I have a question. Huh? Like what? I've always wondered. What about? Do you know? I have a question. Like I have a question. I have a question. Oh, I have a question. I have a question. I have a question. I have a question. Welcome to ATFAQ, assistive technology frequently asked questions, with your host Brian Norton, director of assistive technology at Easter Seals Crossroads. This is a show where we address your questions about assistive technology, the hardware, software, tools and gadgets that help people with disabilities lead more independent and fulfilling lives. Have a question you'd like to answer it on our show? Send us a tweet with the hashtag #ATFAQ. Call our listener line at 317-721-7124 or send us an email at
[email protected]. The world of assistive technology has questions and we have answers. And now let's jump into today's show. Hello and welcome to ATFAQ, episode 200. My name is Brian Norton and I'm the host of the show and we're happy that you've taken some time to tune in with us this week. We've got a great lineup of assistive technology questions for you today. But before we jump in, I want to take a moment to go around our virtual room and introduce the folks that are here with me today. First is Belva. Belva is the clinical team lead for our vision team. Belva you want to say hi? Hey everybody. Next is Josh. Josh is the director of our assistive technology program. He oversees all of our assistive technology service lines and is the popular host of AT Update. Our flagship show here at the end data project. Josh, can we say hi? Hi everybody. Welcome to our next 200 episodes. Yeah, yeah. This is a landmark for us. Man, we're past 200. We're moving on to, well, 201 today. Anyways, hey, I want to take a moment to talk to our new listeners. If this is your first time to the show or you've been just coming for a couple of times, just give you a little bit of information about how our show works. So we come across various assistive technology related questions. And we kind of compile those questions into a show. It's a once a month show and we just try to sit around and we try to answer those as best we can. We get a lot of emails, we get a lot of phone calls, we get a lot of different ways that information comes to us. Questions come to us and we again just try to answer those as best we can. If you have a question that's been on your mind and we're on a Senate to us, you can send us your questions by using our listener line. That is 317-721-7124. We can send us an email at
[email protected] or you can use that wonderful software out there called X or previously known as Twitter. And send us a tweet with the hashtag #ATFAQ and then go ahead and just send us your question that way as well. Those are all great ways to get us your questions. What we would like to also solicit from you guys is during the show as we answer questions the best we can. We'd also love for you to provide feedback in those same ways through that listener line, that email. Your feedback is invaluable to the folks that are asking these questions. We want to provide well rounded answers and know that we don't have all the answers. And so including what you guys share is super, super great. So thank you for that in advance. All right, so without further ado, we're going to jump into our first question today. The first question was an email from Craig and his question was, is there something that will read or listen to a document and provide a summary of the information? A recall and app that could read from the web, but would it from a PDF? I need to notate or summarize a PDF so that I can highlight and speak or give a live presentation from it. So PDF, summarizing PDFs. I'm going to go ahead and just jump in there and just say a few things. The first one, you know, there's a lot of things out there these days, chat GPT, any of those GPT types of systems out there. I know Belle you were mentioning one earlier before we jumped on and started recording, but those are all systems where you can upload a PDF and just ask it say, hey, can you summarize this or highlight the key points on key words or other types of information. I mean, it actually does a very good job of that. So I would the first thing I would throw out there is chat GPT as an option. It's free. You can pay for it if you want instantaneous access. Sometimes it gets bogged down by users and sometimes you have to wait for the service to come online, but I think it's 1999 a month. If you're interested in that to pay for version, but again, you don't have to, it's free, but you can upload a PDF and just say, hey, can you summarize that for me? The other one that has been around for much longer than chat GPT or any of those GPT programs out there is called summary and that's SUMMRY. That's a website that's been around for a while and would allow you to upload a document PDF or a word doc and then it would actually summarize that and what's kind of cool about it is you can upload