AccessWorld Podcast, Episode 32: Reconnecting with Lee Huffman of APH

Episode Notes

Welcome back to AccessWorld, a podcast on digital inclusion and accessibility. In this week’s episode, Aaron flies solo, but isn’t alone as he welcomes back Lee Huffman from APH. Lee breaks down some of the exciting new low vision products and discusses ways blind and low vision consumers can get involved and have their voices heard. Check out the below links for more details.

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AccessWorld Podcast, Episode 32 Transcript:

Introduction: AFB. You're listening to AccessWorld, a podcast on digital inclusion and accessibility. AccessWorld is a production of the American Foundation for the Blind. Learn more at www.afb.org/aw.

Aaron Preece: Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of the AccessWorld podcast, a podcast on digital inclusion and accessibility. This is episode 32 and I am your host, Aaron Preece, the editor of AFB's AccessWorld Technology Magazine. I am sort of flying solo here today. Our co host, Tony Stevens, is currently at the 2026 Helen Keller Achievement Awards. But I'm not alone today. We have a guest with us today. Many who are long term AccessWorld readers will recognize Lee Huffman, who is now with the American Printing House for the Blind. Hey, Lee, how's it going?

Lee Huffman: Good. Aaron, how are you doing today?

Aaron Preece: Not too bad.

Lee Huffman: Thanks for having me on. I appreciate being invited to the podcast.

Aaron Preece: Thanks for joining us. It's always, always a pleasure. I think we had you on back in episode five, way back when we first started, which is crazy to think about. We're now on episode 32.

Lee Huffman: It's come a long way.

Aaron Preece: Yeah, time flies. So, at aph, what is your role? I know you're involved in low vision and I've heard your title, but I was gonna let you kind of explain to people what, what you do there and what your title is and that sort of thing.

Lee Huffman: Thanks. Well, officially, you know, sometimes I have to get out my business card and check to see what my title is, but I believe officially it's Low Vision Product Manager for Product Development. And that's a sort of a long way of saying I manage the incoming low vision products for the American Printing House for the Blind, and really kind of separate those from, once they pass, what we call our pick committee or the Product Ideation Committee. Once we decide that we're going to work on a product, we of course need to tailor it for APH or build it internally ourselves and just bring that project from the idea all the way to market. And that's really the product development pipeline.

Aaron Preece: Gotcha. And I think you also do a lot here. I'm here, as people probably know, in the Huntington office. And you kind of work in the West Virginia Huntington space sometimes also, right?

Lee Huffman: I do. I also am the senior strategist for a program that we call APH Huntington. That's what we call it, the American Printing House. We call it APH Huntington, but it's really, it's not an office, but it's a program where we are in the area of Huntington, West Virginia, doing some local work. I would call it to help bring the elevate APH and our resources in a rural community. And really learning by doing that, we want to learn how to better serve other rural communities across the country, because rural communities have unique needs that more metropolitan places do not. There are socioeconomic impacts, There is communication impact. There is even impacts such as lack of access to end of the Internet. And so those things impact how you serve a rural community where you wouldn't have that in Middletown middle America like you do in a rural community. So by working on APH Huntington and really trying to improve access to information, access to products, and support other nonprofits in our area, as well as teachers of the visually impaired and different school systems within Cavill and Wayne county, we hope to be able to expand our reach and expand the possibilities for people with vision loss.

Aaron Preece: Yeah, it's a. It's super important and it, it's. It definitely is a unique environment. I'd say people might be aware we have a. A documentary on YouTube called Unseen Horizons. So if people are kind of interested in the. The rural sort of west. In this specific case, West Virginia experiences. Both Lee and I are in. Interviewed on that in that documentary. And it kind of goes into what it's like being blind in a more rural rural area like West Virginia. And like you say, even sometimes like this goes for across the United States. But things like access to transportation, access to even the Internet and that sort of thing. You got haulers in West Virginia where you might not have access to either of those things. And I would say, at least in where we are in Huntington and in Wayne county, people might be familiar with one of the. The Tubert foundation we've talked about. I know I've covered it in AccessWorld. It's a foundation that sponsors and funds a lot of blindness initiatives here in the Huntington General area, really Cat Boyne counties, which is. So we're very lucky to have to have the Tubert foundation here funding that sort of thing.

Lee Huffman: Absolutely, absolutely.

Aaron Preece: Can you tell us about yourself? And I know you're visually impaired. I know your vision case or what your vision's like. Quick for the listeners. Could you kind of tell us what your, I guess, what your vision's like, what kind of tools you use, that sort of thing?

Lee Huffman: Absolutely. I was diagnosed with stars guard disease, which is a juvenile form of macular degeneration.

