Blind Bargains

#CSUNATC18 Audio: A New Voice and a New Direction for APH


Until Dave Wilkinson came along, the [Ameircan Printing House for the Blind](http://www.aph.org never had a Director of Sales. J.J. talks to Dave to learn about his new role and also gets some updates on popular products such as the Orbit Reader 20 and the Graphiti graphical tablet.
Blind Bargains audio coverage of CSUN 2018 is generously sponsored by the American Foundation for the Blind.

Transcript

We strive to provide an accurate transcription, though errors may occur.

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Transcribed by Grecia Ramirez

Almost live from beautiful San Diego, it’s blindbargains.com coverage of CSUN 2018, featuring team coverage from across the Exhibit Hall and beyond, brought to you by the American Foundation for the Blind.
For the latest technology news and accessibility information on cell phones, mainstream and access technology, personal medical devices, office equipment, digital audio players, and web-based and app technologies, log onto AccessWorld, the American Foundation for the Blind’s monthly technology magazine, www.afb.org/AW.
Now, here’s J.J. Meddaugh.
J.J. MEDDAUGH: Blind Bargains suite in CSUN 2018. Here with Dave Wilkinson, Director of Sales for APH. This is different.
Hey, Dave. Welcome –
DAVE WILKINSON: It’s totally different. It’s one of those things where you look twice, and you’re like, they’ve never had a Director of Sales, which is 100 percent true. I am the first and only -- hopefully, only for a while. But –
JM: Welcome back to the podcast. In your new role and new company.
DW: I know. I’m – someone asked me the other day about the whole job switch thing – I told them, I’m trying to get up to an entire deck of, sort of, business cards before my career is over in this industry. So we’re getting closer.
JM: Well, like you said, there’s never been a Director of Sales for APH. What does that mean? What is your main role there?
DW: That’s a really good question, and at some point, I might find out. Here’s what I know at the moment. APH is 160 years old, and as I’m finding out, some of its processes predate the organization, but that’s a whole ‘nother sort of issue. But its primary focus, which comes to no – is no surprise to anyone, has been quota dollars. And quota dollars are the dollars that exist to bring textbooks, supplies for students in the classrooms and what is essentially no cost to the school district involved. They have different amounts – but, you know, you have a different amount – you know, you have an X amount of dollars that are allocated per student. And so the schools spend their quota money, APH ships out the product, end of story.
Part of what APH is wanting to do is expand their sales model to go well beyond just quota dollars and look at, well, you, the end user. You, the customer. And market directly to you. And so that’s where I come in. We’re looking at having an actual sales department at APH, which has never been done before, and then we’re looking at improving customer outreach significantly through that to find out, to a large extent, what it is you’re wanting from us and then, how we can provide it. And I think also, to make people aware of products and services that we have available that may be interesting to people outside of the quota system.
So this is all very new territory for us, and it’s evolving day by day. And it’s bound to go in directions that we haven’t thought of yet.
JM: And speaking of evolving and a little bit of shuffling, a lot has been going on. There was a big partnership between APH and AFB. How is that affecting things, and what’s the crux of that?
DW: Basically, AFB has changed its role and its -- or, it’s narrowed or focus and is looking at becoming an advocacy organization. And that means that someone needs to step in and keep things like CareerConnect and AFB Press and some of their other services going, because we depend on those services. And APH was lucky enough to be able to do that. So it could have profound effects in the long run, APH is an entity that provides educational products and services that extends well beyond just K through 12 at this point. It gives us brand new avenues as far as being able to make people aware of opportunities that are available to them as blind and visually impaired people.
JM: Now, you mentioned some of these products, kind of bringing them in from other companies. So, for instance, you took a Humanware product and turned it into the MATT Connect, and you’ve done it with others as well. So go ahead and tell us a little bit about that. Why would someone buy the APH version of a similar product? What’s different about it?
DW: I think there’s a couple of things. First of all, by all means, look at all the avenues that are out there. One of the things that we try to do as a company is to make sure that we have products that are different from anything else that’s out there so that – in reference to the MATT Connect, which you were just asking about – when you look on the Main Menu structure, there’s a whole APH toolbox. In that toolbox, you have apps such as Nearby Explorer. We already have Word installed on the tablet, Excel, PowerPoint. There are, I believe, some games that are already on there. There are other things that -- since this is a brand-new partnership, there are other things that I can’t tell you that are going to be added to the toolbox.
So that – what we’re trying to do is provide a customized experience for our customers so that they have a lot of the apps that they know and love and that they’re going to be using in, primarily, classroom settings. Although, you know, professionals are going to love having Excel, PowerPoint, and Word right there.
JM: But been playing a lot with the Graphiti. We’ve talked about that more in detail on past podcasts. How is that going? And perhaps some partnerships? 40 by 60, that’s a lot of dots. It’s going to be really cool.
