Full Transcript
Daniel:
Some people call it the holy braille.
Brian:
Think of your high level iPad, but for the blind and low-vision.
Kristen:
The manufacturing and development, all that, is ready to go.
Pete:
Introducing the team from Touchpad Pro Assistive Technology, in the process of developing new and totally innovative products for the blind and visually impaired. Meet Kristen Smedley, Chief Communications Officer, Brian Edwards, Chief Operating Officer, and their founder and CEO, Daniel Lubiner.
Daniel:
Something that could have braille and graphics, possibly 3D.
Pete:
Their long-term plans to develop the highly technical Touchpad Pro, but focusing now on an innovative low-tech device, the Braille Doodle.
Brian:
The launch product, out of the products that are coming out of the gate, is the Braille Doodle.
Daniel:
It would be great if there was something for in there around $65.00, that we could not only buy for one kid but all the kids. Think about the size of a laptop, but covered with hundreds of holes. You’ll be able to feel the drawing as you go.
Jeff:
When you take the wand or the pencil-type device across it, the magnet just springs up, and so that makes it raise.
Brian:
Yes. The secret sauce is in the capability of the tactile pens themselves. Repeatability.
Pete:
Witnessing a unique interest among the blindness community, and with a building passion for what they’re creating-
Kristen:
I saw every person listening lean into their Zoom cameras to hear more and were on the edge of their seat.
Brian:
Understanding these products and the level of innovation that Daniel brought to them, with thought and passion and heart and integrity, I saw that this was something that I wanted to be involved in.
Pete:
And now let’s join Jeff Thompson in the Blind Abilities studio as he chats with the team from Touchpad Pro Assistive Technology.
Jeff:
We’re talking to Daniel Lubiner, and he is the founder and CEO of Touchpad Pro Assistive Technology. How are you doing?
Daniel:
I’m doing great. It actually started out about four or five years ago, I was told, you know, that I’d be switching from teaching art to emotionally disturbed students to also teaching art to about 90 blind and low-vision kids a week. When I saw the kids using iPads and stuff and the way they were using electronics and the refreshable braille devices, I got to thinking about an iPad for the blind, you know, some people call it the holy braille. Something that could have braille and graphics, possibly 3D. I really wanted to go all out, and see what I could design from the perspective of everything I could put in there. So I just started drawing and designing and drawing and designing and then finally I put together a patent application for that.
Jeff:
Would that be for the Touchpad pro?
Daniel:
Touchpad Pro. The holy braille.
Jeff:
I like it.
Daniel:
This COVID, for me, in a way it’s been a blessing. It has been so hard to be away from my students, I really can’t stand it, but I would never have gotten this far, I would never have met Kristen, I would never have gotten Brian involved, if it wasn’t for this COVID, you know, because it gave me that time to be home and think about how my kids had nothing in their homes, they were sent home, they didn’t have anything. I couldn’t do art with them, you know, some of my students are from the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, they don’t have a lot of money to just go on Amazon and buy a lot of stuff. So, I started thinking, like, what could be simple that we could send home with these students that would allow them to do art and to do braille? That’s where the Braille Doodle was born. I was playing around with this toy, but the toy, like, you can’t really use it for the blind and low-vision, so what if we created an [unintelligible] toy specifically for the blind and low-vision? And then came the idea of making it into a thing to help instruct braille, because that’s another that came to me, is I went to the braille instructor at my school and said “How are you doing this now? You’re doing Zoom and you’re trying to instruct kids in beginning braille, and the kids have nothing there,” and the stuff I saw out there that were available were very expensive, like $70.00 for one cell that you could play with, that has pegs that you could lose, you know? It didn’t seem like there were any things that they could really use to teach braille that was inexpensive. That’s how this came to be, I really think that it would be great if there was something for in there around $65.00, that we could not only buy for one kid but we could buy for all the kids.
Jeff:
Can you give a description of the Braille Doodle when it’s in your hand, how does it work, what’s the expectation someone would have when they say, “Here’s a Braille Doodle?”
