Built-in Accessibility of Everyday Tools is part of the Pennsylvania Tech Accelerator webinar series, Assistive Technology Basics. Recorded August 2024.
This video includes captions and ASL interpretation.
Transcript
TOM DIAGOSTINO: Awesome. Hi, everyone. Thank you for joining. I think we're going to have some people rolling in as well. So we'll make sure that we get people in as the session continues.
But today, we're going to be talking about built-in accessibility features for everyday tools that we have. So we're really going to be focusing on smartphones, but it could also be extended to tablet use as well. On the slide, we have a few logos. We have the Pennsylvania Tech Accelerator logo from the Institute on Disabilities. We also have the Temple University Institute of Disabilities logo based in the College of Education and Human Development. And we have TechOWL's logo, which is a program of the Institute on Disabilities.
A little bit about the accessibility features that are going to be present during this presentation today, first, we're going to be describing our images. So as you noticed, I described the images in the previous slide. We're going to be describing the images throughout this presentation to ensure that everyone knows what is on the screen. You don't have to see what's on the screen.
We also are so fortunate to have two amazing ASL interpreters for this presentation today. And for the recording of this presentation, we will have ASL superimposed on the video. We have CART captions on this video. We will also be be getting this video professionally captioned for the recording. And if there's any other accommodations that anyone needs on this call, please let us know. You can also type in the chat any questions you have throughout this presentation and we'll be happy to answer those.
On the slide, I have four images representing the four accessibility features that we have in this presentation, that being image descriptions, ASL interpretation, CART, and other accommodations. So, Alanna, tell us why we're here.
ALANNA RAFFEL: Yeah. So why are we here? So this is our second live-- well, second today, but also our second chunk of live webinars as part of the Pennsylvania Tech Accelerator, which is a project that was made possible by Pennsylvania's Department of Human Services through funding from the American Rescue Plan Act. So we are facilitating this grant. We're going to tell you all about the kinds of things that we're doing through this project.
TOM DIAGOSTINO: And we have three logos on the slide. The logos are the American Rescue Plan Act logo, the Pennsylvania Tech Accelerator logo, as well as the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services logo.
So this large kind of project that we're working on, we are calling the Tech Accelerator program. And in this initiative, there are six major components to this initiative. These presentations are just a part of one of the larger six initiatives.
Those initiatives are enhancing technology resources throughout the state, developing a readiness evaluation program and tool, advancing technology for statewide assessment and planning, to execute statewide technology solution providers and assessments, to build capacity through online trainings-- webinars, just like this one-- and regional centers, and to plan and execute a statewide technology summit. So a large event, which is going to be happening in March of 2025. On the slide, I have six icons representing the six main functions of this Tech Accelerator initiative.
ALANNA RAFFEL: So our webinar series, as I said, this is the second month that we're doing this. We're doing 18 months of webinars. It's every third Thursday. Are we already at the third Thursday of August? That's confusing.
TOM DIAGOSTINO: Isn't it wild?
ALANNA RAFFEL: OK. It's every third Thursday at 12:00 PM and 4:00 PM until December 2025. That date threw me off for a second, too. So this is our second month that we're doing this.
Every month, we do it two times in the day. We want everyone to be able to access these, as many people as possible. So we do one at 12 o'clock and one at 4 o'clock. But we also are recording the webinars to put them up on the Institute on Disabilities website. So you'll have access to the slides, you'll have access to the recordings, you can look back at the content if you want to make sure that you're registered for future webinars, you can find all of the information at bit.ly/patechaccelator, and I'll pop that link in the chat momentarily.
TOM DIAGOSTINO: Awesome. So to tell you a little bit about us, the two presenters for this presentation today, my name is Tom DiAgostino. I have worked at TechOWL for about-- a little over five years now.
And I am a person who is very passionate about accessibility on my phone and tablet because I use accessibility features for my personal self and my personal disabilities, as well as supporting people in my life and my family with their accessibilities, because our phones can sometimes become the most important tool in our day to day lives. So I'm very excited to be able to share some of my personal experience as well as a variety of accessibility features on our phones. And Alanna?
ALANNA RAFFEL: Yes. And my name is Alanna Raffel. I'm an occupational therapist and assistive technology specialist at TechOWL. I'm just love thinking about accessibility in all kinds of ways, so excited to share this with you. I think like every OT and every clinician and every person should have some information about all of these different features.
I wish this was something I learned about in OT school. So maybe some OTs are getting some of this content in school. I did not. But it's fun to learn about and really important and impactful for many people. So this is a picture of Tom and I with Swoop from the Eagles.
