ROUGH EDITED COPY
                        MIT ATIC
September 26, 2012

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This is being provided in a rough-draft format.  Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings.
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>> Hi, Candice, are you hearing us?
>> I can hear you very well.
 
>> We have a room mic connected.
I'm going to ask one of students in the class to speak up and let's see if you pick them up.
 
>> Hello.
Can you hear me?
 
>> Yes.
 
>> All right.
Looks like you can.
How about you, you want to speak up for a second?

>> Sure hello.
 
>> Introduce yourself, say something.

>> My name is PRIANKA.
 
>> All right.
Candice, I think we're good to go.
we're going to paucities point.
The class hasn't started so you can take a little break and we'll let you know when it's time to start up again.

>> Okay.
Thank you.

>> Thank you.
 
>> Niceville.
 
>> It really is a real place.

[LAUGHTER]
 
>> Oh, that's so funny.
 
>> What state is Niceville in?

>> Florida.
 
>> Oh.
Okay.
Of course.
 
>> I was going to say Ohio.

>> Would you mind asking the people that are not mic'd up to try to keep their voices up when talking?
That will help for a better transcript.
 
>> yes, we will.

>> Thank you.
So far she's heard us so we'll see.
Larger presentations what you can do is you can connect the Skype great.
And larger presentations you can connect the machine receiving the Skype audio call to a sound system which we did just two days ago and our all hands staff meeting for IFNT and it worked very nicely.
Smaller situations the room mic can work and the mic in the lap top can be sufficient depending on the size of the room, the speakers.
Will we have a few minutes to ask the transcriber some questions about the system?

>> I think that we would.
We have her reserved from 1 to 2 so if we plan time accordingly I think that will be fine.
Are you okay with answering a couple of questions from the group?

>> Yes.
 
>> Thank you.
Why don't we get started.
Very pleased to have our second guest lecture today, this is a visitor's ‑‑ visitors from MIT, Cathy hail.
And we're joined by Barbara Johnson to tell us a little bit about this system.
Please go ahead.

>> So yes (inaudible) Cathy Cahill is sitting here and will chime in a little bit and Barbara Johnson is also on our team.
We're the accessibility and usability team and we're part of MIT central IT department information services and technology.
Today we are here basically to tell you a little bit about what we do in larger realm of assistive technology here at MIT.
Maybe I'll wait a minute until the ‑‑ so ‑‑ I wanted to talk a little bit about our scope, what we do at MIT with students and and staff and also tell you some of the challenges that we face, which you may or may not encounter in your work also in this class.
So our scope is dedicated specifically ‑‑ thank you.
So our scope is dedicated specifically, we look specifically at Assistive Technologies that are used at MIT in relationships to academic work or if it's a staff member, how work is done at MIT.
We're not looking at living a recreational needs although occasionally because students take PE classes, there can be overlap so it's not always easy to say this is simply a work‑related task that we're looking at, sometimes it's related the taking a class.
To give you a few examples of some of the tasks and activities that we are assisting students with every day, these are simple, something as simple as write organize submitting your column stats, reading course materials such as the ones I just handed out to you, sometimes this is just an example of large print textbook, which I can pass around.
, that's one of the smaller ones
>> Who physically made this?

>> Copy tech.

