ATU497 – Holiday Show 2020 Part 2

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Your weekly dose of information that keeps you up to date on the latest developments in the field of technology designed to assist people with disabilities and special needs.

Speaker 1:
This is your Assistive Technology Update.

Josh Anderson:
Welcome, welcome, welcome, folks. Welcome back to part two of our annual holiday gift giving guide. Today I’m lucky enough to welcome back David Dreith, Nikol Prieto, and Brian Norton, as we talk about some more great technology that can make some wonderful gifts for your holiday season this year.

Josh Anderson:
As I’ve told you before, one of my favorite events of the year is the ATA annual conference. Every year I look forward to meeting with a global community of folks who use assistive technology to enhance their lives, or the lives of their family, friends, students, or clients. Now, like so many other events, this year the conference will be held online. This virtual format means there’s more opportunities for flexible scheduling and registration options, and I hope that means each of you will join me online for ATIA this winter.

Josh Anderson:
ATIA 2021, AT Connected, will be held online January 25th through the 28th, and February 1st through the fourth of 2021. The conference will feature the same professional development opportunities we’ve all come to rely on, with educational strands dedicated to AAC, vision and hearing technologies, education and learning, and AT for physical access and participation. Plus, leading assistive technology companies will be showcasing the latest in 80. There will be CEUs available and more than 150 education courses. And there are a ton of flexible scheduling options. So you can attend some sessions live and catch up on recorded sessions that will be available through June of 2021.

Josh Anderson:
This year, there’s also a range of registration options, including full conference, single strand, one day, and even a free option. In addition, you can also join into the daily social activities with your friends and colleagues. I will be attending, and I really hope to see all of you there. You can learn more by visiting ATAI.org/ATupdate. Again, that’s ATAI.org/ATupdate, and I’ll see you all at ATAI in January.

Josh Anderson:
All right guys, for our next section let’s talk about some cool headphones that we found, just cause a lot of us are on a lot of meetings, or maybe we’re trying to listen to some new music or maybe we have other needs that might be able to be met by those. So Brian, you want to talk about the new Apple AirPods Pro. What are those like?

Brian Norton:
Yeah, I just love my Apple AirPods. I have the new Apple AirPods Pro. I know they’re a little expensive, I think they retail for about $250, but I will just say they are some of the best headsets/microphones that I’ve used. They’ve got really great sound quality, they’ve got noise cancellation, which is really good as well. If you had the old Apple AirPod Pros, or Apple AirPods back in the day, these seem to fit my ears a little bit better. They’re not quite as long, whatever sticks out of your ear isn’t quite as long. I wear this when I’m out walking or doing other kinds of things, and it just does a really great job.

Brian Norton:
I also like a feature that it has. It’s got this thing called transparency mode, in which basically, as opposed to my other headsets, the way this works is that they’ve got inward and outward facing microphones so that I can hear the audio that I’m listening to, whether that’s on my computer or on my phone, but it will also allow me to stay engaged with my surroundings as well. So if I’m having a conversation, I can still participate in that conversation normally without having to take the AirPods out of my ear, because again, it’s got this outward facing microphone and inward facing microphone. So really, really great option there.

Brian Norton:
The other thing I’ll mention too is if you have the new iOS 14 update, there is a new accessibility feature that’s specifically designed to work with Apple AirPods or Beats headphones, if you have those. It is called headphone accommodations, so that for persons who were hard of hearing, it will allow you to turn your AirPods into a personal listening device that you can control the audio and adjust the sound brightness and frequencies so that you can hear things as good as you can. So it’s a personal listening device coupled with that headphone accommodations feature as well.

Josh Anderson:
And that’s an excellent feature, and talking about the transparency mode, I can also see, because I know a complaint I’ve always had about headphones and things was from a lot of the folks we work with who are visually impaired and like to travel on their own, so they’ve got their GPS up, maybe telling them, “Turn left in so many feet.” Well, that’s great. But if you can’t hear the person riding the bike next to you or something else, it always made it pretty hard. Because your choices were basically listen to the world around you, or listen to those directions that GPS is giving you. So it’s great that you can get that sound all the way through there. And I’ve played with mine and turned that on and it’s amazing how you can hear they’re not in your ears, at all. Right. So very, very, very cool features.

