ATFAQ 194 – Q1. Blind gardening, Q2. Cell Phones for visually impaired, Q3. Smart glasses for visually impaired, Q4. Thoughts on AI

I have a question.

Huh?

What?

I’ve always wondered.

What about, do you know…

I have a question. I’ve always wondered.

I have a question.

I have a question.

Oh, I have a question.

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 194. My name is Brian Norton, and I’m the host of the show, and 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 you today. But before we jump in, I just want to take a moment to go around our virtual room and introduce the folks that are here with me. The first is Belva. Belva is the vision team lead. One of our team leads in our clinical assistive technology program. Belva, you want to say hi to folks?

Good morning everybody… Well, maybe morning, maybe afternoon. But, hello, everybody.

That’s right. That’s right. Not sure when you’re joining us.

Right.

Also, we have Josh. Josh is our director of assistive technology services here at Easterseals Crossroads. He also hosts the popular podcast, one of our flagship podcasts that is AT Update, which is a news and information show. Josh, do you want to say hi to folks?

Hi, everybody. Welcome, welcome.

Excellent. Excellent. I love coming to this group because I get to be surrounded by some great folks who have been in assistive technology for a long time and have a lot of knowledge to share with folks. And at least, we hope, today, we can get you guys good answers to the questions that you have. Just for folks who are maybe new to our show, just want to spend a moment walking through the way our show is put together, what the format is, and we give you ways to get a hold of us with your questions.

So the first thing is really the format of our show is we come across various assistive technology-related questions throughout the month and week, and we try to put those together into a show where we sit around here at our facility or wherever we are virtually. It looks like Belle is at home, Josh is at home, and I’m the only one here at work during this cold, cold January morning. Anyways, but we sit around and we try to answer those questions as best we can to get you the answers, the situations that you find yourself in. And so a couple of ways for you just to get us your questions would be our listener line. We have a listener line set up. It’s 317-721-7124. Or you can send us an email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org, or you can send us a tweet on X with the hashtag, ATFAQ. We monitor all three of those different channels for questions, and then we, again, put it together in a show, try to answer them the best we can.

Hey, Brian, I have a question.

Sure.

Which one of those ways is used the most frequently for us to get questions?

So most frequently is email. So a lot of folks will do that tech@eastersealscrossroads.org. And, occasionally, we’ll get folks on the voicemail. I love getting voicemails because we’ll play the voicemail. We’ll trim it up and clean it up a little bit, but we’ll play that voicemail, and then jump live into that question. So I love having other people’s voices on the show when we can. And so I would encourage folks to use that listener line if you feel comfortable with that. 317-721-7124. Or you can use the method that most folks use, which is our email, which is tech@eastersealscrossroads.org.

Awesome.

Awesome. Good question. Hey, look, we had an answer.

You’re right.

That’s pretty good.

And we’re done. It was great. Thanks for listening, everybody.

Excellent. Well, hey, without further ado, I just want to jump into our first question today, and this was actually a voicemail, but he didn’t want us to play the voicemail. You can let us know that when you call and leave a voicemail that you’d rather us just to read it. But specifically what this person was interested in, John’s interested in is, “I’m interested in learning more about technology for blind gardening. Specifically, I’ve been looking for a rain gauge and a talking hydrometer. I’m interested in hearing your thoughts.” And so just open that up to the group.

When I was trying to research this, it seemed like everything I was finding was about sensory gardens. So how can you make the garden smell good, I guess. What things can you do to make it more sensory accessible, I guess. And I do know that we had, at one time, Jim Rinehart, one of our co-workers, he did a session on accessible gardening, but I’m not sure if it was really about the visual part of it or just accessible, but what I found, I did find a good article for tips from an expert gardener who is blind, and I just put that in Google and that came up, ConnectorCenter.

And then I noticed that he was asking about the talking rain gauge. I was not able to find a talking rain gauge, but I did find a digital wireless rain gauge at Sharper Image that does have an app for your smartphone. So that would probably be your best bet for trying to get something that’s going to talk to you as far as giving you that information verbally, because I just could not… Even looking at all the places that we would normally look when we’re looking for specialized technologies for persons that are blind or visually-impaired, just couldn’t find anything that was talking. So the digital wireless rain gauge at Sharper Image was my best solution for that.

Yeah. And, Belva, I found the same things, and I think Jim’s was a lot about physical access if I remember, but it’s been a while since that went.

Yeah.

But, yeah, and I ran into the same thing, just find accessible gardening, especially for folks with visual impairments and there just isn’t, or at least wasn’t a lot out there that I could really find with that voice feedback. But same thing, even with the hydrometer that they asked about, there’s a lot of different ones out there that connect via Bluetooth to an app. So as long as that app is accessible with voiceover, that could probably give you the information. Because I know I’ve used… Not so much for this, but more for grilling and outdoor cooking, a lot of them have… You can do the Bluetooth probes. It’ll come through to an app and, in voiceover, it’ll read those temperatures and things off to you.

So I’m guessing that this would probably be the best way. Now this is assuming, of course, the individual has a cell phone an Apple or probably an Android device that could be able to read this stuff to them, or a tablet or something like that might be able to do it as well. But I went the same way you did and seemed to find that the best ones that are going to be able to talk, you’re going to have to have some interface in between it. So some tablet, phone or something like that. But it looks like there are a lot of different gardening devices that can connect via Bluetooth. Some of them even come with quite a few probes, so you could put them in different places in the garden if you need different moisture content for different things you might be growing. You could put them around.

