ATFAQ183 – Q1. Medication Managment, Q2. Wheelchair laptop mount, Q3. Turning the stove off, Q4. Riding public transportation, Q5. Favorite accommodations

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Like, I have a question.

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Welcome to ATFAQ, Assistive Technology Frequently Asked Questions with your host, Brian Norton, director of Assistive Technology at Easterseals Crossroads. This is a show where 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 to answer it on our show? Send us a tweet with the hashtag ATFAQ. Call our listener line at (317) 721-7124 or send us an email at techeastersealscrossroads.org. The world of assistive technology has questions and we have answers. And now let’s jump into today’s show.

Hello and welcome to ATFAQ, episode 183. My name is Brian Norton and I’m the host of the show. And we’re so happy that you’ve taken some time to tune in with us this week. We’ve got a great lineup of assistive technology questions for you today. But before we jump in, I just want to take a moment to go around and introduce the folks who are here with me. First is Belva. Belva is the Vision Team Lead for our clinical assistive technology team. Belva, do you want to say hi?

Hello everybody. Welcome back.

Next is Josh Anderson. Josh is the voice of AT Update, that’s a popular podcast with our accessibility channel here at Easterseals Crossroads. He’s also the manager of our clinical assistive technology program. Josh, you want to say hi?

Hi everybody. Welcome, welcome.

Excellent, excellent. Tracy, I’ll just mention this for folks who are regular listeners. Tracy Castillo, she’s the end data program manager. She’s not here with us today, but we miss her dearly. She always has good input and things to contribute and so I’m sure she’ll be missed with all of the questions that we have today, but we’re wishing her well.

For those that are new listeners, I just want to take a moment before we jump into questions to talk a little bit about how our show works. So we come across different assistive technology questions each week. We gather those up and we put those in the show, choose about five or six of those that we as a group will try to go over and try to provide answers to. Hopefully they’re well-rounded answers, but we also give you, as our listeners, the opportunity to provide feedback, to let us know what you think, so that as we gather the feedback, we also provide that to the folks who are asking questions. And so wanting, again to make sure that we give well-rounded answers to the folks that are asking us questions.

And so we’ve got a few different ways to either give us your questions or your feedback. We have a listener line, that’s (317) 721-7124. We also have an email set up, that’s tech@eastersealscrossroads.org, T-E-C-H @Eastersealscrossroads.org, or you can send us a tweet with a hashtag ATFAQ and we go ahead and look for those on our Twitter account. And so that’s another great way to get those to us as well.

Without further ado, we’re going to jump into our questions today. And our first question is, “I am looking for advice on medication management. I need something to help me organize my meds and help me understand or remember to take them when I am supposed to. Any suggestions?”

Remember back when we used to have people come in and do demonstrations for us, we had a company come in and they demoed their medication reminder device, but I do not remember what that was, but in my defense, that has probably been five or six years ago. So this is a need that’s been around for a while. And I just did a quick Google search for medication reminders this morning and I found a great website called healthlink.com and they actually had, I think it was the top six or the top 10 different devices that they had actually explored and basically made some recommendations for.

Of course, finding the right medication reminder is going to take a little bit of research, so it’s not like we can just sit here and say, “Oh, this is the one you want to get.” Because first thing you want to figure out is the price, is it going to be free or is it something you’re going to buy and have or something you’re going to pay a monthly service for?

And then also the features, a lot of them only do one, well, I won’t say a lot of them, but I did see some that only do one medication. Most of us take more than one medication, so we would probably need something that’s going to do more than that. So functionality, feature, and price are all things that you want to consider.

Then one that they had listed as their top one was called TabTime Timer, TabTime Timer. And that one allows you to set eight different alarms and they list the pros and the cons for each device that they have listed. The next one that they had was the TimeCap bottle. And it actually is the one that only does do one medication because it’s actually a lid that goes on the top of your medication bottle. And again, they list the pros and the cons.

And I would highly encourage folks that are searching for this type of a device to go to that healthline.com and look at the devices as they have reviewed them and have the pros and cons listed. You might also try checking with your pharmacy, your doctor to see if they have any recommendations because I know some of them can get really fancy and let you know and make a notification to someone if you’ve missed a specific pill or a specific pill time so that it’s not just one person that’s being notified or kept up to date with what’s going on. So that’s what I found. So Brian-

So, Belva-

… you had a … I’m sorry, but Brian, you also had previously recommended what you do, which I thought was pretty handy because I don’t think you’re spending any money, you’re just, you’ve got a buddy, a pill buddy or something like that, right?

Pill buddy [inaudible 00:06:44]-

Well, that’s a very personal question, Belva.

Oh yeah, no, there’s a couple different things I have. I’ve got an app on my phone, it’s called Medisafe. It’s an assistant app. And what I love about that app, it’s pretty inexpensive. There’s a free version for you to try it and then you can get some more advanced options if you want to pay for a couple of the more sophisticated features of that particular app. But what I love is it’s an app that exists on your phone. You can set reminders for certain time periods. And in that reminder, when you set it up, you get to tell them what the medication is, there is a picture of what the pill looks like and you can change that depending on if that pill changes. I know I take a blood pressure medication and what I used last month is not the type of pill that they gave me this month, but it’s the same medication so it’s shaped and it looks different. It’s a different color. So you can kind of change that in case you need some help being able to decipher.

If you take a lot of medications, it might just be troublesome to be able to pick out which medication you’re supposed to take when just based on the color and the size and those kinds of things. But you can set reminders. But what I love about this is you can set up what is called a meta friend. And so essentially when the time comes for me to take that pill, it’ll give me a reminder about 15 minutes before, 10 minutes before, five minutes before. And then at the time I’m supposed to take it reminds me again. And if I don’t acknowledge it or tell it that I took the pill, it’ll actually send an email to my wife who is very concerned about me taking my medication when I should. And-

Yes, your pill buddy.

