ATU619 – Farewell Wade – Replay of Episode 378

Hi, I’m Wade Wingler, and this is your Assistive Technology Update.

Hello, and welcome to your Assistive Technology Update, a weekly dose of information that keeps you up to date on the latest developments in the field of technology, designed to assist individuals with disabilities and special needs. I’m your host, Josh Anderson, with the INDATA Project at EasterSeals Crossroads in beautiful Indianapolis, Indiana. Welcome to episode 619 of Assistive Technology Update. It is scheduled to be released on April 7th, 2023. Today, we got a replay of episode 378, so let’s go ahead and get back into our interview with Wade Wingler.

Today, I have a guest who needs no introduction. Wade Wingler has been hosting the AT Update Podcast since its inception. He’s also celebrating 25 years with EasterSeals Crossroads this month. Today, Wade’s stepping out of the driver’s seat to sit in the interview chair and talk about his experiences in assistive technology and this podcast, look back at some of the joys and challenges and talk about what he’s excited for in the future. Wade, welcome to your show.

Well, hi, Josh. And no, actually, welcome to your show.

That’s right, folks. Wade is actually going to be stepping away from the podcasting booth for a while, but I promise we’ll try to get him in here as much as we can.

There you go. No, Josh, this is kind of a big day. And I know that you’re a little nervous, and I’m frankly a little nervous. And I’m excited, because we’re going to get into it. But life is changing around here and you are, as of today, the new host of Assistive Technology Update.

Yep. Well, let’s not talk about that because that’ll just make me nervous and more scared. So the people really want to learn more about you after listening to you for all these, what, 50 years on the radio?

Yeah, something like that. [inaudible 00:01:52].

Somewhere in there. Okay, very good. Well, Wade, starting off, just how’d you first come to work in assistive technology? I mean, I know we don’t get into it because our favorite GI Joe character was an assistive technology specialist. So how did you get into this field?

That’s funny. I, like a lot of folks, sort of stumbled or lucked into it, depending on how you want to look at it. I had graduated from Butler University with a degree in sociology, liberal arts. And my plan was actually to go to graduate school back in the early ’90s and become a pediatric social worker. I wanted to get an MSW and I wanted to go work with kids in hospitals and their families and help them navigate what was happening in their healthcare world. But I didn’t get into grad school.

Oh, that’ll do it.

So all of a sudden, I’m fresh out of college, have some bills to pay, and I thought, “I need to get a job,” because bills. And my plans for the fall have dramatically changed all of a sudden. And so I saw an ad in the paper, back when people found jobs in such a way, that basically said, “Teach people who are blind or visually impaired how to use computers.” And my academic background was in disability, and I wanted to work with people with disabilities. And I had been a do-it-yourself, self-taught computer nerd, writing code since I was about eight years old, on a TRS-80, on a farm in the Midwest.

And I thought, “Well, okay. Computers, got that, can totally do that. People with disabilities, that’s my jam. That’s what I want to do. I’ll apply for this job.” And it was to be an assistive technology specialist here at EasterSeals Crossroads. And I know you know what that job title is, because you have had that job title in the past as well. And I took a job here working first with folks who are blind or visually impaired, teaching them things like WordPerfect 5.1 and the IBM screen reader on DOS PS/2 micro channel computers.

Wow. I don’t even remember what those words mean anymore, but … Well, that leads me to my next question. What was the world of AT like when you first came into the business?

Well, it was DOS, and just a little bit of Windows. It was more technical and less user-friendly. I think back about days early on where if you were going to set up somebody’s computer and put a screen reader on it or put a voice input system on it, or heaven forbid you needed to install a SCSI scanner for an optical character recognition program, that was a two- or three-day job. You would take a computer out and you would start to update the operating system, which came on 3.5″ floppy disks at that time. And if you wanted to install a scanner, well, you had to actually take the computer apart and you had to map out interrupt requests and memory addresses, and figure out the hardware side of it. And then the software came on stacks and stacks of floppy disks. I mean, one of the earlier versions of Dragon Dictate, before Dragon NaturallySpeaking, came on, I don’t know, 25 or 30 floppy discs.