the document. It's pretty easy to do so gives you kind of an upload box and you can point to the file on your computer upload that file and then basically gives you some options to be able to summarize it down to a length that suits you. So you can say, I don't know, I think it was you could say by sentences like summarize it down to seven sentences for me. And it would basically go through and try to capture the essence of what that document was about in seven sentences. And of course you have some fluctuation with that you can choose a little bit longer if you wanted a little bit longer. So summary, it's a website. If you type in or Google SUMMRY, that would be a website I would send you to as well. And then the last one, you mentioned notating. I don't know if it really does a summarization. I think that was the biggest piece, but notating PDFs. My favorite PDF notation apps is Clero PDF. Clero PDF. I have that on my iPad. I have that on my on my phone, my iPhone as well. I can take a picture of a PDF and then it lets me annotate that thing to the inf degree by doing text notes, handwritten notes, video, audio, all sorts of ways to annotate that document so that I can kind of really look at it and pull out the most important parts of what that document was about and make notes. To myself about it. So the three things that I would throw out chat GPT or any of those GPT programs summary, which is a website and then Clero PDF, which isn't at. Right. And it's Clero free. Clero is not free. I want to say it was like $10 something like some around $10 when I purchased it. It's been a while. I've had it for a long time, but I've only had to pay for it once. So you can use it then on your and all those different formats. You can use it on your Mac, Windows and your smartphone. I believe so I know I can use it on my iPhone. I can use it on my iPad. I do not have it on my Mac. Okay. That would be a question I would I would have lingering out there if you can use that on the Mac. Yeah. Good information. So I just went to Clero PDF.com and you can actually drag and drop a PDF right into it and analyze it straight from there without even downloading anything. Oh, wow. I don't know how long it lets you do it. I didn't try it. But it says you can get document analysis, data visualization and actual insights straight from there. So even if you don't have the app, you might be able to use that as a as a different tool. But you brought up a good point when we were talking about this earlier about HIPAA though. That's what I was getting ready to say. Yeah, we can't let this go on set. You do need to be aware and be cautious of HIPAA violations. If you're doing this with any kind of PDF that might have any of that personal information included. Yeah. Yeah. Any client specific and HIPAA HIPAA violations. There's quite a bit that falls under that names addresses. There are certain limitations. So get familiar with that as well. There are some limits to what you can put into those things. Don't upload a client document would be one of those things that has names or any kind of a done a identifiable information is really. Kind of what that what that is, but there's some very specific examples and probably some examples of things that you wouldn't even be thinking about would that would be identifiable information. Honestly, I would suggest if you're thinking about using it at work and we kind of had this conversation earlier too. If you're thinking about using this in any kind of a work situation, you might want to talk with your IT folks and make sure that they're okay with you using it. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. We wouldn't hear it. But we're a community rehab entity. I'm so our nonprofit and we provide rehabilitation services. So we have medical services going on in our building and work covered by HIPAA. And so anything that we use software wise or are doing anything on the web has to be approved by our IT department. We've got to be sure that we're cognizant of what we're putting out there and making sure we're not releasing any identifiable information of the clients we serve. Yep. Most definitely. And there might be some of the tools you can use that our HIPAA compliant just double check with your IT HR departments and folks like that. Brian, you brought up using chat GPT, some of the other AIs. I mean, you could do more than just summarize. You know, if you're looking to kind of do a live presentation, you could summarize and pull out key information or certain facts you're looking for and other things like that. Really with prompting you can probably get even more information pretty quickly by just dropping it into to one of those. Assuming, of course, there's no protected health information on there. Right. Or identifiers. I believe that I haven't have not seen a version in a while, but I believe that curves while 3000 also has the ability to do this with a PDF. I don't think you
