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Show notes:
Panel: Brian Norton, Belva Smith, Mark Stewart, Craig Burns, and Wade Wingler
Q1. Ways to make outside sculptures more accessible for blind/visually impaired. Q2. What type of device is appropriate for an individual with low vision needing to read a board (chalk/white) from a distance? Q3. I have a child in 5th grade and I don’t feel like his school is providing the necessary assistive technology and/or classroom supports to him? What should I do? Q4. I am looking for a text to speech application that will speak Portuguese or a dedicate device with this capability. Any recommendations? Q5.Can someone recommend a voice amplifier for a first grade school student Q6.When will the PC go away (in the context of AT)?
Send your questions: 317-721-7124 | tech@eastersealscrossroads.org | Tweet using #ATFAQ
——-transcript follows ——
WADE WINGLER: Welcome to ATFAQ, Assistive Technology Frequently Asked Questions with your host Brian Norton, Director of Assistive Technology at Easter Seals Crossroads. This is a show in which 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 answered on our show? Send 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 here’s your host, Brian Norton.
BRIAN NORTON: Hello, and welcome to ATFAQ episode 17. I’m joined here in the studio Belva Smith. Belva, you want to say hey?
BELVA SMITH: Hi, guys.
BRIAN NORTON: Belva is on our vision team here. She knows a lot about assistive technology for persons who are blind or who have low vision. I also have Mark Stewart here.
MARK STEWART: Hey, everybody.
BRIAN NORTON: And Mark is on our mobility and cognition team and knows a whole lot about those types of things. And I also have Wade Wingler here.
WADE WINGLER: Hey, everybody.
BRIAN NORTON: Wade just knows a little bit about just about everything.
WADE WINGLER: Very little.
BRIAN NORTON: And I am Brian Norton. I’m host of ATFAQ. For our new listeners, I just want to let you know about the show. First of all how the show format works. This is a question and answer show, so people submit their questions over the course of the week. We take those in and gather them up and put a show together and try to answer those questions for folks. We also want to make sure that everybody knows how to submit your questions. If this is the first time you’ve happened about our show, there are three ways. You can give us a call on our listener line. That is 317-721-7124. Or you can email us at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org. Or you can set out a tweet with the hashtag #ATFAQ and that’ll come to us as well. If you’re wanting to tell other people about the show since you’ve already found it, you can tell them they can find us on iTunes, ATFAQshow.com, through Stitcher, or just through our regular website. That’s www.eastersealstech.com.
Without further ado, we’re going to to jump into some listener feedback. We got a voicemail from a person who listened to a previous episode. We actually tackled this question back in episode 11. We love when we get listener feedback like this. Kind of just expands on some of the answer that we may have given to a question. It helps us folks that are asking those questions to kind of just get more of an answer. Without further ado, we’ll go ahead and play that.
>>SPEAKER: This is Debbie Armstrong in Cupertino, California, commenting on podcast number 11. You discussed labeling options for visually impaired people. I have a few more resources to share. First is that the National Braille Press did a book called “Label It”, which has a long list of suggestions. It’s an entire braille volume. It’s also available in ASCII and DAISY. I believe it’s available in print.
The other thing I want to say is that there is a product you can buy in the office supply stores that I think is far superior to any of the braille labeling option you see from APH, NFB, LS and S Group, Independent Living aids, all the people who sell labeling kits. Many of them sell the braille dymo labels, but what I prefer is the Jenison’s laminating plastic that you can pick up any office supply store, Office Depot, Staples, and what I like about it is, because it’s designed for laminating, it really is clear. It’s much more transparent than the dymo braille labeling tape. In my college, I use it for labeling treadmills in the gym, for microwaves, for labeling keyboards. The other advantage it has is that it sticks like the dickens. Once you stick it, it’s not going to come off because it’s for laminating. Its other advantage is you can cut it into shapes. You can cut cute little arrows for your arrow keys, little triangles, you can cut little slivers of it and stick it on things. The last advantage of Jenison’s laminating plastic is you can actually draw on it and make tactile raised prints. The way to do this is you place a piece of it with the sticky set up so the slick site is face down on a surface with a little bit of gift like a rubber mat. U got it on the rubber mat face side down with the sticky side facing up. Of course the sticky side still has the paper on it. And then you take something like a braille stylus, a pointed stick that’s not too sharp but pointed, and you can draw on it. So you can draw little arrows or circles or squares or triangles. If you can draw letters. My large print letters are kind of clunky but you can certainly draw them. Then you can cut them out. And you have a tactile large print character that you can slap onto a piece of exercise equipment or somewhere in the kitchen. It’s also pretty heat resistant. I’ve used them on ovens before.