Daniel:
The way I designed the Braille Doodle is thinking about the size of a laptop, a MacBook Pro or any laptop, or maybe even a little smaller, but covered with hundreds of holes that are placed tightly together. In those holes are little metal objects or little magnets that get pulled up with the stylus and get locked into place. Many kids played with Etch-a-Sketch, or Magnet Doodle – this would be like a Magnet Doodle, Etch-a-Sketch for the blind and low-vision, because when you take the stylus and you drag it along the surface, you’ll be able to feel as you go, and feel the drawing as you go. You can do triangles and circles and all kinds of different things, it’s not gonna be the highest level drawings, it’s not gonna be thousands of pins, like we hope with the Touchpad Pro someday, you know, so that’s the drawing aspect. And then we got the idea of putting a braille sleeve on it, so just sliding on a piece of plastic that blocks out everything except for rows of braille cells, you know, 6×2, your basic learning braille cells. That way you could instruct a child over Zoom, you say “Okay, go up to your left-hand corner, yeah, yeah, that’s right, up to the left-hand corner, you’ve got the six dots, they all have numbers, so let’s go down that one side, one, two, three, four, five, six, let’s lift up that one peg at the number one spot, okay, you’ve made an A!” And you go through there and copy from there, and we could have other sleeves that actually have the alphabet already put into it, so kids can learn from home that way.
Jeff:
Dot to dot, trace by numbers, or templates, tracing paper, we used that, but this is refreshable. There are devices that have some type of wax paper type of thing that you draw on, but once you fill that in you’ve gotta get a new piece. This here, you can refresh it, right?
Daniel:
That’s right. You just sweep it with your stylus, the side of the stylus, and it’ll got down, or you can push them down with your finger, like oops, I didn’t want to bring up that pin, I’ll push that down. Everything would work with just simple springs and gravity, and when I see these toys and I see these things coming from China that they’re costing $10.00, there’s gotta be a way to modify it, so we can use it.
Kristen:
Jeff, I don’t know if you remember the tactile picture maker, the velcro board that I’m sure a lot of your listeners have had, and we had it, I still have it, with all the little velcro pieces, and I used to build, like we went to the first- don’t judge me, I’m a Philly fan, ok? We went to the first Philly Flyers game, and that’s one of the teams where everyone can kind of nod their head, there’s a lot of talent there all the time, right? We went to the first Flyers game, and before we went I showed the boys on the tactile picture maker what the rink looks like, you know, the goals, and the shape of it, and had to have all those little tactile pieces, put them on the velcro, you know, we have a ziploc bag that holds all of that. I did that all the time when we went to new places or tried to describe something and get their hands on it. When I was looking at the Braille Doodle, I thought “Oh my gosh, that’s like an easy way to just take that stylus, make the squares where the two nets are, make the oval of the rink and have it tactile, right there, without any pieces.” You know, for the moms listening, that kind of practicality that the Braille Doodle brings in addition to learning braille and a child just sitting and drawing, and being able to erase it and then do a whole not her picture.
Jeff:
Especially with, like, spatial recognition, like if you want to describe one room to the next room to the next room, or something like that, it’s a matter of two lines, you can have four quadrants or something. I really like the templates that you can slide over it, that’s ingenious because that makes it teachable and now TVIs have a tool that they can actually rely upon to interact with, like you said, over Zoom, if they have one of those, you can teach.
Daniel:
Exactly.
Jeff:
Now, being an art teacher, I’m sure you’re, you know, crafty, and all that, but this has to do with plastic springs and magnets. Now, how did you go about developing the product and interesting Brian and Kristen to get involved?
Daniel:
First of all, I got involved with Andrew, from Voss Engineering, I was asking around, finally I found someone who would listen, that was Andrew from Voss Engineering. We have gone back and forth, so it’s not just an idea, it’s not just a thought, it can actually get to fruition quickly. I saw Kris online, I reached out to her, and we just hit it off. Brian was a friend of mine since high school, I was like I don’t know anything about business, the business side of this, and Brian, he’s really together when it comes to business, and it’s great, because Kris and I, we’re like kind of dreamy, and like “Ooh, we can invent all these things, and we can do this, and we can get a hand to help,” and stuff like that, and Brian, you know, Brian’s like “Calm down, we have to think seriously.”
Kristen:
Brian’s like “We’ve gotta build the diving board before you two jump off of it.”
