This week, Serotek’s iBlink Radio app for the iPhone and iPod Touch is in the “Featured apps” section of the iTunes Store. On the surface, this may appear to be a nice feather in Serotek’s cap, but the implications go far beyond company recognition. This listing recognizes the blind community as a worthy market as well as putting Serotek on display as a contributor of high quality software and content. This is a first. The first time ever an application for blind people has been offered to the world at large, by a major marketing organization, without qualification or apology. It’s just there as part of the best of the best applications Apple has highlighted for its iPhone and iPod users.
We created this application and placed it on the iTunes store, free of charge, for a number of reasons. First and foremost it is great content – a complete array of entertainment and information, all created by and for the blind and low vision community. This is everything a blind person needs to know in one place, quick and easy, accessible anywhere. This is my personal app of choice.
Second, this is a valuable resource for sighted people if they or someone in their family is losing their sight. It’s a time when it feels as if the whole world is ending. But this one application can be salvation. With it the person can have access to everything they need to know. It used to be considered a tragedy to lose your sight. But today, it is just an inconvenience. With the power of full accessibility any one can live a rich and rewarding independent life even as their eyesight fades to black. iBlink leads a newly blind person to all the information he or she needs and puts them in touch with what they need to know to survive and thrive.
Third, the blind community is full of people with an astounding and diverse array of talents and skills. These abilities are worthy of being noticed and appreciated by everyone. There are a lot of cool dudes out there who happen to be blind and who create some amazing information and entertainment. iBlink brings together the best of the best. A sighted person who wants to experience the world from a blind perspective, can do it on iBlink.
For as long as I remember, our community has been viewed as separate, different, and less capable by the businesses that produce high tech products. A few producers and marketers have seen us as perhaps worthy of separate but equal access to the things that everyone else takes for granted. Even fewer have been willing to provide full accessibility, but only if providing that accessibility doesn’t inconvenience anyone else. Unfortunately large parts of society, including many within the blind community, believe the blind population needs to depend on the kindness and generosity of the government and our sighted counterparts to accomplish the most basic of tasks. They just assume that social networking, the Internet and all the latest hi-tech gadgets are and always will be beyond our grasp. But Apple, and a growing number of followers, recognized that blind people are part of the market. They recognized that including us within their market scope is good business and builds their bottom line.
Apple has opened a whole new take on accessibility with products like the Mac, iPhone, iPod, and soon the iPad; each product is completely accessible out of the box and with all the same functionality our sighted counterparts enjoy. We owe it to ourselves to exploit these mainstream platforms and show the world just how smart Apple is. This week, our community, with its diverse array of talents, ideas and skills, is being showcased right alongside the talents, ideas and skills of the world at large. And you know what? It feels right. This is what accessibility is all about. This is what Serotek has been campaigning for since the company was founded. Blind and low vision folks being treated like ordinary people. It doesn’t get better than that.
Showing posts with label Baby Boomers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Baby Boomers. Show all posts
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Thursday, May 15, 2008
An Open Letter To Independent Living Adult Blind Professionals
Independent Living Adult Blind (ILAB) service organizations face a unique challenge as baby boomers become seniors and many experience vision loss. The impact of a rapid loss of vision can be devastating. In very short order, a person loses every point of reference. They feel cut off, isolated, disoriented, and afraid. A once-friendly world is suddenly an alien place with everything that was once familiar, now strange and threatening.
We who are blind know that with time, a person can find a new equilibrium – well-oriented and secure. Millions of blind people live independently and there is no inherent reason why a newly blind senior can’t recapture an independent lifestyle. But it requires the help of caring and skilled organizations and individuals to make that transition.
ILAB’s job is to be a lifeline, offering support in re-achieving independence and helping newly blind seniors find a path to:
- Orientation
- Mobility
- Safety
- Home and personal management skills such as identifying money, cooking, cleaning, and labeling foods and medications
- Employment skills such as typing and computer use
- Quality of life skills including talking books, Braille, writing guides
- Self-actuating skills such as assertive communications, goal setting and coping
The duty of an ILAB organization is to help individuals discover a way to find new reference points, reconnect to people, relearn basic living skills, and roll back the fear.
Accessible computers, the Internet, and a whole raft of digital devices and services can be important tools for making that path smoother and with fewer obstacles. That is only true, however, if the tools themselves are not a challenge beyond the newly blind person’s ability. Fortunately, the baby boomers experiencing age-related vision loss are more computer savvy than seniors were just a few years ago. A majority have used computers in some fashion either at work or at home before experiencing vision loss, and while they are not computer geeks by any stretch of the imagination, neither are they completely intimidated. The number of computer savvy individuals will continue to grow among the senior population as each succeeding wave is more attuned to the digital lifestyle than the preceding group.
When Serotek created the first accessible digital lifestyle products back in 2001, we were focused on the needs of the newly blind who were even less sophisticated than the baby boomers. We realized that accessible meant more than simply reading a screen or a document. Accessible meant being usable by anyone, no matter how much or how little computer background they might have had. We believed then and now that accessible means accessible to anyone, anywhere. It is that belief, and how we put it into practice, that makes Serotek the perfect partner for ILAB services.
Living Better Digitally
While it is intuitively obvious that digital technology is essential to vocational rehabilitation, it may not be so obvious that the computer, the Internet, and the wide variety of digital tools are even more important to independent living. Consider the challenges listed below:
Orientation - or where am I? Cell phone global positioning will become widely available within the next few months. That means a blind person can get step by step instructions on how to get from here to there, wherever they are on the planet.
Mobility – or how do I get where I need to go? Mobility is always an enormous challenge for the newly blind, but the accessible Internet can greatly reduce the need to travel. With access to the Internet, a person can shop from home, work from home, attend classes from home, and enjoy a wide range of entertainment without ever setting foot outside the door. That takes a lot of pressure off the mobility challenge and makes it much easier to deal with the occasions when staying home isn’t an option.
