 Hello everyone and welcome. I'm Brenda Hauck and I'm the facilitator for today's session. We have two very special guests with us today, Sunhar Tan who is a librarian at the Itaskit Community Library in Illinois where she has worked to create a vision center. And we're lucky to also be joined today by Tom Persky who is the Senior Vice President Rehabilitation Services for the Chicago Lighthouse. Tom has been a great resource for Sunhar and I think he will be for all of us today too. So welcome to them and thank you all for being with us today. Before we begin, let me quickly tell you about the technology we're using which is called ReadyTalk. So you should be hearing my voice right now and that audio can play through your speakers or your headphones. And if that's not working, if it's choppy, that might be a bandwidth issue. So there's a phone number you can use too and we'll put that phone number in the chat. And I'm going to just put a message up here because if you're hearing me say this then you're obviously not having the audio issues. So hopefully people will let us know in chat if they're having any audio issues. So again, if it's not working through your speakers or headphones, we'll share a phone number now and then throughout the session and you can use that as an alternative. We have chat available and we encourage you to use that throughout the session. Use it to ask questions that you have for the presenters. If you're having tech trouble, we have Becky and Sarah both there who can help. If you have resources that you want to tell us about or share with others, feel free to use the chat throughout the session to do that. One of the questions people always have is will this be recorded? And the answer is yes. It is being recorded right now. Later today we'll send a follow-up message and that message will contain a link to the recording. It will contain the PowerPoint slides and then any websites that are mentioned are discussed during the session. I know both Soonhar and Tom are going to talk about a lot of resources and we have websites linked to those things so we'll have those compiled for you so you can easily check them out after the session. One thing I will mention about the PowerPoint is that it was also attached to the reminder message that went out about this session an hour ago. So if you for some reason are having trouble seeing the slides this way, you have the PowerPoint slides that were part of that message that went out an hour ago. And again, we'll send all of this out later today, recording PowerPoint and links. Today's session is brought to you by several groups. I work with TechSoup for Libraries which is part of TechSoup. TechSoup is an organization that helps nonprofits and libraries use technology to serve their communities. And TechSoup is one of the organizations that is part of a coalition called the EDGE Initiative. And that's what today's session is about. It's funded by the Gates Foundation and it's being led by the Urban Libraries Council. The EDGE Coalition has been developing benchmarks for libraries. These are best practices to help public libraries assess where they are at with public technology services and then also to help make plans for improving. There are 11 benchmarks in three categories that are part of EDGE. And you can look at the categories there and see that it's not just things like the number of computers a library has or the amount of bandwidth. Those sorts of things are in there, but this is much broader. And these benchmarks are the basis of the EDGE Assessment Tool. And in January all libraries will be able to use this assessment tool. And so the website and our follow-up message will have more information about that too. But today's session is based on one of the benchmarks, Benchmark 11 which is Libraries Ensure Participation in Digital Technology for People with Disabilities. So today's session and the vision center and services and resources that we are going to talk about represent success with that benchmark. So with that, I'm going to turn things over to Sunhar and Tom. Welcome to both of them and Sunhar. Thank you, Brenda. Hello everyone. I think that I would like to insert a disclaimer in here about the success. I think that is the process of trying to provide such a service as ongoing. So I think I will hold off on determining how much of a success this is. But we definitely have the services up and running. So that is what I would like to tell you about today. The Itesca Community Library is situated in Itesca, Illinois which is a western suburb about 20 miles west of Chicago. We are a pretty small town of the village of just under 9,000 and the library has a budget of about $1.3 million and a collection of a little over 100,000 items. So I have to say that what got us started was really our former director Betsy Adamowski. Now Betsy, the thing about Betsy is she is a huge advocate of libraries and library services and she had this vision. She has perfect vision literally but she understands firsthand what it's like to live with a disability because she is actually hearing impaired and has had two cochlear implants. So she is very empathetic to people who live with a disability. The other thing that was happening was she is friends with Sharon Ruda from the Secretary of State's office. So it was on her radar that the Secretary of State's office provides services that can help people with disabilities and I will talk more about that later. So it was a matter of timing. I had been at this library for about a year and she decided that we were going to do this together. So what we did was we started