Amazon Shopping Tips

The holiday season is in full swing, and online shopping has never been more convenient. One of the most popular sites for scoring bargains and fast shipping is Amazon. From getting the perfect gifts for your loved ones and supporting your favorite nonprofit with ease, Amazon will have you checking off your holiday shopping list in a breeze! Check out these tips to have you shopping like an Amazon pro in no time.

Get to Know the Layout of the Amazon Website and App

Both the Amazon.com website and the Amazon iOS app are accessible with a screen reader and screen magnification software, with the website offering a more reliable experience. The website provides an intuitive layout, including properly labeled elements and easy navigation. This is done through their headings and common shortcut keys to find edit boxes and relevant information.

The Amazon iOS app is also relatively easy to navigate, with an easy-to-locate search box at the top of the app and various tabs across the bottom. Once a search is initiated, product titles are labeled with headings for easy navigation using voice-over and screen magnification.

Additionally, Amazon offers Disability Customer Support options via their website, including obtaining additional assistance via phone and chat.

Read The Product Descriptions Carefully

Once you’ve located the perfect product, read the product information, features, and details sections for the product listing. Sometimes, these sections offer different information regarding the product you are considering, especially clothing items. Some product descriptions are better than others, so our next tip will help you obtain even more information.

Check the Product Reviews and Customer Questions

Amazon is well known for the detailed reviews its customers leave on products. This is arguably where you will find the most valuable information about your product, including quality, fit/feel of the fabric, and even descriptions of how the product looks and operates. Additionally, you will find a customer questions section where you can find answers to commonly asked questions, or you may even submit a question before purchasing the product.

Use Your Resources

Despite all of the detailed information provided on the product information page, it can still leave you with some questions. Luckily, there are now two resources available for on-demand sighted assistance. Aira and Be My Eyes offer sighted assistance via an app on your smartphone. Aira has trained agents that provide visual interpreting, and Be My Eyes has sighted volunteers available to assist. Aira has options for both paid and limited complimentary service, while Be My Eyes is entirely free. Check out the Aira and Be My Eyes websites to learn more about each service.

Review the Return Policy

Sometimes, no matter how detailed your research is on a product, it is necessary to return an item. Be sure to read the return policy for each item you purchase. Most items have free returns; however, some products from third-party sellers on Amazon will require you to pay to ship the item back or, in some cases, may charge a restocking fee.

Support Outlook Enrichment with Amazon Smile

Did you know Amazon donates a percentage of all eligible purchases to your favorite nonprofit? Be sure to learn how to designate Outlook Enrichment as your nonprofit of choice while you shop on Amazon this holiday season! Happy shopping!

Laura Bridgman: The First Deaf-Blind Pioneer

June 26 kicks off Helen Keller Deaf-Blind Awareness Week. This year’s focus is Diversity and Inclusion: Creativity and innovation are built upon diverse perspectives. Throughout June, many groups recognized the accomplishments and creativity of the Deaf-Blind community.

Many know about Helen Keller’s impact on the deaf-blind community over generations. However, half a century before Helen Keller was born, Laura Bridgeman became the first deaf-blind person to learn a language.

Laura’s Upbringing

Laura Dewey Bridgman was born to hardworking New England farmers in Hanover, N.H., on December 21, 1829. At 24 months, she became ill with scarlet fever. Though the fever passed, it left her without sight, hearing, sense of smell, and nearly all of her sense of taste.

Left with only her touch, Laura tried to make sense of the world around her. Her love for imitating her mother made her very helpful with household chores. She learned to sew and knit. She developed a rudimentary sign language, with gestures for food and other basic needs and a name sign for each family member.

As Laura grew, communication became more difficult. At seven, she could only be controlled with physical force—something needed to change.

Laura’s Time at Perkins School for the Blind

Founded in 1829, Perkins School for the Blind, the first of its kind in the United States, opened its doors in 1832. The school’s first director, Samuel Gridley Howe, was happy about his first five years of progress. However, when he heard about Laura, he was eager to try educating her. During this time, Deaf-blind people were considered unteachable.

After her parents agreed to the move, Laura arrived at Perkins in October 1837. No one had succeeded in teaching language to a person with deafblindness, so Howe decided to teach Laura English. He gave her forks, keys, and other objects with name labels made of raised letters pasted upon them. When he gave her detached labels with the same words, she matched them with their objects.

Howe took this further by cutting the labels and separating the letters. He spelled the familiar words, showed them to Laura, and then jumbled the letters. According to Howe’s account, Laura rearranged the letters to spell the words correctly. This was the beginning of Laura’s understanding of the English language.

