S1E14 - Gaming Without Limits: Low Vision, Tech & Staying in the Game

Hello and welcome to the HumanWare
See Things Differently podcast.

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and David Woodbridge as we bring you engaging interviews from
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Hello and welcome to episode 14 of See Things Differently.

We are into 2026 and last month
we celebrated Braille awareness.

And this month for the month of February, we are checking in with our low vision
friends.

This is Low Vision Awareness Month,
and for this month and this episode,
we're going to have a little bit of fun.

We have someone who I'm sure
many of you know, and we want to dive in and talk about low
vision and gaming and what kind of assistive
technology is in use.

We're going to have a great hot
topic segment, so you'll want to stick around for that.

And David Woodbridge is here as always
I am here and I want to introduce our guest Joe
Steinkamp.

As mentioned,
many of you probably know him.

If you don't, you absolutely should.

He is going to give us
a little bit of his background and talk about his vision and some games, but he is currently the manufacturer representative
for HumanWare in the Carolinas.

So if you are located
in North or South Carolina, you might have the pleasure
of running into Joe and allowing him to show you all the great products
we have.

But Joe, welcome to our podcast.

We are pumped up and so excited
you're here!

I appreciate the invitation to come on
board, and I want to apologize in advance
because I haven't climbed any mountains.

Have you forded any streams? No.

I thought about it once or twice, but
definitely giving it some consideration.

I, you know, low vision guy played games
since he was playing Atari in the 70s.

So I have a long history of gaming
and talking about games on podcast, good or bad.

And, it is where I started, naturally.

It was one of those things where, I have worked when I had more vision in places
where I was selling video games.

I worked the Nintendo 64 launch.

But as I, you know, I have glaucoma
and, know, had cataracts at birth.

Cataracts were removed.

Still have the glaucoma. I'm so lucky.

But I have the opportunity to, you know,
work at it from a progressive vision loss situation so I can talk about, how I have adapted, how
things have changed.

You know, there's a lot of great things
out there, whether you're deciding that you want to kill time,
either on a big television, on your computer monitor,
or maybe on a tablet.

There are so many great ways to be able
to, you know, spend time.

And, you know, there was a moment in which the idea of having a screen reader on a video game
console was pure fantasy.

But we've had ten years of narrator
on the Xbox, and last year we finally got a Nintendo system,
the Nintendo Switch 2 with RTS that.

That's amazing.

So there's great things out there
as far as gaming is concerned
and of great ways to be able to play it.

And unfortunately, it all cost money.

Well, there is that right.

There's that state of play barrier
a little bit.

But tell us a little bit about your
background so folks can get to know you.

And then let's talk about kind of
how you got into some games maybe.

What did you start out with and what is
your preferred method of playing now?

Is it on a console
like Xbox or PlayStation, or do you prefer a computer or tablet?

And I know
David will have thoughts as well.

I started like any Vo,
you know, visually impaired or blind individual as a young person
in the 70s of all wish to be on video.

You know, did my Columbia School
of Broadcasting and ran through college and did a little professional work
in radio in the Houston area and realized that it was not as much fun
as I had built it up in my head.

It is an actual job,
and there are things about it that are good, and
there are things about it that are bad.

I was really lucky
that I was able to interview, you know, major rock bands of Faith,
No More, anthrax, Motorhead.

I was able to do
a lot of really cool stuff at a time
when music was really, really at a zenith.

As far as,
you know, metal and rock were concerned.

And then I kind of hit a point
of where I didn't want to do it anymore.

It was just not really clicking for me,
and it wasn't anything to do with my vision loss.

In fact,
my vision loss helped me in a lot of ways.

I had, you know, Joey
Belladonna of Anthrax say, hey, I've never actually been interviewed
by a blind person before.

So that was you know, super awesome.

But I left radio because I had achieved a lot of things
that I had set up for myself at 21.

Wasn't sure what I was going to do.

I was renting laser discs
from a store down the street from me, and I was just kind of bored,
and I was alphabetizing things, and I was, redoing their marketing
and straightening up their signs.

And the gentleman
who was in charge of the, you know, place said, hey,
would you like to work here?

Because you're practically doing it.