would need to worry about HIPAA if you were using that because I don't think it sends it out anywhere. It just does it directly from, I guess, your hardware. Yeah, your hardware. That's Kurzweil 3000, not Kurzweil 1000. And you know what we've been having, we've actually been having some conversations with our IT department here about chat GPT and what we could do for our service lines to be able to use that more effectively. And they actually do have a HIPAA compliant version of it. And you can get, but before you do anything, talk to your IT department, you have to have a business associate, agreement in place with them. So chat GPT just kind of what a lot, I think a lot of folks use, has a HIPAA compliant line of their service. There's also other services that offer it. There's one called Bastion GPT. We've been looking at that for some of our brain injury services here in our building. And they actually have a HIPAA compliant, completely HIPAA compliant version of it where it lives and does not go out completely to the public. It kind of uses the information you have. And so you can get a HIPAA, what I want to say with that is you can't get a HIPAA compliant part to that. It's just be sure you are fully aware of what that really means for you. And be sure you have an agreement in place with them, a business associate's agreement in place with them that they're not using the data that you upload for malicious intent or figure out what they're using it for. So. And don't just assume because it's included with Microsoft Office, that that means a HIPAA compliant because that does not. Right. Well, and so so Brian, I guess that's my question. And maybe this is a question for a whole nother show, right? We have a BAA with with Microsoft. We use Microsoft 365 and co pilots built into every single one of those tools. So does that mean that we have a BAA with co pilot as well? I said, we're going to it's built into word. It's built into Excel. It's built into outlook. I mean, it's in my it lives in my email. So every email I send is being looked at by that. So is that HIPAA compliant? I don't know. I honestly don't know. I don't know much about that. I know we're actively as an organization looking at it. Because we think it could be helpful with with report in it being more innovative with our reports in some areas and then things like that. And so yeah, I don't know. Yeah. I just wanted to kind of throw that out there as far as the comment. Like there are HIPAA compliant versions of some of those GPT programs out there that might be something for some folks to inquire about. No, right. And I think it's important to note that we are a T specialist. We're not IT specialist. So we're just throwing it out there that if you're considering using any of these, you do need to be aware of that and think about it before you do it. Right. Especially with your IT and your HR folks, just run it by them. Then whatever they tell you, you can't get in trouble for if you do it. Right. Correct. Or something like that. That's how that's how we roll. That's how we roll. Well, I want to open this up to our listeners. If you guys have any feedback, if you know of other summary tools for a PDF document or other types of documents, let us know we'd love to be able to pass that along to Craig. And so you can give us a call on our listener line. That's 317-721-7124, where you can send us an email at
[email protected]. Thanks so much. All right. So our next question is an email from Heidi. Heidi asked, I wanted to check in and ask you about the best way to put or fill in letters on my keyboard. I've used it so much in my job that the letters are rubbing off. And so any solutions for filling in the letters on her keyboard. So Heidi, my suggestion for this would be fingernail polish. I have definitely used fingernail polish on more than one occasion. You can even get white nowadays to make it look real. You can also go to Amazon and look on and I don't recommend this, but you can go to Amazon and look for stick, stick on letters for your keyboard. They have those in different colors and sizes and high contrast and that kind of thing. The reason I don't recommend those is because if you have used your keyboard to the extent that you're wearing the letters off, you're going to find that you're going to wear out those stickers really quickly as well. My last suggestion would be to go to Amazon and just perhaps look for a new keyboard. If you're just using like a USB standard, cordy keyboard, you can get those extremely cheap nowadays like eight or 10 bucks. And it might be easier to just replace it. Yeah, I agree with all the things you said there, but the only thing I would add is the little, I don't know if they're silicone or what, but the little keyboard covers, depending if you've got kind of a standard one. My old MacBook not only did I wore off some of the letters, but one of the buttons kept popping off every time I hit it. So I set that over the top of it. It held it down. It also