… it will send her an email and say, “Hey, Brian didn’t take his pill today.”

Great.

“Call and remind him.” Now, not everybody’s probably going to have their wife as their meta friend, maybe it’s a direct health support professional or something like that. But it’s a great way to be able to connect to someone who can help you, help remind you to take something. And so that one’s called Medisafe. Belva, you mentioned the, was it the Meditab that you mentioned there?

MediCap, and then-

MediCap.

Yeah.

So I’ll just encourage folks through our lending library, we have lots of these different types of systems. We’ve got one called Med Ready, we’ve got something called ePill Reminder. All of these sophisticated systems that either sit on your counter, you can mount to the wall, but at which time you are supposed to take your pills, it’s going to send out an alarm. Sometimes they’ll even voice the time. So it’s got some sort of familiar computer voice to be able to say, “Hey, it’s time to take your medication.” And it might even, some of the more sophisticated ones will actually dispense the pills you’re supposed to take at that particular moment so that you’re not getting mixed up with different things.

And so we’ve got a lot of these different ones that you can borrow from our library to try out, see or get your hands on just to make sure it is what you thought it was and it’s going to do what you think it should.

And so something to really try out and see if that would work for you. And so I would encourage you to take a look at your Assistive Technology Acts, state loan library. We all have loan libraries where we’ve got different types of equipment available. We here at In Data can loan to folks who are Hoosiers. So they live in the state of Indiana. You don’t have to be a person with a disability. You can be really anybody, a parent, a loved one, someone who’s just generally interested. You can be a service provider, but you can borrow these types of things for your folks if you want to.

It’s a 30-day loan so you can really see about trying it before you buy it. Investing that money can get tricky sometimes and we don’t all have expendable income that we can just start buying all these different things hoping that they work. So it’s really just a great opportunity to get your hands on it before you buy it.

The other thing I wanted to mention, and I think we’ve talked about this before on our show in some previous episodes, but was there something called the Pill Pack that you can get shipped to your house and sometimes that can-

Yes.

That’s a really easy way to go about that. Details about Pill Pack, I don’t use that service, so I’m not quite sure about it all.

So the Pill Pack, and I saw this at oh, in [inaudible 00:11:06] or some kind of conference, I mean years and years and years ago. But they’re bought by Amazon, so they’re actually owned by Amazon now. So normally if you get your meds, a lot of folks, especially if they get three months, you get it by mail, it’s just a kind of easy way. But let’s say you’re taking four pills, three times a day and they’re different ones. So what they do is they ship them in little packets and it’ll say Tuesday 8:00 AM and all the pills you take Tuesday at 8:00 AM are in that little packet. And if I remember right, they even come out of the box pretty much one at a time. Now there’s no reminder, there’s no anything like that. I don’t know if there’s connected apps or Brian, you should copyright the term pill buddy, but I’m not sure if there’s a pill buddy in there to help you out with it.

Duly noted, I’m going to remember that.

Hashtag pill buddy. And that’s a great way. I mean, again, it’s not going to give you the reminders, but it does help. I mean, especially because some of those things are really small. Some of the pills are very, very small and some are huge. So it’s nice to kind of get them together. And the only other one that I wanted to mention that you guys didn’t, and I think we may even have this in the lab, is something called the Dose Flip from Dose Health. It’s a circular style device. I believe you still actually have to put your meds in the little containers, but what it does, you set it up for times of day, it gives you an alert, it spins around, it opens up, you just turn it over and whatever pills you’re supposed to take that time of the day pop out.

They also have some adaptive features for it. If you can’t lift it and turn it over, there’s a little like stand you can put it on where if you can flip it, barely give it a flick, it’ll flip over and drop your pills out. But I know they’ve been on assistive technology update before to kind of talk about it and it can be very helpful. And I believe it also gives alerts to other folks if you want, to caregivers or pill buddies, if you will, if you don’t flip it over and take the pills out. There’s very little out there that really give you the full piece of mind. If it’s a family member or something, I mean anyone could flip it over, put the pills in their hand and throw them right in the trash can. Or Brian, as you kind of said with your app, you can say, “Yeah, I did that.” Whatever.

How many of us hit snooze 25 times in the morning? Same kind of concept. But they are really good for reminders. And for some folks it’s going to be a combination of some of these things together. So it might be ordering things from Pill Pack while also using the MediSafe reminders or something else like that. So for a lot of folks, I know it’s definitely a need because there’s a lot of stuff out there for it. So I’d say, Brian, you got a darn good thing. Another thing to be looking for is see what your insurance will cover. Because sometimes they’ll cover some of these things, some of these devices or even the way that you get your medications, sometimes they can kind of help with that information as well. But definitely if you’re looking at different ones, if you’ve got a tech act somewhere close, see if they’ve got some things you can try out or go in and see, get your hands on and really get a feel for what they are, might be able to help as well.

And let’s not leave this top topic without mentioning our personal assistance, because most homes already have one of the Alexas or the Google dots or something, not Google dot, it’s just Google or something like that in their home. And you can set reminders up on those as well to remind you at four o’clock you need to take your blood pressure medicine because a lot of medications too, it’s very important that you take it at the exact time of day. Not just that, make sure you take it today, but to make sure that you’re taking it at the exact time of day. And those are very simple to set up.

Or if you’ve got someone helping you, watching, your pill buddy so to speak, they could check to make sure that you did get your notification and you did take your medication. And I just want to reiterate what Brian said about the pharmacy giving him his pill, the same pill but different shape, different color. My pharmacy just did that to me last month as well, and it was my blood pressure medicine. It’s a whole different shape and color. And I looked at it and thought, “What’s this?” And then I read the bottle and said, “Oh, okay, well this is my blood pressure medicine, but it just looks and feels different.” So be careful and keep your eye out for that.