Once Laura understood that objects have names, she quickly learned the alphabet. She communicated with her peers and teachers by using cut-out letters. With the help of fingerspelling, Laura attended geography, arithmetic, and other classes with her peers.

Howe published an account of Laura’s education in the Perkins annual reports, making both student and teacher internationally famous. In 1842, British writer Charles Dickens visited Perkins and wrote his encounter with Laura in his book, American Notes.

Laura spent most of her adult life at Perkins. She taught students how to sew and sold her own needlework pieces. She sometimes visited family and friends and was an avid letter writer. Laura carved out her life journey once she had the tools she needed. She died in 1859 at Perkins.

The Domino Effect

Dickens’s account of Laura’s education gave hope to Helen Keller’s parents in 1886. They contacted Perkins, and Director Michael Anagnos sent Perkins graduate Anne Sullivan to be Helen’s teacher. Sullivan educated Helen using Howe’s methods for teaching Laura.

Helen Keller was a groundbreaking advocate for the rights of people with disabilities and one of the foremost humanitarians of the twentieth century. Though she led the way in advancing education, civil rights, and accessibility for people with disabilities, Helen always acknowledged that she followed in Laura Bridgman’s footsteps.

Laura Bridgman and Helen Keller had profound hearing loss. They most likely only heard very loud sounds. Their hearing loss was also pre-lingual, meaning they lost their hearing before they could talk.

Types of Hearing Loss

Some hearing loss types include:

Conductive Hearing Loss—This hearing loss is caused by something that stops sounds from getting through the outer or middle ear. It can often be treated with medicine or surgery.

Sensorineural Hearing Loss—Hearing loss occurs when there is a problem with how the inner ear or hearing nerve works.

Mixed Hearing Loss—Hearing loss includes conductive and sensorineural hearing loss.

Auditory Neuropathy Spectrum Disorder—Hearing loss occurs when sound enters the ear normally; however, due to damage to the inner ear or the hearing nerve, the sound can’t be organized in a way the brain can understand.

Some people may experience mild hearing loss, which means they can hear speech but might struggle to hear soft sounds. A person with moderate hearing loss may not hear most speech at normal volume levels.

If you or someone you know has vision and hearing loss, Outlook Enrichment can help. Our team’s deaf-blind specialist can answer your questions and connect you with additional resources. Contact us to get started.

Handheld Digital Magnifiers & Cool Apps For Your Phone

As assistive technology devices, digital or electronic magnifiers usually come with a camera and a screen or another display mechanism showing the enlarged image. Many technological advances have been made in this area of magnification.

Older models tend to have a stand that holds a standard 17-inch TV or computer. Below the display, a mounted camera is positioned over a movable x/y tray that holds a book or other reading material. With the onset of LCD screens and advancements in camera technology, newer versions of this have a lot more flexibility.

With all magnification aids, you always need to keep a few questions in mind when determining the best fit for your needs.

Handheld electronic magnifiers

There are many handheld electronic magnifiers to choose from. Prices range from $75 to $1,000. Coming in at a lower price, the Eyoyo Portable Digital Video Magnifier gives you about a 3.5 to 5.0-inch screen. This magnifier has a large magnification range. These magnifiers are easy to use. Some models, such as the Eyoyo PD43 Electronic Digital Video Magnifier, even have color-coded keys. This specific magnifier is priced at around $150.

In Enrichment, we often see higher-end models such as the Eschenbach and the Ruby. These usually have a larger screen, magnification up to 12x -14x, and have some additional bells and whistles. One of the critical things to consider when looking at electronic aids is the user interface and the device’s weight based on the user’s physical limitations. A person with arthritis or tremors might want a lighter device that may be easier to hold and manipulate or a device that has a fold-out leg for hands-free usage.

As a great lightweight option, the Eschenbach has nice curvatures for holding. The controls are all in the same location and can easily be accessed by the thumb. This usually sells for around $600. However, an app on Apple and Android phones called Visor uses a comparable interface to Eschenbach’s handheld device. The app’s downside is that it only has four zoom settings. The maximum magnification is 8X. Visor retails in the Apple store for around $18. Enrichment has tested many magnification apps and recommends this one for the best results.

Other noteworthy apps

Apple’s magnifier app—This free app has many cool features, such as a slider for zooming in and out, 12 color filters, and contrast controls. However, it is more complicated to use. In the app settings, users can select which options they want to have available. Options include turning on and off the color filters so they do not appear on the screen all the time.

Claro Magic X—This nifty free magnification app does not offer as many features. But it will magnify up to 16x if you need more magnification. The user interface is pretty straightforward. Primary options are at the bottom of the screen, and other features, such as the contrast and filter buttons, are in the middle of the display along the sides.

Don’t discount camera apps.

