Eyes On Success Interpretype Deaf-Blind Communication Solution Transcription February 2015 Samantha (synthetic voice): Hello, and welcome to Eyes On Success, a weekly program of information on the ever changing world of accessibility. Now here are the hosts of this program, Nancy Goodman Torpey, and Peter Torpey. Nancy: Hello. I’m Nancy Pete: And I’m Pete. Pete: Well we've all heard about people working on projects or inventions in their garage. This week we’re going to talk about a new product that was developed as a result of working in a commercial garage. Nancy: The Interpretype Deaf-Blind Communication System enables deaf-blind Braille users to communicate in a variety of situations, including telephone communications, texting, instant messaging, the Internet, VRS, and of course face-to-face conversations. We'll speak with its inventor Ken Gan and his assistant Josh Brewer about this portable yet powerful tool. Nancy: But first for our tip of the week. This week's tip comes from Ken Gan whom we met in person for this interview in his Interpretype office upstairs from his auto repair shop. Pete: So I'm curious how you get involved in this. This is basically an auto mechanics shop. You know, I think of people that are used to taking apart engines and not necessarily having all the tools and background to be able to do software development and put electronics together, how did this all come about? Ken: well my background is accounting, that was my major in college. Nancy: that doesn't explain it either. Ken: That's true. This was our family business. It's a fairly good sized auto repair shop. So I usually do a lot of the work behind the scenes, and my passion is customer service. When you pick up your car after a collision job, you will not find a crumb in the carpet or a fingerprint on the glass, and you'll find a live carnation on the seat. And we deliver every car that way. There are fresh rolled towels in our bathroom. We have refreshments downstairs, coffee and candy, and a shuttle service that runs all the time. So I just love customer service and wowing my customers. Originally in 1993 my staff came to me and said, Ken, we've got to buy a TTY because we can't communicate with our deaf customers very well. And I said I'm not going to do it. And they said but Ken you love customer service, why wouldn't you do that? I said because what are you going to do when they get here? You're just going to stumble. Because unless you know sign language or you know sign language or we have an interpreter on hand, you're not going to be able to communicate and I want deliver this exceptional customer service experience. So if you invite a group of people in here that we can't communicate with we’re just going to be set up for failure. So I tabled that idea until in 2002 when my staff came to me and said we need a better way to communicate with them over-the-counter. I hadn't thought it through until then when I said well, this is not rocket science, we should be able to develop software. So I have a friend that had a computer company and I used to be in a UNIX users group that had this guy that was a genius programmer. So between the two of them we found hardware and this developer that was able to write the software to get it to work. And we tested it and it worked great and nothing else was out there so we launched it. And that's how we did it. It's all for customer service. Nancy: So the bottom line is if you see a problem, look for a way to fix it. [Breaker music] Communicating with deaf-blind individuals has been a problem for many many years, but in more recent years technology has come along that's made this a lot easier. And the Perkins School has written a very nice review of the history of deaf-blind communication in general that you might want to read and we'll have a link to that in the show notes for this show on our website. Let's start this show by meeting Ken and Josh and learning about the origin and evolution of Intrepretype. Ken: My name is Ken Gan and I'm president of Interpretype. Josh: I'm Josh Brewer. I work in the office here and am kind of behind the scenes at Interpretype. Nancy: Can you tell us how you started Interpretype and it's later development? Ken: Sure, I'd be happy to. Interpretype is a product I invented back in 2003 as a customer service tool to help my staff at my auto repair shop communicate better with our deaf and hard of hearing customers. Nancy: Now we should point out we’re in Rochester New York and in particular we are really close to the Rochester Institute of Technology and the National Technical Institute for the Deaf. So there's a much larger than typical deaf population in this area. Ken: Correct, Rochester has the largest per capita population of deaf individuals of any city in the world, not number of deaf but per capita. So yeah at this auto repair shop since we are close to NTID we would see deaf customers on a pretty regular basis, maybe a couple or three a week. So I decided to come out with a product that allows you to text back and forth, kind of like face-to-face instant messaging, and that product was launched in 2003 