S1E12 - Mobility, Technology, and Independence

Hello and welcome to the HumanWare
See Things Differently podcast.

Each month, join your hosts, Rachel Ramos
and David Woodbridge as we bring you engaging interviews from
guests, interaction from our one of a kind distribution partners stories
that will take you off the beaten path.

Current promos, shows
where you can find us and so much more.

So stick around.

Hey, see things differently.

Listeners, and welcome to episode 12.

We have made it
to the final episode of 2025, and I want to thank all of you
for joining us.

We have tons more episodes plans for 2026.

So we are getting ready for those.

But as we wrap up 2025, we have a spectacular guest,
Gemma Gatehouse.

She is from Tasmania
all the way in Australia and she has an amazing story
to tell us about her kiddos.

She has three blind children who are varying ages
and she's going to tell us all about that.

But I am here with David
Woodbridge as always, and we are here to have an amazing chat with Gemma
about so many different topics.

So stick around.

You are in for some really good times.

So first Gemma, welcome to the podcast.

It's so great to have you here.

Yeah, thank you for having me Gemma.

Tell us, how did you first become involved with HumanWare
obviously you're on the podcast now, but what was your first introduction
to HumanWare.

Yeah.

So my daughter Lily, who is now nine, she, received a brilliant,
probably about 18 months ago.

And that was sort of organized through
the school and then through the NDIS.

And so she has one at school
and one at home.

And yeah, so our journey has been, really great with that.

It's opened her world in so many ways.

And we actually have a Facebook page, which is, has someone reached out to me
from the HumanWare group? And.

Yeah. So it's been really great
to make those connections.

Tell us a little more
about your Facebook page.

I think it was Andrew Flatres,
our senior product manager.

He somehow came across it and was like,
we have to have Gemma on the podcast and I was all about it.

So what is it that you guys showcase
on your Facebook page?

Well, maybe I need to look it up,
but I'm going to ask you first.

Yeah.

So, our page is called life with Lily,
Andy and Eddie, and, we just post day to day stuff about,
about the kids, and, it's really about what they can do,
because a lot of people, you know, hear that they're blind
or say that they're blind, and they, they automatically think
that that's a bad thing.

And so that page is really
about showing them how great their life is and how much that they can actually do
from a parent point of view.

It's absolutely cute as well.

So I know it has to share its message.

I love hearing stories about, plants
and that sort of stuff, especially from a, quote,
positive attitude.

So no, it's lovely. It's great.

I was at the Braille Challenge earlier
this year, and that was the only other concentrated place where I've seen parents
and kiddos just come together.

And for, Gemma, if you may not know,
the Braille challenge is a competition.

Actually, it is in Australia as well.

This where kids compete in various academic categories, and if they win
in their category from their school, then they come to the finals,
which are held in Los Angeles, California.

And these are just kiddos
who are Braille champions and their parents are all about it too.

And it was so neat to
to come across all the excitement and the enthusiasm
from the kids and parents.

And it sounds like you and Lily and Andy
and Edie and Luke, your husband, are modeling that, as well with your Facebook page,
which is incredible.

So tell us a little bit more.

Lily got a brilliant tell us about
Andy and Edie and how old they are.

And what are they doing
in terms of Braille?

I think David wanted to ask about maybe
some pre braille skills that you're doing.

I've got Andy who's six.

He's actually autistic as well.

And he is non-verbal.

He is absolutely obsessed
with the Braille, as though he loves the sounds that makes.

And he mimics the sounds.

And, so he's really in that pre
braille stage still, and, you know, he loves the books.

He loves all the tactile stuff.

Edie, on the other hand, he's three
he is extremely keen to learn Braille.

So him and Lily often sit there together.

Writing braille books.

It is obsessed with the Brailliant.

And Kate's asking for one.

Number two.

Yeah, I love it. Yeah, yeah.

So they keep saying to me,
you know, your time will come, but, we're only talking about,
you know, Santa this morning.

And he said, oh, you know,
Santa is bringing me a Brailliant.

I don't know that he's be very confident.

He has a lot of faith and confidence
in Santa.

He sure does. Yes. That is amazing.

That's right. Totally.

So Eddie it's really just been ingrained
since birth for him.

So you know so Lily
it took a little bit longer.

I mean we tried to bring it into her life
quite early, but obviously we were going through her diagnosis and,
you know, building that team around us.

Whereas, you know, Eddie's
first cane was the size of a ruler. Oh, okay.

So we knew he was blind and nicely.

So, I think that's been
a really big positive.

And Lily's
been a really big positive role model for him in terms of learning vital
with non-verbal communication.

Gemma, how do you actually go with that?

Because I know I've had,

I've actually got two autistic adults
there that are both.

Well, they've

I mean, they're classified as non-verbal,
but they do have certain key words.

But my wife had to always use storyboards
and visual prompts and all that sort of stuff.
So how do you go with a child that actually can't see
that type of visual stuff?

Yeah, that's a great question.

It's been a huge learning curve for us.

So he actually uses a lab device,
which we're in the very early stages of, and it has
a, a tactile guard over the top of it.

