ATFAQ195 – Q1. voice input software, Q2. Apps for organization and time management, Q3. Wearable Technologies, Q4. Mouse options for limited dexterity , Q5. Wildcard: Most memorable job accommodation

I have a question.

Huh?

Like what?

I’ve always wondered.

What about, do you know?

I have a question.

I’ve always wondered

Like, I have a question.

I have a question.

Oh, I have a question.

I have a question.

I have a question.

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 tech@eastersealscrossroads.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 195. 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 month. 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 our virtual room and introduce those that are here with me today. The first is Josh. I’m going to switch it up a little bit. Josh is the director of our assistive technology program. He is also the host of our AT Update podcast. And so, Josh, you want to say hi to folks?

Hey everybody, thanks for listening.

Excellent. Next is Belva. Belva is our vision team, lead with our clinical assistive technology team today. And so, Belva, you want to say hi.

Hi, everybody. And again, I want to thank everybody for listening.

Excellent, excellent. And I think it’s important to note we’re on episode 1 95, we’re almost to 200 episodes, which is pretty incredible. We’ve been doing this podcast for a long time and have answered a lot of questions, a lot of frequently asked questions, and some not so frequently asked questions as well. But yeah, we’ve been here for a while. So thanks for taking some time to tune in with us today. Just for those who might be new listeners, just want to give you a little bit of information about how our show works, what the format is. And so, throughout the month I’m looking for questions, looking for various assistive technology related questions in different places. A lot of the times we’re relying on our listeners to be able to provide that.

And so, we have a few way for our listeners to get in touch with us and let us know what your questions are. We have a listener line, that’s 317-721-7124. We have an email address at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org and you can also send us a tweet with the hashtag ATFAQ. Those are all three really good ways for us to get your questions to us, and we’d love to be able to hear those.

The other thing that we do is we also come across feedback. We ask for feedback as well. So as we try to answer questions, we try to answer them as best we can, but we know that we don’t have all the answers. And so, if you’re listening and you have something that you would like to chime in with, we’d love to hear from you as well. And you can do that again through that listener line, that email address, or by sending us a tweet with the hashtag ATFAQ. Thanks again for taking some time with us today, and without further ado, we’re going to jump into our questions. All right, so our first question is, how can voice recognition software assist individuals with mobility impairments?

Well, I think, I think this kind of goes along with all of our folks, whether they are mobility impaired or vision impaired. The voice recognition software has opened the door up for a lot of different hands-free control, especially like around the house. Our assistants that we almost all of us have in our home anymore, whether it’s the Alexa, the Google, give us the ability to use our voice to do things that physically we’re unable or just don’t want to have to get up and do. I know for me, I use my home assistants to get all kinds of information and do different things, like turning my lights on and off, opening and closing my doors and just different little things like that.

So I think it really has the voice recognition software, whether it’s in our assistants or even our phone. I really love the fact that with, and I don’t know if this is because I have a newer phone now or it’s one of the recent updates, but I really love the fact that my phone can be across the room from me and I get a text, and I can ask, “Hey Siri, do I have any new messages?” And she gives me that information without me even having to go pick up my phone. Whereas before I always had to go over-

You have no new messages.

Oh yeah, see? So it just responded to me to tell me that I have no new messages and I didn’t touch the phone. So all that hands free is a beautiful thing I think for all of our folks. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, it’s remarkable to see where voice recognition has come. It’s really kind of, when you think of universal design, I mean it was designed for folks to be able to speed up their input on the computer. Back in the early days, 25 years ago it was, well, you have to speak one word and then that one word, instead of just going ahead and put something on your screen, it went ahead and gave you a choice of 10 different words and you had to choose the word that you said. So it wasn’t very fast. And now when you think about today, it’s everywhere. It’s on your phones, it’s in your smart assistants, it’s on computers built in, it’s baked into the operating systems on Windows and Apple, and other platforms. And so, it has literally come so far.

And as far as an access tool for folks who don’t have traditional access to a keyboard or mouse, it is just what an amazing opportunity and tool to be able to use, to be able to have access to the computer, to be able to dictate text into a document or into an edit field, or just simply control your computer from the get go. Turning it on, turning it off, opening and closing programs and applications, and those kinds of things, and switching between windows. It’s really gives you full access. And I think when you think about persons with mobility impairments, obviously having a mobility impairment, not being able to use a traditional keyboard or mouse can really slow you down. And productivity and your efficiency at which you do things on the computer can be really impacted. And anything that you can do with voice input can greatly improve some of that efficiency and that productivity that you have with a computer.

Also, I just think from a practical standpoint, it’s so inexpensive. Again, most of it’s free, it’s built in, you don’t have to pay for anything anymore. It’s really great. I would say if you are going to rely on that solely as your access to the computer, some folks they need to, but if you have the opportunity to somehow pair it with an adaptive mouse or keyboard, or other types of things, I think that’s really helpful, because not everything is as efficient by saying it by voice. Because sometimes I think what I always tell folks about voice recognition is, it’s one of those things where you have to know what you’re going to say before you say it. Make sure that you can say it all in one phrase, because if you don’t, it’s going to mess up, and you’re going to have to keep going back and correcting.