>> There is something which allows for reproduction in different formats
>> Is helping to interact with a website desktop application, a mobile app.
So we're not only dealing with work activities, we're also primarily dealing with what products are commercially available in the realm of assistive technology, how they interact, with available applications and systems available.
And I think the number one question again is how do I interact with this application in a non‑standard way based on (inaudible).
So our goals are to look at success of academic course materials.
We do that at the start and the end of the process, we work hard with faculty when we become aware of a student with a disability, we're taking a particular class, Cathy is in charge of that, will tell you more in detail about that.
Figure out who can help us get the materials accessible to the student.
Our primary objective is also to look at existing commercially available technologies and see if there are any out there already that are perhaps meet the individual's needs.
That can be challenging.
We'll hear about that in a little bit.
Then we have a room, room 7143 where we provide and pretty much house a lot of specialized equipment for students.
They can come and go as they please to use some of the equipment that we have there.
This is a slide that I wanted to share because it relates a lot to how we think about our work and how we provide assistive technology.
And also our mission to kind of get the word out on how to design products that are more accessible from the start.
So if we're doing a good job educating by accessibility there's less work for us to do on the other end.
Most products that we see are really made accessible in one of these four ways listed on the slide, first one being they are directly accessible such as open caption video so you watch the video and it already has the captions showing, giving the person who is unable to hear the audio the visual representation of that audio content.
The person didn't have to know to click a little CC button, it just was openly accessible.
The second way things we have made accessible, they have accessibility options built into the product but you have to know how to find them and how to activate them.
iPhone is a good example of that, it has voice over and extremely accessible to find individuals but you have to know how to turn it on, you have to know how to function, how to get through all the different feature sets to set it up so that you can use it.
Pretty seemlessly.
The third way things are accessible is purchasing an alternative product that works in conjunction with the apps or with the operating system, the application that you want to use.
Screen reader, software that I believe you just saw this week is also a good example of ‑‑ voice over is built into Mac OS 10 but JAWS is a separate product that you have to purchase.
That realm also has challenges because every developer thought of different things that are important and a lot of Assistive Technologies are developed for say certain browsers, so it becomes challenging for individuals for needing to use different browsers for different purposes and they may or may not work with the screen reader or other assistive technology they need to use.
That's probably the number 1 issue we see here at MIT.
I'm also dealing with an issue with dragon naturally speaking, does not play well with the new version of Adobe flash player which faculty the working with rely on heavily for their work.
So they have to choose and that's not always a good choice between one product or the other.
Then the fourth way things are accessible is basically someone maybe you in this class this term, provides a custom modification because there isn't anything commercially available.
That is something we actually do not do in ATIC.
We don't do any developments so we're not making something that doesn't already exist on the market.
So, I'm now going to turn the floor over to Cathy and she's going to speak a little bit more in detail about our process and how we talk to our customers and how to get closer to meeting their needs.
 