TOM DIAGOSTINO: Cool. So today, we're going to be talking about basically adjusting our phone settings to make it easier to use. We want to help people turn their phone into a tool that helps them better see, hear, and enjoy the world around them. And last, we're going to talk about some resources through TechOWL and otherwise to help support you acquiring a phone that fits your needs as well as adjusting your phone to fit your needs.
ALANNA RAFFEL: A little bit about us, I don't know how many of you all are familiar with TechOWL, but a little bit about our organization. So TechOWL stands for Technology for Our Whole Lives because we serve everyone across the lifespan with any kind of disability experience. We represent the state Assistive Technology Act program for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. So every state and territory in the US has an Assistive Technology Act program, so there are 56 of them. And we serve the whole state of Pennsylvania. And you'll see a little bit more about what that means.
We are based at the Institute on Disabilities at Temple University. We're part of the College of Education and Human Development. So we're based at Temple, but we serve everyone. We're an outward-facing organization. That includes Temple, of course, but everyone in Pennsylvania can use our services.
And of course, we may have some folks from other states on this call. So you also are welcome to learn from us, to connect with us. There may be certain things that will refer to your state organization to help you get access to some resources, but we're happy that you're all here. And I'll pop that link in the chat.
The picture here is a bunch of people with disabilities using mobility equipment hanging out on a roof. This picture is from a project called Disabled and Here that seeks to increase disability representation in stock photos. And I'll put a link to that in the chat as well because it's a great resource.
TOM DIAGOSTINO: Awesome. A little bit more about TechOWL is we are a federally and state funded nonprofit organization based here at Temple University in Philadelphia. We view disability through both a social and holistic model. We believe that we can make our society more accessible for all, but also we respect that people have pain and limitations, and that's just a very real reality, right?
We also want to center disabled people in the middle of the conversation. We want to center everything around people who are using the devices. We also are here to educate, inform, and empower Pennsylvanians about assistive technology. So in any way we can help you in the state of Pennsylvania, we will.
The image on the slide is from our ACES program. Our summer ACES program happens every two years. Augmentative communication users can come to Temple University and learn more about their device and get to talk to others who use AAC and explore different, amazing things.
This person is exploring a VR headset and exploring like, I think a zoo in like Spain or something. And the graduate student who's working with him is exploring that with his AAC and monitoring the experience on another iPad. So it's a really interesting, amazing experience, and we always combine different technologies.
ALANNA RAFFEL: So as I mentioned, we serve the entire state of Pennsylvania. And that means that we have assistive technology resource centers across the state. So Tom and I are based in Philadelphia at Pennsylvania's Initiative on Assistive Technology, so the kind of TechOWL mothership. But we have folks throughout the state-- some of them are on this call-- who help support our consumers across the state. Tom and I aren't going to be able to support folks in Scranton and Pittsburgh as thoroughly as someone in those areas could.
So if you are in a different part of Pennsylvania, not just the five-county region near Philadelphia, then you may connect with an assistive technology resource center near you who can provide services and consultation and help you find assistive technology that works for you. So lots of different regions here. And this is on our website. I'm going to actually pop the link to that in the chat as well.
So if you live elsewhere-- and this is actually a great moment to say, I would love to hear where everyone's from. So take a moment and pop your location in the chat. Let us are, you from Pennsylvania? Which county? Where are you?
Tom's in Philly, so am I. So we'd love to hear where everyone is from. It's nice to get a sense of where everyone is joining us from. And I'll share the link in the chat so you can find your ATRC.
TOM DIAGOSTINO: Awesome. As we're receiving your locations, I'm going to talk a little bit about the AT Act program. And the thing that every single AT Act program does. So like Alanna said earlier, there are 56 Assistive Technology Act programs in the United States. Every single state and territory has one. And we all are required to do very similar things.
So these are the four things that all of us are required to do. First is demonstrating devices. We all have an inventory of devices. And we are mandated to teach people about how to use them, what exists, how to acquire them. So that's something that all AT Act programs can help you do.
Secondly, we all have some type of equipment lending program. So you can borrow a device to test it out, to see if you like it, if it works for your disability, if it works for you in general. It's so important when we're investing into these devices to really know how to use those devices. So this equipment lending and this device demonstration is an integral piece to all AT Act programs.
The third program to share is we all do some type of equipment donation. So we have wheelchairs, walkers, canes, crutches, commode chairs, shower chairs, and things like that that we take in donations for. Many states-- every state does this, and we have 12 regional centers that do equipment donations for us in Pennsylvania.
The last thing is we all do some type of education. So that could be a presentation or a training like this or a technical assistant. So helping someone just be more accessible or helping an organization understand accessibility and accommodation. So on the slide, I have four icons, all representing the four different aspects that every single AT Act program does.
