Full Transcript
Greg:
Our business is understanding student workflows, understanding teachers, understanding needs of the students and being able to market and to train teachers and be a resource, right? That’s where our foundation is.
Jeff:
Please welcome, from American Printing House, Head of Global Innovation, Greg Stilson.
Greg:
It was really in response to an outcry from TVI saying, “We need more braille.” And so, we learned that the field was hungry for more braille.
Jeff:
Introducing two new refreshable braille devices to the APH product line, the Mantis and the Chameleon.
Greg:
The mantis is really a first of its kind. I call it a Bluetooth keyboard with an embedded braille display. It’s a full laptop style, QWERTY style keyboard with a 40 cell embedded braille display, but beneath it. Even though you’re using the QWERTY keyboard, you’re always keeping braille at your fingertips.
Jeff:
And a big thank you to our cohost, our braille expert, Satauna.
Satauna:
And what made you choose, I guess this is sort of an obvious question. I’m going to ask it anyway.
Greg:
I love those questions. To help us create products that are designed for the students, for the teachers specific to education, right? Because that’s where APH’s niche is and that’s where we’re called upon in the field to be a resource.
Satauna:
And I’m particularly excited to hear that you’re using the piezoelectric cells on these display. That just makes me so happy.
Jeff:
You can find American Printing House on the web at APH.org. And check out the daily webinar for students, EXCEL Academy.
Greg:
And partnering with some amazing teachers and professionals in our field. The EXCEL Academy has been something that’s been going on for the past couple of months. And it’s amazing to me to see the excitement that is there because really people need this consistency. And that’s one thing that we’ve noticed is that having it at the same time every day for students has been exactly what the parents with TVI, is what the students needed during this really strange time.
Jeff:
And now from APH Head of Global Innovation, Greg Stilson. We hope you enjoy. Welcome to Blind Abilities, I’m Jeff Thompson and we’re in the studio and with me is Satauna. How are you doing Satauna?
Satauna:
I’m doing well.
Jeff:
Well?
Satauna:
Thanks for asking. Yeah.
Jeff:
That’s good.
Satauna:
The weather’s warming up here, which is really great. I don’t have to get up and tend to fire anymore. I just get up and it’s already warm.
Jeff:
I’m in Minnesota. It’s deceiving. I don’t know if it’s going to stick or stay or what. But it’s pretty good right now, I’m loving it. Today we’re going to be talking about braille and you’re a braille user.
Satauna:
I am a braille user. I love my braille. I got to have my braille. My braille is my American Express card. I can’t walk out of the house without it.
Jeff:
There you go. And we’re not sponsored by American Express by no means. However, you use it during your job, your employment, your career. It’s one of your main tools.
Satauna:
Yes. Is that your segue into telling people what I do?
Jeff:
I’ll use it. I’ll take it.
Satauna:
Okay. I’m a voice actor. So all of my copy is read on a braille display. I love it for everything from my finances to just having it available when I’m writing down information about someone or something. It’s with me all the time.
Jeff:
Right. We’ve got a real special guest in the studio today from American Printing House Head of Global Innovations, Greg Stilson. Greg, how are you doing?
Greg:
Hey, how are you guys? Thanks for having me on.
Jeff:
Doing great?
Satauna:
Yeah, Greg.
Jeff:
Greg, for many years you’ve been involved in the development and the innovation of a lot of great products stemming from HumanWare to Aira. Now you’re at APH and they’re coming off a great year last year with the Code Jumper, winning the Best of Innovations at the Consumer Electronics Show, the release of the Braille Trail Reader, and much more, especially through the partnerships that APH has been developing with other companies. It’s just great to see you at APH right now. You’re kind of in your wheelhouse. You’ve always been involved with braille, gadgets, gadget tools to help students get through education. And from the looks of it, APH is not stopping because APH is continuing on this year by rolling out two new refreshable braille devices, the Mantis and the Chameleon.
Greg:
Yeah, I recently joined APH in January of 2020 and being somebody who’s kind of gone through the… I spent 11 years at HumanWare doing a number of different jobs and really what that role or those roles showed me is just how much I really appreciate the education of students with visual impairments. I spent a couple of years at Aira really doing some cool things with their apps and glasses and all that kind of stuff, really working in a super modern high-tech kind of environment and it really helped me become, I would say, a better product manager because I got to see the very modern mainstream way of doing things combined with a lot of the traditional methods of product development as well.
Greg:
And so coming to APH, I feel like I’m really back where I belong. I’m back in the education space. I’m back working with kids, with teachers and working on really the core foundational pieces of education, and one of them is braille literacy, right? As a blind person myself, at one point I was one of those low vision kids who desperately didn’t want to touch the braille paper, right? I wanted to be that kid who looked awesome one inch away from the giant CCTV, right? But thank goodness, I had some TVIs and parents who forcefully at some points made me learn braille and today it’s my pen and paper. It’s the way that I read everything now. So this is really very close to my heart.
Jeff:
Going back, you were behind the BrailleNote, the Brailliant, the Trek. Those are huge devices out there in the world.