And, you know, instead of getting free
rentals, I might as well just pay you.

And I went, oh, cool.

And that turned into
he was a legacy with RadioShack.

And the next thing I know,
Incredible Universe, which was a part of

Tandy Incorporated, was a chain of stores very similar, sold out to Fry's,
if you remember Fry's like, oh yes, I do.

Yeah.

So, there were competitor
to Fry's and Incredible

Universe was like 240,000ft²
with over 450 people in there.

And I started in the music movies
department, worked my way across into games, sold games.

Like I said, the Nintendo 64 launch that I sold home
theater and I was a TJX representative.

And then, Tandy decided that they didn't
want to own anything other than RadioShack.

So after a couple of years of that,
I, helped close those stores and had to pivot once again, found myself
kind of looking at what I wanted to do, and I fell into, sitting at home.

Christmas, a friend of mine said, hey,
how would you like to just, like, make some money for the holidays?

And he worked at Gateway
Technical Support.

Oh well, yes, I remember them too.

Yeah.

So I, took one 800 number calls
for tech support with those big black and white Jersey cow boxes
and did that for a couple of years.

And, fell into assistive technology
because I had gone to, my counselor at the time recommended that I go to NFB for what was called
the job program under Anthony Cobb.

And, yeah, it's
where I got to meet retiring and Curtis

Chong and also, meet Peggy Chong.

Just learned a lot about blind history,
but it was the IPC.

So I got to walk around the International
Braille and Technology Center and see all these old vista and virts
and the gigantic, wax that you could heat up,
and then it would print out this, beautiful, amazing,
look at the periodic table.

And it was covered.

So you said, look, you're not really
fixing people's computers in person.

You're talking to somebody over the phone,
and you're fixing their their computer.

You're doing that visually.

You know, you could do a lot more to help
the community and serve individuals
like yourself than you are trying to, you know, be in denial
about your vision loss and try to, fit in.

And, you know,
my vision was still pretty high back then.

It was a it was a hard partial, but

I couldn't pass all the time.

But I passed a good bit of the time.

So my left eye is my good eye.

My right eye is a prosthetic.

So people would have ideas, when they would see me
mess up on depth perception or something.

Right.

So that would kind of like, hey,
what's the matter with that guy?

And, I'd learn to kind of work
around those limitations, but it was getting harder and harder.

And so Curtis had put it in my mind that you've used assistive technology
all your life.

Why don't you use that as a positive?

And, you know, my first video magnifier was at the Houston Lighthouse in 1979.

I saw the old visual tech.

So I had a lot of history with assistive technology,
and I was able to work that into, falling into working as an employment
assistant specialist for what was called
the Texas Commission for the blind.

So I jumped into government
service, started helping blind individuals
maintain and obtain employment.

And I found that very rewarding.

It was really, really fun.

It was a lot of work.

But it was it was really rewarding to help people keep jobs or find jobs.

And I did that in Houston for,
about almost five years.

And then my assistive technology
background came back up again, and I was invited to come up and work at
the Assistive Technology Unit in Austin.

And at that time we had,
about 44 video magnifiers somewhere around, you know, with note
takers, 12 Braille displays.

So it was like walking into a, you know,
kid in a candy store every morning.

And I got to work with our assistive technology trainers
and help work with vendors.

So they would bring in equipment
in preview, and we would give them feedback and provide that information
to them about, hey, knowing our consumers, we're not sure that the keyboard
has enough play here or we're not sure that this is a great way for you to find
the power button or something like that.

So it was a really good dialog
with a lot of companies.

So I got to meet a lot of people at,
various companies and get to know them.

So when I left in 2010, I came out and worked at various,
you know, places and did assistive technology in the field and started,
you know, taking what I knew and putting that into, you know, doing
call outs to individuals and providing, you know, kind of full circle,
like we were talking about earlier, phone support and,
you know, technical support and sales and got to be kind of a jack of all trades
through doing all of that.

So, you know, it's always been a part of my life,
assistive technology in gaming as well.

Like I said, I was an Atari 2600 gamer.

I moved on to the Atari.

Yes. Next
and did some things in computer gaming.