Excellent. Well, hey, I would love to open this up to our listeners if you guys have any additional information to contribute to this question. Again, looking at medication reminders or medication management, love to hear from you. You can give us a call on our listener line, that’s (317) 721-7124, or send us an email at tech@easteseals crossroads.org. Love to hear from you. Thanks.

All right. So our next question is, “I have a student who uses a wheelchair and we are looking to attach a laptop to the chair. Do you have any mounting systems that would accommodate a laptop? I would need it to be movable to allow him to transfer in and out of his wheelchair when needed. Any suggestions?”

This is something that I have only had to do a couple of times in my many years doing this job and I was very nervous about it because everything’s got to be exact in order for the mounts to fit properly. So one of the things you’ll want to do is find out who is the manufacturer of the chair, reach out to them. More than likely they already have tables or adjustable mounts that are going to be made specifically for that chair.

Because when I first did it, the first thing I started trying to do was measure the tubings and the spaces and that just went crazy for me. So contacting the manufacturer’s my first advice. Second piece of advice is maybe go ahead and try to get an evaluation for the individual so that you’ve got someone who’s experienced in that area that can help you pick out the right device.

And then lastly, just as Brian put out there a while ago about the lending library, this would be a good time. I know your question was specifically, do we have something? More than likely, we probably do, but I would definitely encourage you to reach out to your Assistive Technology Act area in your area to see if they do have one, because there’s a lot of information that has to go into that. And I think Brian, you and Josh both probably have a little more experience in this area than what I do.

A little bit, maybe just a little bit. But that doesn’t mean I have all the answers, especially for this kind, because Belva, you brought up a great point. All wheelchairs are different. The thing I’m going to be attaching it to might be completely different. Is it a manual? Is it a wheelchair? Is it powered? Is I got to have something that’s not going to get in the way of my joystick or my other controls? I need something that’s not going to hang off the side when I try to go through doorways or make anything kind of inaccessible. So there’s a lot of things to think about. And really depending on just the individual’s need, I have used everything from the hard top pillows that you put on your lap to read at night. I’ve had those work for individuals and put them in kind of the right kind of position.

Another great place to look is there’s a company called Mount-N-Mover, and it’s Mount-N-Mover and I believe, what is it, Blue Sky Designs or somebody like that I think handles a lot of their stuff. You might have to look them up, but they have tons and tons of different solutions, all kinds of different mounting solutions. So the piece that actually connects to the wheelchair, they have all kinds of different solutions for that as well as you can add extra arms, make things further, more adjustable to accommodate a laptop, a speech generating device, a cell phone, a tablet, really just about anything that you would use can usually be accommodated onto the wheelchair. And again, I know I’ve used their products kind of in the past. They seem to be really good and seem to be able to hold up and do pretty darn well, but there are a lot of other ones out there.

So I’ve got to go with, look at your AT Act and kind of see if maybe they have some different solutions. They’re probably not going to have the exact one you need, odds are, but they’re probably going to have some different ones from different solutions, different kinds of ways because some are very rigid. You’ve kind of got tubing that’s usually have screws and things. Some of them use more of a modular hose, I think it’s called kind of model, which is more of a, the snake, I think it looks like a snake, but you can kind of bend and move and it’s a little bit more, I’ve had folks have success using mounts, which is a lot of folks use them for cell phone holders in their car, but they’ve actually make some things that can connect pretty well to a wheelchair. And I’ve also had people have success with the things that people buy to connect to their bicycles.

So if you think of kind of the tubular arm that you have on a handlebar and a bicycle, a lot of things are made with that kind of connection. And then just depending on the wheelchair and how things connect, you can put different pieces and parts on it. So we will say connecting things to a wheelchair is something that comes up quite often. I haven’t done it a ton, maybe a few more times than Belva, but not a ton. And I don’t know if I’ve ever used the same thing twice. I mean, I don’t even know if I’ve used the same company twice, much less the exact same design.

But really, important things are just hitting that computer in the right position for the individual. If they’re going to be typing where their arms are in a good, comfortable, natural position, if they’re going to be using dictation, their voice, making sure that the microphone’s close enough to pick them up, but they can still see their screen okay. And then also that it’s not impeding their progress in getting around or making that wheelchair wider because most doorways, if they are accessible, don’t leave a whole lot of extra room. So if you’ve got an arm that’s sticking out a little bit and they’re going to need to move around even while using the laptop, you need to just make sure that it doesn’t change the width of the wheelchair in and of itself.

See Josh, you just brought out a lot of good information from someone who only with experience would’ve thought about, because it’s not just about how do I get this tray attached to the chair? It’s about how do I still do all these other things and things that I have to think about. So you brought out some very good points.

You know how I learned most of that stuff, Belva?

The hard way.

Screwing it up.

Yeah, that’s what I say, the hard way.

Yeah. Helping accommodate people by making all new barriers. That’s usually how you learn. You look and go, “God, I’m stupid. How did I miss that?”

Learning from your mistakes for sure. And I’m sure we all made those before.

I think my best learning comes from it, truthfully.

Just a couple additional things. Laptops come in all different shapes and sizes. If someone would come to our program and ask for, “I need to get this device on a wheelchair,” I would probably say, “Hey, you need to have an evaluation done,” just simply because there’s lots of measurements that need to be taken. If you contact one of these companies, Mount-N-Mover, Josh you mentioned. There’s a couple other ones. There’s Daisy, there’s Rehab Adapt or other ones, but they’re going to want to know very specifically not just the model of the laptop you have, but they’re going to ask you to take measurements of the screen and the width and the length and where the ports are. There’s a ton that goes into it. And so a lot of times folks that come to us, we’re going to say, “Hey, that’s a little more involved than maybe the loan library is concerned.”

