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9 days ago

S1E8 - Back to School, Forward with Confidence

A back-to-school chat with MarLisa Jacobs and Erin LeBlanc

Transcript

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.

Greetings and salutations.

See Things Differently,

Listeners,
welcome to episode eight of the podcast.

I can't believe we are up to episode
8 already.

That is absolutely incredible.

Time is just flying by.

I am here with David Woodbridge.

David, what do you think about time?

I think it's a process
that goes from the past to the future.

So I don't quite know what that actually
means in, you know, think about it.

But that's my idea of time.

It, what's it about? 7:15, as we're doing the recording today.

That's deep, that's deep. That's.

Is that deep?

Excellent. Good. Oh, yeah.

I was told to be deep and philosophical
this morning at 7:15 in the morning.

That is classic David Woodbridge.

I'm Rachel Ramos. We're here.

We're are, well, gearing up.

Speaking of time
to getting back to school.

That is something that happens
twice a year, once after Christmas and once
after the summer / winter holidays.

And to do that,
we wanted to bring on board a pro, a person who is involved in the school process, a TVI, because we have lots
and lots of questions, and I know that this TVI can answer
all of them.

No pressure, no pressure, none at all.

But it is my pleasure to introduce
MarLisa Jacobs from New Mexico.

I've had the absolute enjoyment of hanging out with
her at various conferences, and she just works so hard for her students
and the ones that she serves.

She does a lot of work with Monarch
MarLisa first,

Welcome to the podcast
and tell us a little bit about you.

How long you've been in the industry.

What do you do to prepare for
going back to school, and how do you get ready to have a successful
year?

Well, first of all,
thank you for having me.

This is a fun experience.

And, so I have been a special education teacher since 1995.

But then I changed over
and became a teacher of students with visual impairments
about 8 to 10 years ago.

Ten years ago.

And, it is the absolute fit for me.

I love my job.

I love working with students
who are blind and visually impaired.

I love giving them access to, devices that are going to help them
succeed in school.

So that's who I am.

And, working with students and how do I
prepare for the beginning of school year?

Well, it actually starts
at the end of the school year, especially with devices and braille
and getting books for our students.

And that was, a different experience
this time with the Monarch.

So that was pleasurable.
Usually actually like January or February, we start looking at books and deciding
or trying to get the teachers to tell us what books we're going to use, and then we've got to find them either
in Braille or digitally. And, so we were able to put several books on a few of,
the students I work with on the Monarch, rather large books
because they're high school students now.

And so that was helpful.

And it's helpful for the student,
the student just love being able to get them digitally, to be able to, access them quicker
and have them all on one device as opposed to, oops,
I got to go back and get that volume.

It's in my classroom.

Very, very true.

I definitely remember in school
having about,

I don't know, shelves
and shelves of math volumes lots and having to run back to the different
classroom, grab a different volume.

So the Monarch has has definitely changed
all of that.

And this brings up a good point about
hardcopy braille versus digital braille.

So that's the thing with TVI is teachers
of the visually impaired.

You guys work with students who are often very young to students
who are graduating high school.

What do you do for younger
students like those who maybe haven't learned Braille all the way yet, or maybe those who aren't
using digital devices yet?

And I think another question would be when do you transition a student from physical
hardcopy braille to digital Braille?

And it doesn't have to be an all or nothing transformation,
because I think hardcopy braille still has a very important place
even with all this digital braille.

Younger students, of course, are learning
braille from the get go. And, most of the younger students
don't really start getting actual books
probably until first, second grade.

And then it's still usually
a lot of handouts.

So you have a lot of teachers
who are still Brailling, what the student is needing
kind of on a week to week basis.

But when they hit about third grade,
we're going to have more, books.

But what we've found lately is a lot of
books are digital anyway.

They're having the students
open up their their book, their, computers
and open up the digital book online.

And so, it's looking a little different
for students who have vision as opposed to it
being so different as it used to be.

In the question about when do I start moving toward digital Braille is, as early as a student is ready?

I think, you know, it's every student.

I've had students who are third grade
and ready to rock on a BrailleNote Touch or, ready to start doing, refreshable Braille, something, you know, less intricate
as a BrailleNote, but, you know, maybe a Chameleon,
because if you can get them on them earlier,
I think we're helping them transition for computers, for note takers and giving them access to multiple devices
to be able to get them to find out what works for them best.

And like you said,
some kids still like paper.

Especially like when they're testing because they can go back and forth
easier or quicker.

However,
I have a student using the Monarch, last year and this year,
and she's really starting to be able to work the Monarch to where she can move
in the book equal, I mean, you know, on the Monarch equally as quickly
as she can in a book, if not faster.

Something
I thought of when you were mentioning, you have the student who's a rock star
on the Monarch and flipping back and forth
between maybe multiple pages of images almost as quick, if not more quickly than a physical book.

How have you seen either
Monarch or other devices?

Does it transform socialization
for students?

Absolutely.

But one of the funny, neat things that
the Monarch did was put chess on there.

And I think that has been a social piece that has just opened up doors especially.