quits the clicking. It takes a little getting used to because it just feels a little bit different on your hand, but it can have the letters and everything kind of on there. And even change the colors have high contrast to that kind of stuff. And they're not very expensive either. It's just a matter of finding the right one that fits. But no, I'm kind of with you. If you're using an external keyboard, a new one is probably the best kind of way to go. But if it's your laptop keyboard, you're kind of stuck with it. So you're going to have to do something. But and then I don't remember my wife's the artist and the family, not me, but there are these little white markers you can get. It's almost like a paint marker. But they're kind of, they're not as thin as like the thin Sharpie. There's a little bit bigger, but there's the little bit easier to control for those of us that are not used to using fingernail polish very well. Or just going to probably paint that all over the place. So but something like that could work to you. Just want to make sure it's permanent because especially it's going to be on those keys you're using all the time anyway. So you're going to make sure that you can get something to stay. Yeah, and I was actually looking at prices at the thing that I was going to mention was large print keyboard stickers. Thank you, all of the telling her telling this person that that's not the right to go. That may have been what I sent her through email back as an answer, but I might follow that up with what our chef said. Please listen to the show as well. Some other solutions. But anyways, yeah, anyways, keyboard stickers are going to cost you anywhere from 10, 15 bucks. Josh, I'm online and I'm looking up keep those keyboard film kind of like the silicone overlays. Those five to $10. They're pretty. So in they come in a lot of really cool colors and you can get them plain white keys on white letters on black background or black on white or just a whole bunch of different color combinations. So definitely something to look at. You can go to Amazon and just say, Hey, laptop keyboard overlay or large print keyboard stickers or those kinds of things. And see a whole bunch of solutions. Yeah, part of that way. I want to open this up to our listeners. If you have any feedback for Heidi about her questions on filling in the letters on her keyboard, you can give us a call on her listener line. That's 317-721-7124. We're sending us an email at
[email protected]. Thanks so much. All right. So our next question is an email from Lindsay. Her question is, is there such a thing as light dimming overlays for iPads that are not adhesive? So Brian, I think you might have a few suggestions for this, but I was kind of wondering like, can it be changed with the the settings enough? You know, if we're really, you know, I can dim my my screen pretty darn dim. In fact, it kind of does it on its own every time I'm in the wrong situation. I feel like, um, even more on zoom now in the sun's coming in. So my computer screen keeps getting dimmer and dimmer, uh, which is making it harder and harder to see. So I kind of wonder with that, but then there's also some different apps out there. Cause maybe it's not so much the the dimness, but maybe the color, uh, or some other things like that. There's a lot of apps out there that can really change the look of your of your iPad screen. Can change the contrast, the colors, um, other kinds of things like that. So I guess my question is, are they looking for that? Or is this kind of a, oh, one of those, what is it like a privacy privacy film? You know, we're unless you're, you know, if you're more than a 25 or 30 degree angle, you can't see on it. Cause I had, I couldn't really find an app that could pull that off real well just by, by kind of quickly looking and trying to find some stuff. Um, but I guess it would just depend on on what exactly, I don't know, how much, how much dimming you actually need. I'm with you, Josh, I would, I would lean toward trying to use whatever, if what's available on the iPad, because the iPad does have some pretty customizable lighting settings. And if you can't get it to a fit, um, by using those, then I would really be concerned that maybe, um, you're not going to find anything that is going to be suitable. Um, but another suggestion would be to consider, um, some of the like blue blocking glasses, not necessarily prescription glasses, but, um, blue blocking glasses that might help bring things down, uh, not sure to now, um, interestingly enough, I have had a consumer in the past many years ago, who, um, worked as a school teacher. And, but it was all online at that time. It was around the COVID time and everything was being done online. And she was really struggling with the brightness from her computer screen. However, she was using a screen reader. So you know what I did turn off that screen. That's right. I just said, Hey, you know what? We're going to use this again.