to do the research by visiting a lot of libraries and talking to people in, I don't want to call it the industry but people who work providing services to people with vision impairments. So we found out what other libraries have and some libraries obviously do more than others. We learned about the outreach programs, the assistive technology and we also visited two places that I thought were very helpful. One was Spectreals which is a vision center in Wheaton and one was the Talking Book Center in Geneva called Voices of Vision and this is where the Secretary of State's office comes in. The Secretary of State's office runs a program called the Talking Books and Brill Service and what they do is they provide equipment and basically books used to be on cassette but they are really phasing out the books on cassette. They are now moving them into digital downloads to people who can't see or hold printed material to read. So by talking to Karen Odine at Voices of Vision and Leah Gerlach at Spectreals, I started to learn more and more about what's available out there to people with vision impairments. And then through talking with Kristen Sanderson at the Elmhurst Public Library, I learned about the Chicago Lighthouse. The Chicago Lighthouse is an organization in Chicago and Tom can tell you more about the Lighthouse that does so much for people with vision impairments but because I had never heard of them, they were just not on my radar and this is how it can be when you're just starting out. All these names and descriptions, it's overwhelming because one day you've never heard of the Chicago Lighthouse and what it does and the next day you're learning so much about it. And so I contacted the Chicago Lighthouse to actually learn more about the type of equipment that my library might want to buy. So that was part of the start. Should I keep going? Okay. So basically I had to become an expert about equipment and services for the blind and visually impaired. And Soonhar, are you still there? Hi Soonhar, are you still there? This is the operator. I'm just going to dial out to her and I see that her line is connected still but I'll just dial back out to her. Just one moment please. Okay. Great. Well thank you. Would you like me to talk about the lighthouse for a few minutes? Hello everyone. My name is Tom Persky and I'm employed at the Chicago Lighthouse. It's a private nonprofit organization that's been around 107 years serving persons who are blind or visually impaired. We have 26 actual different programs running under one roof. We also recently opened a center in the suburban area of Chicago. We have everything from a Chicago public school right inside the building. We actually have programs for blind, deaf blind. We actually have a factory where we do industries for the blind. We are the largest wall clock manufacturer in the United States. But we provide lots of low vision, what's called low vision rehabilitation which involves doctors that prescribe optical magnifiers and telescopes and special devices to help people to maintain their independence. And then it goes into a lot of technology of what could be recommended for someone after they've seen the doctor and they've used a magnifying glass, what's available. So the two main categories that have been really a part of what we do is helping somebody read print material and helping somebody access the computer. So if I were to say that those would be the two sort of main categories. I myself am visually impaired. I've been in this career for 30 years now. I was diagnosed with a juvenile form of immacular degeneration which does happen. It's fairly rare. I was in the middle of my college years. So I had to, my schooling was interrupted. I lost my central vision in both eyes. I gave up my artwork, playing college basketball, and driving a car. And so with technology and learning back in the day, I tell people my first CCTV video magnifier was made out of stone because that was the Stone Age. I was able to return to college later in my 20s and onto graduate school using technology. So it really did save my life and that's really been my passion all these years now working with persons with low vision. Hi, Brenda. Can you hear me? Hi, Soonhar. Yes, glad you're back. Sorry, I don't know when though. Okay, Tom kind of introduced who he is and gave a little bit of his background so we can – Right. I could hear him. I hope you could hear me. I don't know where I got cut off. Let's see. Well, you were talking about needing to become the expert and then thinking about there. So basically I felt that all of a sudden I had to know all these things about assistive technology. Even that itself is a phrase that I don't think that I had thought much about before. It's also sometimes called adaptive technology. But I was working with Tom and one of his colleagues Luke Scriven at the Chicago Lighthouse. And basically I said if I were just starting out from scratch and wanted to provide – wanted to have certain equipment or devices, what would you recommend? And so they threw a lot of names at me and I had to – I basically learned about different things like what is a book reader, what is a CCTV, things like that. And then considered whether these would be appropriate for the library. And then basically working very closely with Luke, I came up with a list of – it's almost like a wish list of devices and equipment and how much each cost. And gave this list to Betsy. And Betsy basically put everything together and presented to the Lions. Betsy had – and she's now with the Wheaton Public Library. But Betsy had very good relationship with local