Well, two of the students that I
work with that have Monarchs, they started playing chess with,
you know, the adults in the room.

And then there were kids who were like,
wait, we play chess?

Why can't I play chess on that?

And and so that social piece
has been wonderful to walk into the room and see them playing chess with students
in their spare time.

And, and using the Monarch as opposed to a chess board. And, so there's that socialization piece.

And then actually, I have a student
who's trying to figure out, over the phone how to play chess.

She'll move the Monarch pieces and
they'll move their pieces on their board.

And so they're doing it
socially away from school as well.

And then in class, you know,
students have their pictures of, let's say they're in biology
and they're doing the plant cell and, our student on the Monarch pulls it up
while students are curious.

Well, how are you seeing that?

What does that look like for you?

And so I think it brings up
all kinds of social pieces, talking about the cell,
talking about the device.

And then, you know,
getting into likes and dislikes, so.

Well, I don't like science.

I just seen the conversations
go and go and go.

When you said a student may say,
oh, I don't like science.

I mean, how many times in a school
cafeteria or something do students talk about classes or subjects
that they like or don't like?

And I think a blind student,
not that they couldn't before, but it's really cool
now that they can participate because they too
can look at graphs and pictures and kind of notice things
that maybe they before couldn't because we didn't have devices like Monarch and,
and other digital braille pieces.

So I think that's that's incredible.

And David,
we're going to fly over to Australia.

But you've,
you know, gone to different schools.

Have you noticed some of these things that MarLisa has noticed,
like with Monarch and things like that?

Definitely, I mean, that was this exact same situation
in Australia for school and university.

I mean, I know at the end of school each year because we have four terms here,
not not sort of two major semesters.

But I remember having to have my,
you know, my TVI talk to the classroom teacher
and the head of the head of that particular subject
organized stuff for the next term.

You get to the end of the year
and you had to organize the stuff.

And for next year,
make sure you've got your braille books done.

And it was exactly the same
for university.

I remember going to the lectures
at the end of each year and saying, okay, can you give me
your recommended list reading?

Tell me what the top sort of 2 or 3 are?

Which to me was always very restrictive
because I wanted to basically read everything
and I just didn't want to be able to read, you know, the top three books because,
you know,

I felt like I was being disadvantaged
because I couldn't get all the other ideas from the other books. So having stuff in digital format for me would have been amazing,
because then I just could have, you know, downloaded it to whatever device
I wanted to use and go for it.

So I think the change to digital access
now, you know, not just on on the HumanWare stuff,
but on mainstream tech and smartphones
and tablets is really amazing.

There's a lot of images and culture
now, that if they're described, it's great,
but sometimes, you know, they aren't.

And I guess my question is,
has anybody come to you and said, Miss Jacobs,
what does this look like?

Or can we see if we can pull this up
on the Monarch so that you could help them kind of get to grips
with what a certain image looks like?

I think there's a lot out there that they
don't even know that they can ask about.

I, I come to-

I was showing a bowling alley to a student and it just opened up the doors on that recreational activity because after we did, the bowling
alley on the Monarch, she was like, I didn't know that
all the pins were set up.

I'll throw the ball differently
because it's in a triangle.

It's not in just a row.

And I want to hear them differently.

And oh,
I didn't know what that beeping noise was.

It's the foul line.

And and so just being able
to feel all of that, the next time she went bowling, she was like,
I know what this looks like now.

I actually can sense where everything is
and what's going on.

And then to be able to have things.

I mean, right now
I know I'm talking about the Monarch a lot, because I think there's been
a lot of things that have really helped, a few of my students.

But they have an app
now that I'm being blessed with being able to help test
and to be able to draw on the, iPad and then have the student have it come up on
the Monarch immediately has been another just godsend.

I was showing the app
to one of my students and she's like,

I wonder what my name
looks like in cursive.

And so I was like, okay, let's see it.

So I drew it on the iPad
and as I was drawing it on the iPad, she was feeling it come up on the Monarch.

And was -

She was just amazed.

Oh, that's what my name looks like.

Speaking of the the new Wing-It app,
which is absolutely brilliant on my site.

I was,
as we do the recording at the moment.

I was at karate yesterday
and it's the first time

I've actually
taken the Monarch out to the dojo.

So I had the sensei.

The main trainer that I was with actually
do all the different stances for me, all the different angles from front side, back side, head down.

And he was able to let me know
through all these different drawings and arrows
he was doing on the Monarch, where I could improve
all my different stances doing karate.

And honestly, I went in there and thought
this is going to be a little bit

I don't know how this is really going
to work, in two dimensional versus
3D dimensions and so on.

But it was absolutely amazing.

And it was just him
and I doing it originally.

And then we ended up with a bit of a crowd
around us and quite a few people said, hey, David, if you ever need someone
to do some drawing for you on your on your gadget there, we've been more than willing
to actually have a play with it.

So that was actually really incredible.

I love this so much.

I was at a recent convention and Wing-It
it had just been released, and we had about two minutes before
someone came to the booth and my colleague was drawing things like palm trees
and a sun with rays, and she was like,
do you know what that is?