If you use color filters to decrease glare, consider using a camera app instead of a magnifier app. The apps all use your phone’s camera. Many camera apps allow you to zoom in and out and have a variety of settings for black-and-white modes and contrast settings.

Other features may include a wide variety of colors and effects. Camera+ Free with Colors effect filters 4+ is one of these apps you might want to look at. This free app is packed with features. There are nine color filter options and eight black-and-white options with varying degrees of contrast. It also allows you to take a picture with the filter applied, which is not an option when using typical magnification programs.

Unlike magnification apps, camera apps allow you to use the forward-facing camera. This can help you use the feature for personal care purposes.

Whether you need more information about choosing or using a magnifier, Outlook Enrichment is here to help. Contact us to get started.

Choosing the Right Magnifier for Your Needs

Adaptive technology advancements have improved magnifiers across the board. However, basic handheld magnifiers with an actual lens have not seen many advancements. We often view the handheld magnifier as the standard Sherlock Holmes clue-finding magnifier. The large lens on this magnifier increases the viewer’s field of vision when viewing text or other small items. Often, we think a larger lens gives us a more expansive viewing space. However, this is not necessarily the right way to think about a magnifying glass.

Power

The power of a magnifier can be measured in several ways. The most common, “times magnification” or “power,” refers to how much bigger an object appears when viewed through the device versus the naked eye. The “X” notation on many magnifiers represents the power a given device provides. So, a 3X means three times the magnification.

Lens Curvature and Focal Point

The magnifying power of a lens depends on its focal length (FL). The focal length depends on the lens curvature. Think of it this way the greater the curvature, the shorter the focal length, and the greater the power. When a lens is several inches wide, there tends to be less curvature resulting in more viewable space, but it will be relatively low in power.

Good examples are page magnifiers used to see a whole page of a book or magnifiers used to go over a television screen to allow a person from a distance to see the image better. Because both of these examples have very large surface areas, their magnification will be very low. Often from a 1x to 3x magnification power. When somebody first starts having problems reading a page, a magnifier might be the direction they go, thinking, “I will be able to see the whole page and not have to move it around.” But often, as their vision changes, the page magnifiers are not strong enough to allow the individual to see the letters clearly.

Low vision aids include various adaptive technology devices, such as magnifying reading glasses, handheld and stand magnifiers, loupes and small telescopes. Magnifying devices are generally either handheld or mounted on a stand, with zoom ranges from 2x to 10x.

Reading Glasses

Store-bought readers, often called cheaters, are readily found at popular pharmacies across the country and are frequently the first place an individual who does not wear glasses will turn when printed material becomes increasingly challenging to read. They come with lots of fun frames and are readily available. These lenses tend to be in the lower power ranges from 1x to 3x magnification. Reading glasses help bring small text into focus through magnification, making text appear larger. The downside is that when wearing these single-vision glasses to magnify text, they also magnify everything you view through the lens. While suitable for close work, they may distort anything in the distance. This can cause headaches and other eye strain-related issues. If you find you are using cheaters frequently, this would be the time to have your eyes checked by your eye care professional. Bifocals, to many, are a dirty word, but the advantage to bifocal glasses is they only change part of your field of view. If you view something through the base of the lens, the text will appear larger or clearer, but if you look through the top of your glasses, objects appear as they would normally.

Points to Consider

Here are some key points to remember when choosing a magnifier:

Magnifiers come in many shapes and sizes. Answering some of the above questions will help evaluate the best fit.

Types of Magnifers

A low-vision specialist may prescribe several different low-vision optical devices for various tasks or help determine the correct type of device for your needs. These low-vision evaluations are often covered by health insurance.

As adaptive technology continues to improve the way of life for those with vision impairment, we are here to help. Whether you need more information about a low vision evaluation or a magnifier. Contact us to get started.

GoodMaps: Navigating with Explore and Outdoors

GoodMaps develops digital maps for indoor and outdoor use. Founded in 2019 and based in Louisville, KY., American Printing House for the Blind created GoodMaps (previously Access Explorer) with a simple mission: to further the cause of accessible navigation, mainly indoor navigation.

This article will compare some of the most essential features of their Popular GPS apps – GoodMaps Explore and GoodMaps Outdoors. Both apps are free to download and use for Android and iPhone users.

GoodMaps Explore

Explore was developed first primarily for indoor usage through its specialized mapping system. Some of the key features of Explore include:

This app helps you navigate indoor locations. While this form of navigation is still in development, indoor navigation uses geo-referenced images through a camera-based Positioning System to determine a user’s position. GoodMaps Explore can locate where you are in a room within 2-inches to one meter of accuracy. This is a substantial improvement over the accuracy provided by GPS (8-10M outdoors), Bluetooth trilateration (4-5M), and other approaches.