And so you probably want an evaluation just to make sure you get the right one because to your point, if it’s not secure, the last thing you want is that laptop to fall off of your mount and then get broken because they’re not the most durable things in the world. If it hits the floor from three feet, you’re going to break something most likely and it’s going to be pretty expensive to get fixed.

The other tricky one, part of his question was the transferring in and out. A lot of mounts are just kind of fixed in front of a person. They are then secured to the chair, tubing, usually typically down somewhere between the back wheel and the front wheel. There’s typically a tube there that will attach it to, then it comes up and over the top of the person. When you need to transfer in and out, you need a quick way to be able to move that out of the way.

And sometimes a lot of what folks do is they just pick the whole thing up out of that mount, that little thing that’s secured to the chair, and then they set it to the side. But sometimes that doesn’t work very well, just simply because it’s big and bulky and it’s odd, it’s awkward, it’s L-shaped, it’s got a heavy laptop on one side, and then to get it back in, it can be really cumbersome. And so there are mounts that will actually then fold away, fold away out from in front of the person so that they can then transfer in and out depending on where they go. And sometimes that works a little bit better, but also thinking about when you move that out of the way, it’s going to fold down to the side of the individual. You can’t leave it there. I’ve had folks then leave it there and drive through a doorway and then smack it on the end of the doorway and break it just as much as they would’ve if it would’ve fallen from three feet from their lap space.

And so it’s really challenging. I’ll mention those again. Josh, you mentioned Mount-N-Mover and Ram. Those are great places. Daisy, Rehab Adapt are also some other places, and there is quite a bit out there. We do as a loan library, we can do a demo, we can show you what some of those things look like and that’s maybe what you might want to use the loan library for. We have a couple of kits where we have all of the different tools and we can make a lot of things work, but when you start whittling it down to specific laptops and their sizes and those kinds of things, that probably wouldn’t serve a lot of individuals all that well. But we could give you an example of what it would do if you did buy something like that and it was customized for your particular laptop.

Well, I guess, I think this is a good one for our listeners to kind of reach out too. Do you use a certain kind of mount on your wheelchair in your practice or either with the folks you work with or personally, and do you have a favorite and why? I mean, we mentioned some different manufacturers here, but again, that’s not all of them by any-

Oh, yeah.

… way, shape, or form. So I’d love to hear from our listeners maybe what they’ve done, and maybe not just with a laptop, but maybe some other things they’ve had to attach or accommodate and be able to use and what worked well for them, what did we miss so that we don’t screw up and have to learn that way next time too.

Well, and I think it’s also important too to point out that Brian, you just were mentioning how specific and how customized some of these amounts have to be to fit the individual’s need and the individual’s chair, all the more reason why you want to have a professional assist you with this because of the customization that goes into this stuff, and most of the time it can’t be returned. So if you’ve bought it with the mount in the wrong position, guess what? You’ve got it. So, very easy.

And for some of the companies that sell these specifically for wheelchairs, I mean they’re expensive. They can be upwards of a couple thousand dollars by the time you get all the parts and pieces and the things that you need. So it is an investment, but for a lot of folks, it’s well worth it. It does a lot for you. You don’t have to hold it. You’re not afraid it’s going to slide someplace, but it is a good investment for a lot of folks, especially if you’re out there and a power user of a computer and you want it with you all the time.

So Josh, good segue. I would love to open this up to our listeners and ask if you guys have a favorite. If you use something, let us know how that goes, what you think of it, pros and cons, those kinds of things. You can give us a call on our listener line, that’s (317) 721-7124. Or you can send us an email at tech@eteastersealscrossroads.org. Thanks so much.

All right. So our next question is, “Is there a device that can turn someone’s stove off? I work in a residential setting for persons with intellectual developmental disabilities, and we have difficulty from time to time with persons turning the stove off. Is there something that will do this for them and give us some peace of mind regarding the stove?” And I just know from our experience, we’ve had some situations come up where we’ve had folks have difficulty with that and it’s ended up being a really bad situation where they didn’t even realize the stove was on. And having something there to be able to turn that off after a period of time would’ve been super helpful. In our loan library, we had two items, and I kind of had gotten this question. I’ve sent this on through email just because I know how important it is, but there’s a couple of different devices.

There’s something called FireAvert, which is a fire safety device. And basically if you’re looking for a product to help against stove fires in your home, check out the FireAvert fire safety device. Basically what it does, after it’s plugged in, it protects your home, blah, blah, blah, blah. There’s no real install installation necessary. It just, you plug it into the wall and you plug your stove into it. Basically it has a intelligent 30-second delay that allows users who aren’t the best cooks to clear out the smoke before it cuts the power to the stove. And so basically it simply would cut the power to your stove and throw the breaker, be able to reset that if it ever detects something within the kitchen itself. And so if it would ever detect smoke in the kitchen, it’s going to go ahead and trip your breaker and turn the stove off so that it’s not going to continue with whatever might be happening on top of the stove.

And so that’s something, it’s called FireAvert. And then there was another one called the CookStop automatic stove and oven control. And essentially what this is, I don’t know, it’s basically a programmable stove control. One unit, one part of it plugs into the wall and kind of fits beneath the cabinet or the counter that’s by the stove. It’s programmable essentially, where it can turn the stove on and off, you can set time mirrors with it. It’s got big, easy to use control. So it’s simple to understand and basically allows you to be able to control how your stove works. And so it basically shuts the stove on or off at whatever time that you’ve set that forward. So another thing to be able to look at for that as well.