Although you might have picked up some efficiency with putting text into the screen, onto the screen of your computer or your device, going back and editing it by voice is not always that simple or easy. And sometimes can take quite a bit of time. So slow down, say thing, and know what you’re going to say before you say it. And I think for a lot of folks, that’s just a completely different way of thinking and using the computer, because like when I use my keyboard, my finger knows exactly where the backspace button is, and I’m editing what I’m saying as I go. And if I’m using voice recognition, I need to rethink the way I want to do it. I really need to know what I want to say before I say it, so that it has the better opportunity to get it right the first time instead of having to go back and edit it.

Yeah, I think so. And I think they have come a long way with those like voice controls, though. It’s a lot simpler than it used to be. Used to be, like you said, Brian, you had to memorize and know exactly which kind of words. But now, I mean, especially with the built-in assistants in Microsoft or especially like in Apple with Siri, and sorry if I just turned your phone back on there, Belva, I just turned mine on. Dang it. But know with those kind of tools built in, there’s so much more, I don’t want to say conversational, but almost conversational, kind of how can I help with that and gives you kind of more prompting and things.

Whereas I know it used to be, especially if you were trying to know open and close programs or get to certain things, if you didn’t say it just right, it was just like, “I can’t help you with that.” Or God forbid it just turned into dictation and started putting the commands you were saying right there on the screen, which was twice as frustrating. But I do agree with you, Brian. If you have any kind of mobility or anything that you can really control, it’s great to have a backup, even if it’s a switch or something else just for those little things that the voice control just doesn’t seem to want to control for you, it’s really good to have a backup.

But yeah, they’ve come a long way. I know my wife even uses dictation in text messaging all the time, and I can tell when, because it’s not a hundred percent, it usually makes for some good laughs, because it’s not perfect, but it does get the point across and it’s a lot easier than trying to type on those little keyboards. So it’s very impressive and I love that, yeah, on the phone you can just say, “Hey, you know who, you know, send an email to Brian that says, ‘I’m going to be late for the meeting by 10 minutes, put my signature line on there,'” and it’ll read it right back to you, and you can say send and boom, it’s right there. Gone. So really, really great tool for folks with all different kinds of mobility challenges.

So with the improvement of this voice recognition technology, I guess we call it technology, I don’t know, but with the improvement of it, it makes me think about some of the consumers. Brian, you and I worked with a young man many, many years ago who was in a wheelchair and had very limited use of both hands, and we were trying to assist him with the workplace, basically inclusion, trying to help him keep his job basically. And one of the things that he did a lot of was emailing and creating documents, and creating different schedules.

And so, we were using, of course at that time, Dragon Naturally Speaking, because that was really our only option at that time. And we, oh, you’ve got to have a specific microphone and your room’s got to be kind of quiet, and all these special things that we had to do to make him, or to assist him in being successful. Nowadays, like I just said with my phone across the room from me, and the TV in the background, I’m still able to speak to my phone and get some response. So I think the improvement of it has also made it easier for many folks, especially those folks with speech impairments, right?

That would make getting Dragon to do anything almost impossible, if you could not clearly speak the command or the action that you wanted to do. And Siri was the same way. In the beginning of Siri, you had to speak very clearly and very specific. Recently, as recently as last week, I was working with a consumer who, for whatever reason, Siri wasn’t responding to his voice. And the person that he had worked with before had actually turned it off, just because they had tried and tried to get it to work and it just wasn’t working. Well, we did an update, retrained Siri, and for the first time in like he said, three or four years, it was actually responding to him. So that again, is just the improvement of the technology, making it more accessible for different individuals.

So I didn’t mean to rant there, but just wanted to share that, because when we do look at these things, it does bring back memories of, “Oh, I remember when we worked with this person, or when we tried to help this person with that and how difficult it was.” Whereas now it seems easy, so it makes you wonder what’s 10 years from now going to be like, right?

Yeah. Well, and I know a lot of the companies are taking that into consideration, like they’re actually including people with nonstandard speech in their setup, just so it can understand. And a lot of them let you even change words. If there are certain words that I really am challenged saying, it’ll let you let you do that. But no, I can remember, I don’t know how many times I’ve read the first chapter of Alice in Wonderland, because it used to be when you set up someone with Dragon, you had to have them sit there and read. And I always just picked Alice in Wonderland, because it was so boring. But some of them, depending on their speech, it would make them read a whole chapter before, and then it’d sit there and update for 25 minutes trying to figure out how it could better understand them. And now, like you said, you run an update, do a little tutorial so it can learn from you, and boom, it just adapts the whole time. Yeah, very, very cool.

Excellent. Well, hey, I want to open this up to our listeners, if you have any feedback regarding this question, specifically about the usefulness of voice recognition software as it relates to mobility impairments, but really maybe for everyone, I’d love to be able to have you chime in, send us a note. Whether it’s on our listener line, that’s 317-721-7124, or you can send us an email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org. Take a moment, do that for us. We’d love to hear from you. All right, so our next question is, what are the best apps for individuals with learning disabilities to improve organization and time management?

So I have a hard time saying best, just because our needs are so different, but I’ll give you a few that I like and one that I use all the time. So for organization, I use something called Todoist. There’s a free version and a paid version. I’ve gotten by with the free version for, I don’t know, five, six years. I kind of started using it during COVID, because I realized for some reason I couldn’t stay on task, worse than even before. And it is just very simple. You have something to do. Like if I get an email, if I can’t do it right then I just put it in Todoist and I use a Mac, it’s Command Q, it just brings up a little task, I put it in there, I can make it important, not as important if I want to, or I can just put it there. I hit enter and it exists in my Todoist. And as I get time during the day, I just go look at it and start doing the tasks.

