ATU664 – New Offerings from LVI America with Kimberly Cline

This is Kimberly Cline and I’m the director of Sales for LVI America and this is the 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 664 of Assistive technology Update. It is scheduled to be released on February 16th, 2024. In today’s show we’re very excited to welcome back Kimberly Cline from LVI America. She’s here to tell us about some updates and some new devices available from them. We also welcome back Amy Barry from BridgingApps with An App Worth Mentioning. Don’t forget, folks, we always love to hear from you. Give us a call on our listener line at 317-721-7124. Send us an email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org or just give us a comment, a like, a share, all those great things. But for right now, let’s go ahead and get on with the show.

Folks, if you’re listening to this show, it’s obvious that you like assistive technology and you love podcasts. Well, if you like assistive technology and podcasts, have I got a treat for you. Assistive Technology Update is not our only podcast here at the INDATA Project at Easterseals Crossroads. No, we actually have two others. Assistive Technology Frequently Asked Questions or ATFAQ is a question and answer show where we take your questions as well as questions that we receive through our other programs and do our best to answer those with our panel of experts. I use that word very loosely, but usually it’s myself, Brian Norton and other members of our team sitting in to try to answer your questions. This show relies on our listeners not just for our questions, but sometimes for the answers. Let’s not lie, we do not know everything that there is to know, so we always kind of try to throw those questions out and sometimes our listeners’ feedback, well, we get to learn stuff as well, which is always a great thing.

Or if perhaps you’re short on time, we also have Accessibility Minute. Now, Accessibility Minute is just a little taster. It’s going to give you just a little bit of information about a new piece of assistive technology, a new app, program or something else cool that might be able to help individuals with disabilities and they give you some resources where you can go and check out more about it on your own. So remember, if you like this show, if you like assistive technology and you like podcasts, check out our other shows, Assistive Technology Frequently Asked Questions and Accessibility Minute to go along with Assistive Technology Update, which you’re listening to right now. You can find those over at eastersealstech.com or anywhere you get your podcast. Don’t forget to like, subscribe and give us some comments and feedback. We always love hearing from you, and thank you so much for listening to this and all of our programs. Next up on the show, please join me in welcoming back Amy Barry from BridgingApps with An App Worth Mentioning.

This is Amy Barry with BridgingApps and this is An App Worth Mentioning. This week’s featured app is Headspace: Sleep and Meditation. Headspace is an innovative program designed to help individuals achieve a happier and healthier lifestyle through guided meditations. Studies consistently show the benefits of regular meditation, including decreased blood pressure, deeper and better sleep cycles, as well as increased levels of overall awareness and intention in daily living. Some studies even suggest that meditation can have a therapeutic effect on those suffering from depression, anxiety, insomnia, and even chronic pain. The Headspace app makes it easy for users of all ages and abilities to practice meditation anytime and anywhere. The mobile nature of the app means that everyone can have guided meditation literally at their fingertips and users can practice mobile mindfulness even on the go. The Headspace app can provide beneficial outcomes for a variety of users and was trialed for this review in multiple settings.

For younger children, the app is ideal for behavioral modifications. For those with sensory processing disorders, the use of headphones with the app can be particularly effective by blocking out distractions and helping the user to focus exclusively on the guided meditation. For older users, selections in the singles tab can be used for quick coping strategies and everyday scenarios. Headspace employs a user-friendly touchscreen interface with simple engaging graphics and the app also provides the user with a variety of analytics allowing users to track and monitor their progress. Headspace is currently available for iOS and Android devices and it’s free to download with optional in-app purchases. For more information on this app and others like it, visit bridgingapps.org.

Listeners, Kimberly Cline has been a featured guest on this podcast, well since before I was part of the INDATA project, much less the host of the show, but today she’s back to tell us about some of the new and exciting offerings from LVI and we can’t wait to learn more about them. Kimberly, welcome back to AT Update.

Thank you so much. I appreciate you having me back again.