But, yeah, I went the exact same way that you did. It seems that those might be the best, maybe the easiest. And what’s wild is I don’t know much about gardening. I know it’s terrible. It’s one of those things I’d want to do every year, and then never get to. But even with the hydrometers, they’re everywhere from $25 up to $300. So I guess it depends on what you’re trying to do and what you’re looking at. But most importantly would just be making sure however they connect to the phone, the tablet, the device, that that app is accessible with voiceover to at least enough to get the information that you need, to get the moisture content or the amount of rain.

Yeah.

This question made me think, years ago, we had a coworker who was blind and he was very much into gardening, but he did it all in five-gallon buckets. Yeah. He didn’t actually have a flatland garden like we would imagine in our minds. He did it all in five-gallon buckets and he grew some pretty good tomatoes. I do remember that, for sure.

Well, I know Jim, because you brought him up, he does his in kiddie pools on sawhorses outside, so you don’t have to bend over or anything like that. You’ve got the soil right there. So, yeah, maybe not just the technology part, but something where you can access it a little bit easier. Maybe you’re not bending, stooping, and digging in the dirt as much, but bring the dirt up to you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. I was going to mention just AgrAbility is a great resource. There are 32 AgrAbility projects… Or somewhere around 30, maybe 30, 35 AgrAbility projects across the country. And they put together this thing, it’s called the Toolbox. It’s an assistive technology database. If you go to agrability.org/toolbox, it’ll take you directly there and you can search for all sorts of accessible gardening, farming, agricultural types of equipment. And that could be anything from ATVs to what we’re talking about here, real simple gardening tools. One of the things I looked up, hydrometer, and I looked up rain gauge on their site and it brought up the AcuRite digital wireless rain gauge. They also have an easy-read jumbo rain gauge if you’re just visually-impaired, lots of different tools and equipment. They’re adding to that all the time and updating it, making sure that they’ve got the latest and greatest equipment on there.

It not only talks about what it is, gives you a link to the site where you can go purchase it, but it’ll give you the description, it’ll give you the price. It’ll give you lots of good information about what’s available out there when it comes to, again, agriculture, and that could be a simple garden in your backyard or it could be a full industrial farm where you’re doing lots of different things. And so I would encourage you to check that out again, it’s agrability.org/toolbox. And then you can also reach out to them and find out, “Do they have a contact?” You can contact them if you have a specific question, or if maybe they’ll put you in touch with your local AgrAbility project if you have one in your state. So I would encourage you guys to check them out. They have a lots of great resources and tools that could be helpful for folks looking for things like you are, John.

Hey, Brian, before we leave this question, John, if you do happen to have an iPhone or an iPad, and I’m not sure about Android, but probably also Android, an app that I have found that I absolutely love is called Seek, S-E-E-K. And it will help you identify plants, animals, and fungi. Now, you may be saying to yourself, “Well, I pretty much know what I’ve planted and what I haven’t planted,” but if you’re like me, when I used to garden, things would start growing together and I might forget that, “Oh, yeah, I did plant some of this over here,” so you just hold your camera up to any plant or tree and it will identify what that plant or tree is, or fungi.

So if you maybe have a problem in the garden, you might be able to identify it that way. That is a free app. And, again, it could be found in your app store, S-E-E-K. And I love the app. Ever since I found it, I use it… Not all the time, but I do come across those things that I think, “Oh, what is that plant,” or, “What is that flower,” or, “What is that tree?” So that might be something to check out too if you happen to have an iDevice.

Yeah, I’m-

Belva, I’m downloading that right now, because I have small children who ask those questions constantly. “What’s that tree? What’s that plant? What’s this thing? What’s that mushroom? Can I eat that? What is that?”

Yeah.

Yeah. So, yeah, I’m downloading that right now, because now dad can look a whole lot smarter instead of just making up answers like I normally do. So, awesome.

I use a different app. I’m interested in Seek. I’ll have to download that one. I use one called PlantSnap. It does the same tool. It’s free as well. There’s a paid-for version, which gives you more information, but it’s a pretty useful tool. Now, I’m not looking at flowers or any of the pretty plants or trees in my yard. I’m trying to figure out what weed is this growing in my grass now, but all the same, right? Weeds, plants, all those kinds of things, we’re trying to figure out what those things are so we can take care of them the best we can, whether we want them or we don’t want them. So, hey, John, I want to thank you for this question. Hopefully, we’ve given you some useful information, but I would love to open this up to our listeners. If you have additional information for John, things that we can share about blind gardening, tools, websites, other information where we can get that over to him to learn more about these types of things, talking rain gauge, talking hydrometer, app-based types of tools. Love to be able to do that.

So give us a call on our listener line, that’s 317-721-7124, or send us an email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org and provide your feedback and we’ll pass that along to John as well. So thanks so much. All right. So our next question is an email from Pam. She had a question about an appropriate cell phone. Her mother has developed an eye condition and she needs larger buttons so she can dial the phone, text, email, and FaceTime or video call with others. She doesn’t search for anything, no games, no Facebook, so she’s not using it for really entertainment at all, but looking for something that’s easy to use with large buttons that are backlit, voice activated, and speaks the current time. And so open that up to folks.

So this sounds like a really simple question, and I feel like I did get this question not too long ago, and I don’t know if maybe it was from Pam that it made it through to me or what, but this is a very complicated question. There’s not really anything simple about it, but I did pick up on the fact that she specifically did say FaceTime/video call. I think it’s important to point out that FaceTime can only be done on an iDevice, so meaning iPhone. If you happen to have an Android phone, you are not able to use the FaceTime feature. There are other video call features that you can use, but not FaceTime specifically.