ALANNA RAFFEL: So let's jump into talking about technology and the changing role of technology. We know that 75% of older adults have used the internet and 61% have a smartphone. This is based on research from the Pew Research Center. 72% of adults with disabilities in the US own a smartphone.
And really, this is important because the internet and internet access is more like a utility now than a luxury. It is necessary to access your medical records and apply for jobs and pay your bills. And there are many reasons that having access to technology and internet is essential to our daily lives.
And being online can have many social and emotional benefits. I think we all know that. There's a picture here of an older adult on his phone, on his computer. And so we think technology is really powerful, obviously. We think all kinds of technology are powerful, but this is something that we really think everyone deserves access to. So let's talk more about that.
TOM DIAGOSTINO: So I'm going to launch a poll really quickly, and I would love to know what type of device that you use. So specifically, I would like to know what phone you use as well as what tablet you use. But I have to find where this poll is. Here it is.
All right. So the poll should be launched, so you all should be able to answer. We only have 14 participants, so I think-- and there's like six of us that are from the same institution. So for those who are here participating, if you could please answer those questions, that would be great.
Awesome. So we have six responses. I feel like-- oh, now we have 10 responses. Cool. Yeah. I'll give it like maybe two more seconds then to see if people can finish up.
All right. I'm going to end the poll. We have 11 responses. I'm going to share the results. So as you can see, this is an iPhone-heavy crowd. We have 9 of the 11 people who responded who use iPhones and two people use Androids. So this presentation will be balancing between both iPhone and Android kind of accessibility features. So I'm glad that we have some Android users here.
And when it comes to tablets as well, it's a very similar kind of breakdown. A lot of Apple tablet users versus Android tablet users. So again, we're going to try to strike that balance between Android and iPhone. I'm going to stop sharing. Cool.
So we're going to get started talking about built-in accessibility features. So the accessibility settings on phones are incredible because they're free. On many smartphones and tablets, assistive technology in general is really expensive. So to be able to have this item that's in our lives to have free accessibility features that can help us see better and hear better and experience our environment in a more accessible way is amazing.
Your phone also can be customized in so many ways to your needs. And so that's what we're going to be exploring today. On the slide, there's a little accessibility icon. That accessibility icon is very universal on phones. And so you might see this on your phone, and that's exactly where your accessibility features will be.
ALANNA RAFFEL: So where do you change the settings? It's always in the Settings. So you might see an icon with little gear. The one on the left is for iPhone. The one on the right is for Android. And that's where you'll find all these different settings.
So we're actually going to jump into a bunch of different settings that you might want to test out. If you are not using your phone to watch the Zoom, you might want to go to your settings right now and open it up so you can kind of follow along with us and check out all different kinds of settings. If you're having any issue finding that, let us know.
Quick Android disclaimer, Tom mentioned this a little bit, we're going to be sharing a little bit of both, but iPhones are much more consistent. So there's really like one kind of iPhone operating system. And so we can show you things on iPhone, and we know that everyone with an iPhone will kind of have a similar experience.
Android operating system is much more varied. And so it's a little bit hard to show like, this is what it looks like on an Android, because it's sort of different depending on what kind of device you're using. But we are here to help you.
If you want to set up a time to do a consult with us or problem solving, one-on-one training, especially if you have an Android, but either way, we're here to support you and help you figure these things out. So even if we don't totally jump into every single detail of any of this, especially for Androids, we're here to work with you and figure that out. And there's a bunch of Android phones and little Android robots on the screen.
TOM DIAGOSTINO: Awesome. So Alanna is going to kick it off with hearing tools.
ALANNA RAFFEL: Yes. OK. Fantastic. So we're going to share a bunch of different settings features with you. Again, you'll have access to all of this and time to explore. And we're here to help you work this all out. So we're just going to share a bunch of stuff.
So the first tool that we want to share is live captioning. Live captioning allows you to display automatic captions across all apps. On iPhone, you can actually turn on live captions for FaceTime. It's not 100% accurate, but it's a tool that can be used.
And here, it just tells you on Android how to turn live captioning on and off. You press the volume button, and under the volume controls, you tap Live Captions. So that's one way to interact with captions.
There's a picture here of what live captioning looks like on iPhone. There's a picture of the ocean and it says, I feel so relaxed when I'm near the ocean. So I'm actually going to open up my phone right now, I encourage you to do the same. In Settings I'm typing in Live Caption.
It's easier for me. Sometimes I just type things in to the Settings to find it. I'm turning on Live Captions in beta. And now my microphone is listening to me and it's saying everything, it's typing everything that I'm saying right now. So live captions, it's a tool that can be used during a conversation if you want to see some captions that are helpful.
