S1E9 - Bringing Images to Life: TactileView and Tactile Graphics

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See Things Differently podcast.

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How's it going?

See Things Differently listeners,
welcome to episode 9 of the podcast.

I'm Rachel Ramos and it is my pleasure to talk with someone today
about TactileView.

We are in the midst of the back to school time here, and braillists and transcribers
and teachers are all preparing
in the most excellent way.

They know how to get books and graphics
into the hands of students.

A lot goes into preparing these graphics,
and it's amazing that we have
so many talented people in the field, and one of those talented
and just excellent of people has come to join us today
to talk about TactileView and how he's taught it and how he's used
it, and we're just going to dive in a little bit because, as we all know,
tactile graphics in general aren't as much in the hands of blind students
as they should be.

And TactileView is a program
that aims to solve that problem and increase tactile graphics
and the production of them.

So I'm here with John Taylor,
and John is in Northern California, and he works for Sterling Adaptive.

So John, welcome.

We're so excited to have you.

Thank you.

I'm excited to be here.

Might might be my first podcast - anyway happy to be here.

Well, if it is your first podcast,
I hope it's going to be a fun time because that means you can come back and we'll pick your brain on
on other topics how about that.

Yeah. Sounds awesome.

So, John, you've been in the industry
for quite a number of years.

Can you tell our listeners
how you got into the industry and then how that kind of led you to TactileView
and how it plays a part in what you do?

Yeah, absolutely.

See if I can make this not too long
of a story, but, I am sighted and so I grew up in a town called,
Corvallis, Oregon.

Just not an overly large town,
not notable for a whole heck of a lot except for Oregon State University.

And, truthfully, I didn't know

Braille printers
even existed for a long chunk of my life.

And then, I had a friend
who was an intern engineer for a company called B-plus technologies.

Most people know them as a Tiger
Braille Embosser company.

And he said, hey, you should apply
for a job with my company.

And I said, well, okay,
what do you guys do?

And he gave me the absolute
vaguest description under the sun.

He goes, oh, we make these printers
that do these rays line drawing things.

And like, that was all I got.

He didn't say anything about Braille
printers or I don't even know if he knew to call them a tactile
graphic at the time.

And I was like, well,
that sounds kind of interesting.

And it was my freshman year in college,
and I was pursuing engineering and software engineering,
and I was like, well, I have to go.

You know,
we have some software get paid for.

It is part time job. That sounds great.

Anyway, so I go in and, get an interview.

You know this in these braille printer companies,
they're kind of a niche product, right?

So it wasn't a massive company.

And it goes through the interview process
that goes, oh, well, you know, because I have the technical skills for it
and whatnot and, they at the end they go, you know, so you kind of
understand, you know, what we do.

And I told them what my friend had said
and they go, he said, what?

And I go, we, we make braille printers
for people who are visually impaired.

And we do tactile graphics.

And I'm like,
you have got to be kidding me.

Like,
I didn't even know like that existed.

I suppose I hadn't put that much thought
about that kind of thing in my 20s.

You know,

I can act like I was the brightest bulb
on the tree at my 20 years old, as, as I suppose, a fair amount of people.

But anyhow, long story short,
I did get the job despite not knowing what that was, and, I ended up working for them
as a software product tester, and, and so in that role,
I learned essentially everything there was know
about their braille printers, about their software, what worked,
what didn't, and oftentimes how to fix it.

And some kind of internal political stuff
happened in the company.

And some people moved on.

And, it opened up a bit of a role
in their technical support department.

And so I ended up migrating
kind of over into that and took over
doing all their tech support.

And I, I excelled in it a lot.

And I found out
I really enjoyed working with folks, you know, albeit it was essentially
all remotely at that point.

And I decided I got a harebrained idea that I wanted to switch my major,
and I want to go into marketing, because I figured

I didn't really want to spend my life
in front of a computer typing code.

And I was really enjoying
kind of the customer service aspect of it.

And so again, I got this wild idea,
and I talked to them and say, you guys, I'm going to go ahead and leave and I'm gonna go back to school
full time, go into marketing.

And they said, well, hang on
just a second.

You kind of inadvertently became, you know, one of our more,
knowledgeable staff on our products.

And, you know,
you like you definitely leave a void.

And, you know,
definitely honored me for sure.

And, they said,
how about we give you a job in marketing?

And you said, you stay with us.

And I was like, well,
that sounds wonderful.

And so I switched over
kind of to their marketing and sales team.

And, that's where they started
sending me around the country to do workshops, trade shows.

And rather than just being tech support,

I was also doing a whole bunch
of training as well.

And so I was teaching people
how to use these braille printers, how to really tactile graphics
with their software.

Anyway, and so I was with them for probably about four and a half years,
and then I moved on to another company.

And they did the Index brand of
Braille embossers, and they also did

TactileView.

And I also was their national trainer
for TactileView and Braille writers, and they sent me all over Timbuctu to teaching people
how to use braille printers and graphics.

And I really loved it. And so,

I got a ton of intimate knowledge
from my time there about TactileView.

And then, I met and married a California
girl, which is how I got to California.

And when I did that, I, I had actually
worked with my Sterling Adaptive team.

Now, I had worked with them
in my previous role, and so they knew me.

And then they offered me a job
and I gratefully took it.

And so when I moved to California,
I was already set up to stay in the field, which I had just kind of fallen
in love with.

Which is really why
I ultimately stuck it out, is that

I really enjoy the people I'm
rubbing shoulders with, what I do.

