ATU662 – Earcoustic Headphones with Greg James

Hi, this is Greg James and I’m the sales director for Quantum Senses, LLC and EARCOUSTIC headphones. 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 662 of Assistive Technology Update. It is scheduled to be released on February 2nd, 2024. On today’s show, we are super excited to welcome Greg James, sales director from Quantum Senses, LLC on to tell us all about EARCOUSTIC headphones and how they’re able to help individuals hear things in the world around them a little bit easier.

We’ve also got a story about some guidance coming out from the Department of Ed on ensuring that assistive technology is considered for students and children with disabilities when looking at their IEP and other needs. Listeners don’t forget if you ever do want to reach us, if you’ve got an idea for a show, someone we should have on, something you’d like to learn more about, suggestions, comments, criticisms, we’ll take it all. You can reach us at any time at Tech@EastersealsCrossroads.org or call our listener line at 317-721-7124. We look forward to hearing from you. We thank you for listening today. Now, let’s go ahead and get on with the show.

Folks, our story today comes to us from Disability Scoop, joined by Michelle Diament and it’s titled, Ed Department Warns Schools Not to Overlook Assistive Technology in IEPs. This story talks about some new guidance from the US Department of Education, kind of a dear colleague letter that well, I heard a lot about over the last couple of weeks. Essentially, they released a 24-page myths and facts document, just really aimed at clarifying the school’s responsibility to provide various aids to students that are served by them. Here the story, it talks about that under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act or IDEA, they said that every time an individualized education program team meets to develop, review or revise that student’s IEP, they’re required to factor whether the child needs assistive technology devices or services. Now, of course, this could be high-tech things, but also more basic tools, including visual, schedules and timers, maybe pencil grips, fidgets, things like that, stickers, other stuff to keep folks on track and just to give them what they need.

Some quotes from the letter which was written by Glenna Wright-Gallo, the assistant secretary of special education and rehabilitative Services and Roberto J. Rodriguez, assistant secretary for planning, evaluation, and policy development at the education department. It reads, assistive technology, devices and services can help improve outcomes for children, develop important skills and abilities, and prepare them for the workforce and life after high school. By providing children with disabilities, with the tools they need to succeed, we can help break down barriers and create a more inclusive, equitable education system for all. I realize this isn’t new news for probably anyone that listens to this podcast, but as with a lot of things, once this stuff gets noticed or at least comes out in a way that can really help folks maybe understand that assistive technology, while it’s not always the answer, but at the same time it can really break down some of the accessibility barriers that students face maybe every day at school or in their learning.

Not only that, it can get individuals used to using some of these assistive technology tools because some of those tools, they may benefit them not just in the K-12 environment or even younger, but also in college, in work, or in whatever they plan to do once they kind of transition. Now, this doesn’t just go with school-age kids. So without getting real deep into IDEA and kind of how it works, there is IDEA part C which is used for infants and toddlers and IDEA part B which is school-age kids. These rules pertain to folks with all types of disabilities. Really just says that assistive technology must be considered in kind of all steps of this process. If there’s things that the individual has difficulty doing due to that disability, assistive technology is thought of and becomes part of that plan. It says here in the story that not only must schools provide and fully fund any assistive technology necessary for a child to receive the free, appropriate public education, but they’re also obligated under the law to ensure that children, families, teachers, and related service providers are trained how to use the devices.

So this is a very important thing. Training is where things fall apart a little bit. Sometimes I feel like with assistive technology, somebody gets that equipment in their hand, they feel comfortable with it or they have it, maybe they know how to do a few basic things and it really helps. But at the same time, if they can know the real ins and outs or some of all the things it can do, it can really, really be an assistance and maybe even help out further. As far as training, the parent, the caregiver, someone else, that’s always important as well. Depending on the disability, short-term memory or remembering steps, doing all those things could be one of the barriers. So having a learning partner, somebody else that knows how to use this that’s there with them can really and truly be a gigantic help.

