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Panel – Brian Norton, Belva Smith, Josh Anderson & Wade Wingler Q1. Wifi Extenders and Amazon Echo Q2.Group Contacts on iOS Q3. TV remotes with MS Q4. Apps for Geometry Q5. Dragon and Chrome Q6. When is AT training complete?
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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 43. My name is Brian Norton and I’m the host of the show. I’m in the studio today with a few of my friends. I like to introduce those to you. Belva is our vision team lead at Easter Seals crossroads.
BELVA SMITH: Hi everybody.
BRIAN NORTON: I also have Josh, the manager of clinical assistive technology.
JOSH ANDERSON: Hello everybody, welcome.
BRIAN NORTON: We also have Wade Wingler.
WADE WINGLER: It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.
BRIAN NORTON: We almost got snow last weekend.
WADE WINGLER: I know.
BELVA SMITH: A lot of places around us did.
WADE WINGLER: We walked out of our church service on Sunday, and somebody had set up a snow machine so it was snowing in the entryway of church. It was awesome.
BRIAN NORTON: Awesome. For those new listeners, I wanted to talk about our show a little bit, give you an idea about what to expect, how our show works. Essentially we receive feedback and questions from across various places. We review those each week and set around in a panel much like we are today with these other lovely people in the room and talk about these and try to come up with as best answers as they can. I mentioned feedback, we are asking for feedback. We have a very large listening group an active listening group. Lots of people have great ideas about how to solve issues. If you guys have an answer to a question that we might cover this week, feel free to call in and let us know what that might be and we will play that on our show. Love our listening group so send us your questions and send us your feedback. We will be looking for those things.
There are a variety of ways to get us that information. To ask questions and give us feedback, you can call our listener line at 317-721-7124; you can send us an email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org; or you can send us a tweet with the hashtag ATFAQ. We monitor all three of those places and are looking for the feedback and questions. If you would like to tell folks who are listening, you can tell them how to find shows. You can find our show on iTunes or go to our website which is ATFAQshow.com, or stitcher, or many other places as well. Feel free to tell your friends and family about it. We would love to have them listen in.
Our first question is an audio question. That’s one of the cool things we get to do with that listener line. If you call in, you can leave us a voicemail message and we play live on our show. I’ll queue up the first one and we will take a listen.
WADE WINGLER: I noticed this one came in before things giving so we are recording after cop but this is Chris who calls us on a pretty regular location.
BRIAN NORTON: He has called in a couple of times.
SPEAKER: I’m calling for the frequently asked questions show. My name is Chris Green. I’m your fifth favorite blind guy out of Utah. I have two questions and just a comment.
First of all, I’ve heard of something people refer to as a Wi-Fi extender. I’m having problems keeping my Echo Dot connect to my Wi-Fi and I don’t seem to be having any problems with my Victor reader or iPhone, so I’m thinking it may be something in the Echo Dot. If I put it right next to my router, I don’t have any problems cop but if I try to get it 15 feet away or so, I have problems. I’d like to know if there is such a thing as a Wi-Fi extender. I’ve heard they are kind of small and plug in and that some of them aren’t too expensive. I’m wondering if there are some available costs of the recommended to how difficult that would be for a blind person to connect to the devices so that I can circumvent this issue I’m having with the echo.
The other question I have is , in the past most of my phones that have had for the last – ever since they came out with mobile phones – there was an option where you could go in and create groups if you wanted to group your contacts into family or business or clubs or church cop but I can’t seem to find anything like that on my phone. All I find is groups that are set up corresponding with my email accounts and don’t see anywhere to create new groups. I’m wondering if this is still possible or if there’s something I need to forget or if there is a workaround. I appreciate your help on these two issues.
The comment I like to make is something people ought to mull over and think about. I’m always curious when listen to podcasts those that are describing how to use screen readers and that type of thing, whenever there are doing demonstrations to have their screen reader set up to about 1250 miles an hour so you can’t hear anything or understand anything that is going on. Just something to think about. Looking for to hearing from you cash or appreciate you guys.
BRIAN NORTON: What I did with Chris’s question – the comment is funny to me as a service provider. I worked with many people who are blind or visually impaired, and they use jaws are one of the other screen readers. Things are cranked up so high it’s hard to understand. For them it works just fine. They are sitting there listening for what they need to hear and move on to that stuff. If you are presenting on stuff, it is helpful to slow down and let people hear it. My first presentation ever , a rep from freedom scientific walked in the door with my boss, and I was doing a demonstration of a screen reader so I was extremely nervous. I had mine sped up. Not only was it the voice that needed to be slowed down – this rep from freedom scientific , the folks who do jaws, told me, slow your voice down so people can hear it also go slowly through your menu bar. Let them hear and say the whole menu options, going through your start menu. When it says Microsoft Word, don’t speed through and have them here only Microsoft. Let’s say Microsoft Word so everyone in the audience can hear it. I took that advice to heart. It really does make a big difference of people can fully understand.