>> Hi, everyone.
So as Mary probably mentioned, we serve MIT staff and students although a great percentage of the work we do is with students.
And they often get referred to ATIC through student disability services so this student has gone through the disability services office and they need to get combinations to get there in class or for exams or also to get their school work done so that problem sets studying any number of things like that.
And occasionally we also see, the staff as well, sometimes they're also ‑‑ they're referred to us, MIT medical or environmental health and safety or other departments.
So when a person comes to us, usually the problem is that they're trying to accomplish some type of task and they're not successful in that effort.
So there's a gap between what they're trying to do and being able to do it.
So we sit down with them and try to have a conversation about what's a problem.
So sometimes the problem could be I can't see the board or I need enlarged tests or any number of things.
For an employee it could be something more specific like my arms are killing me and I need to do all work, I need the write papers and documents and emails.
So we sit down and rye to figure out what they ‑‑ try to figure out what they need to do.
So a lot of what we do has to do with use of the computer so it's ways to make a computer accessible.
There's also students we see who need to do things like use a (inaudible) and read articles for books that are assigned for the courses.
For some students there's also writing so writing a paper.
It problematic to try to put their thoughts together and try to outline the paper or some other assignment.
Or even doing homework.
So if you're blind and you don't have access to your home work is in PDF and you (inaudible) screen readers can't read Matt notation, they can only read text so how do you get that work done, how do you understand what's on that paper or (inaudible) and how you ‑‑ how do you complete the home work and then testing.
The disabilities we see can be anything from a long‑term disability, arthritis, blindness or visual impairment, or it could be a shortage (inaudible) we see a lot of people with repetitive stress injuries and those ‑‑ some of them are temporary so that means that you are not going to necessarily need to use assistive technology for the rest of your life but (inaudible) people do need to use it.
So when we talk to customers we try to find out what kinds of technologies they used in the past.  
So that could also include Assistive Technologies like Mary was talking about, third party software so we would be curious if if they have tried anything like if they have low vision, have they tried any magnification software, did they use software to document reading outloud, text reading.
There's also device software that's built into the operating system, Macs and PCs, have they tried any of those to see if it works.
And then we have people who come to us and have not used any assistive technology and do not know much about it.
So that it's all new to them and we're kind of starting from the very beginning.
The other thing we want to know is what settings people are working with.
So are they working in multiple settings, are they working only in one setting?
Do they do most of their computer use studying in their room?
Do they have an office?
Or are they using a laptop and (inaudible) things like ambient noise and acoustics that have an effect on the device that they're using.
The other thing is, we want to know what kinds of (inaudible) a person has.
So in a case like with an MIT student, you guys are generally pretty savvy technology users but we're also thinking about people who may not be as quick to learn new technologies.
In other words, there could be customer whose are children or who are people with cognitive disabilities.
Or who might have more severe physical disabilities where they have family or support people or personal care attendants to assist them.
And whether or not those folks need to be trained to a certain degree in using the technology so that the person is not just doing it themselves but they might need assistance with it.
So once we have that conversation with somebody, we sort of ‑‑ we might have software or some other technology in ATIC already that might meet the person's need and we might sit down with them and give a quick demonstration for them to try it out and see if it (inaudible).
If that works, great.
But very often we might have to go out and sort of hunt around to find something that meets the person's needs.
So luckily there's a lot of technologies out there that have download copies you can down load, test them out and see what's helpful, and very often Mary and I do that, and we do it in conjunction with student consultants who work in the lab, in ATIC.
And we try to take into account the customers' preferences and needs.
So we try to make sure it's got the feature stuff that they need, we also have the customer either try it out themselves, they might download the copy on their own computer or they might come back to ATIC and I'll download it and we'll give them a demo so they can try it out themselves.
If it's useful for them then they can purchase it or in the case of employee, their department might purchase it for some students we might make it available in ATIC for the student to use.
And then we can kind of see how well it works for them.
In some cases, like certain disabilities including, progressive, a person might have a progressive eye condition, they might have multiple sclerosis or Parkinson's disease, people whose environments need changes at times depending on their symptoms.
So they might even come back after a certain period of time and need something different.
Whatever worked before for a certain number of months or years, suddenly isn't.
And that's not an unusual thing to have happen.
So in ATIC, our challenge is ‑‑ challenge versus to do a lot with science technology engineering math material.
So one of the things that I spend a lot of my time on is for any of our students who have reading disabilities at MIT, that could be people with vision problems, blindness or dyslexia or other reading visual processing issues, if they are determined to meet their textbooks and readings in alternative formats, I try to locate that information for them.
And very often there's a lot of ways for us to get textbooks in alternative formats.
Either audio or in what's called daisy format, daisy is a digital accessible (inaudible) system, standard for digital books.
Some of which are audio only, some which are text and audio.
So you can listen and have it read out loud at the same time.
And one of the big challenges is anything that's text is easy, it's easy to get to work with the Assistive Technologies.
So something like a screen reader (inaudible) pretty commonly used screen reader, can read text outloud so it can (inaudible) computer screen and read it outloud.
But if it's a problem set, if it's math notation, if it's a biology diagram, if it is a table, it's not well coded the screen reading can't make heads or tails of those things.
So that means the student isn't getting all the information in the book that the book is trying to impart and that's very important to their learning.
So we work with our students pretty much on a one to one basis if they need something in a ‑‑ that is non‑textural, what is best way to present that to them.
For instance (inaudible) passed around that gigantic book.
For some our students with low vision if we blow things up they can see it, if we magnify it enough it might be usable for that student.
And then for other students we have to go back at it a very different way.
So the middle bunch of bullets there, standard Assistive Technologies meets standard disabilities types.
This is really quite true.
Certainly been guilty myself over the years of saying okay you're fine (inaudible) JAWS.
Or don't you read Braille?
Or things like that.
Where sometimes it's easy to make assumptions about someone with a certain disability as to what their skill set is, what their preference is and you find out things are different as you go along and get to know them better.
So sometimes we have to to work with everybody's individual preferences or the way they like to work and sort of build on that as much as we can.
So I don't know if you have had any lectures about abandonment of Assistive Technologies, it's been discussed a little bit.
That's not unusual.
So I don't even know what the rates are these days.
I know there's been a lot of research into that but it's very high.
But some of the reasons why the amount of time it takes to learn the technology, whether the support is there.
So if you are a person using (inaudible) communication device because you can't speak and you live in South Dakota in a small town and there isn't anybody else for another 100‑miles who uses the same device, that could be a problem.
And hopefully try to find people around you try to find communities of support, whether they're online or whether they're geographically near you.
But if those are hard to find (inaudible) questions and problems (inaudible).
If the usability of the device or the software is not good, then you're just going to get frustrated with it and want to give up on it.
So some of it may not even have to do with a specific disability, it might just be the user interface or something like that.
It's just too complex to negotiate or to (inaudible).
And then as I'm sure is discussed, certain assistive technologies are very expensive, they can become obsolete very quickly.
If there isn't room built in for upgrading and upgrading everything sometimes, so if you have a piece of software and lap top and you're running windows 7 and they come out with a new piece of software that only runs on windows 8, you might be using that old set up for quite some time and it's not at all unusual to encounter users of assistive technology who are using really old machines with really old operating systems using a version of assistive technology stuck in versions back.
And of course, it's harder and harder to get support for those sorts of things if you're using old stuff.
Because you don't have somebody there who can help you solve the problems.
(inaudible) 
>> Sometimes (inaudible).
And here is an example, this is a little bit of a case study.
So in the past year we have (inaudible) and biology who needed access to some key diagrams and visuals from his textbooks.
The diagrams and visuals were extremely visually complex.
They were very ‑‑ they weren't (inaudible) but they used color and a lot of other devices to denote the complexity of some of the diagrams and those things don't always translate well either into like an enlarged blown up black and white diagram or in the case of this student who is almost totally blind, into Braille
So we were trying to figure out a way to make these diagrams available to the student and we did some research and we talked to colleagues, people at other universities who worked in this field, and we decided we were going to buy a device called an (inaudible), which is a tablet that comes with software that allows you to create Braille diagrams an overlay the Braille diagram on the tablet and add audio descriptions to the diagram itself.
So you can overlay the diagram and then you sort of load the software that contain it is audio information.
So then the student can use the tablet to move around tactiling with his fingers and listen and press on different parts of the tablet to get the audio information, about what's in the diagram.
So this was we had to set up a whole process to make this happen.
What we did is hired a student worker who learned how to create the diagram so he had to take what were visually complex diagrams ‑‑ (overlapping speakers)
>> Samples of what the visual diagram looks like and what the Braille diagram attached to it came out to be.
So you can get a sense.
 