Aaron Preece: Probably,

Lee Huffman: I believe around, you know, I was trying to think of. Really when I was diagnosed, I realized I had a vision problem between the second and third grade. And it was really noticed for Me, because I we when you, at that time, you're doing a lot with, you know, addition, subtraction. You're learning to read in first grade, second grader improving and doing some different things, and you're alphabetizing. And I would mistake O's and A's and C's and lowercase E's, things like that that were similar. And the school nurse, I remember I was in sixth grade and the school nurse was, you know, she came in and she was checking everybody in the sixth grade that day. So we would go down to the clinic and she would put the eye chart up and you'd read it. And this one was a box, and it lit up, and it wasn't the one that they put on the wall. But I was sitting in the chair and she asked me to read the line she had lit up, and I couldn't read it. And she said, well, step up to about here. And I walked halfway up and I still couldn't read it. And she just had me sit back down. She goes, you know, you need to be glad you're not 16, because if you were 16, I don't believe you could get your driver's license. And when she said that, man, I mean, I knew I couldn't see very well. And I knew I had trouble reading some and seeing the board. But I didn't know, and until she said that, that it was going to have that big of an impact on my life. And that's when it really started to hit home that, hey, you've got a serious problem. Even though I, of course, known that I had vision issues for a good while. But after that point, I went to the West Virginia University Eye Institute. It became more of an important thing for my parents to get to the bottom of it, of what the issue really was. And went to the West Virginia University Eye Institute, had specific testing done. They put dye in your veins, they take pictures of your eye. They do other types of diagnostic testing. And that's really when I believe I got my diagnosis. I'd been to the eye doctor, several eye doctors, all of this time since about first or second grade. And there was never really a diagnosis. I was told, my parents were told that I was faking it for attention. I got a pair of glasses. I remember having those. Yeah, in the third grade. And they didn't help. And so my first pair of glasses didn't help. So how do you tell your parents they don't work? And I remember pretending to lose them. I would put them down farther, my nose and look over top of them, because it was just very frustrating for me and really kind of scary, too, especially after getting the diagnosis. And I remember my eye doctor at the time who really kind of found out what the issue really was. He said that it is very rare, and most eye doctors see stars guard once or twice in their entire career. So I thought, well, heck, if it's going to be something like that, it's got to be me, right? The one that nobody can fix.

Aaron Preece: Yeah.

Lee Huffman: So, yeah, that really is central vision loss. It's very similar to what older people have when they lose central vision loss for macular degeneration. It's very similar. And it just happens when you're younger.

Aaron Preece: Yeah, that really illustrates, I guess, how. How different, like the. The sort of. The spectrum of vision loss. Because I can imagine how much in a lot of cases, how frustrating that would have been before you realize, like, before you got diagnosed, like, you know, you can't see very well, but trying to articulate that when you can see well enough, because, like, I was very low vision as a child, but I was so low vision that it was obvious from when I was, like two years old, one and a half years old or something like that. So I was able to go into school with. With a tvi, with learning Braille because I could see. But it was. It was very, you know, undeniable that I couldn't see very well. And I imagine that, like, in some ways you have. You have better vision, but in some ways that is. I can imagine being tough in its own way, not knowing and not if that makes sense.

Lee Huffman: It does. And, you know, you had the. I had the expectation because it wasn't something that was, you know, easily recognizable to anybody, that I had a vision condition. There were expectations of you to do certain things that, you know, I really couldn't do. So I remember even in high school where, you know, I would avoid. Of course I couldn't take driver's ed, but it was an option back then. It was an optional course, and you didn't have to take it. So I didn't take it. When all of my friends did. They were chomping at the bit to get into driver's Ed. And I'm like, oh, I don't want that class. And I didn't take typing because you'd have to look at a book and type. Under the typewriter.

Aaron Preece: Oh, type. What's in the. Yeah, what's in the book?

Lee Huffman: And so I avoided that class. And so those were things that I just avoided to try to help cover the fact that I had low vision.

Aaron Preece: So what kind of, I guess like what kind of devices and stuff do you use now when it comes to, I guess, ways that you, I don't know if you would say accommodate for your vision loss. I'm thinking like basically what kind of technology do you do to. Or do you use for work and just in life and that sort of thing?

Lee Huffman: Well, really the thing, the two, three things that I use the most. Number one, I use a laptop every day, a PC every day for work. And I have a laptop, it's sitting over at the side of my desk and I run it through like a 24 inch monitor and a regular sized keyboard, just a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse. That's the way I prefer to work if I have to. When I travel I use my. Still use the mouse because I don't like a trackpad, but that's a personal preference on that. But just, you know, lean a little closer. But I use Zoomtext for just regular PC work. I also have a Jupiter which is courtesy of American Printing House for the Blind for paperwork or things that I need to see that are printed or even objects. I have a jupyter on my desk. And really the third thing is my Apple iPhone. I use that with. I use the magnified fonts on it, I use the bold text. I set those things, I set them, make sure that the brightness is turned up. But really I use those things to like navigate the icons. But when I get into the meat of an app, so to speak, or really navigating through an app like Uber or something else, I use Voiceover to navigate all the different parts of the app to make it function and do the same thing for reading emails and text messages and phone logs, things like that.