For Chris, our fifth favorite blind guy. I do love Chris. He has called in with some great questions. I broke his voicemail up into two separate questions I thought were there. Question one, what is a Wi-Fi extender and how do they work. It seems like he has some issues with his Echo Dot which is the newer version, smaller version of Alexa that comes with the Amazon echo.
BELVA SMITH: I think it’s a companion to Alexa.
WADE WINGLER: It does the same thing without a nice speaker , is my experience.
BELVA SMITH: It’s $49.
WADE WINGLER: $39 on sale during the holidays.
JOSH ANDERSON: Or you can get a sixpack.
WADE WINGLER: They do the exact same thing. It’s just the quality of speaker. On my Dot, I have a nice Bluetooth speaker attached to it and basically get the same impact.
BRIAN NORTON: Is issue is with the Echo Dot, he is having trouble getting it to connect. He only seems to be able to connect to his wireless network when it’s right next to his router. I guess the first question , a little bit about Wi-Fi extenders and how they work and what they are. I have two Wi-Fi extenders throughout my house because I have a two-story home and have a bonus room over my garage where I have a TV. We don’t have cable so we use the streaming everything at our house. I set up one of these extenders. They are easy to use, not that expensive. I would go online and listen to the reviews and figure out which ones are the best. I think I got a Linksys or something like that. I think I paid $40 for ours. It works really well and was fairly simple to set up. I think we ended up plugging it into the wall. When I go to my computer and look at the wireless networks that are available, it’ll have that one available to you. You connect to it and essentially what it does is, when you bring up a webpage, you type in what you want to name that particular extender, put in your wireless passwords as a try to connect to your traditional wireless network, and it’s like a five-step process and you go upstairs and plug it in where you wanted to go. It’s very easy to plug in and it to work for you.
BELVA SMITH: Then you don’t have to do anything else. It automatically does what he needs to do.
BRIAN NORTON: Correct.
BELVA SMITH: It’s been a couple of years ago since I was researching these, but I think there is some difficulty with it going through concrete walls, or have they improved that? Going from a basement –
BRIAN NORTON: I’m sure there are some issues with that. I have them daisychained together, so I have one on one side of my house on the first floor where our router is , and I’ve got one directly upstairs going through the flooring. I got the other one connected to it. It’s a daisychained approach.
BELVA SMITH: I think they are pretty common for folks who have more than one story , to have one on the main floor or the second floor.
BRIAN NORTON: They are really easy to set up. I don’t know if necessarily, when you mentioned that the Echo Dot doesn’t seem to work far away, I mentioned the wireless –
WADE WINGLER: I’m not sure that’s the problem either. I got the Echo and it is probably 30 or 40 feet from the Wi-Fi, and then I’ve got a Dot upstairs that is an entire story away, and it clicks just fine and I’ve not had trouble with it. They are both connecting the same Wi-Fi.
BELVA SMITH: But he said he’s done some of his own troubleshooting, and when he brings it closer to his router it stays connected. When he takes it away from the router is when he has issues.
WADE WINGLER: He said 15 feet. If that’s accurate, 15 feet is not far at all. If you said 150 or 200 feet , then I might be thinking more about that.
BRIAN NORTON: I don’t know if your router is from your Internet service provider, but I would be calling your ISP and asking them if they have a better router.
WADE WINGLER: He said his other Wi-Fi devices are doing okay. Maybe it’s the Dot. I would be getting with Amazon to see what’s going on.
BRIAN NORTON: Interestingly enough, I have a fire TV. I can’t get that thing to work for the life of me. I’ve always had a challenge trying to get it to connect.
JOSH ANDERSON: I have two fire TV sticks, and the one right next to the bottom works worse than the other one on the other side of the house. Sometimes it works great and other times it doesn’t want to work at all, whereas the other one I’ve never had a problem with.
WADE WINGLER: You need to think about how Wi-Fi signals work from an electrical standpoint. They are more like an umbrella than a straight line. Something immediately next to it could be in a dead zone. Maybe moving it three or four feet away might matter. You might try that.
BELVA SMITH: I wonder if it could matter if he’s got the Dot sitting next to another electronic device that might be causing some interference. Maybe try relocating it in the same area that it is in but in a different place.