Greg:
Yeah. It’s always, even today when I talk to some TVIs they’re like, we have no conversation going about the BrailleNote, but then they find out that I was the one who helped design the BrailleNote Touch and they’re like, “Oh, well, my student’s having this problem.” And I was like, “Oh man, you’re going way back in my memory banks here.” But it is, it’s so great to see students using the tools that I got to work with some awesome developers to build and see how they’re really progressing in their educational career. I’ve even run into some students now who talk about making me feel old. I remember working with them when they were in grade school and now they’re in college, right? And they’re still using braille every day and the tools that are out there. So it’s really rewarding to see that.
Jeff:
That’s great. Greg, last year when APH was winning awards for innovation and the different products that were coming out, you must have taken a look at APH and thought there was a good fit there. The educational component, the innovation, the development of tools, and now you got two new products coming out, braille devices. I mean, just last year the Braille Trail Reader came out and now you have two completely new devices coming out, the Mantis and the Chameleon, the partnerships and innovation keeps moving on.
Greg:
One of the things that really attracted me to the printing house was this commitment to innovation, right? APH has always been a product development facility. But one of the things that I would say is that it didn’t really have product lines. You had many teaching tools, you had many kits that were there to help students and TVIs and things like that. But from electronic braille and tactile opportunity, I wouldn’t say there was a lot of choices. There was one braille device or there was one braille display or note taker or option. And as I’ve talked to so many TVIs, I think we all can agree that no two students really learn the same way, right?
Greg:
And so, one of the things that I saw early on was this commitment to really building an innovation line, building multiple devices that served purposes for multiple students, right? And many of the students that we work with today have multiple disabilities. And so, having devices that are dynamic enough to accommodate their needs as well. Last year we launched a product called the Braille Trail Reader. It was really in response to an outcry from TVIs saying, “We need more braille.” There was a lull in offering braille from APH and they said, “We need more braille devices.” And that product, the Braille Trail Reader, we sold out so quickly because the demand was immediate.
Greg:
And so we learned that the market, that the field, was hungry for more braille. It’s something that really was rewarding to me because I know that there was talk many years ago, not many years ago but some years ago, that braille was going to go away, right? And now I’m hearing from TVIs and consumers that they want more braille devices. They want more different and dynamic devices. And so, after seeing the Braille Trail Reader, which was sort of a limited edition product, really take off, we doubled down on our braille. And that was, when I joined in January, the two braille products, it just felt really natural for me to jump in and help kind of bring those products to market.
Greg:
The Mantis and Chameleon are two products that are results of partnerships that we have with some good friends of mine at HumanWare. One of the things that we want to do at the Printing House is bring products that are much more higher quality and bring them faster to market. We don’t want these five-year layoffs between product cycles anymore. We want to bring new products, different additions to the product lines and do it much faster, and the way that we do that is by working with our friends and partners in the field. And that’s folks like HumanWare, like Vispero, like Hymns, like Zoomax, like many of the other partners that are there that are really established to help us create products that are designed for the students, for the teachers, specific to education, right? Because that’s where APH’s niche is, and that’s where we’re called upon in the field to be a resource.
Greg:
And so, Mantis and Chameleon are two examples of those partnership products. Products that we were able to bring to market relatively quickly and they serve different purposes. They’re along the same product line but they’re different products. I’ll start with the Mantis and I’ll kind of just do a brief description of what the product is. I’ve got it sitting in front of me. What the mantis is really a first of its kind. I call it a Bluetooth keyboard with an embedded braille display. It’s a full laptop style, QWERTY style keyboard with a 40 cell embedded braille display but beneath it. It’s got 40 cursor-router keys along the front edge or the HumanWare’s traditional thumb keys for braille panning.
Greg:
In between the thumb keys is a circular home button. And what that does is that it takes you back, it’s almost like the main menu button. It takes you back to the device’s local menu. So if you’re connected to an additional tool like an iPhone or a computer, tapping that home button will bring you back to the device’s local mode, meaning that you’re no longer controlling that tool. You’re actually back in the device’s internal applications. Along the left edge of the device you have, from starting from front to back, you have a USB host port. So you can plug in USB thumb drives, transfer files and things like that.
Greg:
Behind that is the power button. It’s just a power you can press and hold it. And then a USB-C charging port as well. That charging port also doubles as the connection to your computer if you’re going to connect the keyboard to your computer as a USB keyboard. Along the back edge is an SD card slot taking up to 64 gigabytes of SD storage. And on the back is a battery door that allows you, with two screws, you can pop out the battery. That’s it. That’s the physical design of the device. But really the goal of this tool is to be a resource when students need to learn. Students, I would say, and professionals. We’re getting equal amounts of excitement about this from blind professionals because it’s a tool that combines QWERTY input and braille, which is something that I think early on Satauna mentioned that she had used the BrailleNote QWERTY Apex a while ago, or maybe you still use it.
Satauna:
I do.