Safety – When you lose your sense of where you are, the world is a frightening place. Again, the Internet allows a person to deal with challenges of being newly blind, while staying in the relative safety of his or her own home until he or she gains the confidence to become more mobile.
Home and personal management – Shopping, banking, access to medical information, managing personal finances, accessing home maintenance services, recipes and more are all available via the Internet and by using a computer.
Employment – Work from home using voice over Internet protocol and the computer. The computer and Internet make it possible to work anywhere in the world and never leave your home.
Quality of life – Arts, entertainment, social interaction – all available via the broadband connection including talking books, described videos, infinite radio channels, and more. Connect to family via e-mail and old and new friends via an ever growing variety of social networking sites.
Self-actuating skills – It is easier to be assertive online than in person.
The truth is, our society is completely connected today using the Internet, cell phones, and the growing Wi-Fi network. The majority of life experiences are available regardless of whether or not a person is sighted. The Internet, the computer, and the many other digital devices are great leveling tools. Across a digital connection, everyone is the same regardless of the quality of their vision, provided they have a fully accessible connection.
Unfortunately, however, accessibility has not been an easy thing in the past. The tools offered by traditional adaptive technology vendors have been expensive and complex. A person might require 30 or more hours of class room training to become competent on a traditional screen reader and even after 30 hours, not everyone succeeds. License fees for accessibility software have been high and bundled with a string of conditions that assure the vendor a steady revenue stream. While the tools are adequate for most vocational rehab applications they often fall far short when being used to surf the Internet and enjoy the wide variety of products, information, services and entertainment available on the web. Many Web sites have been designed with little regard for screen reader requirements and are thus totally inaccessible to traditional screen readers.
Serotek made the accessible user interface its design priority. Our System Access product family has won accessibility awards from the MS Foundation and the American Foundation for the Blind. Typically a user can be trained and fully functional using System Access with about two hours of instruction. Many computer savvy users can function with System Access with no training, just relying on its extensive Help menu as necessary. We do recommend that users take advantage of training when it’s available. The more familiar the user is with the computer and the Internet, the easier it is for them to use System Access because in general System Access uses the same command structures they are used to, without layering on special “screen reader” commands.
Serotek has also made accessibility completely mobile. System Access Mobile can be loaded on a thumb drive and plugged into any computer, making it instantly accessible. If a computer is connected to the Internet, System Access To Go (SAToGo) is available at no charge to be instantly downloaded and used while the computer is connected to the Internet. SAToGo is made available to anyone, anytime at no cost through The AIR Foundation, which believes that “accessibility is a right.”
When cost is a major issue, ILAB organizations can train the newly blind using SAToGo. There are good reasons, however, for the user to invest the small amount necessary to have the full complement of Serotek Products. We make available System Access Mobile for two computers, NeoSpeech, and the System Access Mobile Network for a monthly service charge of $24.95, with a four-year commitment. That includes all software updates and maintenance. The user can connect a work and home computer using System Access Mobile; and load System Access on a thumb drive to plug into any computer anytime. Access to the System Access Mobile Network (SAMNet) gives the user e-mail, a powerful search engine, access to the largest assembled collection of accessible content anywhere on the Web including news, sports, Internet radio, described video and more; accessible shopping, blogs, forums, etc. SAMNet is a key to independent living. The online community delivers immediate connection to family and friends via e-mail; it connects the newly blind person to the world via news and entertainment channels; the newly blind individual is welcomed into a caring community of others who are happy to share experience and advice over forums and chat groups. SAMNet provides full access to online shopping using, for example, the Amazon.com family of shopping services providing everything from groceries to electronics and other gifts – and they still do audio books. The SAMNet community uses a Serotek tool, called C-SAW, to make Internet sites more accessible. Every SAMNet user automatically benefits from the improved accessibility when they connect to any of the thousands of C-SAW improved sites. Being online gives users access to a growing supply of online applications for business and personal use. We have recently made Quicken Online accessible for users to manage their personal finances.
Reaching and Teaching
One of the biggest challenges for ILAB organizations is simply reaching the newly blind seniors and accommodating the ever increasing numbers. Serotek is the only adaptive technology company that seems to have given any consideration to the huge workload that these baby boomers represent and the limited resources ILAB organizations have to deal with them.
Our solution, being used in state organizations successfully, is called Remote Incident Manager (RIM). RIM is a fully-accessible distant learning and technical support tool that lets the trainer or technician share the student’s computer desktop over the Internet. The trainer can make technical adjustments if the student is having difficulty with his or her machine. The trainer can download software or call it up from the student’s machine and work directly with the student on the application being trained, whatever it is. This one-on-one training is very powerful and students grasp much more quickly than they do in a classroom setting. Using the phone or Voice over Internet protocol, the trainer and student have a full hands-on learning experience and neither needs to travel to make it happen. This saves precious travel time and cost and multiplies the number of successful training sessions a trainer can have per day. Trainers and students both claim that when using RIM, they are enjoying at least a three-to-one advantage with one hour of RIM time being worth at least three hours of class room time. RIM can be used to train conventional screen readers, but when it’s used to train the System Access accessibility anywhere tools, the time from start to full independent living is shortened by an order of magnitude. The $1,000 annual license pays for itself several times over.
It’s All About Independence
When a person loses his or her eyesight to macular degeneration or any of the several age-related conditions, their world crashes. To be newly blind is to be alone and afraid. There is a huge gulf between how life was and how it seems now and independence seems like an unreachable goal. Fortunately, for many, there are ILAB organizations that are ready and willing to reach across that gulf and bring the newly blind into a new dimension of independent living. The digital lifestyle is a big part of the transition and Serotek Corporation has not only made the digital lifestyle accessible, it has delivered the tools to help trainers and students bridge the gulf more quickly.
For us, the reward is that newly blind baby boomer’s independence. An independent blind person is a potential customer for other accessible digital lifestyle products and services and that’s where we see our future. Independently living blind people bring their appetites for all the exciting digital lifestyle tools and toys that their sighted peers enjoy and Serotek intends to be the leader in making these products and services accessible.