Daniel:
Right.
Kristen:
Well, it’s interesting, I mean Jeff, we’ve followed each other and talked a lot, and I know that you and a lot of your listeners know about Thriving Blind, and my blind sons Michael and Mitchell, and I guess I probably have a reputation of not sitting still, ever, and finding solutions when my boys need solutions. As Daniel was mentioning, COVID, although it slammed the door shut on so many things that are so frustrating, it did open up opportunities to utilize curiosity and trying new things, right? And when the whole world was on Zoom, and clogging up the internet, I thought why not get everybody, all the parents of the blind and visually impaired kids that need the strategies and tools and resources that I know about, why not open up the Zoom room and talk to them about it and bring in some cool folks that can teach them great tools and strategies, which is how we had you, Jeff, on that Friday night that we also had Daniel on. I’m sure that you remember and those listeners of yours that were in the Zoom that night, when Daniel started talking about Touchpad Pro, and the Braille Doodle, and I saw every person listening lean in to their Zoom cameras to hear more and were on the edge of their seat, there was one young guy in particular who, he’d been struggling with some things in his life and his blindness condition, it was like one thing after the other, and he was so down at the beginning of Daniel’s presentation, and when I watched that light come back on in his face and in his eyes hearing about these products, it was uncanny, and then my Mitchell, who’s the biggest critic on the planet, you know, came to me that night, and he said “Mom, we’ve gotta figure out how to make that product happen, when is it coming into the world?” I said, “I don’t know, let me, you know, follow up with Daniel,” and then when Daniel told me the story of where his company was and it’s literally funding and awareness, getting people together to get this thing moving forward, that was, you know, the thing standing in the way, and like Daniel says, he didn’t know anything about business. Well, I don’t know about business, but I sure know how to get people together, right, and get things to catch on and get people to fall in love with the mission that needs a lot of love and support, and then Daniel invited me to be a part of the team and I thought, gosh, you know, when my journey started 20 years ago, I was the last person on the planet that you would ever think would be excited about being involved in a tech startup for the blind community, because I was so not in a good place over a blindness diagnosis, and when I heard “Your son is blind,” I crashed, and I crashed because of a couple of things. I had never known a blind person until I met my oldest son Michael, and heard that he was blind at four months old, and I continually crashed over the next several years because there was no access to get my guys the tools that they needed, and then they would get the tools they needed and then we would come up against another barrier, like Mitch had to give up art when he was young because there was just nothing like the Braille Doodle for him to even do the drawing anymore in a way that worked for Mitchell, I mean, I know that there’s some paper that you can run a tactile thing over, but there were so many different pieces to that and you know, Mitch wasn’t that kind of guy, he wanted it all in one. Watching my sons have to give up things that were interesting to them, and they had potential with, simply because there was nothing to put in their hands to be able to access those parts of themselves, was more heart-wrenching than hearing about a diagnosis that I knew nothing about. So when this opportunity came about, I thought man, it really is a testament to a 20 year journey of constantly just taking another step forward, constantly being open to what opportunities are there, constantly learning and constantly asking for help, and when Daniel came and said, “Would you help with this team and this project?” I was kind of doing cartwheels even though at 49 they don’t look as good as they did at 12, but hey, I was excited.
Jeff:
And that’s a huge problem, as parents, they don’t know of all the resources that are out there, and you’re probably always looking, so now with the Braille Doodle, there’s something that they can find.
Kristen:
And afford, Jeff, because you know, that’s the other piece of this. A lot of the equipment, yeah, it tends to be overpriced and a lot of companies get away with that because hey, the school district’s buying it, or Medicaid, or all these places, and the family doesn’t own it. And to be perfectly honest, I didn’t know that until Michael was leaving the school district to go to college, and they said “Oh, all of those, the braille refreshable things, everything is ours, you now have to go buy it yourself.” I’m no longer in a position to have a second income in the house, and I suddenly was in the boat that almost the entire country is in. I couldn’t afford to have one for school, one for home, and when Daniel says, “Oh, the Braille Doodle, we’re looking at about $65.00,” and I’m like $65.00? Are you kidding? But that’s the level- see, this is how you know that this company is rooted in the love of children learning, that’s where it’s rooted, because he doesn’t have a blind child at home, but he had already considered the cost of things, how accessible they’re gonna be, how quickly we can get them in the hands of the kids, all the things that I would consider for my own child he had already thought of, and I know, I know in my bones that that’s why this company is gaining so much traction so quickly that nobody can believe it, it’s because it’s rooted in the love of learning for kids.