You can also pair your hearing devices with your phone. So if you use hearing aids, you can turn on hearing aid compatibility to improve audio quality, take calls. In Android, its Connected Devices in Settings.
Another cool feature that your phone can do is sound recognition. So your phone can listen for certain sounds in the environment and notify you. So there's a ton of different sound options like alarms, animals, household sounds, and people. And the way you turn that on is in Accessibility.
So this first video will show you what it looks like. It's just me scrolling through Sound Recognition. if you want to start that one, Tom, I'll kind of talk through it.
So it's me scrolling down to Sound Recognition, turning that on. And when you click sounds, you can choose which ones you want to turn on. So I turned on a fire alarm, siren, smoke alarm, I'm scrolling down. Now I'm turning on the alert for water running.
And so now, you'll see you in the next video, I brought my-- I turned on the alert for water running. I brought it into the bathroom and turned the water on. And you'll see that it alerts me about the water running. So yeah, it says water running. A sound has been recognized that may be water running.
So this is not 100% accurate. And I don't recommend using it for emergency purposes. Like this shouldn't be your main smoke alarm if you are deaf or hard of hearing. This is an extra tool. But it can even be used for things like glass breaking or things like that, just an extra reminder, a feature on your phone.
And a few more hearing tools. So we have things like Real Time Text where you can use text to communicate during a phone call. I can call someone and be texting them so they can see on their phone in real time what I'm texting them. Maybe I am not able to talk right now, or for someone who's hard of hearing, and they can see in real time. So not just when you press Send, but actually every-- in real time while you're typing.
There's Flash Notifications. You can set your device to flash its camera flashlight or the screen to alert you of an incoming notification rather than a sound or vibrate. And then Sound Amplifier, which is native actually on Android phones, you can use this with headphones to filter and amplify the sounds in your environment or your device. And this is a photo of what Sound Amplifier looks like on Android.
So that's built into the Android device. Often, people prefer Android for hearing tools and iPhone for vision tools. But iPhone, you can try downloading a Sound Amplifier app. It's just not built into the operating system.
TOM DIAGOSTINO: All right. So now I'm going to take over and talk a lot about vision tools. So specifically when talking about vision tools the iPhone is incredibly helpful with screen readers because it's consistent across many iOS devices. So screen readers are aspects to a phone or a tablet or computer that can help a blind person or someone who has low vision interact with the device by using touch that also provides some type of spoken feedback.
So on iPhone, this is Voiceover. And on Android phone, it's typically considered TalkBack. And they both are gesture-based kind of ways in which you can navigate. So by swiping over, the phone will go from app to app to app, and then you can double-tap to then select. You can also navigate by link with the two-finger gesture. There are many different types of gestures you can use to control your screen reader on your phone.
In addition, there are many ways that you can change the display and text size on your phone. You can make the text bold or larger. You can reduce transparency to increase legibility. You can increase color contrast. You can invert contrast, as well, to have dark mode on your phone, which is what I currently have. As you can see, my phone is dark with white text. That just works better for my eyes.
There's also color filters for color blindness, which can be helpful if someone is colorblind. I don't have that on my phone, but I should try it because I am colorblind. And so you see here, we have some images on the screen to show you bold text on the iPhone-- the differences between the first image on top and the second image on bottom is that the text on top is not bolded and the text on bottom is bolded.
We also have the ability to zoom in on your iPhone. So this is not zoom like the app, this is literally to zoom or to magnify your screen on your iPhone. So you can turn on zoom to magnify the entire screen. The gesture to do that, if you have it enabled, is to double-tap with three fingers on your screen, which then it will just like magnify your screen.
Or you could drag your three fingers down and move it across the screen. And that also kind of triggers your phone to enable zoom. But to do that, you have to enable zoom on your phone first to recognize that gesture.
And lastly, we have spoken content. So spoken content is something that I use every day. This allows you to read on your phone. So you can also actually hear typing feedback, too. So you can enable that to-- when you type, you hear the letters that you're typing feed back to you. So the recording that we have on this slide is of that. So I'm going to play that recording so you can see this example of spoken content.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
- Tap H I T H I S I S.
[END PLAYBACK]
TOM DIAGOSTINO: So this is super helpful if you need to hear kind of auditorily what you're typing. In addition, you can use spoken content and accessibility to read what's on your screen. So you can select and highlight a chunk of text to have that then get spoken back to you.
So when you highlight and select, you have Copy/Paste, but then one of the options is to Speak. And then it speaks to you. The other way that you can do this is you could do Speak Screen. So I have this currently on my screen right now. And I can use my two fingers and swipe down-- whoopsies-- this gesture is a little hard.