external keyboard, we're going to close that screen. We don't even need it open. So that's what we did. We used the laptop with the screen down and her screen reader and that worked out quite well for her. I had also she was using an iPad for different instances too, again, using the voiceover and what I had recommended with that is we just do it screen down. So basically, in my situation, I was able to say, okay, we're just not going to look at the screen and we're going to get things done that way. So that would be my suggestion as if you can't accommodate it with the settings in the iPad, maybe some blue blocker glasses or maybe it's a trip to a vision specialist to look at some sort of special glass that we might be able to dim things down. And you know now that I really think about it, I have had somebody that did need something like this in the past, but it wasn't for the tint. It was to make the iPad matte. So you know how an iPad is kind of shiny. It was a cover that went on there that made it to where it wasn't shiny. It was kind of a matte sort of surface. So I guess I have had one of those before. And it was just one of those, I don't want to say adhesive or like sticky, but one of those kind of covers that almost magnetically kind of goes on you. Just put it on there. You can take it off and use it for different ways, but I don't remember exactly what it was, but I have had that before. Interesting. Yeah. And you know, I was going to throw this out. I think Josh, you mentioned before the show, like we just got these into our library. There are there's these things called light dims, customizable dimming sheets. What I read about those, these are like little overlays that can go over light. I do not think they're made for iPads. I don't think they're made for computer screens. I think they're actually for anything that emits light. So maybe it's on your computer. Like when I plug my computer in the AC adapter into my computer, I get a little light that starts to shine and I can dim those lights a little bit so that they're not distracting to me as I look at things. You can probably fix it to the screen. It says it kind of to a screen like an iPad or a computer, but I wouldn't recommend it. I'd be afraid it would mess up the screen itself, the adhesive and those kinds of things. But that being said, you could look up, it's called light dims. You can look them up on Amazon. They've got a couple of different versions of those different sizes. You can get customizable sizes as well up to about 24 inches for a full size monitor if you want. But again, I'd be hesitant to put it on my technology. I think it's really more for dimming halogen lamps or those kinds of things making sure that they're really kind of cutting the real sharp contrast that you get with some of those halogen lights and stuff like that. So light dims would be another option as well. All right, so I want to open this up to our listeners. This is, you can give us a call on our listener line. That's 317-721-7124. We'll send us an email at
[email protected]. If you have any information on light dimming overlays for iPads or other things, please let us know. Thanks so much. All right, so our next question is an email from Lisa. Her question is, "Does anyone have a replacement app for iModeling or BuzzCards? Neither are available any longer in the App Store or Google Play Store?" So that breaks my heart. That breaks my heart. Well, so if you weren't familiar, iModeling is kind of a Josh, what's the term for that type of app? Video modeling. There you go. Video modeling app, where you can show people different tasks by breaking it up into small little video snippets, step-by-step through a particular task, or BuzzCards. That's used for folks who are deaf and helps them with communication. So if you're walking into a store, you have pre-programmed phrases that you typically use or, let's say, one of the pre- you frequent McDonald's and you like the double cheeseburger meal, you can just simply show them one of your cards, no cards, BuzzCards here, to be able to say, "Hey, I want to order two cheeseburgers and a large die coke and a large fry." That seemingly came off my tongue too quick because that is one of my favorites, but BuzzCards, yeah, so are there any replacement apps for those? So when I. Yeah, when I heard about this or seen this question, I started digging around. The "I'm modeling, I'm not experienced with," but I do remember the very first one that you showed us, Brian, was your daughter was the model and she was doing the dishwasher. That was a long time ago. But the BuzzCards are something at Sorensen actually is the one that I believe developed or whatever, the BuzzCards, and I have used those a lot in a lot of different situations. Now, fortunately, I have it on my phone and my iPad, so I don't have to go find it, and it does still work because that was the first thing I tried once I've seen that it was no longer available. And then I started looking to make sure that it really wasn't out there and no apparently, it's not. Now, you may say with BuzzCards, well, that should be easy enough because you could just use notepad, right? Well, sure, you can, but it's not. It's not as convenient, I would say, it's the BuzzCards are. The BuzzCards were very easy