STAR Point Transcript - Freedom Scientific Products
Braille Literacy
Guest: Frank Irzyk
Host: Earle Harrison
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EH: We have with us in the studio today Mr. Frank Irzyk, Product Manager for Freedom Scientific. I know you brought some cool stuff with you, but let's find out a little bit about the guy. Why don't you go ahead and tell us what it is you do for Freedom Scientific.
FI: Ok Earle, I am a Product Manager in the hardware division of the Freedom Scientific Blindness and Low Vision Group. I have product responsibilities for several of the products that Freedom Scientific makes. Namely the Braille embossers, refreshable Braille displays, education products which I will be talking about today and a stand-alone reading machine known as VERA, which stands for the Very Easy Reading Appliance.
EH: And I noticed that you brought a couple products with you today and naturally you're going to discuss those, but before you do, how have you been enjoying your visit here to Minnesota?
FI: I've been enjoying it fine. I got to meet a lot of good people here working in education and rehabilitation. I've been a little surprised by the whether. I was hoping it was going to be a little bit colder coming up from Florida.
EH: Ha, you lucked out (laughter)
FI: And it's been downright balmy seeing people walking around in shorts in Minneapolis…
EH: You've seen people walking around in shorts in 40 degree temperature?
FI: Yes.
EH: Seriously?
FI: Yes. (laughter)
EH: As we speak, this program is being recording toward the end of January and this is very atypical whether for us.
EH: And you're getting somewhat acclimated for your next business venture and I understand you've got a couple colder climates than Minnesota…
FI: Ya that's true. I'm going to Norway after this to talk about our Braille displays and I'm looking at probably Alaska sometime in the near future as well.
EH: Well I've been to Alaska. It's a beautiful place. And I went in November when it felt a lot like January in Minnesota so I can't imagine what February in Alaska is going to be like. But, I understand that they'll be mushing the dogs and you should be able to strap a couple Braille displays on your feet and slide right along. (Sound of man mushing a dog sled and Laughter)
FI: That's right. I'm looking forward to it. It ought to be a lot of fun.
EH: Ok, well what have you brought with you today?
FI: Well, one of the items I brought with me today is the SAL system. SAL stands for Speech Assisted Learning and this is a very exciting device that we've been working on for about 4 years. It actually started as a project with Sally Mangold of Exceptional Teaching Aids, Peter Sullivan with Duxbury Systems. And Dean Blazie was involved with it under Blazie Engineering. The idea behind this was that Sally was very interested in seeing if a device could be used that would assist in the teaching of Braille. And a computerized device that would be so simple to use, that you would need a minimum of instruction on being able to use it and you could concentrate on improving Braille skills, extending the amount of time that a teacher of the visually impaired or Braille instructor could work with a student, and to make something that would be fun and exciting for people who are just learning to read Braille to use.
EH: Is SAL developed specifically for a particular segment of the blind population?
FI: Actually it's been developed to be of assistance to anybody who wants to learn to read Braille. Sally's feeling with this, and we've all kind of been caught up into it, is that there are many people who need to have a reliable reading medium. And there are many levels of learning Braille and the SAL system could assist either young children in emerging Braille skills, young adults who've lost their vision and now need to work on their Braille skills, or the segment of the older population who would like to learn Braille in order to continue reading--be able to do things like read recipes, mark labels, things along those lines and just need the assistance in learning to read Braille with it. And we kind of cover the entire gambit with this.
EH: Now Frank, do you have any statistics with respect to the segment of the blind population who are actually Braille readers?
FI: The actual segment of the blind population who are Braille users is relatively small. I would say maybe ten percent of those who are listed as legally blind. But this number is growing because of changes in legislation that basically verify that Braille is a very viable reading medium and that more people should be using it right now and so that's another reason why this particular device is so exciting because we think that it is going to be able to assist people in expanding this skill.
EH: I see. Is SAL intended as a replacement for Braille instructors?
FI: Absolutely not. There is no replacement for a qualified person who teaches Braille. What this does do, is it allows a qualified teacher to expand the amount of time that a student places on task in learning Braille and decreases the frustration level in kind of being on your own in learning how to read Braille.
EH: Tell me a little it about the kinds of materials that are available right now.