>> (inaudible).

>> So it took a lot of ‑‑ it took a lot of work because the people who know about assistive technology but we're not the people that know biology and physics so we had to get the departments involved, we had to get grad students or TAs in these classes to come and work with our student worker who was creating the diagrams.
So he could create basic diagrams and even before he would emboss them on a Braille printer to create (inaudible) stuff like that he had to create a basic (inaudible) diagram first.
And then the grad student in biology and physics would critique and give feedback so he could then make it more accurate.
So our student worker did this, spent about three months creating a series of about 30 diagrams overall.
And then we had in the fall of last year our student came back from summer vacation and found that the ‑‑ we trained them how to use the tactile audio tablet so he can put the diagrams on them and he showed his readers who worked with him how to do it but he didn't find this useful, he found these extremely confusing to negotiate.
There could be a lot of reasons including the student's own preferences.
We didn't have a chance to test because he was away for the summer but some had to do with proximity of a lot of bumpy lines.
In other words, we can create really cool tactile images and the text can change so there can be different types of textures that changes and they can denote different parts of the diagram but even with large Braille paper like that, I don't think it was differentiated enough for the students to really get be able to figure out what it all meant.
And then so ‑‑ so the student continued on in the class, he didn't use these diagrams.
What he did find helpful, strangely ‑‑ ‑‑ very well ‑‑ drawing tablet that uses a stylus and plastic paper.
He creates a (inaudible) line that someone can feel and the students ‑‑ the students readers would pretty much just try to isolate and maybe create a small hand‑drawn image, one piece of something for him to feel like they were trying to get the concept across to him and then they move on to (inaudible).
And ultimately that's what he found useful.
So here is a case where really cool assistive technology (inaudible).
So that's just an example of ‑‑ and you can see some of that in the handouts that are going around.
Something we tried.
So it was a little frustrating because we spent a lot of time on it and thought we did something really cool but what we were hoping is it would be cool for some other student that comes along because these diagrams probably not change dramatically, hopefully in the next year.
Now I'll turn it back to Mary who will talk about some of the more Assistive Technologies that (inaudible).
 