to set up, very easy to add. In fact, I've got some of my original ones from probably seven or eight years ago when I first started using it that are still in there. As you were saying, Brian, I've had different folks using them at their job, but also mainly just for like going into a restaurant and like where's the restroom or can I get a large print menu, those kind of things. So I don't have a solution for what you might be able to try to find to replace those. I would hope and pray that they would consider bringing BuzzCards back at some point. Maybe they've just kind of gone away for a minute, and maybe they'll be back. I don't know. Yeah, yeah, I was I was sad to hear it and Belva, it's funny when I was preparing for this question at the exact same thing and open BuzzCards on all my devices was like, oh god, is this still what I'm using all the freaking time? And for some folks, it's been like the best accommodation, even though like we said, it's simple, but it's simple to understand for the user or if you're handing your phone to somebody, it's very simple for them to kind of understand what's going on and very helpful. So I don't know if this is a replacement, but one I found that's very close. This is at least on iOS is something just called bigger notes, but it looks it doesn't look a lot like like BuzzCards, but it looks like you just make little notes and they're very small, pretty large print, and then you just kind of save them in a list like you would BuzzCards. So it's not perfect, because BuzzCards are kind of putting categories like the coffee shop, the restaurant, the airport, you know, every day kind of thing. I don't know if you can do that with ease, but it looks like it's free and looks like it's pretty darn simple. You know what I mean? It's kind of like the notes app, if you stripped away all the features, except for like right, change, text, and delete. So it might be something to kind of work in the interim. It's not going to be the same, and yeah, BuzzCards for such a simple app, it did so much. And I don't know why Swaranton still has all their other apps, so I don't know why they couldn't just keep supporting that one in some kind of way. I'm also curious because I'm modeling and BuzzCards are two very different, very different things. So I'm curious why this person is asking for a replacement for both of these apps. So my guess would be, and this is purely speculation and probably stupid to even do, but my guess is that maybe the eye modeling is to try to do with tasks and maybe BuzzCards is more for being out in the community and talking to people, because maybe that's kind of a kind of a challenge due to could be a sensory impairment, could be, you know, a disability with speech. I mean, who really knows or just, I don't know, nervous, ready people. And I did find on the eye modeling side, this is not the same. There are some other video modeling apps out there. Some of them are pretty expensive, and I haven't tried them out, so I don't want to tell you a $200 app that may or may not be any good. But can plan, so I've used it before on iOS, it's not video, it's picture kind of based, but you can really control what it does. So like Brian just because she is the example, and I still remember the example of your daughter using the dishwasher because she put all the plastic stuff on the bottom shelf, and then just threw the little tab in there. I thought it was just but, but, you know, you wouldn't be able to have a video of it, but you could have a pictures. You know, you could have pictures of you open it, you know, and then a picture of this is where the soap goes, and a picture of this is how you push the buttons on there, kind of step by step. And I believe you can do it in kind of a to-do list form as well. You can use stock photos, you can take your own pictures, and I don't think it's very expensive or maybe even free for kind of the basic versions depending on how many things you're trying to learn. I know it's available on iOS because I've used it on there before. It's not super hard to set up for folks, and again, it's not going to quite give you the video modeling, but I don't think it limits you on the amount of pictures. So I mean, you could go picture by picture by picture, frame by frame almost through through some tasks. And I just know it works really well. My favorite apps was I can't remember the original name or the final name, but that HP reveal that used to exist, where you could like make a video and then assign it to a picture. So like, if you took, if you open that app and took it over my business card, I would pop up and talk to you. It was neater than crud, and it was purely an advertising app, but it worked great for like, modeling for video modeling because you could just take a picture in that person's environment, where