So my advice is for Pam and mom to try to connect with somebody somewhere, for example, if you are in the state of Indiana, in data, what would be a great place to make contact and try these things out. Because until you actually have them in your hand and can see, feel, and touch them, you don’t know what’s going to be right and what’s going to be wrong. I also noticed that she very specifically said voice activated and can speak the current time. To me, that goes back to the iDevice only, because the iPhone is or the Android smartphones are the only ones that I know to be specifically voice-activated. Now, there are some tactile phones that you can get voice assistance, but not necessarily voice-activated. You still have to be able to press a certain button to get a live operator that can then help you make a phone call. And name of that phone is slipping my mind right now because, honestly, so many of my consumers have gone away from all of the other types of phones and have found their way to an iPhone.

But I did, just this week, get a phone call from someone who was 80 years old and was very frustrated because he had an iPhone and he couldn’t make it work. He didn’t understand why anybody would’ve ever tell a blind person that an iPhone was the right phone for them. But after I explained a few things to him, he was like, “Oh, oh, well, no one’s ever told me that.” I said, “It’s like any other technology. If you are not shown how to use it, you’re not going to be able to use it.” So for Pam and her mom, I really do highly encourage that you try some of these different phones out. You might decide that having a smartphone is the right way to go, you might decide that having a smartphone is not the right way to go and you would just prefer to have something like the Lively phone, which can be a tactile phone, or a flat glass phone too, they have the smart type phones, but they also still have the tactile phones.

And once you’ve got the phone in your hand and can see how it works and how it doesn’t work for you, the decision might be easier to make. I might also throw in here that you might consider just getting your mom a smart assistant, with Alexa or the Google Home device. You can place phone calls simply by saying, “Hey, whatever, call Johnny,” and it will call Johnny as long as Johnny exists in your contacts. And if Johnny doesn’t, then you can say, “Dial X, Y, Z, Z, Z, Z,” and it will dial the number for you. You can ask it the time, the weather, the date, all of that stuff. So it might be that a smart assistant could replace the need for a phone. Again, I wish I could say, “Go get this phone and your answer will be solved,” but I don’t have that answer. It really is important to try them out, evaluate what you need and what feels good to your mom.

Also, price is going to be something to consider. How much is the phone going to cost you, how much is your monthly service going to cost you, because, of course, the monthly service comes with a fee no matter what. I understand there for a while, Mint Mobile was one of the phone services that I highly recommended to a lot of my consumers because you could get very affordable monthly service, but I understand a lot of the more popular service providers have come down in their pricing too. So you can find pretty much several places now where you can get a reasonable service. So, Brian, if you want to tell them a little bit about INDATA in case they are in Indiana, and maybe they do want to get in touch with INDATA so that they can try out a couple of phones and see?

Yeah, I’ll definitely do that. Yeah. So INDATA is the Indiana Assistive Technology Act program, and we have a loan library of adaptive equipment. So if you live in the state of Indiana, we can serve you by offering you the ability to borrow a device for 30 days to try it out, see if it works for you, make sure it works in your daily rhythm of life. In all the places that you find yourself day in and day out, is this really going to work for you. And it just gives you a chance to try it before you buy it. Now we serve Indiana with the INDATA project.

However, there are 56 programs and every state and every territory has a program like INDATA where we do loan libraries and make equipment available to folks. I’m not going to say what equipment they might have in their own loan libraries, but I know, in Indiana, within our library, we have different devices that you can try. Oftentimes they’re not connected to data plan, so it’s not like you’re going to be able to use it to call folks when you’re out borrowing it for 30 days, but you can at least put it in your hands, try it out, look at some of the features, and again, see if it’s really going to work for you. A couple phones that I’ll throw out there for folks as well, and just to highlight a couple of things with the question here too, Belva, a lot of times, I think it talked about backlit buttons, larger buttons, those kinds of things.

I think if you’re wanting to do video calls, a lot of the flip phone types of features that have those backlit buttons and things like that, you really can’t do video calls on those. And so if you really want to make video calls, one of the primary features of the device that you’re using, you’re going to have to probably use a smartphone of some sort. And a couple of smartphones that I would bring your attention to, and maybe, Belva, this is the one you were trying to think of the name of, but I was told about the Lively Jitterbug smartphone.

Yeah.

Yep. She talked about those.

Okay. Oh, you did? I was totally in my own head space. I’m thinking about other things. So if you’ve already talked about that one, there’s also the Irie Synapptic smartphone that has some of those features built in as well. And what I do love about those phones is they provide overlays. They’re simple to navigate, simple to use, and can really probably help a lot in some of those situations. Another one that someone… I don’t know a lot about this, and, Belva, Josh, maybe you can speak toward it, but I’ve also heard of BlindShell phones, and I’ve not really had much experience with those. I’m not sure if they’re great or not, but I was told about those and I just wanted to throw that out there as well.

So, Brian, let me pop in with the BlindShell real quick. I’ve had quite a bit of experience with those. I was very excited when they first were released and thought that they were going to be the next best thing since sliced butter. But what I have found is, in my opinion, in my experience, they’re not very well put together, and the support that you can get with them is not very good as well. Now, I do have a lot of consumers that are using them unfortunately, but that choice was made because of it having the tactile feature. So I wouldn’t say don’t get that phone, but I would definitely say don’t make that decision without trying other things and seeing the difference. And also, Brian, you pointed out that we have the lending library and none of these things have service, so you may be saying to yourself, “Well, if the phone doesn’t have service, how am I going to know if I like it or not?”