Yeah, it was nice to see you down at ATIA and see all the cool stuff that LVI is doing, so we couldn’t wait to have you on and learn a little bit more about it. But before we do that, for maybe our listeners who kind of haven’t heard you on here before, could you tell them a little bit about yourself?

Sure. I am Kimberly Cline. I live in Las Vegas, Nevada, but I love to tell everybody I live at the airport because pretty much I’m home today, but pretty much I’m in a different city every week. I oversee North America, so all of US and Canada. Do get the opportunity to travel around and show all of our exciting products. I’ve been in the industry a very long time and going on over 30 plus years. I don’t want to say how many because that gets my age up there, but it’s been a long, long time and thrilled to be working with LVI. The name of our company is LVI, that’s where our mothership is in Sweden, and we are a subsidiary of that, LVI America.

Well, I guess, just especially for folks who kind of haven’t heard you before, could you tell us just a little bit about LVI?

Sure. Thank you so much. So LVI is located in Sweden. That is our mothership. That is where everything is designed, that is where it’s tested, manufactured. We have a huge shipping facility there. Everything is done in-house and they actually, interestingly enough, hand-build everything. So that’s always very exciting. They did send me over, I’m going on my fifth year with them, but my first year to get to meet everybody and actually see how they build everything in modules and put everything together. And a lot of the folks that are back there doing the assembly have been there over twenty-some years and they know how it’s important to make sure that the product quality is outstanding because people rely on these products for school, work, home, and they never want them to break. So when we build something, we try to build it for a lifetime.

Nice. Very nice. And yeah, like you said, you definitely don’t want these things to break because you’re kind of relying on them for very important things, be it learning, living, working and all that kind of stuff. But the real reason we had you on here today was to talk about some new things that you have there at LVI. So Kimberly, what are some of the kind of new offerings coming out of LVI?

Thank you so much. So we did release three new products at ATIA. We just got back from that a couple of weeks ago. It was a very exciting conference. It’s nice to see numbers back up and people seem like they’ve just, everyone was kind of back out and at it. I didn’t see too many masks around. Everyone seemed healthy and happy to be around and there was a lot of buzz around our booth. We had three new products. We’ve had a product out for a while. It was our only desktop model, it’s called the Vision, and it was a 23-inch unit. We will be phasing that out. We still have a few left in stock but not for long. And now we have a 24 and a 27-inch vision. We had a 27-inch vision at ATIA.

The cool thing about it is it’s not just, oh boy, it’s a bigger screen. Yes, it is 27 inches, but it’s a new style of monitor that’s that ultra-thin look. You know how TVs keep changing and updating and technology. So we kind of got rid of the bulkier type style and it is a very, very thin monitor. So the 27-inch vision actually weighs right around, it’s a little bit less than our 23-inch, which is kind of incredible. We still do offer it with either text-to-speech or not text-to-speech. That’s something you have to decide upon purchase. We’re also featuring a different front panel. The new front panel has knobs instead of push buttons. We had some folks see that and just felt that it was easier. A lot of times some of the desktop models, they are for seniors and things like that and they felt it was easier for the knobs that stick out, easier to grab, very, very simple. There’s only three knobs on it. An on-off and you can change the size of the magnification and the colors.

And for those of you that really like that other panel, we still have it and it can be interchanged out. And the other panel allows you to do things like line masking and marking if you’re wanting to do that. And then that has all the full colors where the knob panel just has yellow on black, black on yellow, white on black, black on white, in the high contrast color. And then in the other color we of course have full color and gray scale. So it’s just an update to that product. But it is kind of a whole new product because of the fact first of all, the 24 and 27, the nice thin monitor and then the new front panel. So it got a lot of attention at the show and we’re excited.

We currently are in a back order situation, which is a good place to be as a manufacturer. But please, if anyone’s interested, reach out to your reseller in the area. We are taking orders for both the 24 and 27 and we plan to be fully, fully stocked. We’ll get a shipment in March and then we’ll get another large one in April. So I would say sometime in April you’ll be able just to dial up like normal, place an order and we try to ship same day. So that’s one of our new products. Did you have any questions about that one?