WADE WINGLER: Or other devices near the Dot when it’s far away from the Echo. Are there other Wi-Fi devices? Shut them off or see if that matters. Another thing we do with Kyle we had a couple of different frequencies in our house on our Wi-Fi network, the five gigahertz and 2.4. Some devices do better on a different frequency than others. Some access points have the ability to transmit multiple signals. Older devices tend to do better on the older signals and newer devices on the newer signals tend to do better. That’s something to think about.
JOSH ANDERSON: If you do have a router like that. My Wi-Fi extender projects both. I have two different ones on there.
***
BRIAN NORTON: The second part of the question was , is there a way to create a group contact list summer mobile phone? Specifically with an iPhone. He mentioned he sees from his Outlook account and from his email accounts that they can create groups over there, but creating specifically a group for the iPhone – I want to send out to the group.
BELVA SMITH: First I want to say thanks for the question. I always like a challenge and getting the answer to that question was quite a challenge. Before I answer that question, I want to back up and talk about your comment. I do think that as folks become more experience with their screen readers, they do tend to speed them up way faster than what I can typically comprehend. I wanted to say that one of the things that is really annoying or frustrating to me is when people try to talk over their jaws. Let the screen reader talk and you be quiet. When it’s done talking, then you can begin talking. When I got trained to be a JAWS trainer, the instructor, there were 12 of us in the class, the instructor had been a JAWS user for many years. He literally had his set at 110 and I couldn’t understand a single word it was saying. He could understand it just fine.
Back to your question – and I will tell you that figuring this out, I found a lot of solutions that didn’t work. I found some that made it sound very complicated where you have to create the group on your computer and then bring it into the iCloud and bring it into your phone, which none of those solutions were suitable for me. I dug deep enough to find that you can do it from your phone. You open up your contacts and then you tap your plus sign (+) as if you are going to add a new contact. It is very important that you go to the company name – not the last name, not the first time, but in the company name type in the name you want for the group.
BRIAN NORTON: So church events or church?
BELVA SMITH: Exactly. You don’t put anything in the first name or last name. The next place you are going to head down to is the notes section of the contact screen which is pretty far down the screen, below add instant message on my phone. I’m not sure what iOS you’re using. I’m using the current version. You’ll find notes under add instant message , in this case. Most important that you use less than and greater than brackets. For example, I created an ATFAQ group and included Brian, Wade, and Josh. I typed in Brian’s email address with the greater than and then the less than and then a comma , and I added Wade, Josh. Once I’ve completed adding all of the names I want to , each name followed by the greater than, less than, and comma, then go to add an email address comma in the add email address. Your group will be created at that point. You’ve got two options: you can go back down to notes and delete the folks that you added to your group, or you can leave them there. I suggest leaving them there because then if your group grows and you need to add someone, all you need to do is add the one or two people. If you have deleted it, you would have to retype everyone’s information all over again. I tested it; it works. It sounds like it is time consuming, but compared to the other solutions I found, it seems pretty simple.
BRIAN NORTON: Go down to your notes, email address, greater than less than comma, new email address greater than less than comma, copy it, stick it in the email.
WADE WINGLER: You end up with the email between the brackets, between the less than and greater than.
BELVA SMITH: Each email has to be braced with greater than less than. I actually type the steps out. I don’t know if you want to put those on the show notes or whatever.
BRIAN NORTON: Sure.
BELVA SMITH: You just want to make sure that in the notes section, you braced the email address with the greater than less than, divide them with the comma and then copy and paste them into the add email address. You’ll have your group. When you look in your contacts, it’s going to show up along – again, I named mine ATFAQ. When I see it, it says ATFAQ group. When I open it up, I had the option to either message or email from the contact itself.
BRIAN NORTON: That’s great.
BELVA SMITH: Or I can do a new message and type the A and it will complete the rest of it.
BRIAN NORTON: How long did it take you to find an answer like that?
BELVA SMITH: To get it to work and stuff – I will tell you, before I found the greater than and less than, I found the steps but they didn’t say you had to have them. I couldn’t get it to work. Finally I found that one and it worked. I would say about a half hour of digging around and trying to find a solution that didn’t require logging into my computer and doing it from my computer. I wanted to be able to do it from my phone. I’m sure that’s what Chris is wanting too.
BRIAN NORTON: Is that amazing? Something that should be so easy. You should be able to open your phone and create a group just like you can anywhere else. Maybe they haven’t thought of that yet.
WADE WINGLER: It’s a great workaround though.
BRIAN NORTON: There usually are workarounds for just about anything and everything. It’s just figuring out who is going to give you the right information where that is located. It takes a lot of sifting do stuff.
***
BRIAN NORTON: The next question was, do you have any suggestions for a foot mouse for a person with ALS?