If you set up an appointment with INDATA, they can actually demonstrate some of these features to you. So the person, Blake, in our case, would be the one that would probably come out and show you some of the different phones. He’s got a smartphone that is activated, so he would be able to show you from his phone. Because this is what I do when I’m doing an evaluation, I show my consumers, “Here’s how you can use your voice to make a call. Here’s how you can answer your phone by using your voice.” And I give them the opportunity, or the individual that I’m with the opportunity to see how that step works and to try it out. And then very quickly, because I don’t want to take up too much time, back to the smart devices, if you get the ones that do have the screen, you can still do those video calls where you can actually see the person that you’re speaking with. And those are pretty cool too and not that expensive.

Yeah. I’ll mention that.

And just a… Go ahead.

Sorry, Josh, we keep cutting you off.

We got a lot to say about this, don’t we?

We’ve got really important… I’ll just mention the Synapptic smartphone tablet software is about 399, and if you’re looking for that smartphone, the Jitterbug smartphone, you can find that at places like Best Buy, and it’s about… Right now, I think typically it runs about $120, but you can get it right now on Best Buy’s website for about $72. But then I think there’s also a monthly subscription fee to be able to be part of the service that’s offered with the Jitterbug service. But I’ll just throw that out there. And then, Josh, I’m going to pass the baton to you.

No, that’s fine. You guys said everything. No. So just a couple more options and elaborate on some other stuff. So one, this isn’t really made for vision, but it might be able to help. There’s a RAZ, R-A-Z, Memory Cell Phone. It’s made for seniors, it’s actually made for folks who maybe have memory loss or intellectual disabilities, but where it could fit this, there’s only one major screen. It can make calls, I believe it can make video calls as well. And basically instead of having the keys, it’s actual pictures of the people you might want to call. And they’re pretty large also. It has press and hold buttons, so it’s a little bit easier. You’re not going to accidentally hit things. And just because you mentioned it’s for mom, there’s actually you can remotely control some different things. You can change the contacts and pictures, monitor location, and even check the battery from a distance. So that might be something that might be a little bit helpful for this person.

And then when we’re talking about the iPhone, just because I know sometimes it can be a little overwhelming for people, especially if you only want some features, you can set up assistive access through the accessibility on there and really control what shows up, make the buttons bigger, enable and disable features. So if you don’t accidentally want to get lost or in an odd place, and if you just want to do texting, video and phone calls, those could be the only buttons that ever show up so that you don’t accidentally click on something else and end up down a rabbit hole of, “Oh, my goodness, how did I get here and how do I get back?” Which since the home button ain’t there anymore can sometimes be a little overwhelming for folks, that was as long as you hit the home button, you can always get back to where you were. But that assistive access can really maybe help and make it a little bit easier, make everything a little bit larger and really just simplify the entire device. So-

Awesome.

… that was all I had. Yeah, you guys can go back to talking back and forth.

No, that’s a good point. Very good point, Josh, on the new features. And I think that’s only with the latest iOS that you’re able to do-

I think so. Yeah.

But, yeah, I have not really put that in action yet, but I have seen it demonstrated and excited to find the opportunity to be able to put it in action. And as far as the home button, you can always put that assistive touch home button on the screen too. But, yeah, that’s very good points.

Excellent. Excellent. Well, hey, I want to open this up to our listeners. If you have any additional feedback, maybe you know of other cell phones, options for this particular question. Again, looking for an appropriate cell phone that has some features including FaceTime or video calls for someone who just needs larger buttons to be able to see the device better. Doesn’t need a lot of things for gaming or entertainment, but just something that’s practical, useful, and has some of those features we mentioned earlier. Please let us know. We’d love to hear from you and pass that along, and give us a call on our listener line, that’s 317-721-7124, or you can email us at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org. Thanks so much. All right. So our next question is, “I am interested in learning more about smart glasses technology, so wearable technology for persons who are totally blind. I’ve been to the Envision and Ray-Ban websites, but I wasn’t able to fully understand what those devices offered. Are you able to compare and contrast any of the available smart glasses for me? And have a great day.”

So the short answer to that, I’m going to go all the way down because I got… You guys stop me. Don’t let me go on and on and on with this question. But the short answer to his question is-

Belva, stop.

Too much. Too much.

Where did I see that? I found the short answer and what did I do with it? Here it is. The Envision Glasses feature a wide-angle camera positioned for optimal use, enhancing your video calls, and experiences, and the overall usability. In contrast, the camera on the Ray-Ban Meta glasses have a narrow field of view and their output images seem cropped and are in portrait mode, making it less information that can be captured. So that’s what I found as what is the biggest difference. Now, that was the short answer. The long answer… I love this question because I’m getting it more and more and more. The smart glasses are, as we all know, intended to allow individuals to access different features, environmental information hands-free. So if you start out by looking at the Ray-Ban glasses for approximately $300, some a little less, some a little more, the Envision Glasses, $2,400, and we can’t have this discussion and leave out the OrCam glasses, $4,000. So we’ve gone from 300 under, 2,400 to 4,000, and they virtually all do the same type of thing.

The biggest, in my opinion, difference is that the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses were not invented for folks that were blind or visually-impaired. They were just meant for the public. So they put that price tag on them and thought, “Oh, yeah, this would be great. We’ll have $300 sunglasses.” And then the blind community quickly found them and said, “Whoa, these are amazing. We love these.” And, actually, I learned about them from a blind individual. I didn’t even know that they were out there, that they existed. But basically they all do the same thing. They’re all using AI to help you gather different information. They have the integrated camera with the built-in speakers. And so when you’re getting the information, people around you do not have to hear that information. It can come directly to you. It’s not like it’s spoken out loud or anything. The Envision Glasses are going to be able to do things like instant texting, they’re going to scan the text and they’re going to help you make a call and caption.