And for those listeners who don’t know, a floppy disc is an old CD. And for those of you who don’t know what a CD is, that is an old flash drive.

Right, exactly. So I literally remember putting in a floppy disc, letting it run for 15 minutes, putting in another, we’re letting it run for 15 minutes, installing software. And there were 30 of them. So that’s an all-day job just to install software. And then you got to get into training and the stuff that we do now. So anymore, you set up a computer in an hour tops. You’ve got everything on it you need to go. Back then, that was days’ and days’ worth of work. So that alone has changed.

Oh, for sure. And I just have to ask you, just from remembering floppy disk and things, especially when there’s more than one involved, was it usually the 30th one that had the error on it?

No, for Dragon, at least in Dragon version 3-point-something, it was disk 19.

Really?

They produced a whole crop of Dragon software where disk 19 was bad, and they had to mail out a new disc 19 for everybody. I actually carried a disc 19 in my briefcase for a long time.

Nice, nice. Yeah, because there’s no way to know it’s going to fail until you get to that disc, right?

Right, exactly. And you can start over if you don’t have the right disc, the good disc. You start all over.

For sure, for sure. Wade, I know you started in assistive technology with all those different things. When did the idea of assistive technology update start?

Well, it was a lot of years ago now. I think we’ve been doing the show for around seven years, without ever missing a week. It was when we were attending assistive technology conferences and trade shows, so like ATIA and Closing the Gap and CSUN and those kind of things, and trying to figure out how to bring information back to people in Indiana so that AT professionals and educators and people with disabilities or just anybody who was interested in assistive technology could have access to that information. And we actually hosted a conference here in Indianapolis for a few years on assistive technology. And it was two or three days, and we had sessions and we had a vendor hall. It looked like a small version of one of the major assistive technology conferences.

Nice.

And sadly, the funding changed and we weren’t able to do that conference anymore. And I sort of felt this pressure to be able to give the information anyway, because when you sit in the role that you have, you always are learning about a new version of software or some new thing that’s coming out or some new interesting research about people with disabilities and technology. And we wanted to find a way to get that information out.

And when your name is Wade, W-A-D-E, those are call letters. And so when I was a kid, I would pretend that I was a disc jockey. And I would sit in my bedroom on the farm in Coatesville, Indiana, with an 8-track recordable tape deck 45 from my dad’s jukebox, because he owned the pool hall, in my Radio Shack Uniball microphone. And I would say, “Welcome to WADE radio. We’ve got the latest and the grandest of the oldies and the goldies.” And I would sit there and spin my own records and record onto 8-track, because that’s what I could record on, my own radio show. And I thought, “I can have a podcast.” I was listening to podcasts, and I had this content I wanted to get out. And I always wanted to be a disc jockey, so I thought, “I’m going to do this.” And that was how the idea came out.

Perfect, perfect. Well, and so funny, full disclosure, I used to do the same thing, except for I had the Radio Shack cassette player. But I would sit there and record my favorite songs off the radio, and then I would go back and record my voice in between them so that I could do my own disc jockey, so there you go.

Which is why you’re great for taking this job.

Yeah, no pressure. No pressure at all.

Right. You got it.

So there was the idea. So how did that come to fruition? What were the first few … how’d you get it all put together?

Oh, they were horrible.

Oh, I’m sure.

The first ones were so horrible. The music was bad. The first podcast was like five minutes. I was talking like this, and, “Welcome to assisted,” chewing all my words and pretending to be a horrible disc jockey, and put together the first few episodes literally in my garage. So I had … I forget what kind of a digital recorder. Maybe I was recording right into a Mac, with a Uniball … not a Uniball, a Snowball blue microphone. And recorded them literally in my garage. And reached out to a good friend of mine who’s been on the show recently and many times, Danny Wayne, who’s both a radio personality and also an assistive technology guru himself, and said, “Dan, you got to help me with this. You’re a radio guy. You were on the radio when I was a kid. How do I do a better job?” And so some coaching from him and some others got us to the point to where the show was actually consumable after a number of episodes.