SCREEN READER: Speak screen on. Swipe down with two fingers from the top of the screen to hear the content of the screen. Speech controller off. Highlight content. [INAUDIBLE]
TOM DIAGOSTINO: Whoopsies. Ah, stop. OK, so that's Speak Screen on my phone. I just swipe down with the two fingers and it's just reading everything on my screen. My favorite hack with this is that I can read Kindle on the Kindle ebook app. I can just make my Kindle ebook into an audiobook by just swiping down and having it read. I also do this with PDFs.
There's, additionally, for Android, you have spoken assistance, which reads the keyboard aloud. Tap Accessibility button and then you could use a shortcut as well with the two-finger swipe or the three-finger swipe for TalkBack. I find that the spoken content on the iPhone is significantly more dynamic than what I've experienced in Androids.
All right. And Alanna is going to take over with some of that physical access.
ALANNA RAFFEL: Yes. All right. And I hope-- I know this is kind of a lot of information. It's so, ugh, much going on. It's all there, and we're happy to share lots of resources so you can kind of review this stuff. And we'll make sure we can answer your questions at the end.
So Assistive Touch is a feature that allows you to create custom gestures and to be able to access all of these kind of important things that you might not be able to access otherwise. So especially if you have trouble pressing physical buttons or doing kind of multifinger gestures-- sometimes there's complicated multifinger gestures-- this little Assistive Touch menu, which usually on your screen looks like that-- in the red box, it looks like a little black circle. And then you press it to open up the control center and all these other options.
It allows you to have all of these custom options for interacting with your phone. So that's native to iPhone. On Android, you can download an assistive touch app.
Some more touch tools-- some touch accommodations that you can set up. For example, you can turn on ignore repeat. So multiple touches are treated as a single touch. Maybe if someone has a tremor and they're accidentally clicking letters too many times, it would just act like one touch. And there's things like Back Tap, which is when you double or triple-tap on the back of your phone to perform actions quickly.
So, for example, I have mine set up to turn the camera on when I back tap my phone. So let's see if it works. Aha. OK. So for me, I double-tap the back of my phone with two fingers twice. This is very meta to like have my camera looking at me right now. Great thing that it makes your life a little bit easier, especially if there are some other access difficulties.
Some more physical and motor tools are Switch Control, which allows you to use switches to control your phone rather than the touch screen. So maybe you're letting it sequentially scan and using a switch to select something or using two switches to scan and select. So there's a photo here of switch scanning on an iPhone. So it's showing you-- it's allowing you to select the row when it gets to the row that you want. And then you select the row and then it allows you to select the icon that you want. And so for someone who can't have direct access with their phone, this allows you to interact.
There's also Head Tracking on iPhone and Camera Switches on Android, which basically same thing. It allows you to navigate your phone with your head and a few simple facial gestures. So it takes practice. I recommend checking it out if you're interested in getting good at it or helping someone else with it. I've been practicing with it. So if you turn this on, you can move a mouse around your screen and then raise your eyebrows or smile or open your mouth to select. So you can browse, select apps, and it's using your front camera to do all of that interaction.
And then we have Voice Control and Voice Access. So it's called Voice Control and iPhone and Voice Access on Android. This is basically allowing you to use your voice to interact with your phone, to open apps, to navigate, edit text. So there's a little photo here of the different kinds of things you can say in Voice Control, things like open blank application, or open control center, go home, go back, go to sleep.
And you can also work with what's on screen by saying things like show grid, show names, tap a number, tap an item name, or long press an item name. And we're going to show you a video of what that looks like. So you'll hear my voice interacting with Instagram using a number grid.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
- Start listening. 17. Scroll down. Scroll down. 10. 17. Scroll up. Scroll up. 26.
[END PLAYBACK]
ALANNA RAFFEL: So that's just me looking at the grid, using the numbers to choose what I want to open and interact with. And there's lots of other voice commands that you can use. You can do a little training in your phone to practice using all these different commands. It's very cool.
TOM DIAGOSTINO: All right. And so now we're going to talk a little bit about some cognitive tools and accessibility features that we can enable on our phones. So first, we're going to talk about assistive access on the iPhones. So there is a way in which you can adjust the apps so that they are larger and contain like core features that can be customized.
So again, as you see on the screen, we have seven apps that are kind of isolated as these are our core apps and they're big, they're highlighted, they're bold. This offers a much easier way for us to navigate our phones. As we navigate, we see we have a million apps. It's really complicated, especially if these phones can be overwhelming to some people. So you can use this type of assisted access to limit the cognitive load that you have on your screen.