community groups and the Lions was one of them. And she knew she would have the support of the Lions when we started out to do this. And so armed with all the research that I had done, she basically presented to the Lions and at the very same meeting they just wrote out a check of what was $10,000 for her to buy all the equipment that I was recommending. I think that was one of my most frightening moments to think that I was going to tell the Lions, here's how you could spend your money. So it was thrilling when they gave us the donation. And then basically we just had to buy the equipment and really then the real work really began after that because then I would have to tell the community that we have these equipment and devices, that we have these services and hope that they come to the library and use them. You mentioned Lions and Craig mentioned Lions in the chat already too. And I know Tom mentioned that when we were getting ready for this session. So I think that if people haven't thought of that or that made that connection before that's a focus area of the Lions. And so if you have a Lions group in your community that might be a place to look. Soonhar, one of the things you mentioned is that you were starting from scratch with this. And I'm guessing that we have people on today who are at all across the board. Probably some have a lot of assistive technology already. Some are just getting started. So we thought we would do a poll just to see where people are at. So if you can respond to this, does your library currently provide assistive technology? Yes or no? Give you just a minute to weigh in on that. Okay. Well, we have a few who don't have. Okay. We'll take just a few more seconds to weigh in on that until you currently have any assistive technology do you provide it? And 3, 2, 1, we'll show the results. So it looks like a lot of you are providing it. And again, we encourage you to share things in the chat. If you have, as Soonhar talks about what they have, as Tom talks about some ideas, if you have resources that are really popular or that you really liked, feel free to share those in the chat because we'll capture those too, but that's good to know. And then I think one of the other questions that Soonhar wanted to know is just if you're thinking about providing more or just getting started with assistive technology, what do you feel like is your greatest need? Is it to know more about the technology or is it to identify the needs in your community or just not sure about those? Do you not have administrative support? Soonhar talked about the director at her library and how important she was in getting this started, but that might not be the case in all libraries. Money, is it money or other? And if you want to share in chat other things that you feel are your biggest need as you get started with this or as you just think about providing more. Yeah, it looks like money is a pretty big obstacle. Okay, and then just needing to know more about the technology too. Good. Again, that's what we'll talk about today and we also have resources that we'll share so that we can show those results. So I think we've got some people sharing in chat too some things. Okay, so thanks everyone. And again, please keep sharing in the chat both your questions and your experiences and we'll keep capturing and sharing those too. Great. So I think that I want to just, we can leave it at the slide but I just want to address one of the responses that came up which was needing to know, let me see if I can just, no sorry, I won't do that. Finding the need in the community, I think that's one thing that we did not do for background. I think that my director really kind of started with we are going to do this. And as Tom was saying earlier, we know that there is a big group of people out there with various degrees of visual impairment. So you know the need is out there. But in terms of your specific community and where those needs are, I think that's a constant challenge for libraries knowing what our communities want so that we can give them what they want. But I think for us that's always a challenge. And in this particular case, I think that once I had the services in place, I think that I felt that greatly. When I felt that people were not coming in to use my equipment and my services, I thought, is it because I didn't really go out there to find out what exactly that people are wanting? Am I trying to keep them something that they don't want or need? But at the end of the day I really don't believe that. I think it's just a matter of just to keep at it in terms of getting the word out. So after we got the donation from the Lions and we bought the equipment, we decided that we were going to launch this, our services. And we call it, there's more than one way to read a book. And it's kind of inspired by the state's talking book program. And I want to talk a little bit about how I decided what to buy and what I bought because I can tell that for a lot of people that technology part is overwhelming. So it really helped to work with Luke at the Chicago Lighthouse. And I recommend that's what you do as well. Basically, if you have something like a Chicago Lighthouse in your community and if you look into it, there will be many, many organizations in your community that work with the blind and disabled and there will be experts who, and really the idea really is to work with those experts because we librarians, we can't be an expert in one thing but we can be good at tracking down information. So what I decided to buy were handheld magnifiers because I felt those would be practical. And I have