, it would change everything. And then again, that’s just from the group of folks that I’m used to working with. I think all of us, even without realizing it, probably use a form of assistive technology ourselves most of the time daily without even thinking that we may be using assistive technology when we really are.

I know for me, I’m a shorter person, so I use steps tools all the time. Not as strong as I used to be, so I use carts a lot to move stuff around. So in a sense, those are my assistive technology devices that I use and don’t even think about it. So yeah, I think it would be a very different world.

Quick last thought. For individuals when I first got into this area, if they were just low vision, so they had some usable vision and they wanted to be able to read. Any kind of print, they would have to have some sort of magnifier in their pocket. If they wanted to identify money, they would have to have a bill identifier in their pocket. If they wanted to go to the corner store, they might need a GPS device in their pocket so that they could put in the address that they wanted to go to and get those directions back.

So there’s four or five things they’ve got in their pocket to just do two simple tasks. Technology has come a long way. I hope to continue to see it go further and further. I am very interested to see where it’ll be in another 10 years because I’ve seen where it’s been and where it’s at over the last 25. I can’t imagine. I mean, is it going to be at some point that it’s all it can be or will it just always need to be bigger, better, and faster, stronger, whatever?

So I don’t know. I would go one of two ways. One, it’d be basically, “Oh, sorry, you got a disability, you’re out.” And that would just be it. Or B, and maybe another way to look at it, there’s a belief that disability is a society problem, not a medical kind of issue that the world is inaccessible, not because it just is, but because it’s made that way. So perhaps if there wasn’t assistive technology, everything would just be made accessible. I don’t know how that would work. And that’s a pretty big thing, but maybe you wouldn’t exclude individuals just because they have a disability, but instead would make sure that they had access to it because there wouldn’t be any other way.

The thing is though, if you get to kind of like Belva said and even Tracy said, assistive technology is a little bit more than a wheelchair or a screen reader. I mean there’s a lot more that kind of goes into it. But I mean, if you’re talking about no assistive technology, like no wheelchair, would a car work. I mean, where do you go? So that’s a really hard question to answer, but I mean the world would definitely be a much different place.

Again, we’d all have different careers, so who knows what we’d be doing. We wouldn’t be all sitting around and making jokes, doing podcasts. Maybe making jokes, maybe doing podcasts, but not this kind. So I don’t know. It’s almost impossible to tell because it’s hard to tell what kind of assistive technology people use to create the things we already use. I mean, what if the people that created the internet used AT to be able to do that?

Well, we may not have the internet. We may not have cars or other things. How much else would’ve never come to be if not for individuals with disabilities being able to access things? So I don’t know. It’s too big of a question. Too philosophical for such things.

Well, Josh, I got to say two things that you said that are very real. Number one, we would all be doing something different for our job, but think about the number of people that we’ve all assisted to be able to get or keep their job.

Two, yeah.

That would be a phenomenal number of people unemployed.

Yeah. It really truly would.

And I think go beyond just employment. I mean, think about individuals with disabilities would face significant challenges in education, employment, healthcare, just daily living, those types of things. I mean, assistive technology, really, when you think about it gives people the opportunity to communicate, to learn, and to participate really in life. Just regular life and really all sorts of different places. And it can lead to things like social isolation, which we dealt with over the pandemic, decreased quality of life, and then also really limit their independence.

I mean, that’s what assistive technology is really for, right? It’s helping people just be more independent in their everyday life. And so when you start taking some of those things away, you wonder what that would be. It could also, and I think Belva, you may have touched on this, maybe it was Tracy, but it could really limit innovation in other ways. I mean, think about where voice input started. It really was to help speed up typing, but really quickly became applicable for folks with disabilities who couldn’t use a keyboard or a mouse. And the innovations with what people were able to do for folks with disabilities with voice input led to, now we all use it. We all use it to be able to type in a text message into our phone in other ways.

