Full Transcript
Jeff Thompson:
Welcome to Blind Abilities, I’m Jeff Thompson. Are you gearing up and getting ready to go back to school? Well now might be the time to check out Vispero, that’s a parent company of Freedom Scientific, Optelec, and Enhanced Vision. They’ve got some gear that’ll fill your tool box ranging from low vision to refreshable Braille, to note takers and screen reader software that will help you succeed.
Jeff Thompson:
Our team correspondent, Simon Bonenfant who was at the convention who talked to Jeff Bazer of Vispero. They talked about JAWS and the affordable subscription plans, the new version of the ElBraille, and many more products that will help you succeed.
Jeff Thompson:
So as back to school is upon us, let’s go back to the convention. And here’s Simon Bonenfant with Jeff Bazer from Vispero.
Simon Bonenfant:
Hello Blind Abilities, it’s Simon Bonenfant at the Freedom Scientific booth and I’m here with Jeff Bazer. How you doing Jeff?
Jeff Thompson:
Hey Simon, very well. How are you sir?
Simon Bonenfant:
Good and can you tell listeners your title and explain a little bit about what you do at the company?
Jeff Thompson:
Sure, so I work in the south-central part of the country. I have nine states. So, we have various regional representation all over the country. So, I cover Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico.
Simon Bonenfant:
Wow, so you’re busy?
Jeff Thompson:
We’ve got a lot of travel. And we have some wonderful dealers in that part of the country as well so, NanoPack, you folks might have heard of them. They’ve been around a long, long time. And Crystal Vision covers us, Texas for us.
Simon Bonenfant:
Very good. So, can you describe to the listeners a little bit about what you’re exhibiting here today, and for those who do not know could you give a little description about the kind of function and features of what you’ve got here?
Jeff Thompson:
Absolutely, so we’re a large company so we have about ten tables here of all kinds of equipment. We have enhanced vision products which are lots of different video magnification devices. People might have heard of the Merlins before, the DaVincis, Pebbles, there’s a lot of different things that they make. We have Optelec as well, so you might have heard of the ClearView or maybe the Traveler. There’s a new product called the ClearView Go that we have that is an Optelec product and that’s a foldable video magnifier that is very nice, brand new, comes in a 15-inch screen. So, all kinds of things.
Jeff Thompson:
If we move down a little further, we’re at all the Freedom Scientific products. People might have heard of on the low vision side, the TOPAZ, ONYX, the RUBYs, so we have all kinds of different things there will low vision. And then we also have JAWS for Windows of course, ZoomText on our software side. We have refreshable Braille displays which could be our Focus line of Braille displays in a 14 and 40 cell. And we have a new note taker now called the ElBraille.
Simon Bonenfant:
Yeah, could you describe to the listeners what that is?
Jeff Thompson:
Well that’s been around for a little while, but we have the second version of that, that’s being released. It’s a Windows 10 note taker. It runs JAWS for Windows. Basically, it’s a laptop with a Braille keyboard on it. It’s got an i5 processor, it’s got 8GB of RAM, 128 SSD drive for storage. It’s very cool. So what happens is you can take your Focus Braille display, if you have a Generation 5 Focus 40, and it will dock or slide into the ElBraille, so it serves as a Braille display. So basically, you have two parts in one. You’ve got a Focus Braille display that slides into your ElBraille note taker. So now you have a full Braille display and a full Windows 10 note taker with a Braille keyboard.
Simon Bonenfant:
Oh, very nice. And this runs the Windows 10 operating system exactly the way it would go on any other computer, correct?
Jeff Thompson:
Yeah, absolutely. Just like any laptop would be. It runs Windows 10. It runs JAWS for Windows. It runs… you can put Office 365 on it.
Simon Bonenfant:
That’s great.
Jeff Thompson:
Any of those programs that you’re working with that you’ve worked with JAWS before would be able to run on this machine as well.
Simon Bonenfant:
That’s terrific, and you have a new subscription option I’m told for the JAWS for Windows screen reader?
Jeff Thompson:
We do, it’s actually called the Home Annual License and what it allows you do to is to… Well, first of all let’s describe it this way. So, if you’re not current with JAWS right now, let’s say you’re on version 2018 maybe, or 17 or 16, you know a few years back.
Simon Bonenfant:
Right, yep.
Jeff Thompson:
This is the least expensive way for you to become current and use the latest version of JAWS 2019. So, you can pay for one year of service, basically. One year of using JAWS, three years, or five years, all up front. And you do it online. You go to our website, freedomscientific.com. You go to shop online and you use your credit card. And basically, you go in there and you say, “I want JAWS for Windows or ZoomText Mag Reader.” And you pay online and then you own it for as long as you purchased. So, let’s say you purchased a one-year option. So, then the next year you’re current. You get all updates that come out during the time that your license is good. And then when it comes near the end, say 30 days left, you’ll get an email and a message in the program saying, “Your license is about to expire, would you like to renew?”. And there’s a renew link there, so you just hit that- [crosstalk]
Simon Bonenfant:
So you could get it for the next year, the next update to JAWS?