BELVA SMITH: The Kensington expert mouse is always one that can be mounted. I think we actually have worked with the client that had to use the Kensington mouse with his foot.
BRIAN NORTON: We did. There are lots of different options as far as using a mouse whether it’s on the floor or whatever location they need. In this particular case, and thinking with ALS is going to be interesting because I would think –
WADE WINGLER: How long is that going to last?
BRIAN NORTON: – Control is going to be one of those function that’s going to leave pretty quickly. I think the topic of foot mice in general, there are lots of different ways you can do it. I worked with somebody who simply needed a trackball. He had the upper extremities, he didn’t have arms, so he was is in the keyboard and mouse on the floor. For him we did a couple of things. The first was we had a keyboard, the Intellikeys keyboard. If you’ve seen it, it’s a big blue keyboard that has overlays that get inserted into it. As a part of the overlay , there is a mouse portion of that overlay. In addition to the keyboard, you have a mouse right there in front of them. It’s a touch mouse, so you have an arrow that is pointed in the upper right direction. The mouse will start following in that direction and then you got buttons on there as well for all the button functions. That seemed to work really well for him. At times it wasn’t fast enough because he would have to hold the button down to get it to move and wasn’t all that quick for him. It was a fast method of input.
BELVA SMITH: I think you could control the speed of it somewhat but not totally.
BRIAN NORTON: You are stuck to linear motions. You can go straight up or down or left or right, but you weren’t able to move it all around in circles and things like that very easily. The second thing we did was that Kensington expert mouse and placing that on the floor. It is a big ball stuck between four programmable buttons. He was able to use the ball of his foot to be able to navigate with the mouse and move it wherever he needed to go. There are many trackballs out there for that.
BELVA SMITH: The four corners of the Kensington expert mouse are the four buttons. You said programmable, but did they change that so you’re not allowed to program what each button does anymore?
BRIAN NORTON: You can. You can still download software for it. With Windows 10, I would need to check the compatibility to see if you can do that. One of the main things with button functions that is very important for folks, when you think about dexterity, fine motor controls, and other things, is when you’re trying to drag something across the screen, there is a lot going on there. Having a button designed to have a drag button is really important.
BELVA SMITH: A click and drag.
JOSH ANDERSON: The double-click is another.
BRIAN NORTON: You can do double-click and other things. With that drag because there is such fine motor and dexterity stuff happening that you’re not realizing, if you think you take a second to think about what you’re doing when you move the mouse, there is a lot going on. What they did when Windows 7 came out, under the control panel there is an option called click lock. Kensington said we are getting away from our software, we’re not going to release the software which made the buttons very programmable. They expected folks for that drag feature to be able to go in and use the Windows click lock option. Hey, it’s built in now, you don’t need our software. But I believe they still have the mouse worked software and you can go to their website and download it and it gives you some freedom to control those bonds and sign different options to it. The nice thing about it is lays flat on the floor. He did a great job.
BELVA SMITH: What would you say? How big?
BRIAN NORTON: Is three or four inches square.
BELVA SMITH: I’ve had consumers that use that, because in the center is the rollerball. I’ve had a consumer use that with his chin. I also had consumers that use it with their elbow. It’s definitely worth looking into to see if it might be appropriate, even if it is just something they can use right now. It’s not a horrible expense if it’s a temporary tool that will be useful. I think it’s around $100 – which in the $100 is $100 , at least it’s not $1000. Also, you might be able to check with your local AT act and see if you can borrow one and try it. I Velcroed to that. Brian, you taught me this but I had velcroed that to different mounts to get it to the right position. It might be something that could be mounted perhaps to a wheelchair or to the bed or something.
BRIAN NORTON: Anywhere.
BELVA SMITH: Anywhere that would be helpful for this individual.
BRIAN NORTON: As you think about trackballs, there is big track trackballs cost more of the kid looking ball that looks like a bear as you hold it out from your side.
BELVA SMITH: That when you can do with the joystick, or my thinking of a different one?
BRIAN NORTON: That’s just a ball. You’re thinking of the Traksys trackball. I don’t believe they manufacture that anymore. That one had a T-bar or joystick or big yellow ball you could use as a joystick feature.
BELVA SMITH: I know you could program the buttons on that one as well.
BRIAN NORTON: As I thought about this question a little bit, and you’re talking about a person who , over a period of time, their situation is going to change. They will have less functional movement of extremities and are the kinds of things. The more I thought about it, I might start talking to them about switch access pretty quickly.
BELVA SMITH: Or even Eye Gaze baby.
