I am your host Jeff Bond. This is Episode 55. This is also one of those episodes that
I think is a little bit special. This last week the PATINS staff spent time down in Orlando,
Florida at the Assistive Technology Industrial Association or ATIA Conference. We spent time
in the vendor area which we are showing on the screen now. We also spent a lot of time
in sessions.
As we walk through the vendor area it is one of those things where you just keep collecting
little tidbits of information and some of that is what I am going to share with you
today. My colleagues and I look at the kinds of things that might be relevant or important
to you out there and it is just a small, small selection of the kinds of things that we actually
saw.
So we have the ATIA Orlando bag that we all got when we first got there. This is actually
the 15th anniversary of ATIA. They always give us a hodgepodge of things once we get
in there. One of the things that we collect throughout the venue area are just papers
of different vendors that we get for information. It is the kinds of things that we look at
in order to provide the type of equipment or software that could be useful for students
throughout the state. We also ended up getting other things, as well. We get balls like this.
We get shoe polish. We also get keychains that we find at the vendor area with their
logo. This happens to be Loc-Line. Then we get pens and pens and pens and pens; and every
once in a while a CD or two. So all this stuff is things that we collect in that bag, as
well as, the information that we have here just a whole lot of it.
I did want to share the most important thing is the conference itself. I have just the
pre-conference information here and that was on Tuesday and Wednesday. Then, on Thursday,
Friday and Saturday were the concurrent sessions. Just to take a quick look this just happens
to be Thursday’s as we go through here. There were for each day anywhere from 160
to 170 concurrent sessions throughout the day. So just a lot of information that we
all absorbed the best we could.
One of the places that I spent was a two day iPad boot camp with Therese Willkomm. Therese
was also one of our speakers at our last state conference here in Indianapolis with the PATINS
Project. So I spent two days with her, gave an awful lot of information, as well as, Jim
Lambert, the NW PATINS coordinator, and together we kind of shared information and that sort
of stuff with folks there, as well. The one thing that I saw that was kind of interesting
was a thing that Therese uses this corrugated plastic and she said you can get at the hardware
store, but she collects it after there have been elections because that is the type of
media that the candidates use in order to promote their candidacy. So she will go around
and collect that and then reuse it for things like a portable scan and read. That is going
to be one video that we are going to show here just to kind of get an idea. She doesn’t
go into great detail as to how it is really put together, but I think you get kind of
a gest of what she is doing. She also uses a program called TextGrabber and that is an
app you can use either on your iPhone or iPad and we will take a peek at that, as well.
[Video] Therese Willkomm:
Alright, reading papers and documents that are not scanned can be very difficult for
someone who happens to be blind so I have created this very simple portable scan and
read station using an app called TextGrabber on a cellphone. You just open this up. Tip
it like this. You can take a standard 9 x 12 piece of acrylic and put a couple stoppers
here. Then, I lined up the iPhone so that when you put an 8 ½ x 11 sheet of paper in
here it just lines up perfectly. So there is the stopper so if I am visually impaired
I can feel exactly where this goes. I know there is only one way this can go in here
and then I just tap the center of it and it takes a picture of it. Then, I click on reading
it. It is now recognizing it. Then, I can turn on voiceover, one, two, three…(App
speaking: voiceover on)…tap it…(App speaking: checklist or existing facility…checklist
that agencies can use to exam their facilities…). So essentially what it is doing is it is just
reading this. Well then I also discovered that I could instead of putting those plastic
pieces I could take a little bit of this corrugated plastic and I will put that using double-sided
tape and make that a stopper and then make a place to drop my iPhone in here like this.
Again, I can still put my paper in here. You know tap it, scan it. What I did here with
corner guard is I can pick this up and I can lay an iPad right in here so the camera would
be right here shining down. So there you have it the portable scan and read station. One
last thing is I put a little piece of Velcro here so that you can put your piece in here.
Fold it up and now can drop into a backpack. Just remember that this is 12 inches, this
is 28 from here to here and so you take a utility knife and you just score it here and
here. So measure from 8 ½ to here, 8 ½ to here and that is all you have to remember
8 ½ on both sides. Then this of course would be 11…so your paper can go in there and
that goes on top here and …portable scan and read station.
>> Jeff Bond: Okay. Great. Well I hope that you got just
sort of the gest of what Therese was showing and the program that she used was called TextGrabber.
It can be used either on the iPhone or the iPad. I have it on my iPad currently. I am
going to see if I can’t get a picture here. I am having a little bit of trouble with the
lighting, but what I should see is a square when I get it in focus. Come on. (Jeff whispering)
Well, I don’t think it is going to cooperate right now which is not a problem, but anyway
what we get is a picture that basically looks like this. So we will take the picture. We
can crop it. Then it comes over to the side and then we can actually use voiceover to
read it. (App speaking: voiceover on. TextGrabber. Camera. February 1st…the time…Herbert
George…time traveler…) So anyway we can go ahead and use voiceover. I am going to
pop off here real quick. If you notice up in the upper right-hand corner it says translate.
