Jeff Thompson:
Welcome to Blind Abilities. I’m Jeff Thompson. While attending the National Federation of the Blind Convention 2019 in Las Vegas, Nevada, I came across the American Printing House table, that’s APH, and Dave Wilkinson was there showing some of their brand new innovative products designed by Microsoft, Humanware, Sunu Band and their new Color Star color identification device.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jeff Thompson:
It is great that Dave took the time to share with us all these products and give us an overview of each and every one of them. So if you want to find out more about APH, American Printing House, you can drop in an email at info@aph.org. Check them out on the web at aph.org.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jeff Thompson:
It’s really exciting to see the partnerships that APH is developing with the industry leaders. Not only are they developing products that are useful in the classroom and to all of us in the community, they are bringing awareness around the world to the possibilities and the realities of Blind Abilities. Yep. I said it and I mean it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jeff Thompson:
Without further ado, here’s Dave Wilkinson from American Printing House.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dave Wilkinson:
It is great to be with you this morning and it is a happening day here at the exhibit booth. You can hear the crowds in the background and APH has a number of things that we’re doing this year. We shrunk our booth down this year. In the past we’ve had sort of everything including the kitchen sink that we had on display, and this year we tried to emphasize things that were new, were innovative, that were different from things that we had in the past from APH. So it’s a bit of a smaller, sleeker, tighter booth this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dave Wilkinson:
Some of the things that we have here, some of you may be familiar with Code Jumper. It is a series of pods and soundscapes that are used to teach a blind child the basic concepts of computer programming. This was developed by Microsoft. It is distributed by APH. It should be available later on in the fall, and it’s designed to be used in a classroom so that blind and sighted students can work together to learn the basic concepts of computer programming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dave Wilkinson:
We also have here our Braille Trail Reader, which is a brand-new product from APH. It’s a 14-cell Braille display that is a variant of the HumanWare Brailliant BI, 14-cell Braille display. One of the biggest differences between our Braille display and the HumanWare Brailliant model is that this can be plugged into your computer and you can transfer files using a Windows file transfer utility, whereas previously with the Braille Trail, it only transferred files in the Cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dave Wilkinson:
The Braille Trail does have limited note taking capabilities. You can write basic word processing. You can take notes in a class. You’re not going to be doing any fancy formatting so you’re not going to be writing a treatise on War and Peace on it, but it’s a really sleek, small Braille display, quiet, made with your traditional piece of electric cells. It’s reliable, durable, and it’s just a very solid piece of equipment. Even though it’s small, it’s all set up so you can just angle your hands in there. Absolutely, and it’s got the HumanWare signature thumb keys on the front of it, so it’s just a very sweet display.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dave Wilkinson:
We also have with us a toy called BrailleBuzz. BrailleBuzz looks like a little bumblebee. A lot of people have compared it to the Speak & Say, or Speak & Spell. It’s designed for children three or four years old, and if you press a letter on the BrailleBuzz you will get, and it’s going to be impossible to hear in here because of the sheer volume, but if I press something like a… Let’s see if you can make this work for you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
BrailleBuzz: <\/p>\n\n\n\n
[inaudible]<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dave Wilkinson:
So maybe we got that. Awesome. And it’s got little honeycombs across the top that have the Braille letters of the alphabet, and then I’ve got a Braille Perkins keyboard down below so that I can practice letters after I’ve read them on the top and then I can press them down on the bottom. It also has a letter making mode where it can tell me when I press the Braille letters on the honeycombs what the dots are down on the bottom, and so it’s just designed to be a cute, fun toy. And again, if you’ve got a blind child, it’s a neat way for the blind child and sighted siblings to play together. In the sighted sibling\u2019s world, they’re in the blind child’s world, which is pretty cool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jeff Thompson:
That seems like a nice intuitive way to get them interested, and they can master it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dave Wilkinson:
Absolutely they can.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jeff Thompson:
Kind of their first step into it, and then they can move up to the Braille Trail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dave Wilkinson:
