
With gift-giving season simply across the nook, INDATA is releasing its annual vacation present information podcast on Black Friday this week. The 2024 episode includes a panel of our assistive expertise specialists speaking about merchandise our shoppers have loved that would convey vacation cheer to your family members this 12 months.
Listed under are just a few merchandise featured on the present, in addition to what our friends needed to say about them.
Glean
In case your baby struggles with ultimate exams earlier than the vacation break, think about giving them the present of Glean. This AI-powered notetaking software permits college students to interrupt down class lectures in an simply digestible method.
As Assistive Expertise Coach Sarah Crawford explains, “If they’ve ADHD and wrestle to concentrate or are exhausting of listening to, Glean basically creates a transcript and an audio recording of their professor’s lecture. Because it’s doing that, college students can add notes to look again at later or spotlight a sure half like, ‘This will likely be on the check.’
I believed that was actually cool as a result of I might have actually used one thing like that in faculty and I didn’t know that expertise existed, if it even did again then. I even have a sister who is difficult of listening to in class proper now, so I considered telling her about Glean and seeing if Ball State College would add it to their bills for college students with disabilities.”
Glean presently helps college students at greater than 750 instructional establishments throughout the globe. College workers members can be taught extra about how they’ll implement Glean at their faculties right here.
Hable One
Hable One is a brand new Braille keyboard designed to assist blind or low-vision customers sort sooner on their smartphones.
Sufficiently small to slot in a pocket or purse, Hable One is a compact, handheld system that’s easy to make use of as a result of it connects to a consumer’s cell system through Bluetooth. It has six Braille buttons that permit the consumer to sort by urgent completely different combos of those buttons. For instance, to sort the letter “A,” you press button 1, and for the letter “B,” you press buttons 1 and a couple of concurrently. It additionally permits the consumer to manage their system’s display reader, like VoiceOver on iOS or TalkBack on Android.
Through the use of completely different button combos, customers can navigate nearly any cell system to open apps, scroll net pages and alter settings. Some individuals have stated that it’s like having a distant management for his or her cellphone.
Microsoft Copilot
From discovering recipes for dinner events to crafting inventive content material, Microsoft’s AI assistant, Copilot, is sort of a digital genie in a bottle.
“I’ve acquired a shopper who’s been utilizing it to create youngsters’s tales,” Jim Rinehart, Assistive Expertise Specialist Jim Rinehart says on the podcast. “Actually, with the vacation season coming, final night time I instructed Copilot, ‘Inform me a narrative, a Christmas story, with three youngsters in it, perhaps ages 5 to 10,’ and it simply spat out an entire Christmas story. It began with ‘As soon as upon a time,’ and the three youngsters have been all asleep they usually heard a noise. They got here downstairs, Santa was of their home, and the entire bit was that his sled was caught, and the children helped him get his sled unstuck, and it was only a actually cool story.
One other shopper of mine has been working with Copilot to make coloring ebook pages. You ask it to make a coloring ebook web page of one thing, of Santa Claus or one thing, and it generates one you possibly can truly obtain and print off.”
Copilot has loads of capabilities to maintain you busy from the nice and cozy consolation of your house this vacation season. For extra details about the various issues you are able to do with this AI assistant, go to copilot.microsoft.com.
Kizik Footwear
Occupational therapist Kaitlin Hill provides a terrific testimony for this product on the podcast, and she or he even wore a pair of hands-free Kizik Footwear to the recording of the episode.
“I like them as a result of they’re a very good instance of common design,” Hill says. “They’re useful for all kinds of oldsters, not simply people with disabilities but in addition anyone that simply needs to have the ability to simply get their sneakers on and off or has their fingers full. Perhaps they’re post-surgery, perhaps they’re not in a position to bend their hips fairly in addition to they used to, or perhaps they’ve a child of their fingers. I truly acquired these after I was pregnant in order that I didn’t should bend over to place my sneakers on anymore. They’re nice as a result of you possibly can simply slip your foot proper in. They’ve a patented heel design in order that the heel doesn’t collapse if you slide your toes in. You may have them pre-tied, so people who aren’t in a position to handle the laces themselves can have a caregiver do these for them.”
Xbox One Adaptive Controller
Designed for avid gamers with restricted mobility, this controller is customizable to allow them to play a recreation solely with their toes, mouth or different switches.
Easterseals Crossroads’ Mortgage Library Lead Erin McCreedy says, “It not solely makes video gaming accessible for the typical one that needs to play on their Xbox, nevertheless it may be useful for e-sports golf equipment at faculties. Perhaps you’ve gotten a scholar who has entry wants, primarily bodily. Perhaps you’ve gotten a scholar who makes use of a wheelchair and wishes a mounted controller, issues like that. This system has a variety of completely different swap ports. It’s very customizable, it’s nice.”
These are just some of the various matters mentioned on this Friday’s vacation present information podcast, so remember to tune in to Assistive Expertise Replace later this week.