Utilizing Adaptive Technology for Children with Visual Impairments (Session 2)

by Angel Pacheco, Program Administrator, Lighthouse Guild

Transcript

Sheila

Okay, welcome to the Lighthouse Guild “Utilizing Adaptive Technology for Children with Visual Impairments” with Angel Pacheco. We’re lucky to have him presenting tonight. He has worked at the Lighthouse Guild for over 32 years and currently supervises both the Assistive Technology Center and the adaptive Living Program at the Lighthouse. He has over two decades of experience with assistive technology, and three decades with computers. So thank you for joining us. And I’ll turn it over to you. Thank you very much.

Angel

Thank you for having me. Hi, everyone. Again, I’m Angel. What I’ll be doing tonight is going over accessibility on many different devices. Once I’m done with the presentation, I’ll try and answer any of your questions. But one of the things that I like to start off with is Apple devices. So, if we can go to the next screen here. Okay, if anyone has an iPhone, and they like to pull it out now, and we can go over the features together, the Apple phone has, well, every Apple device out there has built in assistive technology, whether it’s screen enlargement or voiceover mobility. The list goes on and on. And the features are fantastic. It’s the most accessible phone out there besides the jitterbug. I’m sorry, something’s beeping on the phone. Yeah.

Sheila

Yeah, it’s someone who, if you’re working around, it sounds like someone’s in their kitchen. If you could mute us why we’re going, that would be great. There you go. Thank you very much.

Angel

Thank you. So, as I was mentioning, we do have a speech, which is VoiceOver, we have screen magnification, which is Zoom. We have Magnify magnifier that’s built into the iPhone and the iPad, we can change the display of the text sizes, we can reduce the animation on the screen itself. A lot of people like to see animation when they’re moving icons around, we can reduce that because someone with a visual impairment may think that the icon is in focus elsewhere, because of the shadowing that happens behind it. So, we can remove that. We can have certain speech read back as well, whether it’s a paragraph or the entire screen. We also have audio descriptions where available. We can go to the next screen.

Sheila

Yes. And while I’m switching the screen, I noticed that people joined in thank you for coming, we are recording the call. So, if you could put us on mute and kill until Angel finishes his presentation and then we will open up for questions. Having said that, if you have your computer and you know you have a question, you can always type it in, and I can read it. So thank you very much.

Angel

Okay, the first time I like to go over is a VoiceOver. VoiceOver allows for many options for someone with a visual impairment or is totally blind.  With the VoiceOver feature, in order to access it, you can go to settings on your phone, and then scroll down all the way to accessibility. Once you’re in accessibility, you’ll see all the options that are available. There’s an option for vision, there’s options for physical and motor hearing, general. And what we’re going to do is go over VoiceOver first. 

If you select VoiceOver, which is the first option on division, there’s an on and off switch available there. There’s another way of turning on the voice, there’s a way that you can triple click. And again, there’s so many different iPhone variations out there. If you have a home button, and your iPhone and set up, you can press the home button three times, and a list will appear. And then you can choose the options that the accessibility options you want. With the newer phones, there’s a button on the right hand side that if you turn triple quick, it’ll bring up the options and you can choose which option you want to turn off.

So, with VoiceOver, again, that’s the speech component is it’s available on every Apple device, the Mac, the IMac, the iPad, and the iPhone. It can go ahead and read back all the text that’s on the screen. You can change the rate at which it speaks. I prefer a higher rate because I’ve been working with the technology so long that you can slow it down until you get adjusted to the rate at which he speaks. Humans generally speak about three over 300 words per minute, we don’t realize that when we’re having conversations with people, and then when they hear a robotic voice, for some reason, it takes a little more time to grasp that. So, I suggest that the speaking rate just be lowered to about 150 until so you get used to it. 

There are other options below that you can go ahead and change, which is speech, you can change the voice, the pitch, voice, could be a male, female, and there’s different options there. 

One of the important things I want to get to is the braille part. I know, some folks had questions about the braille portion. All Apple devices do have the braille software built into it, meaning that if you did have a Braille display, an external display, you can actually connect that display via Bluetooth or a cable connection to a computer system, and just get that going right away. So, you can have braille instead of having the screen read back to you. So, that’s an important feature that only Apple has at this time. If you were using Microsoft, that’s a whole different thing you would need a certain application to to get that going. 