The IRA, they’re going to describe the scene for you, recognize cash, identify people, just the same things that you will be able to do or can do with the Ray-Ban glasses. They have included the AI features in that, so you can simply say… Hopefully I don’t set anybody’s off right here right now, but you can simply say something like, “Hey, Meta, look and read this,” and it will read out loud to you whatever you have in your hand or whatever is in front of you. Now, what I have found to be absolutely amazing about the Meta glasses is if you’ve got a bill from the doctor or from anybody, even the gas company, whatever, you can ask Meta, “What’s the name on this,” and it’ll read the name. You can ask Meta, “What’s the dollar amount on this,” it will read the dollar amount. “What’s the due date,” and it will read that due date. Most of the other smart glasses, I’m going to have to read the whole thing and pull that information as it’s being spoken back to me.

But with the Meta glasses, I’m able to pinpoint and get that specific information. So to me, that is simply amazing. And then like I said, we can’t have this conversation without also including the OrCam MyEye, because I think… I don’t want to be wrong about this, but I think they may have been the first one that came out, and then Envision was quite behind, or they came right at the same time, I’m not sure. But they were there together. The Ray-Bans, way behind. Way behind the game, because it’s a couple of years now that these have all been available and they’re going to do the same things for you. Again, it’s $4,000 versus $300, and the Ray-Ban glasses look cool. Okay? They’re very well-made. Some of these other glasses seem to be very flimsy and not as durable in my opinion. It’s like if you were to accidentally have them in your person and mash on your purse, you might break them. But the Ray-Bans do have a much more durable frame and build.

Now, one last thing that I will say about the Ray-Ban versus the other types of glasses too. I don’t know… I believe this caller’s name was John. It’s funny, I think all of our caller’s names are John. If you might, by chance, have a prescription lens that you… Look at, Brian, he just put his on, looking all cool. If you might have a prescription lens that you are subscribed to, you can actually take your Ray-Ban frames to your optometrist and have them put your prescription lens in the frames. Now, you might say to yourself, “Well, why would I want to do that?” I personally have a consumer who does have a prescription lens, but still has difficulty seeing things at a distance and reading things for long periods of time. So he wants the beauty of the AI part built into the Ray-Ban glasses, but he also wants to be able to use his vision when he can. So he did take his to his optometrist and had his lens put in.

Now, I will say that if that is something you’re interested in, you want to speak with your optometrist before you get your Ray-Bans to make sure it can be done, because not always can it be done. So, yeah, the features are going to be pretty much the same, the price is going to be way, way different. And, again, if you can get yourself the opportunity to try these things, definitely I would encourage you try before you buy, and I would not say that, “Oh, you should not have or should not consider.” I think you should consider them all three, all four, ever how many you want, and just make sure that the decision that you make or that is made for you is the right one for you. Because I don’t think there is a right or a wrong decision. Honestly, the Ray-Bans do look super cool too.

So just to elaborate on just what Belva said, just because we played with these, if you are going to try them out, contact Brian talked about the local [inaudible 00:35:41], they probably or may have these devices. So you can try the different ones and see. One big thing and I’m going to leave OrCam out just because there’s still questions. I don’t know. I heard they were going away, and then they weren’t. So I’ll leave them out just because they ask about these two.

One, Envision is made for folks that are blind or visually impaired, whereas the Meta Ray-Bans are made for everybody and just happen to fit into that thing. One thing, Envision does have AI now, Belva, so you’d said, “Hey, if I look at a bill,” you can do the same thing, you look at a bill, say, “Hey, how much do I owe? When’s it due? And where do I send it?” It’ll give you all that information back. I’m pretty sure you can say, “Hey, this is a really boring document. Read it as an Eminem rap song,” and it will actually read it to you in that voice and change up all the different things.

Cool.

The big difference I’ve found besides the ones you mentioned, which, of course, is the Ray-Bans, their Ray-Ban sunglasses. I mean, they’re barely more expensive than a regular pair of Ray-Bans sunglasses, but have all these things. When it comes to reading text, I have issues sometimes with the Ray-Bans reading a whole document. I can pull the information out, but if I just wanted to read the whole document, it doesn’t seem to want to comply sometimes. So with the Envision, you can do instant text, you can scan text, you can do batch scan. So if you had a 17-page legal document, you could hold each one in front of you, you could have it summarize it, you could have it do those things.

Now the Meta Ray-Bans may be able to do that just as well, and I haven’t figured it out, but they probably could. But, yeah, most of the things, they can do the same. Detect light, describe the scene, detect people and those things. I know, Envision, you can teach it faces and things, so it could say, “Hey, Brian’s in the room, look busy,” or things like that. I’m not sure if you can do that with the Meta Ray-Bans, but, again, it doesn’t mean it can’t do it. It does have artificial intelligence, it’s going to continue to get smarter. So it may have that. But, really, the scanning full page text is the only real thing I’ve found limitations on the Meta Ray-Bans. But if you don’t need that, then who cares? But it’s really just figuring out… And I know you can call a sighted assistant, you can call IRA through the Envision, but, I mean, you can do that through the Meta Ray-Ban as well-

Be My Eyes. Be My Eyes, that’s-

And you can do Be My Eyes.

Yep, they’ve partnered with Meta. So, yeah.