Kind of read down in here, we got some other quotes from… This one here is from Denise Marshall, the CEO of the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates or COPAA, a nonprofit that advocates for the rights of students with disabilities and their families. Her quote here says, “we know that too often the assistive technology consideration is either skimmed over or skipped entirely due to biases, assumptions, or lack of knowledge about various assistive technology devices and services that support and increase a child’s access to the general curriculum in their classroom.” I think that’s where it hits, where the rubber hits all the road, the general education curriculum in the classroom, being able to have kids, oh, kind just sit amongst their peers and do the same work that they’re doing with the help of that assistive technology. When I say I’ve heard a lot about this lately, it’s because of a few things.

One, as INDATA, the AT Act provider here for the state of Indiana, we’re charged with assisting the Department of Education with implementing this, with our loan library or demonstration, maybe some of our other tools that we already have in place. Being able to make sure that we can do that. Education and outreach as well. Just make sure that folks know what’s out there and know what might be able to assist. So whenever they get to those IEP meetings and they’re including this in there, they have some generalized knowledge so that they can assist and then offer more assistance if needed. Also, this was a huge push at ATIA, which is a conference I just got back from this week, and we’ll probably talk a little bit more about ATIA here in the coming weeks and maybe even have some folks that we met there on the show.

I’ll put a link to this story over in the show notes so that you can read about it a little bit. This is something you are going to hear a lot about. It’s a big thing and hopefully will be a giant help for the students as well as toddlers and preschoolers that can really benefit from using assistive technology. So let’s hope this turns into something great. It’s definitely some guidance out there and some things to really help out, and let’s just hope that it just continues to create more independence and a better learning environment for really all of our kids with disabilities. Listeners, I am super excited today. Our guest is Greg James and he is here to tell us all about the EARCOUSTIC headphones, and I cannot wait to find out all about them. Greg, welcome to the show.

Thank you, Josh. Nice to be here.

Yeah, I am really looking forward to hearing about these ever since I got the word about them and found out I really can’t wait to hear more. But before we get into that, could you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself?

Yeah. I am a resident of Prince George’s County, Maryland. I’ve been in the sales game for most of my life, although I do have a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Howard University. So I’ve been working with Justin Lee, who is the founder and the inventor of EARCOUSTIC headphones, the founder of Quantum Senses, LLC, our company and the inventor of EARCOUSTIC headphones, and he is actually married to my wife’s cousin. So that’s how we connected where it’s a bit of a family affair.

That always works out perfectly when you know just the right people and you happen to be related to them, always makes it a little bit better. Well, onto the technology, I guess an overarching, and we’ll dig in more, but what are the EARCOUSTIC headphones?

Okay, EARCOUSTIC headphones are a low-cost solution to a common problem, which is hearing loss. There’s over forty-eight million Americans who suffer from some degree of hearing loss, and for many of them high cost expensive hearing aids are not the solution. In fact, there really is no interim solution from, I don’t quite hear you, to okay, I’ve got to put hundreds or thousands of dollars into hearing aids. So your EARCOUSTIC headphones are that interim solution, we like to call them readers for your ears. When your vision starts to go, as folks will find out as they continue to age, they run out and they get some readers. They don’t go to the doctor, to the eye doctor and get $500 glasses. They get some readers and they go through those until they get to the point where, okay, this isn’t working anymore. I need prescription glasses.

At the same time, they still, even after that, I know I do keep readers lying around the house just in case, you never know when you’re going to need them. So EARCOUSTIC headphones are made from a polymer plastic that’s designed to be recycled. So it’s a green-friendly technology. They have no wires, no batteries, no electronics. They completely make use of acoustical physics, meaning that each of the custom ear cups on the headphones create a personal amphitheater for the user. So it’s a one-size-fits-all product. It has multiple adjustment points, but the basic concept is if you put your hands and cup your ears, you’ll notice all of a sudden every sound coming towards you is magnified.

You’ll also notice if you’re in the right environment that sounds coming from behind you and from the sides are minimized because they’re blocked out. That’s exactly what our EARCOUSTIC headphones do. They cup your ears, they focus forward facing, sound directly into the ear canal so you can hear it better and they block out ambient noise and they do all of this without the use of electronics. We’ve created a product that when it’s reached the end of its shelf life or its use life, it can be put into the recycle bin and turned into a bicycle somewhere down the road.