BRIAN NORTON: Sorry about that, Debbie. I think you got cut off there. I wanted to thank you for your feedback. That is great stuff. I’m definitely going to dig into that, look into that for myself. I certainly appreciate that.
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BRIAN NORTON: And don’t forget, if you have a question, you can give us a call on our listener line. That’s 317-721-7124. Our next question for the day is what type of device is appropriate for an individual with low vision needing to read a board, say a chalkboard or a whiteboard, from a distance? I’ll throw that out there. I’m looking over at Belva.
BELVA SMITH: The first thing I want to say is obviously I can tell you some devices that can be used, but which one is appropriate for this individual’s needs? I can’t suggest that I would be able to tell you that without actually meeting with the individual. But the Acrobat is one of the cameras that can be used for distance viewing, and it can be connected to a — or it is connected to a monitor. Actually the Acrobat is available in both ways. It can be used with a separate monitor or it can come with a monitor to do the distance viewing. The Smart view is another one that comes with its own monitor so you don’t have to connect it to a PC or anything, but you can do the distance viewing as well as desktop viewing. The Transformer is one that does require that the individual have a laptop or a computer there because it is connect and use that laptop monitor to display the information.
Again, I need to know more about the environment, like how much space does this individual have. Because one of the concerns that I’ve heard from clients in the past is, though they love the Transformer because it’s very small and very convenient for them to drop it in their backpack and take it with them, when they get to the classroom, if they are dealing with a standard size school desk, they don’t really have a whole lot of room by the time they get their laptop out and also make sure that they’ve got enough USB ports, because I believe the Transformer requires two USB ports. That’s something to think about if you’re looking at using that type of device.
There is also the Point to View, which works on both Mac and Windows. Again, it’s just a little portable camera that connects the via USB to do distance viewing. So this stuff is then displayed on the screen, but is it going to make it viewable? I don’t know, because are we just trying to get it to the screen in a larger format, or do we need contrast and other visual enhancements that we may or may not be able to get just using one of these types of devices?
And then I also want to say the iPad is another really good option, because I can use it to snap a shot of what’s been written on the chalkboard or being written on the chalkboard and then bring it back to my visual space, and then I can do things like invert the colors if I need to along with magnifying it.
BRIAN NORTON: Right. You can zoom out and zoom in on it as well. And there’s a whole category of CCTV’s that I would — and this isn’t how I classify them, but what I would refer to as distance viewing or close/distance viewing cameras. Again, echoing Belva and what she was saying, they all come with different features. Some are connected to laptops. Some are connected to screens and what not. They all come in different sizes or shapes. Some are easier to use. Some are portable. Some are less portable. In order to really figure out what a person needs, and would want, or what would be appropriate for somebody, you really have to dig down into what is their specific visual impairments? What are they trying to do? What kind of classes are they attending? What kind of information is going to be up there on the board? Because different devices may provide different access to that material, and so we want to make sure that we best match up stuff.
BELVA SMITH: It could just be as simple as using a different color chalk too. Maybe they can’t see white, but they’d be able to see yellow chalk.
BRIAN NORTON: Right. I’ve seen people not even — with the sophisticated devices like video magnifiers and things like we are talking about, some people just prefer glasses, so maybe glasses may be an option for you, making sure that you’ve seen your eye doctor or your ophthalmologist and have the most appropriate classes for the environment you’re going to be in, maybe a monocular would be helpful for you. I’ve seen people use all different sorts of tools and devices in the situations. They are all pretty interesting.
Belva, I wasn’t sure, just the cost on some of these distance viewing cameras, do you know roughly what they cost? I know they are kind of across the board.
BELVA SMITH: You’re going to be looking at around $1500-$2500, I would say.
BRIAN NORTON: Something like that.
BELVA SMITH: That’s a good ballpark. I would also like to say that if this individual hasn’t had a vision exam, that they definitely should get to their low vision specialist and get an exam. I’m sure that there they would also have the above opportunity to see some of these devices that we mentioned and other possibilities as well.
BRIAN NORTON: Right. Again, connecting with your local tech act project, they have a loan library. A lot of times these devices are available for loan. Wade mentioned www.eastersealstech.com/states as a way to see the different tech acts that are in the different states or provinces here in the US. Definitely check into those programs, see if there’s a chance to be able to use those before you actually purchased them, because they are not inexpensive. They are pretty expensive devices.