Aaron Preece: I use mostly Voiceover with Zoomtext, I guess kind of a hybrid model. Are you using text to speech through ZoomText? I know it can sometimes do that. Or do you mainly use the magnification

Lee Huffman: for the large screen? I use them both. I use the Zoomtext always for magnification. But then when I get in, I will find an email that I want and then I'll use Zoomtext to read the email to me or something like that. I'll have it read mostly the content. I do the navigation to get to where I need to go mostly visually through magnification. But then when it comes into reading something, especially a long document, I read some emails visually, but I'm not going to read, waste my time and struggle to read an email or especially a Longer document with just magnification.

Aaron Preece: Yeah, that makes total sense. So kind of swap depending on what's most efficient at the time.

Lee Huffman: Yeah, it's kind of like the hybrid. You know, that's a great way that you describe it. I use both and I just use them interchangeably. And then, you know, sometimes depending on what you're looking at on a screen, I'll need to have like two or three times magnification. But if it's something super small, I ramp it up a good bit and then right back down. So I'm not a person who leaves it at, you know, four times magnification all day long. I'm constantly moving it up and down.

Aaron Preece: Yeah, constantly.

Lee Huffman: And that's just the way that that might be best practice, but that's the way I use it. Yeah.

Aaron Preece: And I would say I don't know what's best practice, but I would say it makes sense to me that you're gonna. Whatever. Again, kind of on the blindness as a spectrum thing. Whatever. Everybody's gonna have a different set of tools and different set of like, I don't know if you'd call it skills or methods of, methods of action or whatever to maximize what's most efficient for them. I can see that. I think about how even like I use a screen reader pretty much all the time because my vision's low enough now that I couldn't use magnification. But I know sometimes I'll use maybe less efficient keystrokes just because that's what I'm used to. And I can go faster that way because it's muscle memory. So the same similar kind of.

Lee Huffman: Absolutely. And I think that's super important. You know, I mentioned I never took typing before, so I never really had good keyboarding instruction. But I do use the home row and do things like that. But really my typing is self taught. But it is muscle memory because especially when you're typing fast and I type all day long, every day. And I'm not the best typist, but I'm good enough to do everything that I need to do. I would just advise people, especially younger people that are listening to this to really learn to be a great touch typist. I'm not a big proponent of the great big large print keyboards where people use those and rely on vision have to have a great big keyboard. And if you get accustomed to that when you're young, you won't become a touch typist very often. And what happens is you rely on that. And if you need to use a Different computer or you need to move to a laptop, you're so reliant on the vision part, you can't use the other keyboard. And so I just want to stress it's always important for people to become as best they can at touch typist. So you can go from computer to computer, laptop to laptop and be more adaptable.

Aaron Preece: Yeah, for sure. I would say it's interesting to me how when we talk to people about like what kind of tools they use and how the consolidation we're seeing since and we've talked about this, I think on the podcast before to some degree and definitely in AccessWorld about how because of the smartphone especially, you've seen so much more consolidation of devices. Like you really mentioned, you've got your laptop, you've got your smartphone, you've got your video magnifier. And I'm personally kind of similar. I've got my phone, my laptop, sometimes a braille display, very rarely. And I would say most people that I've talked to are fairly similar that we've kind of back in, you know, 20 years ago you would have. There were so many more devices people were using on a regular basis. And it's interesting to see how all that's kind of consolidated into smaller and smaller forms, more things folded into singular devices.