DW: It’s a lot of dots, and it’s been really – you know, the Graphiti – to sort of watch it morph over the last number of years and – I’ve been watching it from afar. You know, through coming over from the Hims booth previously, just sort of looking at it. Now, I get to actually see it up close and personal and get to play with it on a regular basis. The final form factor’s been done. We know what the final product will look like. The guys – the techy guys are referring to it as Model C, whatever that means. I just know it’s not changing anymore.
One of the things that’s been fascinating about APH is that you get to, sort of – you get to look at the theoretical possibilities of things and then find a way to make them happen. At the moment, in our booth downstairs, there’s a Canute, which a lot of you will have heard about in previous podcasts, and we have a Graphiti. So that if you start thinking about the possibilities of those devices, you could have an electronic textbook, including the graphics, and not have any paper involved.
JM: Wow.
DW: And that’s pretty cool.
JM: And have them all sync up with the images and the –
DW: It certainly seems –
JM: -- and the words all at once.
DW: -- it certainly seems like that would be something that you could do.
JM: Now, some concerns have been raised – I guess because of the production process of the Orbit Reader 20 -- I’m not sure. How does that affect the Graphiti, and when is the Orbit coming back?
DW: The Orbit will be back by the summer shows. And obviously, we were – we’re disappointed any time there’s a delay in product. However, the flip side of that is the Orbit was a revolutionary product. It broke ground that had never been – that no one had ever come close to in getting under the 500-dollar mark for a refreshable braille display. When you do things like that, nothing ever goes quite as smoothly as you would like for it to. In this case, it didn’t. We had a couple of bumps along the way. I think we figured out what those bumps were, and for customers that were affected by any of those bumps, we have made it right with our customers.
If, by chance, you’re out there and you haven’t gotten in touch with us yet, you got an Orbit that’s not performing up to the standards that you need it to, give us a call. We’ll be happy to make it work for you.
JM: Was it just the units from February, or was the ones from last summer, kind of, had similar issues or –
DW: Just February.
JM: And those were the ones that had the pins sticking and the –
DW: The famous pin-stick.
JM: Yeah.
DW: But a number of things have been done to make sure that we don’t run into a situation like that. It was a pretty bizarre set of circumstances that caused it.
JM: And you anticipate that you’ll have enough of them – of course, you never know.
DW: I anticipate that we’ll never have enough of them, because the demand is going to be strong enough that they’re always flying off the shelves so as soon as -- you know, as soon as they come back, get yours early, because they seem to, just, disappear.
JM: Have you looked at other models of that? You know, 40 cells, 400 cells?
DW: I think before we look at any other iterations, you know, any other configurations of what we’re doing, we need to get this guy out and going.
JM: That’s fair. Yeah. Any other new products? Obvious, you’ve been doing a lot with BrailleBlaster over the past few months. That’s been expanding.
DW: BrailleBlaster's been pretty cool. And it’s really exciting to see things like churches using BrailleBlaster for, you know, hymnals and bulletins. We’ve had moms and dads downloading BrailleBlaster to use with their kids. It’s gone well beyond where we could have really hoped it could go, so we’re very excited about that.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the fact that we do have an active partnership – we’re talking about the Humanware partnership, but we also are proud of our partnership with VFO, with our JAWS, MAGic, ZoomText fusion. People have been talking about JAWS on a payment plan for years. Well, this is pretty much it. You, you know, are purchasing it by the year. In a couple years, you own it. So it’s pretty much a payment plan.
And we also have the video Mag, which is our handheld video magnifier that’s also in partnership with VFO. And I think you’ll see a lot more partnerships with industry leaders as APH moves on over the next several months and years.
JM: And it’s always been really cool to follow that, the openness, you know, as a nonprofit and with the annual reports, among other things, you, kind of, get to see into the future a little bit more than you would with another country – another company who comes out with their new product.
DW: Sometimes it feels like another country.
JM: Another country. Right?
DW: I get to go to another country in a few weeks. I’ve always – I’ve been traveling all over the U.S. and Canada for – when I was with Hims, and APH is sending me to Germany. So at least they’ve chosen somewhere that, you know, that’s beyond North America for me. So I’m pretty excited about that.
Anyway, that’s a total aside.
JM: Lots of fun with that. We’ll have to compare notes later on. Cool.
So thank you so much for coming by. If people want to get more information, of course, aph.org and –
DW: aph.org. You can call 800-223-1839. Anybody who wants to be in touch with me directly, my Email address is Dave Wilkinson, D-a-v-e, W-i-l-k-i-n-s-o-n, at aph.org. Please don’t use D Wilkinson. That goes to my wife, and then she forwards it to me with cranky notes saying, this Email was meant for you. So, it’s davewilkinson@aph.org.
JM: Thanks so much, Dave. Good to have you on.
DW: Thank you.
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Copyright 2018.


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J.J. Meddaugh is an experienced technology writer and computer enthusiast. He is a graduate of Western Michigan University with a major in telecommunications management and a minor in business. When not writing for Blind Bargains, he enjoys travel, playing the keyboard, and meeting new people.


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