Blind Bargains Audio: Featuring the BB Qast, Technology news, Interviews, and more

Dolphin has found a lot of success with their Guide product which provide a simple interface to reading and other features, and now they have taken this idea a step further with the Dolphin GuideReader, an all-in-one book and newspaper reading device in tablet or set-top box form. Shelly speaks with Dolphin Sales Director Steve Bennet who explains the machines and gives a brief demonstration in this podcast. The GuideReader is distributed in the U.S. by Irie-AT.

For tech companies, CSUN is largely about sharing, selling, and finding new products but there are many other reasons to attend a large assistive technology conference. J.J. speaks with Section 508 Program Engineer Noel Romey and Section 508 Program Manager Christina Larsen from the U.S. military's Defense Logistics Agency to learn about how their office helps disabled employees obtain the assistive technology they need and some of the other services they provide.

Amazon continues to expand the availability of their VoiceView screen reader for mobile devices while also embarking on a variety of accessibility initiatives. Shelly is joined by Peter Korn, Accessibility Architect for Amazon and Jamie Teh, Executive Director for NVAccess for an interview which features two live demos: reading kindle books with NVDA and accessing content with VoiceView for Amazon's Fire TV. Other initiatives from Amazon are also discussed in this podcast.

Desmos is a company that uses the slogan "Beautiful, free math" and thanks to recent efforts, beautiful also means accessible. Jason Merrill is the lead engineer for the Desmos Graphing Calculator, a free tool that students or anyone can use to perform simple or mor advanced calculations. J.J. joins Jason who provides an audio demo of the calculator and explains some of the ways his team has made a visual graphing calculator more auditory. By the way, former AI Squared employee Steven Clower is also involved in this project, though some canceled flights prevented him from making an appearance with us this week.

North State AT has featured specialized Android tablets which also do OCR and text-to-speech for awhile, but now they have expanded, or should we say contracted, their lineup to add a smaller 10-inch model as well as a Windows-based Tablet. Joe speaks with Cory Hanosh, owner of NorthState Assistive Technology, to learn about the company's latest options especially geared toward students and the education market.

Be My Eyes was one of the first of what we have commonly called crowd assistance apps and has expanded over the past two years to offer a network of hundreds of thousands of sighted volunteers helhelping tens of thousands of blind and visually impaired users. Alexander Hauerslev Jensen, who works with partnerships and business development for Be My Eyes, talks with Shelly about some of the latest developments with the app and what to expect in the next version for iOS and soon Android. The new app will let users request help with a specific specialty such as computers or cooking, add a rating system, and let volunteers select windows where they wish to be available among other features.

Reinecker Vision offers a range of desktop video magnifiers and reading systems, starting with a 16-inch model for under $2,000. Shelly is joined by Melissa Balbach, the Master Importer for Reinecker Vision, to get an update on the latest happenings from the company.

The Argus II Retinal Prosthesis System is a fancy name, but simply put,it is a system which can return vision to persons with certain eye conditions. It's also an operation that may be covered by insurance in some states. J.J. is joined by Duane Tsutsui, Head of Marketing for Second Sight Medical Products to learn about how the system works and also of upcoming field trials which may bring vision to a wider array of individuals.

The Sunu Band Ultrasonic Smart-Watch is a wearable device which includes a variety of sensors and features to aid the wearer in navigating indoor and outdoor spaces. J.J. is joined by Marco Trujillo, CEO of Sunu who tells us more about the device which will also soon connect to additional apps, such as those for GPS navigation and fitness tracking. Sunu will have mobile apps available soon as well.

A year ago, Humanware debuted the BrailleNote Touch at CSUN as the first combination Android notetaker and tablet. Since that time, a lot has changed with the Touch and other Humanware products, so Joe caught up with Greg Stilson, Product Manager for Blindness Products for Humanware to learn what's happening. Version 3.0 of the BrailleNote Touch firmware, scheduled for release in March, has improved support for webviews, thanks to the use of newer Android accessibility components. KeyWord now will let you switch between multiple documents, and users can have up to 10 language profiles available at one time. Meanwhile, Version 2.0 of the Prodigi Connect now supports Bookshare which allows a user to read over 500,000 books directly on the device within the confines of the video magnifier. The Victor Reader Stream 2 has a new forthcoming release which focuses on updates for European countries including support for dynamic menus, a feature used especially by libraries. additionally, a numeric keypad mode has been added for input, notes can be renumbered, and time synchronization has been improved. Much more, including Greg attempting some math, is included in this extended interview.

There is a lot of magnification products at CSUN but Enhanced Vision has debuted something a bit different. The MoJo Electronic Monocular is a battery-operated and full-color monocular designed to view things that are near you such as text, store prices, or mail as well as some things further away including street signs. Joe speaks with Marc Stenzel, President of Enhanced Vision to learn about the MoJo and its many uses, including as a portable travel aid and a CCTV when placed in its docking station. Mark also teases the return of the Jordy, a popular head-mounted magnification unit which will relaunch in the coming months.

After a lot of waiting, the Dot Watch, the first refreshable braille smart watch, is just about ready for primetime. Alex Lee, Director of Sales and Marketing for Dot Incorporation joins J.J. to talk about the watch and its many features including display of the time and date, battery percentage in graphical form, and the ability to read notifications and incoming call alerts. More features will be added over time, largely powered by the Dot apps for iOS and Android.

The ONYX electronic video magnifier from Freedom Scientific, a part of VFO, now includes the capability to read text through OCR. Shelly speaks with Bill Kilroy, Sales Director for VFO's Northeast Territory, to learn about and hear a demo of this new magnifier. The new ONYX OCR features a 24-inch touch screen, distance viewing, a self view mode if you wish to magnify yourself, and the aforementioned OCR features.

The NeoBraille is a product we first played with in 2016 but it was subsequently retooled and improved before it was ever released. Thomas Simpson, the Director of Marketing for Irie-AT and Young-Gwan Noh, President and Tony Han, Sales Manager for NeoAccess join J.J. for an in-depth demonstration of the refreshed NeoBraille, which will soon be available for $4,995. The new version of this Android notetaker features Amazon Alexa support similar to the Amazon Tap as well as support for Amazon's App Store.

If you ever went to a store and wondered if you could buy the same item for less online, a new update for the I.D. Mate Galaxy may be of use. David Raistrick, Vice President and CTO for En-Vision America joins Joe to talk about the new online price check feature which will contact Amazon, Walmart, Jet, and other stores to see how much that item you scanned will cost.