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BRIAN NORTON: Hello and welcome to ATFAQ episode 30. I’m here in the studio with Belva Smith. Belva, you want to say hi?
BELVA SMITH: Hi everybody.
BRIAN NORTON: Als here with o we have Mark.
MARK STEWART: Hey gang.
BRIAN NORTON: And also here with Wade.
WADE WINGLER: Hey, hey, hey.
BRIAN NORTON: My name is Brian Norton and I’m the host of the show. We all work here at Easter Seals crossroads and deal with assistive technology day in and day out. Today is ATFAQ episode 30 where we will sit around and answer questions we have gathered around the week. I did want to, for new listeners, talk about our show and the format of our show. Throughout the week, we received feedback or come across some various assistive technology related questions. We gather those up and then we set around in a group and try to answer those as best we can. Occasionally we bring in some experts for certain areas of the assistive technology world when we get questions that are very specific, and maybe not an area of expertise that we have. So we bring in some experts. We also love to hear from our listeners about feedback. We try to answer questions as best we can, but we know you guys have a lot of good information. You guys are out there on the street, using these devices, using this technology, kind of deep down in the weeds with it as well, and probably have some good suggestions and information to pass along to our listeners. If you guys have feedback or you have questions, give us a call on our listener line. That’s 317-721-7124. You can also email us. Our email address is tech@EasterSealsCrossroads.org. You can also send us a tweet with the hashtag #ATFAQ. All of those three methods will get information to us so that we can use it on our show.
Play Today our first question is from a listener feedback. A little bit of feedback of the show but also a three-part question. We will pay that for you and jump in to try to answer that.
WADE WINGLER: I totally want to make a sound effect for feedback that’s speakers and microphone feedback, that kind of stuff. I think that would be great.
BELVA SMITH: I do too. Like what my mic did a little bit ago?
SPEAKER: Good morning, my question is for frequently asked questions. This is Chris out in Utah. I haven’t called for a while but I am a very supportive and consistent listener. I had to chuckle when my phone said I was calling frequently asked questions because obviously this question is not asked or I would’ve already heard. I have three parts to my question this morning. Number one, I’m very excited about changing my iPhone five as to a SE because of the increased battery power and the improved camera on it which I think would help me a lot with my KNFB reader. The questions that I have is, number one, when I change phones, how can I ensure that all of the information in my contacts list, notes, applications, etc., will be correctly, accurately, and completely transferred to SE phone. Another question I have with that is, how do I go about resetting my phone so I can trade it in or dispose of it? And the third question I have a somewhat unrelated, but I use the calendar app to check my appointments on my iPhone. I set up some appointments which are on a recurring basis. I had to change one of those, and when I went in and changed it, of course, it asked if I wanted to do this event only or all events. So I changed all events. The application seems to work, and it accurately notifies me a new day, but on my alerts and in my Google mail, I still get notifications of the way it was originally scheduled. I’m not sure how I go about deleting that or changing it so I don’t receive those notifications. I sure appreciate you guys, your show and your podcast but I’ll talk you later, thank you.
BRIAN NORTON: Thank you, Chris, for getting back with us and for asking questions.
WADE WINGLER: Chris is kind of a rock star.
BRIAN NORTON: I know. He has good question for us to pass back and forth here.
MARK STEWART: He is a funny man. I like his sense of humor.
BRIAN NORTON: That’s excellent. From what I gathered from the feedback and from your call, but is that there are three questions. It sounds like you’re changing from an iPhone 5 an iPhone SE, and you want to be assured that all of your information including your contacts list, your apps, etc., will be accurately and completely transferred. So that was the first question. Second question I believe was how do I reset my phone so I can trade it in or dispose of it. Third was when changing appointments on my calendar app, it seems the only change it on my phone and not on my Gmail calendar. Is there some way to delete the Gmail alerts so that I don’t receive them?
BELVA SMITH: That’s almost 2 questions, isn’t it?
BRIAN NORTON: I think question one in question two can kind of go hand-in-hand. It’s all about changing phones —
BELVA SMITH: No, the Gmail question. That’s two questions for the Gmail because one is, how come it’s not thinking correctly, and two, is how to turn off the medications.
BRIAN NORTON: So four questions. Let’s go to the first question illustrate into that one first. From changing from an old iPhone to a new iPhone, how can you be assured that all of your information including contacts, applications, and other kinds of things will be completely transferred to the new phone.
BELVA SMITH: The first thing I want to say, Chris, is make sure you have your old phone backed up. Make sure you have done a recent backup and that it backed up correctly. And the second thing is whoever your carrier is, like if it is AT&T, if you go into the AT&T store, they will help you make sure that your contacts and all that stuff gets transferred over correctly. But if you’ve got a good up-to-date backup, you should be able to connect the new phone and simply restore all the information into the new phone. Now, that’s what you should be able to do. Again, you might want to check with your carrier. Do you want me to go on with what to do to make sure it is ready to get rid of?