Greg:
Tools like this, the full QWERTY keyboard, it was always kind of decided upon that the QWERTY keyboard with braille was kind of going to be that second class device, right? The primary use was going to be six key braille entry or the eight-dot keyboard with refreshable braille. But what we’re noticing, and the reason why we built this is there’s an outcry from TVIs saying that, “My students get so connected and attached to their six key device that they’re resistant to learn QWERTY keyboard entry.” And we all know that if you don’t know how to type on a keyboard, employment is going to be a real challenge going into the future, right? And so, being able to have those QWERTY keyboard skills to be proficient on a computer, to be proficient with these other devices with a QWERTY keyboard is really a foundational skill that needs to transition to higher education and to employment.
Greg:
And so this tool, we built this, I jokingly referenced The Lord of the Rings. This is the one keyboard to rule them all kind of thing. If you’re using it with your laptop, if you’re using it with your iPhone, your iPad, your Mac, this is the keyboard that goes with you and it makes sure that even though you’re using the QWERTY keyboard, you’re always keeping braille at your fingertips, right? You don’t have to reach over to another connected device to get that braille output because that’s what we noticed was that even when teachers would move a student over to a QWERTY keyboard, unfortunately that braille didn’t seem to follow with them. So now they’ve gone from a device that gave them braille all the time to now only getting screen reader output.
Satauna:
Can I just jump in here for a second because I think that this is valuable in a number of ways. Baum did something like this back in the early 90s with their Inka device. They had a full size keyboard. And back in that time you still had DOS. So they had vertical navigation as well on their device, but it was really cool. And we have, we’ve gotten away from, like I’m looking at my Brailliant and you’ve got a braille display and the cursor-routing buttons, and then you’ve got the braille keyboard. So my QWERTY keyboard is actually lifted up above on a separate table because to reach far behind the Brailliant to get to that keyboard is just ergonomically uncomfortable. So I think one of the values of having an actual QWERTY keyboard on the device is that ergonomic flexibility and just ease that it brings.
Greg:
I think it’s a good timing too, right? Being in product development for as long as I have, you can build an amazing product, but if it’s not the right time for that product, the product doesn’t really succeed, right? And when I look at today, there are so many Bluetooth keyboards that are sold now by so many different manufacturers, the Logitech, many of the other ones, right? And the reality is that they’re selling and that this is a market because now we’re not just using a keyboard with one computer, we’re using a keyboard with three different devices at home. Some people even use a keyboard with their Apple TV to help them with keyboard entry and stuff like that, right?
Greg:
So, this is a time when a blind person now, because we have so much embedded accessibility in so many different devices, we’re not just tied to one accessible tool, but we’re tied to three or four in our household, right? So this keyboard has the ability to connect via USB to your computer. But then also you can connect up to five additional Bluetooth devices. So on a daily basis, this is my primary keyboard now that I’m using for work. I have it usually connected with USB to my computer just because it’s right here. But then I’ve always got it connected via Bluetooth to my phone so that when I get a text message on my phone, I can check it, switch over to my Bluetooth connection and I can type in using the QWERTY keyboard to respond because it’s a heck of a lot faster than using the touchscreen keyboard on the iPhone and provides me far fewer mistakes than using voice dictation, right?
Satauna:
Yeah, absolutely.
Greg:
In addition to using it with other devices, that’s the primary use of this tool is to really build efficiency and to build those keyboarding skills. But we wanted to make sure that this tool was designed for the needs of what I would say a student desk, right? So when I look at what’s on a traditional sighted kid’s desk today, they have their textbooks, they’ve got their note taking paper and pencil, they often have a clock, they probably have a calculator and they’ve got file folders, right? So what we wanted to do is build features into this device that are standalone so that you don’t always have to have it connected to additional tools to be efficient with it. So if a student’s in the classroom or you’re professionals at work and they’re in a meeting, you need to take notes.
Greg:
And so, this device does have an embedded basic note taker. You’re taking notes in a text file. It does have the ability to read Microsoft doc files as well. But when you take notes, when you write in a note, it’s creating just a plain text file. There’s no advanced spelling and grammar check and things like that. It’s trying to mimic what a student or a professional would need in a pen and notebook. And so with that, you have an editor that you can take your notes, you can read documents and it’s got built-in braille translation. So as I’m typing in my QWERTY keyboard here, I can set my braille output to be contracted braille UEB or contracted braille, whatever my preferred braille reading method is.
Greg:
It also supports multiple language braille tables as well. So if a student is reading a Spanish assignment and they want to read it in their preferred Spanish braille, they can change to a different Spanish braille profile as well to be able to read the content in the right braille format. So, that’s really valuable as well for international users or for folks who are taking a second language class.
Greg:
In addition there’s a book reader inside of it. There’s a wireless chip inside of this device so I can connect to my WiFi and download books from Bookshare or NFB Newsline as well directly to the device. I don’t have to be connected to any other tool. There’s a basic calculator inside of this as well, a clock. And then one of the things that I’m really passionate about is teaching students folder organization, understanding the way that files and folders make up each other so that they kind of build that foundation. And that’s really something crucial when sighted kids are creating their assignment notebooks and they’re building their assignment structure the way that they organize. So, it does have a file manager inside of it as well.
Jeff:
Greg, can you tell us the relationship between the teacher and the students because I always hear this about the products that you build, that it’s for the teachers as well as the student?