So the idea is that eventually
he'll be able to find the buttons.

But I feel, however, in saying that he.

Yes, he's non-verbal.

But again, he's really blossomed
in the last few months.

And I, I think that's a big credit
to Eddie, to be honest.

They've become really great friends.

So, you know, even in the last two weeks,
we've noticed that he's now saying, I want Chucky,
I want something.

So I don't feel that he will ever have, you know, really long conversations
with us that, using some words in combination with his Lamp program,
we're hoping that he'll be able to, you know, tell us
his basic needs with our children.

We were always keen on just the
the absolute important cues like, you know,
I need help.

You know, I, I'm, I'm getting angry or I can't concentrate
or those sort of things.

Absolutely.

Yeah. And we've made some of those,
okay.

You know, you know, like the visuals
we've made some of those tactile before.

So things like.

No. And yes. So we're working
pretty closely with his speech, and his team to develop those.

So do you actually use
an augmentative communication device.

Is that the board you were talking about
that had the group? Yes.

So we do.

So it's a we've got a, accent 1000,
I think it's called.

Yeah. And it's got the lap program on it.

Now, before we started recording, Gemma,
you mentioned that you have two older stepchildren.

How do they interact with, Lily,
Andy and Eddie?

Yeah, it's really interesting.

I mean, we're just that
they're just normal siblings.

They fight like normal siblings.

Like barking like a parent, right?

Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

No, they're really great with the kids,
and they, you know, they've just sort of grown up
knowing no different with them.

And, you know, they they'll explain things
like Annabel will cook with them and she'll explain things as she goes
along.

And it's sort of just been so much part
of our communication since they were born.

So yeah, it's it's
just kind of very normal family life here, just with a bit of extra help at time.

Oh, exactly.

And in other words, it's
actually quite normal, unquote.

What's normal anyway
besides the setting on a washer.

That's. Yeah.

So, getting back to sort of the pre
brown stuff.

So yeah, I mean, I know you know, it,
it only works at three.

So but what sort of pre brown skills
do people actually do.

Because I've always heard you know these white educators
talk about pre brown stuff.

But what is what's it like
I mean do you play with different shapes.

Do you get spatial orientation.

The things like I don't know
playing with dots like I what sort of happens with sort of pre
brown stuff.

Oh okay.

And therapy assistant work
a lot with Eddie.

You know it's a lot of that finger
strength stuff as well.

So the plan know
yeah the Play-Doh the the shapes.

Absolutely.

You know just orientation
to all sorts of different things.

If even in those early days, it was noted
that Lily was probably a little bit weaker in her,
and so it was actually just getting out and doing more gymnastics
and that sort of stuff just to be able to, you know, fix her posture,
which I actually found quite fascinating, that that was all basically
getting her ready to sit at a desk with a proper posture with a good finger
straight fed those brain skills.

Do you do anything like pre cane skills?

I don't know if I'd call it on
at three years old.

Well, you'd be really surprised. Eddie's.

I'd say really competent with his cane and
and again, if you look at some of the videos on my page,
he, he's learned how to sleep.

He knows how to hold his cane.

He has a preferred hand.

He's learned how to navigate stairs
up and down.

So he's actually and again,
I think that's just because it's been in his life forever.

So Lily, Lily was a little bit slower
with her cane, and I think it was just because she was the only person she's
ever known to have a cane where it's, you know, it is.

He's he's in with his.

He's actually out with his own instructor
this morning.

He navigates the, the elevators.

Yeah. He's great
getting back to Lily there.

So how do you find the school
with support.

So Lily getting around and being in class,
what's it like at school for her?

She actually loves school.

We recently took her out for a week to go
to Queensland, and she was so mad at us.

Which I think is a testament to the school
that, she made her vision teacher give her multiple books, and they did
online sessions while we're waiting. Oh, well, this is clean.

That's great.

She's very well supported.
She's got a really great team.

You know,
there's always bumps in the road, but I'm sure that the school of really
you know, they've been really keen
to learn with her.

And, and you know her teachers in
that have tried to learn braille with her, but she just kind of as did I, but
she just went, you know, well ahead of us.

So just cruising past. Yep.

And as it should,
you know, she's using it every day.

Absolutely.

And and you know, we we felt that
it's been the right fit for her.

I actually have the kids
in all different schools and that's just the way it's fit for them.

So yeah, we've been we've been really
happy to have any hobbies as as such.

I mean, she enjoyed doing certain things
or reading or getting out and about or exercising
or what did she enjoy doing?

So it was her choice.

She would probably read 24 hours a day.

That she's, you know, onto the chapter books
and that sort of stuff.

She, she does choir. She loves to sing.

She does gymnastics.

Yeah. She's quite busy.

I think there's only one day a week
that she hasn't got something on.

So when you say books, I mean, I'll
think about when I first got my books.

You know, I think the Britannica
Encyclopedia was like 185 volumes in the library.

Right.

So just does really have Braille
book sets in hardcopy books.

Or are you transitioning to electronic
books on the Bryant, for example?

Yeah.