BRIAN NORTON: Absolutely.
BELVA SMITH: I found a website that gives you eight things that you need to know before you sell your phone or turn it into treat it in or whatever, it’s www.techlicious.com. Eight tips that you need to know before you get rid of your iPhone. The stuff that you’re going to want to do is, first of all, make sure you have your phone connected to power. Don’t try to do without being connected to power because if it dies in the middle of the process, that’s going to be a big problem. If you’ve got your back up and connect to power, you can go to settings and then general and choose reset. You will have the option to erase all the content. That will hopefully get rid of everything that is on there. But it’s also really important to make sure that you go turn off your iTunes account and your iCloud account. Any accounts that you have, you want to make sure you log out of them and turn them off or otherwise as soon as the phone gets turned back on, all the information will go back right into the phone.
BRIAN NORTON: Rights. I will throw out two things. You can back up your iPhone to either iTunes or iCloud depending on if you signed up for that service. Those are the two ways to back it up. And also I would just make sure that on your phone, go ahead, if you’re getting a new phone and you want to transfer your information to a brand-new phone, just as a precautionary method – I don’t know if it necessarily is needed or not – make sure on your old phone that you’ve updated the operating system as far as you can go, because on the new operating system or the new phone, it’s going to have the newest — typically the newest operating system. Make sure those things match. I don’t know that will cause any problems for you but I just think it’s a good idea to make sure that those things match for you.
BELVA SMITH: I’ve actually had to update my — or have switched iPhones, a total of three times. I’ve never — my arm is wood so I just knock on it – but I never lost anything.
BRIAN NORTON: Your actual arm is wood?
BELVA SMITH: No, my chair.
WADE WINGLER: Your chair arm is wood. Belva is not made of wood.
BRIAN NORTON: I just want to clarify that.
WADE WINGLER: That’s funny. I will tell you what: this Google calendar thing —
BRIAN NORTON: Not that there would be anything wrong with that. We work with folks with disabilities.
WADE WINGLER: Being made of wood is not a disability.
MARK STEWART: unless you are Pinocchio.
WADE WINGLER: That’s different. So this Google calendar thing has gotten me down a number of times. I have to say my 19-year-old daughter has gotten in trouble because of Google’s failure in this area. We have a shared family calendar. It’s just a Google calendar that we keep track of, who was working, when, when we have a family get-together and who is taking the trash out. I tell my daughter to put her work schedule on the Google calendar. She does and it doesn’t show up on my version of the Google calendar on my iPhone or on my Mac because I had my iPhone and my Mac set to read those Google calendars. I can’t tell you how many times I told her, please update your work calendar so I know when you’re working so I know when you will be around the stuff. There is a delay between the iCal server and what Google does with their calendars. I have seen it update immediately. I’ve seen it take hours. And I read some Google forums that have said it can take as much as 24 hours from the time you put an entry into your Google calendar to where it actually shows up on your iPhone. That’s one of the things I think is important to note when you’re dealing with the Google calendar, as it seems to sync when it sorts of wants to. That seems to work both ways. It Google calendar is reading from your iPhone or if you’re having your iPhone read from Google calendar, it is inconsistent and can take a long time before it actually shows up. The other part of the question that I saw, if you want to get rid of those Gmail calendar alert alerts, if you actually go into the Google calendar on the web interface, next to the name of the counter whether it is your standard calendar or birthday calendar or whatever the name of your calendar is, there is a drop down. And that drop-down is a thing that says edit notifications where it lists those things. You can go in one at a time and delete those so that they don’t come up again. You can just go in and manually get rid of those.
BRIAN NORTON: So when you answer enter something into the web interface and Google calendar, it can take 24 hours for it to come through on a desktop calendar?
WADE WINGLER: I have seen it take a long time. In the forums, people are taking it can take up to 24 hours. I’ve seen it take more than an hour before it shows up on iOS devices or my Mac.
BRIAN NORTON: Interesting.
WADE WINGLER: I thought that was interesting too. When I learned about that, it sure did make my 19-year-old daughter relieved because —
BELVA SMITH: Told you, dad.
WADE WINGLER: Mister smarty computer pants.
BRIAN NORTON: Quick getting down on me, dad.
WADE WINGLER: She’s 19. I don’t know anything anyway, right?
***
BRIAN NORTON: Don’t forget, if you have a question or if you have feedback, please give us a call. Our listener line is 217-721-7124.
Our next question is from Russ. This is from an email we received. Do you know where I could buy lift or transfer kit to transfer my son from an aisle chair to a bulkhead seat in a plane? I’m trying to buy right away for a flight in a week, Southwest Airlines has them and they don’t know where to get them. To be honest with you, that’s a little bit — we do some things like ergonomics and recommendation for chairs and other kinds of things, but I’ve never looked at a list seat for an airplane. I don’t have a personal knowledge of these companies. But after a quick Google search, we turned up a few different results. One was 1800wheelchair.com. They have wheelchairs for airplanes that you can find those different – I’ve seen them in airports where it gets you through those skinny aisles in airplanes and things like that. There is also another one, Columbiamedical.com, and then RehabMart.com, also have ways for you to actually Google or search on their particular websites for those types of chairs. I don’t know. Does anyone else have expense with that?