And, I mean, I wouldn’t be 100% surprised if, in the next few years, you saw Envision partner with them and just maybe put some of their technology into that. Right now, they’re built on Google Glass, which, if anyone remembers, when that came out and everybody’s like, “Oh, this is stupid. Nobody will ever like this.” And now you’ve got all different kinds of things like it. But Google quit making them and basically just made them open so that folks could buy them, put their own technology on them and use them.

So it’s one of those things where, yeah, cost is a big difference. I mean, huge, huge difference between the two, but it’s just in what you need them to do and do they do the things that you want them to do. So, like I think Belva mentioned, it’s really try them out and see will these meet the need? Are they better? Do I like them more? And just figuring out which one might really meet the needs of the individual best. I know the Meta Ray-Bans have to connect to a cell phone. I’m not 100% sure about the Envision glasses, I don’t remember, but they probably do as well.

Josh, I’m not sure either. But if they don’t, then that means that they would have to have their own WiFi connection in some way or the AI isn’t going to be able to work. So I’m pretty sure that you’re going to be attached to either a smartphone or a tablet in some manner.

Yep. Yeah. And, I mean, then I guess if you look at that, the OrCam I know doesn’t. So if you cut out $1,000 cell phone, well, then maybe that brings the cost a little bit more comparable. And then, I mean, they’re all using artificial intelligence, so where does your data go? I mean, there’s always that concern, but I do know, and I did find out you do not have to have a Facebook account to use the Meta Ray-Ban glasses. For some features, if you want to live stream on Facebook using them, you have to have that, but that’s not really what we’re talking about. But you can set up that app without having an actual Facebook account and having to link that data together. So that’s a nice thing.

And, I mean, like you mentioned at the beginning, the Meta Ray-Bans were not made for folks with visual impairments. They just embraced it right away and we’re like, “Oh, cool.” So as Meta figures that out, they’ll probably start adding more features that may actually be more beneficial to individuals with visual impairment. So, hopefully, we’ll just see them get better and better. I mean, we always hope that that also maybe drives down the price of some other things when those alternatives come out and not the opposite way of, “Oh wow, this is assistive technology. We can charge twice what we were charging.” We hope it doesn’t go that way, of course. But I can say, in our loan library, I want to say we have six pairs of them now. We had one or two and they were just constantly out. So we just went and got more just because people wanted to borrow them and try them out and see if they really met their need.

Because, again, if it can do what it is you’re looking for it to do, it’s really hard to justify paying $2,000 more for a different one. And also, if you want to try out Envision and see what it can do, there’s an app you can put on your phone. It’s not going to be your smart glasses, but you can always put it on there and at least try out some of the different things to see how Envision works too, just using the camera on your phone and stuff, just as something to try out and see what it can actually do.

I think, lastly, we should point out too that if you do get the Envision Glasses or the OrCam glasses, you’re going to have accessible support for those kinds of things. You buy the Ray-Ban glasses, you don’t have that because, again, they didn’t come out saying, “We’re made for people that are visually-impaired or blind.” They just came out saying, “Look how cool we are. We’re the best sunglasses around, and now we’ve got AI.” So you’re not going to be able to get that support with the Ray-Ban. So that’s something that you may want to consider before making your purchase. You can get the Ray-Ban glasses at Amazon, Best Buy, lots and lots of different places. The OrCam or the Envision Glasses, you’re only going to be able to get those in specific areas or places.

And another thing that I have mentioned to some of my consumers too, if you’re not used to wearing glasses, that’s something that you do have to get used to. And it may be something that you quickly can decide, “Hey, I don’t really like wearing glasses. This isn’t working out so well for me.” As Josh just pointed out, you can do all those same things with your smartphone, just not necessarily hands-free. So if you start out with the Ray-Ban glasses at the cheaper cost and you make that decision, it’s an easier decision to make than if you’ve spent $2,500 or $4,000 to then decide, “Yeah, I don’t really like wearing those glasses. I’m not going to use them, but I’ll use the app on my phone.” So just something else to consider.

Awesome. Well, hey, I want to open this up to our listeners. If you’ve had any experience with any of those smart glasses, for folks who are visually-impaired, would love to get your feedback, in addition to what we’ve talked about here. You can give us a call on our listener line that’s 317-721-7124, or send us an email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org. Love to hear from you. Thanks.

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 a whole lot of time to prepare for and it’s one that Belva’s come up with. And so, Belva, what do you got for us today?

Well, Josh, you started talking about it as we were answering one of those questions. And this is a huge question. What is AI? What does AI mean for 2025?

Oh, can I start with this one?

Yes, please.

Okay. So if you do listen to our other podcast, go back and listen to AT Update… I don’t remember what number, but it’s right around Christmas. Greg [inaudible 00:44:20] mispronounced his name, dang it. I should have prepared. But anyway, actually, we met to talk about a different program that they had and ended up talking for an hour about artificial intelligence, his thoughts on it. And he had some really good things. Because we all worry about data, where does that go, all that stuff. But those things are there. And he had a few points where… One that he had that I really liked was, what if artificial intelligence could change interfaces? So I have a microwave and I bought a new one and it’s all different. Well, what if AI could just change it to where the controls were the same as the one I remembered, or the buttons were much larger because I’m blind or visually-impaired, or those kinds of things?