BELVA SMITH: This is the kind of thing you don’t want to just buy it. You definitely want to be able to try it before you buy it. To make sure that it’s going to be the appropriate device for you. Or are you trying to go from classroom to classroom with it, or is this something for just one particular classroom? Because if it is something that you’re going to be packing up and taking with you, then you want to take into consideration how are you going to be transporting its and how heavy is it and what does it take to power it. Some of them do require a wall outlet to work. Others, which I believe that that’s part of the reason why the Transformer requires two USB, because I don’t believe it requires power. It’s using one to get the power from your laptop — and again, there is another consideration too, because it’s going to be pulling from your battery power of your laptop, so have you got a way to get charged up later in the day. Lots and lots of different things need to be considered before you can actually say which one is appropriate.
BRIAN NORTON: I’ve kind of been thinking back over the cases I’ve done in the past. Like in K-12 environments or maybe when you are in a stationary classroom environment, sometimes schools will put something like the Acrobat which is an over the monitor camera that shines down onto the desk, lets you see things up close, but then you can flip that camera around and be able to see things that are far away. Sometimes they’ll put those on movable card so they can push them into the classroom when you need it and push out when you’re not there anymore. Maybe take it to the other classroom. But then you also got students who prefer something like the transformer that fits into a backpack very easily, right next to your laptop. But then the issue that I find them running into a lot is just this place. You go to college and you’ve got these itty-bitty, tiny desk, and there’s no place to put a laptop and a camera.
BELVA SMITH: And the time. That’s another concern that I’ve had with some of the considers that I’ve worked with. It’s five minutes for them to get their laptop out, get their laptops up, boot it up and connect the camera. It is about space and time and safe transportation of it.
BRIAN NORTON: I would recommend any student, whether you’re in K-12 environment, talking through your IEP process, your teacher record, those kinds of things, and beginning about the types of devices you need in making sure that there is space and an area to use them. Plus in college at the University level, there are lots of different disability services, adaptive education services, those kind of thing where those folks can get involved, work with your teacher to be able to help facilitate the distraction or the interaction that you need with that particular device in the classroom to be sure it’s going to work well for not only you but the students around you and the teacher himself or herself.
BELVA SMITH: And the disability services at the local school may have a device that they could set up permanently if it’s just one classroom that you’re trying to gain access to the board. Because I do know that a lot of the schools have some of the CCTV like the Da Vinci that will do the distance viewing. Maybe they could set that up in the front of the class because it does do distant viewing as well as the stop viewing.
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BRIAN NORTON: For our next question, we’ve got Craig Burns in the city with us. Craig is a member of our mobility and cognition team and has spent 15 plus years in the augmentative medication field? Is that accurate?
CRAIG BURNS: Almost Nineteen.
WADE WINGLER: Plus he’s my hero.
BRIAN NORTON: He is our hero. We love Greg.
WADE WINGLER: Craig’s been on the show before.
BRIAN NORTON: Yes he has.
WADE WINGLER: And we let you come back.
CRAIG BURNS: Yes you did.
BRIAN NORTON: I think early on we did a whole episode on augmentative communication.
WADE WINGLER: We did.
BRIAN NORTON: So the question today came in from somebody and says, can someone recommend a voice amplifier for a first grade student with VCP whose voices down to a whisper? Due to vocal cord paralysis making it difficult for people to hear what he’s saying, the question again is can anyone recommend a voice amplifier for him to use?
WADE WINGLER: I’m going to guess that Craig can since that’s why he’s here.
BRIAN NORTON: Craig, we’re going to hand the mic over to you.
CRAIG BURNS: I’ll take a shot at it. There actually are quite a few options. Some of the options are more expensive than others.
There are a couple of things you have to look for. One is the microphone quality, which is not necessarily the microphone itself, the receptor, but the cord that goes to the auditory device, because some of them can break very easily. They are priced anywhere from about $285 or just under $300 down to $20 if you want one. The Chattervox is a top-of-the-line one that people sometimes use. I just installed one the other day called Best Teachers Voice. It’s a type of mini voice amplifier. It’s about $30.
And I’ve got a couple different microphone options for that person. One is just a lapel mic so they can put it on the shirt collar. It actually picks up very well. I usually buy those in a pack of about three because if you break one then you can just swap it out really quick. So far they’ve been pretty good, pretty durable. Another piece I bought was an over ear loop that comes in front of the cheek and towards the mouth. That one worked out pretty well. It kind of gives you the feeling that you’re doing a presentation. Some of the microphones that come with the devices are kind of, just too visible. Students don’t want to wear something that’s that big and noticeable that comes around and swings in front of your mouth. It looks great if you’re a Tony Robbins presenter type of person and you want to make a big input.