MARK STEWART: Just a bit. I used to work in durable medical equipment eight years or so ago for a stint, and here’s what I want to say to the caller. To make sure we are current, just think about these words: — we mentioned on the show for other situations, but you probably haven’t listen to every show — contact your local durable medical equipment supplier. So if you’re going to look online, look for those words: local durable medical equipment. And then look into how long they’ve been in business, whether there really seem to be a local flair. And kind of look for wording and even pictures and things like that about working with some of the more complex kinds of situations. They call it in the industry complex rehab when it comes to wheelchairs. You could get lucky with kind of a more simplified mainstream national sort of company, but you would want to be more careful about that. Even if they don’t have the same product, if you call your local DME, durable medical increments company, now you’re talking about the people that can give you the best, most lucid, poignant advice for your situation and the timelines and everything. Even if they don’t have it themselves, they’ve got all the catalogs. You wouldn’t believe what they know about this whole thing. That reputable, not fly-by-night kind of company, if they don’t sell it they would be happy to tell you. They would know the question and will get you the right answer.
BELVA SMITH: This is the type of thing you would probably find that your local tech act where you could borrow it, right?
BRIAN NORTON: Probably not. That would be my guess. I know we don’t have any here at INDATA which is Indiana’s assistive technology act. When you’re specifically looking for those, you’re going to want something that’s called an aisle transfer chair, just a real skinny, he strapped them in. When you are on those sites asking about that, ask specifically for an aisle transfer chair. Just my little web search I did, they are pretty expensive, anywhere from $2000 and above. That cost is really significant.
BELVA SMITH: I’m surprised the airlines aren’t required to provide that.
BRIAN NORTON: I believe they have them available. Most airplanes — years ago I worked at a camp, and they had a travel program at that camp. We would take 30 or 40 folks with some significant disabilities, many of them in wheelchairs, we would take them on these vacations. I actually got to go to Hawaii with them. When we were getting on the airplane, you couldn’t imagine all the different I/ aisle transfer chose that they would put out to be able to get those folks loaded into the airplane, get them into the seats and things like that. I believe they have them if you ask for them, but it certainly would require some —
BELVA SMITH: I think our listener said that Southwest didn’t have them. I think that’s what I heard.
WADE WINGLER: I think he said they did but I thought he was trying to get one for himself.
MARK STEWART: These companies may have rentals as well. The ones that I was mentioning, — Brian, thanks for the name of the category. I think you’re going to, if you find that local DME dealer, they will know the legislation, whether they are rentals, and again, picture the company that has been around for a long time and has done a lot of it. They do beds, chairlifts, high-tech power wheelchairs and the complex rehab category, they do the consumer powered simpler wheelchairs, manual wheelchairs, all the sorts of things. They’re going to be a good resource for what, again, Brian?
BRIAN NORTON: Aisle transfer chair.
WADE WINGLER: A few years ago, I had a gentleman on our show on Assistive Technology Update. It was episode number 124, aired back in October 2014. His name is Ben Trockman and a friend of the show and organization. This was an issue that was very important to him. First of all, there are some legal questions here that I’m not prepared to address because none of us on the show are attorneys. Is airline required to have that? He actually travel to Washington DC by car with his family to meet with Congressmen to talk about this issue. Ben is someone who uses a power wheelchair and isn’t able to get a big power wheelchair on an airplane. The issue of transferring somebody with a very high-level spinal cord injury who might be on a respirator or ventilator, for example, into one of the skinny chairs and then move down the aisle and transfer it over into an airline seat, represents a whole level of medical complexity that I don’t think airlines are ready to deal with. Think about what’s involved in helping someone with a high-level spinal cord injury transfer out of their chair, into this chair that my nephew wide or appropriate enough to support the body during this rough, tumble move jump over a threshold situation. And then what do you do with the ventilator and that situation? I think there are some real physical barriers that show up in a situation because, frankly, the stuff doesn’t fit. A big, wide power chair that’s controlled by sip and puff, head array, probably isn’t going to fit in a lot of these situations. Who is going to do the transfer? Airline personnel, I don’t think are trained to do that kind of very medically involved procedure. What happens if the tray pops out? What happens in the situations? How do you provide power on an airplane on a battery based respirator so that somebody has a kind of stuff? The other thing that Ben said is, and if you do get transferred into a seat and onto the plane, then they bang up your chair in storage down below. I’m not talking about any particular airline here, but that’s a pretty technical, maybe fragile but at least expensive piece of equipment that somebody else has to handle, get under the plan, into storage, back out. There is a lot of technical stuff there, especially if you’re talking about a high-end, high-level spinal cord injury situation and a power chair. I think there’s a lot that goes into this that we don’t think about. I know that’s why Ben went to DC, was to lobby for legislative change so that people would require airlines to do more in this area. It’s a big deal.