I am going to select translate and I can go from English to English which is not translating
anything, but if I go to English and make my selection down here I am going to go to
Spanish right here. We will let it do the translation. I can’t honestly verify the
accuracy, but that is one of the things that this program will do. I can also export it
out to an email. I can export it out to a variety of different things and then manipulate
it however. A really neat program just to get text from the hardcopy into the digital
file format. The program itself or the app itself is $9.99, but well worth the download
so actually something to think about. It was a nice piece of information that Therese shared
with us because we are always looking for those ways that we could manipulate those
kinds of things for students. Okay that is TextGrabber. Also, Therese is known as the
MacGyver of assistive technology because she has really done all kinds of stuff with this
corrugated cardboard and line lock and so forth.
The next thing we are going to look at is the Sonocent Audio Notetaker. We have a quick
video for that.
[Video-Sonocent] (music playing in background) Okay. Let’s
talk about notes. Your brain is probably a bit like this. That is why you take notes
to pass that class or get that promotion or avoid that lawsuit. You may even use the latest
technology, but does it help you take better notes? The tools may have changed. The technique
is still the same. Listen and scribble down as much as you can which isn’t always much.
Studies show that when we notetake we usually only capture 40 percent of what is important.
Effective notetaking is hard, but there another way. Sonocent Audio Notetaker is software
which enables you to take better notes by effectively utilizing audio recordings. This
is how it works. The software chunks speech phrase by phrase enabling you to use color
to highlight the most important things as you are hearing them. It is like a highlighter
pen for speech. You can also organize your recording into manageable sections like paragraphs.
Now you know what you should listen back to. You will never miss important information.
You can focus on listening instead of writing and you can create your notes in your own
time and that is not all, it is easy to edit your audio. You can add text, slides and images
alongside. When you are done extract your color highlights into a new file. You can
also export your notes to view on other devices. Record from our free app or import audio recorded
elsewhere. You can even use audio notetaker to capture online videos, webinars and skype
calls. Sonocent Audio Notetaker allows you to stay focused on listening. Safe in the
knowledge that you can back to the important parts again later and could lead to the best
notes you have ever taken. Download a free trial and try it for yourself.
>> Jeff Bond: Alright, that is the Audio Notetaker from
Sonocent. On my computer I have just kind of a tutorial that gives you a little idea
as to the kinds of things that it does. You have the audio over here. Then we can take
our notes here. We can have pictures over on this side. There is just…it is really
user friendly. What I really like is the fact that I can highlight the important things
in a different color. They also have an app and it is called the Sonocent Recorder. I
have that on my iPad. If I click on record it is going to start recording what I am saying
so I am basically taking notes and if we go to the iPad. I will go to the iPad how about
that. There we go. You can see where it is sort of chopping up and looking at the breakups.
I can actually stop it and then I can highlight important things. The whole thing is important
or this is just the important part or this over here. So anyway a really great notetaker
and I can listen back to it in real time. It is just an extension of the desktop version
which is a Windows and Mac compatible.
Okay. We are going to jump ahead real quick. Jim Lambert and I actually did an eReader
app side-by-side comparison. One of the programs that we really liked is Voice Dream Reader.
Voice Dream came out actually now with a thing called the Voice Dream Writer. We will look
at that, as well. Okay, this is basically it and it is a program that I type in and
I will spell out just a couple things here. (App speaking: Hello my name is…Hello my
name is Jeff) So it actually as you are typing it spells it or says it as you put a space
in and then it goes back and recaps you know when you put a punctuation the whole sentence
so really a neat program. This one is as Dream Reader, Voice Dream Reader, is $9.99, but
it is one of those things that we really found very interesting so another thing to look
at.
Another thing that I had was actually a tactile graphic. I went to one session and what was
interesting is that audio descriptions of things sometimes just don’t translate well.
One thing that didn’t translate well for me was the instructions of creating this.
Starting at the top up here and then going 15 degrees as we were given more information
and then counterclockwise and it looks more like a Picasso. Actually this should be a
picture of the state of Florida with Orlando and Miami somewhere in there. So as you can
see my interpretation of just the way the description was just didn’t seem to do it.
So what we have here is just a tactile graphic and everything is labeled and then there are
bumps that take you to the certain sections. So it really gives the visually impaired a
good representation of the kinds of things we are talking about. You know we can have
the state of Florida outlined and you would get a better feel of what the outline is than
my little description here which really wasn’t that good.
Alright, another real quick thing that Therese did share with us is a selfie camera extension
and basically it is just a swifter cleaner thing…I am losing my terminology. You put
your camera on here and you set if for timer. You click it and then you take your selfie.
It gives you a nice extended look of yourself or a group of people and so forth, anyway
just a swifter idea. So, again the MacGyver of assistive technology.
That pretty much wraps up I think what I was going to share. I had some more things, but
sometimes I take a little more time or shoot ahead of myself, but in two weeks we are going
to have our vendor presentation and that is going to be Project Discovery. So we will
see you in two weeks and I hope some of this information is helpful. Look forward to hearing
from you if you have any ideas of something you would like to see presented at PATINS
TV please let us know. Another quick reminder before we go is the PATINS Tech Expo is going
to be April 23rd. It is going to be here in Indianapolis and it is going to have a lot
of the vendors some of which we saw down at ATIA so some of these things you might be
able to actually get your hands on and actually we have vendors doing presentations, as well.
It is free. Registration is up on our website www.patinsproject.com. Please take a look
at that, as well as, the vendor information for our next vendor presentation. So for that
I am going to wrap up and say goodbye.
[Closing music]