And in fact, it’s gotten to the point where if I don’t put it in there, it doesn’t really exist. But it is very simple. It works cross-platform. So it can be on your computer, your phone, your tablet, all at the same time. And again, it’s very simple. Now it’s got some other things, some project planning tools in there that you can use. You can use some other kinds of things if you really want to, but it’s just very, very easy to use. If you do the paid version, I think you can set reminders and you can actually set timers and things like that on it. But again, I just use the free version to get the information out, know what I’m supposed to be doing. I can assign it to different days if I want, or I can just throw it in there and at the end of the day move it. But it’s a great way to just keep track of all the things I need to do today.

And then, as far as the kind of time management, a couple of really good ones that I’ve used, one of them is called Forest. I think it’s a $1.99. At least, I know for a lot of folks with or without learning disabilities, getting distracted can be very difficult. So if I’m supposed to be working on my computer, working on homework, doing something like that, the lure of the phone and all those little things I can look at is great. Forest I think is a $1.99 or 2.99, but you open it up and you set a timer for five minutes up to I think two hours. And then when you hit start, it plants this little tree. And then if you close Forest and go to any other app on your phone, it kills the tree. So it’s just a nice way to kind of give you a little, almost like a game, but it just kind of helps you stay on task with something else, but your phone or, but your tablet or your other device.

So if it’s something else I’m supposed to be doing, be that chores, be that homework, be that work work, be anything else, it just makes it to where if I close that app and open another one on my phone, I’ve got like three seconds to get back to it or the tree dies, and no one wants to kill trees. So it’s kind of, again, kind of like a game, but it seems to be a pretty good way to help folks, at least with the draw and the kind of, I don’t want to say phone addiction, but we all kind of check things on our phone and stuff, and it can be a lot of information coming at us, so it can be really helpful. It’s also super easy to use and super easy to get that information. So there’s tons of other ones out there, but those are just a couple that always really come to mind as seem to be pretty helpful to folks and to myself as well.

That’s great. That’s great. I’ll do the same a few that I use in my daily life. The first one is Workflowy is kind of a new app. It’s really linear based, it’s more outline based. For me, I use the outline view. I kind of can construct structure things a little bit easier if it’s just kind of in a task list and outline view. I would encourage you to look that up. There’s a small subscription fee that you have to pay per year, but it’s not a whole lot. And it basically saves everything. Even though you might delete or archive different tasks, they stay in the background and you can pull them forward when you want them. And so, it’s a really great kind of linear, more outline based way to keep track of different tasks. So I love that one.

Another one is ClaroPDF. If I’m in class or in taking notes, it’s a great way to be able to, let’s say your professor gives you notes beforehand, whether that’s in a PowerPoint or a PDF, you can upload that to the device and then open it up in ClaroPDF. You can take text notes, handwritten notes, you can do recordings, you can do all sorts of things to be able to annotate that document while your professor’s talking about stuff. And so, just to be able to capture the most important information. Another one that’s pretty similar to that is Glean, as I’ve heard a lot about Glean before, and so that’s kind of a note-taking app. But those are two things I would just mention.

Another one is Drafts. Drafts is an app that basically you can take down a quick note and connect it to other apps on your phone. And so, super fast way to be able to throw it in to different places and be able to connect it to do kind of an if this, then that with a particular note or a reminder that you want to send to yourself. And then, there’s always the ones that are just right there available to you whenever you open up your phone. Apple reminders, Google has something very similar. I’ve used those before, kind of moved to Workflowy from those, but those are still really, really helpful.

And then, for folks who are really, I think of like my friends in the IDD community, intellectual developmental disabilities, there’s an app called Aida Reminders. It used to be called Aida, and I’m sure I don’t say that right, supposedly it’s named after some opera, but that’s how I pronounce it. It’s A-I-D-A Reminders. If you go to Google you’ll find that one. But if you go to Apple, it’s under a different name. It’s called Reminder with voice reminders on Apple.

And what I love about this one is it does quite a bit of things, that you can attach a picture, so that folks don’t have to actually know the text, they can just look at pictures to identify what that task is. You can have someone voice record the reminder for them, so it’s just not a visual and you’re looking at the screen to read it. It’ll actually have it read to them in a person’s voice that they’re familiar with. So that can be really helpful. You can set up schedules, look at a calendar. It’s really, really basic and it’s really kind of a basic calendar, but it’s super useful with a lot of extra functionality to it too. So Aida Reminders is another pretty good way to be able to organize and capture things, and be conscious of time management.

One that you didn’t mention, Brian, that I know I dug this up from past, it’s Cozi. Didn’t you used to use the Cozi thing?

I did, yeah. Cozi Calendar. Yeah, that’s a great calendar. So what I love about it is that lets you share calendars with everybody. So I have my wife, myself, my two daughters in the same household, and we are all doing different things. We’ve all got different schedules. And so, what you can do is you can kind of sync all four of those calendars together to be able to find a time that’s open for everybody to be able to meet or grab dinner, do something like that. So it’s a great way to be able to share things amongst a group of folks.

One more that I always don’t really forget about, but if you’re really trying to kind of stay on task or maybe kind of help with that organization, Remember the Milk, and I think there’s a few other ones kind of like this. What I like about Remember the Milk is that if I put simple, I can do very simple tasks kind of tracking, but I can set them up location based, because I mean, there’s nothing worse than I go to the grocery store and I never think to look at my list or I forget the milk, which I guess is probably where it got the name from.