Another advantage to this approach is that venue owners can update and customize their indoor maps, ensuring that point of interest data is always current. You can even virtually go to any location, allowing you to explore the surrounding area without physically being there. This is similar to how a sighted person might use the street view aspects of a mapping program.

Another cool feature of this app is that you can launch Be My Eyes within the app. Be My Eyes is an app that connects a Blind user with a sighted volunteer. Through your phone’s camera and microphone, the volunteer provides access to visual information and additional information when sighted assistance is needed.

Download GoodMaps Explore from the App Store or Google Play Store and try it out.

GoodMaps Outdoors

GoodMaps Outdoors was initially acquired from Aira, previously called Seeing Eye GPS. This outdoor navigation app provides detailed intersection information and turn-by-turn Navigation. Some of the features of Outdoors include:

Outdoors also contains a variety of settings that allow you to customize what items are spoken and how they are displayed. The user can set specific items, such as arrival distance, to provide notifications upon arrival at a destination. For example, options can be selected from fifty to one hundred feet. This may be useful when locating venues not listed on the map, such as kiosks, ATMs, walking paths, etc.

GoodMaps Outdoors also provides various low-vision display settings, such as Black/white, white/black, and yellow/black.

You can download GoodMaps Outdoors from the App Store and the Google Play Store.

Both Explore and Outdoors contain similar items. However, Outdoors focuses on outdoor navigation, such as planning a pedestrian or vehicular route based on a point of interest, street address, or even a wave point, as well as GPS coordinates that the user can create and name. You’ll need to create an account to use Outdoors. GoodMaps automatically saves all the user route information, wave points, and other data to the cloud for ready access.

Contact Enrichment’s adaptive technology trainers for more information or a demonstration of these apps at 531-365-5051.

National Fair Housing Month

If you are visually impaired or blind, finding housing that fits your specific needs can be challenging. Before you begin your search, developing a list of personal preferences can be helpful. A list makes it easier for you or the person assisting you to narrow down your search. In honor of National Fair Housing Month, here are some things to consider when considering future housing options.

Location

The first step for anyone looking at housing is figuring out where they want to live. Your home should be in an area in which you feel safe and meet your needs. Think about the places you go to regularly. Is it important that you can walk to those places? If this is the case, consider looking at housing around shopping centers, including grocery, casual shopping, and dining options. Or is being close to a bus line important to you? If this is the case, looking at where the bus stop is located and how early, late, and often the buses are scheduled would be helpful. Accessible smartphone maps give you an idea of what businesses are near a location and what bus lines are in the neighborhood. 

Transportation

If you are a blind or visually impaired person who likes their independence, access to public transportation will be high on the “must haves” list. When looking at housing options, ensure the neighborhood is on a transit line. Research the guidelines for fixed-route and paratransit services to ensure your needs will be met. Knowledge of the routes, for example, fixed and express, and their schedules can be beneficial when choosing where to live. Knowing where the bus stop is near your location is also essential.

If you are a public transit user, this information is essential in determining if a location is right for you. 

Outlook Enrichment offers travel training to teach people with disabilities, older adults, and interested travelers how to access and use public transportation independently. Some of the skills travel training focuses on include:

Contact Outlook Enrichment if you are interested in travel training.

Helpful hint: Paratransit systems tend to only run on fixed routes and have limited hours. ADA paratransit service must be provided within 3/4 of a mile of a bus route or rail station at the same hours and days for no more than twice the regular fixed-route fare. If paratransit is your primary mode of transportation, it never hurts to call and verify an address to ensure service.

Walkability

Walkability is the measure of how friendly an area is for walking. When applied to people with vision loss, walkability is looked at from a safety and convenience standpoint. Here are some questions to ask yourself when thinking about safety and walkability:

  1. Are there well-maintained and navigable sidewalks throughout the area?

  2. Are the sidewalks on both sides of the street?

  3. Are there accessible pedestrian signals at street crossings?

  4. Are the Street crossings to get to services easy to navigate or complex intersections with multiple crossings?

Making sure there is an adequate path of travel and sidewalks leading to and from your destination ensures you arrive safely. 

Something else to consider is the age of the neighborhood. How old is the neighborhood? Old neighborhoods most likely all have sidewalks, but the condition will vary. New housing divisions may have gaps where open lots are still for sale. 

When considering convenience and walkability, ask yourself: Are amenities such as grocery stores and restaurants within a 5 to 10-minute walk? If your answer is no and you find value and convenience in independently walking to places, then there are better choices than that location. 

Looking for housing is never a fun process, but creating a “must-have” list and asking questions can help you make the best choice to meet your housing needs.