I’m going to go through this real quick. He also had one very great point of all this stuff is free, and wonderful, and great to use right now, but just so I can use his words, the first hit of heroin’s always free, but once you’re hooked, the price goes up. ChatGPT, you can use the free version, but you may have to wait. You’re not going to get as good of an answer, those things. You can pay $20 a month, you’re using a little bit better. You’re probably going to get better stuff. Or if you want the best AI version of ChatGPT, you can pay $200 a month for it right now. And OpenAI still says they’re losing billions of dollars just trying to run these things, even with a $200-a-month plan. So where is the breaking point of how much money can we hemorrhage and still keep these things going and functioning, and when do they become expensive? So that’s always a worry. I mean, they’re great. I mean, we’re talking about Meta Ray-Ban glasses that are $300 that do what a device with OCR that costs 3,000 [inaudible 00:46:06] and 10 times better.

And like you said though, that can pull the information I want out of it. I don’t have to listen to… I mean, if you’ve ever listened to a OCR device read an electric bill, goodness gracious, it is just a bunch of mumbo jumbo and almost impossible to understand what exactly you need to do. So there are those great things, worries and concerns, of course, data, but, I mean, let’s not lie, our data’s all out there. I mean, just in the time that we’ve worked at the same place, I don’t know how many times we’ve got things from insurance companies, from other things that, “Hey, sorry, all your data’s out there. Our bad. Here’s free credit monitoring for six months.” So those things, they’re still a concern, but I don’t know if they’re a great concern because all our stuff’s probably out there. But real worries are cost, when does it get expensive. I worry about that. Originality, I guess, is always one of those, how are you ever going to tell if somebody really wrote this or if somebody just used an AI engine.

I mean, could we write all our blog posts just by plugging it into AI and spitting out what it is? There’s always those worries. My biggest worry, I suppose, is probably in the what’s real and what’s not. There’s folks out there that believe anything they see anyway, and you can’t. I worry because between this podcast and the other one, there’s probably countless hours of my voice out there. You could probably spend five minutes and for free and make a clone of my voice and call anybody you want use it. That’s a little scary. And not just, I guess, the you can’t believe what you see because you could make it that way. I would hate to be in law enforcement or a prosecutor because you only got to convince one person on that jury that, “Nope, AI made that video. That’s not me robbing that bank. That’s an AI video.” Convince one person, you’re off. So those are my main concerns, if we want to talk about the bad stuff.

I mean, the good stuff is, “Oh, man, how nice is it?” I mean, especially for folks with disabilities, if I have a complex task I have to do, I can just plug in, “Give me the steps for… I don’t know, I’m looking around my kitchen. For running the dishwasher. And in three seconds, I’ve got a detailed list of what I need to do to load and use my dishwasher. I don’t have to look it up, I don’t have to do anything else. I just did that, and independently, now I can do it. And if they’re too complex, I can just say, “Simplify that,” it’ll give me two-word answers. Open door, put in soap, and actually tell me those things. So it can supplement caregivers, it can supplement job coaches. It can really just help with so many different things. I mean, my worry is that, eventually, it will be inaccessible because it’ll be too expensive, or it’ll just get to the point where nobody accesses anything anymore because they just assume it’s fake.

So I guess there’s concerns in there, for sure. And I don’t know if you’ve ever watched Congress or anyone talk to anyone in technology about stuff. I don’t know. It’s like watching my grandfather who’s been passed for 15 years try to talk to me about technology. It’s funny. So I don’t see a lot of regulation or things going into place. There’s also energy consumption and those worries. I believe most AI farms or server farms or whatever you see, I think… I don’t know. I heard some statistic they use about as much electricity a day as a small town uses in a year. So there’s always those worries too. So just where does it go? How far does it go? How good can it get? But for people with disabilities, it’s got so many great uses and so many different ways that it can really open the door. From the ones we talked about with the glasses to, like I said, just being able to simplify tasks or I have a learning disability, even I can just tell it to change font, it does it all for me.

I don’t even have to go always go get some other app or other piece for it. It can simplify things. It can understand my voice and be able to do the things I want it to do without having to really… You don’t have to be an AT specialist, I guess, to be able to access a lot of different stuff. So I think there’s really great things it can do. Just because you mentioned Blake, he’s been testing a lot of them, and his office is right next to mine, and it’s very funny to listen to him yell at it because he’s found… And I don’t remember which one he was trying to test, but it kept withholding information. He’d ask it a question and it would beat around the question. He’s like, “Why aren’t you giving me all the information?” It’s like, “Oh, I didn’t know you wanted all the… But it’s funny because it was acting like a human, that it was like a human hiding stuff. So it was just weird. So there’s all those.

But the nice thing right now is there’s a lot of people competing to be the best, and when they do that, you get better products for cheaper prices. So that always helps. But we’ll see where it goes this next year. I mean, it grew exponentially in the last few years, so it’s really hard telling. But there’s definitely some neat stuff for people with disabilities. I’m not the right person to ask because I’m still the one that doesn’t have the smart home assistance in my house because it creeps me out, even though I know my phone, my computer, and everything else is listening to me anyway. But, yeah. So I don’t know. I think it’ll do great things for people with disabilities. I just worry that it may get to the point of being inaccessible and not affordable for the folks that could really benefit from it.

Yeah. I mean, for me, I think there’s a lot of benefit to AI. I use AI all the time. I think the danger that folks get into is just they rely on it completely. And it’s just a tool. You need what it spits out. You should look at what it spits out to confirm that it’s correct. I think, Josh, you’ve mentioned all these things, but confirm that it’s correct. And then you have to make it your own. You have to tweak it to get it to do what you want to do. I mean, quite honestly, if I sent an email to my team using AI, they would know immediately that it was AI, because I have my own way of communicating. Right? I have my own way of conversing with folks. And so make it your own. Don’t rely on it solely.