Losing one’s sight is life changing, but thanks to ILAB organizations and companies like Serotek that support them, it need not be the end of the world. It can be the beginning of a whole new, rewarding and productive life.
Thursday, May 8, 2008
Serving More People, Better, And For Less
“The baby boomers are coming! The baby boomers are coming!” You can hear the cry ringing out in agencies and organizations that work with blind and low vision people throughout the country. And, just when they need more money and resources to deal with the influx of newly blind seniors, the Federal and state governments, feeling the crunch of a poor economy and a raging Federal deficit, are scaling back. Our brave, blind services militia is standing exposed, running out of ammunition, and seeing the hoard descending upon them. Wise people know that if this first line of defense fails and cannot contain the influx of newly blind seniors helping the majority of them to live independently with a high quality of life, society will feel the impact several times over with Medicare and Medicaid costs soaring and a huge demand society cannot fill for specialized housing, transportation, personal attendants, and more.
You might think that the adaptive technology industry and the vendors who have, for years, made a healthy profit selling traditional screen readers, hardware, and services to this community, would now step up to the plate and help the home team meet the challenge. But that doesn’t seem to be the case. So far it looks as if traditional screen reader vendors will simply sit back and profiteer with little concern for the social impact of failure.
Guerrilla Tactics
When conventional forces cannot prevail the only option is to use guerrilla tactics. Fortunately guerrilla tactics are what Serotek knows best. And we’ve created the tools our blind services militia can use to reach out to more people, provide them with an almost instant ability to live independently, and do it even as budgets are being squeezed.
First, Serotek has given the home team an unlimited supply of free accessibility software. That’s right. System Access To Go (SAToGo) is Serotek’s award-winning access tool available at no charge to anyone connected to the Internet. Compare that to licenses costing $1,000 or more from traditional vendors. How many more customers can you serve on your budget? As many as you can introduce to SAToGo – that’s how many. Your organization doesn’t need to spend scarce resources buying software and maintenance licenses for your clientele.
Not everyone will want to use an Internet-based accessibility tool For those who want the software resident on their machine and want the ability to interact between their home and work computers you can point them to Serotek’s software as a service offering (SAS). For less than $25 per month they can have it all: System Access Mobile, NEO speech, and four years of System Access Mobile Network. This is a cost within almost anyone’s budget (less than a cup of coffee per day).
Even with free software, though, your agencies resources will be taxed to the max. How can you physically serve the number of people who will be begging for help in the coming decade? The answer is Remote Incident Manager (RIM). RIM is Serotek’s powerful distance learning tool. Your trainers can work from the office or from home directly contacting clients at home. RIM allows the trainer and client to share the client’s “desktop.” The trainer can adjust the client’s computer, if necessary and then either using a separate voice line or Voice over Internet Protocol, teach the application in a hands-on fashion. Everything the client sees, the trainer sees. The trainer can intervene as necessary, point out errors, and gently steer the client to right process. Any application can be trained remotely including those overweight, overpriced conventional screen readers that some people insist they need.
Does it work? Joe Devine said, “In my experience, the one hour a week [remote] session was a more effective and efficient use of the instructor’s time. I was able to progress much more rapidly than in the three hour classroom session. My proficiency has greatly improved. I am happy and relieved to have improved enough to be functional on my computer.”
How about System Access? Can it handle real screen reader duties? Larry Klug of Clovernook in Cincinnati reports: “I am proud to announce that my consumer Jim Keller, who uses System Access, received the Blind Employee of the Year award last Friday at the annual Clovernook Center for the Blind Annual Banquet.”
And we just heard from a user who walked into a job interview at a company where the systems were not accessible. She accessed SAToGo, demonstrated that she could do the work, and got the job.
The fact is that thousands of users are now looking to System Access and System Access to Go for at least some of their accessibility needs. Major institutions, like Ohio State University, are making their entire network accessible using Serotek’s enterprise solutions.
If you are sitting in a state blind services organization or a vocational rehabilitation training facility and wondering how you are going to survive this imminent crush of baby boomer demand, look no further. The Serotek team is on your side with solutions that work, that are far less costly, and that allow you to do so much more with the precious resources you have.
You see, at Serotek we view the challenge differently. Conventional AT players see accessibility as their only opportunity to make money from blind folks and the current government subsidized software approach works just fine for them. But Serotek sees the opportunity as selling fun, digital lifestyle products to people who already have accessibility. And that means anything we can do to increase the number of people with accessibility makes our opportunity grow. You may be groaning when you see the hoard of newly blind seniors on your doorstep. We’re licking our chops. As soon as we can help you get these folks online, we can reach out and sell them devices that will improve their quality of life ten-fold. Your success is our opportunity.
And together we can make it happen.
You might think that the adaptive technology industry and the vendors who have, for years, made a healthy profit selling traditional screen readers, hardware, and services to this community, would now step up to the plate and help the home team meet the challenge. But that doesn’t seem to be the case. So far it looks as if traditional screen reader vendors will simply sit back and profiteer with little concern for the social impact of failure.
Guerrilla Tactics
When conventional forces cannot prevail the only option is to use guerrilla tactics. Fortunately guerrilla tactics are what Serotek knows best. And we’ve created the tools our blind services militia can use to reach out to more people, provide them with an almost instant ability to live independently, and do it even as budgets are being squeezed.
First, Serotek has given the home team an unlimited supply of free accessibility software. That’s right. System Access To Go (SAToGo) is Serotek’s award-winning access tool available at no charge to anyone connected to the Internet. Compare that to licenses costing $1,000 or more from traditional vendors. How many more customers can you serve on your budget? As many as you can introduce to SAToGo – that’s how many. Your organization doesn’t need to spend scarce resources buying software and maintenance licenses for your clientele.
Not everyone will want to use an Internet-based accessibility tool For those who want the software resident on their machine and want the ability to interact between their home and work computers you can point them to Serotek’s software as a service offering (SAS). For less than $25 per month they can have it all: System Access Mobile, NEO speech, and four years of System Access Mobile Network. This is a cost within almost anyone’s budget (less than a cup of coffee per day).