Also, there's ways in which you can have specific actions. So on the second image, this is for an Android phone. You can also have add images to like, call daughter for like common actions. So having Action Blocks that allow you to then have things in your day. So we have call my daughter with a picture of my daughter. We have call to-- car to doctor. So getting your doctor's appointment. So you have these different Action Blocks on the Android phone to just help with that cognitive load, making your phone the appropriate tool to allow you to kind of like navigate your day and environment.
Some other cognitive tools. So there's Accessibility Shortcuts. So on iPhone, the Accessibility Shortcut is to triple-click the side button. There's a list, actually, in your Accessibility app of many different shortcuts that you can enable with that triple-click. So what I personally have triple-clicked as my shortcut is a magnifier because I often demonstrate to people with low vision the iPhone's magnifier.
So if I click my side button three times, what's going to pop up is this magnifier, which I have currently set on a yellow color contrast. But I can change many aspects of it. I can zoom in and zoom out. So this is the iPhone's digital magnifier that's enabled on all Apple devices. So you can do that with your triple-click, but there's many other things you could use that triple-click for in that Accessibility shortcut.
Android, they also have accessibility apps. So you could choose shortcuts as well on your Android phone. There's Guided Access on iPhone or Screen Pinning for Android. So this keeps your phone in a single app. So it allows you to control the features that are available on that.
And then there's also amazing voice assistants that you could utilize. So Siri is the voice assistant for iPhone. Android, you can enable Google Assistant as well. So you can ask Siri or your Google Assistant questions. You can set calendar reminders. You can ask to call someone. You can even say, where's my phone, if you don't know where my phone is.
You can set timers. You can send text messages, make phone calls, turn on the flashlight, and things like that. This is a really very, very intuitive way to interact with your phone and to do many actions without necessarily needing to navigate your phone screen. You could just use your voice to then navigate.
The amazing thing about Siri, as well, that I like to say is that Siri learns your voice. So if you're a person that might have a complex speech pattern that most technology might not understand you, Siri is quite good at learning your voice because you have to train Siri when you first set it up with your voice, which is a really great feature as well.
Awesome. So do we have time, do you think, Alanna, to do this activity? Great. So we would love for everyone in the audience to choose one of the accessibility tools to try out. And so we have here all of the accessibility tools we just mentioned throughout this presentation. So whatever kind of area of interest that interests you the most, whether that's hearing, vision, touch tools, physical/fine motor, or cognitive, take a moment, explore that, and then tell us in the chat what you've done and what you think of it.
ALANNA RAFFEL: Yeah. So we'd love to hear what everyone tries out. So maybe pop in the chat what you are trying. What are you planning to try? Have you tried live captioning? That's a fun one to try.
I think it's also fun to try-- I will say, if you're trying Assistive Access or Android Action Blocks or Guided Access, you want to make sure you know how to exit those features. When you put that on, it's really like limiting what your ability to interact with your phone is.
So if you put on Guided Access or Screen Pinning, it's just putting you in one certain app. So you want to make sure that how to exit. Sometimes it's like a triple-click. If anyone gets stuck in an app, let us know.
TOM DIAGOSTINO: Yeah.
ALANNA RAFFEL: Turn on Sound Recognition. Yes. Great. You've been scared that you won't hear your apartment fire alarm. Thank you for to-- yeah.
TOM DIAGOSTINO: Great.
ALANNA RAFFEL: I was going to say, like, let me turn on a fire alarm right now so you can test it, but I won't do that. Emily loves [INAUDIBLE]
TOM DIAGOSTINO: Spoken content.
ALANNA RAFFEL: --spoken content. So helpful to have a built-in text-to-speech program on the phone. Absolutely. Sharon, said I made my font bigger and I can read it without my glasses. Love it. Love it.
TOM DIAGOSTINO: That's wonderful. Yes.
ALANNA RAFFEL: Live Captions is very cool. Yes. Did anyone try Back Tap? That's cool. I love that one. That feels like [INAUDIBLE].
TOM DIAGOSTINO: I want to set the Back Ta up on my phone now.
ALANNA RAFFEL: It's really cool. It's kind of magical.
TOM DIAGOSTINO: Great.
ALANNA RAFFEL: Sound Recognition, nice.
TOM DIAGOSTINO: So we would also love to know in the chat, now that we're in the chat typing away, what are some of your favorite apps that you like to use? We're going to now transition into talking about apps, but we'd love to hear if you're using any apps right now that are assistive or help you. Sound recognition, Back Tap.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. If you have your wallet on the back of your phone, that might not work. Otter.ai for meetings is a great app. We actually have that in our presentation, which is great.