Daniel:
It’s also rooted in those kids themselves, because that’s where it all came from. Back home, like my codesigners, because they were there all the way over the last four years, “What do you need? What do you do at home? How do you use that electronic? How are you using that iPhone?” They really helped design all of this, and when it came to also the statistics of 70% of blind and low-vision people are unemployed, I mean, that’s just ridiculous in our current state of our society, you’ve got that 30% who is employed, right? Out of that 30%, 90% of those people are braille literate.
Kristen:
Yeah.
Daniel:
This really inspired me as well, so we can hopefully put a dent in that with the Braille Doodle, because this can go anywhere. It’s not only for kids who are home, but you talk about rural communities where they can’t get the TVIs, adults who have become blind, teach them over Zoom now, things like this I think they’re really gonna make a difference.
Brian:
Jeff, I think that what you just heard from Kristen and Daniel, a level of passion and advocacy, is what got me excited from the very beginning when I had my first conversation with Daniel. I’ve actually shared this, you know, origin story several times already, and I don’t want to make it sound like it’s actually something I’m reading off a script, but this is literally just how organic this began with us. We started high school- as you do with a lot of people, you might lose touch after you graduate, which we did, the advent of Facebook, reconnecting with a lot of classmates and Daniel being one of those people, meeting up, and then Daniel really having a serious conversation, like you know, I think there’s something going on that you might be interested in, and I need your assistance with. What you heard from Daniel is the reason why I was like, excited about this. Hearing him speak about his children is like speaking about his biological children, he takes this very seriously. He talked about all the gaps in terms of learning, he talked about the challenges of trying to teach remotely during the pandemic, talking about the challenges that low-income students in urban areas are having right now to access to tools, and we also tend to think, and myself included being a sighted person, that we tend to believe that these resources are in places for the blind and low-vision community. You actually have access to braille tools and technology as you’re going through your studies with TVI, etc. That’s not the case. Understanding where these products and the level of innovation that Daniel brought to them with thought and passion and heart and integrity, I saw that this was something that I wanted to be involved in. We’ve had a level of connection, the three of us as the core C-suite right now, as we are starting this start-up, as we are getting this advisory board that we have together. All of us have had three principles that I mentioned passively, but it seems like it rings out every time we’re talking, and that’s passion, vision, advocacy for the blind and low-vision community. And everybody that decides to hear anything or gives us five minutes of their time is like wow, this is phenomenal, this is innovative, this is mind-blowing. How can I be a part of this? Even people in terms of the R & D aspect of this, we have people from the engineering world for the designs of these products who are seeded on our advisory board. This is how passionate they are, they can sit there and say, “I’ll treat this like any other product, give me a check and we’ll start working on this.” These are people who are taking time out of their schedule to work with this start-up, see that vision, and see where they can help and add something of value to this world. This has been an incredible journey, and I’m just really looking forward to where this can go, and the sky’s the limit.
Daniel:
I can’t wait for this to happen. In fact, I might be a bit of a dreamer, but we’re trying to get this in the can to kids by September. A lot of people, like “Oh, well, it’s a little too quick,” but you know, I told the product developers that’s how fast I want this done. All that’s standing in the way is the funding.
Kristen:
That’s part of the reason that I got onboard is when I saw that this is all that’s standing in the way, is funding and connecting to the right people. You know, it could be thousands of people putting in a little bit of money, it could be a handful of people that are looking to get involved with a socially conscious movement and give a big sum of money, it doesn’t matter what it is, and the funny thing is, or the interesting thing is so many people are joining in this journey at whatever level they can, because they see the value and they see the impact and how fast we’ll be able to make this happen, and I keep thinking to myself, some nights, have I talked to Daniel more than I’ve talked to my own family? Because we have so many things to work through in the beginning of this whole journey, and I think to myself gosh, won’t it be amazing in September of ‘21, as the world is finally getting back to some sort of normal, when we can look back and in the blind community that is always seeming to be the afterthought, and the last to gain access to everything, right, can you imagine in September ‘21, when the blind community and specifically blind and low-vision children are the first to be able to have a Braille Doodle in their hands, because this company formed and accelerated so fast because of the spotlight on the issue of literacy? Won’t that be great, if they can sit there with that in their hands and say, “Thank goodness these people came together and all of the people joined the journey so I can have this now.”
