It every Tuesday at 10:00. A.m Pacific time. Myself, Michael Babcock, and Marty SoBo, go live on ACB community to answer your technology questions. How do you join in couple always use Alexa, your computer or the new ACB Link app to listen to ACB Media Five. You can also join in in clubhouse or visit ACB Community to learn how to join us live in Zoom every Tuesday day at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time. We'll see you there with your tech questions.
Hey all, marty here. And today, with me, I have Michael Babcock. As usual. Say hello, Michael.
Hello.
And we also have Michael Doyce with us. Say hello. Michael Doyce.
Hello, everyone.
And we call this Michael Squared or M Cubed.
We could do M Cubed.
We'll do M Cubed. In any case, today we are going to be discussing all things convention since we're coming off the heels of convention. And Michael was at the ACB National Convention. And Michael Doyce was at the NFB National Convention. So, Michael Doyce, why don't you kick us off and talk about your you.
Were in a vendor, uh, at I was at a booth for Way Around this time. So it was fantastic.
Yeah, why don't you kind of talk about that a little bit from your perspective? Sure.
So I feel like we're still all recovering from convention. Right. It was a very busy know, being an exhibitor is always especially at NFB. It's a very high traffic, very busy convention, and we had a lot of people that had not heard of Way Around, so it was great to meet those folks and just to get the feeling of what people were experiencing there. It's always nice to be exhibiting for Way Around, because we're always right next to the wonderful folks over at at Guys. So we had kind of this neat triangle of power booths. We had us and At Guys right next to each other. I believe it was a ten, a eleven. And then across from us, we had blindshell, blindshell us. And so some person would ask about Way Around and at Guys or Blind Shell would mention, hey, go across. They talk to them about that. Or they were at the Way Around booth and they had a question about Blind Shell. We could send them across. Or somebody would say, well, we could just send people each other since we all kind of worked together since Way Around is on Blind Shell and At Guys sells our tags, so we could just bounce people around to get them what they needed. So it was just fantastic. But we were right next to IRA. It was us then at Guys and so many great folks in the exhibit hall. So it was fantastic.
So in terms of people coming through to visit all the vendors, people who are attending the convention, was it really crowded, really busy all the time, or was it mellow? Like, what was your perspective from kind of like a convention goer's point of view.
I'm used to most state conventions. There's a little bit of an ebb and flow of know, you have your downtimes, you have your busy times. Usually when sessions got out at NFB, there were just constantly people coming by. We did have our slower times, but it was no less than one to three minutes before the next person came around. So it was long enough for you to catch your breath. Right. And then it was, all right, let's yell over the people again because that's the only way you can be heard.
Yeah. And Michael Babcock, so why don't you give us your point of view from your vendor booth, which was at Guys, correct?
Yeah, we were at Guys at ACB, and I can totally relate to what Michael is talking about. I heard the one thing that was overwhelming at the NFB exhibit hall was the noise, because it just never stopped. So that's always interesting. I was directly to the left I'm sorry, directly to the right of Katie from Magical Moments Vacations. And then I was on the right of I have those I anyways, Katie of Magical Moments Vacations was on one side, and then QMP Solutions, I think the name of Chris's company was on the opposite side. Crystal blindshell, phones and ARX headsets. I got to play with ARX headset while we were at convention, and him and I chatted and we helped each other out. And then Katie does Vacations, and so her and I talked a little bit as well, but not so much about tech. Directly across the aisle from me was Leader Dog, which doesn't do much with tech, although that was an interesting conversation that I had with the ladies over there. But directly across from Katie was a company called Iriat Airaarieat, and they sold a lot of assistive technology products. They're actually out of Corvallis, Oregon, and they had a braille display that had windows built into it, windows Ten. But they had a braille display that had windows built into it. It's 32 cell for about 55 five, $700. But what really intrigued me about IRI at is they had a sub $1,500 embosser, and on that sub $1,500 embosser, you had the ability to set up to eight different braille cell heights in order to build out tactile graphics. And so that was really cool. Got to play with their graphics and feel those and that type of stuff. I didn't, unfortunately, have a lot of time to go exploring to different vendors or stuff because I was actually there to work. Steven, Sean, if you're listening, I did do some work, giving me a hard time about that. But another exhibitor that I did have some time to poke at and to explore was the Oko Oko app. I'm not sure. Have either of you heard of that app?