Well, no, I don’t think so, but I do love the way that you say they just keep getting lighter and that just brought back pictures in my head of the giant CRT kind of monitor style that weighed 90 pounds and didn’t even have that great of a screen on it. So I love that, A, you have a few different offerings, but then also that you are kind of keeping it light. And I do love that you put the knobs on there. In working with folks for so long, knobs just seem to be something easy to figure out, easy to master and easy to keep up with. You also brought up a very good point. It’s something I think we’ve talked before about on here that you listened to your customers when you did that. That’s very cool. Not everybody does that, but I’m glad you did listen to your customers and changed that to something that they wanted and was easier for them to be able to use.

Absolutely. We have something, as I’ve mentioned before, called feedback@lviamerica. It’s feedback@lviamerica.com and if someone has suggestions, questions of course can come to info, but if they have suggestions for products, we review all of our products yearly and when we get a large request for something, 20 people or more, we look at that and go, wow, if 20 people brought it up, probably 200 or more. One, just 20 took the time to take the time to send an email. So we do listen and we did make the change and we’re really excited about it. And what’s nice, like I said, is if someone really prefers that other panel, that panel has two screws, it pops off, you can interchange them very, very quickly. And we have both of those panel sets in the US so we’re excited about that product.

So that’s one. The second one that we released at the show, we’ve had a product out for a while now. It’s called the MagniLink One. It was our basic model of our Zip basically, but the camera didn’t move. So it was very basic. It had one purpose in life, that’s why it was called the One. It did excellent document viewing, but it was always HD. It was not full HD. And now we have that full HD. So it’s the exact same clarity and quality of the camera that we’ve had on our Zip product for many, many years. And the camera is still focused down, but the camera quality, if you set that next to a Zip, it would look exactly the same. So people were thrilled to see that because the price point is about a thousand dollars cheaper than a Zip. There’s a lot of expense in that mechanism of that camera that moves and does document distance, self viewing that can move all around.

So people were thrilled to see that. And we also changed the base of the unit. We made the change last year, we just did an update to version two, but now it’s fully integrated into this model to where if you don’t want to get it with an XY Table, an integrated XY Table, if you want to get it just without, because you’re trying to keep it super lightweight, we do have those removable XY Tables that fit on the Zip and it now fits on the One. It has the two little tabs that stick out in the back and you can just slide that removable XY Table on or off. If you need it, great. If you don’t, don’t take it with you, there’s no reason to carry around the extra weight.

So we made that change to it and the camera and we still kept the price point extremely low and people were really thrilled to see that as well because it folds up. It is only 17-inch, but it does fold up. It has a nice carrying case. This unit, because it is the base model, you do have to plug it in. It does not come with a battery, but it’s a great product, especially for the price point.

Most definitely. Most definitely. And then what else was the new offerings you had on there at ATIA from LVI?

Yeah, definitely. So probably the product, I wouldn’t say out of the three got the most attention, because the vision got a lot of attention as well. But this one, we had it more out front and it really did capture the eye of a lot of people. Last time when I talked with you, we had just released the Magnilink WiFi and the Magnilink WiFiCam, which was our first release of our iPad products. And I’m super thrilled with those. They’re doing great. In fact, when I talked to you last time, those were on back order, but we’re in good shape and got those in stock now. Those products have been amazing, but since we released that product, thank goodness, Apple changed their iOS for the iPad. And now you can direct connect cameras right into the iPad. So our other solution, our first solution, the Magnilink WiFiCam and Magni WiFi were wireless, which is awesome because if you’ve got kids that are too cool for school or just somebody with a tight desk space, they could put the unit anywhere and be able to snap the iPad on their desk, control the software.

