Christina: [00:00:00] Welcome to the taking the lead podcast, where we empower people to be unstoppable. I'm Christina, Hapner with my co-host Leslie Haskins and Timothy Cuneo. And today's a little bit of a shorter episode, but I have to tell you guys, so I've had a Fitbit for years because I like to wear it when I work out, but it broke not that long ago.
And I've been watchlist ever since, you know, when you don't wear something every day and then you don't have it. I've been really debating though, actually getting the apple watch and said,
Timothy: um,
Christina: I've heard it has a lot more features because the Fitbit just, I mean, you were, for me, I just counted my steps and more when I worked out.
How hard, I guess I was working out. That's how that works
Timothy: before my apple watch. I couldn't have, I didn't have a watch on my breast for 10 years, cause I couldn't read the face of the watch. And now with the apple watch, I just put my two fingers on her. If I can't read it. And it tells me the time and [00:01:00] it's very voice, it's got voiceover on it and.
Keeps track of your steps during the day. You're this one that keeps up with my heart. Right? It's got the AKG thing on it and it's really, it's a nice thing to have. So, and it's waterproof Christine's you can wear it anywhere.
Christina: Oh, that's awesome. I would never have to take it off. And also voiceover. That is so cool.
I didn't know that it had a feature like.
Timothy: Yep. Voiceover and it connects to your apple phone and you can control with your apple phone. The only time you take it off to charge it every night. So.
Leslie: You know what I love about people wearing the apple watch or when they always like smack it to turn it off. Like when they get a notification, do you do that? Timothy? No. You just put your hand on it. Oh, down not people. I see.
Timothy: Oh, you just put your hand on, don't hit the apple watch. Don't
Leslie: hit it. What is it?
Every time I see people live in they're turning off. It's like, they just like smack their wrist. Like, there's that sound? It's very aggressive. It [00:02:00] seems so. I'm glad to know that you don't, you don't do that. Um, but it sounds like, yeah, apple watch is the way to go. So many features it's accessible, which is really cool, which actually greatly ties into our topic for today.
We've been getting so many questions about accessible technology, how people who are blind or visually. Access different things. Tivity. What are some of your favorite accessible things that you use?
Timothy: Oh, uh, I've got my thermostats are all smart thermostats. So I just tell Alexa what's the temperature to set my house, to turn the heat, turn it off.
Uh, I've got an assessable, um, air fryer in my kitchen and an assessable. Yes, an air fryer and then an assessable, uh, a, uh, we call it. Uh, those InstaPot's connects to your phone and everything. You can control the temperature and everything, right?
Christina: Yeah. Wait, is this an Instapot like Instapot
Leslie: brand? I have one of those.
I have it. I have to try that out. I didn't know. You could connect to your phone. [00:03:00]
Christina: I
Timothy: even, I want it's on my Christmas list. So I hope my wife's listening to this. There's going to be a smoker that I can get the smoke, no Boston butts and ribs, and you can control the temperature in the garage and it monitors the temperature out there.
And I can adjust it with my phone. So it's oh,
Leslie: let's say you want us to send this episode to Cheryl's what you're saying. We.
Christina: Oh, wait a minute. My mind is blown by all of these things that you can use with your phone that have voiceover that have all these different features. I did not realize there is that many accessible.
Tools. I mean, I'm sure there's a lot more than you just named.
Timothy: I'm just scratching the surface, just scratching the surface. What's out there. It's amazing.
Leslie: Well, that's really cool too, because it's not just for people with a disability, right? Like so many people can benefit from being able to set the smoker from work or turn off their air from home or whatever.
Yeah, all of those different things. Um, so that's really cool. I [00:04:00] honestly didn't know what all that did you just say set the smoker from work or from
Christina: work? I really want to be at work and put a smoker around
Leslie: that's safe. Maybe turn the smoker off. Would that be like, yeah, like if you left it
Christina: on, you would want to turn it off for sure.
Leslie: Be using a smoker
Christina: that would have to be with like my hair tools. I wish I'm wondering, you know, what there probably is. I should look this up to see if there's any like hair tools you can connect to your phone.