But it is a tool. It’s a pretty great tool that helps you organize thoughts. I think about people with disabilities, organizing someone’s thoughts, getting your thoughts down on paper. I mean, you can put in a bunch of random thoughts, and it’s going to help organize those things and put some things around those things to help folks fully think through what they’re trying to convey or trying to convey to somebody. So I think there’s a lot to it. I have the fears, and I don’t get into all the fear stuff yet, I know it’s out there. And I agree that there’s probably concerns, I think, for folks with disabilities. I say this all the time about all the different types of tools and technologies that we use. I mean, it’s really you have to weigh the pros and the cons for folks. And so think about your lifestyle, what you have going on, what you’re trying to do, what you’re trying to accomplish, and then figure out, is it worth it? With the concerns about security, safety, other kinds of things, is it worth it?

It’s the same conversation we had with smart home devices, and cameras, and other kinds of things. What’s it doing for you? Is the benefit of what it does for you better than living without it? And then minimize your risk and figure out ways to mitigate some of that risk if you can. But, I mean, I think AI has a lot to offer. I hope they put guardrails around that over some of that privacy, and security, and other kinds of things. But I think it has a lot to offer. There’s a lot to be determined down the road and where it goes and how it’s developed and the uses of it. Hopefully, everything’s above board, but we know in this world, not everything is. And most of the times, it’s not. So I hope there’s some good guardrails that are put in place down the road.

So we could spend the whole show talking about what is AI. Right? And as I was researching this question, because unlike you two, I did know the question and did take a minute to try to look it up, I was blown away to learn that the term AI was coined back in the 1950s. I just assumed the term AI just came out. I don’t know. But I think of this like computers. That’s all I can do is keep comparing it to that. Because I remember 30-something years ago, when my son said, “We have to have a computer.”

I was like, “No, we don’t. No, we don’t. What do we need a computer for? I don’t know anything about a computer. Why do we need a… Computers are not meant for family homes.” That’s what I said. Boy, was I wrong. Right? And since then, all of the development that has come along with technology in general, there’s a lot of it that I don’t understand and I will never, ever understand. And as I tried to research AI, I just kept becoming actually more and more confused than feeling like, “Oh, okay. I get it now. I got it.” I mean, I understand that AI is… It’s a development of a computer that can learn whatever… What is that word? Algorithms-

Algorithms?

Yes. And then it has the deep subset of the machine learning where it can learn many different layers, and analyze different data, and all that stuff. But the bottom line is it does amazing things. And how it does it, I don’t really know. Recently, I was informed by someone that I was speaking with that said Facebook, they’re mimicking people’s accounts and people don’t know that. And that part of it does scare me to death, because you’re right, Josh, especially our younger generation, they believe everything they see online, right? “I see it online, it’s got to be true.” So those things do scare me, if they’re mimicking accounts, and faces, and stuff like that.

I do believe that as AI grows, that we are developing a huge urgency to make sure that we’re addressing the ethical issues that surrounds our human and our society, because I don’t know what they’re doing with all of my personal information, but I do know that I’m giving them that information freely and willingly because I love the luxury of the AI. Okay? I do enjoy it. So I’m hoping that 2025 is going to be the year where we do begin to answer some of these questions. And I do compare it to… Because I just recently used this analysis with a consumer of mine. We all drive our cars, but we don’t really know what’s underneath the hood especially now. Back in the day, we used to know, now we really don’t know and we don’t really care. What we care is that when we push the button, it starts up and runs.

I think that’s the way we’re using AI now. Because so many of us are using it without really caring what’s going on, just what it’s giving us. And I think that’s why it’s so important right now. But anyway, I think it’ll be interesting to see what, not only 2025, but what the future and AI holds. And I love all of the input that you guys had. So that was a great feedback. And, hopefully, we got some information out there to some of our listeners that maybe got them maybe thinking that, “Hey, I didn’t know this, but I’m going to see if I can research it a little bit or share a little bit.” If you’ve got something that you would like to share about AI, please feel free to do that with us.

Yeah. And, Brian, you should mark your calendar and replay this during our December episode or next January and just see if any of these things came true, see if there was any guardrails put in place. I mean, we didn’t even talk about the old Terminator thing. That was all AI too. But just see if anything we talked about or if it’s the same or what changed or what we missed or that stuff might be cool just to see if anything did change or how it grew or… Because I’m sure it’ll grow in ways that we’ve never even thought of. I mean, no one thought of the things you’d be able to do. And I had friends that played around with the AI art stuff for the last few years, and the difference in what they can create with a few prompts now compared to a year ago is night and day. I mean, it’s like special effects from the 1920s versus right now. I mean, it’s amazing the things you can do. So I don’t know. It’ll be interesting. It’ll be fun. And, hopefully, we all survive.

Yep.

I’ll make a note in my planner to bring that up a year from now and see what’s going on with that-

Yeah. It’ll be cool.

Well, hey, I want to open this up to our listeners. If you have any feedback, thoughts on AI, 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. Again, we’d love to hear from you. Thank you for taking some time to listen to our show today. I want to make sure that Belva and Josh have a chance to say goodbye to folks. Belva, I’ll start with you. You want to say goodbye?

Goodbye, everybody. See you next time.

Excellent. And then, Josh?

See you next time, folks. Thanks so much for listening.

Absolutely.

Keep the questions coming.

Absolutely. Again, yeah, looking for your questions. Give us a call on that listener line. Send us an email or you can tweet us with the hashtag, ATFAQ, on X, and we will be looking for those. Thank you so much. Have a great, great month, and we’ll talk to you later.

Information provided on Assistive Technology FAQ does not constitute a product endorsement. Our comments are not intended as recommendations, nor is our show 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.