here at the shop and it went over very very well, and within a couple of months we sold to our very first customer JetBlue. And it began to evolve from there. It was a pair of DOS keyboards that would type back and forth to each other with a cable. And that worked very well for a while and then we migrated over to Windows systems so our product would communicate with Windows, and so that we can add language translation. So we began by adding Spanish translation that was the first one that a lot of the federal agencies wanted. Nancy: So one person can be typing in Spanish and the other person can be typing in English, or speaking in English? Ken: It's all done through text and typing. Then those DOS terminals started to become unavailable around 2007, right around the time these little netbooks started coming out. And the price dropped on these laptops a great deal, and we decided that since we already had a Windows-based product also, to come out with our second generation which is all based on these netbook or small laptop computers. Then we were able to add French translation as well. So now you have a choice of translating from English to Spanish or English to French. And because they can connect to the Internet and have cameras and can use Skype, we also added videophone software so the deaf customers that use this can actually place phone calls and not just type back and forth face-to-face, but they can actually place phone calls to anyone deaf or hearing in the United States using the video relay service VRS. Or they can do VRI which is video remote interpreting, same way, connect to a remote interpreter and use the cameras to do video interpreting as well. Nancy: Let me understand what you're talking about here because we have a lot of familiarity with blindness issues but not so much deafness issues. This Skype interaction that you're describing, basically the deaf customer turns on a Skype session with somebody who can sign to them? Ken: We didn't use Skype here. It's more for like a classroom. If you have a teacher that can't get an interpreter on site she'll put on a headset and connect via Skype to some remote interpreter somewhere. So that remote interpreter will hear her voice or his voice, they will sign to the student and they'll sign back and forth as the teacher's talking. And if the student has a question the interpreter will actually speak through the headset the teacher is wearing, and asked the question from the student. It's a little convoluted but it called video remote interpreting and it works very very well, but ideal for classroom situations or employee training, not necessarily for customer service. Pete: This means that the interpreter doesn't necessarily have to be in the same classroom. The interpreter can be someplace else. Ken: That's correct. The interpreter can be completely in another state, it doesn't really matter where they are. Because these computers have Internet access and cameras we decided to use all those features. So the basic toolbar we came up with for Interpretype has three buttons on it. I'm showing you on the screen here, there's a text button, a video button, and a phone button. So the text button is the heart of Interpretype where our software is written. But we added the video and phone button for those that wanted to use Skype or use it as a videophone. Nancy: These look to be commercial small laptops. Are you actually fussing with the hardware or are you installing software or both? Josh: Most recently we don't have to do any sort of hardware stuff because they're coming, like Ken said, more and more powerful so they're full of all the RAM that we need to run even the language translation stuff, and battery life is all great so, it's more just getting rid of a lot of the junk software that comes on these laptops, games and things like that, that we don't want to slow down the computer or take up space. You can still access the Internet, you can still load anything on there that you want to that's Windows-based. We don't lock down the computers in that sense. So I do wipe it pretty clean and then load our software on and tinker around with some of the different settings to make it run more efficiently so it'll stay on instead of like going to sleep or things like that to cause confusion to the user. So I just try to make it as user-friendly as possible. Pete: what I think is neat, when I started using assistive technology years ago in graduate school all this stuff was all custom hardware. You know if you had to do something in your PC there was a special board to do your speech synthesis, or video card, what you had was all different wires and stuff. You talk about customization! I mean these things are kind of neat, you can use relatively inexpensive off-the-shelf components and with a little modification put them together in very interesting ways to do, you know, some new tasks. So it's really great the way you've used some of this stuff that way without having to develop special equipment and all. Ken: People at shows have said that once they see what Interpretype can do, they call it the Swiss Army knife of