In this Spotlight Interview, James Oates sits down with Bin Liu and Arjun Mali, the founders of iMerciv and creators of the BuzzClip, which is a standalone wearable that helps people who are blind familiarize themselves with their surroundings and navigate unfamiliar areas both indoors and outdoors.
Spotlight is a 30 minute interview where We take the time to introduce our listeners to leaders in the blind and low vision community.
CBT is the largest provider of news and podcasts for visually impaired people in North America. We have a segment called Spotlight, where we interview people who have information or contributions to accessibility for the blind and visually impaired community.
Spotlight On COMMTECH USA: Empowering Through Technology
Join Jessica for an exciting spotlight interview with Gabe Vega, CEO of Commtech USA..
Spotlight with Charlene Xia of Team Tactile: Creators of Tactile: A Real-Time Text to Braille Device
Spotlight On Everett Elam: Experiencing The World Through Study Abroad
Join Jessica for another special CoolBlindTech Spotlight Interview. This time we feature Everett Elam, recipient of the Gilman Scholarship Program. He shares some amazing experiences and highlights from his exciting experience which are not featured anywhere else.
Spotlight with Grapheel: Making STEM Education Accessible for Blind Students
In this exciting Spotlight interview, James Oates sits down with the highly intelligent team at Grapheel Innovation. The team consists of:
• Daniel Hajas: Blind, theoretical physics student with PhD in Informatics, special research interest on accessible STEM.
• Tim Lingard: Programmer and physicist, PhD student at the Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation (Portsmouth), Head of Information Systems and online services.
• David Turner: Physics student at Sussex, Head of R&D at Grapheel, researching engineering solutions for the Tactile Graphics Display.
The team discusses the enormous problem that exist in providing Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics education to people who are blind or visually impaired. They explained the three-pronged approach that they have devised to conquer this problem.
Step one is called “Iris,” which is a science community based image description service specifically for STEM graphical content used as teaching material. The student uploads an image, and receives a detailed description from a volunteer who is a professional in that field of study.
The second is a consultancy scheme where they will advise on solutions that are in existence for accessible science. Various assistive software, hardware, teaching resources, good practice in science accessibility and so on.
The third is the development of a Tactile Graphics Display. They wish to carry out hardware research and development and concentrate on materials science for developing cost and performance efficient actuators. They also wish to collaborate with the various initiatives developing their own tactile displays and open their operating system for third party developers. This way Grapheel could develop STEM specific applications for already existing tactile graphics display devices, since there are organizations like the American Printing House for the Blind, doing a great job in the hardware development front.
Visit Grapheel’s website to learn more or get involved in helping in this remarkable effort.
You can also follow Grapheel on Twitter.
Spotlight with Suman Kanuganti: Cofounder and CEO of Aira.
In this CBT Spotlight interview, James Oates sits down with Suman Kanuganti, the cofounder and CEO of Aira Visual Interpreter for the Blind, to discuss a life changing new service for those who are blind or visually impaired.
Aira takes advantage of the technology found in advanced smart glasses, like Google Glass, to connect blind people with sighted agents who can use the information transmitted by those glasses to help them with anything that might require visual feedback. That could be anything the user would like an extra pair of eyes for.
Smart glasses not only have a camera that transmits visual information to the agent, but also other sensors that send detailed information to the agent’s dashboard, such as GPS information that is incorporated into Google Maps.
For now, the glasses will need to be paired with a smart phone, but you should listen to this podcast to hear all the spectacular improvements that Suman is planning.
You can visit their website, email Aira, or email Suman directly for more information. You can also call Aira at: (858) 876-2472.
Spotlight On TellMe TV: A Futuristic Approach To Described Television
Join Jessica Rickards along with TellMe TV CEO, Kevin Shaw, for this spotlight on TellMe TV. Gone is the old name and website for this fantastic audio description service, and what has replaced it is a more streamline, futuristic site with greater mobile device integration and app support.
If you would like to try out this incredible service, TellMe TV is offering a special promotion just for our listeners. If you would like to start a free trial of TellMe TV, enter promo code TELLME17 when you sign up and you’ll receive 3 months free.
Spotlight Interview with the Founder of Spotlight Gateway: A Project That Provides Free iPads to the Visually Impaired.
In this Spotlight interview, James Oates sits down with Dr. Howard Kaplan, a retina surgeon, and the developer of Spotlight Text. Spotlight Text is an app that works with Bookshare to make eBooks accessible to the visually impaired. The app displays white text on a black background, and can make the text as large as a reader needs. It works only on iPads, but can also be airplayed to a TV screen by way of a dongle or an Apple TV. This allows for much larger text than can be provided with normal magnification software. The application also works with VoiceOver and braille displays, so that anyone with a visual impairment can use it. Working in cooperation with Bookshare, the app can access more than 450,000 books, and this number is constantly rising.
To ensure that students with visual impairments have access to printed materials, Dr. Kaplan has founded Spotlight Gateway, an organization that provides free access to his app, a free Bookshare membership, and a free iPad to those who are in financial need. Students need to be certified as having a visual impairment by a licensed Ophthalmologist, and they need to show that there is a financial need for the program.
You can try out a light version of the application to see if it works for you.
Spotlight On Shelly Brisbin: When Mainstream Meets Accessibility
Join Jessica for this exciting spotlight interview with well-known author, tech journalist and podcaster Shelly Brisbin. Find out the latest about her very helpful book, iOS Access For All/ and her podcast, The Parallel.
Spotlight with Mark Riccobono: President of the National Federation of the Blind.
In this Spotlight interview, James Oates sits down with Mark Riccobono, president of the National Federation of the Blind to discuss:
You must be logged in to post a comment.