So we do have a, quite a few of those,
you know, early years books.

But obviously as as she gets
older, it's harder to get access to those.

So, the braylee, it's
actually been a lifesaver for us in that regard, you know,
downloading as many books as we can.

And I think I download at least 50 a week,
and I'm sure she gets through them.

She takes it in the car to school, reads the whole way,
the school reads the whole way home.

So yeah, that's a huge passion of hers.

So many people say to me, you know,
and it's a very common comment on our pages,
why don't you give her audio books?

But she hates them.

She absolutely hates
everything about listening to audiobooks is that you never learn how to spell
punctuation, mark spacing, all that sort of stuff
to kind of bring things around.

Here you have three blind kiddos,
which is incredible.

What would you say
is their favorite thing to do?

I guess together, either with your
you and your husband and your step kiddos,
or just them by themselves.

What what do they enjoy doing together?

One of our main things that we do
as a family is camping.

We try and spend as much time
as we can in the caravan, so waiting for those warmer days to come now
so we can get back out.

They're obsessed with beaches, pools,
swimming and camping.

So that's how you know,
the biggest thing we do together?

Probably so. Right.

So that's what this is what it's like
to be in Australia at night.

And they're out there in the bush.

I got
to get over there and do some camping.

Sounds like some professional development
for you.

You can come in
and have a working holiday.

Absolutely.

We're going to go and justify this and I'm
going to go and professionally develop my my camping skills.

I can say that we need to test out
a few, drapes devices to make sure
that when you're navigating down the river that you actually go in the right
direction.

That's right.

Sounds good to me for any parents listening,
whether they're blind parents themselves or if they have if they themselves,
like you have blind children, do you have any kind of thing that you'd
want to kind of pass on to them?

Maybe something you've said on your page before or
just something that's coming to you now?

I've had quite a few people
reach out to me on my page, actually, which has been
one of the really big positives.

And it might be people from countries
that maybe don't have the same support.

I think it's just let them be kids,
let them, you know, if if he if another keeps doing it, find a way they
they can do it.

And and that's been something
that we've always said with our kids, if they want to
we'll, we'll make it happen.

Now, another thing
that I've found really valuable to my journey is actually trying
to meet other blind people because we are quite, you know,
we don't have a lot of that in Tasmania.

We've got a few,
you know, blind adults here and there.

But, we try and get to the mainland
as much as we can and, and, you know, broaden
their, their circle, really.

And I think that's really important to.

Hey everybody.

And welcome to the Hot Topic segment.

Gemma has graciously agreed
to stay and talk to us a little bit more.

We want to talk about games,
especially with three blind kiddos in Gemma's house and play
and what kind of skills those develop.

I know when I was growing up,
I certainly played tactile games, you know, games with raised shapes
and things with my family.

And I would love to know.

Gemma, what are some of the games
that you've played with either some or all of your kiddos
to kind of help develop those those skills of just socialization, interaction
and just have fun?

We do you have old monopoly?

One of the the big hits here though is Braille, you know, that's nice.

Oh, that's my favorite line.

I j yes, yes, I was going to say
did the caravan stackable.

Draw two is always.

Yeah.

It's always an argument in this house
which is what the rules are.

But, and that's been a really big one.

It's lovely.

You know, we've got to talk to Laurie,
which often, you know, probably those pre brown skills.

That's more for Edie and and above.

So, they have a few different games
on them that they can play with those.

We've got the brown Legos.

Recently when we were in Queensland
they started playing Marco Polo, which was really cool.

Edie and Lily loved that in the pool.

That was such a, yeah,
I guess a normal game that they could play with their peas.

Actually, the one thing that I used,
I love playing with my children because they had no special concept was
pin the tail on the donkey blindfolded.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

That's a good one.

That's like, that's that's not fair.
I mean, hang on a minute.

What do you mean it's not fair?
You can say like, hard.

So let's just, you know, let's level
the playing field, dude.

Absolutely.

And it's all those games that are
so important talking about the the brawl.

You know, one of my friends
who reads Braille, he cheats because he can actually read
back to front.

He can actually read the imprints
on the back of the card.

So so I've learned
I've learned how to keep my cards below the table because hey guys,
I'm going to you've got to read two might have you slightly energy down energy
because I can see that you printed on the back of the car
just like you did.

All right. Thank you. Yeah, that's okay.

So what other games to the I mean, I know one thing I was thinking
nervous about was swimming at the beach because I used to think, oh,
if I got eaten there, I'm going to get like the,
you know, not on front in the water, but you'd actually you don't come back
to where you started off on the beach.

How do you find the kids,
go to the beach and swimming in the beach?

Oh, they absolutely love it.

They, pretty good at listening to us.

Although Andy will just go out as deep as he possibly can and tread water all day
if he could, yeah, they did pretty good
at joining into their environment.

They really do.

You know, listen to the lesson.

We're always talking and we're
obviously in there with them as well.

Have your children or have you
as a parent, have you investigated all these sort of echo type
spatial sounds also like echo location.

Yeah.

Like I yeah, yeah. Eddie's a low for it.