BRIAN NORTON: I’m thinking of the guys with the cutlery, the state fair.
WADE WINGLER: Or Garth Brooks.
CRAIG BURNS: That’s what it looks like. It’s behind the head so it’s kind of confusing to where. I find just the easiest thing is to throw a lapel mic on. For kids, they can tuck it under a sweater or under their shirt so it doesn’t dangle around in front and they can step it up so it’s not too loose but not too tight because you want to be able to turn. It picks up pretty well from whatever direction you are speaking from, your mouth turns, because we all turn our heads as we talked. And then the other one, the ear loop, it stays with them so it doesn’t matter where they turn their head. It can work pretty well.
Again, there are different prices. A lot of them are different names, but they look exactly the same, so they are just manufactured differently or distributed differently so that you have a different pricing or different name. They aren’t very expensive, $29-$49. They tend to work out pretty well. They all have rechargeable batteries. Most of them have on the input in case you want to play an MP3 player, plug it into there. They do pretty well as far as speech output or sound output from anywhere from 20 feet away or so. It works really well.
BELVA SMITH: Craig , can I assume that if I pay $60 for one, it’s going to be better than the $20 one , or how do I know that which one has got a better quality?
CRAIG BURNS: The better ones will tend to be slightly heavier because there’s a magnet in the coil of the speaker so it tends to make it better overall sound. I haven’t run into one — I’ve gotten a couple of ones and they’ve been pretty well. They are both different. One was about $30 and one was $45. There used to be one available from a company called Toby Churchill that was called the mini voice in. It was very good. It looks similar to the cheaper ones, but it was, the insides were redone. They had good microphones with it. It worked really well. But now it’s really just not available in the US. At least that I’ve been able to find. They will have either a belt strap or a belt clip. I think the ones with the belt clip are the best. You don’t really want them hanging over or around the neck because they flop around too much when you bend over and things pick you want them steady on the belt. That works out really well. You just have to be careful that that belt clip doesn’t break or two have something else going with it that it can connect to the person.
MARK STEWART: Can you speak a little bit to expectations? For example you and I were talking a little bit before this about different types of voice, that whispered voice where there isn’t the tone really involved, but you can hear it. But now when you amplify that, it doesn’t just turn it that same person if their vocal cords were working?
CRAIG BURNS: You’re still going to get a whisper. If the whisper is all they can make, it’s just going to be a louder whisper. I’ve worked with people with Parkinson’s or MS that start to lose their voice, or voice cancer, where they can still produce the sound, the words, but just don’t have enough air to put that out there. Again, it’s going to be like a golf whisper all the time. It’s not going to make their voice boom out. It’s just wants to be a louder golf whisper.
BRIAN NORTON: Is there technology to give them more tone or anything like that? Or is that more of a speech producing device that you would type into?
CRAIG BURNS: There is no technology that helps them build their voice up. It’s just going to be louder whispering or louder whatever they’ve got. A lot of teachers, they are pushing those kinds of devices over FM systems because they are a lot less expensive and the teachers can save their voice. I used to do traveling around the state training, and by Friday my voice is pretty hoarse. If I would’ve used one of those — and later on I did, I used one when I did college lecture hall presentations. It does save your voice because you don’t have to talk as loud. After a week of talking, it’s a big relief. They are becoming popular with teachers or anybody that does some kind of presentation where you don’t have that availability of some intercom, FM system or PA system. If I ever do a presentation, I might grab one from the INDATA library and make use of that.
BRIAN NORTON: Did you mention where to get the kind of technology? Did I miss that?
CRAIG BURNS: I just go to Amazon.com and look up some different options that are available. I think everything, even the Chattervox is available, or not. I didn’t look at that one. I looked at the website for the manufacturer for that.
BRIAN NORTON: Great.
BELVA SMITH: I might also throw in there now, it’s a great time to check with your local state-funded, like for us it would be INDATA , to see if you can borrow one to see which one might be better.
CRAIG BURNS: That would be a great idea. We have two or three different kinds in our library if they want to try to see if that works. You can also try different microphones. Microphones are, you can get six of them for five bucks, six bucks. Or three of them for six dollars. You just put them in and you can try them. I’ve tried different kinds. The important thing about the lapel one is that you get an easy clip on one because some of them are kind of tough to put the little clip on. That’s nice to have one that just clips on. They pick up your voice from just about anywhere your head turns.