MARK STEWART: It’s interesting. It was clear, I don’t recall the exact approach that needs to be taken for these chairs, but Wade, your part about the complexity of it and the medical stability kinds of questions, I don’t know, it might even be a situation where the DME company might say we know what those are, we know how to process this true for you, but actually you need to go to — you need certain medical signatures as part of this product process or we need to get this matched up better than what you might’ve been thinking. They may not be as generic as you originally thought.
BRIAN NORTON: As you mentioned, we’ve had someone on AT Update talk about it very specifically. I’m sure some of our listeners have had personal experiences or may have additional feedback for us and the question that he asked. Take some time. If you have anything you want to add to that, please let us know. I would love to be able to pass it on, play it on our show. To leave us that information, you can send us an email at tech@EasterSealsCrossroads.org, or you can send us a tweet with the hashtag #ATFAQ, or give us a call on our listener line at 317-721-7124.
***
BRIAN NORTON: So this next question is from Mark. Mark emailed us a question. His question was, any suggestions for a standalone, simple digital timer to help somebody know when to take breaks? There are tons of digital timers. The first place I go to look for something very simple like that, as a digital timer, is I go to the kitchen store, Walmart, Kmart, Target — and you find different types of timers in those kitchen timers aisles. I think those are pretty simple enough to set a time, let it go, and at the end it helps me get up and take a break.
BELVA SMITH: The timer on your cell phone.
BRIAN NORTON: Most people have smart phones.
WADE WINGLER: I’m a big fan of Pomodoro timers and Pomodoro apps. Pomodoro is the Italian word for tomato. It’s because the first guy that came up with this concept used a kitchen timer that look like a tomato. You twist it and it was a kitchen, countdown timer. Then he developed these series of breaks so that every 20 minutes you take a five-minute break, and every three hours you take in a half hour break. They did some research that, using that method, the Pomodoro method, it helps increase productivity. I’m not sure that’s what Mark was getting at with this exact question. I don’t know if it was if it was that simple or not.
MARK STEWART: With the one you’re using on us here in the room, —
WADE WINGLER: We’ve alluded to the fact that we have a timer in our studio when we record this show. We have one called Time Tracker Mini that is electric but is not digital. I don’t know, it’s about as big as a can of soda pop. It has two dials on it. The upper dial is green and lets you set, in five minute increments, time from 5 to 120 minutes. Then it has a red dial that lets you set time from 5 to 115 minutes. What happens with this timer is once you set the amount of time on the top dial, it will count down and show you a green light. Then let’s say you have a time when you want to be reminded that you’re almost done with whatever activity it is, you set the yellow dial to represent that activity.
Here’s how we use it here. We try to you keep our questions on our show to around 10 minutes or so. So to read the question, answer it, we try to keep it around 10 minutes. We have the green knob on our Time Tracker Mini set to 10 minutes. For the first five minutes it gives us a green light, so we know we are in the first five minutes of our question. I’ve got the next knob on this thing set for five minutes that so that at halfway through, it gives us a yellow light and lets us know that we are about halfway through. Then when the timer went out, it blinks red and let us know we’ve spent 10 minutes on it. That might be a little in the weeds and technical, but it’s a great timer that lets you have a countdown and reminded that time is about to run out and a red light to blink in that you know. We have the audio turned down on the timer because it will also buzz and beep be to let you know when your time is running out, but we shut that off in the studio obviously.
BRIAN NORTON: I kind of think that is so helpful. With just a regular timer that will end at a certain time, I love the fact that this one allows us to have that five minute warning. Help me to prepare to take a break because, I don’t know, when I get busy and get working, sometimes I’m so into it that when it goes off and I’m not prepared to actually step away from what I’m writing, I’m just going to keep working, I’m just going to ignore the timer itself. Maybe having a timer that has some visual indicator to be able to say we’re getting close, or maybe even a snooze button to be able to say give me five more minutes. I’m going to take my break. I need five more minutes to work on this task and move on. Again, the question really was centered on standalone, simple timers. Maybe those are simply added bells or whistles that will be nice but not necessarily needed.
BELVA SMITH: LS&S has some nice, standalone digital timers that are reasonable at $10 or under.
BRIAN NORTON: LS&S is a big web wholesaler of assistive technology.
WADE WINGLER: they’ve got all kinds. It’s like Maxi aids or something like that.
MARK STEWART: There are three we happen to have in our loan library that are not examples of how you pretty much have all the versatility you might need to match things up with — so you look at your need, and you can probably find it with the timer.
WADE WINGLER: Mark, we are at a yellow blinking light. We have five more minutes.