Even with free software, though, your agencies resources will be taxed to the max. How can you physically serve the number of people who will be begging for help in the coming decade? The answer is Remote Incident Manager (RIM). RIM is Serotek’s powerful distance learning tool. Your trainers can work from the office or from home directly contacting clients at home. RIM allows the trainer and client to share the client’s “desktop.” The trainer can adjust the client’s computer, if necessary and then either using a separate voice line or Voice over Internet Protocol, teach the application in a hands-on fashion. Everything the client sees, the trainer sees. The trainer can intervene as necessary, point out errors, and gently steer the client to right process. Any application can be trained remotely including those overweight, overpriced conventional screen readers that some people insist they need.
Does it work? Joe Devine said, “In my experience, the one hour a week [remote] session was a more effective and efficient use of the instructor’s time. I was able to progress much more rapidly than in the three hour classroom session. My proficiency has greatly improved. I am happy and relieved to have improved enough to be functional on my computer.”
How about System Access? Can it handle real screen reader duties? Larry Klug of Clovernook in Cincinnati reports: “I am proud to announce that my consumer Jim Keller, who uses System Access, received the Blind Employee of the Year award last Friday at the annual Clovernook Center for the Blind Annual Banquet.”
And we just heard from a user who walked into a job interview at a company where the systems were not accessible. She accessed SAToGo, demonstrated that she could do the work, and got the job.
The fact is that thousands of users are now looking to System Access and System Access to Go for at least some of their accessibility needs. Major institutions, like Ohio State University, are making their entire network accessible using Serotek’s enterprise solutions.
If you are sitting in a state blind services organization or a vocational rehabilitation training facility and wondering how you are going to survive this imminent crush of baby boomer demand, look no further. The Serotek team is on your side with solutions that work, that are far less costly, and that allow you to do so much more with the precious resources you have.
You see, at Serotek we view the challenge differently. Conventional AT players see accessibility as their only opportunity to make money from blind folks and the current government subsidized software approach works just fine for them. But Serotek sees the opportunity as selling fun, digital lifestyle products to people who already have accessibility. And that means anything we can do to increase the number of people with accessibility makes our opportunity grow. You may be groaning when you see the hoard of newly blind seniors on your doorstep. We’re licking our chops. As soon as we can help you get these folks online, we can reach out and sell them devices that will improve their quality of life ten-fold. Your success is our opportunity.
And together we can make it happen.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Retooling for Baby Boomers: Helping Vocational Rehab Organizations Meet The Coming Surge in Demand
Retooling for Baby Boomers:
Helping Vocational Rehab Organizations
Meet The Coming Surge in Demand
There has always been a strong link between age and blindness. Numerous diseases and conditions we associate with aging that result in impairment or loss of vision. This year, the first of the baby boomers reach retirement age and what follows will likely be a rapidly increasing demand for rehabilitation services for the blind. This should not come as a surprise to anyone in the blind services field. This NCSAB conference is a direct recognition of the impending increase in demand.
If state agencies were limited to the tools of the past, the impending boom in demand would be a crisis. Traditional, one-size-fits-all screen readers are hugely expensive and notoriously difficult to train. While baby boomers have some computer literacy, they are still mostly neophytes when it comes to dealing with the technical awareness required by most screen readers. If they are newly blind and just beginning to learn the basics of independent living, the screen readers can be overwhelming. Yet, if they are to achieve independence and full communion with their families, they need to have access to the computer and the Internet. Digital access is fundamental to living independently and to attaining and enjoying a quality of life that compares to their lives before they lost their vision.
If state agencies could count on an enormous increase in funding, commensurate with the growth in demand, it might be possible to assemble reduced-functionality training programs using conventional screen readers. Increases in funding, however, are generally wishful thinking. Reality will likely be an increased workload and little in the way of additional resources.
Strange as it may seem, with its initial business plan in 2000, Serotek started out to address precisely this issue. The plan recognized both the challenge and the opportunity in the “graying of America.” Its fundamental strategy was to treat blind and low vision Americans and others throughout the world as customers rather than welfare recipients.
This was not a popular position because conventional wisdom in the investment community said that blind folks don’t have any money. If you want to sell them products, you have to get the government to pay. Over time, our original vision has proven true, but it hasn’t been easy.
We took this position for a number of reasons:
Conventional screen readers had a vast amount of capability but were packaged with a “one-size-fits-all” mentality. People come in all sorts of shapes, sizes and needs, and for most people, particularly elderly blind people, conventional screen readers are far too complex and difficult to master.
The complexity of conventional screen readers exists in part because they are built on a legacy of past investment. No one wants to reinvent the wheel. It’s easier, faster and cheaper to pretty up the old one. Best of all, by dressing up the existing model, it will still fit with all the old hardware and software. Unfortunately, it also means that the most current screen reading technology is still a generation or so behind the state of the art in mainstream software. Thus in addition to paying a huge price for accessibility, blind folks are forced to run on the previous generation’s operating system. Companies that make their software accessible are similarly hindered by having their corporate technology held back in order to remain compatible with current conventional accessibility tools.
There is a whole host of neat toys – digital candy if you will – that make life more fun. These PDAs, MP3 players, games and such are totally forgotten by the conventional accessibility industry. We like these toys and we know other blind people would like them too. This is particularly true of the newly-blind baby boomers who have been huge consumers of such digital lifestyle products.
In effect, there is an accessibility barrier that keeps the blind and low vision community at a disadvantage in the workplace and from enjoying the lifestyle advantages of the digital age.
There is another problem with the conventional screen reader technology. It is difficult to teach and depends on the network of vocational rehabilitation organizations to train people in its use. The training process is long and expensive both in dollars and in trainer time. Bringing a newly-blind, non-computer user to competence is no easy matter using any of the major conventional screen readers. Despite the dependent relationship between adaptive technology vendors and vocational rehabilitation personnel, the vendors have done precious little to make training easier and more consistently successful.