But you can actually make those location based. So when I show up for work, for class, at home, at grandma’s house, at the grocery store or whatever, those reminders that I set up pop up then. Not just timer based, but actually location based. So that could be very helpful, especially if I need to do certain things at certain places, and maybe forget to look at my device or forget to open up that app. It’ll give me those reminders when I’m where I’m supposed to be.

Excellent. Well, hey, I want to open this up to our listeners as well. If you have any feedback, maybe you have a favorite app for organizing and taking care of time management on your own, we’d 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@eastersealscrossroads.org. Love to hear from you and to hear what you have to say. Thanks so much. All right, so our next question is, how is wearable technology assisting individuals with disabilities in their daily lives? What are some of the best applications of wearable technologies?

Gosh, I’m like Josh, I don’t like that word best.

Yeah, I was just about to mention that. I said, well, there I go. Putting best in there again.

Yeah, yeah, obviously I think the wearable kind of goes into the first question that we had. It’s the hands-free part of it. I think that is most exciting and interesting for different individuals, because the wearable technology allows all of our consumers or all the consumers to be able to do things hands-free and by voice only. So you can get things like monitoring your health. One of the big things that a lot of my consumers are doing that are diabetics, they’re able to now track their sugar and their blood, and all that stuff through wearing a little patch that then communicates with their phone. And that information can then be sent directly to the doctor.

So health monitoring is one of those things. And then, just being able to get environmental information for those folks, my folks specifically that are blind or visually impaired, having a wearable device that can give them information about the environment around them. For example, a couple of months ago I recommended a pair of, I don’t know if I really want to say the glasses, but I recommended a pair of smart glasses for one of my consumers who uses ride-share to get back and forth to work. And she was experiencing getting let out maybe one or two doors away from where she actually needed to be. And you know, can’t blame the rideshare person for that, I guess. They’re not agreeing to drop you off directly at the front door. But this would then cause her to have to get out her phone and use an app to call up a sighted person and say, “Hey, what door is this? And what’s next door? Do I need to go two doors, three doors?”

But with the wearable glasses, she’s able to do that without pulling out her phone, just by simply asking, “What am I looking at right here?” And it tells her the name that she’s at. So then she knows, “Oh, I need to go two doors to the left,” or whatever. Just getting the environmental information, the health information, and just getting crazy information, like what is around me. That’s not something that you would do on a normal, but the fact that you have the ability to do that is exciting. And sometimes you do it just to find out what, and you learn that, oh, well I didn’t know that there was a Walgreens two doors down, so that might be easier for me to get my medicine next time or to pick up my milk, or whatever. So that’s one of the ways that I think that the wearable technology has really just made access to information around us easier for everybody.

Yeah, most definitely. And you’ve hit on most of the things I was even going to say, but a few other things that I think are really exciting is some of the wearables that have kind of AI built in. So not only can you get information, but you can really kind of dig in or even not get all the information. I just think of, and I know you’ve done it before, and I think we’ve kind of done it before, we have folks that maybe fly a lot for their jobs. So you know, they used to have to kind of pull out an app and maybe have everything read to them. Now they can just say, you know, “Where’s the flight to, I don’t know, Orlando?”

And it’ll sit there and, “Oh, that’s flight number, such and such. It’s at this gate and it looks like it’s on time.”

You know what I mean? I don’t have to listen to every little bit of information. And then, also some of the ones that are coming out where I can use kind of the augmented reality glasses to get captions kind of put into my glasses. I think that’s very cool. And there’s different ones kind of coming out. In fact, we’ve played with some just cheaper augmented reality glasses around here and connected them to our phones, and like the Notes app or other apps that do some transcribing, and been able to get some captions on there. I mean, it doesn’t make up for, of course if you’re doing an event or something, definitely plan for accessibility and have that there. But if you’re an individual with a hearing impairment, you know darn well that not everybody plans for that kind of thing, especially in maybe kind of quick conversation.

So just being able to get that information right there, it’s very cool. And again, you’re not holding another device. I mean, you could maintain eye contact with the person the entire time and have all those captions just pop up right there, right in front of your eyes, which can be super helpful. And yeah, all the different health things.

And then with a lot of the smartwatches, the fall detection, especially because know it’s not a device that has to be in my home, it’s not something else I have to wear or anything like that. It’s something that can just really help for folks who maybe have any kind of challenge with mobility, where that might be a concern, where it can actually still call people and just, I don’t know, let us stay at home and be healthier a little bit longer, or as long as we possibly can. But there’s lots of very cool ones. They all kind of have their place. Some of them look like regular glasses and regular devices. Some of them are much larger and maybe not something you’d wear every day, but still can make a huge difference in a lot of different ways.

Yeah, and I mean, just getting dressed for work every day, something that a lot of us take for granted. But if you’re visually impaired, it’s kind of hard to make sure that the outfit that you’re putting on is going to be appropriate for the job that you’re going to today. So sometimes having those smart AI glasses allows you to stand in front of a mirror and just say, “How do I look today? Is my outfit appropriate for what I’m about to do?”

And it’ll give you that information, down to even if you’re wearing a necklace or not. I mean, most of us will reach up and be able to tell that, but now how much do we want to rely on it? I don’t know. But I guess at this point in time, it’s better than nothing, right? So to take a quick check of yourself before you walk out the front door, we all feel better when we think we look good or when we look good, it helps us feel better. So that’s one of the uses that one of my consumers that we got the smart glasses for was for her to just be able to make sure that she looks appropriate when she walks out to go to work every day.