MARK STEWART: Slippery slope of conditioning. There is the Invisible Clock 2, that has a number of different things you can do with it. One of the things is you can set it to vibrate so that not everybody knows that is going off and reminding you. There is the tactile mechanical round kitchen timer they can wear around your neck and the actual numbers are tactile. You can feel the numbers and what they represent just by touch. You can tell where you are and how much time is gone by, for folks with visual challenges. The Time Timer Audible is one that gives you audible feedback but also a nice visual display. So for example picture when it is set to 60 minutes, the whole timer would be red, and then as time lapses, goes away, let’s say there is only five minutes left, only that little five minute small wedge section would be red. So you have a nice visual experience. I think those are some nice examples.
WADE WINGLER: The other timer we have in our city is a very simple sunbeam 20 minutes egg timer that I use when I’m doing interviews for Assistive Technology Update. We try to get those around 20 minutes or so. It just let me know where we are in terms of the amount of time we spent on that. I’m going to say this was about a five dollar —
BELVA SMITH: I think it’s about six dollars on Amazon.
WADE WINGLER: Super inexpensive. The Time Tracker Mini unit you can get from all kinds of places, Walmart, $12-$15 for that one. That one is pretty inexpensive to go along with those others.
MARK STEWART: I had a case a few weeks ago where — we are thinking a lot about autism and things like that with these timers, but I had a case of a lady who has to work from bed. She has pressure ulcers and is really working hard with the medical team to fight those back. She is totally captivated by her work and actually what we are doing with assistive technology voice recognition and all other access to do her work from bed on the computer. It became a concern, I guess we could say. We wanted to get ahead of it as far as the amount of time she spent in one position, and that time would fly by while she was working more so than when she wasn’t working. So we needed to think about different timer option to use to help her take breaks, to help her even cue her aides, to move her and things like that. I know those things should happen anyway and that’s what I encourage. But sometimes time can slip by. They were looking for simple options.
BRIAN NORTON: That’s great.
WADE WINGLER: I guess the last thing I would add there is there are tons of apps. Belva mentioned on your phone you might have some of those that I have a digital timer built in, but there are tons of apps designed to do all kinds of time of countdowns and verbal prompts and music prompts. I know one of the apps we use a lot is Aida reminders. We also have used applications like choice works calendar and choice works has programs that will help you do even more than simple timers. You might check out some of the apps sources to do that. I would suggest maybe BridgingApps that work would be a place to add look for that one of those other places to look for apps, but that are tons of them.
BRIAN NORTON: Maybe you guys use a timer like the one we are talking about. If you guys have other suggestions, let us know. Again, reach out to us, let us know if you have any other questions or feedback. Give us a call on our listener line at 317-721-7124
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BRIAN NORTON: So this next question is from Wade.
WADE WINGLER: There’s another one?
BELVA SMITH: Wait, we had a question from Mark and now we have a question from Wade.
WADE WINGLER: I’m going to learn to quit asking Brian questions.
BRIAN NORTON: Totally no one in this room. We met at a different Wade.
BRIAN NORTON: This is a question from Wade. He said I need a recommendation for a solid office/task chair in the $250-$300 range that has all the essential adjustments and is rated for human — is rated for medium length of daily use. Any suggestions?
I guess to draw the question down a little bit, when you think about essential adjustments, let’s talk about that first off. I think there are certain adjustments when you would think about an office chair, when you start thinking about ergonomic office chairs, what those adjustments should be. I would say definitely having the lumbar, being able to adjust the lumbar up and down, or at least the seat back up and down, being able to adjust your arms up and down. And some chairs you can adjust the arms in which they would rotate in towards you or away from you. And then really the seat pan becomes the other piece. That’s where I find the real difference between some task chairs, some good solid office task chairs and what it ergonomic chair might offer. Typically in an ergonomic office seat pan, where you set sit down, you can adjust the seat in and out so you have some depth adjustment there so we can move in and out, giving you a little bit more of a seat to sit on it, maybe a little bit less of its back towards the back of the sea as well. But then also a way to tilt adjust that seat as well, giving you either kind of a waterfall effect as you fall forward out of the chair or being able to help you take better care or better adjustment or better posture when you’re using and taking full advantage of the back support. It can help you tilt back in the chair to help you take full advantage of the support you get on the back of the chair. Those are some of those — and some of the height adjustments, that’s the basic adjustment for the chair as well. Those are what I would say would be essential adjustments about think of those. Does that hit everything for anybody?
MARK STEWART: Semantics as far as the word essential and adjustment, but I like recline, independent recline of tilt.
BRIAN NORTON: And then be able to lock it in at a certain angle as well.
BELVA SMITH: I think essential is personal, isn’t it? What’s essential for me might not be what’s essential for you, or am I wrong?