But I was always love consoles, so I've owned just about every Sega device
there's ever been.

I have a couple of Sega
minis around here somewhere.

So I've always had, you know,
various video game hardware around because it was something
that I could just kind of zone out to.

And so I didn't go out,
especially after my radio career.

I didn't go out as much.

I didn't really jump up and down.

To, to go out there to a loud club and, have to work out
what somebody was trying to pantomime, especially if there were strobe
lights there with glaucoma.

That's really fun.

Oh, so light to dark. Light to dark.

That's that's a blast.

But it was easier to see the.

I could control lighting.

I could control colors,
I could control things on the television.

And so I made adaptations not knowing
that I was doing rehab engineering or, you know, I just was making it easier
for myself to see.

But in the meantime,

I was training myself to understand
how to do that for other people.

So my gaming hobby, turned into something
that I was able to use for work.

You mentioned consoles, so this is a great way to kind of introduce,
it was mentioned briefly earlier, but, screen readers and other assistive
technology tools on consoles.

What are your thoughts on that
and how has that changed over the years?

It makes it easier to troubleshoot
something that's nice.

It it was a way to control
streaming content because a lot of these, devices have the ability
to play Netflix and Apple TV.

And in fact,
I still use Apple TV on my Xbox because it has a better output
to my high definition television.

It is.

It's nice to be able to, especially
if you're the parent of children, and you need to be able to look
and make sure you know what kind of games they're playing,
or set up the parental content so you can, you know, set up lockouts
and or not playing games you don't want them to play or seeing things
you don't want them to see.

It was very liberating.

So beyond the idea of just going through
the menus and being able to launch a game, it gave you a lot of opportunities
to have control over what the device did for your family,
which I thought was really fantastic.

And, I was really happy to be able
to explain that to others.

And then later
Sony did that with the PlayStation.

The PlayStation four got toys.

It's not as good as what came later
in the PlayStation five.

But, you know, once again,
if you had a family situation where you needed to be able to control
that content or say, I don't want kids to play any game that's mature,
you could go in there and settled that as a blind person, which, you know,
that was very liberating.

Later, you know,
we got things like Apple TV and, fire, through Amazon and Roku
has, their own way of doing things.

But, you know, for a while
there, it was taking something that was so visual,
but giving somebody the opportunity.

And people will have been playing games
for a long time.

Blind, you know, fighting games
especially.

Yeah.

Fighting games
have been, going all the way back to early Mortal Kombat from the 1990s,
or Street Fighter to Street Fighter.

Those are the two I was thinking of.

Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter. Yes. Yep.

And so those games, you know, we could memorize
and we could be competitive with them.

We would have sound cues
and we could be right there with people.

In fact, one of the people
on my PlayStation friends list,

Rattle Head, he's a competitive fighter.

So he plays for real
and is in tournaments, and he's one of the people that helped design
the sound cues in Mortal Kombat one.

So there was actually a mode
within Mortal Kombat one that allows you to turn all the music off
and all of the, you know,
kind of grunts and groans and hits and have sounds that are
just coming at you in a stereo soundscape so you can determine how far away
the players are from each other.

You can determine how close you are
to the wall.

Or you can actually tell when someone's
doing an overhead or kick.

Joe, what's the like,
the squared magnification?

Because, you know, traditionally
we think the screen magnification is, you know, you've got quite normal screen
modification, which is like the fonts and that's the stuff.

But when I think of screen magnification,
I think of the old zoom text size.

So even now where you've got,
you know, two times, four times and you only start
to see a portion of the screen, what's the state of screen
magnification on game consoles?

I mean, do you get that real magnification
or it's more of a portal type thing on the screen? You can use magnification.

It is something that of course,
when you enlarge something, you start to lose things around
what you're looking at.

So naturally,
if you magnify to two extra forks, I'm starting to cut off
portions of the screen, so I'll have to use some form
of non-visual memorization to know where I am or know
what's going on.

I don't use it often.

I will use it for, strategy games.

So imagine a map where you have
little figures that you can move people across the map and have them do things
like in Final Fantasy Tactics.