So you’re limiting some of the innovations that came from the design and the implementation of assistive technology have a great impact on everyday tools that we use these days. So I think there’s a whole lot there if you would take assistive technology away and it didn’t exist. It would be life altering for a lot of us, not just from employment wise because that would suck, but from just our everyday lives, convenience, our ability to be more independent, to do things more quickly, proficiently, and more effectively in our everyday lives, for sure.

Well, and I mean even think of commerce, Brian, I mean, individuals with disabilities are people, they buy stuff. I mean, you think if that 25% of the population couldn’t buy things, that hurts the economy in all kinds of ways. Not only work, but also just being a consumer or doing all those other things, that learning, going to school, doing all that stuff. And then I also wonder… And Belva, I know you can definitely attest to this, and Tracy, you’ve probably seen it, I’ve met a lot of folks with disabilities that I wouldn’t say what they were doing was assistive technology, but they’ve accommodated themselves for every year of their life. You know what I mean? They’ve found ways around things, ways past things, ways through things. So I don’t know if you could have a world completely without assistive technology because someone with a disability is going to say, “Blank that and do it.” You know what I mean? Get through it anyway.

So I don’t know if you use that big blanket term for AT. I don’t think you could completely get rid of it because at least one person would say, “Nope, there’s more and I’m doing it.” And would make up their own assistive technology in their own way through it.

I think about educationally too. I mean, I’ve had a lot of… Well, not a lot, but I have had several clients that dropped out of school at a young age because they felt different and because the accommodations that they needed were not available to them. This is from older folks, it’s not as current or not as prominent as it used to be because we do have lots and lots of accommodations for people now.

But people my age, if the accommodations weren’t there for them and they just weren’t, they just dropped out of school. Was it Hadley? I think it was Hadley that offered the GED program that you could do online. I’m not sure if they still do offer that or not, but they also did a full walk across the stage type graduation at one point. So educationally we would really be hurting too. So thank goodness we have assistive technology. And if you would’ve asked me 30 years ago, what’s assistive technology? I would’ve said, “I don’t know.” [inaudible 00:50:25]

I think we all might have thought that too.

Belva was only 38 because I know she said people my age. No one could see you, Belva, so we’re just going to say 38. So 30 years ago she was eight years old and would not have known what assistive technology was.

How funny. Well, hey guys.

Good question. Good question.

Yeah, absolutely. I would love to open this up to our listeners to get your thoughts and opinions on what would the world be like if assistive technology didn’t exist. You can give us a call on our listener line that’s 317-721-7124. Or you can send us an email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org. Those are great ways to get ahold of us. Send us your feedback on this particular question. Well, that is our show for today. Just want to say, give the folks here in the room an opportunity to say goodbye to everybody. And so I’ll start with Belva. Belva, do you want to say goodbye?

Goodbye, everybody. See you next time.

Excellent. Next is Josh. Josh, do you want to get a chance to say goodbye?

Bye, everybody. Can’t wait to see you again. Keep those questions coming.

Excellent. Hey guys, thank you for joining us today. Really appreciate you. Look forward to hearing your feedback and we will talk soon. Thank you so much. Take care. Bye-bye.

It seems like every week we have at least one blooper, so here you go.

Voice of ATFAQ. I’m sorry. Hold on a second.

No, that’s fine. I’ll take that too. Whatever. The voice of a new generation. No, that was Pepsi, Pepsi. All right, Brian.

That’s the third voice in my head. I don’t know.

There’s nothing wrong with that, Brian. You go live your best life.

Information provided on Assistive Technology FAQ does not constitute a product endorsement. Our comments are not intended as recommendations, nor is our show of evaluative in nature. Assistive technology FAQ is hosted and produced by Brian Norton. Gets editorial help from Josh Anderson, Belva Smith and Tracy Castillo. Receives support from Easterseals Crossroads and the INDATA Project. The show transcript is sponsored by INTRAC, the Indiana Telephone Relay Access Corporation. To learn more about INTRAC, go to indianarelay.com. Assistive Technology FAQ is also a proud member of the Accessibility Channel. To find more of our shows, go to accessibilitychannel.com.