No, I haven't.
Michael?
Yes, I have.
Yeah.
Have you played with it yet?
I have not.
Okay, so what Oko will do is, Marty, you've heard of the audible lights at intersections, right? Where you hit the button and it'll make a sound when it's time for you to cross? Well, Oko, you can put your foot well, you hold your phone vertically in front of you. At Guys has a new device called a Slinger that will allow you to just hold your phone around your neck really easily. But you hold your phone in front of you and you look towards you point the camera towards where the street light would be and then dependent on the signal that the streetlight is giving, will determine what type of feedback you get from your phone. So the guy there had a street light that was next to his booth that he could use to control it and let you play with it. And it would give you feedback and say, hey, it's time to cross. It didn't use those words. It uses audible and haptic feedback to let you know that. So you would cross at that point. But what was really intriguing to me about this is if the camera lost focus of the light, it would also give you additional feedback and then stop, which is great for someone who might often veer out of the crosswalk because you typically would cross towards the light. And so you would want to follow that feedback free application available in the US. Spain and one other country. I don't think it's Canada, but it's something that you could check out. And I thought that was kind of a cool technology that I had heard about but never downloaded the app because I'm like, I don't need that. I can just follow the traffic surges, but I can actually see a use for that tool in my toolbox.
Yeah, especially someone who's new to mobility and they're not used to doing the flow of traffic and things like that. So that sounds like a pretty cool lab. We'll definitely have to mess around with.
It, play with it. As much as everybody knows how much of a tech enthusiast I am, I always am very hesitant with things like that. It's like, what if it's wrong? What if it gets something, see something that looks like a light? So for once, I'm kind of the skeptic, but I would love to try it.
Yeah, it's worth trying. Just download oko. It's a pretty simple, straightforward setup process to get it going. What's really cool about it is if your phone is not vertical, so it's not straight up and down in front of you, and you put it horizontal, like flat against in front of you, then it'll turn it off so it's not wasting your battery. And that was what I was concerned about.
Now, is there anything that you absolutely have to have? Like, for example, a LiDAR or no. Will it work?
Just uses the camera. It worked on my iPhone Twelve with the camera. So you don't need anything super nice. I think it'll go back to the XS, I believe, but yeah, it doesn't require LiDAR or anything like that.
No. That's awesome. So, Michael Doyce, is there any apps, any booths, any technology that you saw on your end that really stuck out to you?
Yes, there were several things that I got to see. I didn't get to make my way through the full exhibit hall. It's just so big. There was, I believe, over 40 booths per section, and there's three sections, not to mention the Independence Market. So the places I went to were hims. I went to APH and Orbit, and when I went to each of those, I had specific devices in mind I wanted to look at. To start out, I went to Hymns and got to check out the synths player. I was a big fan of this device when I saw it because the construction just looked very solid. It looks more mainstream, in my opinion, compared to the Victory Stream third generation. On one hand, the stream has hired contrast buttons and things like that, but the synths player just looks very sleek. I like the design. It's running Android. They're working on a screen reader. It'll have side loading of app support pretty soon, so I'm very excited about that. I would love to get my hands on one and just play with it just because of tech. But they were pretty excited about it. And it'll just be neat to be able to sideload apps on this device, envision or IRA or other things, and it can control a cell phone. So that was pretty interesting. The Orbit booth that I went to, I got to speak with the creator of the Orbit, optima. Optima, yes. That word was just not coming to mind, and he was great. We talked about podcasting and all those kind of things, and really neat to talk to him. And then he showed me the device. I was a big fan of the Optima. That's kind of what I'm really watching. I'm not probably ever going to get one just because I don't use a laptop without a screen, but I think for a lot of folks it will be great because it's mainstream and braille. So I think that has a lot of promise. The device is completely modular. We talked about keyboards. We had a long discussion. We covered it in great detail on the Iacast, so check that out. And I just love the modularity of the framework, modular parts that are inside. He did tell me that it will upgrade to later versions of processors. So it's not going to be stuck with the I Seven you bought today. You can upgrade it to an I Seven that comes out two years from now.