Greg:
Yeah. This product was asked for by teachers, I would say. It was something that was very clearly asked for, that there was a significant gap in TVIs having the ability to keep braille at their fingertips while trying to teach a student QWERTY keyboard input. In APH, one of the things that we’ve done, we’ve built typing tutors and we’ve built tools. We just released Type Around the Web, which actually is a really cool web-based application that allows you to learn how to type on the web. And so, keyboard skills, building keyboard skills has always been kind of a foundational piece that APH has tried to help with. We’ve offered multiple tools that are there, providing a keyboard that compliments that and to really build those foundational tools along with the braille literacy, it was something that we never had and it was something that the market definitely needed.
Greg:
And so, this is a tool that is designed for students and for blind professionals and consumers. It’s also a tool in the TVIs’ toolbox to say, “Okay, well, you don’t want to relinquish your braille. That’s great. We have a tool called the Mantis that can keep braille at your fingertips. It’ll teach you all the keyboarding skills.” And when you look at it, tools like the product Satauna mentioned, the Brailliant and multiple other eight-dot braille displays do have mechanisms in place to map keyboard shortcuts to the shortcuts for JAWS or the Windows shortcuts and things like that. But when it comes down to it, those are I would say multiple key presses that are not as natural as what JAWS or NVDA or Windows have created with the standardizing of Ctrl C, Ctrl V, Right?
Satauna:
Yep. Totally agree.
Greg:
Those are keys that students need to learn early on because they’re going to be with them the rest of their life. And so, memorizing that Backspace + Space + V is your pace command that works on your device, but it may not work as a standard, right? So I think really building those foundational transitional skills is the core of why we built this.
Satauna:
So Greg, you talked about building those transitional skills and foundational skills and the organizational skills. One of the questions I have is in terms of the standalone organizational abilities of the Mantis, how other than TVI literally reading the braille on the display, how would a TVI see how the student has organized their structure? Because if you’re a teacher and you see the student’s paper notebook, it’s clear, but how is that done on the Mantis?
Greg:
It’s a good question. There is no screen on the device, so a braille-only device. However, when you plug it into a computer, it shows up as an external drive. If the teacher wants to see the structure that the kid has created, they want to see what files or folders they have, they just plug it in with USB and it shows up as a removable disk and they can click into it and copy files and move things, just like you’re plugging in a thumb drive essentially.
Satauna:
Nice. That’s great.
Greg:
So it’s very, very simple. We’re not doing anything. We’re not reinventing the wheel there. We have had requests from early field testers to figure out a way to hook up an app or a screen or something to the device. And it’s something that we’re actually considering. There’s limited ports on this. So if you are using a USB port or something to connect a screen, then you can’t use it for USB thumb drives and things like that. So we are contemplating that, it’s something that was requested. I think it’s a great request. I know that from the times that I was working on the BrailleNote Touch, that screen that’s there, for some students they never used it even though you can type braille on the screen. However, it was a huge asset to teachers that are visually impaired. They always appreciated knowing exactly where the student was, being able to help them out and things like that. So we do acknowledge that having a screen or a visual output for the TVI is valuable.
Satauna:
That’s awesome.
Greg:
One of the other fun things I want to mention about the Mantis, and this is really something that I thought was really cool is when you connect to a Windows machine, the modifier keys that are to the left of the space bar, they’re your traditional, starting from left to right, Control, Function, Windows, Alt. But what’s really cool is when you connect it to a Mac or an iOS device, those keys change. Now, we can’t change the control and the function keys. We’re locked in by a restriction there by Apple. So it still goes Control, Function, but then the next two keys become Option and Command. So, it does feel really natural to do those command C command V keystrokes because we are using the same Mac layout even just on the fly when you connect to an Apple device.
Greg:
And then I will mention that Android and Chromebook, Chrome OS, those are two drivers that we are in contact with Google about. Unfortunately we have to wait for them to embed the driver for Mantis into their operating systems. All the work is done on our end, we just need them to push an update. So Android and Chrome OS are coming in the future.
Satauna:
So you talk about a full-sized keyboard on this is that you’re talking about a full-sized laptop keyboard so it does not include a numeric keypad?
Greg:
Right. Correct. Yep. For portability.
Satauna:
Okay. And so if that’s the case, how did you decide to do a 40 cell instead of a 32?
Greg:
It was a combination of a few things. The size of the keys, the spacing between the keys to make sure that it was comfortable for little hands and larger hands. And the other side of it is when we started looking at off the shelf QWERTY keyboards, it was much more natural to put 40 cells beneath them rather than 32 because we wanted to use up all the real estate, right? So if we put 32, what we found out was that you’d still have a couple inches on either side of the braille display, I would say, blank space. And so we might as well fill that up with braille, right? So from left to right, basically the braille display goes all the way from edge to edge, which is really nice.
Satauna:
Very cool.
Greg:
That’s the Mantis. The mantis is available. It’s available on both quota and non-quota purchase. So the pricing, this is something that we’re offering today is for quota users and this is the way that you would do this is contact your ex-officio trustee, your EOT in your district. If it’s not available, you can pre-order it immediately on quota funds as well. It’s 1,995 on quota funds, 1,995, and 2,495 if you’re not using quota funds, if you’re not using those federal funds that are allocated for students. From what we looked at, we felt that this is a very competitively priced device for what you get for 40 cells of braille.