I said no, and then she told me,
I thought, wow, that is so cool.

So even just outside of school,
you know, David at karate, me at a booth before we had some visitors
come and see what Wing-It is all about.

It is so cool because as either a blind student or a blind adult,
you know, we never stop learning.

And this is just as neat for us
as blind adults and useful as it is for those in school.

And I think we've all kind of been able to chat about how helpful it's
been in the classroom.

And then outside of the classroom.

I love your bowling alley example.

I think that's incredible.

That actually helps me next time I go bowling pins are in a triangle.

See, I never knew.

The question is, though.

The question is, though,
which way is the triangle pointing?

Though?

That's a great question.

I don't know.

Well, and she was able to
she was able to see that, you know, when we talked about, you know, where would you throw the ball,
would you throw, you know.

So it was
it was a really good conversation.

We will conclude this segment on preparing for school and transitioning
students from hardcopy braille, which never really goes away
to digital Braille and MarLisa.

Thank you so much for your insight
and your dedication to your students.

It is fantastic to witness and to hear
about, and this has been so much fun.

So it looks like you're sticking around
with us for another segment. Yes.

Sounds great.

We hope you will too, friends.

We will be back very shortly.

Welcome back to the Hot Topic segment.

This is a fun one that we do each episode,
and we pick a topic that we may have differing views on
and just unpack it a little bit.

So this month's topic
we have MarLisa Jacobs,

TVI from New Mexico, teacher
of the visually impaired, and we want to discuss the topic of mainstreaming it can be a blind student
or a student with another disability.

Should they
be mainstreamed into a regular school, or should they be sent to a school
that specifically deals with their type of disability, whether it's blindness,
deafness, other types of needs?

Or should there be a hybrid approach?

There's lots of different views on this,
but I have David and Marlisa here and we're going to unpack this
a little bit.

So David, what are your thoughts on
mainstreaming versus not mainstream?

We'll be saying this when we are there.

But this is my personal idea.

You know, those famous statements
where they go, this my statement does not reflect the statement and values
of the organization that represent.

So that being said,

I'm there to protect myself from getting
jumped on by people on the internet.

I think I'm a mainstream support person
because,

I mean, there's so there's two things.

I mean, mainstream means
that you're mingling with your, your quite sighted peers and everybody else
wherever they decide whether or not, you're getting the exactly
the same education that everybody else is getting at that particular school.

But what you can't do is throw somebody into a mainstream school
or university setting without support.

You still need some type of support.

And that's where, you know, visiting
support teachers come into play.

Because I can still remember my years
at the blind school that I was at from,
you know, year three to year nine.

So three years
before I graduated from high school and it just felt that I wasn't living the life
that my brother and cousins and that were living
when I got to 9 and 12, when I went out with excursions
with the school,

I just wound up with excursions
to the school.

And, you know, normally
I just to one of my friends, in the class
and when we got home that way, the support person
wasn't even in class for me.

So the whole role was just to make sure
that I had all the material.

And like I said previously,
if I ever got stuck in class,

I could always go in and check with her
or email the information and that sort of stuff.

So I, so my instinct goes for me,
a good the, the issue with some because I've, I've actually got, two severely autistic children.

So they're nonverbal.

They do have quite
a few physical behavior issues.

So when they get very, very annoyed
and frustrated that I can do to sort of lash out
a little bit, pure frustration.

Yeah.

That's the sort of stuff
that I can clearly understand that putting that person in the mainstream
school would be absolutely unfair in this case to my son, because he's
just not going to be able to cope.

Special schools,
from that point of view, I can see, would be a lot better in some ways because hopefully the,
you know, the teachers support people are a lot more understanding
of that person's particular needs.

It's a very good point, really.

So what are your thoughts on mainstream
for students is different.

You know,
we I've heard over and over again that if you've seen one student
who has cortical visual impairment or one student
who has a vision impairment, you've seen one student
with a vision impairment.

You don't see a bunch, you know,
and I think it's the same with all of children who have,
difficulties learning in a different way.

And, you know, nobody is the same.

And so I think that's why
we have the different options.

I, I hate that we get stuck in one over
another.

Also, I, I feel like, here in New Mexico,
we have the school for the blind.

The students go to that school, however, they mainstream
for a lot of their classes, and they come back
to campus for, let's say, you know, skills that they need to learn
specifically how to cut with a knife that may not be taught
at a general, public school.

They were able to to participate in both the blind school on campus activities, but they were able to go to a football
game.

That was happening in the public school
that they were attending.

It's a it's a hard, tough topic
because I see the benefits of going to a school
that specific for a need is just.

And I've got my hands on my head
going, yeah, it's such a hard topic.

It is.

It is a tough topic.

I, I do see advantages of
I'll call it the hybrid approach.

I was able to do that as well
is, you know, you go to a blind school for some classes and some skills
like computer skills and things like that, and then go to a mainstream school
and you get that socialization, which when you get to middle
and high school, that is a really, really big deal, is learning
how to interact with peers who are sighted and then you have your peers
who are blind in that type of a disability due
to autism, other disabilities.