Brian Norton:
Yeah. I used to recommend for that situation so that you can, again, stay engaged with your surroundings while you’re listening to music or doing other kinds of things. We used to recommend bone conduction headsets. So they just fit over your ear and kind of right in front of your ear. You don’t have anything in your ear. They’re just little pads that sit in front of your ear, and they conduct sound off of the bones in your cheek or whatever. And you can use those, but I’ve just really found that these are really great. I can hear the music, I can hear the sounds much, much better, and again, stay engaged with other folks that are in my environment. So, yeah.

Josh Anderson:
Great. And the battery life’s not bad on them. On meetings and things like that I usually get about two to three hours out, but what’s nice is as soon as you put them back in the case, they’re charging. So it doesn’t seem to take them too awful long to get charged up in there. So, nope. Very, very cool. And David, you found some underwater ones. Tell us about those.

Brian Norton:
Yeah. So this is actually a … It’s a full MP3 player. And speaking of phone conduction, this is kind of how this operates. So I enjoy swimming and I’ve been a swimmer for most of my life, and do a lot of long distance swimming, long distance open water swimming. And we swimmers tend to have a chip on our shoulders when it comes to technology developed for athletes. That runners get all this special gear and bikers do and all of that. And that’s for a couple of reasons. One is we swimmers are tough on things. The water can corrode, et cetera. And then also, things like GPS trackers don’t work as well underwater. The other piece is to improve the technology, you have to spend quite a bit of money into R&D and the swimming community isn’t as large as the running or the biking community, and so as a result, it’s rather expensive to bring a product to market.

Brian Norton:
But Finis has the Duo Underwater MP3 Player, and it does work through bone conduction. And interestingly enough, bone conducted sound works better underwater. So the sound quality when you’re listening to music is better when your head is in water, actively swimming. That when you come up out of the water it tends to sound a little tinny and it’s a little hard to hear. But this works fantastic. I actually had the first generation product that Finis developed and released, and it worked like a charm from a sound standpoint. But now this is a fourth generation product. It’s got four gigabytes of memory. So what I used to be able to keep maybe 12 songs on now has a lot larger capacity.

Brian Norton:
It’s relatively cheap. It’s between a hundred and $140. I saw it today listed on Amazon at a discount below a $100. The funny story about that though, is I’m educated as an engineer. I’m not a fool when it comes to science, but placing bone conduction pads on my cheekbones for the first time made me nervous it’s going to vibrate my cheekbones and shatter them. But no, it doesn’t. I can tell you they’re safe, from that standpoint.

Brian Norton:
The other great thing about it is they clip to your goggles and there’s not a lot of cords involved, so you’re not going to be tripping and having cords dangling every which direction. They’ve also made significant improvements to this generation, in that my first generation SwimP3 players it was called then, I had difficulty plugging it into charge because sometimes there’d be little water left in the USB port and I’d fry one. They’ve changed how you plug these in now. So there’s less of a risk for that. Water can still be a problem. It can corrode the jack for where you put in the charger, but just the simple solution of vinegar and water will keep that clean. I can’t wait actually to check this one out.

Josh Anderson:
Very nice, very nice. Well, speaking of headphones, I found some really cool headphone like devices that could have some really great real-world applications. They kind of work like, if anybody’s ever seen Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, they work like the Babel fish, which was a little tiny fake creature that you put your ear and it would eat the words of any creature talking to you across the galaxy and translate it into your native tongue.

Josh Anderson:
Now, these things of course aren’t real, but I found the Timekettle WT2 Plus translator earbuds, which is I think the longest name of anything on the show today. But these little earbuds, they come in a charging case, kind of like what the Apple AirPods would come in, but that case splits apart so that you can give one earbud to a communication partner and then put the other one in your own ear. And they link up to an app and all you have to do is just talk, and they’ll actually translate the conversation in real time straight into those earbuds. So basically I could talk in whatever language I speak in, the person I’m talking to can speak whatever language they’re comfortable to, and in that earbud is going to be their words, but in my language.