Greg:
We’re very happy with the price point that we’re able to achieve here. We’re able to use the flexibility that we have with the quota system to reduce that price a little bit due to the federal system that we have. But even for a non-quota user, when you look at 2,495 for a 40-cell display with internal intelligence and a unique profile, we’re pretty happy with the price that we were able to achieve with that.
Jeff:
Great. Can you explain to the listeners what the quota funds is all about?
Greg:
The quota system is a federally funded, it’s basically a grant that’s provided to all the states in the US that allocates a number of dollars per state based on the number of blind or low vision students in that state. And every student gets, I don’t remember the number off top of my head, it’s $430 or something like that, allocated to them. And the dollars can all be pulled together to purchase products, right? And so those products can either be on a one to one basis for the students, every student gets their one product, or there’s educational lending libraries and learning centers that can basically send out products throughout the state that are purchased on quota funds.
Greg:
And so, it’s a federal grant that’s provided to all the states based on the number of students who are in those states that are blind or low vision. And so those can only be used to purchase products from the American Printing House and it’s something that we’re very proud to be having done for over 100 years now. The quota funds, like I said, are available for education. They’re also available in some adult learning instances as well. If you are visiting a training center and things like that, they may actually have the ability to use quota funds in those situations as well.
Greg:
But this is something that APH, we’ve always been education centric. One of the things that we wanted to do is when we are bringing these really new, innovative, and first of their kind of products, we wanted to make sure that there was a path for non-educational customers because I do see this as a huge value for a professional as well. So, having both the quota and the non-quota price is something that is new for APH, but it’s something that I think you’ll see a lot of going forward.
Jeff:
Yeah. I was surprised to hear that because I was thinking, “Oh, this sounds like a great product.” But I’m glad that 2,495, like you said, for 40 cells, that’s awesome.
Greg:
Yeah. I’m really excited about where we landed on those. So yeah, the Mantis is in stock right now. You can go to APH.org and purchase that. If it does say it’s out of stock, it’s because we’re literally bringing in inventory today, so just be patient with us. It is available. We’re going to be starting shipping if not this week early next week, and this is on the 28th of May today.
Jeff:
Good thing.
Greg:
If I can shift over to the Chameleon… I talk about the Mantis first because all of the software that’s running on the Mantis is available on the Chameleon, so I like to do the whole spiel with the Mantis first and then I’ll talk about the Chameleon. The Chameleon is another product that is in partnership with HumanWare. The Braille Trail Reader as we mentioned was a limited edition product. It was a product that we released because of the outcry for braille. We knew that we were going to build our own product with a partner going forward. But we knew that that product was going to take longer. And so there was a need for braille immediately, and that Braille Trail Reader serves the purpose. It’s a great introductory product, it’s available now. It’s a 14-cell braille device. It’s based on the platform of their Brailliant 14 at HumanWare, and does have the ability to take notes on the device. It’s a lower cost device, it’s 995.
Greg:
But we wanted to look at really expanding what was possible with an eight-dot entry device. So we have the Mantis Q40, which serves the purpose for teaching those QWERTY keyboard skills and building that transitional skill for employment and things like that. But as I mentioned early on in the podcast, we want to make sure that we have flexibility and choice for students because some students, either they have multiple disabilities or they have use of only one hand, or they just prefer an eight-dot entry device. Just because they’re using an eight-dot entry device for the majority of their efficiency in their education’s career and things like that doesn’t mean they’re not going to learn QWERTY input. It just means that maybe they feel like this is the tool that they want to use the majority of the time. There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s just we want to make sure that we offer choice there.
Greg:
The Chameleon 20 is a 20-cell refreshable braille device that possesses all of the same internal intelligence as the Mantis. It’s got your braille editor, it’s got your book reader, it’s got your calculator, your file manager and your clock all in the device in the same fashion. It can connect to multiple other devices via USB or via Bluetooth connections. What’s really cool about this is that the embedded editor and system also possesses a on the fly braille translator as you’re typing. The Mantis is doing the translation of the braille output, the Chameleon does the translation of the braille input. So as I’m typing in an editor, you can type in contracted braille and when a teacher or that document that you typed in gets transferred to a computer, all of that content is in readable print. So it’s doing the translation on the fly for you.
Greg:
And that’s really valuable for students who may be learning some, they’re not quite to their contracted braille. They haven’t built all those skills yet. Maybe they only know some contractions, right? And what’s really cool about this is let’s say I’m reading a document in contracted braille. I can do one key stroke. If I come up, let’s say I don’t know THE symbol and I come up to THE symbol and I’m a student and I’m like, “Oh, I don’t know that.” I can press one command and that THE symbol will then get immediately spelled out for me. So it’ll do that on the fly contraction to uncontracted. And then once I get past that and I realize, “Oh, that’s THE symbol,” then I can switch back into contracted braille and continue my learning at that point.