That’s right. Man, you’ve got it right there. That is exactly… We should just have you back here and I should go look around the exhibit area. A couple more things that we have here, we are distributors for the Sunu Band. The Sunu Band is a haptic watch. It also emits sonar waves so that the sonar waves hit things so that you don’t. The Sunu Band is really good for detecting things like tree branches up above your head. I use it to find which elevator is open like when I’m in a hotel lobby. It is meant to be an augmentative device to a cane. It does not replace a cane or a guide dog. The Sunu Band can also be used, you can tell the time silently, you can set silent alarms, you can use it as a compass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dave Wilkinson:
There’s an iPhone finder which is really cool where you can swipe. It’ll make your iPhone beep, which I find to be shockingly useful as I get older. There’s also a really neat feature on it where you can use it in conjunction with the Google Maps. If you’re looking down the street you can point your hand and say, “Is there a restaurant on this block?” Google Maps will say, “Yes. There’s a restaurant in 600 yards.” Then you can get directions from Google Maps while you’re still getting haptic feedback from the Sunu Band.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dave Wilkinson:
Quite a lot of things that you can do with it, and it’s comparably priced, so it’s a smart watch for the blind that’s priced at the same level as a sighted person’s smart watch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jeff Thompson:
That’s really neat, and you’ve actually used that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dave Wilkinson:
Yes I do, and because I do not like to get clubbed in the head with tree branches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jeff Thompson:
There you go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dave Wilkinson:
The last couple of things that we have here, we do have our Color Star which we think is the smallest most accurate color identifier. What sets it apart is that it can tell the color of light so that if you are trying to tell the color of the little LED lights on your router boxes, or cable boxes, or other boxes that we end up calling tech support for and they’re always asking you if the red light is blinking, with Color Star you can actually tell if it is or not. So along with being able to tell you the color of your shirt, it can also tell you if the light is on or off, what the color of the light is, and if that light is blinking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dave Wilkinson:
The last thing we have down at the end is our Jupiter Video Magnifier. It’s a 13-inch video magnifier that is designed to be simple. It has big buttons, big knobs, so it’s not designed to have every feature under the sun and the moon, but it does have distance viewing, near viewing, itself viewing, and it’s got simple basic knobs so you can make things bigger and smaller without having to use a touch screen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dave Wilkinson:
That’s what we have here this year at APH, so there’s a lot happening at APH. There’s a lot more that’s going to be happening soon that I can’t tell you anything about or they’d have to kill me. You can always keep in touch with APH by sending us an email at info@aph.org. You can also email me directly at Davewilkinson@aph.org, or you can call our customer service folks at 800-223-1839.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jeff Thompson:
They can also find a lot of Braille information there too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dave Wilkinson:
Yes they can.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jeff Thompson:
All right. Well, thank you Dave. Thank you very much for taking the time and have a great convention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dave Wilkinson:
Dude, it was a pleasure. Thank you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jeff Thompson:
Be sure to check out Blind Abilities on your Victor Stream on all your pod catchers of choice Overcast, Downcast, the Podcast app. Enable the Blind Abilities Skill on your Amazon device just by saying, “Enable Blind Abilities.” Check us out on the web at www.blindabilities.com, and we’ll see you there. And most importantly, I want to thank you for listening. We hope you enjoyed and until next time, bye, bye.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Music] [Transition noise] -When we share<\/p>\n\n\n\n
-What we see<\/p>\n\n\n\n
-Through each other’s eyes…<\/p>\n\n\n\n
[Multiple voices overlapping, in unison, to form a single sentence]<\/p>\n\n\n\n
…We can then begin to bridge the gap between the limited expectations, and the realities of Blind Abilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jeff Thompson:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For more podcasts with the blindness perspective:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Check us out on the web at www.BlindAbilities.com<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n On Twitter @BlindAbilities<\/p>\n\n\n\n Download our app from the App store: Or send us an e-mail at:<\/p>\n\n\n\n info@blindabilities.com<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Thanks for listening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n *****<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you reside in Minnesota, and you would like to know more about Transition Services from State Services contact Transition