BRIAN NORTON: And if you are needing — a lot of times people are needing an evaluation because the findings were that they may be tapping into will want to pay for those things. Those of the clinical side of what we do here at Easter Seals crossroads. There are other programs like ours throughout the country and around the world who do that evaluation piece where they come out with those technology and they can try out different devices and figure out which ones going to work best for your particular situation. Whether you’re here in Indiana, give us a call, let us know. We’ll look for ways to hook you up with funding sources and the like that. Or if you are from a different state, different nation, check-in and look for a local resource for that as well.
CRAIG BURNS: One thing you do want to watch out for is the wattage that that device puts out. The one I like is 20 Watts.
BRIAN NORTON: Okay.
WADE WINGLER: And a couple of quick cleanup things here. I just punched Chattervox into Amazon, and as of this recording today lots of options come up, even the Best Mini Teachers amplifier which is also a 20 Watts unit. There’s lots of options there. And if folks are looking for the local assistive technology lending library here in the US, we’ve got a listing of those. Just go to www.eastersealstech.com/states, it’ll take you to the list of equivalents programs to the INDATA Project. Most of them have lending libraries, and I’m guessing a lot of them have voice amplifiers to try out.
MARK STEWART: If I may, on the wattage, do you have the numbers on that? I don’t have the experience that you have with them, but I’ve had some experience with them not having the volume that we were expecting or that we wanted with the particulars consumer. Have you found what wattage is a sweet spot for you?
CRAIG BURNS: I think the 20 Watt is about the best. Some of them may be 10 Watts.
WADE WINGLER: Some of them are as high as 50. As I’m looking at Amazon, the Chattervox says that it’s only a five Watt.
MARK STEWART: I didn’t want to say that the Chattervox was the one that I had that experience was, but it was.
CRAIG BURNS: It depends also on what you’re using it for. With adults that are doing outside teacher, maybe playground work, supervision. I had this one person who was doing outdoor activities, so she wants to be heard. Kids are probably not going to use it when they are on the playground type of thing, but when they are outside where there is no room capacity to keep the sound in, then it’s going to be a lot quieter. They won’t be able to be heard as far as way but they’ll still be able to be heard.
BRIAN NORTON: Awesome. Thanks Craig. I appreciate you coming in and doing that with us.
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BRIAN NORTON: If you have a question, as you’ve been listening and we’ve been giving answers, if you have a question that came to mind, don’t forget to send those to us. You can email us at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org. We would love to get those questions so we can continue to add them to our future shows.
The next question I have for us today is, I have a child in fifth grade, and I don’t feel a kitchen school is providing the necessary assistive technology and/or classroom supports for them? What should I do?
BELVA SMITH: Scream.
WADE WINGLER: People do that for sure.
BELVA SMITH: That’s where you start, but that you have got to get down and get busy.
MARK STEWART: It’s hard not to sometimes, but that probably isn’t the best approach if you’re able to talk or facilitate a conversation around them.
WADE WINGLER: A lot of disability advocates would tell you that a ramp never appeared in place of stairs by somebody standing there saying nice things to it.
BELVA SMITH: Exactly.
WADE WINGLER: It’s definitely a place for advocacy. I kind of want to jump in here. When we talk about assistive technology being provided in the school, there are a couple of different laws or plans that sort of make that happen. What is an IEP, or individualized education program, under IDEA, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. There’s also the 504 plans, which can happen. Both of those can kick off an assistive technology sort of situation. There are some resources. If you Google online IEP versus 504, you’re going to see that there are some differences. For example, with an IEP, there are only 13 particular kinds of disabilities that can qualify a kid and they have to be a special ed student. 504 seem to be a little more broadly applied and isn’t quite as stringent. But there are some subtle differences.
Regardless, I think it’s really important to have good communication with the education team. You need to be talking during that planning process, whether or not assistive technology needs to be part of that. I think what happens in those meetings is sometimes there is sort of a checkbox mentality where the educators or the administrators say they don’t need assistive technology and kind of move on, when in fact it might be something that should’ve been more closely considered. Another thing that I think happens in those meetings are very specific technology is being recommended and they may see something like this student needs Kurzweil 3000 instead of saying a technology that can do document scanning and reading, OCR, color highlighting and those sorts of things. I think one of the things that happened is there is a breakdown when people get locked into products, people get locked into process, and really it’s about communicating and trying to have a team identify assistive technology under that auxiliary aid section in the IEP and identified technology that is going to be broadly applicable and available.
That being said, in almost every state as far as I’m aware, there are resources and experts, probably people who are better at answering this question that I am who can give you a lot of details about the specific laws that apply to the state. In Indiana, there is also article 7 which kind of comes alongside the IEP process and provide some state specific stuff. There really are some very specific answers your question.