Greg:
So the Chameleon is a, like I said, it’s a 20-cell device. I love this thing from a portability perspective. It’s small enough that you can slide it into a jacket pocket. It’s light. It’s a tool that is really portable. And quite honestly if I’m on the go, this is the tool that I’ll use with my phone. It’s totally portable. And it’s a result of the feedback that we got from TVIs last year when we brought a bunch of TVIs into the printing house. They mentioned that these are their needs that their student has with an eight-dot entry device and a braille device.
Greg:
One of the things we didn’t expect to hear was that the TVIs, from an aesthetic perspective, they were getting feedback from students that they didn’t want a device that was just plain black, that looked like all of the other assistive technology tools that they’ve had. And so, the reason we named this the Chameleon is because some of the things that we put with this is a way for the students to sort of dress the product up to fit their personality, right? With the Chameleon, you’re going to get three different styles of cases, three different colors. So you’ll get a pomegranate, a teal, and a purple case that all come with it that you can pop the device in and out of depending on how your mood is that day. Today are you a pomegranate or a teal or whatever?
Jeff:
You’re talking bling.
Greg:
Yeah, exactly. It’s got little stickers that you can put all over it. We’re kind of going with the bug theme as you can tell. So we’ve got some Mantis stickers, you got the Chameleon stickers, you’ve got a few other ones that you can put on the device. And then it does come with a teal folio case to protect it as well. For the average listener, it may not sound like a big deal but I can tell you as a blind student, you often get what you get, right? I know my wife has, I don’t know, three, four different color phone cases that she pops her phone in and out of. There’s no reason why a blind student wouldn’t want to let their device show a little bit of their personality too. So every Chameleon is going to have three different color cases in the box along with that teal folio case as well.
Jeff:
Right in the box.
Greg:
Right in the box, yep.
Jeff:
That’s cool. That is important because you don’t get the choices, like you said. Well, you get a choice if you want an iPhone gold, but you never see it because you put a case on it anyway.
Greg:
Right, yeah.
Jeff:
You got three cases right there. Perfect.
Greg:
Yep. So one day, on Tuesday, the student can have it in the pomegranate case and on Wednesday they can have it in teal case, whatever they prefer to use.
Jeff:
Pomegranate Tuesdays.
Greg:
Pomegranate Tuesday.
Satauna:
Can you talk about the braille on these. Is the braille Orbit Braille or is the braille Brailliant Braille, if that makes any sense?
Greg:
We’re using the traditional piezoelectric cells. One of the things that we looked at was really reliability for these products and the piezoelectric cells, as they are a little bit more expensive to produce, they’ve been around for so many years. And with students, you can’t run the risk of being without your device in six months because something fails on the braille, right? And so, we used a number of other resources that we had at our disposal, especially being a nonprofit, to try to reduce the cost of these devices.
Greg:
And so, I’m very excited to say that the cost of the Chameleon 20 for a 20-cell braille display on quota is going to be 1,295 and for non-quota will be 1,595. For a piezoelectric cell that is on par with virtually all the other braille displays out there, I think we’ve priced these very competitively for a really advanced product. I would say these are not simple devices by any means, they can serve simple purposes and they’re only as difficult as you want them to be. If you just want to use the Mantis as your QWERTY keyboard for your computer, you can definitely do that. You don’t want to touch any of the internal apps, right? But it does have the ability to grow with the student, right?
Greg:
As the student is learning QWERTY keyboarding, maybe now they use it in class to start to take notes or they use the Chameleon in class to start to take notes and then they connect it to their iPhone, right? We wanted to make sure that these devices were not just sort of one shot solutions. These are things that can grow with the needs of the students.
Satauna:
Going back to the Mantis, it functions as another device as keyboard when connected via USB or Bluetooth, functions as a standalone device when not connected. So, does that mean that there’s no terminal mode? I can’t switch quickly between reading a file in the built-in note taker and looking at my text message on my iPhone, or how does that work?
Greg:
No, you actually do. There’s a terminal mode. It’s the second choice on the main menu. Let’s say I’m connected to my iPhone. I’m looking at my text messages and I’m done looking at my text messages and I want to get back to my note-taking file that I was working on. I can just tap that home button that’s in the middle of those thumb keys, and I get switched back into what I would call local mode. So it takes you back to the device’s main menu, and you can go back into your editor and do your notes and things like that. Let’s say you get another text message in there. You can switch over to your terminal and connect to your iPhone again. When I say connect to your iPhone, you stay connected, you just switch over to your terminal mode to start looking at it.
Satauna:
Right. Yes, it is as easy as just a couple of key presses and you’re back.
Greg:
Exactly.
Satauna:
And what made you choose, I guess this is sort of an obvious question. I’m going to ask it anyway.
Greg:
I love those questions.
Satauna:
I was going to ask, what made supporting PDFs difficult. And there’s a hundred reasons I can answer, like PDFs have images and things like that, and sometimes they’re not really text files. There’s those that are image that somebody scanned. But just being able to open a PDF on… or maybe they’re just not used as much in educational settings. But if you’re doing a crossover, particularly with the Mantis, between educational and professional, what was the assumption just that you would use a PDF on a computer side?