Lee Huffman: Yes, I think it's very important we still, I call it, and it's been called this for decades, I'm sure your low vision toolkit or a toolbox. And same thing for people who have blindness skills and rely on or use braille and speech output, things like that. But you have a toolbox. And my toolbox used to be heavier because I had like a handheld 5 inch video magnifier and I had a monocular and I had other things. And so I used to carry all this stuff and I no longer do that. My smartphone is what I use to magnify, you know, most everything quote on the go, because the Jupiter from APH sits on your desk, you can move it from room to room, but you don't carry it with you when you go to the mall or when you go out and about wherever you're going in your day. And so if I need to see something, I will open the phone app and enlarge it and see what you need to see, spot read really and use that instead of carrying another device. Now, some people are not tech savvy and they don't use a smartphone or don't use it very often and are maybe not skilled with the accessibility features that are built into it. And for them a 5 inch video magnifier that they carry is essential. And that's why at APH we have a spectrum of low vision products. So that depending on what your potential or not potential, but what your personal needs and preferences are, we try to match where you are with a product. So we still have the 5 inch video magnifier. We call it the Video Mag HD for high definition. The second handheld that we have is called the Juno and That is a 7 inch screen, but that also incorporates a handle that is, you know, folded in a couple different ways to give you a little bit more ergonomics. It does have a 7 inch screen and it provides full page OCR. So if you're a student, if someone is looking at mail and you need to read like a typed letter, for example, the Juno may be something that you want. The next step up is the Jupiter, which is what I use. It has a camera that provides distance viewing. So if you need a student looking at a chalkboard or a presentation or a teacher, you can use that. You have desktop viewing. So if you want to read a passage or you need to fill out a form or I even still write a few checks. Not all, everything. Some of what I do is online or over the phone, but I do write a few checks every month. So I use it for that. You can also use it for self viewing to you know, check your makeup, check your hair, trim your beard, whatever you need to do that way. So the Jupiter is a great, I think all around device. We also have the Matt Connect which is a tablet based system. It also has a distance camera. It has a lot more functionality because you do have a tablet as your display screen. That's the Matt Connect. And we also have the, I guess the newest in our lineup is what we call the Neptune. And you know, I said when we were developing a name for the Neptune, the Juno, the Jupiter and the Neptune in your Greek mythology, they're all so in a family of products. So we're working on. And the Neptune is an OCR device. Basically it has similar form factor of the Jupiter. It has a platform where you place a sheet of paper in landscape orientation under a camera and it will take a picture really immediately. It's super fast and accurate and you can display that on a screen if you want to. There's a 13 inch very lightweight screen that you can if you have low vision and you want to be able to use some vision. It has adjustable high contrast colors. You can see that as it's read aloud to you and it will read a document or you can read multiple page documents with it as well. So if a teacher gives you a handout, you can like four or five pages, you can read that at whatever speed that you want. There are two different voices that are English voices. There's also a built in Spanish voice. If someone needs another voice or another language that can be special ordered as well. So if you need a student to have German or French or Italian, we can make that available to you as well. And really it can save a five or ten page document to a thumb drive or it could save an entire book. Whatever you need to save, you can save that on a USB drive from the device and take that to your laptop. You can put it, change the name, you can adjust it, you can do whatever you need to do, come back to your Neptune, read it later. And it's very portable. It weighs about 4 pounds total. It comes in a nice carrying case. And that's our latest addition to our low vision line. So like I said, it's really low vision or blindness. It kind of spans that spectrum because it can be used with or without a screen. It has a remote keypad, that's how you operate it. And it's very high contrast, very tactile keys and it has an audible menu. So if you need to go in and hey, what version of software is this? Or how do I change the contrast colors? You use the remote control. It's all sub voicing and very, very accessible.

Aaron Preece: That is super cool. That seems like it would be a good one. Good for like say seniors. We talked about people that might not be using smartphones and using more like handheld magnifiers and that sort of thing. Good for immediate access and easy to understand, but also has enough complexity that if you are using like a smartphone or a computer and you have that extra, those extra capabilities for that audience, it seems like it could kind of cross audiences there.

Lee Huffman: Absolutely. Also for students who are at the point, maybe they're middle school or high school students, college students who have a lot of text reading to do. If you can't for whatever reason in time frame or at all, get your textbook in an accessible format, you could take your chapter, if you have to read chapter 10 for tonight or for the next week, you can take that chapter from your book, turn the page, it'll snap a picture, keep turning the pages, get that whole chapter snapped and photoed by the Neptune, save it and read back to you at the speed that you feel comfortable having it Read back to you or watch it on the screen.

Aaron Preece: Yeah, that's nice too. From a speed perspective. I remember back in the day using like the scanners and you had to pull the book out, flip it around.

Lee Huffman: Sarah, or something like that.

Aaron Preece: Yeah. Being able to do it so quick, it's kind of a niche question, I guess. But whenever it comes to books, I guess I feel like I've seen it and there's like really bright light to really illuminate everything so it gets a good picture. How do people. Are there techniques people are using and maybe this is something but like techniques to make sure you're getting both pages and that sort of thing are there like do people use peripheral things? I remember back in the day, you'd see like the glass thing. You could press down on it. What's the.

Lee Huffman: So what you would do with this case at the back of the platform where you lay the piece of text, you know, the text on the platform, there is a raised line or raised indicator across the back. And you place it in landscape orientation against that. So you have a place to line up your text or line up the page of the book where you need to do it. And as soon as you get it in place, the picture is snapped. It's like you even hear the camera sound like an old camera from the 80s or 90s.

Aaron Preece: So you know it's done. Yeah.

Lee Huffman: And so you know it's done and it flashes the flash that's needed to illuminate the page enough to take the picture. You just hold it in place. And if they're. I remember we did usually back in the day, you'd have a clear piece of plexiglass. You'd press down on the book. You don't need to do that with the Neptune. Just hold it in place and just hold the page down. And it does accommodate for that. It also has a column mode. So if you're in column situation, there's a column mode that's available autorecon.