two at the library, one that we allow people to use in the library whether it's to read spines on shelves or to look at a magazine. And then we have a smaller one that people can check out and bring home to use on a daily basis to try it out. And the idea of these handheld magnifiers was that they would use it and see how well they like it. And hopefully they are actually using it as well to meet their needs but these are very expensive electronic magnifiers. And so if somebody is looking into buying it, then it's nice that they can try them out for us to see how well they like them. So for example, one of our electronic magnifiers is called a Lucky Plus and that costs about $500. Then the other thing that a lot of libraries have is a CCTV and the one we have is called a Smart Reel Synergy which I bought from the Chicago Lighthouse. And this is basically a magnifier with a screen. So the Smart Reel Synergy, I like it very much because it's pretty basic but I think it gives a very good image. And this one has a 19-inch screen which I think is a good size. And so this is how I started out, like finding out what are some of the basic things that we should have. So through my research I also decided to buy a scanner reader. So basically a scanner reader is something that has a camera with what they call OCR and it's optical character recognition and it basically can read a page and read it back to you. So for somebody who has pretty much no vision, they can actually use this because it also has hand gesture commands. So we got an iPad and the reason I got the iPad is because it's portable. And it's important to have things that are portable because as part of the marketing when you are going out to do a health fair or any kind of place where you want to market your services, it's nice to have the equipment with you that you can show. So I like that. And then we also decided, I'm sorry, let me back up. So through talking with what I learned was I should have devices that would work for people with low vision and then that should be an option for people who are completely blind such as the iPad. And a lot of libraries also that have assistive technology also use something called JAWS and that's for blind users. And I'll talk a little bit more about that. And so what I've talked about so far, the handheld magnifiers and the CCTV and the iPAL scanner reader, those equipment are for accessing written information. So written printed materials, you can use the magnifier, the handheld magnifiers, the CCTV, the iPAL reader scanner, and those will allow you to see or will read to you. Then the other type of equipment that I thought the library should have was equipment for accessing electronic information. And so to do that, we bought an iZoom flash drive and that works like ZoomText. And some of you may be familiar with ZoomText. And basically these are programs that magnifies everything on your computer screen. So you can go online. Basically you can use the computer and it will magnify and enhance the content on your computer. And iZoom also has the ability to read back to you. Although I have to warn you that a lot of programs where they read it back to you, you have to be very careful because sometimes the quality can be kind of iffy. So JAWS is a software that has screen reading function. It's very expensive just like all these other equipment are. And so we decided not to buy JAWS but we have downloaded onto a computer that we set aside for our Vision Center an open source program. It's called NVDA which stands for Non-Visual Desktop Access. And it's basically an open source program for Microsoft Windows. And what it is is that it reads everything on the screen back to you. And then the last two things that I bought again for accessing electronic information were an iPad and also a keyboard. And the keyboard that I bought was a large size keyboard which is also Bluetooth. So it's very easy to use. And the iPad as some of you may know is considered the gold standard for accessibility because it has the voice over feature and also Zoom and then you can put apps on it. So those were the things that on my wish list that was presented to the Lions. And so those were the actual devices that we bought. But at the library we also have a radio that I got from the Chicago Lighthouse. We call it the Chris Radio. And what it is is that the Chicago Lighthouse gets volunteers to read the contents of the daily newspapers and people who have the radio. And this radio is free to people who qualify for it if they contact the Lighthouse and they qualify for it. They can actually get this radio sent to them free. So we have a radio here that people can check out, try it out, see how well they like it. And basically they can tune in and listen to the news of the day. And not just the news but also they add red to them from the Tribune, the Sun Times, the Daily Herald, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. And I think some other periodicals as well. And then from another company called LS&S we have an oversized pectile timer that people can check out as well basically to try and see how well they like something like that before they actually buy it. And then the other thing that I do at the library, besides having the large print books, the audio books, playaways, and things like that, we have information about the Illinois Talking Book Program which is supported by the Secretary of State's office which I had mentioned earlier. One thing I'll mention to people soon, Har, is again we will be sending a follow-up message today that has links to these things. So if you want to go check