BRIAN NORTON: All of those will move your mouse. Oftentimes we use 12 select. Easy keys is a software package that allows you to use switches. There is an on-screen keyboard you can navigate through but also as a mouse component to it where you can either use a sonar mouse or move it along and XY axis to get to different locations of your screen. There are a lot of options. With those you just have to have one controllable movement. As functionality starts to go away, you just move that switch control access point to a different place. It could be using your foot to push a button at first but you can go all the way down to where if you can blink your eye. If you have one controllable movement that is consistent enough, you can use those software packages. If you can have voluntary movement where you are purposefully moving. Eye gaze is something that is coming into its own. The cost is coming down. There are many solutions for folks –
BELVA SMITH: That would be something that would work for a longer period of time probably. A long-term solution.
BRIAN NORTON: Hopefully maybe those solutions would be some options for them. I know there are traditional foot mice where you use both feet to be able to move the mouse around and then you got big buttons down there to press. Those I think would require more movement and might be harder to control over a period of time.
BELVA SMITH: And I’m thinking they are going to be more expensive than the hundred dollar Kensington.
WADE WINGLER: The one we use to use around here a lot was the no hands mouse which had two platforms, and one rotated on an axis and you could use it to control the mouse , and the other one you would rock back and forth to click. It’s been discontinued. You can buy it anymore.
BELVA SMITH: That’s what I was thinking.
WADE WINGLER: There is a newer one called the foot mouse that runs around $150. It has one button on it that is directional that lets you move it and a bunch of other buttons that can be your clicks and programmable buttons like you’re talking about with the Kensington. Interestingly enough it has what they call a slipper. Basically it is a thing that looks like a sandal or flip-flop but bigger with Velcro straps on the top that you strapped it to your foot and use it to interact with those different buttons. It’s an interesting thing. I was impressed. It seems to be widely available and runs $150.
BRIAN NORTON: I believe we have one in our library.
WADE WINGLER: We do have one in our lending library. It’s possible that other states might have as well.
BRIAN NORTON: Those are a couple of suggestions for this particular question. I would encourage folks, if you’re listening in and have something that you have used before for a similar situation, let us know, provide feedback. As you are listening and have questions, there is a variety of different ways to get those to us. You can send us an email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org.
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BRIAN NORTON: Our next question is, I have multiple sclerosis and would like to control my TV independently, but even with my good arm I’m not able to use remote control all that well. Is there a different or better way for me to control it? I’ll throw that out.
WADE WINGLER: Being an Apple TV fan, that’s one of the things I find interesting because it has Siri built in, so if you’re using streaming content, that’s not going to work to change your cable box or things like that, but we use that more and more often all the time where you have some movement to navigate but when it comes to tapping the names of shows for the things, that’s where we use Siri. Comcast has a thing as well –
BELVA SMITH: That’s what I was getting ready to say.
WADE WINGLER: Belva, you have more experience with that.
BELVA SMITH: If you have XFINITY — you have to have the XFINITY package. They do have a remote control that you can speak to; however, you do have to activate the microphone button to begin speaking to it. It can do things like search for a show or go to channel 13 or whatever. I’m wondering if you might possibly have enough movement or his ability to get the TV turned out and get that microphone button activated. I don’t know of any way to get it activated without pushing that button. The good news is you don’t have to hold it down. You just have to press it to activate it.
BRIAN NORTON: She mentioned, with my one good arm just using the remote control. I’m wondering if pressing one button as opposed to many buttons would be an option. I’ve known about Comcast, and I thought a couple of other service providers were doing that. Is it just Comcast?
BELVA SMITH: I think they are.
JOSH ANDERSON: I think DirecTV or dish network is starting to do this same thing.
BELVA SMITH: Comcast was the leader and I think the rest have started to follow. I’m also wondering if the enormous remotes that you can get from the drugstore that has the larger buttons, I think those are directed toward folks that are low vision. But again, maybe having a larger button – I know the remotes on our XFINITY controller are very small. Maybe having something with a larger button might also be an option.
JOSH ANDERSON: Way to talk about Apple TV, but we have a fire stick. The new ones have Alexa built in. You push one button and topic and tell it whatever you’re looking for and it will look across a few are streaming Netflix and Hulu and all these other ones. It will find on one of those for you.
BELVA SMITH: That’s interesting because you just mentioned Alexa. If you have Alexa and have your TV plugged in to one of the power –
BRIAN NORTON: Modules.
BELVA SMITH: Could you ask Alexa to turn the TV on?