Let’s go on to the next screen, because if I speak about VoiceOver, we’ll be here all night. The next feature is Zoom. Zoom is the magnification. The magnification does go up to 15 times on the screen. For computers, you can use different keyboard commands to turn the zoom on and off, increase and decrease the magnification. All of this is available on Apple’s website. Also, there is a practice feature on the iPhone, which we’ll get to a little bit later that can guide you through all of these steps. 

The Magnifier, the next option here is just that – it uses your camera as a magnifier. So, once you turn the magnifier portion on, it’ll go ahead and allow you to scan anything, increase the magnification while you’re looking at it live. Live, meaning that you can move around on the page. And then, if you just want to take a picture of it, and increase it further on your phone, you can do that. And then you can save that image for a later date. So, for example, if you’re reading the newspaper and there’s an article there with small print, you can go ahead and use the magnifier, put it to the magnification that you need. And if you want to save it for later, you can take an image of it. And then at a later time, just open up the magnifier open up the picture and then go ahead and magnify.

Now you can do that now by just taking a picture going ahead and taking your two fingers and, and just spreading it out to open up that picture. But it’s much easier with the magnifier because it’s a sliding bar rather than using your fingers to expand the size.

Okay, so let’s go to the next option which is on the next page. That’s the Display and Text Size. I love this feature. It allows you to change the characters on here and many other options. I prefer having the text bold, it stands out more. For some reason, all the phones just have a lot of brightness. You can go ahead and select the bold text, it’ll just darken it for you – easier to see. You can enlarge your text, it will take up a little more space. If you make it too large, though, then some of the characters may actually disappear off the title of some icons. So you have to be careful on how large the text you have. 

As far as button shapes, you can actually recreate the different outlines on them. In other words, instead of having an outline on them, you can remove the outline so that way there isn’t too many too much motion on your screen. Some folks, usually when they see motion again, it tends to distract them and they may end up in another area. 

We also have On and Off labels. When you turn that feature on – for us when we turn on a certain feature, you’ll see a green color near the button that means that that item is on. When we slide the button to the left. Usually we get a dark area. I have a dark gray or black. When you turn on the on and off labels, you have a zero for off or one for on, similar to some of the items that we use today, you might actually see a capital I, which is supposed to be a one and a zero, it’s basically letting you know that the circuit is on or off.

The other option is to reduce the transparency. For some reason, again, just to make things appear nice and neat, when you open up something you might be able to see through that item. You can reduce that feature completely. And I’ve done that on my phone. Because if you’re trying to read the text on something that’s transparent, you might see the characters behind that making it difficult to read. So, I always suggest to my students that they reduced the transparency completely.

Increasing the contrast – you can increase the contrast, you can change the brightness.  Actually, the iPhone has a feature called dark mode that takes off a lot of the white and makes everything black with white lettering, which is awesome. Because I know I use my phone a lot. And when I’m done using it with the white background, my eyes are just tired. But now that I’ve been using the dark mode, I’m able to use my phone a little bit more. And I don’t know end up with ice dreams or headaches or anything like that. So, I love that feature. Let’s go on to the next. 

Okay, motion, again, we can reduce the motion or the effects of icons and other items on the on the phone. We can also change the way the text is animated. We can also go ahead and change the video previews. Sometimes when you get a text, for example, New Year’s Eve, people were texting, you know, happy New Year. And when you open up that text, all of a sudden you get fireworks and everything. You can turn those features off so that way, only the text comes up without that animation. 

The spoken text content. Again, you can, if you put your finger on certain text, it’ll highlight that word, you can have that word spoken back to you, you can actually spread it so that way it reads whatever else is selected. You can have the entire screen read back, if you have VoiceOver on with two fingers swiping down. And a lot more. Again, when you have the VoiceOver on, it just basically reads a lot of information back to you. But, you do need to know a lot of hand gestures in order to use the equipment, especially an iPhone and an iPad. With the computers. It’s all keyboard commands. Let’s go to the next screen. 

It should be audio descriptions, okay. Audio Descriptions is just that – if you’re watching a video on your iPad, or iPhone, and there is audio descriptions on there, it’ll automatically play. If there’s no audio descriptions on that video that you’re watching. Unfortunately, you’re out of luck. But it’s already set to the on position. And if there is only a description on there, you’ll actually be able to hear it as well. So, you won’t just hear the video. It’ll also tell you what’s happening in the background. 

Now, a lot of great things about Apple. First of all, they do have an accessibility support line. They have the website where you can actually get a lot of the keyboard commands, a lot of the hand gestures, they actually show you step by step on how to do everything that I just mentioned earlier. And not only that, they have tutorials on YouTube. So, they’ll teach you how to maneuver your hands because there’s a lot available on this phone but you have to go ahead and use those hand features. 