out any of these things in more detail you can do that by following those links in that email. So again we're tracking all of these and we'll have links to them so you can research that. Thanks, Sunhar. Sorry to interrupt. No, not at all. Thank you for that reminder. And then I just have a, let me see if I can move this slide. And this is a picture of, I wanted to show people how we are circulating the equipment. So on the right-hand side, sorry, it's just kind of a small picture, but you can see the iPad and the iPad has been encased in this special holder. As many of us know, these Apple products can be so delicate. And so I found out about this holder that is quite protective and whether kids are using it or the elderly or really anybody, it just gives you that extra sense of security. And so we put them in these bags that many libraries have these bags, but basically I keep them in the bags and then I have some basic instructions and information of the bag themselves and then they can circulate that way. The box that you see on the top of the table is for the lookie. And then the last picture is a picture of our CCTV. As you can see, there's a tray beneath the monitor and so you place your reading material on the monitor, sorry, on the tray and you can slide that and you can control how fast quickly you can slide that. And then there are the dials to magnify the image, change the color, change the contrast, brightness, and then there's a feature that allows you to put a line under your text. It's really a brilliant machine, very easy to use is what I really like about it. So those are some of the things that we have and I wanted to show how we circulate them. So I think that a lot of the participants have questions about technology and want to know more about what other equipment are out there, what kind of technology people might have heard about Kurzweil, like I mentioned, and when you do your research really your head can just spin. And I remember many, many times when I was talking to Luke at the Lighthouse just stopping him and just saying, I'm so sorry, what is that word? How do you spell it? What does it mean? What does it do? And I just really just told myself I don't know anything about this and I need to learn and I just made the people I was talking to explain until I got it and it was really worth making the effort to educate and I encourage everyone to do that as well. And I'm going to turn it over to Tom. Thanks, Tunehar. One comment I wanted to make about finding out the need in your community is if you know your catchment area, if you can find out for instance how many persons over age 65 live in that area, we pretty much know standardly that about one in six over 65 is experiencing vision loss due to this common disease epidemic actually of macular degeneration or central vision loss. It actually goes up one in five over age 75 and one in four over age 85, actually very similar curve to older persons with hearing loss. It's about exactly the same. So when we think about serving all the people in the country who are blind or low vision, we actually divide that pie into about one quarter are totally blind and about three quarters are low. What we consider low vision meaning that a person cannot do this, our routine daily activities like reading their mail or seeing the thermostat on the wall or being able to drive may or may not be considered legally blind, but having difficulty with everyday functioning. So of the low vision persons, about 80% of that group are these older people with macular disease and so it's really slanted towards more older people although we do of course serve children who are born with vision impairments all the way up to the older folks. Then I wanted to mention some of the categories. Soon Har was saying it can be a little bit overwhelming when we start talking about specific types of technology. So we've put them into categories and actually if you look on our website chicagolighthouse.org and you click on shop online it actually goes to our technology website which we do sales and support and training but the categories are actually listed right there for you and I'll just go over those briefly. So for those with low vision, as Soon Har mentioned the video magnifiers or CCTVs what they used to call them can magnify from 2 times to 60 times the normal size. The reason these are so popular is no matter what degree of vision loss somebody has it really does work for just about everybody and so I know many libraries have had maybe a big clunker down in the basement or an older model. Of course now they come with a flat screen surface and they do look pretty sleek and sometimes can actually be moved from place to place but basically a person places their reading material or even writing material. You can slide your pen under there and you can do anything that you can do on that tray looking at books or magazines, looking at objects like a bottle of pills or can of soup, a person can be pretty independent and function. They all have what's called automatic focus now. Then Soon Har mentioned the lookie is one in a category we call portable handheld CCTVs or portable video magnifiers and so with this new flat screen technology being small 4 inches, 5 inches, 6 inches or 7 inches similar to a tablet although these devices are made to do the same thing where they can be held over a book or they can be held upright. Let's say a person wants to be able to see something on the wall, a bulletin board or a thermostat on the wall. This has a camera that can magnify from 2 times up to about 12 or 14 or some of them even go to 20 times the