Aaron Preece: So the text just good enough now that it can just. It understands and can better read like the text that might be angled into the. That's nice to know because I remember using that big old plexiglass, like you're saying the big plexiglass piece to hold the book down. So that's cool to see the kind of subtle things you don't even think about. That's been improved in the tech.

Lee Huffman: And really as far as instant. Once you lay that page down and you hear the snapshot of taking the photo literally in less than two seconds, it's reading aloud to you. And you can use a standard earphone jack that you get for $2 to the drugstore and plug into the Neptune. You can just let it play out into the room. But if you're a student and you need some privacy, you can do that. Or you're reading a private document, you can use the headphones or you can have Bluetooth headset connected to the Neptune as well. And so where are we going? Where are we going with the products that we have? So right now, one thing that I'm working on with a few colleagues at APH is our low vision roadmap. So as part of the product development side of it, we are looking for what is the next best thing that our customers need. And for the most part, we look at K through 12 and the education market. We also always think about seniors or adult professionals as well. But the school age market is our biggest group of customers.

Aaron Preece: Yeah, if that makes sense.

Lee Huffman: Yeah. And so we're looking right now and hopefully you'll be able to, in the show notes for this particular podcast, add links to some surveys that were done doing. Part of our roadmap is asking people what they need. What we want to find out is what do people need? What is working well now, what is not working well, what needs improved, where are the gaps, especially in the classroom and for students that we need as Apache to be filling or better filling as we move forward into the future. So one of the things that we're doing, we have surveys for teachers of the visually impaired. That's one. We have one, for example, blindness, low vision professionals. And when, I mean that, you know, it's sort of like the rehab professionals, people that handle those types of working with jobs, working with people with vision loss, parents of students, young students who are blind or low vision, and then adult consumers, adults over the age of 18 who are blind or low vision. And so there's four different surveys that we're having people answer questions about because we want to know. And you know, sometimes there are products that really work really well in isolation. So if you're sitting at a desk at home by yourself, it works really well. But if you're in a classroom setting where you need to collaborate with your classmates, work on a project in real time, does it work there? Does it work in that environment or does it not? Do we need something that would work better in that situation? So all of these types of questions are being asked and others as well.

Aaron Preece: That makes sense to cover those different, like Demographics. I think what I didn't even think about was the parents, because I'm sure there are situations where a parent's like watching their kid do their homework or something, and the kid doesn't even realize what they're struggling with. But the parent from the outside view sees that and can identify all the kids struggling to do this specific thing. And if the device could do this, it would help them. When the kid doesn't even realize that they're compensating for something or whatever. I can also see just different. You might be getting different feedback on different products too. I imagine someone working in an office job might be using a jupyter where maybe someone that's in college or in high school and they're going from room to room constantly might benefit from, say, a Matt connect and be using that. So you're getting different kinds of feedback that way.

Lee Huffman: Exactly. And a teacher, when a student. When I say a student, I mean kindergarten through 12th grade. And so if you're looking at a third or fourth grade student, maybe they don't really have the vocabulary or the words to articulate what they're struggling with. As well as a parent who's seeing it firsthand would see it or a teacher seeing it firsthand. And the challenges at home might be different from the challenges at school. And so especially if the student is not able to take a piece of assistive technology like a Jupiter or a video mag hd, if they can't take it home with them to do their homework and they have to find workarounds or get help from a parent or a sibling or something like that, you know, what challenges are different at home? Looking at the TV remote is different than filling out your map with the test of the states. When you're in 10th grade or something like that, it's different. So we want to know what challenges are at home, what challenges are in the classroom.

Aaron Preece: That makes total sense.

Lee Huffman: One thing too, that we're asking all the different demographics of survey is about artificial intelligence. And this is something that we have a lot of questions about. At the American Printing House for the Blind, for example, you know, how and how and when and to what products should we or do students or teachers want artificial intelligence brought into a product? And there's lots of ways that you can do it. I mean, when people think of artificial intelligence, that means all different things. That could be like OCR, that could be currency identification. Is it a $5 bill or a $10 bill? It could be chatgpt type of a thing where you Ask it specific questions and want to get specific answers. Or it could be something like an Alexa or a Siri where you say, hey, change the magnification to level four and you speak to a device auto.

Aaron Preece: And it's smart.

Lee Huffman: It automatically does something.

Aaron Preece: Yeah.