assistive technology. I don't want to invent the wheel all over again, I mean Dragon is good at what they do, JAWS is good, Braille displays are great, I don't need to invent all this stuff. But let's put it all in one package so people can make their choice and use what they need. [Breaker music with Samantha (synthetic voice): You’ve been listening to Eyes On Success] Nancy: This week's focus topic is using Interpretype as a communication tool for people who are not only deaf but also blind. Pete: So this product originally started out as a product for the deaf. How did it come to be a product developed for the deaf-blind community? Ken: People wanted more and more features and they started asking about deaf-blind. Well since we're working on this computer platform anyways, Freedom Scientific got a hold of us. Brad Davies as a matter of fact down in Florida came over and tapped me on the shoulder, and said, hey you think you can come up with the deaf-blind product, you know so that an able-bodied person can communicate with a deaf-blind person without using a tactile interpreter? And I said, more than likely. Their product JAWS runs on Windows products and their JAWS will power these refreshable Braille displays, so we worked together in conjunction with Freedom Scientific to create a portal for Interpretype software to communicate with JAWS and thereby output to the Braille display. So the same way I would type to a deaf person, I can put a refreshable Braille display connected to one of the computers, and as we type it comes out in Braille. And then the blind or deaf-blind user has the option to type back either in Braille on the Braille display or to use the QWERTY keyboard and type back on a regular keyboard. So now you can communicate with the deaf-blind person without using a tactile interpreter. Nancy: Who are the primary customers for the deaf-blind version of Interpretype? Ken: We have interest from lending libraries or help centers, employment one-stop centers, and areas like this are interested in a product like this where they need to communicate with the deaf-blind, and the deaf-blind would have to know how to use Braille in order to use it. Nancy: What are some of the other special applications for this device? Ken: There's a few other things around the room I can show you. Right behind you is our hospital cart which we designed and developed for use with Interpretype in hospitals. It looks like an IV cart with a pitched roof on both sides which Interpretype can sit on, on each side, so you can actually wheel this down the hall and right in front of patient. It goes up or down, either sitting height or standing height and you can triage someone or type right on the spot with Interpretype back and forth very very quickly and get the information you need as opposed to telling someone, oh let me go get an interpreter, when in the meantime all they wanted to tell you was that their brother is in the car and is in trouble or something like that when there's no need to go get an interpreter at that point. So that's our hospital cart. It's actually been sold to the TSA. They use it in the passenger lanes to communicate with deaf customers as they are boarding planes. So if they want to go through security and are having trouble they can wheel it over to whatever lane they had the issue in and use Interpretype that way. They have it at the Rochester airport. Pete: So are you actually running a fully featured version of JAWS on these systems or something pared down just be able to do the communications that you're interested in? Ken: It's a full-featured JAWS. And since it comes with a couple of licenses, we put it on both computers, so that the deaf-blind can actually connect the Braille display to either one and be able to see which screen is doing which. And it's ideal for probably an employment situation where a deaf-blind person is employed and anyone that wants to walk by their desk and communicate with them can, or in a home situation where a family member wants to communicate with them, or if an appliance repairman comes over to the house, they can actually chat with the deaf-blind person and talk to them and do things. It is portable because they are laptops, but it's a little more cumbersome than say an iPhone attached to a Braille display or something like that. So it's more for a more stationary use for someone that wants to get work done or use it at home. Nancy: You've got a Focus 40 Blue paired with your laptop here. Freedom Scientific also makes a Focus 14 which is much smaller that sometimes people use with smart phones. Do you have plans to make smart phone version of this? Ken: Not at this time. We haven't seen enough interest in this product itself, so to move over to a mobile platform, there are enough people in that space already that have a little more experience, and that's not the heart of what our company does. Nancy: These things being wireless, right now we've got the two units practically touching each other, but as long as they are both on the same wireless network, the two people don't even have to be in the same room even? Ken: Correct. They're