So that was our wireless solution. But we did have some folks that said, “Hey, I love your tab form factor.” Because we have a product called the TAB for the Surface Pro TAB, and wouldn’t it be great to have that for the iPad? So that’s exactly what we have now, it’s called the iTAB. So it’s kind of different than the TAB, because it’s the “i” version, the iPad version. And it fits in there just like it does in the TAB. We have it for an 11-inch and a 12.9-inch iPad. So again, we don’t sell iPads, it would just be we’re selling you the stand, the camera and the software. And so we did release that at the show. We actually had both the wireless version, the MagniLink WiFiCam, and the iTab next to each other, so people could kind of play with both and kind of go, “Oh yeah, I like this one or here’s the reasons I like…” Whichever one they preferred.

But it’s an amazing product because it does direct connect. So the beauty of direct connect is of course you’re going to get a much quicker image. So if you go to move the document, there’s no delay with a direct connect where you might have a slight delay with the wireless. And so it got a lot of attention. It’s still a great product. The product that it’s of course most like is the MagniLink WiFiCam. The software is the same software. So if you just go up to the app store, the software’s free. We don’t charge for it at all. So if you already have an iPad or you have an iPhone and you just want to try the software, it’s just called MagniLink Viewer and you can check that out and that will just give you a chance to play with it. Now with the free version, we did cut out the OCR, we cut out form filling and we cut out the ability to take video and pictures, but it still gives you a real good feel for changing color.

You do have the ability to go into high contrast colors, put on the line masking and all of those types of things, and of course zoom in and zoom out. So we now have basically two different versions. We will not phase out the other product. It’s still very popular. But for people that wanted to have that direct connect, this is a new option. So here’s some things that, it’s probably little technical things I just want people to understand. So our MagniLink WiFiCam and Magni WiFi, that worked with anybody that had an iPad that supports iOS 15 or higher. So that went back quite a few years. Of course, the newer the iPad, the faster the connection, all of those things. But still we supported all of those iPads going back for several years. Also, that one didn’t have a physical stand, it had a lean-to stand.

So you have the ability to put any size iPad, iPad mini, anything like that. With the new one, it is only for an 11 and 12.9-inch. We figured most people using this product are low vision. They’re probably not going to be using a small iPad was the thought process behind that. But you do have to have an iPad that’s newer. You have to have an iPad that’s got a USB-C connection, and you have to have an iPad that can support iOS 17 or higher. So that’s the newer release. And for people that have that, that’s great, but if you don’t, then yes, you’re going to have the investment of not just the product, but you would also have the investment of going and getting an iPad. So no right or wrong, it just depends on what the individual wants.

Sure. And I mean, it sounds like they’ll both still work for years kind of down the road for you as well, but it sounds like, yeah, definitely. If you’re looking and trying to decide between those two, definitely look at if you have an iPad, what version you’ve got and things like that. And maybe if it’s time to upgrade that as well, if you’re too far back and can’t get to that iOS 15, it’s always kind of a good thing.

We’ve got a lot of other cool things too with it. So if people have our MagniLink S product, which is our camera, our standalone camera, and you bought it November ’21 or later, so it goes back quite a few years, we allow you to direct connect that right into an iPad. So if someone already has a newer iPad that’s got a USB-C connection, they could take their S, if they already have a MagniLink S, plug it right into the iPad, go get the software and you’re ready to go. So that’s another solution as well.

Oh, very cool. I didn’t even know that. So yeah, if you’ve already got that, then you could just download the software and boom, have that already set up and everything else. That is really, really cool. Now, I know these are kind of new, but could you maybe tell me a story about someone’s finding more accessibility using these or maybe some feedback you’ve gotten from ATIA and places like that?

Sure, of course. So the MagniLink WiFi and MagniLink WiFiCam have been out for about six months and we’ve had a lot of kiddos using them in schools. And on those products I’ve heard already, oh my gosh, we were trying to find a solution for our student. They were a little too cool for school. There’s no way. They weren’t going to use anything. Everybody in the classroom has an iPad on their desk, and that’s what they wanted. So this provided them that solution. So we’ve heard that with that. This product, literally, I got my product at ATIA. It was the first time I had seen it, so it’s brand new. But everybody that came by that saw it was so familiar with our TAB product, they said, “Oh my gosh, this product is cool. The Magnilink WifiCam is cool, but this is really what we wanted.” Because we didn’t want anybody to have any latency at all, we wanted that instant.