I could do that
because there's not a lot of action going on, and I can control the mouse
and I can control the movement, and nothing's going to be off screen
trying to kill me, you know, because I can control.
It's all menu driven.

So for those kinds of games,
that works out really well in, other places
where screen magnification might work out better is in a game like Forza motorsport,
and Forza motorsport is a driving game where you can make,
the heads up display bigger.

You can, have it have certain colors.

So if you have color vision issues, you could actually make it easier
to be able to see those things.

You could also have different modes.

So in force you could actually
I tend to drive with the bumper camera.

So the camera is like right on the bumper
really close to the ground and I can see the ground better.

But some people might find that
distracting or offputting, because, you know, it's
you don't see anything but the road.

So they might want to be able to see like a helicopter
view of their car on the road.

And that might make them less motion sick.

For if you really want it,
you can actually have a view inside the cars.

You can actually, you know,
see the cockpit inside the car, see the gearshift moving,
see the winch, you know, see your, view outside the windshield
and see the steering wheel turn.

Some people like that,
and I think that's really neat.

Ford's is one of those,
the late Brandon Cole was a part of.

And he came up with audio cues for me being able to drive blind, blind driving.

These are all console games
that we've been talking about.

But, Joe, if you can talk to us
real quickly about any, any PC games and any assistance that you use,
whether it's audio description or any type of magnification,
like we're just chatting about it.

Well, I guess, do you play PC games
and if so, what do you use to kind of help you adapt
and to have the best experience possible?

Well, it's funny because a lot
of these games that I've mentioned so far have come to PC. Nice.

They've actually broken away
from the PlayStation and the Xbox.

So, The Last of Us, which is, you know, really well designed for a blind individual
or someone with vision loss.

You can actually play that on a PC.

And,
you know, these days when I'm asked about what should I get for my kids, I'm like,
you know, get a get a PC.

Because so many of these games
are coming over anyway, and you don't want to lock yourself
into an ecosystem.

The only place where that doesn't work is
Nintendo.

Nintendo is kind of their own thing,
and Mario is only going to be on Mario's platform.

But, you know, Forza is through Game Pass,
available on PC.

Some of the games you can buy from
Microsoft are what's called play Anywhere.

So you can buy it on, you know, the PC and play it on Xbox
if you want and carry over your saves.

There are people I know who have a, some of the new handheld, like the,

Republic of Gamers are Roge ally.

So they have those and it's like,
you know, a Gameboy, but it's a PC and it's got a small screen on it,
and they can play their games on their, their ally and or Steam Deck.

How, how playable is, the good old famous
which my children absolutely loved.

Minecraft.

Oh yeah.

Minecraft is an interesting thing.

So there's, Minecraft
itself, Minecraft dungeons, and then there's Minecraft Legends,
and Minecraft itself has been adding more
and more accessibility features to it.

It really depends on whether you're comfortable
with the controls.

It has rudimentary speech,
so you'll have some speech on where an action is like,
you know, oh, you're by a tree and I'll say trees, you know,
but you still have to have some idea of how you're supposed to interact
with those things.

Right.

So you're still going to turn to your kids and say, oh,
I punch these trees for wood, right?

Okay, cool, cool. South Park here.

And in the case of Minecraft Dungeons,
my son and I played a lot of Minecraft dungeons
because I had enough vision to be able to interact
with some of the things on screen, and I could do it
until it got way too fast, so I couldn't,
recognize the motion in the movement.

So I'd hand the control over,
and then I would just watch the pretty lights go by
because he was really good at it.

So it was I was like, oh, I'm so glad I
paid money for the surround sound system.

It sounds great. So

I think
what you said earlier is important, David.

It's really about,
finding what works for you, but also being able to have that family
environment and playing with kids.

So a lot of people will play,
you don't know Jack, which is a game where you could use
your phone as the controller and you can't necessarily do all the
the drawing games and stuff.

But, you know, most of the trivia
questions you can do the answers to, hey, Rachel, I think we need to start
testing, games on our on our own PC coming out soon,
because I think that would be a very valid way to make sure that the hardware and
software is completely working correctly.

Absolutely.

I want to play for some motorsport, man.

The only driving game
I've done is top speed three.