That’s great. I love… It seems like people always miss that part of thinking, what happens when this is no longer useful to the individual or no longer useful to the person? What happens to it? Does it just add to more waste? But I love that you guys worked that in as well. Greg, you mentioned this a little bit, but can you talk about some of the situations in which the EARCOUSTIC headphones are really helpful?

Absolutely. So the number one area where I use them and where I think most people will find that they’re most useful is sitting at home watching TV. That’s where the other members of your household are probably saying, please turn that TV down. Can you hear? So that’s the number one situation. When I’m sitting down to watch a show, I’ll pop on my headphones, I can turn the TV down from a hundred, excuse me again, I can turn the TV down from a hundred and put it down at a normal listening level. But EARCOUSTIC headphones are also portable. You can fold them up. They come with a convenient tote bag, take them with you to church. A lot of times people tell us that, hey, I can’t quite hear the sermon. I can’t hear the speakers. Or you can take them with you to the movie theater.

So after 30 minutes of previews you can put them on and the people sitting behind you, they can’t tell that they’re not just normal headphones. Of course people ahead of you don’t even see you. So you don’t stand out, they’re not really noticeable. Then when the movie’s over, you pop them back in your tote bag. To the theater, if you’re going to a play, we’re currently discussing with the Kennedy Center to make them available to patrons there. So when you go any type of theater environment. Also, another area that they’re useful for is for schools. For the kids that are perhaps suffering a little bit from ADHD, they’re distracted by all the noises in the classroom. This will help them to hear the teacher speaking from the front while blocking out that noise, the person behind them talking or whatever else is distracting them. But I would say still the number one area is sitting at home watching TV. It’s a pretty controlled environment in the first place, but it allows you to turn the TV down.

Well, it’s funny when you bring that up, I think of how many fights or arguments I’ve seen throughout my life with folks with just, would you turn that down? Would you turn that down? So being able to still actually hear it and keep those arguments from happening is a great thing. Greg, where did the idea come from for your EARCOUSTIC headphones? I know most folks I talk to, it seems like there’s always kind of an aha moment or you see something and you figure out what’s needed. So where did the idea come from for these?

Well, thanks for that question, Josh. Justin Lee, who is our founder and CEO, that’s his story, but I am more than happy to tell it here. Justin met my wife’s cousin Nikki about 10 years ago. Actually, she’s our medical director. She is a doctor, and Justin is a rocket scientist, he’s an aerospace engineer. So one day a rocket scientist and a medical doctor met and fell in love and got married and they moved to Florida. While they were living in Florida, Justin who is like Nikki, is native of Prince George’s County, Maryland, but while they were living in Florida, their neighbor Justin befriended. Because Justin had a history of entrepreneurship and inventing things, he was exposed to this neighbor who was a Vietnam vet and his wife, and she was always complaining that the TV was too loud. Oh, they were just always fighting about it, as you were talking about earlier.

So Justin began to think of ways that he might be able to help out, and he started experimenting with a variety of different products and eventually developed ear cups and started working his way around. This is what developed into EARCOUSTIC headphones. Now, unfortunately, his neighbor passed, he had pancreatic cancer. He passed before this could all come to fruition, but in the early stages he was helping Justin to experiment with the various innovations that he was coming up to help him with his hearing. One thing led to another. So over a couple of years, Justin came up with this idea, but then it sat on the shelf and he really didn’t know what he had and what to do with it.

A couple of years ago when he and his wife moved back here to Prince George’s County, Maryland, and we got to know each other better, and he found out that I had many years of sales experience and I’m quite a bit older than him, and I also suffer a little bit from hearing loss. As we discussed it, I said, this is really something that you have to push out. This is something that a lot of people could use. So he began to do more experimenting, some modifications. We got some testing done at the University of Maryland as well as at Winston-Salem State University. That’s the University of Maryland College Park and Winston-Salem State University, where they did testing on acoustical dummies and were able to show a significant improvement in the sound quality that the devices were hearing by using the EARCOUSTIC headphones.

Nice, nice. Very, very cool. Well, Greg, can you tell me a story, maybe about someone’s experience using the EARCOUSTIC headphones and how it was able to help him out?