In general, you want to start off — open communication , trying to be clear about the shared objective you’re trying to reach with the student. And then know what resources you have when it comes to bringing outside experts in to help and advocate, or know what the appeal process or the grievance process looks like in the school system so that if you really do feel like there is not an option for assistive technology or the school is just not doing what they’re supposed to, you know who to talk to. Oftentimes it involves a conversation with the director of special education. Sometimes it involves going to outside advocacy agencies. Here in Indiana there is the Indiana Protection and Advocacy. There are some similar organizations in every state where you get attorneys or a paralegal kind of folks who can come to your defense and handle some of that stuff. I usually say start with open communication , trying to be very proactive, then bring in some outside friendly expert advice. And when necessary start the complaint process. Anybody else have other advice or experience? I can say that and be done with the show.
BRIAN NORTON: That’s excellent. Just from past experience, I do quite a bit of third-party evaluations. That’s something through the IEP process that parents can request. In your IEP meeting, if you’re not happy with what’s happening, you can appeal the process specifically with assistive technology. I’m not sure about all the other ancillary services that may be available, but very specifically with assistive technology, you can get a third party outside evaluation. We come in there and we work with the school and work with the student and the parents and we try to help massage that relationship a little bit too can figure out let’s get some tools in here to help the person. I know here in Indiana, and after elsewhere, there are similar places. There is organizations like PATINS who does a lot of what INDATA project, the tech act project here does, for the general public. They have a very specific organization called PATINS here in Indiana that works specifically with school to help them implement and put assistive technology in place. They also have a lot of services that they can provide, things like AIM, which is the Accessible Instructional Materials, so that people can get their textbooks in audio format or other alternative formats. What I find a lot is that schools just aren’t aware that those things exist. The teachers just don’t know or they are already taxed trying to teach an entire classroom of kids, and they just don’t know about these other services. Really just educating the school about did you know or did you contact these folks, because it can be helpful in those situations.
BELVA SMITH: That’s what I was going to say to you, Brian. I think as a parent with a student who will benefit from technology, the first thing you need to do or want to do is to educate yourself about the different types of technology, which can be hard, because we don’t know what we don’t know. But to educate yourself and then share the information with the school, because I do think oftentimes, because the stuff changes all the time and new stuff is developed all the time, and schools tend to get something in stick with it for years and years, when maybe there is a new product that’s available that they’re just not aware of. Were they aware of it, they may be able to provide it. I think first educate yourself and then share the information. Look for user groups, forums for parents of students with particular disabilities, and see what other people are using and what’s working for them.
BRIAN NORTON: Right.
MARK STEWART: A couple of things with regards to finances. It’s probably going to be the case in K-12 education that the purse strings are pretty tight. It doesn’t necessarily mean that the people at the school are unwilling. Unfortunately squeaky wheel gets the grease can be the case. You may have some success just with those initial inquiries and subtly educating them yourself and things like that, and then they know that this person is going to stay on this. All of a sudden you have a partner.
BRIAN NORTON: Excellent.
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BRIAN NORTON: If you haven’t sent your questions in, go ahead and do that. You can send us a tweet at hashtag #ATFAQ. Without further ado, we’ll jump into our next question. The question is, I’m looking for a text-to-speech application that will speech Portuguese or a dedicated device with this capability as well. Any recommendations?
WADE WINGLER: To clarify, are we talking speech to text or text to speech? She said text-to-speech?
BRIAN NORTON: Text to speech.
WADE WINGLER: So something that will take language on the screen and read it out loud?
BRIAN NORTON: Correct.
MARK STEWART: My interpretation is we’re not talking about language translation. We’re talking about just speaking it in a different language.
BRIAN NORTON: Right. So there are lots of programs that will do that. There are lots of text to speech applications out there, things like Kurzweil, screen readers, jaws, voiceover, other kinds of software, Magic which is a screen magnifier also comes with speech. There are lots of different programs that will be able to speak in Portuguese. A lot of times what you may have to do is talk to the manufacturer, figure out what kind of version you might need to purchase. Sometimes you’ll need to purchase that specific language version of the software. There are many programs that do that.
MARK STEWART: As I was researching this, I had to double check because I almost always work with the English language with these programs. Looking at the little bit of history about where things rolled out and stuff, it’s a question that needs to be asked but pretty soon isn’t going to need to be asked. A lot of things, for example, started in North America or English-speaking countries but now they are going international. That kind of was the theme of what I was finding here. Some of the things may have been rolled out specifically for a Brazilian rollout, but now if you happen to speak Portuguese in the United States, you play off of that.