You may want to have them in a school
that can work directly with them.

But how do they integrate into the world?

Because that's the ultimate goal, right?

For everyone is to successfully integrate.

And that's- it's a tough one.

So as with all of our hot topics,
there's never a nice neat answer.

But I love just talking it over
with you guys and coming to the conclusion
that there is no conclusion.

And that's okay.

Welcome, everybody, to our newly named Trials and Triumph segment,
formerly the cringe segment.

But David and I decided that
we wanted to focus on positive things.

Now, if there is a crazy trial
that we've had, we can talk about it.

But I thought this would also be
a good segment to focus on.

Some of the wins that we've experienced
or victories that happened when we're just out
and about traveling and living life.

And what's really exciting is
MarLisa has chosen to stick around for this segment as well, so she has some experiences
that she would like to share.

I'll just jump in
and over the last month or so,

I have a triumph that I want to share.

And it involves the Waymo
autonomous vehicles.

We should have a hot topic segment
about that too, because there's lots of ideas
and opinions about them.

But I had never tried one
and I was in Los Angeles for a work event recently,
and they had the Waymo cars available.

They were at the event, so they had some discount codes,
and I thought, well, let's give it a try.

And I had some friends there who said,
you should definitely do this.

This is really good.

Are they still your friend?

And I wanted a bit of an adventure.

Right.

Are they still my friends? Absolutely.

I'm alive to tell you about them.

So yeah.

But it was very, very cool.

I was able to take some videos
with, Ray-Ban Meta glasses.

I have, and from finding the car
to getting in to starting the ride, it's very cool.

The car can honk
or you can have the car honk.

So I knew where it was.

And it talks you through.

You know, when you get in, it says,
hey, Rachel, and it talks you through, just safety videos
and you start the ride when you're ready.

And it took me to, a friend's house.

I spent some time there, and then I went
back to the hotel for the awards ceremony that I was,
participating in for the event.

And what was very cool, aside
from being able to request the ride and locate it, is
it has audio description.

So it would tell you if it's waiting
for the intersection to clear or yielding to pedestrian or what street it turned
on, so you can turn those on and there's a voice in the car that will tell you
kind of what's happening.

So I think that's very, very good.

But it was a little bit unnerving
getting in the back of a car.

There is no driver.

And before we started recording this,
the question came up,

Will the car tell you where you are
or when you reach your destination?

And when I got back to the hotel,
it stopped.

It was on this hill.

I opened the door, there were cars honking and driving,
and I thought, this doesn't seem right.

But the car kept saying,
you reach your destination.

So I was not convinced.

So I called Waymo support and I said, hey,
you know, I'm blind.

I just want to confirm
that I am at my destination.

And the agent was great.

She looked it up
where I was supposed to be on the map.

She said, yes, you're here.

You're just a little bit in front of the hotel entrance
because there are vehicles blocking it.

So that's why your car couldn't pull up
completely.

Well, okay. Great.

So she gave me walking directions
to the entrance, and once I had that,
I was able to find the hotel.

So that was my experience.

Overall, this is a really, really positive
so what's what do you got, David?

What's your trial triumph on?

You know, here in Sydney
there's a famous train on, of course, that runs between Newcastle
and Sydney.

So it's about, 110km long and it's, you know, it's called the Central Coast
Newcastle line.

You know, for the last, geez,
I want to say 30 to 35 years, we've had these sort of gradually
getting more tired and tired sort of double decker trains
running on it.

And half the time you can't hear the guards you know, saying, next up is X, Y and Z.

So they've been introducing the new trains over the last,
I want to say 12 months or so.

But finally, last week
they said these trains are no longer running on the Central Coast
Newcastle line.

The rally on this other line,
which is basically to the Blue Mountains in Sydney, but the really cool thing about
these new trains is not only do they do announcements,
they do the following things.

So they'll actually tell you
what side of the platform the train will be stopping at
and what side the door will be opening on.

But the really, really cool thing
that these trains do now, which other ones never did
and I don't know how they do it, but between Sydney and Newcastle
we've got some platforms that, you know, four cars
long, six cars long eight cars long.

So the thing you rock up to, you,
you walk up to your railway station, you think if I get on the wrong
part of this, cut this train, I'm stuck?

Because when it pulls up, those doors,
just don't open.

They just stay closed.

So what happens with these new trains?

You get on and it pulls away and it will
automatically say, welcome on board.

You are in car six of an eight car train.

So if I said that to me, I think, oh fine, I can just walk up,
you know, three front cars.

So that way I know
absolutely not only what doors are opening on what side of the train, but I know
absolutely that I'm on the right carriage.

I'm not going to get stuck.

But the fact that you can tell what carriage right now is just
it just takes a huge weight off you travel.

It's it's

I've just it's the little things, right?

Just little things that make travel so,
so much easier.

That's it.

Yeah. Right.

How do I get those in
what car are those in?