BRIAN NORTON: I think in this particular question, when you’re thinking average person, if you have all of those adjustments, you will be able to personalize those adjustments for yourself. Having the adjustments is the first thing, and then being able to personalize those for somebody would be that second step.
MARK STEWART: I see specifics in the question, but it only goes so far. I think what it leans towards is preventative ergonomics. We’re talking about folks that we are not picturing them having this disability or challenging condition. They are in the normal range with regards to height and size and aches and pains and what have you. Really what you’re trying to do is prevent things and provide something that is going to help prevent things quite a bit for a particular amount of time. When you start getting into being behind the eight ball a little bit, and now you’re trying to pull back from pain syndromes or disability syndromes. We need to define to some extent, and I think that preventative item is that we are talking about. What kinds of adjustments can help somebody in the midrange normal category head things off at the pass. I think that’s where I would look at it. One of the other questions I’m going to have is what type of lifecycle are you looking for for the chair? What is the cost-effectiveness that we are shooting for?
BRIAN NORTON: Durability, those kinds of things? Is that what you’re looking for?
MARK STEWART: Overall construction.
BELVA SMITH: Is $250 a reasonable dollar amount? Or should they probably be spending a little bit more on that for a really good share? I think they said for around $200
BRIAN NORTON: For a solid office task chair, $250-$300.
WADE WINGLER: It’s too bad we don’t know this Wade guy, or we could ask him to care for the question a little bit. Here’s a situation: in addition to my responsibility in assistive technology, I’m also over our AT program. The question was do we have a standard office chair that we buy for our staff. Somebody who is standing at their desk, maybe not eight hours a day before five hours a day on average, what is a good solid baseline ergonomic office chair, just like Mark said for an average person, someone who doesn’t deal with a specific disability issue, isn’t obese, doesn’t have those special situations. And it’s something in the $250-$300 range that is sort of a good solid chair. It’s interesting that we talked about what are essential adjustments, because I consider essential adjustments, obviously the sea will go up or down, the seat to back angle is going to be adjustable, the seat angle itself, the waterfall adjustment has to be there, and the arms are going to go up and down. Probably lumbar, at least to some degree, are what I sort of consider the essential options, essential adjustments for just of anybody. I also like the fact that if arms can go in and out or rotate, that’s really good. If you can have the ability to adjust seat depth, I think that’s important too. But there is obviously a trade-off there. The more adjustments, the more durability, the higher price you’re going to incur. See you can spend $1000 or $2000 in a chair like that. I was looking for the sweet spot for sort of an average office chair in that range.
BRIAN NORTON: We found some chairs that match that category. Is that right?
WADE WINGLER: We did.
MARK STEWART: Even before you mentioned the chairs, I think there’s another interesting point about the category. What was your terminology of the amount of use?
WADE WINGLER: I said medium.
MARK STEWART: Medium use which means a ton versus light versus heavy. Frankly before the purchase, which category within medium are you talking about? If you can nail down who the people are, so if you have IT professionals who really are intensively using the computer and their arms and really need to have some important positioning while they are at the computer; or let’s put it this way, they could really benefit from that because their high end, professional user is really trying to be efficient for that period of time they are at the computer. But they are actually only there off and on for two hours during the day. Then even though they are such high end users while they are there, they just don’t need the same chair that somebody would need if they are there doing the same thing all day long or perhaps scripting. The chair will last as long because they are not in it all day long. Perhaps the same types of things therapist might fall into similar categories.
WADE WINGLER: What we were looking at is sort of a baseline average chair with the understanding that in many situations somebody is going to need something different than that, because of the duration, the nature of the task, a medical condition, or disability, or just their physical stature might change. We were trying to figure out, what is our baseline chair, and we can go from there. We ended up with lots of good recommendations from this. Just to throw out a few different suggestions, there is a website called the human solution that has some pretty good chairs on it. There is a line of chairs called the Eurotech Apollo line of chairs that’s in the $250 range that has all the adjustments that we talked about that is set up for some durability.
MARK STEWART: Does it recline?
WADE WINGLER: I don’t know if it has recline. The one I ended up picking is a baseline chair. In this case we went to Office Depot. Obviously we are not recommending companies or particular equipment, but we happened to find a work Pro chair from Office Depot in the $150 range that had a lot of the same adjustments. The one thing that it didn’t have was adjustable lumbar support on it. But what it did have instead was seat depth adjustments and a protruding lumbar mesh. So the idea is you can’t adjust the lumbar, but you can slide your chair forward and backward or you can slide your seat in and out and get more or less lumbar support that way. It had all the other adjustments including rotating arms, up and down, and out, and those kinds of things. Rated for 8+ hours a day according to the sales literature. I haven’t tested it yet. I found one to play with and seems to be a pretty decent chair for that $150 range. It’s sort of a baseline chair.
