ABILITY Magazine: CSUN 2014

Hi, ABILITY Magazine!

We are all differently abled.

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

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

It's actually four wheel drive, so it does really well on terrains, grass, pebble, dirt, we can handle all that.

So it's pretty practical for daily use.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We don't want to design me to products. We always want to do something new and unique and beneficial for our blind and low-vision consumers.

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

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

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

TRAFFIC LIGHT SPEAKS

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

We put the remote control inside the smartphone, and we develop smartphone applications to communicate

with the traffic lights.

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

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

One that's really exciting is VOICEYE.

VOICEYE is a system comprised of a two-dimensional barcode

in a smartphone application.

One of our great early adopters is actually ABILITY Magazine.

So ABILITY Magazine is the first major publication to utilize VOICEYE to make their magazine accessible.

(VOICEYE reads from page)

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

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

I'm a software developer.

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

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

or enough trunk support to use EYEGAZE.

So I decided to build a system for her.

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

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

her when she talks to select movies.

APP: To watch Nickelodeon Music, say yes.

BETSY: Yes!

APP: Okay.

(TV plays)

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

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

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

Yes, we can! Isn't that exciting?

As you can tell, she gets very excited about using it, because for her she's never been able to actually say what she wants,

so she knows this is the first time that she can actually choose one thing over another.

Yes! Exciting, huh?

Yes!

I got low-vision when I was 17.

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

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

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

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

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

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

When I see the smiles on people's faces, and they say thank you, that's when I say, "Wow, I found my calling in life from my injury!"

Nice to meet you, ABILITY!