Well, my try out - MarLise just talk to us.

Tell us about your program.

I am, assistive tech specialist, and sometimes we don't think about, like you said, those little things
that are going to make a big difference.

I was working with a student
who was just struggling, bless her heart, to to see the board,
to see the paper in front of her.

And we had tried one thing after another, and I came in
and we had this simple magnifier that you can put paper underneath it
and, and read up close.

And they had a camera that you could, flip to the board and see the board will,
all of that was great.

She loved it.

She was like, yes, I want to use this.

And she, we, I was having her play with it to just kind of make sure
if she had any questions.

And she started crying and I was like,
oh my gosh, what did I do?

What happened? What did I do? And her, the assistant who helps her in a lot of her
classes was standing in front of her
and she said, I can see her face.

She's so beautiful.

I was like, oh, my gosh,
the things we don't think about that that happened.

And so that was a triumph for me,
that that she was able to feel the connection with the person that's been
working with her the whole school year.

And it just took a simple magnifier to to do that.

That's incredible.

As David often says, we use the right tool for the right job,
and that was the right tool for the job.

So, friends,
if you have triumphs or trials that you'd like to tell us about,
don't be shy.

We'd love to hear from you.

[email protected] is where
you can send those notes with Love It.

Tell us your stories because we have plenty, but we know you have plenty as well.

Welcome everybody to the Partner
Corner segment for this episode.

It is so exciting that

I get to go a little bit north of the border here and talk to someone from Canada.

It is my pleasure to introduce
Erin LeBlanc.

She is an assistive technology
specialist at Neil Squire and Erin

Welcome to the podcast and I'm so excited
you're here.

Yeah. Thank you so much, Rachel.

It's, I'm excited to
to share all the good about, you know, Neil Squire
and and our connection to HumanWare and, and all that love and joy that we have
in assistive technology collaborations.

Love and joy.

That is something we have an abundance
when it comes to assistive technology collaboration. I love how you put that.

Tell us your story.

How did you get into the industry
and meet up with HumanWare and start this awesome partnership?

Yeah, so I have been working to support individuals with disabilities
literally since forever.

Some of my really early, you know, jobs
and early career opportunities were in kind of personal support
worker roles, respite worker roles.

And I've moved through some positions, such as learning strategist,
where I'm doing like accommodation provision and assessments,
and had a big shift probably about five years ago, where
I really fell in love with the assistive technology piece of breaking down barriers
and providing opportunities.

So I've been with Neil Squire
for just over three years as an assistive technology specialist, and Neil Squire is a Canadian nonprofit organization,
and we serve Canadians with disabilities.

So we are not specific to the blind, low
vision community, we serve individuals with mobility impairments, hearing
impairments, learning disabilities.

We have a whole portfolio
that is really ready and willing to work with those struggling
with mental health concerns.

And I got connected to HumanWare in a pretty special, natural way, when I ended up
sharing, airplane seats, side by side with a gentleman by the name of Mathieu here
out of your Quebec, Canada office.

And we were both on our way
to the Assistive Technology

Industry Association conference
that happens annually in Orlando, Florida.

That is absolutely incredible.

Yes. Mathieu Paquette,
he is our product manager for Stream and StellarTrek and Odyssey
and so on.

And you can't network
any more naturally than that.

I just love that.

And so what was the conversation
like where Mathieu maybe mentioned what he did
and you thought, hey, this could really fit
into what I do into the organization.

How did that materialize?

So I really began exploring solutions and technology for individuals
with total vision loss and low vision.

About a year and a half ago, when I met a beautiful woman who-

I share her story
so often, and I might even get emotional.

But she is a newcomer to Canada.

She arrived as a refugee with her family and just had so many layers, kind of facing her for securing employment
and housing and everything else.

And she is blind and she is so motivated and she wanted to become
computer literate.

She wanted to enter the workforce
like she's a dreamer.

And I began working with her,
and she has sparked me so many times
to ask those questions like, hey, when you have someone who has never used
technology, when you have someone that's never explored, even visually,
what the alphabet looks like.

So to kind of go
down the road of a QWERTY keyboard, you have someone that's never learned
Braille.

You have,
you know, all these kind of factors that just made up who she was
and her learning opportunities hit me. And

Mathieu and I were sitting beside
each other, and I had met another really special individual, you know,
a newcomer to Canada, similar story.

And he actually was a Braille reader.

And, I knew about the BrailleNote Touch Plus. you know, I've kind of seen it
in action, heard about it.

And Matthew and I just started
this beautiful conversation about, like,
why would you go in this direction?

Why would you continue to encourage
Braille versus maybe exploring some other softwares?

And so it was great
to have someone who's really, you know, this is their bread and butter
and when the more kind of specific questions that I asked, the more feedback
he provided and the more examples he provided and went way above and beyond,
like we shared a taxi to the hotel.

We met up like various times
over the conference, and when we both landed back in Canada,
he coordinated a meeting.

With someone who was really able
to speak to the different

Braille devices that HumanWare offers to really do, like a really special
pairing with this individual.