BRIAN NORTON: I sat in it for certain meetings up in your office area. It’s a really nice chair. Mark, you mentioned what’s the lifespan, durability with it. It has some different things for controls. It’s more of cable controls which would give you then a concern that, over time, they may wear out more quickly than some other chairs. But again, for $180, it did have a lot of adjustments guy was very comfortable, has that much for breathability factor instead of sweating up against fabric or leather or something else for a long period of the day. It was very comfortable.
MARK STEWART: It’s all relative. If you’re talking about somebody who doesn’t have any aches and pains right now and is only going to be using it for two hours a day, they can get away with about anything. And if it’s for $150, maybe the lifecycle only needs to be three years. From experience, I’m concerned about lifecycle in that, as a generalization, I’m concerned about lifecycle in that price range. You get one arm rest to crack. Now you go from a situation where you were really doing preventative kinds of heads up ergonomics kind of chair that does a little bit more than some, to a chair that is going to cause a problem because there is a crack down the middle of the armrest and they don’t want to ever put their arm on it and their shoulder is hiked. We’ve all met the person whose piston has gone out and they are sitting real low in the chair. There’s just that weak link factor that concerns me.
BELVA SMITH: That’s my chair at home. My piston is out, so every time I sit in it, no matter high I lift it, before I’m done I’m at the bottom.
WADE WINGLER: You’ve got to fix that.
BELVA SMITH: But I found that Home Depot and Staples both have a really good selection of the chairs on the floor, so if you can get into the stores to try them out, that’s what I’ve suggested to the folks that I worked with a couple of times when I’ve had to get chairs. It’s to go into either OfficeMax or Staples and actually try them out because they usually have 10 or 12 different ones put together that you can try out.
WADE WINGLER: I think that’s the most important part. We are going to try these things and see how they last and flex and adjust as we need to. We are starting with these.
BRIAN NORTON: Excellent. Maybe you guys have a recommendation for an office chair, maybe a task chair, that you love and has lots of adjustments. Let us know. Also don’t forget to send us your questions. Email those to us. This one came through email at tech@EasterSealsCrossroads.org.
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WADE WINGLER: And now it’s time for the wildcard question.
BRIAN NORTON: So we will jump into our next question, the wildcard question.
WADE WINGLER: Yay. Okay, you guys. This is a party question, so if you’re a doctor and you go to a party, people are going to ask you questions about their gallbladder. But you are all assisted technology experts and —
BELVA SMITH: My computer won’t.
WADE WINGLER: You are at a party, a social event, and somebody who is a friend of yours comes up and says guys, I am a librarian at the local public library, and we just got the Kiwanis club to give us $5000 to put assistive technology in our library. What do we spend it on?
BRIAN NORTON: Do I hear crickets in the room?
BELVA SMITH: A CCTV.
BRIAN NORTON: I kind of think about that question, and I’m wondering tell us what kinds of challenges the people have. What are they doing in your library? Back but it’s a public library. You’re going to have to infer some low vision, some learning disability, some wheelchair users. If the general public. If you had to pick five grants but in a public library for the general public, what are you going to put in?
BELVA SMITH: I would do a CCTV and an accessible picture of some sort. Almost all of the public libraries have computer set up, but not all of them to have an accessible workstation. That would be my two suggestions. If you’ve got money left over, we can go from there.
BRIAN NORTON: I would then center, because of the limited resources. $5000 when you’re talking about CCTV’s doesn’t go very far. I would focus in on reading because we could look at and ask workstation to be able to help with voice recognition software to be able to help write papers and things like that. Because were in a library in your hitting the general public, I might focus in on reading. That would incorporate folks who are blind or visually impaired either using something like a CCTV or video modifier to be able to do that kind of thing. Or maybe a scan and read system for somebody, maybe who has a learning disability or is blind. Blind can’t actually read the print.
BELVA SMITH: They could do that with a couple of iPads and apps. Brown it would be pretty quick. Maybe I would focus in on the reading piece of it. The Mac that’s what I would do.
MARK STEWART: I’m thinking about the computer themselves. A real nice high-end PC and Mac, and an orientation to the onboard accessibility tools so people really know how to navigate those things, ease of access center of course and the PC.
BELVA SMITH: Do you think folks are going to the public library to access the computer, Mark, or you think they’re going to read a book or magazine?
BRIAN NORTON: I think half-and-half. Folks are going there to study.
BELVA SMITH: You think?
WADE WINGLER: A lot more computer access these days.
MARK STEWART: They may be using the computer to find their way around library as well. There’s just that learning and curiosity part of the library as well. They may go to the library to find out about assistive technology. The station might be part of the research into assistive technology in a sense. I’m a little bias on this, but I think it certainly applies, 5000 is tough. The physical access, to be a set slack stand station, definitely a workstation that a wheelchair to get underneath. I think that’s appropriate, bias as I am with the physical and cognitive side of AT. If it’s going to be for public use, we need to make it accessible to people of different sizes and what have you. Everybody is right here. There are the standalone programs that do more than the onboard programs and we need to pick and choose which ones we would want to have on there.