Jeff Thompson:
It’s the most economical way for anybody to get in to using JAWS. If you’ve never used it before, or if you don’t have a current license, for as low as $72 here at the show anybody who’s at the NFB here, we’ve got some special show pricing for that. The regular retail price though is only $90. It’s under $100, you know so-
Simon Bonenfant:
That’s terrific.
Jeff Thompson:
Yes. You know, traditionally, if you think about it Simon, I mean this has been close to a thousand dollars before when you buy-
Simon Bonenfant:
Absolutely.
Jeff Thompson:
We’ve tried to make it possible for anybody to use JAWS and that’s what we want. We want any of our users to have access anywhere. So maybe you have it at work, but you haven’t been able to keep it up at home, afford to keep it up at home, now you can.
Simon Bonenfant:
And with this $90 plan does it have a limit on the amount of computers that can be registered with this license?
Jeff Thompson:
So, you’ve always been able to run JAWS on three machines and you can still do that here. The nice thing about this is if you need to move it from one computer to another, you can actually go into our license portal on the freedomscientific.com site again, and you can basically manage these licenses. You can deactivate on one machine, activate it on another. So, you’ll never lose access, no matter how many machines you use, because you can move it from one machine to another.
Simon Bonenfant:
Oh that’s great. You know, so say something happens with your computer. You have to deactivate it and get a new computer. You can reactivate that and that would still work for you because you’d still be on the three computers.
Jeff Thompson:
You’re right-
Simon Bonenfant:
Oh that’s terrific, that’s great. So a lot of customizability and affordability. That’s great. If folks wanted to contact your company and are interested in purchasing your products or getting support for the products, they currently own, what are the ways the customer can contact the Freedom Scientific Corporation.
Jeff Thompson:
To contact us directly, remember you can always go through your local distributor too. So, if you have local folks in your state you work with for our products, we always encourage you to do that. But you can call us directly as well if you’d like to. The phone number is (800) 444-4443.
Simon Bonenfant:
That’s easy to remember.
Jeff Thompson:
So the three at the end. (800) 444-4443. Then you can follow the prompts to the departments you need. If you need to verify a serial number or check on the status of a repair, you can do all those things through our customer service. If you want to talk to sales, learn more about our products, you can do that. So, there’s prompts there.
Simon Bonenfant:
There you go.
Jeff Thompson:
And you can always go to our website too. The Vispero website will take you to all of our various companies under the Vispero umbrella. So that is Vispero, V-I-S-P-E-R-O, vispero.com or go freedomscientific.com, enhancedvision.com, whatever you want to do. But, if you go to Vispero then we’ll have links to all of our companies from there.
Simon Bonenfant:
We’re looking ahead to JAWS 2020, coming up in the next year?
Jeff Thompson:
Yes sir. Coming up probably in October is what it’s looking like right now. We always release in the fall, usually at the end of October. So, 2020, not only for JAWS, but JAWS, ZoomText, and Fusion, we release all of our softwares now very close together and we’ll do that in October.
Simon Bonenfant:
Yes, because, JAWS is ZoomText programs.
Jeff Thompson:
Yes sir. That’s right.
Simon Bonenfant:
Well thank you very much for coming on to the Blind Authority Podcast again. This has been your first time so thank you very much for coming on again and explain to listeners what you have here at the exhibit hall and enjoy the rest of the day.
Jeff Thompson:
Thank you Simon, thanks for stopping by and talking to us. We appreciate it and we look forward to seeing everybody.
Simon Bonenfant:
Absolutely.
Jeff Thompson:
Always a great time talking to Jeff Bazer and great job Simon Bonenfant he’s our team correspondent, he’s a transition age student out there in Pennsylvania doing his thing with the Blind Abilities Podcast. Great job Simon. And remember to enable the Blind Abilities skill on your Amazon device just by saying, “enable Blind Abilities”. A big shout out to Chee Chau for his beautiful music. You can find Chee Chau on Twitter @LCheeChau. And be sure to check out your state services for the blind. Your state services, your vocational rehab, and see what they can do for you. And most importantly I want to thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed it. And until next time, bye-bye.
Music] [Transition noise] -When we share
-What we see
-Through each other’s eyes…
[Multiple voices overlapping, in unison, to form a single sentence]
…We can then begin to bridge the gap between the limited expectations, and the realities of Blind Abilities.
Jeff Thompson:
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