Greg:
It’s a good question. Supporting PDF translation, one of the things that we wanted to make sure that we looked at was the base needs for the student. I kept going back to the student’s desk, like what’s the things that they needed. And the reality that we came across was that if you’re getting a PDF, oftentimes you’re getting it from a few sources. You’re either getting it from the web, you’re getting it from your email or you’re getting it from a cloud-based folder, right? So you’re going to get it from a Google Drive or One Drive or something like that, right? All of those three things required you to connect to an additional tool anyways to get it.
Greg:
So, to be able to put duplication on this device which increases the cost because then we have to put licensing support for PDFs and the conversion to a text file or whatever we’re going to do, that results in license fees as well that we have to support. When we looked at it, I’m a big proponent of workflows and understanding what the workflow is to get a result, and the workflow that was consistently there. Because this was not a BrailleNote Touch or a Polaris where you’re always connected to the cloud and using it as a traditional note-taker device, this resulted in you going to your computer or going to your iPhone and things like that. And those tools already possessed ways of making those PDFs accessible in the first place. And then at that point, we’re just adding the braille to that. Does that make sense?
Satauna:
Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, it does. Thank you.
Jeff:
Good question. That was good.
Satauna:
I have another big one, which is that when I look at your website around the Mantis, I presume it relates to the Chameleon as well. When I click on the warranty tab, it says pending. So tell us about warranty and maintenance and repair costs and things like that because with braille, that’s always an issue.
Greg:
That’s a note that I’m taking right now Satauna from what you said because that warranty information should be up on the website. The warranty is one year, it’s traditional one year warranty, and it’s done through APH. So you’ll contact APH for any of your technical support issues and your repair issues, any of that kind of stuff. If you have a sticky dot on your braille display, any of that kind of stuff it’s covered for one year, and it really mimics all of our other products one year warranty, right? I think it’s mainly just because this is so brand new that even the web people haven’t gotten that updated yet.
Jeff:
I think it’s great that you guys are making this available, and especially with the emphasis on the education and students. I also saw on the website and listened to one of the podcasts that APH started, Change Makers. Great startup. I like the idea of it. I was taking note of EXCEL Academy, which is a call in line. Can you explain that a little bit?
Greg:
Yeah. This has been a partnership that we have with Paths to Literacy. What we learned really fast was that in this time of COVID, students are home. There was a time when we were barely shipping products because we had nowhere to ship them to because all the schools were out. It’s interesting I talk about the Chameleon, right? I feel like APH is kind of a Chameleon today. We’re changing colors based on the needs of the field, right? For a long time, we’re a product source, right? We provide textbooks and tactile graphics and testing and all this other stuff, right? We try to be whatever the field needs and what the fields needed over the last two months has been a training resource and a place for students to spend a little bit of time to learn different skills remotely in a familiar environment.
Greg:
And so, in partnership with Paths to Literacy, Leanne Grillot who’s our outreach director really has taken ownership of this whole daily webinar process of basically creating different content for every single day and partnering with some amazing teachers and professionals in our field. And they do things from building soft skills for students to talking about technology, to showing science experiments, to telling stories with our light box product, right? Like there’s no two days are alike.
Greg:
The EXCEL Academy has been something that’s been going on for the past couple of months and it’s really, I mean, I’ve never seen numbers in our field on a webinar like I’ve seen. I mean, you’re talking 800 to 1200 people on a webinar. And it’s amazing to me to see the excitement that is there because really people need this consistency. And that’s one thing that we’ve noticed is that having it at the same time every day for students has been exactly what the parents with the TVI is what the students needed during this really strange time.
Greg:
In addition to the EXCEL Academy, our team has been putting out some technology webinars as well that have been really well attended. We just had one yesterday on Code Jumper, for example. I’ve done one on Mantis and Chameleon doing some demonstrations on Braille Trail Reader, on some of our low vision tools in partnership with this Vispero. And that even we’ve done some, APH does offer JAWS, the student version of JAWS to students as well. And so we’ve done some demonstrations and webinars with Vispero showcasing how to use JAWS with Chrome and how to use it with Zoom and some of these things as well. So really, like I said, APH is trying to be what the field needs whenever we can. And so the last two months the need has been, we need remote learning resources. And that’s what APH has been trying to do.
Jeff:
I like Change Makers, the podcast, Jonathan Wahl host on there, bringing in people. Joe Strechay was on there. Bringing in people who are changing and helping the community. That’s a great initiative. I like that.
Greg:
Awesome.
Jeff:
Satauna?
Satauna:
I love that you were talking about partnerships with others. I think that’s just really important because if you take something like these braille displays and you connect them with your traditional screen readers, obviously those partnerships are valuable. Do you feel like APH has strong partnerships with screen reader manufacturers and even like an open source screen reader like NVDA, or what’s your partnership like with Apple? Because I have to say that I think it’s wonderful and I’m particularly excited to hear that you’re using the piezoelectric cells on these display. That just makes me so happy.