WADE WINGLER: You could get power to it but it’s still not going to control the remote. You actually have to push the power on button on the remote and you would still want to change channels and things like that. Alexa doesn’t seem to have the ability to control TVs at this point. But when you think about the fact that fire stick has the Alexa software built in, you get a lot closer. What you’re really talking about most of the time is a programmable remote. There are a ton of different universal remotes that are programmable out there. One other things might be to find a larger one or different shaped one that works better that is programmable and maybe just programmed buttons that you use in it, because a lot of times when you’re having a hard time with the remote it’s because there are 20 or 30 buttons on there and you only want to use channel up, channel down, power off, volume, the basic controls. Just fiddling with some of the different programmable remotes that are out there might not be a bad idea. The other thing is you can always look at traditional environmental control units. Brand names we know about our Sage and See care and Possum. These are more traditional units that do a switch interface or sometimes two boys interface or work with your computer or even your iPad. That’s another thing to think about. A lot of the cable providers had iPad apps that I suppose have remote controls built into them as well. If you’ve got good iPad access, maybe find the iPad remote app for your provider.
BELVA SMITH: Brian, what are those things called that use them for typing.
BRIAN NORTON: Typing aids?
BELVA SMITH: May be some sort of a typing aid, because again I’m trying to think of getting to those little buttons is probably one of the biggest difficulties. Maybe having a stylus or one of those typing aids can also be helpful to hone in on the button that you’re trying to get to.
BRIAN NORTON: Maybe even just mounting the remote in some location and using a typing aid. Typing aids are plastic things that fit over your hand with a plastic extension, rubber knob at the end they can simply press a button.
WADE WINGLER: It looks as if you have extended the middle thing on your hand by about three inches or so.
BELVA SMITH: This is the kind of thing that you really want to be there and want to see it. You know if you could see it you would have lots of ideas that you could try.
BRIAN NORTON: Interesting question. If there are other folks that have feedback, let us know if you’ve come across an interesting remote or option to be able to control TVs and other kinds of things independently. Let us know. We would love to hear that. You can give us a call on our listener line at 317-721-7124. With any of those questions or even the feedback, you will play those live on the show. That always is a fun part for us to hear our listeners chime in on that way.
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BRIAN NORTON: Our next question is, I have a patient who is not physically able to utilize a compass and router for geometry. Any apps you would recommend for her to use?
WADE WINGLER: I haven’t dealt with those in a long time.
BRIAN NORTON: I always get the compass and protractor – I have to think about what’s the difference.
WADE WINGLER: The compass is the one that someone can stab you with.
BRIAN NORTON: I’ll remember that. They used to be the coolest thing ever that you could purchase.
WADE WINGLER: A protractor you can fly like a frisbee across the hall. This is my recollection of high school.
BRIAN NORTON: And a suggestion with that?
BELVA SMITH: I’ve got nothing with that one.
JOSH ANDERSON: I looked up a few of them. One of the compass and ruler apps had a ruler and protractor on it which confused me because then I had to sit there and question which one am my really looking at. If you look up compass and router software, you get C.A.R. We can put the – I’m not going to read off the website because it has a lot of dashes and dots like that. It’s free software you are supposed to be able to download and easily type in some of the stuff for functions, curves, expressions, and I kind of stuff. I don’t know if that would help because they are asking for in app. I think they are looking for something more on the phone. I went through some free apps and stuff and didn’t really find anything that was very user-friendly or seem to help a whole lot just because of that physical what you have to hold the compass and use it around. As far as a ruler, there are tons of things you can use for it but the compass becomes more of a challenge.
BRIAN NORTON: Great answer. Way to go. That was my same experience. There are quite a bit if you look for geometry software and things like that. There are some websites you can go to, software you can get in download. Again, those are things we don’t have lots of experience with. I know one of the website I sent a lot of folks to is mathway.com. Math Way has every different type of subject of math, finite math, calculus, algebra, geometry, all that stuff. It’s a good option for folks. I’m not sure if it has specifically geometry. I know there is a graphing option but it might be some place to start for folks. Again, you mentioned apps, Josh. I don’t know of a good one for specifically geometry tasks. There are some good math apps. A couple I will mention to folks if you don’t know about, one is called photo math, really interesting in that if you have calculations, you can hold your phone or over top of it and it solves the problem for you. It’s not to cheat or make your work easier. What it is therefore is to help people understand how an answer was resolved and how they got to that particular answer. You hold your phone or mobile device over top of an equation, it solves it, and then walks you through the steps that it took to be able to solve it. Step one, this is the first thing we did; step two, this is a second, third, fourth, and finally gets you to your answer. Helps people better understand what is happening in the background on how a particular answer was eventually come to.
There’s also one called Why Homework which works a little bit differently. I kind of like why homework a little bit better because it allows me to enter the problem myself. Sometimes worksheets and other things that are handed to you from a teacher may not be the best quality – they’ve been scanned and are times so you don’t get a good quality equation from that. With why homework, you can type in the equation and they’ll do the same thing, solve it but then break it down into steps. I don’t believe those two things do geometry.