Nice, nice. And I know it changed over time and grew, because I know originally it was just more of a news program, keeping people up to date. And then it switched over to more the interview style. When did that happen? Was it organically? Was it just what people wanted?

Yeah, so it was in response to listener feedback. It also, I think, was in response to some of my passions too. So you’re right, the first shows were just a few news stories, and that was it. And then I remember doing an interview, and I believe my first interview was with a guy named John Williams, who was actually the man who coined the term assistive technology. He’s a reporter for The Washington Post. He’s a man with a disability who I’ve gotten to know over the years. And he made up the term assistive technology and printed it in The Washington Post, and that’s the first record of that term being printed anywhere. So he actually made the term for the industry that we work in.

Oh, perfect first interview.

Exactly. He was either my first or one of my very first interviews. And I realized that that is a fascinating thing to do, is to talk to people who are on the cutting edge of assistive technology, or in his case, created the term that describes what we do. And so we did one interview, and that wasn’t the format. We did an episode-plus or something. It’s like, “Today we have a bonus thing on our episode.” And that bonus thing turned into something that I love. I love having conversations with people who are thought leaders in the field and finding out what’s happening with them, and just getting a little bit deep with them and figuring out, what is their motivation to do what they do and to tell stories about the lives they’ve impacted, and those things?

So after a while, the format needed to standardize, because we’re not only broadcast as a podcast, but we’re also broadcast on some of the radio reading services on terrestrial radio. So we needed to fit into a half an hour or a 27-minute time slot. And so we needed to standardize a few things. And that’s when the interview and the news stories all fell into this half hour format. And it’s been, gosh, probably out of the last seven or so years we’ve been doing it, the last five or five and a half years have been that format with interviews. And I love the interviews.

Oh, wow. So that probably equals out to just roughly around 300 interviews, I’d probably say, in this amount of time.

Probably so. Yeah, we’re recording episodes in the 370s right now, or 380s. And yeah, so about that.

So really hard question here. Do you have a favorite interview?

There are a few. John Williams, that I mentioned before, the guy who coined the term assistive technology, has been one of my favorite interviews. Another one of my favorites is Bob Heil, who isn’t necessarily known in the AT world, but he’s the only non-musician in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. And the reason I connected to Bob Heil is because he’s interested in ham operator accessibility for children with disabilities. And if you haven’t heard of Bob Heil, but you’ve listened to this show, you’ve actually heard his work, because we use Heil microphones in our studio, and the PR 40 is the one that you’re talking on right now. And in the interview that I did with Bob Heil, he talks about how the idea for the microphone came out. It’s going to blow your mind. It blew my mind when he said it.

He and Joe Walsh were sitting at Bob’s kitchen table one time, because Bob did sound for The Eagles and the Who, and he invented quadrophone and Quadrophenia sound, that was the tours in the ’70s. So Bob Heil was hanging out with Joe Walsh and Joe said, “I need a microphone that sounds like this.” And Bob said, “You can’t make a microphone that sounds like that.” And Joe said, “Well, it’d be cool if you could.” And so he made one, and that’s the microphone that we’re talking on right now, is the Heil PR 40 that Bob did. And Bob is also cool because he does sound for Stevie Wonder, and I believe he might have done sound for Ray Charles, and so has some serious celebrity disability connections. And is just a hoot. He’s a great guy, a very genuine man.

So I really enjoyed talking to Bob Heil. And there are so many others, but I guess the interviews that I like the most are the ones that sort of get on the edge of assistive technology and make your eyebrows go up and realize, “Oh, well, it connects to the rest of the world. It’s not just our industry. Our industry’s connected to others.” And I love those interviews that take us there.

You talked about a few of them, but what was the biggest challenge in the podcast? I need to know this one.

It’s time, Josh. It really is time, because-

I know. I need to know this one.

And that’s why we’re making this transition, is because my job is changing, and I’m sure we’ll talk some more about that … But is finding the time to do it, and consistency. I’ve learned with podcasts that people want to know what they’re going to consume. They want it to be reliable, and they want it to be consistent. They want it to be around the same length, about the same kind of content. They like the formula, but you can’t miss. You need to put it out there all the time, otherwise you do what’s called pod fading, and that’s where, “Oh, you miss an episode, and then you miss three episodes.” And before long, it’s, “When we used to do the podcast.”