We took on this barrier from two perspectives. First, we created System Access to Go and made it available free of charge to anyone who wishes to use it. We did this in cooperation with The AIR Foundation, which promotes accessibility as a fundamental human right. For those who aren’t aware of the da Vinci-award-winning System Access, it is highly intuitive and easy to learn. Although we do not position it or market it as a vocational rehab tool, it handles most of the major off-the-shelf business applications like Microsoft Office and delivers a host of special capabilities. One such capability allows a user to access a home computer from the road and run it just as if he or she were sitting at the keyboard. System Access to Go, which just won the 2008 AFB Access Award, is a web-based version of System Access that can be used anytime a person is connected to the Internet, at no charge.
Our second program is called Remote Incident Manager (RIM) and it is a tool designed specifically for trainers and technicians. Using RIM, a vocational rehab trainer, working from her home or office, can conduct one-on-one training of a blind or low vision person with a computer and access to the Internet wherever they might be. The trainer can be on the trainee’s desktop sharing the same application and providing direct instruction, using voice over Internet protocol. He or she can help adjust and install new software on the trainee’s system and help the trainee work through applications in real time. The trainer can teach any application including conventional screen readers. The whole interactive process is fully accessible.
Serotek is basically changing the economics of blindness. The SAToGo accessibility tool meets one hundred percent of most people’s needs for accessibility – at least in their everyday lives. It’s available anywhere, costs nothing, and it is relatively easy to learn and use. The software includes a screen reader, braille access and text magnification. This is the perfect tool for newly blind baby boomers and for many others. Many of the people who use SAToGo may choose to purchase System Access Mobile and have an accessibility tool permanently installed on their home system and on their portable systems. Many would also enjoy the benefits of being part of the online community, System Access Mobile Network. Priced as a service, this costs the user less than $25 per month for everything. That’s well within most budgets. And for those who require state assistance for this payment, it is still far less expensive than any other accessibility solution.
Remote Incident Manager (RIM) is priced at $1,000 per seat. This software pays for itself many times over by saving commute time for clients in rural areas. It also allows vocational rehab trainers to reach and successfully train more people in a larger geographical area at less total cost. RIM eliminates the burden of travel – always one of the biggest barriers for the newly blind.
Combining the two products, System Access (including SAToGo) and RIM, makes it possible for a vocational rehab center to take on the added burden of newly-blind seniors and to provide them with the tools for independent living and a high quality of life. Equally important, the tools allow the vocational rehab center to spend less of its precious resources providing products to their clientele and to focus resources on delivering service.
The coming boom in demand for vocational rehab services is inevitable as baby boomers age. Serotek gives vocational rehab providers the tools to meet this surge and to continue delivering the high quality services that give newly blind seniors a path to independent living.
For more information on how Serotek’s award-winning products and services can enhance the way you interact with your consumers, please contact:
Ricky Enger
Serotek Corporation
http://www.serotek.com
(612) 246-4818 Ext. 104
Toll free: (866) 202-0520 Ext. 104
ricky.enger@serotek.com
Helping Vocational Rehab Organizations
Meet The Coming Surge in Demand
There has always been a strong link between age and blindness. Numerous diseases and conditions we associate with aging that result in impairment or loss of vision. This year, the first of the baby boomers reach retirement age and what follows will likely be a rapidly increasing demand for rehabilitation services for the blind. This should not come as a surprise to anyone in the blind services field. This NCSAB conference is a direct recognition of the impending increase in demand.
If state agencies were limited to the tools of the past, the impending boom in demand would be a crisis. Traditional, one-size-fits-all screen readers are hugely expensive and notoriously difficult to train. While baby boomers have some computer literacy, they are still mostly neophytes when it comes to dealing with the technical awareness required by most screen readers. If they are newly blind and just beginning to learn the basics of independent living, the screen readers can be overwhelming. Yet, if they are to achieve independence and full communion with their families, they need to have access to the computer and the Internet. Digital access is fundamental to living independently and to attaining and enjoying a quality of life that compares to their lives before they lost their vision.
If state agencies could count on an enormous increase in funding, commensurate with the growth in demand, it might be possible to assemble reduced-functionality training programs using conventional screen readers. Increases in funding, however, are generally wishful thinking. Reality will likely be an increased workload and little in the way of additional resources.
Strange as it may seem, with its initial business plan in 2000, Serotek started out to address precisely this issue. The plan recognized both the challenge and the opportunity in the “graying of America.” Its fundamental strategy was to treat blind and low vision Americans and others throughout the world as customers rather than welfare recipients.
This was not a popular position because conventional wisdom in the investment community said that blind folks don’t have any money. If you want to sell them products, you have to get the government to pay. Over time, our original vision has proven true, but it hasn’t been easy.
We took this position for a number of reasons:
Conventional screen readers had a vast amount of capability but were packaged with a “one-size-fits-all” mentality. People come in all sorts of shapes, sizes and needs, and for most people, particularly elderly blind people, conventional screen readers are far too complex and difficult to master.
The complexity of conventional screen readers exists in part because they are built on a legacy of past investment. No one wants to reinvent the wheel. It’s easier, faster and cheaper to pretty up the old one. Best of all, by dressing up the existing model, it will still fit with all the old hardware and software. Unfortunately, it also means that the most current screen reading technology is still a generation or so behind the state of the art in mainstream software. Thus in addition to paying a huge price for accessibility, blind folks are forced to run on the previous generation’s operating system. Companies that make their software accessible are similarly hindered by having their corporate technology held back in order to remain compatible with current conventional accessibility tools.
There is a whole host of neat toys – digital candy if you will – that make life more fun. These PDAs, MP3 players, games and such are totally forgotten by the conventional accessibility industry. We like these toys and we know other blind people would like them too. This is particularly true of the newly-blind baby boomers who have been huge consumers of such digital lifestyle products.
In effect, there is an accessibility barrier that keeps the blind and low vision community at a disadvantage in the workplace and from enjoying the lifestyle advantages of the digital age.