WADE WINGLER: I got nothing on that either. A little googling didn’t find much. This would be a great opportunity for folks in our audience you might teach math and deal with this on a regular basis to chime in. I’m going to send out an email to some colleagues over at BridgingApps to see if they have any recommendations on that specifically. They are really good at knowing what apps do what. They are also regular contributors to our regular show, Assistive Technology Update. I’ll check with them. If we hear back from a listener or back from our friends at BridgingApps, we can follow up in an upcoming show.
BRIAN NORTON: Sounds great.
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BRIAN NORTON: If you guys have questions or feedback, don’t hesitate to give us a call. Our listener line is 317-721-7124. We would love to hear from you.
Our next question is, I have a client with Dragon NaturallySpeaking 13. When Dragon is not running, chrome works fine. When Dragon is running, Chrome comes up as a black screen. Is this a known issue? Has anyone seen this before? Anybody have work around suggestions? I believe Belva mentioned she might.
BELVA SMITH: I have seen this before. My first suggestion would be to use Internet Explorer. I’m just saying that –
WADE WINGLER: But I like chrome.
BELVA SMITH: I think the expense with Dragon NaturallySpeaking is better with Internet Explorer; however, if you do want to use chrome, I have the link here that you may want to put into the show notes. You want to make sure that you have downloaded and have enabled the plug-in. You want to open chrome and go to the menu icon and select your settings and click “extensions”. It’s actually called the Dragon web extension. Ensure that that’s been enabled. Make sure you turn it on. I do have the link for downloading that extension. It’s like so many other things with chrome – we were talking about this before the show. Chrome requires an extension for just about anything that you want to do.
BRIAN NORTON: Especially these days.
BELVA SMITH: I think you’ll probably have a better experience as long as you do have that downloaded and make sure it is enabled. Just downloading it doesn’t automatically turn it on.
BRIAN NORTON: It’s not necessarily going to enable itself.
BELVA SMITH: Exactly.
BRIAN NORTON: Have you guys had any experience with Dragon in the new edge browser?
BELVA SMITH: I’ve tried it. It’s still kind of flaky. However, using the voice recognition, Windows voice-recognition, with edge is working well. I’m confident they’ll get those bugs worked out eventually.
BRIAN NORTON: Perfect.
BELVA SMITH: If not, you can use chrome.
BRIAN NORTON: Maybe that’s for Windows. Is that the same for Mac as well? I don’t know how that works. Dragon is not the same on a Mac as a Windows computer.
BELVA SMITH: I wouldn’t begin to know about doing it on the Mac side of things.
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WADE WINGLER: And now it’s time for the wildcard question.
BRIAN NORTON: Our next question is the wildcard question. This is where we throw the microphone across to Wade and he asked us an off-the-wall question.
WADE WINGLER: No throwing microphones. We paid good money for these microphones. No throwing microphones.
BRIAN NORTON: Can’t bend the mesh that’s in front of my microphone.
WADE WINGLER: I’m expecting eyes to roll in this room because this is part of the conversation we had earlier today that I thought there is our wildcard question for the day. Everybody in this room has spent extensive time doing assistive technology services, lots of one-on-one time with people that includes evaluations and installations and trainings and all kinds of good stuff. The question is, how do you know when you have finished treating somebody in a particular assistive technology.
BRIAN NORTON: Insert eye roll.
WADE WINGLER: There is not a sound effect for that is there? How do you know, when you show up and say here it is, to go, see you later, let me know if you have any questions. Or is it you spend too much time with somebody so they don’t even want to see you come to their house anymore? How do you know when you are done training and what kinds of things you think about to figure that out? We’ve all made that call hundreds of times, but how do you know when you’re done?
BRIAN NORTON: Can I jump in?
WADE WINGLER: Sure. You’re the host.
BELVA SMITH: It’s your show, Brian.
BRIAN NORTON: Since this is my show, I’m going to answer first.
WADE WINGLER: Plus you look like you are ready to leave.
BRIAN NORTON: And we will see you later. One of the things I find extremely helpful is always when you are putting together a training plan for somebody, yet had a plan. That should be a roadmap for you to be able to get you through training. As you recommend equipment and are talking to the client and figuring out what their situation is, you should also at that time be developing a training plan with them, what the training needs to constitute, what we need to cover during this training. Be very concrete with that. Create a checklist, a roadmap for you from here is where we want to start, where we want to end, we want to be able to cover these topics. I think that is vitally important to start people out so that everybody can have a trainer, the client, funding sources, and everybody else knows what you’re going into doing what you’re going to accomplish. If you don’t have that stuff, training is everywhere and you never really move in one direction and have an outcome established when you’re done. That’s where I will start.