normal size. Of course the bigger you make it it doesn't all fit on the screen so then you do have to move it back and forth. Many of these devices have a handle and then you can also change the contrast. You can make letters white on black for instance for people with that kind of things but they are very handy. They are very small and portable and lightweight. What's new in the last several years are devices that read out loud so we have two categories of those. Soon Har mentioned the IPAL solo which is a product you just simply place your paper. It automatically senses there's text there, takes a picture and starts reading. If you want to pause or play you just simply move your hand under the camera so there's no need to find any buttons. The older people really like it. So this OCR technology or we call devices that stand alone can be moved from place to place. There's about five or six brands now on the marketplace that have these devices that read out loud. I think one of the advantages of coming to the Chicago Lighthouse is that we carry the variety and we carry every brand. So most of these devices are sold by distributors who only sell their particular brand which can be helpful to learn from but it doesn't give you the overall feel that sometimes you need for a library to see what one or two products on the market is really going to help the most people and which brand offers that. So having that expertise from myself and my staff here we can really help guide someone. In the old days I call it we used to have to have one piece of equipment for some people with low vision and another one for totally blind. But because of this new OCR technology there's devices that will do work for both. So for instance there's an OCR called a clear reader where a person can place their document. It will begin reading out loud and it accepts a computer monitor that can be plugged into the back so a person can actually see the words word by word as they hear the words and those words can be changed and made very large on the screen. And it highlights each word as it goes across so it even works for learning disabled persons. So that technology is getting more and more popular. It's also a little bit cheaper than it used to be just one or two years ago. Tom we had a question about the iPel. Does it read only handwriting? I mean does it read only print text or does it also read handwriting? Nothing in the world yet that reads handwriting. Okay. Thank you. That's a good question. But the clear reader is a good product. There's now CCTVs that use a high definition camera which is really good for persons with minimal vision loss because you can get more words on the screen. The colors are nice and brilliant if you're looking at an art book or something like that. But they also now have OCR built into some of the CCTVs. So for instance a person can place their paper down. There's a product from a company called Humanware. If you go to humanware.com and it's called the Prodigy. And so the Prodigy is you place your paper down and once you've chosen the size of the letters it shows up on the screen on its own as a column or a line. And you choose speech and it will also read out loud. So this technology is brand new. Something like the Prodigy is brand new that offers that capability as well as the guts of the machine are actually behind the little screen there. And they make a touchscreen tablet so the person who's maybe scanned a chapter out of a book can then take that tablet where it is saved on the big machine and grab it and go sit in a comfortable chair and with a set of earphones can listen to the chapter and see the words on the screen and whatever size they need all by a little 5-inch touchscreen tablet. So technology is getting fancier and it's coming down in price. That particular one is under $3,000 where many of them are getting closer to $4,000. So there's quite a few options. There are options for scanning and reading, devices that read out loud that hook to the computer. That would be a different category. So instead of buying a full standalone device there are many scanners that now just hook to the computer with a piece of software. I use one called the PlusTech Book Reader. It's about $700. It scans. It opens the window for me. It knows what size and what color I like the letters and then it shows it on the screen and reads out loud to me. So it's very, very helpful. I push one button to have it read. I push the other button if I want a PDF made for me. So that kind of technology is also available. Computers. There's another computer system that Sunar did not mention called CDesk. It's the letter C and then the word desk. It's by a company called AdaptiveVoice.com. And it's more for seniors and it's more for people with low vision. But what's really neat about it is it also works for the totally blind because it has giant words. It's an application that runs over the top of windows so a person doesn't even need to know how to operate windows to use it. So it's quick and it's easy. It has some nice features of Word. It has a news reader feature without having to go to the Internet. A person can just go up and down with their arrows and choose CNN or Fox or Reuters and then be able to see the daily articles. They hit the enter key and they come up. CDesk has also developed an interface for the National Library Service. Sunar was mentioning the Secretary of State, but each state is connected to this NLS, National Library Service Talking Books for the Blind that many of you are familiar with. They do have a website now for BARD, NLS BARD which is a way to download books for