And, and I always thought
this technology was super cool and so in my role here, I'm
a product specialist, and I, I work on demonstrate training, and represent
a number of different brands of, of all kinds of real
and low vision technology.

But I've always kind of said my first
love was braille printers and tactile graphics.

And so I've always,
stayed up on TactileView and then this, this new HumanWare
taking over Tackle View.

And they've made some yes, made some amazing changes that I'm very
excited about I've been waiting years for.

So anyway, that turned out
a little more long winded than I intended, but that's my story.

So here it is almost 15 years later,
and I've been in this field so.

And I still love it
as much as when I first got into it.

It's been a wonderful career for me.

This this field is, is so dynamic
and kind of like you've said, you kind of got into it by accident,
and it just turned out that 15 years later, here you are.

You're cruising around
Northern California, even into Nevada, a little bit of Utah.

You're doing tactile graphics.

You're doing so many other things.

And it also makes me think how much
tactile graphics has changed, right?

I mean, I was going through school and
I remember wicky sticks and rubber bands and thumbtacks to put something together
and, to get attacked.

A graphic
kind of communicated to me. But now transcribers and trainers like you can create tactile graphics
with just a computer.

You had mentioned some features of TactileView
that you personally have been waiting for.

What would you say
is maybe your favorite feature, either to train on or just to use
if you're using the program for yourself?

Oh, that's a good question.

I, I think I'd have

I don't know if I can narrow it down to one,
but I also I'll go to, well, I'll keep it short.

But, there's two major things.

The first one is the ability to clean up
images really fast and easy.

So with a lot of other tactile
graphic programs out there, a lot of manual cleanup is required,
and that just can be super time consuming.

You know, just going through
and literally hand, you know, erasing and drawing little bits of a graphic, it's
just it just takes forever.

Because with most tactile graphics, you're
essentially trying to take a picture and turn it into something
a little bit more simple that is just more conducive
for a clean, tactile graphic.

You know, like a line
drawing, for example.

Yeah.

And TactileView has a convert to line
drawing feature that literally just takes all of the work out of it.

You just drop in a Jpeg or PNG
or whatever you got.

You hit this convert to line drawing
and they have a little essentially slider that lets you choose how much detail
you want from the original image, and your cleanup work is done
in like two seconds, literally.

It's amazing.

So that's a ton of manual work
out of it, folks, compared to other other ones out there.

And then the other biggie, it's
got to be the graphic part.

So there for those who are maybe
not familiar with TactileView and they have a graphing tool
built into it, and you can just give it an equation.

And there's a couple different ways
to do that.

You can just type it in on your keyboard
if you know how to do, you know you're it's
not a essentially get order operation correct.

Or it does also work with a third party
program called Math Type, which is an equation building software,
even though really just copy and paste a even complicated equation right into it,
it will graph it for you, turn it into a tactile graphic,
even Braille label it for you.

Right?
So this takes out so much manual work.

That is just amazing.

So once you kind of get the feel
for TactileView and kind of where the settings that you like to change
or your type of embosser or your type of graphic are,
you can have a braille labeled, beautiful tactile graphic of essentially
whatever graph you want in less than 30 seconds.

It's going to take longer
to break it out on your embosser than it is to even be created.

And so this is, you know, I, I at this point, I've been
showing the software to people for years.

Right.

And most people have literally been hand
drawing each and every, you know, grid box,
drawing out their axis, drawing out their x and y axis,
you know, axis.

And that's all been manual labor
and that essentially it takes out, you know, some people would spend an hour
to some one math graph, right.

And for this to be able to do it
in 30s just is mind blowing.

And, you know, you said wicky sticks and
and rubber bands and stuff that I mean, that's
that was also one of the fun as part of like teaching people
this that had never really used a braille embosser
or tactile graphics software before.

They look at this and like,
I would just get jaws dropping you was like,
I would spend three hours on one math graph trying to make it by hand,
you know?

And so anyway, those are just two,
which is really just scratching the surface,
so to speak, of TactileView.

Such dedication
that that teachers have and trainers have to spend so much time
making graphics to be embossed.

And now, of course,
we have devices like Monarch.

And just for fun, John, have you in your training of tactile view
and kind of mMonarch.

And we're jumping,
you know, ahead a little bit.

We started talking about, you know, years ago
and now we're kind of jumping to present but have you interacted with teachers
or transcribers who have said, you know, I created a tactile graphic
and then I just put it on a Monarch for a student,
or have you helped folks create tactile graphics and then maybe shown them
how to put it on a Monarch and just kind of that digital braille transformation,
in addition to hardcopy braille?

Yeah.

I have a little tiny bit
but admittedly TactileView 3.0, which is what
we're really talking about here when we're talking TactileView is because that's the new version
that's just dropping now with HumanWare that's the first time
Monarch mode has been enabled.

And there's been a few other ways
to create tactile graphics for Monarch, but bringing the power of the TactileView
tools to be able to create tactile graphics for the Monarch is
a total game changer in my opinion.

Because it wasn't at least
that I was aware of a really clean cut way to do that before.

So we're I'm literally
just starting to do that with folks, so I don't have a whole bunch
of amazing stories for you quite yet, but I've been working on it myself.

And it's essentially
I'm taking the power of TactiveView

Right?

All I do is
essentially switch on monarch mode, and all of a sudden now I can create
tactile graphics for my Monarchs.

I got a demo Monarch, and I worked with a
number of schools that have Monarchs now.

And so I've been I knew it was coming, so I've been hinting at it to people
unofficially for a while now.