Lee Huffman: So there's all different ways that AI can be incorporated. Now there are logistics and legal aspects around all of that. So you have to be very careful, especially up to the age of 13, it's very strict and stringent. After 13, it gets a little bit less. But there are all types of information that you have to be very careful that you don't collect, like personal identifiable information about a student who's like 12 years old. So one thing you have to be very careful of when you're a company that makes assistive technology, if you're going to have it using or any type of technology used in a classroom, you've got to be very cognizant of what are the laws in all 50 states. And right now, every state is different. Every county, every county is different. And the policy within the county is different. And these schools, policy within the county is different from the school around the corner. So you have to try to make a product that is as available to all sorts of students as possible. So we really want to know, you know, from a student, you know, are you excited about AI? Are you hesitant? Or a teacher? The student may be, yeah, let's go, let's put it in here. I'm looking forward to it. And the teacher may have some questions and the school district may say, absolutely not. So we want to know, where is everybody? And we're also asking, for example, teachers, how, what type of regulation do you have in your particular school district that you know, is the smartphone allowed in the classroom? And if it's not, what about in an IEP situation, can it be used, you know, other things like that. Also, the meta glasses, which a lot of people are using today, are those allowed in the classroom? Because you never know. Is the student going to take them off when they go into the locker room or to a restroom? You have to be very careful about how people use cameras and recording devices and things that can be used for great things and can be used for equal, more equal access to instructional materials, but can also be used in a negative way as well.

Aaron Preece: Yeah, for sure. I would think, especially in education, just the, if you give access to, say, ChatGPT, there's a lot of beneficial things you can ask it for, especially around computer vision and recognition and that sort of thing. And probably even reformat, you know, take a picture say with you know, OCR and then have that picture reformatted into an image that you can, you know, see better in some other way. But the, the temptation then you're opening it up potentially to the temptation for the student to use it to take shortcuts or something. That I know is a thorn or cheat.

Lee Huffman: Let's just say it. Yeah, well say it because like for the Juno for example, which is our smaller handheld device, it's magnification. It also like the video mag HD has the ability to take a photo and if you take a photo of a completely worked algebraic equation and you save it there and you're in algebra class, you're taking a test. Let's just, if the teacher. You can just scroll looking at your screen.

Aaron Preece: Yeah.

Lee Huffman: Just scroll. She thinks you're trying to see the exponent. You're like trying to copy the exponent from your screen. Yeah. Test mode on some of our products as well.

Aaron Preece: Oh, that's smart. Yeah, that's it. I can see where that'd be really one thorny. Just because like you're saying with all the different regulations and how like cookie cutter or like not cookie cutter but what like piecemeal they are across the country and just in education in general because we, we talk about AI a lot here and we're very. I know personally I'm very gung ho about it just because of the, the applications but we're thinking about it from a, like from as used by adults in real. Yeah. Professionals in real like in, in a non regulated environment like that like education. So I can see where that would be. Have a lot of questions involved and how do you give access to the value, the useful features that AI can provide but have the safeguards around for regulative and just ethical aspects.

Lee Huffman: It's a balance for sure. And like I said, I would really appreciate you putting the links to those surveys in the show notes and if you're listening I would appreciate you taking, you know, if you're falling in one of these categories that you would take our survey, it's not going to take you a long time. They're not. I don't remember how many questions or maybe 20 minutes it might take but the value that we receive from the honest answers from these different segments are really what help us be better informed about what we do with our products going forward. We really use and appreciate the input from these different demographics of people.

Aaron Preece: That makes total sense. I know oftentimes you'll see no matter how much testing you do until you release it to the public, there's always something you're not going to be able to catch until the public gets their hands on it and you just get that volume of feedback. You see it a lot of times in software and that sort of thing.

Lee Huffman: So I can see that's really when we, when we develop a product at aph, whether it's a blindness product, whether it's a low vision product, whether it's technology or whether it's a tactile map, our products before they go to the mark to market or we can put them on sale in our store, they go to field testing as part of the development process. So that means we have a prototype. So like what we think is a quote, a finished product and we send it to out for field testing. So we'll go, for example, to 15 to 20 teachers. It will go to parents of visually impaired children. Just a group, random. As random as we can get. We always want to make sure we balance, you know, the states. We don't want to have, you know, 15 people from California and two people from Minnesota or two people from West Virginia. We want to spread that out. And we also want to have a representation of rural versus suburban versus metropolitan areas because everything's different. And let them use the product for a given amount of time, three or four weeks, possibly shorter, possibly longer, depending on the product. And then we send them a survey. And oftentimes we actually send two. One for the teacher that's working with the student and then one that the teacher fills out on behalf of the student, like what problems did the student have? And we can capture the student information. And then there might be some challenges for the teacher. Like this was very difficult to explain to the child. Or I have problems, you know, learning to use it myself. Whatever the feedback we get from that process, we go back to the drawing board and say, hey, we needed. We had a lot of information that said A, B and C. And we have to address those before that product is going to be put into store.

Aaron Preece: Yeah, that makes total sense. And that's. I could see the. There's something about the diversity of experience that's really valuable.

Lee Huffman: I feel like it's super valuable to us. And what I'll even do, hopefully. I'll send you a link, Aaron. That is a link to our get involved page where if you're interested in participating in field test surveys for any of the APH products that we have, whether it be blindness products, educational products, low vision products, you can become A tester for those and sign up to be one of our testers for the future.