FI: There's a wide variety of material and we knew that this was going to be very important in making sure that SAL is a good product. The materials are largely developed by Sally Mangold based on her teaching materials that have been well tested and have been used for 30 years. And it runs the range from early Braille recognition, line tracking, making sure that good Braille skills are used, you know good hand and finger position in reading Braille, to pattern recognition, rapid tracking, letter recognition, everything necessary at this point to teach good efficient reading skills. In addition to instructional materials, there are reading materials that allow individuals to practice reading and get the assistance if they come across an unfamiliar word, letter or contraction and find out what that letter is without having to talk to a teacher about it.
EH: Great. Well I understand that you brought SAL with you and that you're going to be doing a demonstration. Why don't you go ahead and talk a little bit about the actual physical characteristic of SAL.
FI: Ok, let me give you a quick tour of SAL. SAL is about 16 inches long, it's about an inch high and about 12 inches wide. So what it looks like is a large tablet with a Braille keyboard at the very bottom of it, closest to where the user would sit with this. And the keyboard is very much like a notetaker keyboard, a Braille keyboard that has the 6 Braille keys and the spacebar plus dots 7 and 8.
EH: Very similar to the Millennium or Braille Lite line of note takers.
FI: Yes. There are two speakers on the front as well for the speech out of this unit and then there is a very flat area at the top with a latching mechanisms that looks a little bit like a hinged paper hold and this large flat area is actually a touch window that is sensitive to Braille dot, so it's a fairly sensitive area. Along the right hand side of the unit we have a 3 and ½ inch disk drive that's for loading lessons and there's also a compact flash slot for longer lessons or future materials that would be larger than what could be held on a 3 and ½ inch disk drive. And along the back of the unit there's an on and off switch, a rate control and a remote input to work with a foot pedal so in order to listen to some of the instructions a person doesn't necessarily have to take their hands off the Braille.
EH: Oh that's great.
FI: And the whole thing weighs a little bit over 5 and ½ pounds so it's fairly easy to carry around and it's fairly resilient so we think that kids are going to have a hard time really doing any damage to it, or that's what we hope.
EH: I know of some that would be up to the challenge though (laughter). Ok, let's go ahead and take a look at SAL at work.
FI: Ok, I'm going to turn on the SAL unit here. I'm just going to reach around the back and turn this on. Then you hear a little click and soon the voice will come on.
SAL: SAL ready.
FI: And the voices should be somewhat familiar. This is Eloquence that is speaking. And at this point what I do is I take a piece of Braille paper that has, in this particular case it has a story on it, it's a page from a book called Message in a Bottle. The only thing that distinguishes this page right now is there's a bar code that's printed on the backside of this. So when I place this page down on the SAL Unit and then close the latch, a bar code will fire up and read that bar code.
SAL: Message in a Bottle, page 1 (followed by a two tone beep).
FI: So now it has this information. You may have heard a two tone beep at this point and this is the clue to the user that there are no instructions on this page, that it's just a reading page. And I just wanted to show some examples of this. This is a page that some one can go along with and read along with it and if they have difficulty with a particular letter or a word that they're reading over with this and just pressing on the word on this touch sensitive screen:
SAL: Bottle
FI: You hear that the SAL unit tells you what the word is. If I press it a second time:
SAL: Capital B-o-t-t-l-e.
FI: It will spell the word.
EH: How does it handle contracted Braille?
FI: Well, I'll show you that to. Now this is one of the really interesting features. I can read along with this, and I'm going to find another word that does have a contraction here and I'm going to stop on this word.
SAL: Dropped.
FI: And you hear the word dropped at this point and I'm going to have that spelled.
SAL: d-r-o-p-p-e-d sign.
FI: So this has been programmed to recognize contractions and tell the user what the contractions are. Again, aiding and speeding up reading at this point and assisting the person in learning contractions.
EH: Can you adjust the rate at which it gives you that feedback?
FI: Yes. There's a rate switch that's on the back of this unit and we gave a lot of thought to where things would go and we put the rate switch in the back to keep young hands from constantly playing with the controls, but it's easy to get to so I can:
SAL: Speech faster
FI: Speed it up just by hitting that button and again I don't need to know any special commands--just where the rate control is and where the volume control is.
EH: What about curriculum? What's currently available or actually is SAL currently available?