And so that consistency and making it part of the heartbeat of your work has been one of the biggest challenges. It’s not hard to find content. There’s always something new and exciting happening in this industry. It’s not hard to have passion and enthusiasm. And that’s why I’ve asked you to take this, because I know you have that and you can go deep with the guests we have on the shows. And you’re going to be talking about assistive technology every day no matter what.

True.

We might as well put some of that on the air. But it’s about time and consistency.

Okay. Well, I will definitely take that to heart. Wade, just talking about assistive technology, what are the biggest changes you’ve seen in your 25 years’ experience? And not just, “We don’t use DOS anymore.”

Well, we don’t. We don’t much, although sometimes I like to get into DOS for nostalgic purposes.

Sometimes.

I want to say mobile technology. I want to say the iPad and the iPhone and those kind of things. But really, I think it’s bigger than that. I think it’s about the convergence in mobility of technology in general. In the past, you had a different program or a different computer or a different peripheral for every different kind of task that you wanted. You had a 35 millimeter camera, you had a compass, you had a video recorder, you had an audio recorder, you had a calculator, you had a word processor. And each one of those things cost money. Each one of those things had its own set of batteries and power cords and failures and all those kind of things.

And now, we see all those things coming together, where the thing that you and I have in our pockets or on the desk, the mobile device, does as many things as you really want it to do. And it’s changing all the time. I can listen to music, I can watch a movie, I can do a spreadsheet, I can do screen reading, I can do eye control systems, or at least switch control systems with my face.

The fact that it’s all coming together and also becoming a consumer grade product, that it’s not me and my disability and my special thing that the special person had to come and set up and teach me how to use, and when it breaks, I got to send it to the special place. It’s this thing that everybody in the room also has. And when it breaks, I go to the same store, the same place to get it fixed. And if I use some special apps, well, everybody has a billion apps on their phone. And nobody notices that mine is special. So it’s convergence. It’s the fact that it’s becoming consumer grade stuff, and it really is become easier. I don’t have to mess with dip switches and IRQ channels and memory mapping and those kind of things anymore, or piles of broken floppy disc.

What are you most excited for the future of AT?

It’s interesting, because I’m seeing sort of the democratization of assistive technology. I’m seeing more and more do-it-yourself assistive technology. I am honored to teach for a couple of universities here in Indianapolis. I teach young people about assistive technology. And one of the things I often had them do is sort of a mocked up assistive technology assessment. And that assignment years ago was a pretty complicated assessment. Now, it’s a trip to the app store, right?

Oh yeah, oh yeah.

And the fact that you can do a lot more do-it-yourself kind of stuff. I mean, sometimes it’s as simple as turn on the built-in thing on your device, a screen reader that can support braille, or whatever. And it really is becoming much more do-it-yourself, which the flip side of that then of course is, well, is our industry going to die related to that, and are specialist not going to be needed anymore? And-

I’m editing that part out.

Yeah, I know, right? But I think the answer is no, right, because more people are going to use it. We aren’t seeing fewer cell phone stores.

True.

We aren’t seeing fewer people buying these devices. We’re seeing greater utilization and a leveling of the playing field with people with disabilities. We’re also seeing a greater incidence of people with disabilities. Think about age-related disabilities. Think about the increased diagnosis of autism that’s happening, thinking about the increased recognition of learning disabilities and things that before might have just got you a bad grade and moved you to the back of the classroom as opposed to being acknowledged as a difference that needs to be scaffolded or accommodated. So I don’t want to say we’re going to make it up on volume, because it’s not exactly it. But I think there are more opportunities to help people know how to use technology and make a meaningful integration in their life with technology. And so I think it’s going to be different, but I think there’s a ton of opportunity there.

Oh yeah, and I’d have to agree with you. And especially with all those different things out there, finding the one that really works for the individual can always be a way that hopefully we can always stay in that market. Folks might not know this about Wade, but he’s always doing something new, something different. He’s an avid banjo player, and always seems to be getting another degree or certificate or something like that. So we talked about what you’re excited about the future of AT. What are you excited about for the future of Wade Wingler?