I think in a way they actually all,
they don't, you know, they don't do the, the clicking is such that he's
actually a video on my, on my page of Eddie walking through a corridor
at the hospital, and it he, he was so excited at
how much of a great echo location room it was for him.

Yeah.

I say they often tell me that this wall
next to them and, people are always amazed that they,
you know, they walk straight down a hallway and I believe it's
because they're using echolocation.

How do you find these ties
with toys and electronic toys?

I mean, are there still toys
around these days that you could still, you know, that adaptable or kids can play.

So you can just rather than having
to go to a, you know, a store and go,
oh, God, where are they?

Can you still get toys, electronic toys
that are sort of roughly accessible?

Well, yes and no.

I always, I always dread Christmas
and birthdays coming up, to be honest, because it is quite hard to find something
that's good for them.

Andy's easy.

He loves anything that makes noise.

He's got a few stocks and favorite toys that we end up
replacing over and over again.

Lily actually is really,
she's got about,

I would say, in the hundreds
of little figurines on types of figurines.

She loves.

We've recently discovered the the old school Fisher-Price, dolls,
and they're quite, quite small.

And so she's got probably
I would say she's got over 100 of those and she groups them into, like, Andy's class, her siblings
and all sorts of things.

And that's, it's actually really
fascinating watching her play with them, because she can tell them all apart
just by picking them up very quickly.

She goes, oh,
that's mum, that's such and such.

And and that's really she really enjoys
all that kind of imaginative play.

And I think in, in a way
she's using those scenarios to play out the world in her way.

It's really fascinating to watch. Yeah.

So in terms of actually
finding specifics, it's very difficult.

And if you want to add a bit of Braille
into that, it's very expensive.

That's true. Sure. Yeah.

Well one thing I've discovered is I did
I didn't realize this until last year because I'm really into the F1 now.

So and I actually got Vision Australia.

Their access library not only does
tactile maps, but they also do 3D models.

And I,

I asked them for a 3D
model of an F1 racing car and I got one.

So I was like, oh, that's so cool.

This.

So it's like, yeah, look, I wonder know
what a two day thing feels like?

But having a 3D model of a of a car, it's
actually really, really cool.

My son's favorite one was the buffet.

You know, you twist it punch.

Oh yes.

Buffet is fun. Yeah.

We have every single version of the buffet
ever made. Yes.

There you go. Yeah. True
fans. It true fans.

Yeah, yeah.

I'm speaking of toys. So. Yeah.

Nine years old now.

I use sort of thinking of,
you know, tablet type things at this stage
like iPads or iPhones.

Right. There was the store did early. Yes.

So, Lily's actually had an iPhone
for about two years now.

She doesn't use it in the same way that, you know, a teenager
or older kids would use it.

But, she really loves watching movies,
so, we really got it for her to start using that voiceover,
which she doesn't love, but she's definitely getting better at,
and so we're sort of encouraging her, put her own movie on of a year
and picking her own movies.

And, you know, she she can sit there.

She loves to call and, and pop.

And so she uses, Siri for that.

So she uses her voice
to do all that independently.

She can send text messages, to, to, you know, the family and stuff,
which she loves to do.

So, you know,
she doesn't take it everywhere with her.

And it's not like it used in the same way that a phone is
used for other people, I suppose.

But it was sort of just to bring those,
those three, you know, those pretty important skills
when she's older, she's just, discovered that she can actually use maths
and it will tell her where to go.

So she's starting to use that a bit more.

She's got the Ray-Ban glasses.

Oh, God. Oh.

Wow. Again, never too early, though.

And she absolutely loves them.

So she surprisingly loves shopping.

She she would shop all day if she could.

And so she uses the glasses to go shopping
and she'll go, you know, hey, mirror, what's in front of me?

Explain this doll to me. You know what?

Show me where I am in the shop then. Yeah.

So I've been using those.

She uses those with her
or with them as well.

Yeah.

So I feel like we've got quite
a few of the bits that you're doing.

You're doing extremely well.
Yeah, right. Wow.

You guys are ahead of the game.
That's great.

But I must say, I did enjoy watching
when Shrek became, audio describing this is probably really old me
for some people, but I still love it because my child needs to watch it
all the time when it first came out.

And, it's amazing how audio description
just brings all these really fantastic movies to life
because you can so enjoy it.

The look that's so great that she loves watching her own movies
and that sort of stuff. And the Ray-Bans.

I use the Ray-Bans to find out where
I'm on the railway station because sometimes I can't find the stairs.

My beloved guide dog will confidently go
off in the wrong direction, right?

Yeah.

No dude,
this is not the way to the stairs.

We just try to incorporate
whatever we can into their day and, you know, give them as much tools
as we can.

Anything in your toolbox.
If it works, it works.

If it doesn't, you can find another one
and and go for it.

Yeah. Absolutely.
Yeah. It's not just one solution.

This has been so much fun.

To hear you speak about your kids and the things that you do as a family and of course, as a parent
to try and get them ready for whatever life has,
whether it's school or with little Eddie.

He's cruising around the world already.

Like, again, never too early.