Because they're gonna be really excited
for that.

Because it's going to make
making all those tactile graphics on Monarch so much easier.

And the other part of the equation
is too is,

Braille embossers are, of course,
they're they're costly.

And there's a bit time consuming. Right.

And the other thing is,
is most people who are schools possibly you have, you know, a real printer
or maybe a tactile graphics setup that's
usually parked in their office. Right.

So unless they have
a dedicated transcriber, which sadly,
I don't know if that's the case for the rest of the country,
but I assume it is.

We have a real shortage of TVIs
and transcribers, you know, and so especially in the
maybe the smaller districts, we've got a

TVI who has to do the transcription
themselves as well.

And so having the just kind of
this paperless option that we can again, easily
and quickly create those tactile graphics and then digitally deliver them on
a Monarch is going to be really cool.

I think that's going to make the Monarch
shine even more than it already has.

That digital delivery is going to
is going to,

I think, open up a whole bunch of doors
for tactile graphics.

So I'm really excited about that.

But I don't have any
a ton of people I'm doing it with yet, because that feature
just kind of launched it.

Last question real quick.

Because you seem to be so excited
about TactiveView.

I am as well, and I know
a lot of folks in the field are.

Do you have a favorite graphic
that you like to show people?

Maybe a car or bike or something fun?

Yeah, I,
I have a handful of my regular go tos, and I might, again,
I might if I can break it down, but my top two is I have a rocket ship,
which is just kind of a basic image.

Right?

It's not like a it's not like a,
you know, an actual pictures that we took of, like, of a rocket,
but it's more of a just a, like a clip art type
drawing of it.

That's one of my go tos.

And the other one I have
is this kind of silly, kind of cute hippopotamus, which is kind of which it's
kind of a silly graphic, like,

I don't know if it's actually practical
for students and everybody loves it.

It'd be great.

This is fun. Right?

So this is kind of
cartoonish, hippopotamus.

So I break out the rocket ship
and I break out the hippopotamus more than anybody else.

And that is fun.

And I think just to kind of end on this,
you bring up such a good point.

There's obviously
a lot of academic reasons to have a Mnarch for math and science
and those types of graphs
and the content that they help present.

But it's also really fun for people
to just create a graphic of something that maybe they've always wanted to see,
like a hippopotamus or a rocket ship or,

I think I mentioned this
in a previous episode.

We were using, another app
called Wing It, where we're going to talk about that in, one of our future segments
on this episode.

But just the fact that graphs
are so much more in line with- you can get instant access to things.

Now you want to know what a sun with rays
looks like?

Have somebody draw it with Wing It.

You want to know what a quick chart
looks like, or yet have somebody create one in TactileView.

I mean academics is important of course,
but it's also we can have fun with this.

And I think that's so great
because the world is it's a visual place.

Right.

And how can we help with TactileView
to make that more relatable to students and,
and just blind folks in general?

Absolutely.
And when you say academics too, right.

You know, sometimes people's heads go straight to college and,
you know, high, you know, complicated, graphics, you know, you know, biology
and that kind of stuff.

Right?

But, you know, there's going to be a number of K-12 kids
working on this, right?

And if you can make it fun, it's
going to make it so much easier for people to learn something that's worth mentioning
about TactileView as well.

TactileView has a menu driven system to it,
as well as a visual kind of toolbar to work off of, and it's really neat
that TactileView is one of the.

I think it's really the only honestly,
tactile graphics solution out there that actually they've made a really great
attempt to keep it accessible.

Yeah.

And what I mean by that is
you can actually use

TactileView as a screen reader user.

There, you know, digital drawing
is something that is, has historically been
inherently fairly inaccessible.

Right.

And admittedly something like, you know,
clicking and dragging, drawing, you know, free style with a mouse
is still something difficult to do.

But TactileView, almost all the stuff
you can draw on there, like you want to drop in a picture,
you want to drop in a label, you want to draw a rectangle
or triangle or whatever it might be.

But you're talking about bringing in
like a graphic for you to check out for yourself, right?

You can bring it in, you can run that,
you can run that, that filter that converts it to a line drawing,
all right, via a screen reader.

And you can even TactileView
has placement tools for everything.

So like a visual person
to drop something in and click and drag it around with their mouse
and resize it.

But TactileView
also offers essentially the same features but in a menu driven, screen reader
friendly way.

So just as a simple example,
if you wanted to draw a square, you could do that
visually by clicking on the square to move your mouse and clicking
and dragging out your square.

But you can also do that non visually via
the menu.

There's a tools menu below
and your screen reader you go to draw a line or draw a square
and then it will ask.

You will say okay,
where do you want to place your square.

And it will tell you it's in relation to
the left hand edge in relation to the top.

So you could say,
okay, want my top left corner of my square to be placed one inch down my top and one
inch on the left hand side, and then it says,
okay, how big do you want you to square?

Do you want this to be a square rectangle?

And you go say, oh, I want my square
to be two inches by two inches.

And then the program will just place it
into the graphic for you automatically.

Right.

So every other tactile graphics tool,
at least every common one here in the States, everything has to be done
visually, like click and drag out.

There's essentially
no accessibility to it.

And so TactileView actually offers that.

So people actually could do that
for themselves with TactileView as well.

I really don't think they could
with most any other program out there.

And that's also an incredible component to

TactileView you just don't see in a lot of other
places.

Anyway, what you said reminded me of that, so I just want to bring it up to a quick.

But it's it's cool from start to finish.