Josh Anderson:
They use an app in order to do this. It says they can translate in up to 40 languages and 93 different accents. There are different modes for different environments. So if it’s two people talking in a loud area, it can just pick up that person talking. If you’re in a meeting or something else where you just have one person talking in a different language, there’s different settings for that. Or if you’re in an interview or something else where it’s kind of more quiet, there’s another setting where you can change that. Promises 95% accuracy, and the translation should come through in one to three seconds using their AI as long as you have good wifi or cellular connection. So really that’s amazing that something can actually be able to do that now.

Brian Norton:
Wow.

Josh Anderson:
And of course in today’s day and age, I guess we’re not having a lot of face-to-face conversations, but whenever that does come back, this would really be great. Especially if you’re traveling around or you just think of how much of a barrier, sometimes language can be to folks, especially if you have even folks that speak more than two languages in a conversation, just being able to understand each other. And really they’re $199 on Amazon right now, but that’s really not bad, I don’t think, for what you get. To be able to sit there and, again, just have conversations with folks in any language and have everything come right back to you in your own native tongue.

Brian Norton:
Yeah, that’s really … Josh, I’ll just say, that’s pretty cool. I know we use interpreters and other kinds of things when we meet with folks, and I think interpreters do offer some advantages with being able to really get information in context and in the inflection in the voice and all those kinds of things that maybe lends itself a little bit better to those things. But man, when you’re in a pinch and you’ve got to get something done and you’re your struggle with the language barrier, what a great tool. I know there’s lots of apps that do that stuff too, but that’s an interesting application just to have a set of ear buds. That’s great.

Josh Anderson:
Well it really is, because I think of a lot of the apps and a lot of them will translate it into text for you. But then what if I can’t read? Or I’m not a very strong reader that I’m going to get a little bit behind. And Brian, you did bring a great point though that interpreters can … They know the nuances. Language isn’t word for word the same kind of translation. So they can actually put in those little extra parts. So in really anything that the actual translator, interpreter is always going to be your best. But yeah, if you’re in a pinch, or if you’re in a new country, or if just … I think of it as we’re all in the social service industry, what if I just meet someone for the first time and I didn’t know? Or maybe they speak English, but they’re not as comfortable using it as they are the Spanish, or whatever it is that they normally speak. What a great accommodation to be able to just make sure that we’re all understanding each other, and able to relay that information and just make sure that we give the help that the folks need.

Brian Norton:
Right. Or when my kids all take Spanish in high school and are talking about me in Spanish and I don’t understand what they’re saying. Wouldn’t it be great to be able to understand a little bit more what they’re saying about me?

Josh Anderson:
Well and I realize I took just in a French in high school, just enough Spanish in college, that I mix them both together. And if I was ever any of those countries, I think I could ask where the bathroom is and the library, but I don’t know how often that would really help.

Brian Norton:
That’s great.

Josh Anderson:
All right guys, moving right along. We really can’t go through this whole time without talking about the world’s kind of changed a little bit, at least for the time being. So what changes has the pandemic made to your holiday plans and traditions. And David, since you’re new here, I’ll let you go first this time.

David Dreith:
Yeah. So it’s interesting. I always think of the holidays as beginning of Thanksgiving, and we become recluses at Thanksgiving. We don’t leave the house and it’s four days and just kind of hanging out and being with each other. If we do anything, it’s for a walk in the woods. The pandemic, I think, we’ll let us do all of that. Christmas though, it’s always such a social time. This is the point of the year where, whether it’s a work party or getting together with family, it’s a lot of time where we spend a lot of time in closely packed places with other people. And I just can’t see how this holiday season is going to be the same without our being able to do that.