I am way behind
and then you can, hook up meta glasses and then you can ask it to say,
where is my car?

No, it's dude, where's my car?

But I.

Know who's breaking out the references.

That's right.

But no, Joe, this this was great.

I know you're sticking around for us, for that segment,
but thank you so much for just coming on and really explaining in such a great way
the games that are out there and what you can do to play with others,
you know, family and and friends.

I found this really, really enlightening.

Thank you so much.

And we are going to be right back.

The next segment.

Welcome, everybody, to the Hot
Topic segment.

Joe Steenkamp, who is our manufacturer representative in the Carolinas,
is still hanging with us.

And we are talking about low
vision and gaming.

So to really bring out the, allegiances,
shall I say, we wanted to quickly talk about Star Wars
versus Star Trek.

I really have no dog in this fight.

So I'm leaving it to Joe and David.

And I tell people
if I was more knowledgeable about either, I would probably follow
in the Star Trek camp.

But I think Joe is a pretty big fan
of Star Wars.

So Star Wars, Star Trek,
which one do you prefer and why?

It's actually really funny.

Retro because I don't technically dislike
Star Wars.

The problem is, I grew up originally
with what now is supposed to be 4 or 5 and six, and then God bless them,
they brought out then one, two and three.

So I got so used to four, five and six that when one, 2 or 3 came out, Star Wars
I went, what?

This is just making money
and commercialism and blah blah blah blah blah.

So and then on the other hand, I,
I only like certain parts of Star Trek, so I can't stand good old James

T blasted Kirk in the original Star Trek and Star Trek I really like
is the new generation one with

I know Jean-Luc Picard,
so I'm a bit fussy, I must admit.

The latest one, it's out now,
which is, Starfleet Academy.

I actually really do enjoy.

Although I can't listen
to, the San Francisco song anymore without imagining a starship
going across Golden Gate Bridge.

Now we know there's a Grateful Dead
record, right?

On on her.

She has a record player, the,
the commandant of Starfleet Academy.

The chancellor has a Grateful Dead record
sitting right next to her.

Really? Yeah. Oh, yeah.

I didn't read the description. Oh.

That's terrible.

If you could.

Actually, I'm probably more of a Star Trek
fan than I am a Star Wars.

Are you a bit of both?

Driver of one more than the other
in a while.

It doesn't really matter, man. It is.

This is when Rachel mentioned this to me.
It's really tough.

So for full disclosure, I, help host a Star Wars room and clubhouse.

Yes, clubhouse is still an app.

And yes, I still go there.

But I've actually had conversations with people from Lucasfilm in Clubhouse,
which has been really cool and, some really good friends
from doing Star Wars.

But at the same time,
my parents took me to meet Gene

Roddenberry when I was six years old,
in the 70s at the Sam Houston Coliseum.

Back when,

TV channel 39 was doing Star Wars,
excuse me, Star Trek marathons.

And so I, I can go to either
side of this argument.

And right before I walked in here,
I watched, the trailer for Mole Shadow Lord,
which is a new animated Star Wars.

The thing I love about Star Wars,
especially since Disney reset the canon, is that there's
just so much lore in so many books.

And if you want to dip a toe in,
that's great.

You can pick up what you've like
and follow characters you like.

I mean, this is a a franchise
that developed a backstory for an ice cream maker
that they turned into a prop.

There's an entire backstory behind this, if you see it on screen
and The Empire Strikes

Back for like maybe five seconds,
but they're, you know, an entire.

Yeah.

So the dedication of the fandom,
is is amazing, right?

The same way with with Trek.

There there's just so much of it.

If you wanted to watch every episode
that Worf appears and you're going to be watching 250 hours worth of television, so it's it's what you're after.

So if you are after good versus evil, how we have to stay on the path in order to meet our true selves,
then you might want to be a Jedi, and that might appeal to you
if you believe that we collectively can do better
and we will do better over time, then you might feel really comfortable
being as a part of Starfleet, and I am happy that both of those
are very optimistic about the future.

It really comes down to what
speaks to you, what sounds great.

Hey everybody.

And we are here with the Trials and Triumphs segment for February.

We're going to jump into some trials
and triumphs.