Brian:
And that’s a fantastic way to put it, Kristen, because this tool and these products were needed before the pandemic. Because of the pandemic, they were needed yesterday, months ago, the level of imperative nature for these to be in the marketplace and in the hands of children, we can’t understate in terms of where we can actually go and what we can provide for these students. As Daniel and Kristen gave statistics earlier, braille literacy is very important, it’s very important for employment, and being a socially conscious company, that’s why it’s very important for us to have people who are in the blind and low-vision community on our advisory board, and to be employees and employed as we actually grow over time. That’s very important to us, not to necessarily sit there and make this all about us, and we have three sighted people that are in charge of the whole thing, we want the inclusive nature to be community as well, and that outreach.
Kristen:
Yeah.
Jeff:
I think it’s also great that you mentioned the portability, but especially for parents to be able to sit down, and you know, what’s the letter A to a child that’s never seen before, there you can just draw a letter A and actually work together on it, and it seems like it’s so intuitive, like you said, like an Etch-a-Sketch, but it’s raised and reusable, I think it’s a great invention.
Daniel:
Thank you.
Kristen:
Here’s one more dream of mine, when I think about when this product is ready, I run the patient organization for CRB1, LCA, and RP. And in our organization, one of our advocacy directors at CRB1, he’s a blind adult, he’s the VP of a major nonprofit in New York City. Now this is an extremely successful person, right? His wife called me a couple years ago, and they had- at the time their son was three, and was moving into a new type of picture book that his dad could no longer read the print because the print had gotten smaller, and she said that was their biggest struggle, that he couldn’t sit with his son and read a book anymore, so I was telling her about Twin Vision books, and he was trying to learn braille and all that, and now that he does know braille, I thought can you imagine the day that he can sit there with his son, and now he has a younger daughter, and the two of them on one device like the braille doodle, the sighted son can draw the A, right, and he can feel it, and then he can show the braille A, and they can sit there together as father and son and have that experience of literacy. The possibilities for this are extraordinary.
Jeff:
So you said September, September 2021.
Daniel:
That’s what we’re hoping. Fingers crossed.
Kristen:
We just need funders. Anyone that wants to get onboard and help us fund this we can set up a meeting, we have the business plan, we can let you know where we’re at with all of it, but in terms of the, like Daniel pointed out, the manufacturing and development, all that is ready to go as soon as the funding’s there.
Jeff:
Kristen, where can they find this information?
Kristen:
We’re at tppat.com, all the information to get in touch with us is there.
Daniel:
Touchpad Pro Assistive Technology, so the initials are T-P-P-A-T.com.
Kristen:
And they should also join the journey on Facebook too.
Daniel:
And also I just noticed that if you put Braille Doodle into Google, our stuff comes right up. So if you Google Braille Doodle, actually the first thing that comes up is our Indiegogo, so we’re running a little fundraiser now, we’re trying to just get a head start. Can’t expect to get all the money, because we do need hundreds of thousands of dollars, it’s no simple task, it’s not a little thing that we’re just gonna throw together, it’s gonna take some funding. We’re starting off with the Indiegogo and trying to raise a little funding to get a kickstart to our little business.
Brian:
And to let the audience know where those funds go, it’s not going into anybody’s pockets, it’s literally going in to cover some initial legal fees, user group research and also patent follow-up information, your typical product and start-up/follow-up information, and procedural processes you need to get through, that’s where it’s going, everything is going right back into the development of the products, and into furthering the initiative going into the rest of the year.