I gotta ask asks.

I'm always curious.

What would you say
is your favorite piece of technology that you've gotten to introduce
to one of your clients?

I know it's a tough one.

Like just within the HumanWare
or my going big ocean of options here.

Let's do one of each.

Let's do one thing from HumanWare
and one thing from something else that you have experience
with, from the HumanWare the Victor reader is been
just like the classic that a lot of the individuals
that I support that are, you know, of a particular age
and have a particular comfort with that style of device,
you know, just providing that auditory feedback for reading support
and, digital document support.

It's just such a handy, small, user friendly compact device that I find it
so multi-functional and really, really easy to use for even like a debutant technology person.

So it's one that I've recommended a lot
and trained on a few times with persons who were very like opposed
almost to the introduction of more advanced technologies.

So that would be my go to.

I really like the design.

Again, just it's very intuitive to use.

So it's not burdensome.

It's really not something that, has been difficult to kind of have really good implementation,
like we do often unfortunately, see very specialized complex technology
be recommended and purchased and paid for.

And then just ends up collecting dust, or it's
not really being used to its full capacity because of the learning curve involved
in really being able to use it.

But the Victor is a great one.

I think it's just really well
designed and serves a lot of purposes.

I think I'll go with that one.

I love it,
I love that it's a great choice.

One of our most popular products.

How about the other one?

Outside of what HumanWare offers,
I will say that just in terms of a device
that can do so much for so many like high incidence learning disabilities, the accessibility settings, that you can change at no cost, very easily
within a lot of the Apple products,

I recommend a lot of Apple products,
not because of specialized apps that you can put on them, but really
because of how easy it is to make so many good modifications to the device
and the interface and accessibility.

So that's one that I will say
that I will recommend

Apple products a lot,
whether it's a phone or a tablet, especially for, you know, limitations
within reading and reading comprehension
or writing or written expression, because you can do it with just like two
little taps and it changes the whole way.

You can, you know, express yourself
with word processing or read and understand documentation.

This is a fantastic answer
because it's true.

And even in the previous segment,
we had our low vision product manager say that, you know,
there's a magnification app called the explore app,
and that's on the iPhone itself.

So it's not about having proprietary technology to meet
all the needs, mainstream technology has come such a long way that we can meet
those needs in some ways.

And yet there's still a space,
and I think always will be, for technology that meets the needs of of blind people
and those with other disabilities.

Erin, thank you so much for coming on.

Just speaking with such enthusiasm
about what you do, how you're partnering with us
to fulfill that mission.

And it has been such a pleasure,
I will say, because I want, you know, HumanWare
and also other partners out there to know that we really value
the relationship.

You know,
I've had really beautiful success, you know, having devices sent out
for people to trial before purchase.

And I know that perhaps
the rules are a little bit different south of the border,
but at least here in Canada, like, it's so important, sometimes
to really have a trialing opportunity, especially when some specialized
technology does has a price tag that is not always accessible
to everyone or available to everyone.

So I just wanted to send out some props,
to the partnership on that side as well.

If there are on site
demo days or loan libraries, no matter where you are in the world,
those resources are available.

They exist and are worth checking into.

So you can see if a piece of technology
is going to meet your needs.

Well, thank you again Rachel
for having me on. Today was really fun.

Welcome everybody to the

Tips and Tricks segment of this episode, and it is my pleasure to welcome back
Roger Steinberg.

He has been a guest on our podcast before
and we are so lucky to have him.

He is our low vision product manager and he is going to share some tips and some tricks about magnifiers
and which one to buy.

Because as we know
when making any tech decision or any bigger purchase,
there's a lot of choice and it's hard to know
which choice to make.

So out of our low vision
products, Roger's going to go through them and we'll just have a quick chat
about which ones meet, which needs and which one might be best for you.

So Roger, welcome back. Rachel,
thanks a lot.

I'm just so happy to be back again.

This is one of the fun parts about
the job is doing this.

And you know, this afternoon I'm going to a conference to to meet and greet
and, show show our solutions to individuals who might have a need, and those are the most exciting
parts of the job, is helping people to find something that really helps
them out in their day to day life.

But as you know, Rachel, picking a digital magnifier isn't just about zooming in
and zooming out.

It's about finding the one that fits
the needs of the user just right.

Like in Goldilocks in her
trying to find the porridge, going from chair
to chair and crunching one.

And one's too big one's too small, one's
too complicated or just right.

So that's what I hope to do
today, is give, folks some, some guidelines to think about
when they go to buy a magnifier.

Sounds fantastic.

So let's start out then with our our smallest handhelds, if you will.

How would somebody decide, do I need a five inch magnifier
or an eight inch magnifier.

Yeah.

So I think, Rachel, it comes back.

To- I created a little mnemonic here.

And if somebody wants to send us
a better one, I'm all for it.

But, so simply put, it's like what
every tech fan buys, and it's a simple way to think about five key areas
when shopping for a digital magnifier.

So the very first thing, and probably
the most important to consider is that w the what what do you want to do
with this magnifier when you buy it.