Perfect. Well, as you're also typing, I want to be cognizant of time. Alanna is going to take it away with the apps, so.
ALANNA RAFFEL: All right. So I'm going to share a bunch of apps again. Grab a couple of these that you think are interesting. And also, we love to hear about other apps, too. So if you have apps that you think are good for these kinds of things, pop them in the chat. I'm sure everyone would love to see them.
So some apps for hearing include Rogervoice, which transcribes phone calls. This app is free for people with hearing loss, but you do need to confirm eligibility through the FCC's telecommunications relay service. So you'll see when you download the app, it'll ask you for all those different things. But if someone has hearing loss, they would qualify for this.
Ava is an app that provides live captions and transcripts, and it captions who said what. It does text-to-speech with a natural voice, so that's a great option to have. Live Transcribe, which is free on Android-- and there are paid versions on iPhone-- this app can caption in 70 languages, but it does require Wi-Fi or a network connection.
And finally, Otter.ai, as Emily mentioned, is an automated meeting note-taker, which does real-time transcription. And there are free versions that allow you to use 300 monthly transcription minutes and 30 minutes per conversation. So something that-- a great example of something you can test out and see if you like it before you pay for something.
Some apps for seeing include Seeing AI which Tom and I talk about all the time. We think this is such a cool app. It does a ton of different things. It can speak short text in real time.
So there's a video of a guy demonstrating this. He's in a cab and he's using Seeing AI, the short text feature of Seeing AI, while he's in the cab, just holding up his phone and is reading out to him all the different stores that he's passing and signs on the street. So it can kind of just, in real time, capture all the different things that it's seeing.
It can do color and currency identification. It can recognize saved faces. So I think Tom us saved in mine. If I like hold it up to his face, it'll tell me who I'm looking at. You can ask-- if it's capturing a photo, you can ask more specific questions about it.
It recognizes handwriting. It's a really cool app, and it's free on both iPhone and Android. So we always recommend using that as kind of your first line of defense before you maybe purchase something more complicated.
TapTapSee is another similar app that uses image recognition, and it's pretty user friendly. It does, however, require voiceover or screen reader to be on. So this would only be for someone who's using a screen reader.
Be My Eyes is a great app that I'm sure many people have heard of. It connects blind and low vision users to sighted assistance. So it calls a volunteer. I've taken Be My Eyes phone calls before. It's really fun. So if you are not blind or low vision, you might want to be a volunteer on this app, and you can answer someone's questions, help them figure something out. There's also an AI beta version of Be My Eyes, which can provide descriptions of images and scenes without having to connect to a volunteer.
And finally, Aira is a service that connects blind users to a professional sighted assistant. So someone who's paid. It's a little bit more formal, professional, if that's a service that you'll be needing a lot, and maybe if you need it for more private documents or things like that. That is free for five minutes a month, or you can pay for a service plan.
Some apps for memory, these are things that I personally use all the time. So things like Alarmed, which would allow you to set reminders for when you arrive or leave a specific location. I think that is, to me, like one of the most amazing things about smart technology, is being able to have it to tell me things at a certain time. Like to me, that is so powerful that I can have my phone remind me of something when I'm leaving the house or when I arrive to work.
Reminder with Voice Reminders can do recurring reminders. And this is cool. It can use your own voice or a song. So you can have your voice remind you of something, or a loved one's voice remind a person to do something, take their medicine, or something like that. That can kind of be an important feature of a reminder.
Remember the Milk is a cool app that can send reminders via all kinds of platforms, like email, text, Twitter or mobile apps. And it breaks tasks down into subtasks in a really helpful way.
And the Medisafe medication management app allows for family scheduling and tracking, and it integrates with Apple Health and Google to track all different kinds of health features. But it does this whole family scheduling thing, which is really cool. Oh, Kurt. yeah, that's cool. Remember the Milk.
And finally, some apps for organization. I'm like always trying out different apps for organization. I always love hearing about what people use. There are things like Recipe Keeper, which allows you to search by name, ingredient, and course, and it has a built-in shopping list.
Todoist, which is a task tracker that's very easy to navigate. It can create daily lists, custom lists. I really like to use native functions on my phone. To me, something that's native is the most helpful tool, typically, so I don't have to like add an additional thing into my brain. So I often am using the Notes app on my phone.
And you can even use Siri to add things to the Notes app. And so maybe the Notes app in your iPhone is what works best. There's pictures here of the Recipe Keeper app with lots of different yummy-looking food, and the Todoist app as well.
TOM DIAGOSTINO: Awesome. So now we're going to end off this conversation talking about TechOWL programs, how they can help you, specifically around getting access to a phone or a tablet. So the first program that I want to highlight from TechOWL is our assistive technology lending library.