WADE WINGLER: I guess maybe it goes without saying, but it needs to be Portuguese language on the screen they are going to be speaking. So if you are running Portuguese Windows or a document with Portuguese language, you’re going to start with Portuguese language. Even with voiceover on the Apple products, you can turn it on and it has a Portuguese option and will read it out loud. It’s more about how it pronounces those words as opposed to translating or something like that.
MARK STEWART: I’ll add one more thing. I initially read it as speech to text, so I did look up some of those options, Dragon NaturallySpeaking which is a popular speech to text program, and in 2011, it rolled out software to handle the Portuguese or Brazilian Portuguese. There is an option as well.
BRIAN NORTON: Very cool.
***
WADE WINGLER: And now it’s time for the wildcard question.
BRIAN NORTON: Okay, so our next question is our wildcard question of the day. This is where Wade gets to throw something off the wall, around the wall, from another room, into us, something that we haven’t heard before and we get to try to answer that for him.
WADE WINGLER: This is fun. I like getting to do this every time. Here’s the question. When will the PC go away? In the future context of assistive technology, we’ve seen service become desktops, desktops become laptops, laptops become tablets, tablets become smart phones. We’re seeing a lot of stuff moving away from a desktop or a laptop computer into mobile devices. The question is when does the PC go away, or does it? Is it all something more portable, something more mobile?
MARK STEWART: Are you defining PC as a desktop or laptop?
WADE WINGLER: Yeah, desktop or laptop. I think about in Windows, the Windows operating systems versus something like Windows Mobile, or in Mac, it’s something more like OS X versus iOS. When does the PC itself go away and it’s all about mobile portable devices? Or does it?
BELVA SMITH: It doesn’t.
WADE WINGLER: It doesn’t?
BELVA SMITH: It doesn’t. There’s always going to be the need for a full-blown PC. I don’t know, it’s going to be a different reason for every individual. There are a lot of things that I do on my phone and my iPad completely and successfully and with ease, but there are certain things that I do that I only do on my PC, because I prefer to do them on my PC. It may be that people will only be using computers as a preference. I don’t know. But I also think that things like video editing, you can’t do that kind of stuff on an iPad.
WADE WINGLER: Some would argue you can.
BELVA SMITH: But you really can’t. To an extent, you can, but I don’t know. I think that computers will always be here. They’re probably going to change and obviously change in their size and function, but I think they’ll always be here.
BRIAN NORTON: I think it’s a trick question a little bit.
WADE WINGLER: These are always quick questions.
BRIAN NORTON: I think about cloud computing and all those kinds of things, nowadays I just need some sort of dumb terminal on my computer as long as I get access to the cloud. You think of Office 365; you think of all the Google Docs and things like that. Those are actually pretty good programs.
BELVA SMITH: But not everyone likes the cloud.
BRIAN NORTON: That’s true. There are always going to be those. But things are kind of moving that way, and eventually people may not get a choice in what you get.
WADE WINGLER: Not everybody likes computers either.
BRIAN NORTON: I don’t know. Our future is kinda dictated by what Microsoft and Apple really decide what they want to do. Sometimes we don’t get a choice on what we prefer or what we like. In the context of AT, I think if PC’s were going to go away, it’s a long way off. Perhaps just because of the nature of screen magnification, you kind of need a computer of some sort plugged into a larger monitor and things like that. I don’t think that’s anywhere near happening, but I could see in the foreseeable future that that does happen.
MARK STEWART: I’m going to answer this in a two-pronged approach. The first one is it’s already happening right now in the sense of right now 2-in-1’s and 3-in-1’s — so you can make the argument — and of course especially in our field we could say like with what sort of happened with Belva’s example, depending on the work application, what you actually really need it for and the level of productivity is what is going to dictate whether it’s already happened or not. So just generally speaking, there could be an argument for the backstop already has gone by the wayside. The laptop was still here, but now the laptop is leaving right now into a two-in-one or three-in-one.
The other prong to the answer is along the lines of it’ll never happen because if you’re going to be looking at a visual experience, you need size. No matter how much power you can put into an iPhone, in fact now the iPhone has come and gone back towards the six because there was hard enough power to do a lot of general things in the original form factor of the iPhone, but it’s coming back up in size arguably not just put more processing power in it but because people need the screen size being somebody who just introduced reading glasses and computer glasses to his assistive technology. I’m thinking laptop is fine with me. I probably don’t need all the power all the time, but I sure need that screen size.