BELVA SMITH: I think the key to what you just said is you want to make sure that the individual can actually perform whatever those goals were that you created. Maybe as you’re going along will decide that without that the school was going to be really important and we discover that maybe it’s not so important but that there is another task that needs to be completed that is important. To me, when I can ask the person I’m working with to perform whatever the goal may be, whether it’s sending an email, editing a document, or texting or whatever it is, when they can actually perform that task without my verbal guidance, then I say they’ve got it. Often what I will do, if we are working on email, I will say to them when I get ready to leave, email attachments. During the time that I’m leaving in the time that I come back, I need you to send me three email attachments. If I don’t get those three email attachment before I get back, then I know we still have more work to do. If I do get those attachments, I know we’ve got that, now we can move on to the next level. I think it’s actually seeing the person perform whatever the task is that we set as a goal in the beginning.
JOSH ANDERSON: I completely agree. It is having them demonstrate that they can do it. We talked about earlier having some folks who, you walk in with the equipment, start working with them, and they basically kind of show you the door because they don’t want to work with you or they think they know it all. Truth be told, if they can sit there and demonstrate they can do all the tasks without having to be verbally cued or looking up every time, and they’re pretty much ready to go.
BELVA SMITH: I’ll ask people to I’ll tell them Control-N is going to open up a new message and I’ll tell them two or three times. Before I have them do it, I’ll have them tell me. What was that keystroke we are going to use to open up a new message? Hopefully they remember it. If they do remember, I’ll have them tell me that two or three times before we do it. I’m a firm believer that you need to hear it a couple of times before it actually really registers. Especially for folks using screen readers because there are so many keystrokes that do so many different things.
BRIAN NORTON: I always think it’s important in the training process for folks to not only sit there with you during training but to spread training out over a period of time so that they have time to really use it where it’s going to be used. If you’re working with a student, you may be training them in their dorm room and things go really well and they are walking through the tasks. They need to bring that device to a classroom and use it in a classroom and see how it works there. I think that homework piece of it, hopefully they are not sitting there just wanting you to hand-over-hand instruct, train them on how to use it but that they are taking and are invested enough in what you are providing to them that they are actually using it out in the community where they’re going to be and making sure it works. It’s one thing to do training in a sterile environment where everything is going to work fine, because you’re the teacher and you have it set up exactly right. I hope they’re using it where it’s live. If something screws up, they are thinking of the questions that they want to ask you to the next time they get to meet you.
BELVA SMITH: I don’t like the word homework. I don’t know if it’s because I hated homework so much when I was growing up. I do like to ask my consumers, clients, to work with the computer when I’m gone. If sending me the email attachment is to be considered homework, okay. I’m just going to say show me you can do it by doing it. If they are not going to work in between our training sessions – Brian, you are very correct in saying that training needs to take place in several different appointments instead of all in one. If they’re not going to practice in between, they are never going to be successful. If you don’t use it, you’re going to lose it. If you think that you’re going to turn the computer off when this training session is over and turn it back on in a week when I come back –
JOSH ANDERSON: You’re not going to retain that.
BELVA SMITH: It’s not going to work.
JOSH ANDERSON: Something I always have my consumers do is we open up a Word document and start it, it’s basically questions for Josh. So that in between that week or two weeks, however long it is between when they’re sitting in class and, oh, I forgot how to do this, or can I do this, how do I do this. Whenever do come by for training – what’s nice is as you move on, they might have 20 questions, oh I figured that one out, I remembered that one, I kept messing with it and figured that one out. Maybe out of those 20 questions, only five of them were actually relevant by the time you get back.
BELVA SMITH: To go a little further with the answer to Wade’s question, one way you can be really sure that an individual has learned whatever the task is that you had set forth in the goal, is when they can take the information that they learn for that task or that goal and apply it to do something else, then you can know for sure they really got it.
BRIAN NORTON: I tend to agree that demonstration piece has got to be a part of the final piece of it.
To wrap up today, please send us your questions by calling our listener line at 317-721-7124. You can send us an email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org. You can also send us a tweet with the hashtag ATFAQ. We certainly want your questions and feedback. Any other questions you heard today, if you get feedback or answers that you’d like to share on the show can’t give us a call. We certainly want your questions and feedback. Without those, we really don’t have a show. Be a part of it. Have a great day.
BELVA SMITH: Thanks everybody.
JOSH ANDERSON: Thank you.
WADE WINGLER: Things everybody. Merry Christmas.
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 Stewart 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.
***Transcript provided by TJ Cortopassi. For requests and inquiries, contact tjcortopassi@gmail.com***
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