The Apple stores, they also have free training on these on the accessibility portions. So, if you call up your local store, find out what days and times they have them – every store is different. Usually in New York, we use the stores on 68th Street and 14th Street. 14th Street is close to a building for folks that have visual impairments and are totally blind. And they often go to that store for assistance The store and 68th Street and Broadway in my hand, that’s where a lot of our consumers go for assistance. And they do have folks there that know about accessibility. So, when they go in there assist it, they’re provided training. 

And also, if you do not have a device with you, they will go ahead and lend you a device for that training, which is fantastic. So, that’s a great part about Apple. Apple continues to just move forward with accessibility. Not only, as I mentioned, that they have the voice, the magnification, but they also have the software to run braille devices, which is awesome.

Okay, let’s move on to the apps. Be My Eyes is a fantastic app, I am actually one of the helpers on there. I’m one of the volunteers. When you use Be My Eyes, you open up the app, you go ahead and click on where you need assistance. It’ll actually go ahead and dial four or five volunteers. Whatever picks up that phone first is the volunteer that will assist the individual. So, as someone that has a visual impairment, or is totally blind says, “Can you please read the the date on the gallon of milk?” We can tell him well, can you turn the light on first, because that individual may not know whether the light is on or off. So that they’ll hand turn the light on? Then we’ll tell them okay, can you move the milk over to the right, that’s where the date is. And then we’ll read the data back to that individual. And they’ll say, Okay, thank you. And that’s the end of the call, unless they have other things that that they need assistance with. 

I’ve help people identify money, I’ve helped them identify where they drop things. I mean, so many things, whether they’re shoe colors match. Yeah, so it’s just a fantastic free tool that you can use. I do not recommend it for outside mobility. Because the individuals, again, those are just volunteers, a lot of them, most of them are not trained on orientation mobility. So you know, it could be a liability, if they go ahead until you make a right and you may end up somewhere where you’re not supposed to be you get totally lost and, and run into issues. I will be going over another app that has live volunteers that are trained. 

The other app I want to talk about is the AIRA app. It is similar to be my eyes, it’ll go ahead and connected to a volunteer. And actually, this is the app that keeps track of you. In other words, if you’re traveling from your house, to the closest Starbucks, and it’s five blocks away, the volunteer will actually stay with you until you get to that Starbucks, they will tell you okay, you now need to cross before you cross, your the light is red for you where the light is green for you. They will just walk with you all the way through because they will have your GPS, your location. Once you get to your location, you just say goodbye. Thank you. And that’s it. 

Now, it’s free for five minutes. Then if you hang up and call back, it’s free for another five minutes. Their fees are always changing. I don’t recall what they are now. But it can get a little expensive. But if you’re inside a AT&T store or a Target store, it’s absolutely free. So if you’re shopping at Target, and you are looking for a certain color, size, shirt, they will tell you okay, that shirt is blue and no I want yellow. Okay, over to the right, there’s a yellow one. The sticker is on the top. No that’s an extra large, medium is the next one. Okay, I got it. And the individual can just put it into their cart. So, the AIRA app is a fantastic app, if you plan to go traveling and just want someone to be with you throughout the whole route. But again, it’s only free for the first five minutes after that there is a fee. 

Okay, let’s go onto the next window. Seeing AI is another beautiful app. It is free. It was created by Microsoft. This app allows you to do many things. It allows you to identify money.  It helps you identify colors. It helps you identify whether the room light is on or off. It also helps you identify how many people are in a room. And, for example, if we were all together in a room, and someone took a picture of me and labeled it Angel, next time, we’re in an a room, and they scan the room. If I’m in that room, it’ll tell them Angel to the right 10 feet away, which is awesome. 

It can also help you read back text, as well as handwriting as long as the handwriting it isn’t a doctor’s handwriting. Not that all doctors handwriting is bad. But yeah, it goes ahead and reads back handwriting, which is awesome. And this was developed by Microsoft. And I believe it’s also available on Android now. But it can be used on iPads and iPhones. Let’s go on to the next. 

Okay, Amazon Alexa, another little great device that a lot of folks can use. I’ve actually worked with parents and autism and went over a few things on how they can use Alexa, I have my Alexa right here next to me it’s muted, so that way she doesn’t go on and start asking you know, can you speak louder or anything, but it helps with time management. Waking up with an alarm, I ask for the current time, set timers, appointment reminders, medication reminders, you can go ahead and make and receive calls. You can send or receive texts, you can have a wireless home. We can also set the thermostat, we can do the alarm system, we can listen to different stations, we can order groceries, Amazon orders and so much more. I’m actually going to go ahead and turn on, unmute my Alexa here. Alexa set temperature to 70 degrees.