WADE WINGLER: But does that mean they’re going to cost $1 million because it’s like assistive technology is now? These very specialized things are so expensive that the mainstream products aren’t available anymore? Everybody uses a tablet or a smartphone and the people who need a larger screen experience, due to disability, there are not a bunch of them made? What happens?
BRIAN NORTON: I don’t know. I look at assistive technology, things like Kurzweil or things like Read and Write Gold, things that are fairly expensive pieces of software. I think those will always exist. Those will always be around, maybe not in their current form factor. I then look at apps that are now available on my iPad. For a person with a learning disability who needs that text to speech and need to be able to markup documents, maybe books and other kinds of things, Claro speech and Claro PDF and other kinds of apps that are much less expensive are now readily available for them. The world is changing. I don’t know.
MARK STEWART: Brian, I think you started, you are holding to the slow change arguments, because you’re kind of going towards answering it in the sense of when is the whole experience going to change, the whole interface going to change? When is being on the bridge of the Star Trek Enterprise actually going to be all you need? You just chat with it. You just move your hand. You don’t need a screen and a keyboard to look at. That’s a long way off.
BRIAN NORTON: Right.
WADE WINGLER: About five years ago, and this is a pretty popular discussion, Steve Jobs said that there will always be trucks. If you look at the automobile analogy, people don’t want big, clunky, fuel-hogging automobiles. They want smaller, better looking, more sleek, easy to handle automobiles. As we look at on the highway, and whatever high percentage of the automobiles are small, passenger cars that are fuel-efficient, easy to park, easy to handle, and those kinds of things to haul a few people, because that’s what most people need. But there still garbage trucks. There’s still some semis. There’s still pickup trucks, because for the special use cases that you’re always going to be trucks. That’s what Jobs said. There’s always going to have to be racks and server rooms that are handling your email service, even if they are little Mac Mini sitting on a shelf or whatever. They will still need to be some enterprise-level computers out there. I think you are right. I think it doesn’t ever totally ago away, but what happens is when you buy a server — in fact we record the show on an old Mac server that’s kind of been repurposed because it’s got a lot of horsepower and weren’t using it for something else. But when does it become more expensive because the desktop or laptop model of the computer, they don’t make a bunch of them. Everybody uses a tablet or a smartphone. I think it’ll be interested to see when it tips.
MARK STEWART: What a fun question. Wade, in your show, your update show podcast, you cover brain computer interface. Isn’t that a fun answer that’s not even exactly the Star Trek answer. Maybe Star Trek didn’t have it all figured out, but that’s something that could happen. That’s not going to happen next year Or maybe they get it figured out that way pretty soon to where I don’t need a screen. It’s not about whether my glasses were not. I get all the stuff done. Now the PC is gone.
WADE WINGLER: Interesting.
BRIAN NORTON: Again, back to that trick question piece. I just think everything we talk about, a tablet has a processor. If you think about PC, it’s a processor, a hard drive, all those things. The tablet is essentially a computer, a PC is at a tablet device. It just form factor.
BELVA SMITH: So are most of our appliances at home, right?
WADE WINGLER: Input output processors.
BRIAN NORTON: It’ll never, ever go away.
BELVA SMITH: I know I took it as our desktop or laptop computer, not a computer themselves. I still think I like your truck analogy, because the first thing I thought of when you said that was yes, people are going to move. You have to have a truck. You can move in your Honda fit.
WADE WINGLER: You can, it just takes forever.
BRIAN NORTON: Some people would argue that you can.
BELVA SMITH: And you can’t do video editing on a tablet either.
WADE WINGLER: Good point.
BRIAN NORTON: Excellent. That’s our show for today. Thanks everyone. I appreciate it. Mark?
MARK STEWART: Thanks everybody. See you next time.
BRIAN NORTON: Thanks Belva.
BELVA SMITH: Keep sending us your comments as well.
BRIAN NORTON: Thinks Wade.
WADE WINGLER: You’re welcome.
BRIAN NORTON: Again, here’s how to find our show. You can search assistive technology questions on iTunes, look for us on stitcher, or visit us at ATFAQshow.com. Also send us your questions by calling our listener line at 317-721-7124. Send us a tweet at hashtag #ATFAQ. Or email us at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org. We want your questions. In fact, without your questions that we really don’t have a show. So be part of it. We love to hear from you.
WADE WINGLER: Information provided on Assistive Technology Frequently Asked Questions 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 by Brian Norton; gets editorial support from mark steward and Belva Smith; is produced by me, Wade Wingler; and receives support from Easter Seals Crossroads and the INDATA project. ATFAQ is a proud member of the Accessibility Channel. Find more of our shows at www.accessibilitychannel.com.