So thank you for everything you're doing.

You're having a lot of fun, I can tell.

And, you're you're passing all the
all the knowledge on to to everyone else, right, of what games can be played
or what technology should we start incorporating into the kids lives
so that they can kind of get a head start?

Well, Gemma, I want to wish you
happy holidays to you and your family.

And, I hope you have an amazing
Christmas season and a great new Year.

Yes, same to you
guys. Thanks so much for having me.

Welcome, everybody to Partner Corner.

This month we bring you part two of the
interview conducted with Jason Martin.

He is the product manager
for Wing It over at APA.

If you want to catch up on part
one of the interview, please go ahead and find episode
11 in your podcast player.

And now here's Jason.

When you release something like that, you,
you and the team have been working on it for so long
and in a bubble, really.

I mean, we did field testing
and we did internal testing, but it's still a very small group of people
compared to to the general public.

Right.

You just don't know how the public
is going to take to to something like going up
and at one of these conferences,

I've gotta say, when, when it was
a good feeling, it really was one wing.

It was out in the wild.

People were were giving us responses on it
for really how they felt about it.

And somebody came up and they said,
oh, well, obviously this drawing application
is not for a blind person.

And I was like, yes, it is.

Well, it's it's accessible.

It's like, yes, yes it is.

You mean you can draw with it?

Yes, yes you can.

And they were just so certain that, you know, this drawing application.

Now, is it the easiest thing in the world.

No. Is it easy for me now.

But is it,
is it a step in the right direction?

Absolutely.

We've we've seen great success, with people using stencils over, the iOS device.

So I just simply tracing stencils
where they haven't before.

I think learning how to draw digitally in
general is tough.

And so, like to your point, I think I've,

I've seen a lot of students at first go,
oh, I'm terrible at this, but I can do it over and over
and over and over again.

And it doesn't cost anything.

And so like that.

That's really a cool, cool part
that I've seen students instantly jump on
is that I can start drawing myself.

There's there's quite a lot
to see with it, and I'm so excited to see really what
teachers are going to do this school year.

Like what drawings are going to be shared
with wing it and and really, what creations
are kind of coming out of it.

So now that it's officially out
and the school year has officially begun, what will we see?

How will wing it even grow
and improve as an application as well?

So there's some really cool things
that we haven't touched on with.

We get that that it's
when you look at digital tactile braille that some of it might seem equal
or might seem the same, but what really separates wing
it is when you have

Braille on a tactile graphic image.

Right now, it's kind of iffy
if you zoom in to that image, if that Braille does in fact stay the same
or stay in the same location, you know, on, depending on what image
and how the image was created.

And so with wing it now, what's pretty
incredible is that are Braille labels.

When you label them,
you don't have to know braille.

So if it's a teacher or a peer,
maybe it's just a friend or a parent
that wants to label something for you.

They can label that in print
and it comes over in Braille.

They can draw something
and a person can label on the side of the monarch itself.

But then the zoom levels are effectively
they're infinite.

And that's what's really cool about it,
is that the shapes and drawings so say if it's a campus map,
someone is drawn.

You can make that as
large or as small as really physically possible.

And in the Braille, as, as much as physically possible
is going to stay the same.

So like if you zoom out all the way
like an image or, campus map it visually or tactically, it's going to get it's
going to become gibberish.

And if you zoom all the way in, it's going
to get so big that you can't even tell.

But all those spaces in between.

Now, what we can do is be very, very clear and how that's, representing and that there's no borders necessarily
with wing it.

So most tactile
graphics are limited by a space of, 11.5 by 14
or something of those standards with wing it,
there aren't any in that sense.

So you do have a canvas that's broad and
open and it's really for you to create on.

Like you
said, it's not limiting books and papers and bindings and things do have standards.

And even some of the things in the app.

Gil, you have certain numbers
of zoom levels, but if you're just creating, it's very neat that that's kind of up
to the artist to draw and then have the, the blind person or who
whoever's interpreting the graphic be able to interpret
maps can scale up or down as needed.

And I think that's really helpful,
especially when teaching new concepts or tactile maps is is really another thing
that I find fascinating in learning.

You know, new cities are
they're angled streets.

If somebody could just draw an
intersection, how helpful would that be?

I mean, now I'm kind of wondering
we talk about wing it in the classroom.

What about wing it
in terms of O&M or travel experiences?

I would name is one of my favorite things
to use.

Wing it for.

Because I mean like an example to just draw a classroom
or draw a campus map.

I can do that.

And now over some practice,
I can do it in about seconds.

But where something like
that would have taken at least from the time of conception
to fingertips, would have taken
at least half a day, at minimum.

So, so something like
this is pretty incredible.

I'll tell you what's fun about seeing it,
seeing wing it out in the wild
is all the different use cases.

So, it was David Woodbridge with human.

Where with you guys?

I saw him post this that he was using wing it for karate katas
and like to learn that.

And it's really stuck with me.

I was like, well, that's that's cool.

I've used that
that story several times, and, but it like other examples,

I've used it's football season right now.