So a few other options, and this is more of if money’s not a problem kind of options, but they do make a smart speaker enabled, I don’t know the best way to put this without turning on all of Belva’s machines, but Alexa enabled ovens. So they do actually have ones where you can tell it, “Hey, go ahead and preheat my oven.” “Hey, double check and see if the oven’s on.” They’re not cheap. The least expensive ones I can seem to find just on a quick search, are about 1200 bucks, which is about what, two to three times what a normal kind of oven stove top will cost you. But I mean, it depends. I guess if you’re in a residential style setting, you probably got quite a few people using that, it could be really helpful and it might even be able to overcome some different barriers of maybe actually trying to use all the different plugs and buttons and dials and things like that.

But they do offer those. Again though, they are not really a cost-effective option, but it does give you that kind of peace of mind, I suppose. I mean, I guess the other way to do it, and it wouldn’t really help you if you saw it, but if you had one of the Alexa devices with a camera on it, you could just face it towards the oven. Or I think the newer Echo shows actually move. So if you had it in the kitchen where you could turn it in order to see those controls, you could see if it was on. It wouldn’t do any good because you wouldn’t be able to turn it off remotely. But at least it could give you something if you’ve already got one of those devices or things. But besides what Brian had, those were the only ones I really had. Belva, do you have anything else?

Well, I wanted to add the FireAvert, that was actually on the Shark Tank about a year or so ago because they came out with a new, it’s now called FireAvert Pro, and it will not only shut the stove off, but it will also send out an electronic notification that the stove has been left on. What I’m not able to confirm, and Brian maybe you know, is it just for an electric stove or will it also work on a gas stove? Because everything I’m seeing, it looks like you have to plug your electric stove into a box to get this to work. So I’m not sure, it never says that it doesn’t work with gas, but I’m just not sure if it does or not. And then I was going to check the price out too, because I think it’s right under 300 bucks.

Yeah, they do have a gas version of it.

Yep, I see that now.

And that’s about $190. And I think the electric stove version looks to be, let’s see here, about $170.

These are very, very important if you’ve got a family member or a loved one, especially if they happen to be living alone, maybe they don’t even have a disability or have a special need of any sort. Maybe they just need to be reminded if the stove gets left on, I think we probably all have at one time or another, made the mistake of walking away and leaving the stove on. That’s how we end up with burnt chicken and noodles. And that’s a whole personal story that I won’t get into, but I do think that they could be very important devices for people to consider. So I like that FireAvert.

Yeah, I’ve heard a lot of good things about that. This question actually came from a residential program who is looking to help make sure, they’ve got a couple of residential situations where they don’t necessarily have direct support professionals in the building, that they come and go, they don’t live inside the home with the individuals. And so it was a real concern for them to make sure that they’re safe and when they cook food that they cook it in a safe way and there isn’t issues. And so I think this device could be really, really helpful for a lot of folks.

Well then let’s direct those folks to the firevert.com website simply because there is some kind of special pricing if you’re buying it for a residential home area where you’re going to be buying lots of them. I think it was like for 20 or more, they have a special discounted rate, so FireAvert.com might be worth having them check out. I don’t think it’s going to help if you’re just buying one, but should you be in a situation where you might need to buy several of them.

Yep, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, hey, I would love to open this up to our listeners, if you have anything more in this particular area. Again, help with turning someone’s stove off and making that simple and easy to avoid fires or leaving the stove on and not realizing it, those types of things. We’d love to hear from you. You can give us a call on our listener line, that’s (317) 721-7124, or you can send us an email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org. Thanks so much.

All right. So our next question is, “I spend a lot of time training persons with intellectual development disabilities on how to use the bus system. Are there apps or technologies to help them with riding public transportation?” And I’ll jump in there. The app that I have used before, or have seen used before is AbleLink WayFinder app, that is made by a technology company called AbleLink Technologies. They make several different apps. We actually were a partner in a pilot program here in Indianapolis where we were testing out the app with some of our folks who are taking the buses in and around Indianapolis to get from home to work. And it was quite interesting. Basically it helps folks with IDD travel safely, whether by bus or on foot. It’s basically you can set up, there’s a part of the app called a route builder, which allows you to take pictures, to put a title for that route.

You can provide audio for the route so that maybe if that person accepts instruction from their job coach or their mom or a family or a friend better than others, you can have it play audio recordings or audio prompts if you will, based on wherever you are, what picture or what particular step you are in the route. And so there’s a route builder, it’s got a lot of different tools to set up the routes from home to work or wherever you’re headed.

And then you can then jump into the overall app. And so as you travel, it’s again connected to your GPS. And as you get closer to something, we get closer to, let’s say Walmart, it’s going to pull up a picture for a Walmart and give you a prompt to maybe pull the cord on the bus or to get off the bus at this particular stop so that you can then go and walk into your workplace.

And so it’s really super easy to use. It’s pretty intuitive, it’s easy to set up routes. And again, we actually pilot it with, I don’t know, a handful, probably five to 10 individuals and had some success with them in being able to then travel independently using public transportation as their means to be able to get from home to work. There is some setup time, there is some prep time. You’ve got to put those routes in and make sure that the individual understands how to use the app and can follow the different prompts to be able to figure out if you’ve got enough prompts in there or if you need to limit the prompts. So there’s some initial setup time with that and some training, but seem to work pretty well with them. It’s called AbleLink WayFinder app.

And just so you know, this is actually a frequently asked question. I know Brian and I both came from employment kind of different decades I guess, but you’ve been here quite a bit longer than I. But that was one of the main things that you had to work with individuals with was, “Hey, we’ve got the interview skills, we’ve got these kind of things, but if I can’t make it to work, I’m not going to probably be able to keep a job.” And especially here in Indianapolis, the bus system is a way to get around. But I can say as someone who has trained other people to take the bus, I’ve gotten lost as all get out many a time getting on the wrong bus or having to be at a main drop-off point and then jumping on the wrong one or off at the wrong spot or other things.