I love it.
We kind of end it on on the screen reader note there's nothing more perfect or accessible than a program
that you would think includes, you know, such a visual concept,
right?

Of drawing, of graphics.

As I can go in there,
I can press control L, and I can go and I can tab through and choose
my dimensions of my square.

Like you said,
I can put it where I want to put it.

I can add my own labels.

Everything is, you know, context menus
or menus themselves and it's just amazing.

And also, I think Monarch really helps
with the concept.

I, I tell a lot of people
when I'm demonstrating it, you know, visual concepts like zooming in
or zooming out or scrollbars.

So, you know where an image
is on the screen.

Those have traditionally
been visual concepts.

And I know
until I started using Monarch, more, you know, full time as part of my work,
did I really come to understand what is zooming in
and what is zooming out?

And, oh, there's my image
because I can see the scroll bars.

So I love that
the visual aspects to the world, if you will, are kind of
being brought into, a tactile way where,

I, as a blind adults or,
you know, as I work with blind students or even you as a trainer, you work with blind
students were able to bring that in and make it relatable, because then students
can better relate to each other.

And I have a better understanding of
maybe what something looks like.

And I think it's just so, so neat.

I'm so glad TactileView
is around to make that a possibility.

And that's super cool.

And it's just fun to see the technology
going this way.

Right.

Because if even if we talked ten years ago
right.

This probably was it.

Now this is all kind of
sort of out of the question.

But now suddenly we have
these tools like TactileView like Monarch which is just opening some super fun, super cool, accessibility doors. Right.

And that's, that is just amazing.
Let's see.

Well, John,
thank you so, so much for coming on and just having a great conversation
about TactileView and how you use it,
how you teach others to use it, and some of the new features
that are just being released.

I really can't
wait to see where it goes in the future.

And I know you're going to be a part of
that in everything that you do with Sterling Adaptive.

So we got to have you back on
on a future episode, and you can tell us what cool things you've created.

All right. Sounds good. I'd be happy to.

Welcome, everybody to the debate or Hot Topic segment.

And this segment is one
in which we pick a topic and we come at it from different angles.

So this one, because we're talking about
tactile graphics and how to produce them and, and what devices
that the tactile graphics can be read on.

Our topic today is do you as a student
or maybe when you were a student or you as a teacher,
whoever's listening to this or whoever's viewing the tactile graphics,
do you prefer them to be delivered in hardcopy braille
or on a digital device like Monarch?

I'll jump in and say that when I've had this conversation
with TVIs in the field before, some of them are very much
for starting out with hardcopy braille, because you have a physical representation
of the graphic.

If you're doing a line
or if you're plotting a point or even if you're looking at a map
and you need to look at a key and the key is usually on the first page, then you flip the page
and then you look at the graph itself.

Or is that
easier to look at on a digital device?

And I think some TVIs would say,
let's start out on physical and then go to digital.

David, what do you think David is here.

Never fear everybody! I am I've reappeared
from the Internet ether somewhere and I'm back in this virtual world
that we know is podcasting.

So, it's really funny
because when you were talking, I thought, yeah, that's like the that's like the standard of which
we assume that everything's going to work.

The first that popped in my mind,
were the dreaded wicky sticks or elastic bands or other things
to make tactile.

Those things don't really do proper tactile diagrams for my liking.

I mean, you can't really do well.

I still don't think you really can do.

It's a sharp, sharp 90 degree or 180 degree or 145 or whatever you want.

Like lines.

Because I'm thinking,
because we always say to people, look, if you're going to do diagrams,
they have to be basically, lines, not sort of like, you know, old
coloring type stuff, textures.

They have to be pretty straightforward.

And I- the only thing I could revert to in the wicky sticks back
when I went to primary school was it just used to feel like
somebody made a mess on a piece of paper if you weren't concentrating.

So to me, you know, yes, somebody said to me, look,
do you like hard copy braille?

I'd say absolutely.

Especially tactile because with,
high resolution of of of an embosser.

And when you can get in, in time,
that's absolutely fantastic.

I mean, I've got all the F1 racing tracks
at the moment in tactile braille.

And that's really amazing because I've got all the corners
and I've got everything else in braille that I can feel when I'm listen
to the race, when it's on for the F1. So that to me would be really, really cool.

There is nothing worse than being in a class and so doing biology
and the go, look, we're not going to study this silly stuff
today.

We're going to go
and do the heart, for example.

And you're sitting there going, oh my
goodness, I don't have a tactile diagram.

So my support teacher doesn't have what
he sticks to do the different types it up.

Whereas if you had access
to a digital device such as the Monarch, you could very quickly draw up a heart
diagram and you could even label in braille.

And of course, I'm talking about
about the Wing It app and the TactileView application running on windows.

So it's really weird because from a pure point of view, I absolutely love hardcopy tactile diagrams,
but from an instantaneous, quickly do a proper tactile diagram
that you can quite feel, which is proper tactile lines not made of wiggly
things like wicky sticks. Then

I'd really have to go for electronic tactile braille for both Braille and tactile diagrams,
because it's just that element of being much faster
and instantaneous.

You can't beat that for sure.

And something I think you were mentioning
also is the more complex the graphic, the more let's say wiki
sticks you'd have to use, and then there's a higher chance of them
falling off the paper, and it just becoming,
like you said, a mess.

Whereas if you have a
maybe a more complex graph or chart in a digital form, as long as somebody has
a foundational skills to understand a tactile graphic
and kind of know what they're reading, it's a lot easier
to dive into more complex topics.