Alexa

The heat’s set to 70.

Angel

And it went ahead and set temperature to send in degrees. Alexa, play 1010 WINS me.

Alexa

1010 WINS from radio.com. Acme is hiring for second shift orders. 

Angel

Alexa, stop. Alexa, wake me up at 630 with the Z100.

Alexa

Alarm set for 6:30am tomorrow with Z100 on I Heart Radio. Would you like this alarm set for every weekday? No.

Angel

And those are just some of the features that you can use it. If you are at work, and you want to tell your child something, you can actually send a message through the Alexa app. it could be verbal, or you can have Alexa just repeat it into the house.  You can have multiple Alexa devices throughout the house. And, I’ll repeat it throughout the entire house or a certain device – you get to choose which device or devices you want that information sent to.  Again, another wonderful little device. And if what I’m using right now is the Echo Dot but if you do have the other devices that have the cameras, again, you can communicate visually with your child if they have some vision. 

You can actually see what they’re doing while they’re at home. And just a lot.  You can also set reminders for your kids – hey five o’clock take out the garbage, six o’clock do the dishes and, and so many other options. It’s just wonderful how far technology has come today. I remember 30 something years ago, when I had to put in a one foot card into a computer system. And the voice that came out there was terrible, terrible and that one piece cost over $3,000. And compared to today’s feedback with the sound like Alexa is almost a human sound, it’s awesome, but also scary. But let’s go on to the next slide, please. 

Someone had a question about ZoomText. ZoomText is a screen magnification program, it does come with some speech. With limited speech It’s not a full screen reading program. That’s because there are two versions – the magnifier reader, it’s just that it’ll magnify. A great deal. Usually I tell my consumers that if you’re magnifying more than eight times, it’s time to move over to voice. Because once you increase it more than eight times, you’re not going to get too many words that fit into the screen. So, it’s gonna take you much longer to make out what those words are. 

With the partial reader will read back a lot of information, but not everything. That’s where Jaws comes in. And if we can go to the next screen. Jaws stands for Job Access With Speech.  The JAWS program is a full screen reading program. And as long as there is text there and if on webpages pictures are captioned properly, then you’ll get the feedback as to what’s in that picture. There’s different costs to each of these, if you’re using it at home, I believe they have an annual plan of about $89. I believe, if you’re at a job site, you’re looking at $1200 and up to have the software on your system. And I can explain that a little bit later if someone wants further information on that. 

The screen that’s up now are the types of braille displays. The one on the left is from Freedom Scientific, it’s the Focus 40, which means that there’s 40 braille cells. And on the right you have the Humanware BrailleNote Touch 18 Plus. It’s actually a notetaker and a tablet. I’m going to go with a device on the left first. 

The Focus 40 is just a Braille display that can actually take over the keyboard. So, we can connect the device to a computer system. Now if it’s an Apple system, the Apple system should be able to automatically detect it. And you can start working with it. No problems. If it’s a Microsoft system, usually you need JAWS in order to run it because JAWS has the files needed to run that device. 

Every program that you run on a computer or every piece of hardware that you have on your computer needs some kind of software in order for it to work properly. And again, Apple already has that installed in their systems. Whereas with Microsoft, you actually need another component in order for these devices to work. With the Focus 40 you can use it just like a keyboard. It has Braille keys. I don’t know if most of you are able to see it but there’s a total of four key buttons on the left and then a four on the right in the middle, there’s a space button, along with more buttons in the front and on the side. That allows the individual to move to the right, to the left, by character, by word, by or up and down, by line, by paragraph, by page. There’s a lot of options available when using the Focus 40.

You can also with the Focus 40 Bluetooth connect it to the iPhone, the iPad, or any other tablet that’s accessible and basically get all the information that shows up on the screen. Now this Focus 40 is pretty big. There’s actually one that’s 80 cells that’s much larger than that. But there are others that are much smaller. If you notice on the right-hand side, this 18 cells. There are 18-cell displays that you can actually use.  They’re by another company and I have a list of companies on the next slide when we get to that. 