>> So the next few slides I put in a little bit more for your reference.
I don't really want the verbalize everything on them but this particular slide shows, these really are the most commonly used Assistive Technologies we help people with at MIT so I thought you might want to know what those were.
We do a lot with reading, applications, software and devices.
Cathy mentioned the daisy readers and we bought an ipad which has a very ‑‑ has a daisy reader on it that is a very easy way to demonstrate how daisy works so we can look at that.
But I wanted to make sure we have time for questions and ask if you have particular questions about particular technologies that are up on this slide.
And also leave time to talk about the cart presentation which is happening live right now.
CART is provided, I don't know if you noticed in any other classes, it is provided quite commonly at MIT, in many classroom settings for students.
However, primarily in academic classes they are using live captionists.
And we have set up this passage to remote caption.
The difference literally being the live sessions, the captionist is sitting in the room whereas this remote transcriptionist is sitting in Florida.
We found out earlier.
So why don't I ‑‑ does anyone have any questions for the the CART provider while we have the CART provider's attention?
 
>> What kind of keyboard are you using, is it a standard keyboard?

>> I am using a Stenograph machine.
Stenography machine.
Similar to what a court reporter uses.

>> We have a question:  What is a stenography machine?

>> It is a little machine we write steno with, very similar to what the court reporter uses in the courtroom.
24 keys.

>> I have a question for the CART person.
One of the things I was asked was to provide material to the writer ahead of time so that he or she could familiarize themselves with the terminology that might be used.
So I was wondering when you do that, what do you do?
Can you code short cuts or other similar things to help you?

>> Yes, absolutely.
I make a job dictionary for each particular job, and put in the language that I don't already have in my main dictionary.
I also do make short cuts for very technical or difficult words, it makes my life a lot easier.
 
>> I have a question.
How do you represent ambiguities in your interpretation of a speaker?
Do you just enterpoe late them what you think was said or do you make it clear there was some ambiguity to your ‑‑ in your interpretation?

>> Sometimes if I am not understanding what is being said I use a parenthetical that says in‑‑ INDISCERNIBLE.
(indiscernible).
 
>> You got a few INDISCERNABLES, Cathy.

>> What does an hour of CART time cost?

>> I'm not sure I'm allowed to answer that.
 
>> I don't know if Candice -- it's negotiated for the provider, for MIT it's $105 an hour as an educational ‑‑
>> Live?
(overlapping speakers) 
>> It's almost double (inaudible).

>> I have a question.
So speaking is obviously a lot faster than typing words so how do you manage to remember word for word exactly what's being said?
In transcribing this ‑‑ the dialogue?
let me see how to answer this one.
I don't actually remember what is being said, it goes in the ears, and straight out to my hands before I really think about it.
 
>> Interesting.
 
>> Thank you.
As a side note, I at times I have written speeds above 400 words a minute.
 
>> Do your hands ever hurt?

>> Yes, sometimes after a very long day of writing they definitely hurt, as well as my neck and arms.
That doesn't happen too often though.
 
>> How much do you have to train to do something like this?

>> It varies.
I went to a court reporting school ‑‑ a court reporting school and it took me approximately three years to finish.
It becomes difficult to write what I'm thinking myself.
This is new to me today answering questions and writing so I'm making a few mistakes.
But it took me three years to train to become a court reporter and then I retrained approximately 10 years ago to become a captioner and that took me about a year and a half.
 