There is another problem with the conventional screen reader technology. It is difficult to teach and depends on the network of vocational rehabilitation organizations to train people in its use. The training process is long and expensive both in dollars and in trainer time. Bringing a newly-blind, non-computer user to competence is no easy matter using any of the major conventional screen readers. Despite the dependent relationship between adaptive technology vendors and vocational rehabilitation personnel, the vendors have done precious little to make training easier and more consistently successful.
We took on this barrier from two perspectives. First, we created System Access to Go and made it available free of charge to anyone who wishes to use it. We did this in cooperation with The AIR Foundation, which promotes accessibility as a fundamental human right. For those who aren’t aware of the da Vinci-award-winning System Access, it is highly intuitive and easy to learn. Although we do not position it or market it as a vocational rehab tool, it handles most of the major off-the-shelf business applications like Microsoft Office and delivers a host of special capabilities. One such capability allows a user to access a home computer from the road and run it just as if he or she were sitting at the keyboard. System Access to Go, which just won the 2008 AFB Access Award, is a web-based version of System Access that can be used anytime a person is connected to the Internet, at no charge.
Our second program is called Remote Incident Manager (RIM) and it is a tool designed specifically for trainers and technicians. Using RIM, a vocational rehab trainer, working from her home or office, can conduct one-on-one training of a blind or low vision person with a computer and access to the Internet wherever they might be. The trainer can be on the trainee’s desktop sharing the same application and providing direct instruction, using voice over Internet protocol. He or she can help adjust and install new software on the trainee’s system and help the trainee work through applications in real time. The trainer can teach any application including conventional screen readers. The whole interactive process is fully accessible.
Serotek is basically changing the economics of blindness. The SAToGo accessibility tool meets one hundred percent of most people’s needs for accessibility – at least in their everyday lives. It’s available anywhere, costs nothing, and it is relatively easy to learn and use. The software includes a screen reader, braille access and text magnification. This is the perfect tool for newly blind baby boomers and for many others. Many of the people who use SAToGo may choose to purchase System Access Mobile and have an accessibility tool permanently installed on their home system and on their portable systems. Many would also enjoy the benefits of being part of the online community, System Access Mobile Network. Priced as a service, this costs the user less than $25 per month for everything. That’s well within most budgets. And for those who require state assistance for this payment, it is still far less expensive than any other accessibility solution.
Remote Incident Manager (RIM) is priced at $1,000 per seat. This software pays for itself many times over by saving commute time for clients in rural areas. It also allows vocational rehab trainers to reach and successfully train more people in a larger geographical area at less total cost. RIM eliminates the burden of travel – always one of the biggest barriers for the newly blind.
Combining the two products, System Access (including SAToGo) and RIM, makes it possible for a vocational rehab center to take on the added burden of newly-blind seniors and to provide them with the tools for independent living and a high quality of life. Equally important, the tools allow the vocational rehab center to spend less of its precious resources providing products to their clientele and to focus resources on delivering service.
The coming boom in demand for vocational rehab services is inevitable as baby boomers age. Serotek gives vocational rehab providers the tools to meet this surge and to continue delivering the high quality services that give newly blind seniors a path to independent living.
For more information on how Serotek’s award-winning products and services can enhance the way you interact with your consumers, please contact:
Ricky Enger
Serotek Corporation
http://www.serotek.com
(612) 246-4818 Ext. 104
Toll free: (866) 202-0520 Ext. 104
ricky.enger@serotek.com
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
The Coming Crisis
Doom and Gloom! There, we got it out.
Actually this article is about hope and promise and a better life for everyone, but the background is not very encouraging. And without the background, the discussion doesn’t make much sense.
Here’s the basic premise. Vision loss and age are inextricably linked. There are eight million visually-impaired people in the U.S. and 80% are age fifty or greater. This shouldn’t come as a big surprise. As we age our bodies deteriorate and the eyes are specifically vulnerable to diseases like:
• Macular degeneration
• Diabetic Retinopathy
• Glaucoma
• Cataracts
• Corneal opacity
The current assessment is that 800,000 people age 65 and older in the U.S. are totally blind. By 2015 it will be 1.5 million and by 2030 it will be 2.4 million.
The cause is simply the aging of the population. As the “Baby Boomers” hit retirement the graying population will increase dramatically and the prevalence of blindness will likewise increase. We can and are making great strides in attacking various causes of blindness, but we can’t stop people from getting older.
Certainly everyone knows this “graying” is occurring. From AARP to Social Security there is a great deal of planning and marketing going on relative to the sharp growth anticipated among the nation’s elderly. But there has not been a lot written about what this means to the nation’s blind services structure. For the most part, and in most states, different organizations manage issues regarding the elderly and those pertaining to vocational rehab. But when it comes to dealing with the newly blind, many of the issues are the same and the resources in place are not sufficient to respond to the coming need.
As things stand today, seniors losing their vision are going to be hard-pressed to maintain their independence. And this is a real shame because today, with the availability of resources of all kinds over the Internet, there is no reason for a blind person not to live independently. The digital lifestyle means liberation for people with blindness and low vision and baby boomers, like no aging group before them, are well versed in its benefits. Yet the supporting agencies are not prepared to help them make this transition.
What are the benefits? Here’s a list we’ve compiled:
• Community: individuals can interact and share information and experiences with other like-minded individuals at will
• Awareness: The Internet provides nearly instant access to news and information of all kinds. People using this source of information are significantly better informed and aware of world events than those who do not have access.
• Information: The Internet is the best single reference source for information of all kinds. With the aid of a search engine, a user can access the vast library of government publications plus an even larger library of private information sources. There are few, if any, subjects that cannot be successfully researched via the Internet.
• Employment: Computer usage is virtually essential for any meaningful employment in the modern world. Via the Internet, persons can not only be employed but often work from their homes.
• Entrepreneurial activities: The Internet makes it possible for any individual to sell goods and/or services to a worldwide market.
• Education: A computer and computer skills are essential for modern education. Via the Internet, a person can pursue a wide range of educational opportunities ranging from acquisition of technical skills to completing high school, to acquiring a bachelor’s degree, master’s degree, and/or Ph.D. from accredited online universities.