So lately
doing football plays, I can draft, the defensive line and offensive line and save that is like a default image and then quickly show the plays,
kind of how it's moving back and forth or how play
just happened and quickly hit undo.

And then we're back to basics again.

So like, they're just insane ways
that we get I think the community is going to see wing it, and I can't wait
till they start sharing it back with us.

Is there any applications
that are coming for monarch?

So there are a few that that are coming.

I can tell you one
that I'm working on right now, that, the team is,
it's a very popular word game.

You might have heard of Wordle.

Absolutely.

Used to play all the time. Wordle.

It's it's interesting
when you're playing it on iOS versus when you're playing it
on, like, the mod architect on display, that it's very much the same game, but it's it's done in a tactile
way, right then in very much a tactile way.

So, it's,
it's just need to see that transition to, to see what we're talking about when we're
talking about a Braille revolution or what do we mean
when it's, it's effectively getting the same gaming experience
as someone who would be getting this visually instead
of how we've traditionally had to play

Wordle is is with audio cues and something like that,
and it's simply just a different game.

It's just not as fun.

And so this one, this one is one that,
that that's in the pipes, that I can talk about.

I can give you this one, 200, boy.

A bonus I would be a mess if it if it escaped me, if,
my developers would be very upset.

I can't say that. We're working
diligently.

The team is on an update
to moderate chess, where there's going to be a companion app that goes through iOS.

So anyone that wants to play with
someone on the mark can simply connect similarly, to how when it connects
that they can just connect and play chess.

And so if you're playing with a person who is, who's vision dependent, then it might be a situation
where they get the iOS app and the person, might want to use their monarch
to play on that side of it.

But also with this, we've included the, the ability to connect to, delicious APIs.

So meaning chess can go online now
and wow, by, by connecting to this API,
it's a couple of different things.

We're doing.

It's not only can you play chess online
and that's pretty neat, but it there's this thing a trend in chess right now
called smart chess board.

So they're great for individuals
with low vision.

They light up with LED, movements.

So you can pick up a piece and it can tell
you your possible options to move.

But, with, with these chess boards, now, a physical chess
board can pick it up, I can move and it will show the monarch, and
a person on the monarch can move theirs.

And it would show me on the smart
chess board, actually, where you've moved.

So it's playing both physical
and digital chess at the same time.

It's pretty neat.

So, more more of that,
to come at towards the end of the year.

Okay.

But, the chess update is a really big add
on, that's coming in.

I just love the development for monarch is not just internal to the classroom.

Right. We're seeing it in other fields.

We're seeing it know and,
we're seeing it in social circles as well.

I mean, who doesn't love
a good game of chess or a good game of Wordle
when that's going to be released?

So I'm very, very excited for
what's coming.

And lastly, Jason,
could you tell, teacher, is there anyone who may listen to this
at a future point?

If they make drawings on doing it,
how can they share them?

Back to you guys for just field testing
or however it is it you're going to use them for later?

There's plenty of mod art groups and you ask me this
and I don't know the specific one.

If you follow a web page, human wires, and like our Facebook groups,
our Instagrams, definitely.

There's always a ton of information.

If you're following that, it's
hashtag monarch, and anything related.

So say if you have a, a winged image that
you have drawn up and it's pretty cool.

Hashtag monarch, hashtag wing. It.

We'll always get the image to us.

So any of those hashtags work
when sharing those online.

So absolutely.

Just, often, I encourage people
when sharing images like that, you know, it it may look like
a basketball court to you, but it may not look like
a basketball court to the rest of us.

So if you could,
you know, always before sharing something at, awesome image of a basketball court.

Madam Wingate, you know, I like that.

That helps,
to also be positive about text, but, sometimes
our drawings aren't the Picasso's.

We think they are.

That's why I'll text to the rescue.

And, you know, for for screen
reader users as well, if they wanted to pull up an image maybe into their it's and show it on their monarch
just to see what someone else has drawn.

Absolutely.

Well, Jason,
thank you so much for coming on.

It has been such a blast to talk with you
about winging it and some of the other great plans that you have for monarch, and we just really appreciate
all your hard work and everything that you do to move this revolution
forward, because you're part of it.

Thanks for having me
on. It's great to be a part of it.

Hey everybody, and welcome to the holiday
recommendation segment.

That's right.

It is December and the holidays are here.

So we are foregoing our Normal Trials
and Triumphs segment to give you guys some recommendations
on what we find would be great holiday gifts for all of those
amazing people in your life.

And we're going to come up
with a few options here.

Some are human wear products,
and some are just neat accessories that we find go well with our products.

So let's throw it over to David now,
because this was David's wonderful idea and I love it.

So David, start us off what you got
with your holiday recommendations.

All right.

Well, I'm going to start off with well, it's actually technically a it's
a common way product, but it's actually
a bigger company's product.

So I just thought
I probably should mention one of my favorite things
that which of course the Ray-Ban glasses.

Now I know we've got new ones out
and everything else, but considering what's going to happen with smart glasses,
you know, next year in particular,

I'd say jump on the bandwagon.

And I know in Australian dollars,
which people normally say it's probably millions of dollars
in Australian dollars compared to the US, probably about $500 Australian.