the blind. So if a person has a Talking Book identification number, they can now go to NLS BARD and try to download a book. We found it very difficult to do especially for people with low vision or seniors. We counted 23 steps to download a book. So CDesk what they did is they came up with a way to do it in three easy steps. For libraries around the country they offer a little jump drive. I think it's $20 that the library can purchase and then you can either sell that to the people who need it but basically it would have their BARD number in there. They could go to any computer in the library, slide in their jump drive and it would take them right to the BARD website and in three easy steps they can search for the author or the title they want and then hit download. It downloads directly into that little jump drive. And then when they remove the jump drive it doesn't leave a mark and so they can then take that anywhere that they need to go. So especially for blind or vision impaired or seniors who don't have a computer at home it could be a great service for the library. So again that's adaptivevoice.com is the company that does that. I see we're getting a lot of questions coming in and we've got about 12 minutes left. Some of the questions are about specific technologies and things. I wonder if we should talk about the training and teaching and outreach and then come back and go through some of those questions about specific things about technology? Yes, so I imagine that as Tom was talking about all the options up there I can just hear people wondering how am I going to learn about all that? And I felt the same way and I still do. Just like any technology it's like learning a new language when it's new to you. It's like learning a new language and then the other part of course is that you have to keep using it but because our targeted audience this is not a group that we interact with every day and so we are not using this equipment every day. So it is a big challenge to keep on top of this technology. Sometimes I feel like I don't use my iPad for a month and then if I have to show it to somebody I have to give myself a quick refresher. So a lot of the manufacturers have online tutorials. Your vendors should provide training. Whoever you buy from the Chicago Lighthouse is very good about that. I worked with someone named Linda Hallman who used to work for the Chicago Lighthouse and she would just come over and just kind of I call it playing with the equipment and that's really what you have to do. You just basically have to use it and play with it to learn it. It can be challenging. And I don't consider myself a high-tech person at all. So that definitely is a challenge for me and then the whole idea of practicing is just so important which of course is easier said than done. And then the other part of it is training your colleagues. So that would be your impetus for learning because then you have to train your colleagues. What if you are not there and someone comes in and wants to use one of the equipment and so you have to train at least one colleague to know how to use it as well. And then the other part of it is just talking it up among your colleagues especially say with the circulation staff. We keep our equipment and I see someone asked about the bags and I will get my tech department to care of that for me so I will get the information for Brenda to tell you where you can buy those bags which I like very much also. Just talking it up all the time and encouraging them to share the information with patrons. I just can't say enough about that. Then of course after all that, learning about the technology, learning how to use it then really your biggest job is still ahead of you which is the outreach and the marketing. And I feel like from the time we launch our services I feel like it has just been nonstop marketing. The way I launched it was I held to what I call vision fairs at the library and what I did was I contacted vendors and other people who work in the vision area for example the Department of Health Services has a bureau for the blind and so I contacted someone there and had people from the lighthouse come out, someone from Spectrios and basically called it an information fair and that was one way to kind of tell your community what you have and what you can try to do for them. I sent out, we had signs made up and I sent out more than 50, I sent them to schools, to other libraries, to doctor's offices, hospitals, school for the blind, just any group that you can think of that would remotely be in contact with somebody, really any kind of school and healthcare provider, senior homes, ITASCA as I mentioned earlier is very small unfortunately we don't have many of these so I sent them to neighboring communities. Just reach out, just cast your net as far as you can. So I did a couple of those fairs and then of course your newsletters, your websites, your Facebook, you need to just keep putting it out there. You need to have signs in-house, find out your local health fairs, most hospitals would have information about that. In June our community college was a site for an event called the Visually Impaired Awareness Day and so we had a table there with some of our equipment. I made brochures and then just before the start of the school year I sent letters to principals in our school district inviting the school librarians, their special ed teachers, whether to come out and visit the library to learn more about equipment and maybe how students can benefit from them and I also offered to go and talk to them. I did have two teachers, two special ed teachers come