FI: Right now we're currently taking orders for SAL. We're not quite ready to ship, we're pretty close here. We're doing some final production testing on units and I think things are going to work out pretty well with it. I'm hoping it's going to be about March (2002). Again we want to make sure that this is a very high quality products and it does what it's supposed to do.
EH: What about the cost?
FI: The cost of it is $4,598.00
EH: And will it ship, with curriculum?
FI: It will not ship with curriculum. The curriculum is sold separately because the types of materials that individuals purchase, or school purchase or rehabilitation agencies purchase, will be dependant on the type of client they want to work with. So there are materials that would be appropriate for younger children and younger learners, there are materials for teens and young adults and there are materials appropriate for older people to work with this.
EH: And will people be able to develop their own curriculum?
FI: Yes. Duxbury Systems, which is one of our partners in this development, is developing what is basically an authoring program called SALSA and SALSA will allow individuals to be able to develop their own curriculum materials simply by taking computerized Braille files and work with them to either make lessons or learning materials that will work with this. SALSA will be generally available a couple months after the SAL unit comes out. Ok, let me put a new page into SAL right now and this is from the Braille basics lesson. And to show you how this works, again, once the page is down the instructional materials have this little rectangle, these embossed rectangles that use an "and" sign and a Y, so we call them andies. As long as those Andys are down at the bottom of the page… And so once we put this down and again close the latch:
SAL: Braille basics 2, lesson 6, page 21 (followed by a beep).
FI: And you hear a beep here, that means that there is something I need to find out by pressing one of these andies which is the prompt Andy.
SAL: Activity 1, press on all of the words that would be found on a grocery list then press prompt (beep tone).
FI: That beep tells me that there are some instructions here, and I'm going to press the Andy on the lower left hand corner and it's going to tell me what to do next:
SAL: Activity 1. Press on all the words that would be found on a grocery list the press prompt (beep).
FI: That double beep tells me that it's time to go ahead and look at this. What I have in front of me is two columns of words and some of the things could be part of a grocery list, and I'm going to use my Braille skills here and see if I can find a few of these. Let's try this one:
SAL: Great.
FI: So as I go down I'm looking at this list and seeing words that I would find on a grocery list, and if I if I get it correct it will tell me if I've done well with it.
SAL: Perfect
FI: And I can go right down this list. When I'm finished with this list, I press the Andy again and it will tell me a score.
SAL: Your score is 2 out of 11. You've completed this activity in 58 seconds.
EH: Well that's great. I see lots of applications for SAL especially for folks who want to develop their own curriculum for their students. Topics such as geometry I see lots of possibilities…
FI: The possibilities for developing materials are endless on this. Right now there are materials that deal with Braille literacy skills both in contracted and uncontracted Braille. There are a number of materials that deal with Nemeth code and math. Soon curriculum is going to be developed for learning music notation with this as well too. The possibilities are endless. I think, we're very excited about this.
EH: We're speaking with Frank Irzyk, Product Manager for Freedom Scientific. We're going to take a short break now and when we return we're going to talk about the Focus Braille display, the new Braille display slated for release sometime in 2002.
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EH: Hello welcomed back to STAR Point, a production of the Minnesota STAR Program. We're speaking with Frank Irzyk from Freedom Scientific.
FI: We've just re-designed our line of Braille displays. As you know Freedom Scientific sells the Power Braille line and this has been a, kind of a work horse of a Braille display for many years, but it was time to modernize it somewhat and I've had the opportunity over the past year to talk to a lot of people about what they would like to see in a new line of Braille displays. I have one in front of me and I'll tell you about it. We're actually releasing 3 Braille displays simultaneously, the Focus 84, the Focus 70 and the Focus 44 and that refers to the number of Braille cells that are a part of each unit. Other than that they're all pretty much identical as far as features and what they do. Physically, the Braille display is quite different than anything you've seen from us before. It's about 4 and ½ inches deep, about an inch high and depending on the size of the unit, anywhere from about 14 inches long to about 27 inches long which makes it very light weight and easy to move around. It's in an aluminum case, which is different from most of the Braille displays that you see around right now too. As I mentioned before it's a very slim line design and one of the reasons for this was an ergonomic issue. We found that in all office products one of the big ergonomic features is the idea of being able to easily move items around so you're not repeating actions all the time in the exact same position. And this isn't something that's very easy to do with something like the Power Braille because it's so large. But on this, it is fairly thin and light weight, which means that you can move it around on a table or place it on an under the desk keyboard stand along with your keyboard. Certainly on the smaller displays just take the entire keyboard and put it on your lap to read. In order to make that convenience possible too, all of the Braille displays will be USB powered which means that they'll only be one cable that's necessary to work with this. We've also included a serial port because we know that a lot of our users are still using Windows NT that doesn't support a USB. But as they move up to other operating systems, they'll be able to work with that as well too.