Yeah, it’s kind of interesting. I think wearable technologies still has a way to go. It’s trying to, I feel like there are a lot of good applications. And Belva, you listed a lot of those out. I do love the health related stuff. So being able to communicate directly to your primary physician about what’s going on at particular times. Because I’ve been there, I’ve sat on that desk in my doctor’s office and tried to explain how I’m feeling, and I can’t, I never feel like… The answer I get most of the time is, “Take two of these, call me in the morning.”

Because I’m never able to really fully explain or help them understand what I’m feeling. And I don’t do a good job of that. So I love some of these things that it can do. I think still, it’s still time, that needs a little time for it to really kind of figure out what exactly are the most important things it can do for folks. And maybe the next few years we’ll continue to kind of tweeze those out as AI becomes a part of some of that as well. And again, I think, Josh, you mentioned it, Belva, you might’ve also mentioned it too. It’s just like, okay, well, so we also have to be a little careful. We can’t trust it fully. Like, what do we do with that? How much do we rely on that versus do we look at other sources to be able to help get us our information? I don’t know.

There’s a lot of great things out there for sure. I think it’s going to take a little bit more time to explore a little bit, but I’m encouraged. It’s moving along and there are some really good applications for it. Well, hey, I want to open this up to our listeners. If you have any feedback regarding wearable technology and how it can help folks with disabilities, 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@eastersealscrossroads.org. Love to hear from you. All right, so our next question is, are there mouse options suitable for individuals with limited dexterity? So I’ll open that up to the group.

My favorite one is one that I came across many years ago and I was trying to look right now to see exactly what it’s called. I don’t know if it’s called a thumb mouse or a finger mouse, but it’s just a little tiny device that you can slip onto any finger in your hand. Your hand can actually be laying on your wheelchair arm, your desk arm, in your lap, whatever, and you just control it with your thumb. So the left click is left click, right click is right click. And the thumb in the middle, there’s like a little track thing you can track. I’m sorry, move it around.

So you can hold it in your hand, put your finger in it. It’s very comfortable and very easy to use. And it’s also very, very inexpensive. We do, I know, have them or have one in our lending library, and I know we have it, because I’ve used it for evaluations in the past. But yeah, there are a lot of different trackballs and joystick, and head mouse, and you guys probably have a lot more experience with that type of stuff than what I do. But that little thumb one is one of my favorites. And when I say very inexpensive, it’s like less than 20 bucks. But it’s definitely one that if you are having difficulty with using the standard mouse, that sometimes is a good option to try out.

And Belva just named off half of them. But anyway, yeah, there’s all kinds of different ones. The trackball mice, I mean, if you just have a little bit of limited dexterity, a trackball can be nice, because it doesn’t require as much movement. A lot of them also allow you to program some of the buttons, so that it can be a little easier for maybe some tasks that you have to do that require some fine motor control to really be able to access. And then other ones, you mentioned a head mouse. So it’s a different ones that kind of track my movement. There’s also eye gaze. I mean, if I can move my eyes, blink or dwell, control those kind of things, I should be able to control a lot of my computer.

And again, that’s just moving the eyes. I don’t have to move the head or anything else. There’s also software and things you can put on. Cephable is one I kind of think of. It’s free. It allows you to control a lot of your computer with head movements and with some other kinds of movements. Your iPads and iPhones, if they’re newer versions, actually have some eye control built in. Still a little not perfect, I’m going to say not perfect. That’s a really nice way of putting it, but it’s also pretty new. So as we kind of learn with anything, especially that like Apple puts out, it takes a little bit of time for it to really get better. But the fact that it’s being built in is still very cool, because that used to be a one, $2,000 device to kind of connect and really get.

And I know just in the time I’ve been doing this, which comparatively to everyone else on this call is not that long, eye gaze systems and eye control used to be if a mouse ran by in the other room or the wind blew, or a fly landed on it, it didn’t work. You know, you had to completely recalibrate it. And nowadays, I mean, you might need, if you have very, very little movement besides your eyes, you might need somebody to help you set it up originally. But after that, it’s going to pretty much work. It seems to really help. So I mean anything from just a little bit of limited movement on to, again, very, very, very little mobility at all. There’s different ways to control your devices out there.

And then, another one I’ll just bring up is Microsoft has adaptive tools. They have an adaptive mouse that you can actually 3D print different kind of handles and different ways to control it. And then they also have their, and I can’t remember what they’re called, I really should right now, probably should have looked that up. But other accessibility tools, which are almost like specialized switches. Again, they’re just made by Microsoft. They work great with their tools that you can use to set up your own kinds of switches and things. And they’re about the same price as just your standard kind of switch controlled devices for computer control. So there’s a ton of different options out there.

And Belva, just because you brought it up, you’re here in Indiana, we have most of those options here at our loan library, and you can check that out at eastersealstech.com. Or if you’re not in Indiana, but somewhere in the United States or the territories, you can go to eastersealstech.com/states and find your local program, because I can guarantee wherever you are, if you have an ATX program, they got a lot of mice there that you can try out. A lot of different controls, just because, I mean, this is a need a lot of folks have.