>> Thank you so much for your flexibility in answering our questions.

>> We appreciate it.
Thank you.
 
>> You're welcome.
This was fun.
>> As hand‑outs are passed around which lists pretty much all the ‑‑ that lists pretty much all the Assistive Technologies that we have in ATIC.
We brought a sampling of things for you to look at and play with but I just wanted to make sure that you all know if there's anything on that list that you're interested in seeing in more depth, feel free to reach out to Cathy or I and we can set up a time to show you what we have.
Last year in this class we let students borrow some things to use.
So we want to be a resource to you if there is something that we happen to have that might be helpful for you.
Just to even look at to see how it works.
So I just want to make sure (inaudible) before we run out time.

>> To paralyze that process would you (overlapping speakers)
>> And pass it through the class room and round Robin them all around?

>> Yes.
Absolutely.
Sure.
 
>> This is a iPad app that is put out by book share which is a book daisy reader provider.
Pre‑loaded (inaudible) on here.
You might want to turn the volume down a little while passing this around.
But it demonstrates what Cathy was talking about, this is a text daisy book so you can do multiple things.
You can read it in large print without audio, you can read it with large print and audio.
You can just listen.
And not worry about the reading visually.
You can do all three together, any combination you want, the settings here.

>> And you can choose colors.

>> Thank you.
(inaudible) 
>> So these are two one‑handed key boards.
So if for some reason you can only use one hand to do your typing, this one is called the back keyboard, and this is a seven key, what's called corded keyboard.
So similar to what Candice the captioner is using but as far as hitting multiple keys at once to get your work done.
You can do everything on a normal keyboard with this keyboard but you have to learn all the key combinations.
There's actually a map that goes with it so this has a pretty high learning curve, but for some people it is much more efficient as far as finger and hand movement to be able to do this instead of trying to travel with one hand back and forth across a conventional keyboard.
So I'll pass that around.
Then this is another example of a one‑handed keyboard.
This looks a little less threatening, it's called a frog pad and pretty much what you do is you use one hand, obviously you done have to move your hand back and forth because it's only about 5 by 3 rows.
And what you wind up doing is you change modes, so there's different color keys on the bottom, green and orange, and there are different associated key functions depending on what mode you're in in order to make this keyboard work.
So we often will show these to people who might only have the use of one hand either temporarily or long term, and for a lot of people they look at that and say there's just no way.
There's just no way I'm going to use it or they might try and find it difficult to use.
So what do they end up with?
We might show them a really small keyboard.
So this is just a conventional keyboard that you see at a lot of retail outlets, in other words, it's just a keyboard that's meant to fit in a small space, the keys are smaller and closer together and very often people will opt for something like this instead.
Their hand still travels but not as far.

>> So on the front, (inaudible) the left third, middle third and right third or something like that, standard keyboard?
You can translate your hand left and right without having to actually move your own hand?

>> Yes.
I think there's a left handed frog and a right handed frog pad.

>> Yes.
You can buy them, either primarily right or left and then they map to what you expect.

>> Same is true for the back keyboard.

>> Imagine doing the mode switch is almost automatically in software because if you're typing away, it's going to be GOBBLEDEGOOK opt right section of the keyboard so the software can figure out what you need and switch around most of the time.

>> You have to buy a different keyboard if you're left handed or right handd?
>> That's correct.

>> That's the left ‑‑ is it ‑‑
>> That's a left hand.
(overlapping speakers)
>> Yeah.
And the right handed one is the mirror image of that.
 
>> So this is (inaudible) pass around.

(off mic)

>> Yeah.
This is a BIGtrack ball, so for someone who can really only do like gross motor movements and not fine motor movements this is a great way to control the pointer on the mouse.
So you can use different parts of your hand or your fingers to move it and it's got big buttons to activate it.
So this is very often used for kids who have disabilities, you can see it in a lot of special Ed classes but you might also see it with someone who has Parkinson's disease or some visible disability that makes it hard to do tiny hand and finger movements.

>> (inaudible).

>> Yes.