Bluetooth so they can go about 30 feet apart, walls don't make a difference. It's not necessarily a Wi-Fi environment but it's a Bluetooth environment. Although we do have another piece of the software that is Wi-Fi, so you can get off of Bluetooth and connect to a router. And if you do so, you can connect up to 120 Interpretypes in one conversation. Pete: This is a very portable solution. Your netbook is small and your Braille display is these days. I'm looking at this Focus 40 display here; it's very light and portable and connected by Bluetooth. There's no extra wires or anything. You can move this thing anyplace and it's easy to cart around. Ken: That's correct. Here let me show you this bag really quick. The Interpretype bag, basically it's about the size of a lunchbox with three zippered slots on the top. Both computers fit into two of the slots and all of the cables go into another slot. And then there are these little hooks on the back which are made for the Focus 40 to clip to and hang on the outside of the bag. So actually the whole thing can be carried around in the size of a lunchbox bag. So it is very portable like you said. But the setup time might be a little cumbersome if you're trying to make your way through an airport or something where you need a little quicker conversation. But if you get to your desk and you set it up by all means you’re good to go. So it's very portable, you could take it to work, take it home, it's very easy to move around that way. Pete: And also these can all be run off batteries, they don't have to be plugged in all the time if you just charge them up. What is the battery life like on this kind of setup? Ken: It's getting better all the time but for the most part these run about eight hours, Josh wouldn't you say? Josh: Yes, these new ones run about eight hours. Ken: The newest ones are about eight hours, and what about the focus 40? Josh: The Focus 40, as far as when I was getting information from Ron at one of the conferences we were at, he said between standby mode in use mode it will run around 10 hours on one charge. Pete: So this whole program seems pretty easy to use. It sounds like you just click on the application, get it running, and then decide whether you want to do: text, Skype or video interaction, and then you just start typing away, is it that simple? Ken: That's correct. It's actually almost more simple than that. Most of the people just want to use it in text, and for the user, say the customer that just comes up to the counter, or the user that comes by the deaf or deaf-blind person's desk, there's a laptop there and it's very simple. There's a spot for them to type the name, hit logon, and the only thing you can do from there is type and read back and forth. Now we've added a lot of extra features to make things easier for people. We've added something called our macro key toolbar, and you can turn this toolbar on and off if you want to. What it is is a set of nine questions loaded in the function keys that you can preload. So, for instance, I have my deaf-blind macro key toolbar up here and F1 says, hey, how are you? F3 says you can read my responses in Braille, F4 says press the space bar then type your message. And there is all sorts of instructions there so I can just send some of these messages to the other person and give them directions that way. The same as I can ask a set of questions to a customer at a counter. But we’re not limited to just nine questions, below all these questions are these little radio buttons where you can switch your group of questions to a different group of questions, and you can have as many groups of nine questions as you want. So, for instance, we sold a bunch of these systems to the New York Unified Court system. They wanted them for jury intake, Family Court and Criminal Court, wherever they receive customers. They came up with a whole bunch of different macros and the Spanish translation for all those macros, and we preloaded those on all the computers before we shipped them across the state, so that when they loaded them, launched them to all the courthouses across the state, every one of them have the exact same macros, the exact same questions asked the way the people in Albany wanted them asked, so they were all preloaded that way. So it's pretty handy, the user has the flexibility to adjust those macro questions, and then they don't even have to do any typing like my staff downstairs that doesn't even have to ask any questions. F2, F3, F4. They don't have to type hardly anything and the user reads the responses and you can print and save the conversation if you want to. Either on paper or copy it and put it into a Word file, email to someone; whatever you would like to do. Pete: That's pretty spectacular. So you said that you often preload some of the questions for people, but I think you also said that the user can customize their own questions and answers? Ken: Yes. The computers come blank with no macro files in them. However, a large customer like the state when they saw that feature said, listen we don't want to load them in every place they go. Can we