they're working or wherever it is they need to do it and have the video pop up and it worked great but then of course it went away. So yeah that can plan and then that bigger notes are the two that I found that might be able to meet some of the needs of folks just depending again on what those needs really are. Along those same lines Josh, the one I use a lot when I am working or working with some of new staff for Heart of Hearing, it's called BigNote. BigNote, it's not bigger notes but BigNote is a better. BigNote is allows you to hit a microphone, you can talk to it. If you're a speaking user you can just simply speak into it, it makes it in large print. You can actually save those notes for later on. You can also type in those notes. It can actually speak the note for you if you'd like. It's a really great app and I would encourage folks to check that one out. BigNote, I use that a lot. The other one, a couple other ones, ChoiceWorks and then Golly, GOAL, LY are two, they're basically video scheduling systems, a little bit like Josh, you described Can plan. Again, I don't know if you can include videos with those but I know you can do picture-based tasks. Step one, step two, step three down to the end of a particular task and so I would also check those out as a replacement for eye modeling, Golly, GOAL, LY and then ChoiceWorks has some options as well. They've got a few different apps I believe. I'm not specifically sure which one best fits the need for this one but if you look up ChoiceWorks they've got a few different apps to be able to look at. A great way to really find apps is Easter Seals of Greater Houston has bridging apps. They're a program and you can look up at bridgingapps.org. They have a search tool there where you can search apps. You can just kind of look up video modeling or look up communication, different things like that and they curate a large list of apps. They're not paid by any of those companies or anything like that. It's a great place. I go there a lot just to find ideas, things that I don't know about apps I've never tried before for different folks with different kinds of needs. Bridgingapps.org, go check them out because they might have even some better suggestions for you. They usually have pictures too and most of their reviews and descriptions are by users. A lot of them who either have disabilities or work with folks with disabilities. They take it from that angle and can help you with some decision making. Plus it tells you prices, everything's kind of right there so you can contrast and compare those without having to download every single app. That's a great, great idea, Josh, because like you said, most of those apps have all been tested. The review that you're getting is from someone who's actually tried it out. And I would also just throw in there too. You may also, if you're interested in borrowing, I know we have choice works as an app within our library. If you want to try some of these things out, previous question we answered was about letters on your keyboard. We have large-prank keyboard stickers. You can't really affix them, but you could ask for a demo of those. We wouldn't want to affix those to your keyboard. We want to be able to keep those available so folks can see them and understand what they are. We have a couple of different options. We might be able to come out and do a demo for you on. And then obviously we have lots of different types of equipment in the library that might be helpful for you as well. Should you need something for either a short term accommodation or just something to be able to see just to see before you try it before you buy it kind of thing. But you can check the library out. If you go to Eastersealstech.com/library, it'll take you to our alone library webpage and be able to check that out. Well and also Brian, like you just were, we were talking about the dimming sheets in the previous question. And I believe I heard Josh say that we just added some of those two are lending library. And that's one of the great things that we're very lucky and fortunate to have when we come out to do evaluations for individuals because we do have access to all those things in the library and we can bring those with us. So we may be able to bring those dimming sheets with us to determine whether or not they're going to be appropriate. But even if not and you just want to try them, in fact, I just had a call today from an individual who was looking for a way to wake himself up and long clock doesn't work. He I put him in touch with Steve at the lending library and he's actually going to try to borrow one of the bedshaker devices to try to help him help himself get up. So that's a great way to try this stuff before you buy it. Also get it in your environment and see if it's really going to do what you think it's going to do because sometimes it doesn't work the way you think it's going to work or the way that you were told that it would work. So. Excellent. Excellent. Hey, I want to open this up to our listeners. Again, we're looking for replacement apps for eye modeling, which is a video modeling app and buzz cards, which is a way to be able to kind of keep pre-programmed phrases and be able to show those to folks. Maybe if you're deaf or hard of hearing, that can be helpful when you're out in the community communicating with other folks. If you have any suggestions for where folks could find an alternative app for those two that are now no longer in the app store, that would be great. You can let us know. You can give us a call on our listener line. That's 317-721-7124, or you can send us an email at