Aaron Preece: Definitely. So outside one thing we wanted to to cover the Monarch device kind of outside of the low vision spectrum. One of the very promising I think we've talked about. I know I've talk to people about it. I don't know if it's come up how much has come up on the podcast before but it's the URLs multi line braille display and tactile graphics display. Lots of very cool features. But can there, there's. You have the Monarch Rise program and I, I saw that some applications for. I think the waiting list is. Is still open till the 30th of April and I just wanted to throw that out to people.

Lee Huffman: Sure. Yeah. The Monarch is one of our. I wouldn't call it new any longer. It's a newer type of device because it is a multiline braille display which is really sort of a new concept for a lot of people and it really is opening a lot of doors and we're at the tipping point where we're having so many of them that are in the hands of blind people that it's really changing the way we believe naph is changing the way blind students are learning in general. And so getting Monarchs into the hands of students and professionals is super important. And that's why we have the Monarch student pilot program and then the Monarch Rise program as well. So the student pilot project is really getting this into the hands of the families of blind and low vision people who students who read Braille and letting them learn to use it and adapting to all and learn to all the different features and functionality and the new apps that can continue to come out and how they can incorporate that into their classroom with their teachers. And as part of that program, if you apply to that and there are certain regulations and you have some responsibilities if you get a free Monarch that you will participate and provide honest feedback about how well it's working for you, how it's incorporated into your classroom. And so there's information that surveys that we send out to if a student enrolls and they receive the Monarch to their teacher, to the student themselves and to the parents who you know, kind of oversee and kind of collaborate together to help the student really learn to get the best value from the experience of using a Monarch. And we have the Monarch Rise program as well, which is for college students and people who are in the first couple of years of their career field and then folks who are underemployed as well to get them using the Monarch to see how they can best use that for their advantage in their situations. And there's a lot of online resources that are available for both of these projects. A lady named Erin Sigman is the one who oversees a lot of the Monarch projects and it would be great, I think just we had talked earlier about possibly having her come on and really explain in more full detail what the programs are, eligibility and all the potential benefits that are available.

Aaron Preece: Yeah, definitely. I would love to do that. I. So as far as I understand the the current group has of the Monarch Rise program has received their devices that are in the program now and then there's an application for being put on the waiting list for the next like the next round, so to speak. Is that correct? Is that what.

Lee Huffman: That's right. The spring applications have closed. There is a wait list that if you get. Get this out, podcast up fairly quickly and people can get to the link. There is a wait list that is open until April 30, 2026. So just in the next couple of weeks, maybe.

Aaron Preece: Couple days. Yeah, depending on when this drops. I think it should drop before. Before then. But yeah, hurry basically, if you're interested, hurry to check it out because depending on when this drops, as soon as

Lee Huffman: the podcast is over. Go to the bottom.

Aaron Preece: Go to the bottom. Yeah, click the link again.

Lee Huffman: That is the wait list. So if someone would need to drop out who's already registered. I gotcha.

Aaron Preece: That's what that means. Okay.

Lee Huffman: Or another position somehow opens up that. That can. People can be on the wait list.

Aaron Preece: It's such a cool. I've seen it a couple times at show, you know, at conferences and that sort of thing. And it's just a really, really cool device. And I the potential of that type of device for education, but also in careers and just in a lot. A lot of different applications for that.

Lee Huffman: So yeah, and I don't want to speak too much or the wrong way from what I have because I'm not on the Monarch team, but there's even different apps. They're always creating new apps for the Monarch to be coming out. And one of the things is called Wing it where you can draw on a tablet and it automatically pops up to make like a Braille graphic on the Monarch's display. So someone could be like a teacher could be drawing something for you. For example, the layout of a room that you've come into and you can draw that fairly quickly and sketch it out. And the student can get better orientation by Feeling that on the screen so they get a better gist of what's located around them in the room. Something like that.

Aaron Preece: That's cool. In general, that's all the questions and kind of topics I had. Is there anything that you would want to bring up or anything you think the listeners need to know or, you know.