load them before they're shipped? And I said, by all means. Let's work together on you getting me the macros and we'll get them all made. It's just a file that I load one directory, and they're all there, and they automatically show up. It's very easy. So you want to play with it a little bit now so you can see what it does? Nancy: Yeah, that would be great. Ken: I think you are already logged in. Pete: It says guest has signed on, that's me, I'm reading the Braille display. Ken: Do you know how to toggle up and down on that? Pete: No, I've never used one of these. Ken: Okay, so there's a paddle right here on the front Pete: Oh okay. Ken: Toggle down. And it says Ken has signed on. Pete: Ken has signed on, yes Ken: Toggle down one more time Pete: It's blank? Ken: It's blank. So, you know you've reached the end of the conversation. Pete: Okay Ken: So if I type something again and press enter … Pete: Hello Peter. And it's even in contracted Braille. Ken: So all you need to do is press the space bar. That will put your cursor back down to the typing area. Pete: This is a test. Now what do I have to do to enter it to you? Ken: Press the Enter Key. Pete: And then you should see it on your screen? Ken: What popped up on my screen is guest is talking, because Peter is logged in as guest, that's your name. And the next line down says this is a test. Pete: You have the Braille on the Focus 40 display here, but you also have a normal QWERTY keyboard on the netbook that will enable you to type if you are more comfortable with a QWERTY keyboard? Ken: That's correct. So I'll press F4 and then press enter … Pete: You can read my response in Braille. It says on the display here. Ken: So I can easily switch to another set of macros and ask you questions. For instance here's one you might recognize some of the questions. Pete: How many bags will you be checking today? Oh, that's pretty cool, that makes it very easy. So people don't have to spend the time typing back and forth Ken: This one took up two lines, so you may have to scroll up to see it. Pete: Are you carrying any hazardous substances or weapons? Ha ha, that wasn't made for the auto repair shop I take it. Nancy: ha ha, Hopefully not for the schools either Ken: So what I sent you were my macros for the airport. So when I do an airport demo I can ask all those questions in a row without typing anything. So now I'll show you one more really fun feature that we've added. Since these are Windows computers, and you can add all sorts of Windows features, we've also made this friendly to Dragon naturally speaking. So this one is trained to my voice, and I'm going to put on a headset, and I'm going to turn on Dragon and my microphone. Now everything I say you will be able to read in Braille. Pete: And it says on the Braille display, now everything I say you will be able to read in Braille. Nancy: So I used to use Dragon Naturally Speaking and it has commands for all of the control functions if you will. So go to a new line, enter this text, whatever. Do you have to do that? You just stopped talking and it seemed to go. Ken: Since we made this friendly for Interpretype, I'm going to go into my settings real quick because I didn't do it when I first put the headset on. And I'm going to go to our feature called enable lecture automation. And what this does, it allows me to walk away from this computer, like a teacher walking around the classroom, and every time I pause for a half a second, it will send what I said into text and out to the other device. So let me do that real quick. And we also have an adjustment, just in case, depending and what speed Braille user you are. We can set this for expert mode or normal mode. In normal mode, you would have to pan or scroll down each line. In expert mode, it will send the Braille to it as fast as it arrives. So it may leave your fingers before you have a chance to read it because these lines will show up rapidly as I'm speaking. So I'll just start talking and you'll see how fast it shows up. As I talk it should all be sent to you and show up in Braille. And the more I talk the more text will show up Pete: As I talk it should all be sent to you and show up in Braille. And the more I talk the more text will show up Ken: Aand it will continue to do so as long as I'm providing the lecture Pete: And it will continue to do so as long as I'm providing the lecture. That's pretty cool. That's neat. I like that. Nancy: So you call this lecture mode, I am envisioning a professor or a guest speaker or somebody lecturing to a hall and a deaf person who may or may not be able to make use of the loop hearing system or whatever, can just bring in their equipment and provide the headset to the speaker and be able to follow the lecture. Ken: You catch on very quickly. That's exactly what it's for. In addition they would be wise to put up an LCD screen so everyone can see the text, not just the deaf person. In a lecture hall I would recommend they do that for everybody. Nancy: Dow does the system differ from other types of real-time transcription? Ken: What's different about this, as opposed to CART, or computer aided