I think the other thing
about tactile diagrams, which electronic, is the fact
that you can zoom in the first time

I got a hold of the Monarch last year
and the the classic, there's one of the, the diagrams of an atom with the nuclei.

And then you had all the little protons
and electrons whizzing around.

But the really cool thing about it,
you could zoom in on different parts of that diagram.

So if you wanted to, you know,
more in depth, look about the nucleus.

So the, the, the rounds,
you could actually do that.

Now there is absolutely no way you can do that on a hardcopy piece
of braille paper, unless you want to start doing multiple diagrams
and thinking what the person would want.

So that's the other huge advantage.

I mean, I can imagine looking at, let's say an overall structure
of an aircraft.

Now, I love thinking about flying and, you know, the little elevators
on the wings and the flaps and how that actually adjusts the airflow
over the wing, that sort of stuff.

And, and I can imagine me
starting off with, like, you know, the, the diagram of the aircraft
and then going, well,
I want to zoom in on the wing structure.

I want to look at the front
and the back of the wing, and I want to see what those flaps
and ailerons are like, that that would be really cool there.

There's just no way you get to that
level of detail with a hard copy diagram.

So I think for me, particularly
when you're talking about that type of level of of tactilness
or you're talking about very high level mathematics or physics
or astronomy or cosmology for that matter.

You really have to go from the very,
very large structure, and then you have to dive into that
structure to find out more about it.

And I think that's where the the electronic braille,
the Monarch, really comes into its own.

I think just to kind of circle back around
and say that when kids start out learning graphs and Braille
and all of that fun stuff,

I would say that it's best
for them to learn hard copy.

Just like somebody who's,
you know, kind of starting to read print.

And they would
they're looking at pieces of paper.

Then when you jump into higher level math,
like you were saying, or if somebody has a real interest in aviation, astronomy, science, all those things have a device like Monarch to go with you
on that journey.

Zoom in to details of graphs.

It can grow with you,
like as your interests in graphs and the graphs themselves become complex.

That's fine.

I mean,
because somebody can still follow along.

So I think that is maybe where we end up
is there's a place for both.

And it just kind of depends
as someone kind of goes through their education
and professional journey, what are they end up which I would think it would be
in the digital delivery of graphs.

Welcome, everybody, to the Trials and Triumphs segments
where each month David and I.

And if we have a guest with us
and they choose to hang around and share, we talk about maybe something
that was a trial or something that was a triumph,
and sometimes it's both.

But in this case,

David was mentioning to me
that he has a triumph he'd like to share.

And then I will share a triumph as well.

What do you got, David?

So this is a
so I'm going to talk about trends again.

And I've done a bit of trend,
traveling lately because I have to be down
in Sydney up for a bit.

And this was actually yesterday,
as we do the recording for the podcast.

And the problem was I had to move between
the different carriages in the train because I was too far back on the train,
so I had to walk through.

And because I wasn't thinking that, you know, the train was going forward,
but I was going to

I was walking towards the back
of the train and somewhere in my brain,

I decided that both the front
of the train, that where I was walking actually met each other.

So I got to the car, which I had to be,
which was fine.

And then when I got off the
the train at the platform,

I got the train at the platform.

For some reason, my brain
decided that I was going to go in the opposite direction
to where the stairs were, and as guide dogs sometimes do,
if the handle is feeling very confident, the dog will be very confident
and charge off in the wrong direction.

So I kept wondering down the platform
thinking where are the stairs?

And then, I hear that ding
ding on the side of the bell on the train, which is basically a thing where the guard normally notifies the driver that they're
getting off the train temporarily.

And the guy came up to me, said, hi, I saw you get on it,
you know, at Strathfield in Sydney and, I noticed you go
in the wrong direction to the stairs.

Can I help you and I went "What?"

And of course, being a lovely,
a lovely guide dog user, I actually blame my dog
for going the wrong direction, not me.

And, he said, look,

I can I can tell you which way
to go and half either way or I can actually just you can follow me
to the stairs with your guide dog.

And I said, oh no, no, I, I don't want
to bet you're holding up the customers.

Wait, no, no, you're you're just
as a valid customer is everybody else.

And if I help other people get on and off
the train, I can certainly spend, you know, 40 seconds
taking you back to the stairs.

And I thought, wow.

So he basically just, walked in
front of me with an I just got the wizard following my guide dog got to the stairs
and he went, have a fantastic day, mate.

And, I said, look, in my defense, mate,
this has not happened to me in 50 years
of traveling on public transport.

So, but no, but I just thought, you know, yes, I probably slightly
inconvenienced the people on the train by about, you know, one minute
five seconds or something.

But I just thought it was lovely.

He was just so calm about it.

So considerate. Wasn't overly pushy.

He was letting me make the decision
whether I wanted help or not.

And I just thought, because especially people in public
transport, they really get a hard deal.

Sometimes they get blamed
for this and blame for that.

And I thought that was just so lovely
that he just popped off the train,
walked me to think it was no big deal.

It was almost like, you know,
when you have those people that just do a quite nice thing, but it's just
the act itself is just nice and,

I suppose it's a bit sad these days
where we just get taken aback by people just being nice and genuine,
but it was just a lovely experience.

So I got home and I thought,
you know what?

I've had a really busy day,
but that just made my day.

It just came that nice, gentle help
at the end of the day. Home.

That is amazing. You're right.

I mean, we shouldn't be surprised
by kindness, and we should all do what we can to put kindness out into the world
and help where we can.