And the big push with it too is the Magnilink S. We have a lot of schools out there and a lot of people out there that have already invested in our products, and we’re all about, we were building the family of the products with the air products that we talked about in the past, but we’re all about don’t just get rid of something you have. If you made an investment in something, let’s group it together with other products. So if someone has a Magnilink S and they just want to plug it in and they have their own stand, that is one way to go. So there’s really not an expense involved. They just go download the software. They have to have an iPad that they can directly connect in. Now, however, when you’re directly connecting, whether it’s the S camera or the Magnilink Wifi, excuse me, the iTab camera, which is the camera that looks just like the camera on the TAB, it’s one on the bendable arm.

If you’re plugging that in and using it directly connected, it does zap power from your iPad. So because it does that, you’re only going to maybe get an hour and a half. If you’re not fully using every feature, maybe two hours. But a lot of folks, that’s not enough. They want it for a full day. So even though we don’t sell the iPads, if you get the iTab, which has the stand, or you’re using the S and you just buy our stand, we actually give you a charger and we give you a charger for the iPad that’s more powerful than maybe one you would just get with it. It’s a 65 watt. And the beauty of that is it’s not just allowing you to use the camera and keep it solid, it’s allowing you to use the camera and charge it to give it power at the same time.

So if it was 50% when you started, you’re going to be able to get up to a 100%. So our stand has a hub on the back, and that hub allows you to plug in, of course, our camera, either the S or the camera that comes with the iTAB, and then there’s also the ability to charge with that hub. And then you also have the ability, let’s say you want to charge your phone or any other thing that you’re going to plug into a USB connection, our handheld Naras or just anything, because we figured if we’re going to put a hub back there and make it a powerful enough hub, let’s give enough ports if people want to be able to plug in other things as well.

Very, very cool. Kimberly, if our listeners want to find out more about kind of everything we talked about here as well as maybe some of the other offerings from LVI, what’s a good way for them to do that?

Sure. They can reach out to me directly, and my number is 702-468-6611, and that number, you can call me or text me, again, 702-468-6611. And you can also email me @Kimberly, K-I-M-B-E-R-L-Y.cline, and Cline is C-L-I-N-E@lviamerica.com.

Awesome. And we will put links to those down in the show notes. We will also put links to some of our previous shows that Kimberly’s been on, just so that you can get a little deeper dive on some of the other things that she mentioned today and really all the great things that they have also. Well, Kimberly, it’s always a pleasure. Thank you so much for taking time out of your very brief time to be home, to spend it here with us today and tell our listeners about all the great new offerings from LVI.

Thank you so much. And if you have more questions, you’re like, wow, that’s a lot of options for the iPad. Do I want the MagniLink WiFiCam? Do I want the iTAB? Do I want to use my S? All those things. We are hosting a webinar on February 27th, that’s a Tuesday, and that’ll be at one o’clock Eastern time. And I literally will have all the options. I’ll be plugging it into an S with the stand. I’ll be using the WiFi connection, I’ll be using the wire connection. I’ll be showing you all the options. We’ll spend a whole hour on every option that we have available for the iPad. It’s a free webinar. If you want to join, you can just go to our website, which is www.lviamerica.com. Go to the webinar link. You can register and we are offering a ACVREPs for this webinar. We have learning objectives, of course, there’ll be an entrance and an exit code, and then we’ll give you an email to send that information to, to apply for your ACVREP credits. So we’d love to have you join us.

Awesome, awesome. Those free credits are always a great thing to be able to get, not just while you’re kind of learning things, so awesome. We will put the link down in the show notes to lviamerica.com as well, so you can go there and sign up for the webinar and be able to check out all those great things. Thank you so much again, Kimberly. Have a great day.

You as well. Take care.

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 @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 @relayindiana.com. A special thanks to Nikol 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, Easterseals Crossroads, our supporting partners or this host. This was your Assistive Technology Update. 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.