It’s a bit confusing. And so I guess some of this also depends on where you live because sometimes there are resources as far as through whatever your bus system is. And I don’t just mean the paratransit kind of companies, but I mean there might be different things on the website. I know some in states you can put down, “I live here, I want to get here.” It will give you the two closest bus stops to those, give you about the amount of time as well as which bus and/or buses you take, and information that could be really invaluable, especially if you’re setting up something with prompts and reminders like Brian was talking about.

So I’m sure there’s other queuing programs and things that you could probably use. Just what works for the individual. Pictures is good. Again, the more information, the better. Unless it’s too much information, then less is better. So it’s very individualized to the person. And in working with folks, I had folks that, I mean, we used timers because they couldn’t remember what stop it was or they couldn’t hear the bus driver correctly or really pay attention to that, but they were on the bus for about 27 minutes. So when that 27 minute timer went off, it was going to be one of the next few stops and they could recognize what was there, a gas station or something that could kind of do.

And I mean, it’s a simple kind of way to do it and then only gets you one place, but if that’s the place you need to go, that kind of gets you there. So it’s a hard question because it comes up a lot, and I can tell you no matter how good your public transit system is, it’s confusing as heck. So not that I’ve taken it a ton of places, although I will say that I can figure out the L in Chicago quicker that I can figure out our city bus system, and I have no idea why, but I figured that one out in a day. I’m still not 100% sure where the bus out front actually goes to. But, hey.

And you guys, I have no experience with this, but I got to wonder, is this something where one solution’s, what’s going to work? I mean, if it works for them today, is it going to work for them tomorrow or next Wednesday? Or is it something where you might have to have more than one solution so you’ve got a good backup plan?

I think you should always have more than one solution so you got a good backup plan, Belva, for sure.

Good answer. Good answer.

Well, and to the point of a particular app, I mean, I think in our particular situation, we were helping folks travel from home to work, and so it worked well. In that situation, they were only going one place and that’s where we wanted them to get to. And so that’s what we had practiced. However, if they’re needing to get other places and everybody wants to go wherever they want and public transportation can go a lot of different places, we want to make sure that they can continue to go where they want to and be independent in and their everyday life.

And so with some of those things, well, they would have to have someone who’s helping them set those things up, whether that’s a loved one, a parent, those kinds of things. In our situation, we were very specifically focused on work because we operate a vocational program here and wouldn’t necessarily be able to have helped them with just where they want to go personally necessarily.

Well, and I know in my world of folks that are visually impaired, when we first started using the Talking GPSs to get around and then the Ubers and Lyfts and stuff like that, one of the biggest concerns was the inaccuracy of arriving at a specific address. I heard plenty of folks with issue where they would think that they were arriving at their home, but they would actually be at the house next door. And I think that has improved, but I definitely remember that being a struggle in the beginning.

Yeah, I think anything with disability specific transportation, because it’s limited and logistics become kind of a nightmare. And I’ve heard lots of logistical nightmares for folks with disabilities trying to use disability specific transportation to get places. And I won’t go into all those details. However, in this particular situation, no wonder people want to use just the regular public transportation because if they can, that would be much more beneficial because you’re not having to call, schedule appointments, hoping that they arrive on time to pick you up, and then that they get you to the place where you need to be on time for whatever appointment you have. That just always is, again, logistically challenging for any place to be able to transport numerous people to different places with limited availability of transporting options.

Right.

Well, hey, I would love to open this up to our listeners. If you have anything to contribute to this particular question, give us a call on our listener line that’s (317) 721-7124, or send us an email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org. We’d love to hear from you. Thanks so much.

And now it’s time for the wild card question.

All right, so our next question is the wild card question. And this is a question where Belva has had a chance to think of a question that we have had no time to prepare for. And so Belva, what do you got for us today?

So today I thought we would take a minute and go around the room and let everybody talk about a memorable experience. So someone that you remember working with and the complications that you ran into and were able to overcome. Or someone maybe, I mean, maybe someone that you tried to work out something and weren’t able to get it worked out, because we do have those situations, we just try to not remember them.

Right.

Well, I’d argue we almost try to remember those more so we don’t do it again.

True.

Would kind of be the thing. Well, I’ll go first. And this is a really hard question for me. And the main reason is, and Belva, you can probably kind of attest to this, we come in to work with somebody and they’ve got something they’re trying to do and they’ve got a barrier caused by a disability or something being inaccessible. We put something in place to try to overcome that, and then we disappear. And we never really know what happens after that.

I mean, occasionally we help someone go to college and be successful with that and they graduate and then we help them kind of in the job search or on the job, but we never, not never, we almost never really know how it completely goes. So I always have a hard time with this question because I’m afraid I’m going to talk about this amazing accommodation on how successful it was and the person lost the job the next week and I don’t know. And maybe they weren’t successful.

Oh man, there’s so many things I’m proud of or I think were really great or the consumer just took to it. I will go with one that was probably the, I guess, what makes me always remember to not think I’m smarter than I am or over complicate things. Let’s go with that. I’ll always think I’m smarter than I probably am.

But this one individual worked at a place he did kind of the maintenance custodial kind of work. So cleaning, small repairs, things like that. Dude was great at his job, bosses loved him, everything else. He worked a night shift though, and the boss wasn’t there when he got there or nor was the boss there before he left because of the shift that he worked. And the only way for his boss to tell him the kind of special things that needed done was through email.

He would email, “Hey, this happened, this happened, this happened. Please work on this. Please work on this. Please work on this.” The individual had a learning disability and basically couldn’t read or write, partially because of a learning disability, partially because probably a failure of the education system, but that’s neither here nor there. But he couldn’t read or write, so this didn’t work.