[email protected]. Thanks so much. And now it's time for the wild card question. All right. So our next question is the wild card question. And this is a question that we haven't had any time to prepare for other than when I sent the questions to these two folks the day before. But the question is, what's your most used keyboard shortcut and what does it say about you? Okay, I'll go first. So ever since, which has been a long time now, they've added read aloud toward I do a lot of reading documents, mainly the reports that I create and stuff like that. I love to have them read back to me. And I used to, I will say I still use jaws from time to time, but I also use read aloud a lot. And so that is a control alt space to begin read aloud. And I will typically just start the reading and let it be read to me while maybe I'm doing something else, but I'm hearing it. And so if I try to prove read my own report, it's easy for me to misread something that I actually did type, but if I'm hearing it, boy, those screen readers don't miss it. So they'll always let me know. So that's mine. And that's control alt space to begin read aloud inward, which is free. And it's there. It's also there in outlook. I think it's good. Adobe products. I read aloud. What? Yeah, yeah, I think Adobe might have some kind of reader in there, but it's different. It's different. And read aloud. It's and read alouds in on edge as well. So if you use so Brian, if you a it's a Microsoft thing. Yep. Yeah, if you use edge as your PDF viewer, then you can use read aloud to read your PDFs in Microsoft Edge. Not okay. Interesting. Yep. So it's both a second part. What does that say about you? It says that I don't trust myself reading what's in front of me. I need to hear it. So I need to not only see it, but hear it. Then I can trust it. So mine's not as fancy. And I use a Mac. So hopefully I get this right on the windows, but it's command tab or alt tab. And it says that I have too much stuff open at once. And I have to continuously go through them all. But it's so much easier. I don't know. It whenever I'm in the office, I use an external mouse. And I swear that I move it to the side so I can write stuff down and reach my coffee. And then I can't find it. So like I do a lot with keystrokes, I guess, but that's I guess that in command space bar. So I can bring up the search and kind of look for different things on the device. But that's probably the one I use hundreds and hundreds of times a day. Just because I would agree with you on that, Josh, I use alt tab a lot too. Yeah. It's because I have so many things open and I'm going from a multitasking. Yep. I'm trying to write a report. I'm trying to answer an email, but I got something open on the internet that I need to go look at to get the information for that. So I do all those all those kind of things. So that's probably my biggest one. Yeah. Interesting. Wow. You know, we all chose different keystrokes because my keystroke is control Z or commands on my Mac. Okay. And I mean, if I if I really do think about what's the key I use most, it's that one. I can be an outlook and I delete an email and I'm like, Oh crap, I'm going to need that email. I mean, Z comes right back. Yeah. And how many things am I am I saving something or I'm moving something and I can't find it anymore. I can do the control Z. I use control Z a lot. Maybe maybe that's the second one. Delete is also my next one because I write a lot of stuff and I constantly am heading delete as I try to think about what I want to say. But control Z is is is really way, way up there. And I guess what it says about me is I'm a stake prone. And maybe I get ahead of myself too much. And
And it helps me get back to where I should be on the same page with my own self. So command Z. So hey, I would love to open this up to our listeners 'cause I would love to hear what your most used keyboard shortcut is and what it says about you. I'm just a great way for you to get involved in the show. We'd love to be able to play some of these for folks. You can give us a call on our listener line, 317-721-7124, and or you can send us an email at
[email protected]. And so yeah, please let us know. We'd love to hear about that. Wanna let that is the end of our show today. We always end with our wild card question, but I wanna make sure Josh and Belva have a chance to say goodbye to all of you. I mean, so Josh, I'll start with you. Switch it up a little bit today. - Ooh, hey, bye everybody. Can't wait to see you back here next time. - Excellent, and then Belva. - No, that's right. (laughing) Awesome. - Hey guys, yeah, seriously, thanks for joining us today. We'll be back next month, and hope to have you join us then. Take care. - Information provided on assistive technology FAQ does not constitute a product endorsement. Our comments are not intended as recommendations, nor is our show a value to the nature. Assistive technology FAQ is hosted and produced by Brian Norton. Its editorial help from Josh Anderson and Belva Smith receives support from Easterseals Crossroads in the INDATA project. The show transcript is sponsored by Intract, the Indiana Telephone Relay Access Corporation, to learn more about Intract, go to indianarelay.com. Assistive technology FAQ is also a proud member of the Accessibility Channel to find more of our shows, goodaccessibilitychannel.com.
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