Satauna:
But like some of the stuff that’s in screen readers for braille, I would love to see braille be better supported or supported differently or not used as… well, if it outputs in speech… if you look at NVDA, whatever your speech says is essentially what braille says. And it’s a little bit like that on an iPhone too, right? If you’re on a line, if you’re dialing a phone number, on your braille display when you touch the one on your touch screen, you see the one on the braille display. But that’s all you see, even though the braille display has room to accommodate more stuff on the display. And if we are a sighted person looking at the screen, you see more things. So, I guess I’m asking if you’re going to create innovation in terms of the hardware, do you have any input regarding what manufacturers are doing around software integration?
Greg:
I’m going to phrase this in a couple of ways. We have great relationships with the mainstream partners. One of the things that I’m really proud of is, being in the industry as long as I have and working with some folks who have also been in the industry a while, we’ve been able to build personal relationships with these mainstream companies. And being APH and being as big of an entity in the education space, one of the things we started with these partnership concepts because we don’t… I’ll freely admit, we don’t possess the foundational expertise to build a product like this from the core, right? From a manufacturing perspective, that’s not our business. Our business is understanding student workflows, understanding teachers, understanding needs of the students and being able to market and to train teachers and be a resource, right? That’s where our foundation is.
Greg:
And so, for a long time APH has done a number of different things, right? And I think that we’ve done some things well and we have not done some things well. And I think in this case, this allows us to really focus on our core, which is partnering with companies who possess the manufacturing expertise. The companies like HumanWare, the companies like Vispero who do this day in and day out. But what we can do is build products that are directly for students and TVIs. And in addition, some of these will be valuable to professionals like the Mantis, for example.
Greg:
But to advise them to create specs to build and use these partners as sort of manufacturing partners, if that makes sense. It allows us to keep sticking to our core and it allows them to do what they do best and the result is what you’re going to see with the Mantis and Chameleon. It’s a product that from a software perspective is built for the student and for the TVI and some professionals. And from a hardware perspective, it’s an incredibly solid built product that will look like a HumanWare product for those of you who are familiar with it. And it’s something that is durable, is solid, and is going to last. So for us, we’re really proud of that.
Greg:
From a mainstream perspective, we have some great relationships with the Googles, the Microsofts, the Apples. Apple, for example, has a Mantis in their office right now because they’re working on adding in some functionality for us to make sure that the connection to iOS and to Mac is solid. We have the relationship to be able to send them products and they’re willing to help us out. Without those partnerships in this field, we’re always going to have a stand still, in certain places. And so, we’re very thrilled that the Sarah Herrlingers at Apple and Eve Anderssons at Google and things like that, we’re able to call them colleagues and to be able to work with them.
Satauna:
Awesome. Thank you.
Jeff:
Greg, I think it’s great what you guys are doing at APH. I think you’re a great addition to their team. After last year I thought, wow, they’re really moving along here with their partnerships and the products you are putting out and even you’ve got the APH museum there. And I believe that’s Aira access point as well for people, and that’s in Louisville.
Greg:
It is, absolutely. It is. Yep. And we’ve recently added many of the Helen Keller Archives from AFB as well. I’ve actually checked my email from Helen Keller’s desk, so that’s one of my clients too.
Jeff:
Really?
Greg:
So yeah, it’s a really cool place if you’re coming to Louisville. It may not be the first thing you always think of, but it’s a really incredible historical museum to see. I mean, you’re seeing braille writers from long, long, long ago. You’re seeing slate and stylus, you’re seeing technology from way back and it’s just really an incredible history to go in and see some of the technology and the tools that we’re used to build up to where we are today.
Jeff:
And where else would you find that but there.
Greg:
Right, exactly.
Jeff:
Satauna, do you have any more questions for Greg?
Satauna:
Not that I can think of off the top of my head. This has been really valuable.
Greg:
Well, thank you guys very much for having me on. This is a lot of fun, and I really look forward to hearing how people get on with these new tools. Of course we’re always listening. We’re always excited to hear how people are using these things in their daily life, right?
Jeff:
And people could find out more at APH.org.
Greg:
Yup. APH.org. So if you go to www.aph.org, there’s a search box right at the top, you can type in Mantis or Chameleon and get right to them. Like I said, if you’re an ex-officio trustee, if you’re a TVI, a teacher of the visually impaired, and you’re not able to pre-order, talk to your ex-officio trustee right now. Pre-orders, if they’re not live, you may need an EOT login to pre-order with quota funds. Hopefully by the time this gets out, pre-orders are going to be done and you’re just going to be ordering regularly. But if you aren’t able to order and you are a TVI, contact your ex-officio trustee of your state and they can place the order as a pre-order for you.
Jeff:
All right. Greg, thanks for all you’re doing. Thanks for what APH is doing. Thank you very much for taking the time and coming onto the show.
Greg:
Thanks for having me everybody. Everybody have a great day.
Jeff:
That was a great time to have Greg Stilson on the show and to learn more about what American Printing House, APH, is enhancing the opportunities for students in education. And a big thank you to Satauna for bringing her braille skill knowledge to the show. Thank you Satauna, and a thank you to Chee Chau for his beautiful music. Thank you Chee Chau, Chee Chau, Chee Chau. Most of all, I want to thank you, the listener. I want to thank you for listening. We hope you enjoyed and until next time, bye-bye.
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