>> They do (inaudible) large button.

>> Yes, exactly.
Microsoft used to make something not unlike this.
But not quite as gigantic.

>> (inaudible) text ‑‑ 
>> This is a mouse that you operate with your feet.
So there's a foot pedal for moving the cursor and then there's this platform for pressing different combinations of the mouse buttons.
It has been used by some students.
We always give it out with a word of warning, it can cause tendonitis in your ankles so we don't long term use of this.

>> What does that cost?

>> About $200?

>> See if the prices are on ‑‑ can you show the tablet, device also please?

>> Yes, absolutely.
 
>> The (inaudible).

>> I didn't bring that with us.

>> Oh.

>> The Braille stylus?
We didn't bring the stylus.

>> We didn't.
So this is like the ‑‑ not the world's oldest but this is an old and heavy but still useful piece of Braille creation technology called the Perkins Brailer and it was made in the Perkins school for the blind in water town next to Cambridge.
It's very heavy but it has a handle.
It's completely mechanical so you pretty much roll in your paper and you can start Brailling and page goes up as you Braille.
So you can feel what you have been typing and then do carriage returns and so forth.
Then the six Braille are here and space in the middle.
And it's even got a little ring ding thing so you know you're at the end of the line so you're not going to like type into space.
So this thing costs like 7 or $800 which is a lot of money, it's not a great thing to carry around with you.
If you're going to class, but it is incredibly useful for creating Braille at home or at your job or wherever you need to do it.
So this is a case where it's an old technology but a reliable one.
And you're welcome to play with it, you can type on it, if you want to pass it around.
 
>> We have reached 1:55.

>> Okay.

>> We should let them know otherwise if you want a few more minutes for questions, that would be great.

>> This is beginning ‑‑ needing to be to be powered on, this is a hand held magnifier that magnifies text to the screen.
It's a little (inaudible) because the screen angles up, most of them are flat, requiring the user to streak down and (inaudible) plug it in and you can come up and look at it.
Does anyone have any questions before you have to run?
 
>> I have a question.
I don't know if any of you guys, I'm a new coke clear implant user so technically deaf but I can her you, so if any of you guys are interested in technology related the that or learning about my experiences I have a laundry list of things, I would love for one of you to create for me so feel free to catch me later on and I would love to chat with you.
 
>> We'll certainly follow‑up with you.

>> Okay.
 
>> Yes.
 
(off mic)
 
>> Have to be the price ‑‑
>> Some we make available in ATIC for the students to use.
Some students can get some of these Assistive Technologies through the state rehab agencies and then there are times where MIT might provide the technology for the student to use.
So it used to be in the old days assistive technology was ad a desktop computer and you had computer lab but as everyone has lap tops these days that whole way of working is changing quite a bit.
So we're trying to get with the times as well and make the software more available for students to use.
on the go.
 
>> We work with each student to make sure they get what they need.
Some students come with what they need and ask for it, others need it and we provide it for them.
 
>> Yes.

>> Yes.
You have seen firsthand quite a bit about this constant struggle between either adapting assisting technology not particularly meant to be assistive versus purpose driven devices that run the risk of becoming obsolete.
Do you think that's going to be a constant struggle forever or do you see us converging on the stream devices that have accessibility built into them?

>> There definitely is a trend for converging more mainstream devices.
But that has limits.
So I think it's a mixed answer.

>> It's a mixed ‑‑ (overlapping speakers)
>> Always sort of be a constant struggle. 
>> I think it's so nice to see things like iPhones where someone can use voice over and they're using the same device as their friend because one thing that was always an issue with former customers I have had was they either had some big clunky device but no one else they knew used anything like it so they couldn't get help from anyone else but also they felt I think a big stuck out a little bit more because of that.
And then as we were talking about the price and the availability of support is a big issue.
So I think it's going to be a mix of both.
 
>> Mary?
Cathy?
Barbara?
Candice?
Thank you so much for being with us today.
This was fantastic.

>> Thank you.

>> You're welcome.

[Applause]
 
>> Our emails are on the paper hand‑outs and will be on the course website if you want to send a question.