So explore 5 and explore 8
Those are two of ours.

Obviously there are others on the market,
but again it comes back to starting with your purpose.

Are you looking to read your mail?

Are you doing crossword puzzles?

Do you want to look at family photos?

Or maybe you need to fill out forms at
or see a whiteboard in a classroom?

So this one question
what do you want to do?

The what is is going to help narrow
the choices down very quickly.

What do I need this for.

So that's the starting point.

So the following question, you know after you you answer the
what is the e or the every.

It's the environment.

Where are you going to use it.

So if you're going to use it at home,
you probably can get away with a larger desktop magnifier like our Reveal 16,
although there's a plethora of desktop options on the market.

But if a user is going to go from,
say, class to class or going to appointments,
or maybe it's just for,

I'm going out on the dinner, I'm going
grocery shopping.

So those lend themselves more to the first products that you mentioned,
maybe that five inch explore or the 8 or the 12,
depending upon the environment.

Where are you going to be setting it up?

So some people need both.

So again,
I would come back to the user and say, think about your day to day routine
and the environment where you're going to be using this device
most often. in today's digital world or landscape,
like you mentioned, maybe you'll need a five inch for spot
reading.

Maybe you need an eight
inch for a more involved task.

It's no different.

I think then folks having maybe an Apple iPhone or Apple iPad
or some type of other tablet or computer, it just comes down to the different tools
for the job.

Now, you mentioned desktop magnifiers.

Let's jump into the next category, if you will, of the 12 inch and 16 inch,
what do you tell folks who might be interested
in those types of magnifiers?

Yeah.

So again you have your first two questions
that you've answered.

The the what and the environment.

Right now, you're starting to get into
as you cross over sometimes into our 12 inch
which we have a Connect 12, it's called.

And we have a second Reveal 16i,
i is for intelligent.

So we move into the level
of technology comfort.

And you mentioned a minute
ago the iPhone and the iPad.

Some individuals
are not comfortable with those.

They're they're just too deep.
I was talking to my mother this morning.

She's like, I don't know what to do
with the cell phone.

And so, we start, you know, diving into
is the user comfortable with touch screens and applications on their phones
and things like that?

Or do you want something that just works
with, you know, 2 or 3 buttons where I learn,
you know, I press this one to zoom in, I press this one to zoom out.

And there's one other that changes the colors for me,
and maybe a power on and off button.

So some people really prefer
a simple tool, that starts with the smaller solutions
that you talked about the explore line, but then if they want to get into text
to speech capturing a document, with the device,
having a read aloud back to them, accessing the web, using other
applications and things like that.

That's where our Connect 12 tablet based
solution, the reveal 16i and our latest, solution, we have a prodigy software
that comes in a number of different configurations.

Those open up the world of, you know, more advanced technology for
those that have a higher level of comfort.

I love that you mentioned
being comfortable with your technology.

That's such a big consideration.

We manufacture technology,
of course, that's meant to be easy to use and intuitive.

There's nothing better than just pressing
a button and having something happen.

So I'm changing the zoom. I'm
changing the contrast.

Just for a second.

Can you talk about
some of the speaking features that the larger models
or even the software has?

I love that someone can take a picture
and then get it read to them.

Yeah, this really speaks to the features
that you would look for once you've gone through sort of those
first three things.

So, we,
we utilize the Acapella speech engine.

Folks that are new to
the world may not recognize that name, but these are high quality, human
sounding, more human sounding voices.

They actually use neural text to speech
now, which is modeling off of actual human speech.

So there are a host of different
technologies that can be used out there, but we think that the Acapella
are the best within the low vision sphere.

Of course, you know, if you're using, a digital
device for a reader and just doing reading and listening, sometimes,
other voices come in more handy there.

But then we get into, you know,
the other features beyond just the audio feed back into, you know, how high
of a level of zoom does the user need?

So, you know, some devices like our
explore 5 go for go up to 22 times, and then we have other devices that
go to 60 times, what you're looking at.

And so how, you know, it depends on the eye condition,
but how far do you need to go?

What is the level of clarity
that you need to have?

There are ranges in displays
of the clarity of the image.

Do you need to have
lighting built into the unit or is your environment
going back to the other question, do you have a lot of good
ambient lighting?

Where are you planning to use the device?

So lighting isn't so important.

And of course,
then we get into a lot of things that I covered in a previous session with with us,
which is sort of like lines and blinds.

I won't go into those now.

Color, contrast and things like that.

So there's a lot of features to consider
and you can get into features being overwhelming.

Coming back to your
your point about the comfort level of use, you know, too
many features may not be a good thing.

I think the last feature that I would
consider is sort of, do I need this thing to be foldable
and compact coming back?

And that ties back
to the environmental use.

Do I need to be able to move about really,
really efficiently with this?

Or is it okay for it to sit in one place
all of time?

So this is where things get really personal about
what's just right for the user themselves.

So to conclude, Roger,
if somebody is looking at magnifiers and trying to make a decision, what is the best way for them
to learn about the options and then eventually get a demo of that product
so they can really make that final decision
of what's going to work best for them.