But it's so great
when someone who, as you mentioned, is dealing in public transportation,
which can't be easy because people can just have rough days and maybe, you know,
put it on someone who they shouldn't.

And for a train person to, come off and help you find the stairs,
it's just just awesome.

And really, what is a minute,
you know, to those on the train.

Right.

So anyway, I have
you do have a triumph or, the other one,

I the, the other,
the other one, the trial.

No, I got a triumph.

Yeah.

I mean,
I guess we could kind of have both.

Yeah. You know, we'll we'll start both.

So the state fair, happens every year, rounds
kind of beginning of August.

And that is in some states,
not all of them, but they have ten days of a big event where there is food
from different areas around the state.

There's animals like horses and cows,
and they do dog shows, and there's all kinds of things
you can buy and things you can see, and it's just a lot of fun.

There's a lot of concerts and,
I was with my husband, my best friend, and we went to go see a comedian,
and we got to the gates.

And the person who was checking us all
in was saying that, okay, you're going to, you know, we're going to go through your bags
and we're like, okay, great.

So you've checked our bags? Now, how do we get to the stands
where the comedian is?

And she was starting to point like, oh, you're going to go
this way, you're going to go that way.

And we just all stopped her.

All three of us are just like, no, stop.

We're going to need some assistance.

And and the, lady was like, oh, okay.

So they got us some security people,
and we went up there and saw the comedian.

It was absolutely fantastic. Was great.

So then they said, you know,
contact security when you're ready to or when the show is over
and we'll come get you.

Well, there was no way to contact security
when the show was over and the stand started getting emptier
and emptier and they were cleaning up.

And because the show was over
and we're like, oh no, what do we do?

And I was like, well, guys, let's start heading down the stairs we came up and,
see what happens.

And the best friend was like,
no, I don't know, maybe we should wait.

Like,
come on, let's go. We're going to do this.

We start, you know,
walking down the stairs and walking out.

And my best friend, who was the most
hesitant was in the lead.

And just see, you know,
where you're going.

And it was so cool.

We just kind of,
you know, kept our sense of orientation and walked out and right near
the end of the, grounds near the exit.

Then there was some really nice,
I was about to call them passengers.

That's how much I fly!

There was some really nice people
who said, hey, do you need some help?

And we said, yeah, you know,
we're just looking for, this restaurant.

We're going to go grab a ride home.

And, so they helped us at the end,
but it was very cool.

It started out it could have been a trial,
but they helped us.

And then the triumph was we're just like,
you know, we're not going to wait.

Because security clearly isn't coming.

So we, we walked out of there and
we were all very, very proud of ourselves.

We we made it out.

I've actually tried to do that.

More like, you know, thing because I'm
actually traveling a lot more these days.

And, and you're right,
as long as I keep my orientation point and I roughly where I am, you just go,
all right,

I'm going to go and walk in this direction
and actually see what happens.

Because eventually I'm going to hit a wall
or a person, so to speak, and a counter.

And I can hopefully find another human
being to talk to.

And I've just got
I've just got no fear these days.

As long as I know that I'm,
you know, relatively safe,

I'm not going to hurt myself
or anything else. Right?

It's just lovely because you're right.

You just sort of
can't sit there and go, well,

I'm going to wait to the person that comes because sometimes
they won't actually turn up or they can't.

And I think it's great
that, you know, people just can go, oh, let's
go for a walk and see what happens.

I mean, what's kind of the worst?

You just keep going right around
in circles from somebody yells at you and guys,
areyou guys lost.

Oh, I need help, right?

I mean, this wasn't a state fair.

There was almost 900,000 people there.

Like, I was not, you know, worried about
not finding someone.

And people just kind of popped up
as, as the need arose.

But it was very cool. And it's just kind
of a confidence boost when that happens.

Welcome, everybody to the

Partner
Corner segment on See Things Differently.

Each month we pick a partner
who is either a dealer of ours or just someone who is in the business.

And we are so fortunate
to work with such amazing people.

This month I am here with Ed Worrell.

He runs OverHere
Consulting in Great Falls, Montana and he has been in the business
for quite a while.

I will definitely let him tell you
all about that.

But Ed, welcome to our podcast.

Well, well thank you.

I'm glad to be on it.

I saw that,
this is what if you guys have eight last I listened to,
the eight of them were up and going.

So I feel honored to be in the early,
you know, in the top ten.

You are absolutely on the top
ten leaderboard.

I love it.

So, Ed, you have been in the industry
for a while, right?

How did you get into it and how did you
get partnered up with HumanWare?

So I actually have only been blind
for about 18 years, so about half my life being 42
now, a little a little, little shy of half my life now you're the answer
to life, the universe and everything.

Exactly.

I actually have been running the business
for about 13 years.

Like I said,
I lost my eyesight 18 years ago because my wife and I have been married for 17,
so it's just started losing my eyesight.

Just before, me and my wife got married and I lost my eyesight
because of diabetic retinopathy.

I actually had 11 eye surgeries
in nine months.

That took my eyesight completely,
completely away.

My final eye surgery a week after
my wife and I got married.

It down
in, Salt Lake, the MRNI Institute.

So I've always been into technology.

It took me a little bit
to, you know, get to where I'm at.

Obviously to, to this day.

But I started with using a computer
when I was six years old because

I had, an unusual resource, my dad being a computer programmer for his career and he let us kids play on the computer
when we were little.

I remember running DOS games and DOS
programs and everything when I was little.

And, technology
has just always been in my life.

And, it didn't stop after I learned-
lost my eyesight.