Coordinator Sheila Koenig by email<\/a> or contact her via phone at 651-539-2361. Thank you for listening! Check out the Blind Abilities Community<\/a>on Facebook, the Blind Abilities Page<\/a>, the Career Resources for the Blind and Visually Impaired<\/a>and the Assistive Technology Community for the Blind and Visually Impaired<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Full Transcript Jeff Thompson:Welcome to Blind Abilities. I’m Jeff Thompson. While attending the National Federation of the Blind Convention 2019 in Las Vegas, Nevada, I came across the American Printing House table, that’s APH, and Dave Wilkinson was there showing some of their brand new innovative products designed by Microsoft, Humanware, Sunu Band and their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-5196","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P6rcRg-1lO","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":7227,"url":"https:\/\/blindabilities.com\/?page_id=7227","url_meta":{"origin":5196,"position":0},"title":"Meet Micheal Hudson – Director of the Museum for the American Printing House for the Blind. Learn about the history and what is new and upcoming for the museum renovations and tours.","author":"Blind Abilities Team","date":"March 9, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"Full Transcript Pete: Coming up on Blind Abilities today\u2026 Michael: That doesn\u2019t mean that you still don\u2019t get a chill down your spine when you\u2019re in the presence of the Liberty Bell. You\u2019ve just got to figure out a way to make it possible for everybody to have that chill\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"BlindAbilities Logo A black square with white initials, B A.","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blindabilities.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/Blind-Abilities-Logo.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blindabilities.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/Blind-Abilities-Logo.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blindabilities.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/Blind-Abilities-Logo.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blindabilities.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/Blind-Abilities-Logo.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blindabilities.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/Blind-Abilities-Logo.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blindabilities.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/Blind-Abilities-Logo.jpg?resize=1400%2C800&ssl=1 4x"},"classes":[]},{"id":5932,"url":"https:\/\/blindabilities.com\/?page_id=5932","url_meta":{"origin":5196,"position":1},"title":"American Printing House is Keeping Braille at Your Fingertips! 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Greg: It\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"BlindAbilities Logo A black square with white initials, B A.","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blindabilities.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/Blind-Abilities-Logo.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blindabilities.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/Blind-Abilities-Logo.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blindabilities.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/Blind-Abilities-Logo.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blindabilities.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/Blind-Abilities-Logo.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blindabilities.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/Blind-Abilities-Logo.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blindabilities.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/Blind-Abilities-Logo.jpg?resize=1400%2C800&ssl=1 4x"},"classes":[]},{"id":4886,"url":"https:\/\/blindabilities.com\/?page_id=4886","url_meta":{"origin":5196,"position":2},"title":"Vispero – Helping Blind and Low Vision Individuals Reach Their Full Potential. 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David Raistrick Brings Us the Latest Updates From En-Vision America. #NFB19","author":"Blind Abilities Team","date":"September 8, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Full Transcript Jeff Thompson:Welcome to Blind Abilities. I'm Jeff Thompson. Jeff Thompson:Now, I've got some news for you. Walmart and Sam's Clubs now provide accessible prescriptions, courtesy of ScripTalk from Envision America, and once again, Envision America, bringing us great news for accessibility. 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I'm Jeff Thompson. Speaker 2: Okay, so State Services actually played a huge part in everything that I'm doing. Speaker 3: Don't be afraid. Get out there. Meet people. Be friendly. Nobody is judging you. Speaker 4: Think big. 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‘Blind Abilities’; that’s two words.<\/p>\n\n\n\nContact Your State Services<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
To find your State Services in your State you can go to www.AFB.org<\/a> and search the directory for your agency.<\/p>\n\n\n\nContact:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities<\/a>
On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com<\/a>
Send us an email<\/a>
Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store<\/a>and Google Play Store<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n