Jeff:
Well, I think it’s really great, you know, you guys aren’t operating out of a box, I mean, Daniel, all your experience and teaching and involvement with the students, you bring such passion to it and Kristen, your 20 years of working with your sons, and then all the work that you’ve been doing, then your advisory board, all this pooling together, it seems like it’s something that this is for the blind, and somewhat by the blind, this is the tool that you see a good use and purpose for, a well-needed tool too, so I’m glad to have you on the show, and I’m glad you’re doing what you’re doing.
Brian:
Thank you, Jeff.
Kristen:
Yeah, thanks, Jeff.
Daniel:
Thanks. Yeah, I was listening to some of your work, and it’s great. I’m definitely a fan, now, so I’m gonna be listening to your stuff.
Kristen:
Thanks for the work you do, Jeff.
Jeff:
Well, thanks for all you guys, I mean, it’s all of us, we’re all in a community, and I hope people listen to this or go to your website, read your book. Brian, I’m glad you got on board too, because you know, a lot of us do dream about stuff, we have ideas and all that, but it does take someone to actually, okay, let’s pull this thought bubble down and put it into reality.
Brian:
There you go.
Kristen:
That’s Brian, he’s the thought bubble puller!
Jeff:
I teach woodworking too, so I have a lot of blind students, they have an idea and I have to try and grab that bubble and bring it down into a practical skill use, teaching type of thing.
Daniel:
Oh, that is so cool! You do woodworking, with students?
Jeff:
Yeah, I did it at Blind Incorporated for five years, but then I left that and now I teach out at Enchanted Hills out in San Francisco. Well, this year didn’t happen. Yeah, so teaching woodworking to students and adults and then we have advanced stuff too, so people from basically around the world, mostly United States, Canada, get together and share ideas and stuff, I learn a lot from them, but in the beginner stuff it’s people who want to do like beekeepers and want to build their own toolbox type of thing that they carry out into the field, you know. So you get some really interesting people you get to meet, even Mr. Holly, he worked 19 years with Apple, Steve Jobs. He worked with him when he went to Next and came back, so just sitting out on the balcony after shop, just sitting there rocking in a chair talking to these people, it’s like the stories you can get, you know? They call it woodworking, I call it interacting with people.
Daniel:
Seriously, that’s great, I mean that was the best thing about teaching with these students, they really taught me a whole unique way of experiencing life. We take so many things for granted.
Jeff:
I think you’re a good team with Kristen because while you’re working with the students, the parents- I used to do a teen night thing, the parents would all get together, you know, and I think that type of advocacy, bringing together their first advocate basically as a group, because it’s a lonely spot when you first go blind or when your child first goes blind, that you have at least a network. That network is very valuable, I think, especially parents, so thank you for what you’re doing, Kristen.
Kristen:
Oh, well thanks, that’s the beauty of this journey, too, we’re getting all those folks together. Next week, actually we’re getting a bunch of the teachers of the visually impaired together. A lot of them, I’m sure, have never met, but to say how do you see you using this product, what are things we haven’t even thought of, and then we’re talking to the parents the same way, these are opportunities for you to now learn right alongside your child, and they can all meet each other, so to your point, Jeff, I mean, yeah, building networks at the same time that we’re building this product and building these dreams for this kids. It really is one of the most extraordinary journeys I’ve ever seen.
Jeff:
Oh, good. Well thank you guys, thanks for reaching out.
Brian:
Thank you, thanks so much, Jeff.
Daniel:
Thanks, we appreciate it.
Kristen:
Thanks so much, Jeff.
Pete:
We’d like to thank the team from Touchpad Pro Assistive Technology.com for joining Jeff in the Blind Abilities Studio. Kristen Smedley, Chief Communications Officer, Brian Edwards, Chief Operating Officer, and their founder and CEO, Daniel Lubiner. You can find out more information about the Touchpad Pro or the topic of today’s podcast, the Braille Doodle, at the company’s website, that’s www.tppat.com. And from all of us here at Blind Abilities, through these challenging times, to you, your family, and friends, stay well, stay informed, and stay strong. Thank you so much for listening, and have a great day.
[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:
For more podcasts with a blindness perspective, check us out on the web at www.blindabilities.com, on Twitter @BlindAbilities, download our app from the app store, Blind Abilities, that’s two words, or send us an email at info@blindabilities.com. Thanks for listening.
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