And David,
you have some cold coffee with you.

So that might be a trial
I do and I probably sound different on the podcast this time around too,
because I'm in a secret location, which is not that really that fantastic, but it sounds really good
if I say secret location.

So that's why I sound different, because goodness me, I'm
using a different microphone.

There's no mixer
involved, and a list of all

I'm using a windows laptop.

So there you go, I won't be I won't be
allowed back in the apple pyramid now.

Oh. He has excommunicated himself
from Apple.

He's got cold
coffee, is in an undisclosed location.

Like David.

It's just having a time
where I'm at the wilderness, mate.

Right.

But that's his trial.

But what do you got for us, David?

So this is it. This now.

This is is all and will be.

But it will be a different triumph.

So with the brown note evolve coming out, which we own for now, all know by now
publicly that it's going to be a best year and windows based laptop with a broader
supply on it that's actually really, really,
really good to begin with.

But the amazing thing is,
because it is a, quote, laptop, even though it's got a, you know, a brow
input keyboard and a brow display, you can then plug things into it
so you can plug in a monitor.

So if you want a bit of visual stuff,
you can plug in a HDMI monitor where you can cast to another device, you can plug in a keyboard, you can plug it in a mouse, you can plug in a webcam, you can plug in basically
anything you like into the laptop.

So in effect, your Braille note taking device based on windows,
it turns into a full desktop.

Now, the reason why I'm so keen about that
is because if you want to use large print,
for example, when on your screen, making modification,
then you plug in a monitor and you can use the built in system
in windows, or you can use zoom text to do large print.

If you want to turn your laptop into a video magnifier, you can run prodigy
for windows on your evolve and then with your webcam plugged
in, of course, or any other document
type scanner for that matter, then you can actually then use prodigy for windows as your video magnifier, which is actually pretty amazing
when you think about it.

And then of course, for people
that just want to use windows with, you know,
screen ready magnification, screen reading itself.

So things like Nvidia and Jaws
and that sort of stuff and the brio, then you can do all three.

So I like to say that
the evolved was a bit of a 3 in 1.

You can do screen unification, screen
reading and braille.

So if you're a person that's sort of
in that situation where you're transitioning from, say, large print through speech and large print speech and possibly speech and Braille, then one
machine is going to do it for you.

You don't need to go off and buy,
a separate laptop.

You don't need to go off
and buy a separate Braille display.

You don't need to go off and buy
anything else.

Once you've got to evolve, then whatever you need, you just simply plug into it
and change what you like.

The funny thing is, when I've been
demonstrating the evolve to people, they don't believe it's a windows laptop
because it doesn't look like a laptop.

It's got a Perkins case on top of it, and
it's got a Pro display in front of a guy.

All that coffee windows showing up,
and then as soon as I plug in a monitor, a mouse and keyboard
and we land on the desktop and people say all the beautiful icons in the taskbar
and the start menu and all that.

So I think I've, oh, it's windows.

Does that mean I can do windows things on.

It's like, absolutely.
You can just do anything you want it.

But but but but but can
I plug it into a network.

Can I plug in a USB hub.

Can I plug in a microphone.

Can I plug in a webcam?

Can I do anything I could do if I went to a shop and bought a laptop
and I said, absolutely.

So I think the thing that I want to do
this year is

I want to have a T-shirt saying, yes,
the evolve is a windows laptop.

So yeah,
because that's the right question.

But yes, I think this is going to be
fantastic for education, for workplaces, because like I said, it's a thread,
mind you, just use it quite normally.

You can have a large print,
watch, print, speech, speech or speech and browse or just browse.

So, I'm really looking forward to the
potential of this device going forward.

I think a lot of us are
because it has so much potential.

As you said,
it's a windows laptop and we'll get more questions about, you know,
what can you do with it?

And I think a couple months
or so we should record an entire episode using our evolves.

Yes. That would be so much fun.

And then folks can really kind of, well,
we'll tell them, hey, we're recording this right on the evolve, and then it becomes
your portable audio workstation mixer.

And I think that would also be kind of
a fun use for it.

But I love how you just combined
the trials, triumphs, tips and tricks.

Whoa.