• Entertainment: Via the computer and Internet one can enjoy virtually any desired entertainment from described DVS’s or downloads of popular movies to thousands of Internet radio channels, to games of all types, and all manner of hobby-related forums.
• Health services: Self-care, healthy living programs, health coaching and ask-the-doctor information is all available on the Web.
• Shopping: From necessities to luxuries, one can buy anything via the Web, all without leaving the comfort of one’s home.
• Finance: Online banking, investing, loans – almost any financial activity can be carried out over the Web
• Creative arts: Writing and music are two creative activities that the blind can enjoy using digital technology.
• Counseling: Online support groups are available for a wide range of issues from grief-management to depression to cancer survival.
• Spiritual: Whatever your path, the Web has resources to support you ranging from virtually all conventional religions to a huge array of less conventional spiritual paths.
The simple ability to stay connected to family and friends via e-mail is enough to make being online worth it to most seniors. Add Internet-based telephone services like Skype and people can stay connected to loved ones around the world, for peanuts. But today, in the world of conventional assistive technology, it costs the elderly person (or the supporting agency) several thousand dollars and weeks or months of study – with all the necessary transportation – just to be able to send and receive e-mail. That’s insane.
And it’s unnecessary.
Nationwide, blind services organizations march lockstep to the beat of conventional screen reader technology. That is their sole solution to blind accessibility and no matter the situation they apply it. As the saying goes, “when your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.”
But as good as conventional screen readers are, they are without exception complex and difficult to learn. They are expensive and they require weeks or months of training to achieve proficiency. Once proficient, a blind person can do amazing things. But most elderly people or new users lack the core technical skills to master conventional screen readers and agencies lack the resources to purchase the high priced software and training required.
But in fact, for the cost of rehabilitating a single blind person with conventional screen reader technology, an agency can deliver full accessibility to four to six blind people who are not looking to become computer professionals. Assuming a conventional screen reader cost about $1,000 and requires about $3,000 in training for the user to achieve proficiency, Serotek’s System Access Mobile cost $499 and a user can be trained in about two to ten hours. You do the math.
Moreover, using Serotek’s RIM (Remote Incident Manager) or Remote Training and Support the user can be trained over the Internet, with no need to travel and take up class room space. The service agency can provide one-to-one, on-screen tutoring with the trainer and the student both working from the comfort and convenience of their own homes.
Logic would suggest that state agencies and local rehabilitation organizations would welcome tools like System Access Mobile and RIM with open arms. With them they can help more blind people for less money. How can they not be excited?
But logic doesn’t take into account inertia. The entire organization is structured for conventional screen readers. That’s how budgets are developed; that’s where training skills are concentrated. There may even be a vague fear that if it is that easy to give newly blind people accessibility, training jobs will be in danger. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. Even with the six-fold (or greater) multiplier effect that System Access delivers, the demand will continue to exceed the supply as the population ages.
Unfortunately, the person with the least say in this decision is the newly blind person. He or she basically gets what’s he or she is given as decided by the professionals. The result is that people in need of accessibility tools are hugely underserved. A mere handful of blind people (perhaps eight to ten) end up with the ability to access the digital lifestyle out of every hundred or so who need accessibility help. And that is extraordinarily costly. A blind person without accessibility consumes far more resources in terms of personal care, medical care, social services, and welfare than a blind person with full access to the digital lifestyle. And, sadly, the person without access lives a much more enclosed life and is more apt to fall prey to depression. Without accessibility, blindness is a prison sentence; with it, it’s a minor inconvenience.
There is, of course, no incentive for the producers of conventional screen reader technology to make their products less expensive and easier to learn. This isn’t a “free market” where they must compete head-to-head against alternate solutions. Rather it’s a captive market where the buyer has no choice. The in-place infrastructure has a bias towards maintaining the status quo, even at the expense of the nation’s ever growing population of newly blind elderly people. We on the outside can call for a level playing field, where consumers can make their own informed choices, but those who have control of the playing field have no interest in making this a fair contest.
At Serotek we believe that when you can’t win through evolution, it’s time to start a revolution and we have one in the making. When an infrastructure does not serve the people it was created to serve, it’s time to look for ways to make the infrastructure irrelevant. We have been pushing the technology envelope for six years and our latest product, System Access to Go, available directly over the Internet on demand, may be the catalyst for change.
We are working with a number of people who have the interest of the individual blind person at heart. We are close to making an announcement that we believe will simply change the way accessibility happens – to the benefit of all. We invite you to stay tuned. But in the meantime, don’t hesitate to rock the boat. Change won’t happen unless we work to make it happen. “Information without accessibility is tyranny!” Where the heck is that tea?
Actually this article is about hope and promise and a better life for everyone, but the background is not very encouraging. And without the background, the discussion doesn’t make much sense.
Here’s the basic premise. Vision loss and age are inextricably linked. There are eight million visually-impaired people in the U.S. and 80% are age fifty or greater. This shouldn’t come as a big surprise. As we age our bodies deteriorate and the eyes are specifically vulnerable to diseases like:
• Macular degeneration
• Diabetic Retinopathy
• Glaucoma
• Cataracts
• Corneal opacity
The current assessment is that 800,000 people age 65 and older in the U.S. are totally blind. By 2015 it will be 1.5 million and by 2030 it will be 2.4 million.
The cause is simply the aging of the population. As the “Baby Boomers” hit retirement the graying population will increase dramatically and the prevalence of blindness will likewise increase. We can and are making great strides in attacking various causes of blindness, but we can’t stop people from getting older.
Certainly everyone knows this “graying” is occurring. From AARP to Social Security there is a great deal of planning and marketing going on relative to the sharp growth anticipated among the nation’s elderly. But there has not been a lot written about what this means to the nation’s blind services structure. For the most part, and in most states, different organizations manage issues regarding the elderly and those pertaining to vocational rehab. But when it comes to dealing with the newly blind, many of the issues are the same and the resources in place are not sufficient to respond to the coming need.