Yeah.

So I think it's, you know, talking with the appropriate people,
finding the right sources of information.

So, you know, most folks
nowadays will start with Google.

But, talk to the eye care provider.

If it's a veteran,
they can talk to the VA.

People that are still in the workforce
can talk to rehab counselors and so forth.

In the education sphere, it's going to be
teachers of the visually impaired and things like that. Counselors.

So try, try and find someone that's
in the know about these sorts of things.

There is one other consideration.

And for many it's it can be
the most important consideration.

But I would still always
start with my needs.

And that is the budget for the device.

So, you know, magnifiers
can range in price from under $1,000.

In fact, we have a free magnifier app for people
that are just starting to experience, you know, vision loss and
need a simple magnifier on their phone, but they can go up to several
thousand dollars for the device.

So higher cost
usually brings the larger screen size and some of the advanced features
we talk about.

But the goal isn't always to buy
the most expensive.

That doesn't mean it's better.

It's the find
the one that meets your needs.

So again, I always say, I'll come back
to that, mnemonic that I gave.

And again, I would love for somebody
to give me a better, a better one.

But, you know what every tech fan buys?

What the environment, technology.

You're comfortable with, the features
and your budget, for the device.

So find the balance.

Try before you buy, find a resource
that you can try them out.

We have dealers throughout the country, as well as sales managers
across the country to help you out.

And don't be afraid to ask questions.

There's no wrong, wrong answers.

And trying to find something
that's going to meet needs, because the best magnifier isn't
always the biggest or flashiest one.

It's going to be the one that that meets
your needs as a user.

To help
you get through day to day, enjoy reading and doing what you want to do
and your life's pursuits.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

Roger, thank you so much for laying out
all these considerations in such a concise
and easy to understand manner.

And if anybody has any questions,
please reach out to us.

You can go to our website www.humanware.com www.humanware.com

We have lots of resources.
You're not alone.

I know sometimes with changing vision
it can be overwhelming and it's not easy to find
what's out there.

But HumanWare,
has been around for a long time and we want to help
in any way that we can.

So Roger, thank you so much
for sharing your expertise with us and you will be back on a future episode.

It's good fun.

Rachel, I appreciate you being here
and I definitely look forward to the next go around, whenever that may be.

All right, friends,
welcome to the upcoming show segment.

As mentioned in the previous episode
where things were slowing down a bit, things are now speeding up
and you can find us in several places
around the country and internationally.

So I'm here to tell you about the upcoming shows in August and midway
through September.

Starting August 14th through 16th,
you can find us at the National Federation
of the Blind, the NFB.

We will be in South Carolina
at the DoubleTree, and that takes place in Columbia,
South Carolina, August 21st through 24th.

You can find the NFB in Arizona.

We will be at the Hyatt
Regency in downtown Phoenix.

Come say hello to our distributor,
Digital Apex, there.

August 22nd and 23rd.

We will be at the Iowa Council of the United Blind
that takes place in Iowa, and we will be in the
holiday Inn in Des Moines.

Cruising on into September.

Now on September 11th,
the National Federation of the Blind, we will be in North Carolina
at the Marriott that is in Carolina Beach on September
16th.

We are cruisin' across the pond
to Sight Village, Blackpool.

We will be at the Winter Gardens
and that is in 97 Church Street, Blackpool.

FY11 HL that is over in the UK.

So if you have some friends or you
yourself are over there, please come by and say hello
to our fantastic European team.

They will be happy to take orders,
say hello, give you some demos, answer any questions that you have
and that is open from 9:30 a.m. until 3:30 p.m..

If you find yourself in Europe
and want to contact the sales team by email, you can do so at [email protected]

So again, we are in lots of different places around the US
and across the pond over in the UK.

So if you happen to find yourself in one
of those places, stop by and say hello.

We'd love to chat with you.

If you have comments or suggestions,
we'd love to hear from you.

Please send them to
[email protected]

That's [email protected]

Thanks so much for listening to See Things
Differently.

We'll see you next month.

Episode Notes

In this episode of See Things Differently, hosts Rachel Ramos and David Woodbridge sit down with MarLisa Jacobs and Erin LeBlanc from to talk all things back to school. Whether you’re a parent preparing your child, a teacher getting ready for the classroom, or a student navigating new challenges, this conversation is packed with insights and encouragement.

You’ll hear:

  • Practical advice for easing the transition back into routines.
  • Strategies for supporting students with vision loss in and out of the classroom.
  • Tips for fostering collaboration between parents, teachers, and support staff.
  • Personal stories from MarLisa and Erin that highlight the importance of adaptability, advocacy, and building confidence.
  • Tips&tricks with Roger Steinberg on how to find the proper magnifier for your needs

Plus, the team shares updates on what’s happening at HumanWare, upcoming events, and how the right tools can make a big difference in school success.

Neil Squire (Erin LeBlanc): https://www.neilsquire.ca/

Find out more at https://see-things-differently-with-hu.pinecast.co