I just had to learn
how to use the technology different.

So that was a big thing
to me as I was able to do mostly the same things

I've done over the years, being sighted.

But, granted, in a, a little bit, sometimes tedious manner,
but definitely a different but also just as productive way
as I did it before.

I think you just encapsulated life.

You know, we do all of the same things.

We just do it a little differently.

I love that perspective that you shared.

And so, you know, you got married and you were then
embarking on life as a blind person.

What led you to start your business
and how did that all come about?

So starting the business, actually,
the first real encounter
that I had with other blind people and I kind of make that sound funny,
but it really was because I was literally the only person that had lost my eyesight in my family,
and even out of anybody I knew.

I didn't know anybody else
that was blind or low vision at the time.

I actually made the decision
to go to the Montana Association for the blind Summer orientation program,
which is a long title in itself.

But what that is, is it's a program
for newly blinded adults here in Montana.

It's actually one of the oldest programs
in the country that does what it does.

And it's a month, month long.

And I went as a student, because being a a newly blinded adult,
I went in 2010 and, you know, it was all brand new to me.

I'd only been visually impaired or blind
for about two years at that point.

And I just started learning that, hey,
there are absolutely different ways to do this,
but I can do everything I did before.

And that program taught me the skill set.

And then once I went back in 2011
for my second year, as a student, actually halfway through,
they asked me if I could teach computers.

I was learning JAWSat the time.

In 2010, I took a JAWS class, and then

I jumped feet
first into the Apple ecosystem after that.

So they got their first Apple computer
at the summer program.

And, I had an Apple laptop
that I had just gotten just shy of a year prior to that,
the second year of being a student.

And they're like,
can you teach this? So I'm like, well, let's give it a shot.

So that's essentially how I got into training blind or low vision people
how to use technology.

And it really is a passion of mine.

And shortly, I don't even want to say
shortly after, I think it was even that year, the summer program purchased a bunch of Victor Streams for students at the program.

So they bought the Victor Streams,
and that was really my first, introduction to,

HumanWare
products was the original Victor stream.

So they just throw it at you and say,
hey, Ed, learn this so you can teach it.

What was that like for you?

So yes and no.

They did have us take a class
that went for the majority of one day, learning
how to, get get the stream connected or authorized,
through the talking book library or BARD.

Then we could download books
and put it on the Stream and stuff like that with the computer.

And of course, me being a Mac
OS user, I had to translate what they
were teaching from JAWS to VoiceOver.

Sure. Yeah.

Because I, I had to do it different again.

There's that different.

There's a slogan I do things different.

There's a theme, right.

But it's, it's just one of those things
that I had to learn how to do it.

Because they're a bunch of people
got them at the program.

So I actually spent about a week reaffirming and going over
what we learned in that class.

Again, for all the students.

When we started our business in 2013, we actually started as a training and instruction company and doing tech
support and stuff like that.

But we, me and my former business partner
at the time, we realized that we had to expand
because there wasn't enough training or or tech support in the state of Montana,
because we've only got a million people in the entire state.

About two years later,
we actually talked to,

Kevin Hughes for our
the regional manager here.

And, we actually he gave
us a he gave us a chance.

And we've been a vendor probably
I think it's been since late 2014 or early 2015 somewhere in that,
that ballpark of, of vendor products.

And now we've, we've grown to cover not just Montana but,
Wyoming and Idaho now too.

So it's it's really been kind of, a labor
of love and a passion for the products that kind of got us involved with HumanWare
in the beginning.

Well, we are so, so lucky
that you are part of our dealer network and that you have such a passion for the products
and that you teach and train as well.

I just think that's so, so cool.

And jumping,
I guess ahead to what we're talking about this month is we're talking
a lot about tactile graphics and, you know, which do we prefer?

Is it them on hardcopy Braille?

Is it them on digital?

And I know you have had
a lot of experience with Monarch.

So to wrap this up,
what is I guess maybe a favorite graphic that you have or what are your thoughts
on tactile graphics and or Wing It?

I just threw like three questions at you.

So you're just throwing it all at me?

I know, I know, you can handle it,
and I believe in you.

Believe it or not,
I haven't had a lot of time with tactile graphics, mostly
because I didn't go through school visually impaired
or blind or anything like that.

It came in later on when I was an adult, so my preference really is tactile
graphics on a display.

Me personally, I can just see the future
where down the road we with AI and things like that, tactile
graphics on a display can just be amazing.

We can go to a website and click on it
and bring it up in full view with like a few,
like a separate window or something.

And with AI really the
the world is endless.

I've played around with Wing It.

Before I lost my eyesight,
I actually was a little

I was a little bit of an artist.

So I actually played around with it
and drew a couple things here and there, and could sign my name
and feel it instantly on the Braille display and stuff like that.

So it it's kind of a cool thing.

It's I think it can be a, a game changer for,
bringing in instant graphics to students in school,
possibly even in the workplace.

I haven't quite figured out how
that could work in the workplace just yet, but, definitely in the education market,
I think it's, it'll be an amazing tool for TVIs
and teachers to be able to bring instant graphics just literally a student asks,
what does this look like?

The teacher can pull up their iPad,
draw it on the screen, and be like, here, look at your Monarch.

Thank you so much, Ed,
for coming on and sharing with us your experience of what it was like
to be sighted and then how you adapted when you went blind and you're just doing so many incredible things across Montana,
Wyoming and Idaho.

If people want to find you or get in
touch with you, how can they do that?

So they can actually well, they if they're in Montana,
Idaho, Wyoming, they can call me.