Lee Huffman: I always kind of try to give my best advice to people who are blind or low vision. I always think about young people because I think that that is super important. And you know what I've did when I used to be the editor of AccessWorld years ago, many years ago. I've known Aaron for a long time. I'm very familiar with the American foundation for the Blind. By way. I always advise people, especially young people, is really three things. And number one is that the first one is to master the technology. The access technology and mainstream technology that you need, whether that's low vision technology and magnification, whether it's blindness technology, refreshable braille, using voiceover, whatever it is, that technology that you need for your eye condition to master that as best as you can. And that's not a one and done thing because there are always updates, there's always new technology. Mainstream technology comes out that access technology has to keep pace with. So you're never finished with technology or. Oh, I've learned all of that. You may know the basics that you can extrapolate out as new technology comes along, but always master the technology and keep moving forward with it. That's number one, orientation. Mobility is number two. The better that you can physically get around not only your house or where you live, but your office, your town, your state, the country, and really the world. I have colleagues that travel literally all over the world. Yeah, for APH and they don't have someone with them. I mean, they travel independently and they navigate and do everything that they need to do. I mean, APH doesn't send somebody with them to be their sighted guide. That doesn't happen. And so the better that you are aware of all the technology and travel, because you can develop technology into your travel, but the better you're able to orient and navigate your space. That's the second thing. And really the third is to build an accessible life for yourself. And quite often, you know, Aaron and I are from a rural state. West Virginia is the third most forested state in the nation. So I live in Charleston, Aaron lives in Huntington. And we compete on who has the most people in our city. And on a good day, one of us will have 50,000 people.

Aaron Preece: Yeah, we're the two most populous cities in the state.

Lee Huffman: We're the biggest cities in the state. We compete all the time, who's got the most people. But you can go two miles from where I am right now and not have any Internet access. And that's the same in most all of West Virginia. So really, building an accessible life means if you live, you know, two miles out a two lane road in McDowell, West Virginia, McDowell County, West Virginia, and you don't have Internet access, you don't have Internet, you don't have access to an Uber Lyfter taxi, you don't have a bus or a paratransit, you're stuck.

Aaron Preece: Yeah.

Lee Huffman: And that's the worst thing to me that anybody can really be. And that might mean that you need to move to a place like into town or a place where that you can get a bus or you can walk to where you need to go or, or get to a job or a school or a grocery store or a bank or a post office or whatever it is that you need to build your life that you can get to. And it might mean moving away from family and things that you're familiar with, but you need to build an accessible world for yourself so that you can be independent and you can be productive and pursue education, pursue employment and really build an independent life for yourself. And really for me, that is a message not only to a young person, but to the parent as well, to encourage independence and to encourage high level of expectation not only for them from elementary school through college or whatever post secondary education they want to pursue, to expect excellence, no one's perfect. But to expect excellence and instill that in your child who may have a visual impairment for whatever it is that they do, and to do that as independently as possible. So that's my.

Aaron Preece: I would agree, I definitely agree with that. And even if there's something about the encouragement and instilling the mindset of to try, even if you find that you fail or you find that you can't do something as well as you thought you might be able to, just having that mindset of I'll at least give this a try will really, really benefit people. Especially thinking from a parent to a child perspective, or whether you're a teacher or you're some other kind of authority figure, I think that's super important to instill that sort of optimistic, adventurous attitude. I don't know what else you'd call that, but I think that's super important. I agree there.

Lee Huffman: I think it's true. And Really, I think that sometimes you don't even know how you're going to do it. You're just going to figure it out as you go along. I remember when I first started traveling for work, and you, you know, change planes, you go to a new airport, you've never been there before, and I'm like, well, how am I going to do this? Or how am I going to find my gate? And because I might be able to see the big number that says A4, gate A4, but all the different overhead signage in an airport that's, you know, much smaller, you can't read any of that. So you just kind of figure it out, but you've only got 42 minutes between to do it, so. Well, I'm going to figure it out and. But, you know, you do it and you ask people. If you have a tongue in your head, you can't get too lost because you can ask directions and you can say, hey, I don't see very well. Can you tell me how I need to get to, you know, gate A4? And they'll point you walk as far as you can go until you figure out where you need to turn. And you do it as you go. You don't always have the roadmap, but you figure it out along the way. And that's what people have to realize that they can do for sure.

Aaron Preece: All right, well, thank you so much for being on the podcast today. This has been excellent. We really appreciate it.

Lee Huffman: Well, I appreciate you asking me. And if anybody needs any more information about the American Printing House for the blind, please visit aph.org and that will get you to our main website. And from there, you can use our search function to search a product or search a topic, or search some of our different resources that are on aph.org and you can search our store as well. So aph.org will get you really to information about the Monarch, the Monarch Rise program, the student pilot program we mentioned before, and all of our offerings, whether it be low vision or blindness technologies, for sure.

Aaron Preece: And check out the show notes and we'll have some of the links down there, too, for some things like these surveys and the Monarch Rest application and that sort of thing.

Lee Huffman: We would love to have your listeners get involved. Absolutely.

Aaron Preece: For sure. Thank you, everyone, for listening. I hope you enjoy the podcast and we will see you next time.

Tony Stephens: You've been listening to AccessWorld, a podcast on digital inclusion and accessibility. AccessWorld is a production of the American foundation for the Blind produced at the Pickle Factory in Baltimore, Maryland. Our theme music is by CosMonkey, compliments of ArtList.IO. To email our hosts Aaron and Tony, email communications@afb.org to learn more about the American Foundation for the Blind or even help support our work, go to www.afb.org.

Outro: AFB