Oh my gosh. She probably really can because when growing up, my dad would always make us run upstairs and check to make sure we unplugged everything. There was always one or two things. So, well,
Timothy: here's the amazing thing is you can get those smart plugs and you just tell Alexa, turn off plug number one, and whatever's attached to that plug turns off.
So, you know, I'm lazy. I tell the Alexa to turn my light bulbs on and stuff like that. So, uh,
Leslie: Alexa right now is huge. Right? [00:05:00] She can do so many different things. All households really are benefiting from Alexa. We have them on campus here in Rochester Hills and our residents. So each room has an 11. So that clients can ask, you know, what's the weather in Rochester Hills today, or, um, to read actually some of the lectures or play the, taking the lead podcast.
Christina: Look at that. Look at that. I
Timothy: love my Alexa when I was there because I like to listen to thunderstorms or I'm sleeping. And so I got to do that while I was there. So yes,
Christina: it's amazing. I mean, Timothy, how did you find out about this accessible technology? Well,
Timothy: I mean, you know, I'm in groups of blind people on Facebook and then at the NFB Gwinnett chapter that I go to and, and, uh, we all talk and I'm the technology guy for our local NFB chapter.
So I'm going to be talking about a new app that I've got, I saw yesterday, it's assessable. And so every month I got to show these people a new, uh, app. So I got to keep up. So I I'm [00:06:00] sure there's lots more out there. I don't know about, but I mean, I was just word of mouth.
Leslie: Yeah, and I want to point out really quick.
We've been saying NFB in a couple of episodes. I don't think we've actually said what NFB is Timothy, do you want to give just like a quick NFB?
Timothy: It is the national Federation for the blind is the biggest organization in the United States. That's out there advocating for blind people and they're based in Baltimore.
That's
Leslie: awesome. Thank you. I appreciate that. I know we've said it a couple of times. I just wanted to make sure everybody's aware of what NFP is, but back to accessible technology. So, um, there are so many different things. I mean, smartphones alone are really connected. So many people who are blind or visually impaired with the rest of the world, getting, you know, emails and news and Facebook and social media and all of that stuff.
But there's also different apps that people use for different things. I think we've talked about briefly, um, Timothy, you mentioned the app. Ugh. Well that you use it. The air parts of high place
Timothy: it is called now it's called where to go, where to
Leslie: go, where [00:07:00] to go. But also the seeing AI app. I use that a lot with clients you can read and scan documents, you can read QR labels, you can scan actual items at the store and it'll tell you what it is.
I mean, there's so much cool stuff out there and that's just not a fun. That's amazing.
Christina: Another
Timothy: good ones. Be my eyes. It gives you, it gets you a L a live person to read whatever's on your camera to you. Like if you're adjusting temperature on your oven, or you want some, somebody to pick out your colors of your clothes for you that day, that looks good.
You know, I mean, it's, it's, there's so much out there and people are adding to it every month. So there's a lot of people out there trying to help blind people. And I appreciate.
Leslie: There's other things, you know, like braille note takers and refreshable braille displays Humanware. Um, they make adaptive technology, like that's their specialty.
So we often use the Victor reader, Trek GPS, which is an accessible GPS from them, which is a separate handheld device. But there are GPS apps that can be used on somebody's [00:08:00] smartphone. There's of course, pros and cons to it. Yeah. Um, there are CCTVs there's magnifiers, and if you want to get a little less technical, there's just things such as bump, dots, or high contrast and paint and tape and things like
Christina: that.
I don't know what you're saying. What's a bumped up. What the CCTV
Leslie: CCTV stand for. Basically, um, like this kind of computerized thing where you can put documents underneath it, and then they show up on a big screen and you can manipulate it to be black on white, white on black, yellow on blue. You can zoom it in.
You can actually just have it, read it to you. So like a lot of times people will get mail, a paper mail in the mail, and then they can use the CCTV to set the mail underneath there and read it to them.
Timothy: I even have a handheld. That I had to buy a new one last week, cause my other one broke and it reverses the colors.
So you can read it easily or, and you can magnify it 32 times. That's about the size of a cell [00:09:00] phone. So that's another little great little device. Mm.
Christina: So what does a bump
Leslie: dot then? Uh, so bump dots are kind of like little, um, stickers. If you will, that you can get that. I have like a raised a dot. You can get them in like rubber.