real-time transcription, is that the student can respond, where with a transcriptionist in the room they can't. So if you have a question, you can just raise your hand and me as a teacher can ask, what's up? You can type on your computer and it will show back up in the lecture on my screen. So now you can ask a question, even if you're deaf or deaf-blind, you can raise your hand, the professor can stop, reread the question that you asked, and then answer it, where in a transcription setting it can't be done that way. Nancy: The normal window where the text that the other person has typed shows up in is fairly large print. For a low vision user is there the ability to adjust the size of the font and the color and contrast and stuff? Ken: Yup, I'll show you that here. The font size is completely adjustable. Alt up arrow and the font keeps growing as large as we want. Nancy: What's the biggest it can get? Ken: It can go completely off the screen and get too big, or if you really want it large, you can just plug in a projector like any laptop will run and put it on a big screen and make the font as large as you want. And you can also set these because these are regular Windows you can set these to reverse video or any colors that you like in the Windows settings themselves, not in our software. So you can see here only about six words on that screen, that's pretty large and is pretty easy to adjust back down again just by tapping the up and down arrows and holding down the alt key. Pete: Well that was a great demonstration. I thank you for showing that all to us. [Breaker music] Nancy: Now for this week's final item, some customer reactions and how you could get more information about Interpretype. Pete: What kind of feedback have you gotten from customers who've used this system so far? Ken: I guess the biggest response we get from mostly deaf customers, which is our largest population is that once they get Interpretype they feel as though, as they say, they are in the loop. You know, no one is going to walk by them, go to lunch and not say hello. They can stop at their desk, type something to them and say, hey we’re going out for pizza, do you want to come with us? And the next thing you know they are in the loop and they can communicate with someone. Or they can grab a pair of Interpretype's, run-up to the supervisor's office or meet them in the conference room without having to schedule an interpreter and everything else, and get the meeting done. It's much easier that way, and in classroom situations with students, if they want to break off into groups, and they have one deaf person in their group, well grab Interpretype, someone can be a stenographer for that person, and then keep them in the loop and off you go. Nancy: This is really cool, and of course this is a radio show and we love to play audio clips of demos, but nothing is making any noise. Pete: So if people want to find out more about this equipment and where to get it, what would they do? Ken: Probably the best way is to go to our website which is www.Interpretype.com and there is a page on the deaf-blind solution itself. Or you are welcome to send us an email and we can send you a PDF or even an HTML file with the information on Interpretype, so they can read it with a JAWS reader if they wanted to. Pete: And your email address is? Ken: info@Interpretype.com You can ask for either me or Josh in the email and we'll be happy to respond. Or Bruce, who is our sales rep out of Atlanta, he will respond as well. Pete: And you have a phone number? Ken: Our number is 585-272-1155 Pete: And we will have all of that contact information if you missed any of it in our show notes at www.EyesOnSuccess.net . Look for the show notes associated with this show. We'll also have links in the show notes to some documentation and flyers about the specific system as well as Freedom Scientific. In addition, we'll have a link to a transcript of this show for those who can't hear the audio to this show. Nancy: That's it for show number 1507. Next week, on Eyes On Success we'll be talking about blind parenting of sighted children. We did a show a few months ago about sighted parents of a blind child, and next week Ron and Denise Miller who are parenting two-year-old Russell will be asking us questions about how we handled that situation which, same as them, one of the parents is blind, the other parent is sighted as are the kids. If you have any questions regarding something you've heard about on the show or you'd like to share an idea for a future show, send an email to hosts@eyesonsuccess.net or call us at 585-258-0333. Samantha (synthetic voice): You’ve been listening to Eyes On Success, hosted and produced by Nancy Goodman Torpey and Peter Torpey and distributed by WXXI Reachout Radio. For detailed information or a full archive of programs, visit www.EyesOnSuccess.net. You can also follow us on Facebook and AudioBoom.com at EyesOnSuccess or Twitter at _EyesOnSuccess. We hope you’ll join us again next week for more information and updates on products for accessible living. Thanks for listening to Eyes On Success and have a nice day