David Dreith:
We’ve made some travel plans, because we trust Airbnb and driving, but then, what do you do then? Once you’re there, it may look a lot like Thanksgiving where we’re staying indoors. But I will … Even as introverted as I am, I really will miss the holiday events, where you get to see people you haven’t seen all year, or you get to see people that you know in a work setting and have been conducting business with all year, but you can be relaxed in a social setting. I’m going to miss that.

Josh Anderson:
No, I agree. I definitely am too. Nicole, what about you?

Nikol Prieto:
Same thing. We’re just trying to figure it out like everyone else. My grandmother has just come through a pretty major surgery, so we’re worried about some of our older relatives. So we usually compound down at my uncle’s house out in the country and take family walks and watch movies. And I think it’s going to turn into more of a just coming down for the day, keeping our distance, that kind of thing. So I’m definitely sad about it and hoping that for some relatives that are far away, we’ll do some video calls and some Zoom calls with them to at least see everybody’s face and wish everyone well, and hope that next year we’ll be under different circumstances.

Josh Anderson:
Very nice. And Brian?

Brian Norton:
My holiday plans are still a work in progress like everybody, else’s. Not really sure what we’re going to do. I do know one of the things that we love most, Thanksgiving as a family, and extended family, we all get together typically … David, you mentioned this the time when you want to be around people, and people who are close to you. And so we do Black Friday shopping every year at Thanksgiving and we’re kind of gearing up, or gearing down, I guess, what that might look like. Because it’s going to look a lot different. I can’t imagine going into a crowded store now. I’ll be up front. I was never the one to go into the store. I’m the chauffer that day, and so I’m usually dropping people off at the door and parking a mile back, waiting for a text message to come pick people up. But I think this year, maybe we’re going to be staring at a computer a little bit more and buying our presents online rather than enjoying the hysteria associated with Black Friday, that typically is what we do.

Brian Norton:
My guess is though, I still think we’re going to gather together as a family. I don’t know. I’m sure we’ll take precautions. Again, it’s kind of a work in progress. Not really sure exactly what that’ll look like. And again, we’ll probably continue with some of those precautions that are out there, social distancing, masks and other things, depending on what we do. But yeah, I don’t know. This is just a weird, weird time. So it’s kind of hard to tell until we’re faced with making an ultimate decision on what exactly we will do. So, but yeah, it’s a work in progress.

Josh Anderson:
And I’m kind of there with all of you. And Brian, I got an idea for your Black Friday. You guys can just have a Zoom meeting and all be on different websites.

Brian Norton:
There you go. I kind of like that.

Josh Anderson:
Yeah. Try to get all the deals, share a screen if you need to. “Hey, should we buy this?” Or keep that together. But no, and we’re kind of the same way. Everything’s just very much up in the air, as trying to kind of figure out exactly what we’re going to do, and maybe try to do a bunch of little gatherings. I’m not sure. But again, that’s still months away. Or I guess by the time this comes out, about a month away for the Christmas time holiday, and Thanksgiving will already be passed.

Josh Anderson:
But I will admit, this as one of my favorite times a year. And my family is all very good cooks. Most big family get togethers everybody kind of brings a dish. So I’m a little overwhelmed that I’m going to hopefully try to make all that. But if it’s just my wife and I eating it, there’s going to be a lot of leftovers. But anyway, let’s hope that maybe some things get back to a little bit of normal, or at least we all get to enjoy it. And who knows, maybe even start some new traditions that’ll be great to keep from now on.

Josh Anderson:
Well, talking about COVID-19 and the pandemic and everything else that’s happened to this year, cleanliness has become a big thing. I know that hand sanitizer, there was a run on it. I think all of us have probably seen more of that than we want. So let’s talk about cleanliness, and maybe some really cool devices to help with that during this section. So Nikol, can you start us off by talking about the SoClean Device Disinfector?

Nikol Prieto:
Absolutely. Well, just a side note that I realized when this all began, or I did not realize until this all began, how often I touched my face.

Josh Anderson:
I didn’t either until I had to look at myself on Zoom and I was like, “Oh my gosh, I’m touching it all the time.”

Nikol Prieto:
It’s so strange just when you don’t realize. Well, another thing I didn’t realize is a statistic I learned is that a typical cell phone user touches their phone 2,617 times a day.