BRIAN NORTON: Belva, you mentioned iPads. I’m thinking with an app like K NFB reader, five or six iPads, K NFB reader on those iPads, a couple of E text or EPUB readers, you have a whole world of print available to you just in a few iPads, being able to take a picture of something, have it read to you. You can also use those as video magnifiers. There are apps for that. You could probably go a long way with a few iPads, being able to get checked out at the library encounter.
WADE WINGLER: Circulation desk.
BRIAN NORTON: One was the last time I went to a library. It’s been a long time. I use the one drive. There is an app for your local library where you can get books.
WADE WINGLER: I don’t know.
BRIAN NORTON: Come on.
BELVA SMITH: I don’t know.
BRIAN NORTON: Market that.
WADE WINGLER: One of the benefits I get with the about card question is I get to think about this longer than you guys do. Belva, how much is an average video magnifier that has OCR built in? Is at $2500?
BELVA SMITH: $2500.
WADE WINGLER: I’m thinking with $5000, we spent $500 on a decent but not exceptional motorized table goes up and down. We put $2500 into a CCTV that has OCR built in because at that point your covering most of your vision impairment related stuff with a simple table with that CCTV on it with some height adjustment. You got that sort of covered at that point. Then I think I’m spending the other $1000 on public awareness and training about the ease of access stuff like Mark mentioned. I think I’m printing posters, doing an accessibility week, some in services, maybe racing out to an organization like ours or the other AT act projects to have them go in and do some awareness activities. The public library is going to have computers already. They are going to have Max or Windows-based computers with a lot of the accessibility stuff. You’re not going to have somebody coming in and using Dragon on a regular basis because they have to have their voice files and the ambient noise situation is a big deal and the microphones are going to get ripped off all the time. I think it’s a CCTV with OCR and the computer and then tons of training and awareness, maybe some training with the staff in the library on how to use those accessibility options. I’ve had more time to think about it then you guys, but I think that’s what I’m doing with $5000. I’m worried about iPads. I’m worried about them walking away getting dropped and broken. The training related to how do I use this app.
BELVA SMITH: That’s what I was in when you’re saying the iPads could be used for this easy to use. For the older generation that might be going in there and want to access the newspaper or something, to use an iPad for a CCTV isn’t as simple as walking up and pushing a button to turn it on. That’s where I think the CCTV with the three buttons to do all the settings and then have it read if it needs to.
BRIAN NORTON: There are challenges with them all. IPads can walk away. You’re also going to have some fiddles with IT in the local library to get people access to things that are down and tucked under your control panel, the ease of access center. We work with some libraries before. I know they can be a specific challenge. I think with all the different types of technology, you are introducing something very new and foreign to them and to a public environment. So education is going to have to be part of the matter what you do so that, if it is an iPad, it doesn’t walk away. How are some ways we can do with that? A CCTV? How do we deal with that? What if you can’t figure it out? You educate people with how to do with that technology.
BELVA SMITH: When I think library guy think print or text. That’s why my first thing was the CCTV, because I see the CCTV as my print access.
WADE WINGLER: I see iPads doing all kinds of things in libraries. I see CCTV’s in libraries often not being used, but when they are used it’s magic. People are like I know what that is, I know how to use it, even if mine at home is it exactly like it. It really does serve a wide variety of the population. You don’t see a bunch of kids playing around with CCTV’s. They are not that interesting but they are super helpful for a lot of folks.
MARK STEWART: Thinking on the physical access side, that person coming in with a wheelchair, wait a second, look at what is available. Wade, as you said, that entry-level height adjustable table. What I didn’t say was axonal monitor arm and a nice high death 27 inch monitor is — if people have missed what can be done there, it’s going to represent a lot.
WADE WINGLER: Although with a monitor, I worry about people dominating that computer because it has the nicest monitor on the computer. Someone is playing a videogame or online. I’m worried about the attention is going to attract just because of the glitzy wow factor as opposed to using it for the intended purpose. That’s a double-edged sword because it’s good for everybody. They should all be using 27 inch monitors.
MARK STEWART: Assistive technology is cool.
WADE WINGLER: 80 is cool. That should be the new name of the show.
BRIAN NORTON: If it doesn’t look good, it’s not technology. Thanks everyone. I want to thank Wade, Belva, and Mark for being a part of the show. Thanks guys.
MARK STEWART: You bet.
BELVA SMITH: See you everybody.
WADE WINGLER: Anytime.
BRIAN NORTON: Again, here’s how to find our show. You can search assistance technology questions on iTunes. Look for us on stitcher. Or visit us at ATFAQshow.com. Don’t forget to send us your questions. Also send us your feedback. Our listener line is 317-721-7124. You can send us a tweet with the hashtag #ATFAQ. Or email us at tech@EasterSealsCrossroads.org. We want your questions, feedback. In fact, without those we really don’t have a show. So be part of it. We would 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.