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Hi, ABILITY Magazine!

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We are all differently abled.

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So, I'm Chris from Whill. We have a very
unique technology applied in the front

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wheels. It's an omniwheel, which lets me
turn sideways with a really tight turning

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radius. It's actually four-wheel drive,
so it does really well on terrains, grass,

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pebble, dirt, we can handle all that.
So it's pretty practical for daily use.

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We have a control that's more of a computer
mouse than a joystick, so you slide it sideways.

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I'm James McCarthy, and I'm the
president of HIMS Inc.

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We're an assistive technology company
for products for the blind and visually-impaired.

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This year at CSUN we have an exciting booth.
We're introducing several new products.

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The E-bot is the first and currently the
only iPad- and Android-compatible reading,

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writing, and distance video magnifier with
OCR text-to-speech available on the market.

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It's very useful in the classroom for students
because it's got reading, writing, and distance.

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We don't want to design me to products.
We always want to do something new and

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unique and beneficial for our blind and
low-vision consumers.

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So, our company is a French company
created 20 years ago,

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and we created the company on one idea: to
make the traffic lights talking to blind people.

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The principle is quite simple. When you come
close to the traffic lights, you press the button,

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and you would stop walking.

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(Traffic light speaks)

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And 20 years later, we have 100 thousand
traffic lights equipped in France.

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We put the remote control inside the
smartphone, and we develop smartphone

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applications to communicate with
the traffic lights.

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My name's Thomas, I'm with
ViewPlus Technologies.

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Today, we're here representing a few
different types of technologies.

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One that's really exciting is Voiceye.

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Voiceye is a system comprised of a
two-dimensional barcode

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in a smartphone application.

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One of our great early adopters is
actually ABILITY Magazine.

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So ABILITY Magazine is the first major
publication to utilize VOICEYE to make

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their magazine accessible.

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(VOICEYE reads from page)

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So, this is Betsy's interface, and there's
the camera looking at her moving.

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Hi, I'm Sergio, I'm the father of Betsy
Sergio Fernandez.

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I'm a software developer.

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Since Betsey has CP, and we've tried to
get her to communicate with us,

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and we haven't been very successful because
she doesn't have enough control to hit the buttons,

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or enough trunk support to use eye-gaze.

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So I decided to build a system for her.

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The system basically is going to be using this
camera, which is a perceptual technology camera,

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that allows the computer to see her
movement, and then is going to use

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that iPad and the app is going to hear
her when she talks to select movies.

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APP: To watch Nickelodeon Music, say yes.

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BETSY: Yes!

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APP: Okay.

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(TV plays)

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And once we get her to consistently use
the movement of the hand, and the yes or no,

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then we can really open the path of
communication for her.

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You know, we'll hope that she will end up
using it in school, and all kinds of situations.

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Yes, we can! Isn't that exciting?

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As you can tell, she gets very excited
about using it, because for her she's never

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been able to actually say what she wants,
so she knows this is the first time that

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she can actually choose one thing over
another.

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Yes! Exciting, huh?

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Yes!

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I got low-vision when I was 17.

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All of a sudden, it was baseball season,
I was a baseball player,

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I had, I took a line drive off of my face!

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Living with low-vision is my life, this
has become my career,

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you know, it's my passion, it's my hobby,

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so I'm really passionate about the things
that we do!

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Not because they're devices, but because
they help people.

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When I see the smiles on people's faces,
and they say thank you, that's when I say,

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"Wow, I found my calling in life from
my injury!"

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Nice to meet you, ABILITY!