To get a pair of Ray-Bans.

They work beautifully with your iPhone
and your Android device, so I absolutely love it.

So that's fine.

Now, the issue that I found is when you try and connect these things
to your Bluetooth things, whether it's a book to read, a stream,
and so on.

Sometimes the device gets a bit annoyed
between you trying to use it as a Bluetooth headset versus
using it as a smart pair of glasses.

So the little speaker that I also want to
recommend is the JBL, 4G,
and I think pretty sure it's 4G.

But it's a tiny little square speaker and it pumps out really good sound, works
beautifully with things like the manas q30 because as we all know, that there's
no built in speech in the this K40.

So these little speakers are cool.

And because I bought one, I then thought,
well, I must have to buy two because then you can actually dual them
together to create a stereo pair.

And of course you can keep adding a third
one and a fourth one, not how many you can actually do it, but
Australian dollar wise, I think mine was,

I want to say about $110 on some of them, but really,
really good speakers, very, very cute.

They just nice solid, you know, pretty fairly waterproof
ish speakers.

And the third one,
of course, is my final recommendation, which is a human wear product.

And that is the device that I've had
personally since it first came out.

Feels like a long time ago
now, which is a big to read.

A stream three third generation.

I've still got my one
and two sitting on my table here as well, and that's really great
if you want to sort of dependently go away from your smartphone
so you don't have to waste your batteries on aircraft or, on the train
or anything else.

You can just use your Victorian stream
to listen to documents, to online radio stations, either cricket coming up
in Australia for the summer season.

And of course, you can,
you know, take notes and you can do
sorts of other really, really cool things.

So that's probably
my one of my three favorite things.

So that's the Ray-Ban glasses, the JBL 4G portable speaker and of course
the Victoria Australian three.

I would have to agree that
the Ray-Ban medic glasses are fantastic, and I think it's absolutely awesome
that you recommend one of their JBL speakers,
because that's one of the products

I was going to recommend
and we had no planning.

You guys, we we just love good tech.

So one of the JBL speakers I was going to
recommend was the JBL go, which David, it might actually be the same one
that you were just talking to someone.

So I was thinking of J, as in, yeah,
now you can go.

I just go.

That's a pro contraction by the way.

Yeah, that is so cool.

So the JBL we have tons of those
around the house.

And my husband reminded me he's like,
hey these are great because they have of course, the signature sound
that when you power them on, you know, they're on, you know, they're off to,
you know, when they're paired there and the, the play and the pause and the bass for all of the buttons
have their own unique.

Well, not really unique
because other speakers have them too, but their own designs,
like the play pause, is triangular.

The volume down is the minus sign
and the volume up this plus sign.

And they didn't do that
just for people disabilities.

That's just always been their signature.

And it really has worked out.

I guess that's what we call
a universal design.

It is.

Can I admit to the fact
that I've got the huge JBL 310 speakers and I've got two of them
and they're really for parties, but you can't win them up too much outside
because when they when they're up for full volume,
they're really, really, really loud and they're sort of, you know, in US measurements,
they probably stand about three feet high or something. So they're huge.
They're on wheels.

I was just going to ask, are
those like the suitcases on wheels?

Yeah, those are incredible.

Yeah.

We have the JBL 120 I think it's a party
box and it's it's quite large as well.

I've got two of them as well
because you just can't buy one.

You've got to.

Absolutely.

The old adage two is one,
one is none. That's the one.

Now what was your other favorite gadget
that you were talking about?

Which is also one of my favorite ones.

One of my favorite products
is the Brilliant by 20.

It's so portable.

The keyboard is great to type on.

The Braille is crisp.

You can throw it in a bag.

Of course, if you have a larger pocket
of some kind, a jacket or sweater, or some cargo pants,
you can throw it in there and then you have Braille anywhere you are, download your books,
you can connect to your phone, and I think it's just great for being on the go
and yet still having Braille.

So I think those would be my
my top two, the JBL, any JBL.

Let's just not so

J because you go for it. Yeah yeah.

And for all our products that support
Bluetooth the JBL is were great with them.

And then the really by 20 would be one of my favorite products
that I'd like to recommend.

That's right.

And where the where it comes
really handy is if you have got some barer files on your victory stream,
which has an SD card in it, you can take that SD card out
and watch it in the back of your B20 x because it has an SD card slot and offioe,
so it's very transportable because that's what I love
about the mantis in the B 20 of course is the SD card slot, that you can
transfer stuff to and from between stuff.

So yeah, it's it's a great device.

In fact, I've had about Oh jeez, that
five requests in one week for them because when people touch them
in the field, like,

I didn't realize it was so tiny and cool
and it just feels great.

And like I said, the brass crisps are,
you know, it's it's definitely one of my favorites.
Manjoo.

Everybody. He's me on any podcast I do.

I always say this device is my favorite
followed by the next one, which is also my favorite.

So I think I just click Favorite Devices.

That's okay.

That just means they all work
well together and you just really enjoy using them.

So there you go.

Friends get Bluetooth speakers.