That was a so it was a pretty good gig.

So one segment, one thing that I will say to wrap up is one trial
that kind of turned into a triumph.

As I was trying to book an event recently,
and I needed to change the quantity of tickets for the event.

And I was doing this on my iPhone
and it said the quantity was a text field.

And I thought, all right,

I can just adjust this by double
tapping on the text field.

Well, that didn't work.

So I switched over to screen recognition,
which is a great handy VoiceOver feature on iOS
that will kind of like your screen reader cursors,
you know, just cursor Nvda Object Nav let you explore the screen and get access to elements that may not be visible
with the regular cursor.

So I did that
and I saw something that said Down Arrow.

I was like, well, here goes nothing.

So I activated that and that is
what adjusted the quantity of tickets.

I did not know that a down
arrow could do such a thing.

Another, and a reminder that we have
so many tools at our disposal, and sometimes we just need to take a leap and, click on something because
it might actually end up helping all.

Exactly.

And that's the thing I like,
I do like about when does he says
actually try this sort of petits mac at the same time going,
it's like, hey, don't worry, I'll be back.

Is the fact with windows, if always found,
if one browser doesn't work or one word processor doesn't work,
or one screen really doesn't work, you can switch over and try different
combinations to get the same result.

So like I said about the flexibility
to evolve, the fact that I can use the right
if I wanted to, I could use Nvda,

I can use jaws, I can use sip in over,

I can use Google Chrome, I can use edge,

I can use all these amazing possibilities
to get the job done.

So that's another thing
about the flexibility that your tools are expanded.

So, you know, whilst
the product touch was absolutely fantastic and it was based on Android, it did really, really good thing
when it first came out.

Well, still does to some extent having a windows based operating system,
which basically

I reckon 90% of the planet
actually uses to do education.

And what that's right.

Then I think this even further makes it
a lot more flexible moving forward.

So I was doing some work this morning
and for some odd reason, the edge browser on the evolve
which is by default because Microsoft didn't read something that went,
oh, okay, well, silly silly thing.

So I went and tried Chrome and
Google Chrome and it worked really nice.

Oh, nice. I like this idea.

So I have got all my desktop
populated with about three different 4 or 5 different browsers,
about 3 or 4 different screen readers.

So I'm ready to go for the new, you know,
I've got my evolve,

I've got my mobile applications.

In fact, I think my last looked
at my icons on my evolve.

I've got 65 items on my desktop, so oh my goodness.

Nice. I'm motivated mate.

I'm, I'm I've got all the tools now. Okay.

David is ready to rock and roll.

I'm ready to rock and roll.

And we hope that if you're listening
and you happen to see the evolve and please stay
tuned for the upcoming show segment, because I will tell you where
we're going to be.

We're going to be moving on the road,
and I hope you'll be able to come and join us
and check out the product for yourself.

And we would love to,
of course, hear your feedback on things that maybe you have encountered
and how you problem solved.

Because we're all about problem
solving here.

So send us a note if you like.

Podcast at you and welcome. We'll be back.

Welcome everybody to

Partner Corner for episode 14.

And in this episode
we are heading to David's neighborhood,
the Land Down Under Australia.

And it's my pleasure to introduce to you
Megan McEvoy.

She is the regional account manager
for the land Bank of Australia.

She tells me she doesn't
dominate the oceans but the land, she's got it down so we are so excited
to have you, Megan, on the show and I'd love to hear a little bit
about you, your background,
what brought you to human where thank you.

So good to be on the show.
Thank you for inviting me.

My background, I suppose

I have always been
within the vision field.

So I'm an optical dispenser by trade.

And I did that for around about,
20 years or so.

I don't want to show my age,
but it has been a little while.

But, yes, many different clinics
all through I am

I do hail from South Australia.

So Adelaide, sort of in the, the,
the central south of Australia and so many, many different clinic types.

And I absolutely love, problem solving for people
with, vision conditions.

And so I think it was just
a very natural path to follow on from there into, the low vision
and, and blindness field as such, and really been enjoying
my work here as well.

I have worked for a few other companies that also do, equipment in this,
in this area.

And so that's, was sort of my next step
to lucky enough to get to work for him.