EH: Ya, it's nice to have that option. So it will come along with an AC power supply as well?
FI: That's correct and it's only necessary really when you're using it with a serial connection.
EH: The actual display itself is closer towards the back of the unit than it is the front. What's the logic behind that?
FI: Well the logic behind that is that we wanted to put the Braille display as close to the keyboard as possible. So what we've really done is just turned the Braille cells around and made it so there's just a very short distance between where you keyboard would sit and where the Braille display is. That additional room has actually a Braille keyboard that is used primarily for command input. We didn't see this after talking to a number of people, they really didn't want to do data input on the Braille display but command input. So there is kind of a unique Braille keyboard that is built into the top of the unit and the keys are flush so it makes it easy to use the Braille display as a palm rest when you're working with this.
EH: Without accidentally pressing keys.
FI: Without accidentally pressing keys. We've recessed them to the point that it's very difficult to push down on it with the palm of your hand.
EH: I notice that you've got the traditional cursor routing buttons above each of the Braille cells and you've also got these wheels along the sides.
FI: Ya, wiz wheels. This is something that we innovated with the Millennium line and we've carried this on. Wiz wheels are used for navigation primarily. You can move by different segments. You can either move by line, by sentence or by paragraph and you change this by pressing down on the wheel. And the possibility exists to program the wheels to different functions. So if you bring up a start menu, use can use the wiz wheels to kind of move the focus from one choice to another. Also just above the Braille display we've put advance bars. If you hit the left advance bar you're going to move the Braille display back. If you hit anywhere along the line of the right advance bar you're going to move the display forward.
EH: What about the, what looked like audio jacks on the side of the unit?
FI: The jacks on the side of the unit allow you to connect the Focus. Number 1; you can put audio input from your computer so if you're using JAWS you can run the input from your computer into the Focus. There are applications say in call centers where people are also using telephones with this and put the input from a telephone into the other jack and be able to listen to it through the headphones in one particular location. This is specifically requested by one of our customers and these audio inputs were available on the Power Braille and we kept them on the Focus. We've also placed USB device connections on either side. This is a convenience issue again, so if your computer's on the right side of your machine you connect the Focus from the right. If the computer's on the left side of the Braille display you connect the computer on the left.
EH: Cool, so I can actually kind of use it as a USB hub?
FI: No. We didn't make it a hub because that means that the unit would have to be powered at that point and that would mean more cables. We just found that it's just cheaper to buy a USB hub for about $30 then try to build it into the Braille display.
EH: Now I know that Naturally… Freedom Scientific… For those of you who aren't familiar with Freedom Scientific it is a merger of three companies, are we actually building in that synergy that we heard so much about when the merger first occurred?
FI: It's a very exciting thing because this is really the first product that takes this into account and in order to make some very unique features work with this there had to be a lot of work between the hardware and software divisions and some very fundamental changes to JAWS the screen reader. An example of this is, as I mentioned, this has a Braille keyboard for command input and in previous versions of JAWS it wasn't possible to hit more than 4 simultaneous keystrokes so that made command input very difficult to work with. So we worked closely with the software people to make sure that we could get up to 9 simultaneous keystrokes. What this does is, it kind of adds to the features of this. One of the things that we knew from the Power Braille is that the Power Braille was built in a DOS world where there weren't a lot of choices and it kind of graduated into the Windows world. And there were all kinds of strange commands that you had to remember because there were things like rocker switches, concave buttons and concave buttons on the Power Braille.
EH: A little like a game of twister from time to time.