That way you can listen to your books
on your Victor stream with your brand new

Bluetooth speaker, or you can read books
in Braille with your brilliant bit 20 x.

So that is some of our most favored
holiday recommendations.

I hope that as you're
listening to this, that you enjoy whatever gifts you get to give to others
and receive this year.

And I just hope
everybody has a great holiday season.

Excellent.

And if I was listening that device
that's under the Christmas tree, I promise it didn't cost that much by all.

Hey everybody, and welcome to the Tips
and Tricks segment.

In this segment, I'm going to demonstrate
the terminal clipboard feature that's found on the brilliant
by 20 x by 40 X and the mantis Q 40.

What this feature allows you to do
is to copy up to 360 characters of text from the brilliant
to a connected device that can be either a windows computer
or an iOS device.

Currently, Jaws for windows
and iOS are the two supported screen readers for this feature,
so you can copy text from various places.

You can copy it from the vector reader.

If you're reading a book and want to copy a small portion of text
to another device, or you can do it from the editor and that being text that you've written.

So I'm going to do it from the editor,
and I'm going to copy a small grocery list that I've written from the brilliant
to my phone editor keypad.

So I'm on the editor now.

I'm going to press enter Create file.

I'm going to press enter on create file.

And now I'm in a blank document.

So I'm going to write a small grocery
list.

Grocery list.

We'll do eggs eggs milk milk bread bread and some salad mix.

Salad mix.

So there is my small grocery list
that I want to now copy to another device.

So if you're copying something
from a book or other content source, you can write your cursor
where you want to start selecting.

Press enter with S to start
your selection, navigate to where you want to end your selection and press enter
with S again to end the selection.

Because I want to copy everything
in the document that I just wrote, I'm going to press enter with dots one, two,
three, 4 or 5 six or a full cell.

Now the speech didn't report it, but I do feel dots
seven and eight underneath my text, which means the text is highlighted
and ready to be copied.

So I'm going to copy it with backspace
and y copied.

Now my text is copied and I'm ready
to connect to my iOS device, in this case to paste the text.

You can connect to later iOS devices through USB, but I'm going to connect
through Bluetooth.

So I'm going to press the home key to go to my terminal terminal
and press enter USB connection.

That's the first device.

I don't have anything connected over USB, so I'm going to go down
by pressing the outer right thumb key.

Rachel's iPhone.

There's my iPhone
and I'm going to press enter.

Now the brilliant says Braille display,
which lets me know that I am now
successfully connected to my iOS device.

Maybe I'm not ready.

So now you hear that it is connected to my iPhone
and I'm going to launch the notes app.

To do this, I'm going to use the new

Braille access feature in iOS 26.

If you're curious about that feature.

There are many excellent podcasts
out there on Apple.

This through the NFB
and other guides that are available, so I recommend checking those out
at your convenience and exploring
all that Braille access has to offer.

So to activate Braille access, I'm going
to press start seven and eight relaxation.

And I'm going to go to the launch
app option.

Now once I get there my cursor is present
which means I can type.

So I'm going to type in notes and press enter.

Relax I got those folders back button.

So I'm in my notes app.

You can tell I'm at the top
because the back button is present.

I'm going to go all the way to the bottom
by pressing space with dots 4 or 5 and six
to get to the new note button toolbar, new note button, and I'm going to press
a cursor writer key to enter this.

Do note although the text field the only that started.

So I'm now ready to paste the content from the brilliant into this new note
on my iOS device.

What I need to do first,
though, is enter a pass through command so that the paste command from the
brilliant is interpreted correctly by iOS.

To do that, I'm going to press space enter
and that's four five, six.

Enter local command.

It's at enter local command,
which means I can do things on the brilliant
like now check the battery status, enter with the letter P,
or check the time on the brilliant.

But I want to enter in the paste command,
which is backspace and the letter V mixed.

So VoiceOver read those items very quickly
but don't have it.

Read the full note now
so you can hear the grocery list.

No text field is entering grocery list.

Call the next note read delegates,
eggs, bread, milk, and salad mix so all the items are there
thanks to Terminal Clipboard.

As a quick recap,
you'll select and copy up to 360 characters of text that you want to go
from your brilliant to a connected device.

You then copy that text and paste it
when connected to the iOS device.

Before you can paste it,
you enter the local command or the pass through command
by pressing enter with space and dots 4 or 5 six on the brilliant and function
and F3 on the mantis.

After you enter the local command,
you press the paste command and your text is
then copied to the iOS device.

If you have other tips and tricks
that you'd like to see us demonstrate on the podcast, please feel free
to reach out to podcast at Human Wellcome.

As always, we'd love to hear from you.

Hey everybody, it's time for the upcoming shows segment.

Oh hey, wait a second, it's December.

So the upcoming shows will be on
hold for the holidays, but you'll be able to find
any upcoming appearances in our podcast episodes
that will start in January.

So we hope you and your family and friends
have an excellent time off.

Enjoy some great food and some holiday fun
and we will see you in January!

From all of us at human, where we wish you a happy,
healthy and safe holiday season.