 Words appear. Our technology for equal access. Sensory impairments. I'm Eric and I have a visual impairment called Stargarts. And it's a macular degeneration which affects the center of my vision. So it makes it really hard to read fine print and see details. So I use the sides of my eyes to see more and the periphery. Zoom text enabled. The main piece of assistive technology that I use on the computer is Zoom text. Which is a screen magnifier that allows me to make everything on the computer screen as big or as small as I need it depending upon what I'm reading. There's also a built-in screen reader on Zoom text which I can also use to help read documents because my eyes get tired really easily. I use a TV monitor that I have on my desk that allows me to see the board and what is being projected on the board by the teacher. Hi, I'm Mike. My disability is that I am visually impaired. I can see things up close but for the way it gets blurry. I use a whole bunch of different technologies in my daily life. My smartphone works brilliantly for what I need it to. It has a whole bunch of different apps on it that will help me in my day-to-day life. I have Voice Stream Reader which is an input app so you can switch over different types of media and it will allow it to be read aloud to me. Lyceum, Lyceum to State July 19, 2000, 1650 p.m. And that's what the sign says. Scanning is very important for somebody with a visual impairment because there are a lot of printed materials in the world in general that are very not visually impaired friendly or not blind friendly. Hi, my name is Jessie. I am a fourth year student at the University of Washington. I'm doing an informatics with a minor in diversity. I get to find myself as a staff. So as a staff technology, I use all of my concrete implants with my own pose. I use an FM system which I give to my professor so that I can hear the professor more directly through my cochlear implant. It's like a microphone. I do not accommodate and use almost every day is called C-A-R-T which stands for communication access real-time. And so what it is is capturing and giving that real-time capturing that I can read the transcript on the screen while your professor is talking in real-time. My name is Takashi and I have a disease called retinoschesis that affects my retinas. Mostly I use my phone's camera to take pictures of the whiteboard or homework or whatnot and just blow it up as big as I can. I use screen readers, not so much, but I do like them and ZoomText on my laptop. Smartphones are such an amazing tool. I am oh so very glad that I was born in an era with smartphones because I just can't imagine doing school or just living my life without a smartphone. Grace, student. I'm profoundly deaf. I grew up with two hearing aids and then last year when I was 17 I got a cochlear implant on my right side because I wouldn't hear anything through my right ear. In school I use an interpreter, a sign language interpreter, and I also have a note-taker for each of my classes whenever I request one. And if the class has a video or a movie showing that we usually have captions or if there's no captions, my teacher will provide a transcript. There's a lot of group projects in my engineering classes and I just use an ASL interpreter pretty much. And I talk to the other students and make sure that they're aware that I'm deaf. So I just tell them to slow down a bit, or speak louder, and they're usually very flexible with me. My name is Vincent and I'm currently a PhD student at Georgia Tech in Human Center Computing. As it is with people with all types of disabilities, people with the same disability also access information differently. For example, I'm totally blind and I primarily utilize my computers, and I say that because I have five or six different computers with different operating systems. And I utilize them different ways. I access a lot using a variety of screen reading programs with hardware and software based synthesizers. I am wearing something no one's even noticed here. I'm wearing something that's off-the-shelf technology now that used to be military and then it was extremely expensive. This is a bone conduction headset designed for runners. I wear one almost continuously. This is off-the-shelf technology that anyone can use right now. And it's also my watch is connected to this. When things come through now, I hear them in my head, even with people around. And I just hear the notification or whatever text message it is, news updates. And now I don't even have to go to my phone anymore. Words appear. Final Thoughts My name is Cheryl Burgstahler and I direct accessible technology services at the University of Washington in Seattle. As you can see, it's really important that people with disabilities have access to the technology that they need, including assistive technology, so that they can be successful in education, in careers, and all of the activities that they wish to pursue. It's also important that IT developers, including those that create websites, documents, software, and other IT, make those products accessible to people who are using assistive technology and to everyone else. For more information about IT accessibility, consult uw.edu.accessibility. This video presentation was created with funding from National Science Foundation grant number CNS-1042260. Copyright 2019, University of Washington. Permission is granted to copy these materials for educational, non-commercial purposes, provided the source is acknowledged. Described by Audio Eyes.