I mean, not just individuals with disabilities, but as we get older, if you really think, I mean, if I’m moving a mouse around, I’m moving my elbow, my wrist, my shoulder, my fingers, I mean, I’m moving pretty much everything on that right or left side of my body. So any limitation in that movement could cause pain, stress, or just kind of issues with access. So there’s lots of different ones out there, and really it’s just finding the one that’s right for you. Some are more joystick shape, some require more movement, some less, but there’s a lot of different options out there.

Yeah, and you did pick up on that library thing, so thank you for that, Josh. But also, sometimes it’s temporary and maybe you’ve had some sort of an injury, and just for the next 30 or 60 days, you’re going to need to look for an alternative method for using your mouse. So your lending library could also be a place for you to be able to accommodate that, because most of the devices can be loaned for a limited amount of time, just like any other library.

And Brian, I’m going to jump back again many years ago to a client that you and I worked with, this was back in the day when Brian did all the evaluations and I got to do all the training piece. We had a young man that was using a head mouse, and I remember he put his on a hat. So his little tracker thing was on a hat that he would have to wear, and then he would move his head and do his mouse functions with that little dot that was on his hat, and the camera that was sitting on his monitor. And then, Josh, to go back to something that you said, the one big flaw in that whole situation was someone had to put the hat on for him.

He was unable to get the hat put on by himself, so he couldn’t start his computer work until someone was able to get that hat on for him. I’m sure that there’s probably a way to make that more independent at this point in time, but that was many, many, many years ago. So, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Well, and if you think, I mean, even kind of back in the day, not every computer had a camera on it. Now pretty much every camera has a built-in camera that’s probably higher quality than the one you used to have to connect to be able to do it. So it’s just a matter of getting the software to kind of work with those things and it makes it so much more accessible. And it seems like while a lot of assistive technology is still very, very expensive, a lot of these tools seem almost more mainstream these days and not quite as cost prohibitive.

I mean, still borrow them from your ATX and figure out which one works for you, or like Belva said, and great job just setting them up and we’re just knocking them down, and back and forth to each other, because that’s perfect. But yeah, thanks for bringing up the temporary needs and temporary disabilities, because yeah, a shoulder injury, an arm injury, any kind of injury like that, that’s something that could definitely keep you productive, keep you doing what you need to do while you’re healing up and getting back up to where you want to be.

Excellent. I don’t even have much to add, because I think you guys covered quite a bit of it, so that’s great.

Actually, Brian was talking the entire time, he was just on mute.

That’s right.

We got a lot out.

I just figured that out. I’m like, “Hey, oh, I’ve got some things to add. Didn’t get them in. I was muted.” So, but hey, I want to open this up to our listeners. If you guys have any mouse options that you’ve used for folks who have limited dexterity, let us know. I think that was a great suggestion, talking about the state ATX, what a great opportunity to be able to try some of those things out. There are hundreds of these, thousands of these different types of mouse options, and it’s a great way to be able to put some things in your hands to be able to try those things out. But if you do have feedback or any suggestions for other options, let us know. We’d 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@eastersealscrossroads.org. 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 question kind of goes back to what we do every day here and some of the experiences that you, Josh, Belva, myself have had. But looking back on all of the accommodations you’ve helped provide over the years, is there one that stands out as particularly impactful or memorable? And then, what made it special? And so, I’ll just open that up.

I’m ready to go. I’m ready to flow, if you want me to go first.

Go for it.

Okay. So if I do happen to mention a name during this, it’s okay, because he has many years ago agreed to do a story for us. So his story has been published, but he will always go down in history as one of my more challenging accommodations and one of my most successful accommodations. So the fact that it was so challenging and so successful, just it will always be very fresh for me. So he is a deafblind individual who lives alone. Now, I don’t know how much you want me to go into, Brian, so if I start going too deep, just say, “Okay, that’s enough.”

But he lives alone in the middle of nowhere. So if you could close your eyes and imagine being deaf and blind, living alone, he does have a dog, and unable to communicate with anyone. I mean, he can’t email, he can’t pick up the phone. Even if someone shows up at his front door, he’s unable to communicate. So he became an applicant in the I Can Connect program, which is a program where we work to provide technology and training for individuals that are both vision and hearing impaired for the purposes of distance communication.

So a friend of his had heard about the program, sent in his application, I showed up to do his evaluation and learned that he had really not used a computer in many, many, many, many years, and learned that he was in the middle of nowhere. So getting internet connection into his home, which was absolutely going to be necessary for distance communication, because that meant we had to have some sort of connection to the outside world, wasn’t available in his area. So I had to first figure out how was I going to teach this person how to use a computer who hadn’t done it in many years, and how was I going to get internet service into his area, and was he ever going to be successful?

So I left him with a qwerty keyboard after the evaluation and said to him, “Here, just play with this. I’ll be back.”

And that took me weeks to figure out, it should have been a simple question, but it wasn’t. But it took me weeks to figure out how to get his internet service. And what we ended up going with was a little MiFi Wifi device that we were able to connect to his phone line, which then gave him, because yes, he did have a phone line, but he couldn’t use the phone, obviously. So then we were able to get the computer connected to the internet.

Long story short, many, many hours of training. The first day that he was able to actually send and receive an email message from one of his family members who lived in a different state, there was myself, his sister, two interpreters, and him in the room. And as he was reading that email message, using his braille display of course, and understanding what he was reading and who it was from, and everything, I don’t think there was a dry eye in the house other than his. Everyone sitting around him was just unbelievably amazed. And then, he responded to this day, this has been 10 plus years to this day, on a rare occasion, I will receive an email from him saying, “Hey, this is Jeff. Just wanted to let you know Millie and I are doing fine.”