But they were really happy with everything else he did at work. They just needed to overcome this kind of barrier. And we walk in and we know all the high-tech, really cool, amazing stuff that’s out there, but we walked in and I look and his job coach was there, and really the accommodation they’d had is the job coach would read the email to him, which is great, but I think his shift started at eight or 9:00 PM so that’s not really normally in the time a job coach would work.

So she opens it up. So I had him open it. I said, “Can you open the email?” And yeah, he knew kind of the steps to do that. But we just turned on, I don’t know, read aloud I think in the Chrome extension, like at a Chrome extension. So it’d read it to him and he is like, “Well, heck, that’s perfect.” But he couldn’t reply. So we just turned on the Google speech recognition and he could reply and that was it. We found an old set of headphones that they had there with a microphone on it that just happened to be sitting in a closet and we were done. I didn’t write a report, I didn’t recommend anything. I wasn’t far from the VR office, so I just drove over there after I was done. I was like, “Listen, I’m going to come back or call and see,” but I’m not going to do anything else because that’s all they needed.

And just one of those things that walking in, I had 25 different ideas in my head of all the different things we could probably put in place that he’d probably need. I got there, none of that stuff was a problem or a barrier, even a need. He had one specific thing that was keeping from him from being completely successful in this job. And within 15 minutes we had it figured out and within an hour he knew how to do it independently and we were done. So no report, no nothing.

So I always go back to that one because not only was it pretty inexpensive, I mean we used stuff that was already sitting there, but also it keeps me grounded on sometimes the simplest answer is the best answer. And the only other reason I use that is cause as far as I know, at least last time I heard anything, he was still working in that job and just doing great.

So I’ll use that one because I’m always afraid I’m going to use an example and hear from someone and realize, I used an example for someone who didn’t succeed. So again, nothing super high-tech, nothing that took a whole lot of really work or anything. It was using things that were already there and just using them to meet that need. And I can tell you that from what I heard from his job coach, not long after that, everyone used those tools then, not just him, his boss dictated all the emails to them and his other coworkers would use it to listen to it and do it just because it was a little bit easier way to do things.

So I don’t know, I always kind of like that one because again, you walk in thinking all these things and you get there and it’s like, well, no, none of that’s needed. But really if you take the time to listen and look and see what that barrier is, you can come up with some pretty cool things.

I love that story, Josh. I absolutely love it because how many times have I been on my way, hopefully it’s a short way, hopefully it’s not one of the days when I’m driving to Gary, but I’m lost in a train of thought of what am I going to be able to do? We could do this, we could do this, we could do this. And then I get there and it’s nothing at all as I expect it. [inaudible 00:51:40]-

Oh, the job’s different. The needs different. I mean, people are all so different that it’s just like, wow.

And I love that you have everything you need right there. It’s just a matter of using it the way you need to use it. I love that story. So Brian, do you want to go and I’ll go last?

Yeah, sure. So my story is just the kind of the first ever accommodation I ever did. It kind of just opened my eyes up to the whole world of assistive technology accommodations. It’s a little bit to your story, Josh, where it’s something, it’s not all that expensive. It’s pretty rudimentary, but it does the job.

I had a guy I was working with who had been injured in a car accident, had been paralyzed on his left side, and he was actually a movie ticket tearer. This is back when I was an employment consultant 24 years ago. And really my first ever experience with an accommodation of that sort. And so basically when I got, and I met with him, he wanted to be a movie taker, he had already had a job and I was just coming to work with him to do some more job development.

We were looking at maybe some other types of activities. And when I got there, I met with him and he was tearing tickets off in his mouth, movie tickets off in his mouth, and then handing it back to people. And I’m saying that in all seriousness, I mean, that’s what was actually happening. And at that time, I worked with an AT specialist who was with us at Easterseals Crossroads. And he came out and what he brought out, I was kind of surprised he brought out a hacksaw blade. I thought, “Well, that’s interesting.” As an employment consultant and not really thinking about what a hacksaw blade can do, where he took tickets is he was at a kiosk. And so we had a kind of wooden stand that was next to him. And basically the AT specialist took this hacksaw blade and kind of screwed it into the top of that kiosk.

And at that point I’m thinking, “Okay, well that’s interesting.” And then he kind of showed me, you can slide the ticket underneath that hacksaw blade, rip up against it, and it’s going to go ahead and tear that ticket for the individual. Super simple. It’s a couple dollars, wasn’t all that expensive. And it was very effective. And I’ve used that story since, and I always say the hacksaw blade is sharp enough to cut paper, but it’s really not sharp enough to cut you unless you’re really trying to cut yourself.

And so for that particular situation, it was super useful. And it did the job and it really just kind of opened my mind like, “Wow, that’s just really what I want to be all about.” I love how the world of assistive technology, it’s kind of, yes, there’s technology, there’s these devices, but it’s also leveraging, I talk about it when I’m doing presentations, we’re also leveraging my staff’s creativity in situations.

You have to be creative and think outside the box a lot of times about, wow, oh, that doesn’t take a whole lot. What if we try this and see if this stuff will work for you? And so, yes, we’re leveraging technology, but we’re also leveraging people’s creativity and how they use that technology to help people be more independent.

And so I just think that really was my first ever step into the world of assistive technology and really just, I just fell in love with it. I thought, “Man, that’s what I want to do. I want to use that creativity. I want to be able to help folks be more independent using technology, but also creatively applying it to certain situations to make them be able to do things more efficiently, more effectively.”

Okay. So I love that story too, Brian. I’ve heard you share that story many, many a times, but it’s always good to hear. And I actually remember seeing the device when you got it made too. You were very proud of it. So, all right.

So my story is about a frequently asked question that I hear is, how long will it take to teach this person how to do something? So my story is going to be about getting a consumer, oh gosh, I’m going to say about seven years ago now, who was a 30-something-year-old mother of two, married, blind, had never had a job, had never used a screen reader because when she was in high school, she still had some usable vision so she used magnification. After losing all of her sight when magnification was no longer an option, she just gave up using a computer.