You can get that. Kind of a felt material. You can get them in plastic. And so a lot of times people will use those on their microwave for the start button or on their oven or their dishwasher or washing machine. So
Christina: somewhere they know where start stop
Leslie: is. Oh, very cool. And those are really nice for even, you know, people with low vision or who are starting to lose their vision.
I know my. Personally, I have helped him get some bumped dots and use those on different spices or medications or things like that. Just kind of help make it a little bit easier, still some remaining vision. Um, but you can get them in bright orange. So they really pop on an oven with kind of all black or things like that.
So there's even
Timothy: a assessable, uh, pharmacy that we've had [00:10:00] on our collaboration. That is a great little thing to do. If you can, you know, get your prescriptions and you scan it and tells you to all, everything about that person.
Leslie: Oh, that's amazing. Yeah. So accessible pharmacy will give them a little plug. Uh, they did join us for a collaboration event.
We recently just had on , which is another GPS app, um, for making accessible, so many different things accessible. So there is a lot of different things out there which are really cool. Just to name a couple places where you can find some of these things would be maxi aids, L SNS human way. There's lots of different kinds of companies online.
You can do some different Google searches to find some of these things. And
Christina: Leslie, uh, we just talked about collaboration events a little bit, tell someone how they could attend or join how often they happen. Tell us about those.
Leslie: I would love to tell you about our collaboration events. I get very excited about that.
Uh, our collaboration events happen monthly the last Wednesday of every [00:11:00] month. At 3:00 PM Eastern standard time, and they go for three to 4:00 PM and we partner with different organizations, uh, in the blindness and low vision field. So it's a great way for us to share resources such as accessible pharmacy Lazarus, Cilla computers for the blind American printing house Hadley Institute for black leader dogs.
One piece of the puzzle. There's so many other things that people can benefit from. So if you are interested in learning about our collaboration events, you can go to our website leader, dog dot. Under the resources tab, you'll find our virtual learning and there you'll also find a link to some collaboration events and you can register for these everyone's welcome.
Yes.
Christina: And we also do put them on our Facebook page. Um, Leslie does send me that information and I make sure to get it on there. So it will be listed under our events tab on our Facebook page as well. So if you are more Facebook savvy, you can have there too and find those Timothy though. Is there any other cool apps that we should know about?
Timothy: Well, I mean, uh, your, [00:12:00] even your TV's now are talking to you, your Firesticks are talking to you. Everything's assessable. Now there's more than there was like 10 years ago. So it's look like it's all of a sudden just boomed. So I'm, I'm grateful for it, but there's so much more out there. I tell you, you can't keep caught up sometimes.
Leslie: Absolutely. And I, I, you know, the, one of the questions we get all the time is how do people who are blind use a computer. Right. Cause most things on a computer are visual. So there are different programs such as jaws or voiceover that make everything accessible and it's audible. So as you're going through or scrolling through a folders, it's kind of reading them and then, you know, you can hit enter.
I don't know how to use dress specifically, but there are ways to use everything. There is a technology, people are using computers way better than I am without vision. So please. If you have a question about something, always do a Google search because I promise you there is something out there to help make it a little easier.
Christina: I just can't even, I mean, I need [00:13:00] to start downloading all these apps. I'm so curious. Now I need to get myself an apple watch. I feel like I'm so behind the times,
Leslie: Mommy. We didn't want to say anything, but it does seem that
Christina: I need to get with it. Definitely. I'm definitely gonna check some of these out myself. Cause I'm just curious to see how they all work. Yeah. You know, it, the more knowledge you have the better to help spread the word and help
Leslie: other people too. Yes. And if you have questions about any of this, please do reach out to us because we're happy to send you some links or get you in the right direction.
Um, but thank you everyone for listening to this short episode of taking the lead, it's always fun to dive into different topics and just kind of have a chat amongst us. I'm Leslie Haskins with host Timothy Cuneo and Christina Hapner. We really hope you enjoyed today's short episode. Please join us next time.
As we continue to dive into the world of blindness. And if
Christina: you'd like to learn more about applying to leader, dog, you can head to leader, dog.org or call us at eight eight eight seven seven six. [00:14:00] 5 33 too. And don't forget, you can reach us at taking the lead at leader, dog.org with any questions or ideas.
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