I always love getting that email, because what that says to me is we were successful. He’s still using the exact same method that we set him up on many years ago. Now we have had to update his computer once, and then also on a rare occasion, I’ll get a text from his sister and it will say, “Hey, Jeff’s email is not working.” So when I hear from her, I know we’ve got a problem. When I hear from him, I know everything’s successful. The problem’s usually pretty minor. A storm has happened or something has caused the little Wifi device to have to be reset. Usually with a reset of that or a restart of the computer, everything is fixed.

But anyway, he now is able to communicate with his family. The only person that he really did communicate with before all of this was his sister, and they sort of kind of have their own little language for communicating. And she shows up to see him every two weeks with groceries. And he was elated to be able to send her an email to make sure that she brought him all the right things, because she was always forgetting something, because she just didn’t know all the things that he needed. So yeah, I love his story. I love his success and determination, because trust me when I tell you, it was many, many hours teaching him how to use email, and that’s the only thing he does. He turns that computer on, opens up his outlook, and he reads his email and he sends his email, and then he turns the computer off and that’s it. It’s just his communication device and works amazing for him.

That’s awesome.

Yeah. Yeah, great story.

Awesome.

It is a great story. I don’t want to follow that one. So I’m going to go the opposite way, not of something that didn’t work, but I sat there and thought about this, and I was like, “You know, there’s been so many just cool ones or ones that I really got,” but I guess this one just demonstrates that AT doesn’t have to be that hard.

So Belva said that individual came to us through I Can Connect. This was an individual that came through us through vocational rehabilitation. And so, usually when VR gets a hold of us, they have us do an evaluation, kind of a workplace assessment, see what they might need to be successful at work. This individual worked at a kind of a public building, and so I don’t disclose too much, I won’t kind of say where, but they were a janitor and they had no problem doing their job in any way, shape or form. They cleaned things great, they did everything wonderfully. They knew all their tasks, but the issue was they worked in the evenings. Their boss worked during the day and they had no overlap. And the individual due to his learning disability, could not read, could not write.

And so, the boss couldn’t leave him directions on how to do his job or how to do the extra things, “Hey, there’s an event coming up, we need this done this way or this done this way.”

There was no way for them to kind of communicate. I mean, granted, the boss could have changed his schedule and stayed half an hour longer, but that’s not kind of a real accommodation. So went and met with the individual, and again, they give us so many hours to kind of meet with someone, look at their needs and write a report. So we sat there and in talking to the individual and their job coach, like, “Yeah, the boss sends these emails with the things.”

So I just downloaded a real quick Chrome extension that could read those emails to the person and enabled dictation. And within 45 minutes, he knew how to have the computer read those emails to him and how to dictate back to his boss. So it was not far from the VR office. I went over to him and just asked him if they had a headset somewhere in their closet, maybe things that had been returned or something like that. They did. I took that back to him and I asked, “Do you even want me to write the report? Because we’re kind of done.” So while there was still time left, I said okay. So I came back a few weeks later just to look and everyone that worked there was using the dictation and having the things read to them, because it was just easier.

Easier, yeah.

It was easier. And it was just one of those things, that AT doesn’t always have to be big and kind of hard. And this individual, again, the boss was the one who told him to get in touch with VR to see how they could help, because he loved him working there. It was just he couldn’t give him the instructions to do other things. They tried drawing pictures, they tried other stuff, and none of it had really worked. And again, it was just as easy as putting a free Chrome extension and a free download on the computer. And again, in 45 minutes of training, the individual knew how to use it.

And normally we do an evaluation for a few hours, write a report. This was just almost in and out, and I felt bad. After an hour, I was like, “Well, I feel like I should do something else, because this was a little bit…” And then in going back, everything was great. They were able to communicate, he was able to get more done, and as far as I know, he’s still working there, because at least as long as his boss would work there, he said that that individual is going to work there, because he was just an amazing worker that did a really great job. So there’s too many to count. I always like that one, because especially as we go and talk to businesses and maybe talk to other people, they think that everything’s going to be expensive or really hard, and sometimes it’s not. Sometimes it’s just as simple as enabling some of the tools that we’ve talked about here today, even on the show.

Yeah, like you said with that, Josh, sometimes it is just a matter of having a different set of eyes come into the situation and with the background and the knowledge that we have, be able to just be like, “Oh, let’s try this.” And boom. Wow. It works.

Yeah. And Belva, have you ever tried to overcomplicate things?

Oh yeah.

Me too. Me too. Where I’m like, “Oh, if I could just build like a forklift device that could somehow do this.” I’m like, “Or you know, they could turn a dressing stick around and use that to pull that off there. And that would work too.”

So, yep. Okay, good. I’m glad. It’s not just me that sometimes sits there and goes way off like, “Wow, we could do all this amazing stuff.” And you just look at it like, “Or we could just do this little thing and be done, and it’d work even better.” So, yep. Okay.

That’s excellent. Excellent. Hey, also for me, I’m going to go even in an opposite way. I love the kind of the mix of stories we’ve got with situations, but one of my favorite one, and Josh, Belva, you can tune me out, because you probably heard this from me a million times as I do presentations, but my favorite one was a situation… Nice. Nice, Josh. Josh turned his camera off. So my favorite one was a real simple kind of a Tim the Toolman Taylor, kind of a MacGyver situation. It was a guy who was working at a parking garage downtown Indianapolis, had a hard time getting in the parking garage. He had CP, limited dexterity, range of motion on his left side. And in order to get into this parking garage, he had to swipe his name badge on a little kiosk that he’d pull up to in his car. But that was really challenging, because of his range of motion and dexterity, fine motor control issues on his left side.