They can, go to the website,
overhereconsulting.net

And that's over
h e r e consulting dot net.

All my contact information is there.

I mean, you can find me on

Mastodon as well.

You can find me Blind World at Mastodon
dot social.

So I mean I'm
you can find me just about anywhere.

Honestly, it's been a pleasure. Ed.

I'm sure we'll we'll see you on the road somewhere out there
in the great wilds of Montana.

Absolutely.

I appreciate it.

Hi, and welcome to this demo on the Monarch

And in this demo,
I want to show you how easy it is to download a tactile image from the APH

Tactile Graphics library
and then explore it on the Monarch.

I'm currently
at the main menu of the Monarch, my first option on the
braille display actually says braille edit, ebrf, so I'm interested in the right tactile
view.

And yes, I do have speech turned on.

Otherwise it'll be a very boring demo.

So I'm gonna press enter
to start out in the Monarch tactile mode.

I'll.

So that's it.

APH TGO as an American printing house for the blind,
the tactile graphics library.

Now, if I press up arrow
because I've been using this before open, that's normally the default
one that comes up when you first go in.

If you haven't been using it
before, I press down APH TGIL,

I'm going to press enter on it.

And of course I've got my nine dots
in a three by three grid to the left to the denote to me on the multi-line
display that's in focus press enter.

I know.

A whole menu search and I've got search.

And then on the main display
I've got activities games, arts education, health
independent living, mathematics, music, monuments, orientation, mobility.

And if I press my page down of it
in the cool page down, which is actually pulling down,
I go to the next screen.

So my nine dot grid cursor, everything is on its search
settings search.

I'm going to press straight search
what search what what sound search searches
when it says that for the question mark.

So I'm going to do shapes.

So s h a p e s okay.

And of course saying
shapes on the braille display and shapes searching for tactile graphic image.

Searching for tactile graphic image.

I wish it had that cute
little 17 results for random man when the Monarch first stands
up, it's really cool it feel all right.

So on
the display, we've got 17 results found and I'm just going to write down.

So we've got common 3D shapes, common 3D shapes, counting shapes, cylinder net plane,
fractal, blah blah blah.

All right.

So I want to come down to
and by the way again

I've got lots of items on the
the Monarch display.

If I wanted to press page down a pin down,

I can go through
because this said it was 17 items.

So technically I'm going to get about
about about nine on one line because we had 17 results
found on the first line of the Monarch.

Ten line Braille display.

What's in the press down
come in 3D shapes, solid, common 3D shapes, transparent.

Counting shapes.

It's the one counting
shapes. Pressing enter again.

Right. Loading content, loading content.

Please wait. Dot dot dot.

And depending on your internet connection,
this can take a little while.

So as I say to people on lots of different devices, you just need to be
a little bit patient and wait.

And here tactile.

So I want tactile viewing now the reason why
I wanted this one in particular, because when I feel it, it actually doesn't feel like anything up.

This is like a thumbnail image,
of the graphics.

All right. So let's zoom in.

So I use the plus button on the right hand
side of the Monarch, pressing it now, and hey presto, I have cognition.

All right.

So and again, what's happened with this
at the moment is that it's boarded up.

And if I try and read it, it doesn't really make any sense
because it's sort of brought me up in the middle of the display
so I can go to the top.

So space one and four.

Okay.

And you might be able to hear the Monarch
making noises.

It's just refresh display.

And now on the left hand side in grade
two Braille

I've got dot 5 0 as in one as in one.

And then to the right of it
I have a shape which is a square.

Yeah.

If I write down it says two
and then that has two circles.

Now the bottom of the circles cut off
because it can't fit any more on the display.

And if I press down there to scroll down.

I've now put the bottom of the circle
on the actual display.

So now it's got two.

And I can definitely feel there's
two circles I'm actually going to press.

Keep pressing down until I feel it's safe.

Three on the brailledisplay.

And I'm just doing this fairly slowly
because sometimes when you give it over, over, excited,
you can zip past what you're looking for.

So I effectively just press it in here
3 or 4 times here.

So now we have three and we have three triangles.

Now again because I know what that is.

The bottom of the triangle is cut off.

But I can definitely rate three
and the top of the triangle.

So I can press down just once. Good. So that says three.

And now I can feel the bottom
of the triangles.

Perfect.

So I'm going to press chord E to go back.

I'll come back to the results
that I was searching for.

When I press home
to go back to the main menu.

Main menu ebrf okay,
so there you go.

That's how easy it is to download
and view a tactile image using the APH Tactile Graphics library, and then to explore it on the Monarch.

And one of the reasons
why I chose the counting shapes one is because it wasn't just a static,
tactile image.

I had to actually do a little bit work to explore the image
with the up and down arrows we pressed zoom in to,
you know, increase it from the thumb, which didn't sort
of really make much sense at the time.

And then, you know, space one for to jump to the top of the file
and just very quickly it's space two and five for the middle space
three and six for the bottom.

And as I say, I know my demos.

Thanks for listening and bye for now.

All right everybody, welcome to the upcoming shows segment.

We have a couple shows
where you can find us this time around starting September 26th
through September 29th.

You can find us
at the Silmo Eyewear exhibition and that is in Paris, France. In

Raleigh, North Carolina on October 2nd.

You can find us at the Raleigh Assistive
Technology Expo.

That's it for the upcoming shows.

So please, if you happen to be in
any of those two places, Paris, France or Raleigh, North Carolina,
be sure to swing by and see us.

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.