She was a stay home mom, busy raising the kids and doing the house stuff. But the kids were getting older now and she wanted to go to work, had never had a job, hadn’t used a screen reader. So I remember on the way to her house thinking, “Oh wow, how long is it going to take to teach this person how to do something?” But we started out using a loaner computer from In Data and the screen reader, NVDA, and we started out with a very, very basics of learning the keyboard and how to open a program and how to close a program. I worked with her for a total of about 20 hours.

VR still had not bought her a computer, she was still using a loaner computer. And when our time for training was up, I kind of left her with, “Eh, I might see you again. Time will tell.” And a few months went by and I got a phone call from her and she said, “I have a job and I need your help.” So she had actually gone out, been her own advocate, found herself a job working in an office. Her job was to answer calls and get information from college students that were looking for different funding sources, who they could contact about getting, what do you call it?

Scholarships.

Scholarships and stuff like that. And if they had gotten one, why hadn’t they got it yet or that kind of stuff. So it was going to be very in depth computer use. And so I was very nervous about, “Oh wow, are we going to be able to make this work?”

But the company that was hiring her, let her and I come in, and VR funded, I think it was another 20 hours of us testing the screen reader. Now, we had moved from NVDA to Jaws at this point to see if it was going to work with their database and was she going to be able to do the job. And after the testing, everything went well. And I forgot to mention too, that she kind of lived in the middle of nowhere. So transportation was also going to be, as it is for most people, was also going to be a big challenge. But as it turned out, she had a church member that worked about two blocks from where she had got this job and lived two or three doors down. So it worked out perfect for her to have transportation. Her initial goal was to be able to get a job working from home, as that often is the end goal for a lot of our consumers.

They want to work from home so that they don’t have to deal with transportation. About a year after her being in the job, she was granted permission of only six people that they were allowing to work from home to go to work from home. Now, this is a big company, y’all, this office that we were working in, there were a lot of people in this office, but they had a small group of folks that they did allow to work from home, and they gave her permission to work from home.

And now, I haven’t talked to her in about a year and a half, but I did speak to her during COVID. She was still doing her job, she was still doing it from home, and she had become a trainer for some of their new hirees. So here we have this 30-something-year-old mom, no computer experience, totally blind, hadn’t never had a job. All of it happened for her in under a year. But that’s all because she was so dedicated and devoted to making it happen. And that story makes me happy. It makes me grateful to be able to have the job that we have and to be able to bring success into people’s life like this. Of course, I always say, I didn’t do that. She did it. She did. It was all her.

And she did share a story with us about it because I told her that her story could help so many people that think that, “Oh, I’m blind. I will never be able to get a job. I haven’t done this and I haven’t done that.” And yet she’s proved that you can do it as long as you want to do it, and you want to put forth the effort. And that’s one of many, many stories that I have. I have lots of them, and it’s always good to take the moment because of HIPAA where we don’t really get a talk too much with other people about the things that we do. But it is nice to be able to share the stories and just take the moment to look back and be grateful for being able to have the job that we have. So thank you guys for sharing.

And I would like to say, hey, let’s open this up and let some of our listeners share their stories. But hey, that could be a good show one day where we just listened to people’s story about how they get to where they are.

Yeah, that would make a really good story. Oh, for sure. Good segue. I mean, I think we all have stories. You can’t be in this field and not have a story about how you’ve been impacted by a particular situation or solution that you’ve come up with or in conjunction with the person you’re working with.

I mean, I tell our team all the time, really, it maybe day to day, it’s hard to get out of the weeds a little bit to get the higher perspective about what you’re really doing in people’s lives. I think living in the weeds, it’s a lot of work and there’s a lot of things to think about and there’s a lot to do. But man, if you can just simply, at times, elevate yourself out of the weeds a little bit and just kind of, man, look at what you did, what, look at what you accomplished in conjunction with the person you’re working with.

And that made a huge difference in their lives. I mean, you guys are really changing lives every day by what you do. And maybe don’t get the accolades that you think that should probably come along with that. Because I mean, literally, you’re helping people be more independent. And I just love that particular aspect of the things that we get to do.

So, hey, I do want to just wrap up today’s show. We’re about an hour in, and so thank you Josh, and thank you Belva. Just want to make sure to give you guys an opportunity to say goodbye to our listeners and I’ll start with you, Belva.

All right. See everybody next time. Thanks for listening.

Excellent. And then Josh.

Bye guys. Can’t wait to see you back here in a few weeks.

Excellent. And then, Tracy’s not here today, but I’m sure she would well wish you as well. And then, have a great one. We’ll talk to you guys in a couple weeks. Don’t forget, you can get us your questions and your feedback through our listener line. That’s (317) 721-7124 or through our email, that’s tech@eastersealscrossroads.org. Thanks so much. Have a great one. Take care.

And it seems like every week we have at least one blooper, so here you go. Voice of ATFAQ. I’m sorry, hold on a second.

No, that’s fine. I’ll take that too. Whatever. The voice of a new generation. No, that was Pepsi. Pepsi.

That’s the third voice in my head. I don’t know.

There’s nothing wrong with that, Brian. You go live your best life.

Information provided on Assistive Technology FAQ 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 and produced by Brian Norton, gets editorial help from Josh Anderson, Belva Smith and Tracy Castillo, receive support from Easterseals Crossroads in In Data project. The show transcript is sponsored by Interact, the Indiana Telephone Relay Access Corporation. To learn more about Interact, go to Indianarelay.com. Assistive Technology FAQ is also a proud member of the Accessibility Channel. To find more of our shows, go to accessibilitychannel.com.