When I got there, what I loved was the employer had already done an accommodation for him, and they basically cut a yardstick in half, took a binder clip and a rubber band, and stuck that on the end of that yardstick, and then put his name badge in that binder clip. So for him, he could take his right arm, which he had much more control over, had better range of motion, dexterity, fine motor control with, he could take that, reach over, grab that yardstick from his passenger seat and reach across to him and swipe that out the window using, again, the arm he had better range of motion with, and then put that back in the passenger seat to get in and out of the garage.

However. So that was a really great accommodation, it worked really well for him. However, at times what would happen is he would put it out the window too far or maybe it wasn’t fully secured in that binder clip, and then his badge would fall to the ground, which would cause a lot of consternation, because once you’re pulled up to that little kiosk where you need to swipe your badge, you can’t open your door and you can’t pull in, because the arm’s not lifting up. And so, he gets kind of stuck there. And so, what I found, one of my favorite places to go a lot of times is just the hardware store and just kind of walk the hardware aisles. I don’t know, maybe I’ve got an affinity for PVC pipe and other types of glues and tapes. I don’t know.

But what I found at the hardware store was it was a craftsman auto tape measure. And so, essentially what that did was allowed him to be able to hold this tape measure up against his chest with that binder clip, or it was actually, it wasn’t even a binder clip, it was attached to the end. At the end of a tape measure, you always have a little metal tab. And we were able to kind of slide his name badge up on that little metal tab. So we’d hold that tape measure with his name badge up against his chest, and he’d be able to press the button and that tape measure would go out and extend out the window, and then he could then hit the retract button and it would retract right back into the car.

And so, he could then grab that and it was much smaller, easier. It wasn’t going to fall off. We had to fix his name badge to it, so he could get in and out of that garage much more quickly. So those were always my favorite kind of the nuts and bolts. I know Josh, you like to tinker with PVC pipe and peg boards, and other kinds of things too. So one of my favorite things to do is just kind of come out with these out of the box, kind of simple solutions. Wasn’t very costly. Tape measure was like 20 bucks, but was much more efficient and it was much more quick for him to be able to get in and out of that garage, and much more effective as well. So yeah.

That’s one of the rewarding parts of our jobs, when we’re able to help somebody do something that they just were absolutely unable to do. And sometimes it’s, like you said, sometimes it’s very cheap and easy to do, and other times unfortunately it is kind of expensive. But fortunately there’s, at least in our area of work, we have funding sources that usually help take care of those expenses. But it’s an amazing feeling when you can see the joy from someone when they can finally do something that they’ve been struggling to do. Yeah. And by the way, Brian, Tim Taylor’s got a new show out if you haven’t-

Tim the Toolman Taylor.

Yeah. He’s got a new show out. It’s called Shifting Gears.

Excellent. One thing I love about kind of all those stories is that as we talk about assistive technology, and not us maybe so much, but maybe people that look from the outside, the focus is always on what an individual can’t do. I think each of our stories kind of show what the individual can do. It’s always just that one challenge with communication or with access to a piece. It’s just that little piece that’s kind of missing, that one challenge, and just overcoming that. And then it’s all good from there. Especially kind of like you said, Belva, if the person can put in the work, because it is challenging to learn new technology for anyone and a disability, it can be an even bigger challenge. So no, great stories. I love hearing them. My favorite part of this job is just getting to hear the stories and the things that we get to do.

And when I go into a situation like this too, I don’t go into it thinking, “Oh, this person can’t.” I always go in thinking, “How are we going to do this differently?” Because that’s the thing, it can be done, but it’s going to be done in a different way. So what’s that way?

Yep. Yeah, exactly.

Hey, I want to open this up to our listeners. If you have an accommodation story or something that you would like to share on a situation that you’ve been involved with, we’d 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@eastersealscrossroads.org. Great ways to get ahold of us. Also, send us your feedback, send us your questions. Both of those things are super important as we put this show together. I would love to hear from you. And as we wrap up today’s show, I just want to say thank you to Josh and Belva, and give them an opportunity to say goodbye to you. So I’ll start with you, Belva.

Okay. I’ll say goodbye to everybody. And I also just want to remind everybody that no question is a dumb question. So if you have a question, please share it with us. And everybody have a great week and we’ll see you next time.

Sounds good. Josh?

And I’ll echo what Belva said, and also not all of our answers are not stupid answers. So if you happen to have a better answer or just kind of lived experience, be a provider, be an individual with a disability, or be kind of anywhere in there, please share that too, because I don’t know, I don’t think we’d do these jobs if we didn’t love continuing to learn and continuing to kind of grow. And you do that more the more folks you have doing it. So thanks for listening and thanks for participating, and thanks for being a part of it all, and see you next time.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Thanks, guys. Take care and we’ll talk to you guys next month.

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. Its editorial help from Josh Anderson, Belva Smith and Tracy Castillo receives support from Easterseals Crossroads and the INDATA Project. The show transcript is sponsored by InTRAC, the Indiana Telephone Relay Access Corporation. To learn more about InTRAC, 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.