But with the BrailleNote Touch 18 Plus, it’s basically a laptop. It just doesn’t fold. There is a screen on this one but there are others that don’t have a screen. It works just like a laptop. It has a word processor. It has spreadsheets, you can access the internet, you can access your email. The list goes on and on. Same as a laptop. The whole thing is you just get braille output that tells you everything that’s on the screen, and also provides voice feedback so you can hear what’s there as well. 

For privacy, you can use a Bluetooth earpiece, the same thing when you’re using your iPhone or any device that has speech, you can always get a Bluetooth earpiece, so that way, you’re the only one that hears it. And, you know, your bank account is not read back a lot to everyone. You can also have a privacy screen on a lot of the Apple devices it basically blacked out the screen. And you can do your whatever it is you’re going to do text and so on without anyone seeing what’s happening on the screen. 

But with these two devices, again, they’re very different. They do cost a lot of money, because each braille cell is about $200, every braille dot, I should say, is a little over $200 each. So the device on the right, which is the BrailleNote that one right, then that picture is just over $4000. There’s another one for about $6,000. The Focus 40 on the left is just over $1,000. These prices do fluctuate depending on the version that comes out, the changes that are made them and so on. Let’s go on to the next screen. 

I provided a list of contacts for you. Bookshare. That’s for audiobooks. CTech is a company that sells a lot of these products along with Eye Assist, Hims, Humanware. And I added the Microsoft accessibility number. So, if you do have a Microsoft PC, Microsoft PCs do have voice which is Narrator and also a magnifier. If you’re using Windows XP, the magnification and speech has improved a great deal. And Visibility is another company that will also sell you these products. 

A lot of these companies will also go to your home to demonstrate them. I know a lot of you are not in New York, but some of these companies actually have people throughout the United States. So, a vendor can actually go to your home and show you a certain product and talk to you about the pricing. And in New York, the New York State Commission for the Blind does have a monthly plan, you can take out a loan I believe it is. Last time I heard, the rate was four point something percent. So, you can make monthly payments with that. 

If you do have a child in school, just realize that your child also has the right to the same education as any other child that’s there.  Go to the disability department, demand that they provide your child with equipment. In New York City, they do provide the children with the equipment only while they are they are in school. And unfortunately, once the summer comes in school and SOS devices have to be returned to the school. And they don’t have these devices. And when they return back to school, sometimes they forget how to use the devices or newer devices come out. And then they have to go through retraining. So, it’s important to make sure that as parents, you go into the school and give them heck when you have to. Because a lot of times they may not even tell you that these items are available, but every school is supposed to have it. 

I also know that in New York City, a lot of the libraries, some of the computers installed had magnification installed onto them along with speech. So, check with your local library to see if they have an accessible computer that your child can use. So, that’s another place that they they can go to to practice the skills. 

But I am going to tell you right now, starts them now. Your two-year-old, your three year old, whatever age because as they continue to grow with the technology, it makes it easier for them to just keep up with everyone else. I used to run a Saturday program for over 12 years, and it’s the best part of the 30 something years I’ve been at the agency We had children from the ages of eight to 17. At the end of the course, we provided them with a computers – the New York State Commission for the Blind, provided them with the software because they were assessed to determine what they would need, whether it was magnification speech, or both. 

Some of our kids went ahead, continued on to college, using the computers, some of the computers were six, seven years old, but they still use it to get through their college courses. Some found jobs, and were able to continue working because they were able to use the technology to read back information. To see what was on screen with the magnification. One child actually went to Harvard and graduated and everything came back and it was like, amazing. So again, start them young, the technology will continue to change. At one point, we’re just going to be like Star Trek, just give a command and, boom, it’ll be there for you. Right now, Xfinity has a control where you just speak to it, and they’ll find the movie or or whatever show it is that you want immediately, and it will start playing it for you. So, we’re very close, unfortunately, you know, a lot of companies are a , I don’t know, if it’s that they’re finding it difficult to make websites accessible, or are they just gave up. But by law, they’re supposed to have their sites accessible. 

And I go back and forth with a lot of them and saying, hey, you know, your website needs this, that the other thing and all I get is Oh yeah, okay, we’ll look into it kind of thing. But if you keep pushing, they’ll go ahead and make those changes. So, the web is not that fully accessible yet. I’m hoping that it will be down the road. But again, nowadays, you can speak into a lot of computers and get a lot of the information you need on the screen and sometimes it’s overwhelming what you get. 

Sheila

Okay, well, thank you so much angel that was so full. Let me just turn off the recording and then we’ll open it up for questions if that’s okay with you.

Angel

Sure. Absolutely.