out to visit and I gave them a tour and talked to them about equipment. Visit senior homes, partner with other libraries because we are small. One of the libraries that's pretty close by that also has a lot of assistive technology is the Bloomingdale Public Library. So I have visited the outreach library in there and she has visited me and we plan to work together. We plan to do a fair together maybe with another smaller library. So you just have to work with, I think the key is to just try and work with as many people as you can. That was something we had a few questions about that, just people wondering how do you market to older adults who have vision challenges and people are finding that there is some shyness about using technology in the library. So these are some good ideas for outreach. Yeah, definitely. That's very true. And I had to deal with that and I don't really have an answer for you. We have a patron who comes in to use the computer and he brings his magnifying glass and he holds it up to the computer screen. And we were like, oh, we have the eye zoom. That's perfect. This is how you use it and you don't have to hold your magnifying glass to the computer screen anymore. And we showed him a couple of times but then after that we noticed that he does not ask for it. Whether he's shy or he just doesn't want to have to deal with learning, how do I use this? Something new you have to learn with. So that is definitely a lot of resistance. I mean, I do have people ask about it because then I don't really see them come in to use so I can relate to that. That will just be a constant challenge and we just cannot give up. We just have to keep trying, keep reaching out. Go to your senior centers, contact them, ask them if you can do a little presentation. I did that for a little group. And you don't know who it's going to reach, how, but you just have to keep putting the word out there and spreading it out as much as you can. Work with your township. They usually have senior services. I've done that. Find out about health fairs, set up your table, and just keep at it. I mentioned the Lions Clubs and often I think just doing a short presentation at one of their meetings, they're always looking for speakers. And I told them and kind of challenged them. I said, instead of spending $3,000 on one person, why don't you consider giving the money to a library so that everybody in the community could use the technology because there are so many now over 65 who need something like that. The other resources, the American Foundation for the Blind, AFB.org, they have lots and lots of resources there. They also even have a directory of services for every state so you can call them and find out all the organizations in your state. They have a wonderful newsletter called Access World which will help you. It's also an app. You can just download on your phone. It'll help you keep up with every month what's new in technology. We have an organization in DuPage County called Donka Inc. It's B-O-N-K-A Inc. They also work trying to teach people with disabilities how to use computers and they give free classes to people eligible. So there are many groups out there and partner with Donka is going to come to the library to do a presentation. So just, you know, everything that you can do, I would say just keep doing it. I offer lots and lots of help too because I know people around the country. So if you want to email me directly, it's tom.persky.p-e-r-s-k-i at chicagolitehouse.org and I can connect you with people in your area or if you have specific questions. We have just one minute left. Any final words, Sunhar or Tom, that you want to share before we start wrapping up for today? Can I just say two things? One, the Talking Book program in Illinois has now been consolidated so they no longer have those different centers. Everything is at Illinois Talking Book Outreach Center. So if you do IllinoisTalkingBook.org, then that will give you all the information you need. And other states should have similar Talking Book programs as well. And I just want to say that I think it's great that so many libraries are interested in getting the services started or wanting to provide more. There is so much that we can do and don't be discouraged. Don't give up. Just keep doing it because even if you just reach that one person a month, you would have at least helped that one person. So thank you Brenda and Tom. Yeah, definitely the need is out there as I mentioned. It's 1 in 6 over 65 and it's growing. The next 30 years it will be doubling as the baby boomers get older. So the need is pressing. It's really epidemic for portions. So you'll be helping a lot and lots of people. Good. Well thank you both for sharing your resources and your expertise with us today. And I think you'll all be glad to remember that we're sending out that message later today. We've been scribbling, copying and pasting and making sure that everything that has been mentioned is in this follow-up message that you'll get today. So you'll have a chance to explore all of these resources in more depth at that time. So again, thank you both so much for your time and sharing your expertise. We hope people will join us again on December 3rd for our next EDGE initiative webinar. And we want to thank ReadyTalk, our sponsor for today's session. So thank you everyone. There's an evaluation form you'll get at the end of the session if you can share your thoughts on this session and on future sessions. That would help us a lot. Again, thank you so much to Tom and Sunhar. Thank you Brenda and thank you to everyone for listening. Thanks a lot. Bye now.