FI: Ya every once in a while so you had to you needed to remember some strange commands to get the Braille display to do some relatively simple things. But now because we can do command input on this unit we have some convenience commands, things like you know if you want to open the start menu it's an ST, you know dots 3-4 and that brings up the start menu. If you want to minimize all your applications and go onto the desktop you just hit the letter D which is a lot easier to remember than you know, right rocker switch up, concave button and then convex button as an example of strange things you had to remember. And all of these things were items that were programmed in by the software side in order to make this work so really this is a collaboration. It shows the synergy that is starting to show in the products that we're building at Freedom Scientific.
EH: Is it safe to say that you're building in a higher level of support for your Braille displays than you might build in for the competitive lines of Braille displays?
FI: Well we're starting with ours and what we're going to do is keep that high level of support but also share this information with to other screen reader manufacturers to make sure that this can be sold across the line. We do understand that people use other products.
EH: Here we are in this emerging era of paperless Braille and a lot of us are carrying around note takers. I've got my Braille Lite with me here and it's a 40 cell Braille display. I guess I'm wondering why would a person purchase a dedicated Braille display versus a note taker that can double as a Braille display?
FI: Well there are a couple of things. When you use a note taker, it's a multifunction device and you make some compromises with that in terms of ergonomics and convenience and our Focus Braille display line is specifically developed for use with a computer in office applications. So we build in some convenience features. For instance we have a very unique keyboard stand that allows you to position the Braille display and the keyboard in a comfortable position. That's not saying that the note takers aren't that but there are different features that some of these things do. We also have some applications that people need to do we it just, you know… Rather than having the note taker features, having something as dedicated as a Braille display makes more sense. For instance on the larger format displays, the 70 and 84 in particular, your looking at formats on the screen that you just can't see on a smaller style Braille display.
EH: I understand that there are also some issues of confidentiality with some companies and honesty in testing. We don't want a person in a college environment being able to walk into a situation saying that this is a reasonable accommodation, being able to hook-up their note taker/Braille display and then have all the answers to a test at their disposal.
FI: Exactly. There are certain companies that we deal with or government organizations that request that what the Braille display do is act as a monitor rather than a storage device.
EH: So these are to impressive products, SAL and the Focus display, are there any plans in the works for perhaps incorporating SAL into more of a paperless environment?
FI: We're always looking at new possibilities with something like this. There are some very important reasons for being able to use SAL with Braille that is produced on paper. Number 1; is it provides a way to look at things in a special way that really right now aren't possible in electronic Braille, or refreshable Braille. So no matter what happens… I guess I use the analogy with this that even though I use a personal data assistant and laptop computers and things along those lines, I still carry a pen in my pocket to jot down some notes and things along those lines. What we see SAL doing is being able to provide students with the beginnings of using Braille we've incorporated things like this ergonomic keyboard design that we use on the note takers so it would be fairly easy for students to go from paper Braille to the refreshable Braille environment.
EH: It's coming up on time for us to rap it up. Why don't you spend a couple of minutes talking about Braille literacy in general.
FI: Braille literacy has always been a very important issue for me, in former lives I was a teacher of the visually impaired. And one of the major issues that I had was the idea of students to be able to read well. Literacy was an issue that was very important. I think something very important happened in 1999 when the education act changed saying that students that were diagnosed with a visual impairment, the first method of reading instruction that had to be considered would be Braille and that made a big difference in the way people viewed Braille. You know, from going from a reading medium of last resort to Braille, that everybody… that Braille is portable, it's easy to work with it provides a great deal of information and items like the SAL that promote learning good Braille skills and learning fluent Braille skills and our commitment to say a refreshable Braille display line that give people the choices and give people the choices of being able to work with this and the changes that were made in screen reading programs that incorporate Braille more into the entire system says a great deal about how important Braille Literacy is.
EH: Sure. You're tuned to STAR Point, a production of the Minnesota STAR Program. We're talking to Frank Irzyk Product Manager for Freedom Scientific and I want to thank you very much for taking the time to join us today.
FI: Thanks Earle.
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You've been listening to a broadcast of STAR Point, a production of the MN STAR Program, a System of Technology to Achieve Results. If you would like to provide feedback, be a guest on our show, or if you'd like to find out more about the STAR Program, please visit our Web site at www.admin.state.mn.us/assistiveetechnology. My name is Earle Harrison. Thank you for listening.