And. Well, well,
that sounds like a natural progression.

So you said you did,
optical dispensing and things.

So it seems like you have
a lot of experience with maybe glasses, magnification.

Just for fun.

What are your thoughts
on the meta glasses?

I think they are, wonderful.

I think they're very,
the technology is exciting.

I and I think having mainstream products
that can incorporate just so many, names and have that functionality, I think is just we're just at the beginning
of what best technology can do.

So I'm really excited
to see where it can go.

It was interesting.

I was chatting to some students
the other day, and they come from an area of just working in
an optical optometrist store and their family green to the field,
but just they hadn't even entertained
the thought that the glasses could be used and how the functionality could be used
with someone with low vision.

Wow. And and they kind of
they had this a little bit of mind blown and had so many follow up questions
in regards to how they could be used.

And, I really enjoyed that conversation.

I think that is really neat.

And I think these glasses
are going to be quite exciting.

I love when you markets, you know,
and it's just a whole clean slate of education
that can be done with them as well.

Today I do really, you know, hopefully,
you know, minimize those sort of, you know, anyone saying anything silly,
and really understanding the power of what those glasses,
will be able to do so with their stuff.

What what
sort of excites you about our stuff?

I mean, we've got,
you know, all the explore range, the reveal and everything else.

So what's the device that you found
gives the most?

And this is another term
that I used to hear people saying, what's what's the delight of this product
that makes you think, oh, this is so cool.

Do you have one of those?

One of your sort of outstanding?

I do, so I suppose we'll, you know, for
I have only been with you and rare for it's
I think it's just over six months now.

So I am definitely learning a lot
about all the technology that we have.

But my favorites too is prodigy
for windows, which is software.

Does that still cap?
Does it have to be a hardware?

No, not sorry not sorry.

It's great software.

Yeah I mean and I suppose because of there is these constant updates
that are coming out with it.

Mike just released an update
which is bringing in an AI system, a really and I love that.

It's a very accessible,
AI assistant for low vision, users.

It does have keyboard commands as well
for for, for jaws users, as well.

But I just love that
it's got a very user friendly, very easy AI assistant
to be able to pop some questions in things that maybe you don't say out loud
or you know, that you can use.

And I think what brings me, you know, as you said, Joy,
Mike makes me happy with this with the software is
you can go to the human website and you can trial it for two weeks
for free, you know, like, and and that's what I mean.

Two weeks is a is a great trial.

That means you can put it through your paces over, over 14 days
and really make the decision.

Is it is it useful?

Does it add benefit
or is it a hindrance to my, you know, to my to my workflow,
to my what I want to do on the computer?

And I think that just gives everyone
such a great opportunity to try it out.

And of course, you know,

I'm we we're always there for support
if you need, but I think that I do love when people
want to try things for themselves and just really understand
before they part with their heart.

And dollars.

Is it going to add, benefit and, you know, and really have
some good features that people will use.

So I think that's, that's the portion
of the prodigy for windows that I,

I find joy with that
I think just works very well.

Well, Megan, thank you so much for coming on and
introducing yourself to the wider world.

We're so excited that you're here
and helping bring our products, forward and covering Australia
in the great way that you do.

And from all of us
on on the other side of the pond.

Welcome to human, where
thank you so very much.

It's it was very enjoyable
coming on for my first show.

So thank you.

All right.

It's time for the upcoming show segment.

We are definitely back in action
and back on the road, and we'd love to say hello to you at any of the following
appearances throughout February and March.

From February 12 to 13,
we will be at the Illinois

ADR Conference in Naperville, Illinois.

February 12th.

The 15th we will be at the NFB
of Maryland state convention that is in Ocean City,
Maryland, February 18th.

You can find us at the Metro
Olina Association for the Blind in Charlotte, North Carolina,
and we will be exploring the next generation of Braille note takers
from March 9th to 13th.

We will be at the Season
Assistive Technology Conference in Anaheim, California.

And lastly, on March 17th, we will be at
Site Village in Glasgow, Scotland.

So if you happen to be at any of those
places, do come by, say hello, check out some new products, new releases
and we would love to meet 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.