Well, I don’t know.

And that’s exciting.

Yeah, right? Exactly. The day we’re recording this is one day away from my 25th anniversary here at EasterSeals Crossroads. And you might recall we talked about earlier, I was just taking this job to get by until I got into grad school. And fast-forward 25 years, it wasn’t what I had planned. So I don’t know what the future necessarily holds. I’m not leaving, I’m not going anywhere.

Oh, thank goodness.

In fact, as you guys know it and people have picked up, I’ve been promoted. I’m now vice president of the organization. And I’m responsible for a lot more than just assistive technology. I help oversee our autism programs and our adaptive driving programs. I take a look over our enterprise technology, our IT systems here as well. And I got a lot of things growing in my professional world that just means sort of bigger responsibility in the agency, bigger picture responsibility. I find myself with board members a lot more. I find myself going out and trying to help carve out, what does the future of the organization look like, and trying to develop strategic partners with universities and those kind of things. And so I’m sort of seeing sort of a bit of a transition in my career. It’s less practical, tactical technology kind of stuff, and a little bit more big picture, leadership, executive kind of stuff in the organization.

And the only reason I’m okay with that is because I have an amazing team who are picking up the parts that I’m sort of stepping away from. Between you and Brian Norton specifically, it’s amazing for me to be able to say, “Okay, I’m stepping away from podcasting and I’m stepping away from direct AT services.” But the team that’s there are not only people who are highly skilled, but they’re guys that I love and trust and know pretty darn well. And so if you got to hand your baby off to somebody, hand it off to guys that you really know and trust. And so you and Brian specifically, and the whole team, but you guys are sort of the keystone of what we’re doing here with this transition. So I don’t know what it means for me, but it’s going to be exciting.

I’m excited to see what the future holds, and love working for a great organization where I know that I’m going to have the resources and the support I need to help figure out, what does the future mean for this place?

So Wade, tell me a story of someone you’ve helped, either in the position, directly through the podcast, something like that, that’s really stuck with you. And I like that you laughed at that.

It just happened last week, one that sort of surprised me. And you will learn, Josh, as you do this, that you have an impact that you don’t realize that you have. There was a gentleman who walked through our hallway just outside the studio a couple of days ago, who was looking for an answer to a technical question about assistive technology. And this is somebody that apparently heard me speak at a keynote address or something that I gave a number of years ago. He came up afterward and asked me a couple of technical questions. I think it might have been about Dragon, or voice input of some kind. And I said, “Oh, well, take a look at this and think about that. And if you can’t figure it out, give us a call. We’ll help you out.”

And he was here in the building for something else and came up again and said, “Hey, I’ve got another question.” And you were actually in the hall. It was about what version of Dragon is current, and how can he upgrade, and that kind of stuff. And I thought I had the answer. I wasn’t sure. You were able to say, “Oh yeah, this is the answer to the question,” and whatever. And he went on. And I said, “Hello, and good to see you. And gosh, it’s been a while. And how have you been,” and all that kind of stuff. And then later in the day, one of my coworkers said, “You’re not going to believe what happened. I was in the elevator with a guy and I just said, ‘How’s your day?’ And he goes, ‘Well, it’s really good. I got to talk to Wade.'” And that made me feel weird. I’m like, “Well, that” …

And he goes, “No, it’s that guy and those people there always have the answers to my questions. And it doesn’t matter if it’s been a minute or a year since I’ve seen them. I can go and I can have an answer to the question that I need. And they can always point me in a good direction. And I trust those guys.” And when she said, “How’s your day,” it was that we had helped him.

That’s awesome.

And I get that kind of feedback from the podcast. I get that from students that I teach. I get that from speaking engagements that I’ve done in the past. It’s just really good to know that we’re just rattling on about the stuff that we care about and having a good time making radio and that kind of stuff. But I really do believe it has an impact. And we hear from the listeners on this show and on AT FAQ, where you spend a lot of your time, or have, and are going to spend more time here. But I really think sometimes we’re getting the rubber to hit the road. We’re making an impact on people. And I think we lose sight of how big that impact can be.