Brian Norton:
Wow.

Josh Anderson:
What?

Nikol Prieto:
2,617 times a day.

Josh Anderson:
Oh my god.

Nikol Prieto:
So I found that shocking, sad, made me put my phone away and have a break from screens. But then also you’re thinking, “Oh my gosh, how dirty.” We can only keep our hands so clean, then we are touching something else right after we played them and the cross contamination. So there’s so many new devices, and this one’s really cool. It’s called the SoClean Device Disinfector. And it is a way to kill viruses and bacteria off your smartphones.

Nikol Prieto:
And what it is, it’s a box that you put your items in and that it uses an activated oxygen technology to clean them. And this technology reaches surfaces that even UV lights can’t reach. So you can put your smartphone in there, and you can put up to four and it kills 99.9% of the viruses and bacteria. So very important when we’re touching it them many times, I don’t know if you need to clean it five times a day, but you can do all four at once. You can do other things too, like your glasses, your key fabs. Just think about how dirty those are. You throw them in the car, you throw them in your purse, pocket, and you don’t think about how often you’re touching those and not cleaning those off. And it’s a safer way than using any kind of wet moisture things for some of these sensitive materials.

Nikol Prieto:
It does have a USB charging port on it, so you can also charge your devices while cleaning them. So it’s really nice to just think, “Oh gosh, I can put it in there, set it and forget it. And I’ve got a nice clean device.” They range … Let’s see. I think the price was 289. Yep. 289, $289. And did have free shipping, which I’m one of those people that loves to see free shipping. They also will let you try it free for 30 days and it has a two year warranty. So you can learn a lot more about this at Soclean.com.

Josh Anderson:
I’m going to be wiping down this entire studio for the rest of this interview now that you mentioned that about the phone. Goodness gracious.

Nikol Prieto:
Right?

Brian Norton:
Right, right.

Josh Anderson:
And Brian, now that we touch our phone that much with our dirty hands, which hopefully we’re washing more often nowadays, but you found another device that might be able to help us clean them up. What’s that called?

Brian Norton:
Yeah, I wanted to talk about the PhoneSoap 3. So it’s basically a container, if you will. Or a case, a simple case you can put your phone in, and once you close it, it will not only sanitize it using UV light, but it will also charge your phone as well. So you can charge … While it’s charging, you can also sanitize your device.

Brian Norton:
And I think there’s something I just want to draw out for the audience is PhoneSoap will disinfect your phone, it will not clean your phone. So it’s not putting it into a carwash per se. It’s not cleaning soil from the top of your device, it’s just sanitizing it. So it’s killing bacteria and other kinds of things that you might’ve picked up from grocery carts, gas pumps, door knobs, or other things that may have been transferred to your phone as you pick that up and use it. So it’s not cleaning it, it’s just sanitizing it and getting rid of that stuff. It uses UV light, and I’ve read a lot of mixed reviews on UV light and its effectiveness. But out of a lot of those studies, I do get a lot of good information that it does kill about 99.9% of germs.

Brian Norton:
This particular one, PhoneSoap 3, fits all different models of phones. It has a lot of different case sizes. You can get them a lot of different colors. Some people may be asking, “Well, how can I hear notifications when it’s actually in a device like that?” The device itself actually comes with an acoustic audio amplifier that allows you to be able to hear alarms and notifications when it’s actually being cleaned or sanitized. And really, it’s universal as well. So it doesn’t matter if you have an Android or an Apple, it comes with a USB port off the back and they can USBC port on the back. So whether you have … No matter what device you have, you’ll be able to charge that particular device using the PhoneSoap 3 case.

Brian Norton:
And so here at the INDATA Project, we have a loan library, and we have lots of devices coming and going. It works kind of like checking a book out of the traditional library, where you can borrow it for 30 days, the device for 30 days. Once you’re done with it, you give it back to us. And we’ve been using UV light in addition to our other standard sanitization procedures. And really, again, mixed reviews on its effectiveness, but why not? It just gives you another way to be able to make sure that you’re doing your due diligence and making sure that that stuff is clean and sanitized before you use it. And again, Nicole, that shocks me that we touch our phone that much during the day. But heck yeah, I might buy one of these today and run out. It’s 80 bucks. You can go to phonesoap.com to check that out.