This is a place where you can borrow equipment to see if it just works for you. Specifically, we have a lot of iPads. And so if you're considering getting or acquiring an iPad and using that for its accessibility features, you are welcome to borrow one from us for nine weeks. Our iPads are uniquely loaned for nine weeks long. Everything else pretty much in our inventory is five weeks long, But. Because we have so many iPads, we extend that to nine.
This is a free program for all Pennsylvanians. So you can go through our library as well to see if there's any other devices that you might want to utilize. We can get on a call with you or meet you in the office to demonstrate that device, maybe even set up some of these accessibility features that we demonstrated today.
And if you don't live in Pennsylvania, again, don't worry. This is something that every single state and territory does. Every state and territory does some type of equipment lending program. So there is a link in on the slide, but I believe Alanna already put the link in the chat earlier to find your local Assistive Technology Act program.
Another program that we have is called the Free Special Phone Program, which is exactly how it sounds. We are able to get people access to a smartphone and/or a landline phone for free. This program currently provides an iPhone 13 and, I believe, a Galaxy 11. I can't remember the Samsung that we offer.
But this program is wonderful. It works with people who have disabilities like hearing loss, vision loss, cognitive disabilities, and physical disabilities to get access to a phone and the accessibility features that they need. This program does have an income requirement of 200% of the poverty threshold, which is around $30,000 for a single person. But if you have a larger family size, you can go to our website to look to see the family income breakdown if you qualify for this program.
So this program also is only providing you the phone itself and not the service that comes with the phone. So you need to provide your own service for the phone once you receive it. You can apply online. If you have any questions, you are more than welcome to reach out to anyone at TechOWL, and we are happy to assist you to apply to this program.
Another program we have is called ICanConnect. This program is designed specifically for people who have a combination of vision and hearing loss. It's a fantastic program to get people phones, tablets, laptops, refreshable Braille displays, any equipment that will allow that person to interact with a computer and telecommunication.
So this program not only provides you with the devices, and multiple devices, but it also provides you with one-on-one support and training to learn how to use the device, which is so important, especially if you have to integrate so many aspects like a screen reader, a refreshable Braille display, the tablet.
There's just a lot that goes into that. And so having that one-on-one support is so, so important. So if you know anyone, or if you yourself are deaf-blind, please, please reach out to us. This is a program that I personally try so hard to push out into the world.
And last we have the Del Sordo Fund. So this is a $400 mini-grant that we provide at TechOWL. And it is a last resort funding source. So you have to have already tried other funding sources, and you have to tell us what other funding sources you've tried or looked into that just don't work out for your specific need. And this is $400 to purchase an assistive device.
So this is also, again, another income requirement. So it's 400% of the poverty threshold, has to be your individual income, so-- which is around $60,000 per individual. And again, you can go to our website to see the family size breakdown.
Some devices that we've been able to fund through this program are things like a digital magnifier, a Roomba vacuum, a wheelchair battery, and a Quadstick, which is a sip and puff switch to help you play video games. So these are just some of the things that we've helped fund through this scholarship. But, yes, if you are a person who is looking for financial assistance and you want this one-time only, last resort funding source, this is an option for you through TechOWL to fund the device you need.
So please, stay in touch with us. We are doing-- as we said, we are doing these webinars every month. But we also are all over the place on social media. We have so many events at our community space. We have events throughout the state.
So we really want you to follow along on our journey and to keep learning about assistive technology with us. So you can follow us on social media at TechOWLPA, that's for TechOWL-specific social media accounts. You're also welcome to follow the IOD, iod@templeu-- or @iodtempleu
On TechOWL's social media account, you'll see both Alanna and myself, and we always post about upcoming events that are happening. Anything else on this slide before we go to the--
ALANNA RAFFEL: No, I just realized it's not templeu, it's just iodtemple.
TOM DIAGOSTINO: IODTemple I think is their Facebook.
ALANNA RAFFEL: Oh, got it.
TOM DIAGOSTINO: Yeah. I know. I get confused with their handles.
ALANNA RAFFEL: Got it.
TOM DIAGOSTINO: Great. So we made it to the finish line, everyone. Thank you so much for coming along on this journey. I would love for everyone to please, if you're not using your phone, you could use this QR code to access the survey. Alanna is also going to put the link in the chat for this survey to please take this survey.
We need to prove to the state that we do these demonstrations and that we do these presentations. So we would greatly appreciate your feedback, first and foremost, and also for-- to continue showing that we're doing amazing work that we're doing. I'm going to turn off the recording now and open up the floor for questions. So give me one moment to stop the recording.