So Wade, what advice do you have from me moving forward? If you could go back and talk to Wade, what, 70 years ago when you started this podcast-

Yes, 70. Right.

… and just tell him some things, what would you tell him so that I can use that advice to help myself out?

This is hand-me-down advice, and it actually comes from John Williams, the guy who coined the term assistive technology. It must have been after the interview, we were just chatting afterward. I asked him the same question, because I thought, “When am I going to get to talk to the guy who made up the term assistive technology?” And what John said was, “Wade, you can never tell the basics enough.” He goes, “Your inclination is going to be to get super nerdy and super technical and into the details that really excites you, because it stimulates you, because it’s the edges of assistive technology.” He goes, “And that’s going to be exciting. And that’s good,” he said, “but people need to hear the basics over and over again, because there’s always new audience members.”

There’s always somebody in your audience who might be a specialist in one area, but is a total novice in another area. And he goes, “Don’t be afraid to tell the basics over and over again. And that will get you to do this for a long time, because people need to hear the basics.” And that rings true for me as well. There are times when I’ll go to a conference and I hear something that I’ve heard before, maybe even something that I do every day, but to have it validated and to hear it resonate from somebody else’s perspective is a super helpful thing. So it’s not always about learning the new cool, nerdy, weird thing. Sometimes it’s about hearing the basics again and being invalidated, that, “Oh yeah, that is how that works. And that is what best practice are. And that’s where truth is.” So don’t be afraid to tell the basics.

KISS method, I believe it’s called.

Right, Keep It Simple Stupid, right?

Yep, exactly. Wade, if folks would want to find out more about you, is there a place where they can look?

No.

Okay, good.

No. I’m going under a rock, never to be seen again. You can’t find me.

And if anyone’s ever met Wade, they know he’s lying through his teeth right now.

Probably. Probably the best way to find me at this point is to go to the assistive technology website. So go to EasterSealstech.com. And if you throw a forward slash staff on there, EasterSealstech.com/staff, it’ll take you to our staff listing, where you can see not only my contact information and my smiling face, but also Brian and Josh and everybody else that works here in our assistive technology program. If you wanted to meet some of the people behind the microphones and here doing the daily work here, that’s a great place to go. And there’s contact information and email addresses and all those things there. So really, EasterSealstech.com is the place to go, or EasterSealstech.com/staff.

And you can find out everything. Wade, do you have anything else to add?

No, I’m proud of you. And I’m excited to be an audience member of your show, Josh.

And just so you know, folks, it’s big shoes to fill, a big microphone to fill, I guess you might say. But I’m very encouraged, very, very excited. And Wade, I can’t thank you enough from our listeners, from myself, from everybody here on the team, for just all you’ve done. Realize that even though you might have new people taking over some of these things, it is stuff that you built. We’ll hopefully keep that to heart and know to keep it going well.

Well, thank you. I appreciate your kind words. Do it your way. It’s your show. I expect it to be different. Just don’t break it.

I will definitely remember that. Well, Wade Wingler, thank you so much for letting me interview you today. Hopefully we can get you back on the show here sometime when you’re walking by.

Thanks, Josh.

Do you have a question about assistive technology? Do you have a suggestion for someone we should interview on an Assistive Technology Update? If so, call our listener line at (317) 721-7124. Send us an email at tech@EasterSealscrossroads.org, or shoot us a note on Twitter at INDATA Project. Our captions and transcripts for the show are sponsored by the Indiana Telephone Relay Access Corporation, or INTRAC. You can find out more about INTRAC at relayindiana.com.

A special thanks to Nicole Prieto for scheduling our amazing guests and making a mess of my schedule. Today’s show was produced, edited, hosted and fraught over by yours truly. The opinions expressed by our guests are their own, and may or may not reflect those of the INDATA Project, EasterSeals Crossroads, our supporting partners or this host. This was your Assistive Technology Update, and I’m Josh Anderson with the INDATA Project at EasterSeals Crossroads, in beautiful Indianapolis, Indiana. We look forward to seeing you next time. Bye-bye.