As things stand today, seniors losing their vision are going to be hard-pressed to maintain their independence. And this is a real shame because today, with the availability of resources of all kinds over the Internet, there is no reason for a blind person not to live independently. The digital lifestyle means liberation for people with blindness and low vision and baby boomers, like no aging group before them, are well versed in its benefits. Yet the supporting agencies are not prepared to help them make this transition.
What are the benefits? Here’s a list we’ve compiled:
• Community: individuals can interact and share information and experiences with other like-minded individuals at will
• Awareness: The Internet provides nearly instant access to news and information of all kinds. People using this source of information are significantly better informed and aware of world events than those who do not have access.
• Information: The Internet is the best single reference source for information of all kinds. With the aid of a search engine, a user can access the vast library of government publications plus an even larger library of private information sources. There are few, if any, subjects that cannot be successfully researched via the Internet.
• Employment: Computer usage is virtually essential for any meaningful employment in the modern world. Via the Internet, persons can not only be employed but often work from their homes.
• Entrepreneurial activities: The Internet makes it possible for any individual to sell goods and/or services to a worldwide market.
• Education: A computer and computer skills are essential for modern education. Via the Internet, a person can pursue a wide range of educational opportunities ranging from acquisition of technical skills to completing high school, to acquiring a bachelor’s degree, master’s degree, and/or Ph.D. from accredited online universities.
• Entertainment: Via the computer and Internet one can enjoy virtually any desired entertainment from described DVS’s or downloads of popular movies to thousands of Internet radio channels, to games of all types, and all manner of hobby-related forums.
• Health services: Self-care, healthy living programs, health coaching and ask-the-doctor information is all available on the Web.
• Shopping: From necessities to luxuries, one can buy anything via the Web, all without leaving the comfort of one’s home.
• Finance: Online banking, investing, loans – almost any financial activity can be carried out over the Web
• Creative arts: Writing and music are two creative activities that the blind can enjoy using digital technology.
• Counseling: Online support groups are available for a wide range of issues from grief-management to depression to cancer survival.
• Spiritual: Whatever your path, the Web has resources to support you ranging from virtually all conventional religions to a huge array of less conventional spiritual paths.
The simple ability to stay connected to family and friends via e-mail is enough to make being online worth it to most seniors. Add Internet-based telephone services like Skype and people can stay connected to loved ones around the world, for peanuts. But today, in the world of conventional assistive technology, it costs the elderly person (or the supporting agency) several thousand dollars and weeks or months of study – with all the necessary transportation – just to be able to send and receive e-mail. That’s insane.
And it’s unnecessary.
Nationwide, blind services organizations march lockstep to the beat of conventional screen reader technology. That is their sole solution to blind accessibility and no matter the situation they apply it. As the saying goes, “when your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.”
But as good as conventional screen readers are, they are without exception complex and difficult to learn. They are expensive and they require weeks or months of training to achieve proficiency. Once proficient, a blind person can do amazing things. But most elderly people or new users lack the core technical skills to master conventional screen readers and agencies lack the resources to purchase the high priced software and training required.
But in fact, for the cost of rehabilitating a single blind person with conventional screen reader technology, an agency can deliver full accessibility to four to six blind people who are not looking to become computer professionals. Assuming a conventional screen reader cost about $1,000 and requires about $3,000 in training for the user to achieve proficiency, Serotek’s System Access Mobile cost $499 and a user can be trained in about two to ten hours. You do the math.
Moreover, using Serotek’s RIM (Remote Incident Manager) or Remote Training and Support the user can be trained over the Internet, with no need to travel and take up class room space. The service agency can provide one-to-one, on-screen tutoring with the trainer and the student both working from the comfort and convenience of their own homes.
Logic would suggest that state agencies and local rehabilitation organizations would welcome tools like System Access Mobile and RIM with open arms. With them they can help more blind people for less money. How can they not be excited?
But logic doesn’t take into account inertia. The entire organization is structured for conventional screen readers. That’s how budgets are developed; that’s where training skills are concentrated. There may even be a vague fear that if it is that easy to give newly blind people accessibility, training jobs will be in danger. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. Even with the six-fold (or greater) multiplier effect that System Access delivers, the demand will continue to exceed the supply as the population ages.
Unfortunately, the person with the least say in this decision is the newly blind person. He or she basically gets what’s he or she is given as decided by the professionals. The result is that people in need of accessibility tools are hugely underserved. A mere handful of blind people (perhaps eight to ten) end up with the ability to access the digital lifestyle out of every hundred or so who need accessibility help. And that is extraordinarily costly. A blind person without accessibility consumes far more resources in terms of personal care, medical care, social services, and welfare than a blind person with full access to the digital lifestyle. And, sadly, the person without access lives a much more enclosed life and is more apt to fall prey to depression. Without accessibility, blindness is a prison sentence; with it, it’s a minor inconvenience.
There is, of course, no incentive for the producers of conventional screen reader technology to make their products less expensive and easier to learn. This isn’t a “free market” where they must compete head-to-head against alternate solutions. Rather it’s a captive market where the buyer has no choice. The in-place infrastructure has a bias towards maintaining the status quo, even at the expense of the nation’s ever growing population of newly blind elderly people. We on the outside can call for a level playing field, where consumers can make their own informed choices, but those who have control of the playing field have no interest in making this a fair contest.
At Serotek we believe that when you can’t win through evolution, it’s time to start a revolution and we have one in the making. When an infrastructure does not serve the people it was created to serve, it’s time to look for ways to make the infrastructure irrelevant. We have been pushing the technology envelope for six years and our latest product, System Access to Go, available directly over the Internet on demand, may be the catalyst for change.
We are working with a number of people who have the interest of the individual blind person at heart. We are close to making an announcement that we believe will simply change the way accessibility happens – to the benefit of all. We invite you to stay tuned. But in the meantime, don’t hesitate to rock the boat. Change won’t happen unless we work to make it happen. “Information without accessibility is tyranny!” Where the heck is that tea?
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