Josh Anderson:
Excellent. Well enough about talking about our disgusting devices, because now I’m not going to answer my phone for two weeks, but David, you found a self-cleaning water bottle. I know this has got to be helpful, because a lot of us are trying to maybe cut down on waste and use a reusable water bottle, but finding the time to clean it all the time isn’t always easy. So tell us all about this.

David Dreith:
Yeah. So this is the Larq Insulated Self Cleaning Water Bottle. Larq is L-A-R-Q, and it’s also insulated. So that’s another thing is you like to fill up a water bottle and you like to keep it around. So this is a stainless steel bottle, and it also on ultraviolet light to disinfect the water so that the ultraviolet light comes out of the cap of the bottle, the screw top, and you screw it into the top and you have a setting where you put it on for two minutes and it removes all of the germs from your water. It’s important, like the phone, it’s not going to clean the water of any minerals or deposits that might be in that water, but it will remove the germs. And as Brian says, 99.9%. They’ve had their bottle tested by an independent lab and have found this to be true.

David Dreith:
What’s funny about it is it also has an adventure mode where it’ll sanitize the water for three minutes. Now, I don’t know where you’re getting your water that you think, “Yeah, I’m going to put it in for an extra minute,” but should you want to be adventurous with where you source your water, you have an adventure mode in which you could do that. What I also like about it is it comes in 17 ounce and 25 ounce sizes, as well as multiple colors. If you’re going to be carrying a water bottle around as often as I do, especially in the workplace, you want it to be attractive, and you also would like it to be somewhat sizeable.

David Dreith:
What’s interesting about it though, is you will eventually have to wash the water bottle. Because again, the deposits will build up, but that’s pretty easily done by hand. Of course, I’m going to go and find out what other kinds of beverages I can put in this water bottle. Larq is happy to report that you can put other beverages in there and it will sanitize the same way. Now, it’s going to add your cleaning process, especially if you put something with any kind of sugar in it, you’re going to leave a sticky residue in there at some point. It won’t be germy, but it’ll be sticky and then make your water taste funny.

David Dreith:
It’s a $100, roughly, for the 17 ounce bottle. $150 for the 25 ounce bottle. While that sounds like a lot, you’ve got a stainless steel bottle that’s going to last for a long time. And it’s one of those things that as long as you’re not treating it like an umbrella like I do, which is leaving an umbrella any place I go, I think it’s worth the investment.

Josh Anderson:
Very nice. As long as that UV doesn’t take the liquor out of the bourbon, it’d be a great cup to use for many, many different things. And I really have to ask with all the UV stuff, can I just take all my stuff in a tanning bed with me to get cleaner? Just kidding. That’s probably not a good way to go.

David Dreith:
I think it’s a different UV light, to be honest with you.

Josh Anderson:
Oh, so put my face in the UV cabinets is the reason I’m not looking like summertime yet. I get it. I get it.

David Dreith:
Right. Yeah.

Josh Anderson:
Well that’s all the time we have for today, folks. Please join us next week for our conclusion to our holiday 2020 gift giving guide. Do you have a question about assistive technology? Do you have a suggestion for someone we should interview on assistive technology update? If you do, call our listener line at (317) 721-7124. Shoot us a note on Twitter @INDATAproject, or check us out on Facebook. Are you looking for a transcript or show notes? Head on over to our website at www.Eastersealstech.com. Assistive Technology Update is a proud member of the Accessibility Channel. For more shows like this plus so much more, head over to accessibilitychannel.com. The views expressed by our guests are not necessarily that of this host or the INDATA project. This has been your Assistive Technology Update. I’m Josh Anderson with the INDATA Project at Easter Seals Crossroads in Indianapolis, Indiana. Thank you so much for listening, and we’ll see you next time.