Yeah. Well, actually I can, my father, who I’m happy to say just turned 90 back in November, but he is not that ninety-year-old that most people think of. He still works. He still goes up and down from New Jersey to here visiting. So he is a very vital person. He’s very active in his church, but he was losing his hearing and we as a family we’re suggesting that he consider hearing aids, which of course most folks resist, but he began to look into it and he did eventually wind up getting hearing aids. These hearing aids cost $6,000 and there was no insurance that covered that, but he had the need and he did get them. They have a lot of apps that go along with them, and he just was never comfortable with them. So he used them as necessary, but he didn’t like them. When I began talking to him about EARCOUSTIC, and I explained to him just over the phone how it works, he immediately sat his phone down and cupped his ears and he’s like, I don’t even need the hearing aids. This works perfectly.

He was watching TV, so he would watch TV with his hands around his ears because it solved the problem for him, and it did not require all the adjustments on the app for the hearing aid. It did not require that they be charged up and all these things. So he just found that just cupping his ears. As I said, the primary situation where people would use these headphones, he found that it solved the problem. So now that we have the actual product in hand and we have begun distributing it, he’s got his EARCOUSTIC headphones and he uses them all the time to watch TV.

That is awesome and perfect, and just kudos to him for being 90, still doing all the travel and still working and still kind of keeping up. Kind of what you said is something I see a lot of problem with some… Some technology, especially for our older population, is just, yeah, it’s great that it does all this stuff, but why do I have to open an app and plug this thing in and charge this thing and do all this? I just want something that works. So I see the same situation. You kind of explained with your dad that I’ll use them when I absolutely have to, but my goodness, if I can do anything else to not have to mess with all these things, I’ll do that much quicker. So that is great. Greg, how can our listeners find out more and get their own set of EARCOUSTIC headphones?

Well, like readers, these are a low-cost solution. So EARCOUSTIC headphones are under $25. So all you have to do is go to our website at www.theEARCOUSTIC.com and you can order them. They come in red, blue, white, and black. I always recommend to folks at this price, get a pair to put by every TV. So you don’t want to have them downstairs by the TV while you’re upstairs in bed and you’ve got your TV blasting in the bedroom and your spouse is complaining, and now you’ve got to go downstairs. Now if you’re like me, when you get downstairs, you’re going to forget why you went down there. You’re going to do 10 other things and then come back upstairs without them. So I always say get a pair to put by every TV and you’re always ready to go, but it’s again, very simple. Just go to our website, theEARCOUSTIC.com, and order yours today.

Awesome. We will put that down in the show notes so that people can easily get them. Well, Greg, thank you so much for coming on today, for telling us all about EARCOUSTIC headphones and also just thank you for making something that’s easy to use, solves a need and is actually affordable and even recyclable. Thanks for thinking about all those things, and definitely thank Justin for us for putting something together like that, that can definitely solve a need and doesn’t need hours of training and other things to be able to be functional. Thank you so much.

Well, thank you. Let me add, if it’s okay, we are also placing EARCOUSTIC headphones in assistive technology libraries across the country. We’ve got them in several counties and in Baltimore. In Maryland and we are currently engaged in remote demos with a variety of states because the ideal situation for us is that many of the states have departments of assistive technology where people can come in, try out the headphones, try out other assistive technologies, depending upon their handicap, and then they make it easy. The state makes it easy for them to order. So we are doing our very best to get these out to the people in need. We also work with senior communities throughout the country to give the folks who are most in need of this type of assistance an opportunity to see it and try it out and get it for themselves.

Awesome. So listeners, if you do want to try them out, definitely contact your local state AT ACT and see if they’ve got those in their loan library. If they don’t, maybe let them know that they do need to get a set of those in so that you can try them out for yourself and see if they work for you. Then they can probably assist you with getting in touch with everybody so that you can get a set for your own. Greg, thank you so much for talking to us today and for adding that too as well because the state AT ACT are definitely great resources. I’m not just saying that because we happen to be the one for Indiana, I promise they really are a great resource for folks out there just to be able to try things out and see if it’s something that meets the need they might need and can solve some of the problems that they’re having. So thank you again, sir.

All right, Joshua, thank you. It’s a great show and we appreciate your time.

Do you have a question about assistive technology? Do you have a suggestion for someone we should interview on 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 Nikol 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 are supporting partners or this host. This was your Assistive Technology Update. 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.