That's pretty cool.
That is exciting. That's kind of the biggest news that I've heard with that. So there's a lot more to talk about with that device. We could have a whole episode on that, but I got to go to APH and check out The Monarch. Both the Optima and The Monarch are about the size of small gaming computers, even though they don't have screens. And The Monarch is it kind of felt like laminated braille or thermoform one of the two. It has a film over the braille, so it's not as sharp. So people may like that or you might not like it. It won't hurt your fingers as much. But the graphics were really neat. You could zoom in and a page turn button and different things like that. They have a new format, the eBRF format for having images and braille worked on by the Daisy Consortium and a lot of things like that. So it looks like there's quite a few devices that are coming out that will be very nice. The nice thing on The Monarch is it will work with graphics and braille interchangeably, so you don't have to have graphics on one part of it and braille on the other. So it's pretty neat.
Yeah, that sounds pretty cool. All right. So, Michael Babcock, anything especially that stuck out to you? Technology or anything else that just kind of left any kind of a solid impression?
No, but I do want to give IRA a quick shout out. So those people who may or may not know IRA was not an access partner for either of the conferences. However, I did hear people using IRA, probably not as much as I did, but there were people using IRA quite a bit at both of the conventions. And I used IRA to navigate independently through the Las Vegas airport all by myself, because they told me Meet and Assist was going to be anywhere between 20 to 40 minutes. And I'm like, no, I'm going to go ahead and just use IRA and get out and go where I need to go. And me and the IRA agent made it to my next gate in like, 25 or 30 minutes. It was very quickly, and it was a very awesome experience, and freeing because I didn't have to worry about waiting for someone or riding in a wheelchair. I just whipped out IRA, had it running when we hit the tarmac, and then the stewardess asked if I needed to wait for someone, and I'm like, no, I'll just get it. And IRA guided me up the jetway. We got into the airport and they're like, okay, here's something, and let's go this way. Now, one thing that I don't think people realize, and this kind of blew my mind, I'm not surprised by it, but IRA had indoor maps of both of the convention locations and the hotels. So if you tell them, hey, I'm in Schomburg at ACB, I'm on level two, I need to go down to level one and find Schomburg E, which was one of the rooms. IRA can take a look around where you are. They'll tell you, I'm taking my eyes away from your camera right now. They would go look for the map and say, okay, so now let's go find this escalator. So we found the escalator, and then we'd go down. They'd say, turn right, and then go down to this room. And that was pretty cool and very freeing. They also had a map of the Las Vegas airport, and the lady I was working with said, I see this looks like a shortcut. It's a long and narrow and windy hall. Do you have a problem with that? I'm like, no, not at all. So I took that hall, and that saved me probably about 1520 minutes of walking because it took me between the different terminals. And so that was pretty cool to have that experience, too. So those are my two AHA moments. It's like, I am justifying paying for IRA right now because I'm using them to be super independent.
And, Michael, real quick, before you go on, I want to point out at the NFB convention, they did make one part a site access, and that was the walk between the Hilton Americas and the Marriott. It was through the convention center. It's about a five minute walk. It's pretty long convention center. So, from what I understand, they did make that a site access.
Oh, okay. Sweet. That's good.
Pretty cool. Yeah, definitely. And, Michael Joyce, was there anything that absolutely stood out to you that you thought was something that left an impression on you or anything like that at.
The convention in particular or technology specific?
Let's go with technology specific.
For me, I would really have to say that what really left an impression as kind of game changing in my eyes would have to have been the optima. That was it for me.
Awesome. All right, well, that's kind of like, a little bit of a tidbit of what went on in the vendor area and technology with both the ACB National Convention as well as the NFB National Convention. And before we go, Michael Deutsche, do you have anything Iacast related you want to speak about before we go?
Sure. So, if you want to hear more about convention, we did an hour and 45 minutes episode that was posted, I believe, last weekend, discussing that. We'll be doing an episode this weekend, and we'll keep putting out content.
All right, well, thanks, everyone, for being here. And, Michael, Doyce say goodbye.
All right. Goodbye, everyone.
And, Michael Babcock, thanks for being here and say goodbye.
Goodbye.
And we'll see you all next time.