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#CSUNATC19 Audio: Taking Your Tablet To New Places With Patriot Vision


Shelly had a chance to reconnect with Charles Palmer of Patriot Vision to learn about their new iPad based Patriot Pro 12.9. The unit, with its stand and laptop case, is 8 pounds and it also sports an iOS app that has been two years in the making for providing Video Magnification. The software is Voiceover aware and will change the product s user interface if it detects that it is active. Therefore, icons for features like zoom and OCR options will appear if Voiceover is in use. If not, the device will rely on a user to perform hand based gestures for navigation of text and magnification. To learn more about this new Video magnifier, or review other products like the wearable Viewpoint headset, visit the Patriot Vision website

CSUN 2019 coverage is Brought to you by AFB AccessWorld.

For the latest news and accessibility information on mainstream and access technology, Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon offerings, access technology book reviews, and mobile apps, and how they can enhance entertainment, education and employment, log on to AccessWorld, the American Foundation for the Blind's free, monthly, online technology magazine. Visit www.afb.org/aw.

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Transcribed By Grecia Ramirez

Direct from Anaheim, it’s blindbargains.com coverage of CSUN 2019, brought to you by AFB AccessWorld.
For the latest news and accessibility information on mainstream and access technology; Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon offerings; access technology book reviews and mobile apps and how they can enhance entertainment, education, and employment, log onto AccessWorld, the American Foundation for the Blind’s free monthly online technology magazine, www.afb.org/aw.
Now, here’s Shelly Brisbin.
SHELLY BRISBIN: I’m back on the floor at CSUN 2019 at the Patriot Vision booth, and I’m talking with Charles Palmer about magnification of various kinds.
Hi, Charles.
CHARLES PALMER: Hi. Nice to meet you.
SB: Nice to meet you too. So tell us, first of all, about Patriot Vision. I think we visited last year, but folks might not remember what you guys do.
CP: Hi. Yeah. So my name is Charles Palmer, and I carry a product here called the Patriot Viewpoint that we spoke about last year. And the new product that we came out is called the Patriot Pro 12.9, which is an all-in-one iPad system that magnifies and reads out loud, also does distance viewing, and then operates as a fully functional iPad that you have the App Store, you could browse Safari, check your Email, and so forth on. It’s about 8inches, and it folds flat into a little laptop case, so it’s very portable to take around if, perhaps, someone’s a student going to school. Maybe, if they’re in the work force and they want to take it home over the weekend, or if they just travel a lot, the device is very portable in that sense.
SB: So you’re – you’ve got a stand, I assume, that it’s on?
CP: It is. So there is a metal stand that you sit right on the table, and there’s a tray along the bottom, you place your documents. And then there’s an iPad that is mounted along the top of the unit, and that looks right down at the document, so you’re able to magnify it and then change the colors to, like, a CCTV color like black on white and so forth.
SB: Which iPad are you using?
CP: So we’re using the iPad 12.9 second generation. The third generation just came out a couple months ago, and we are working on switching over to the newest one. We just have to fit the stand – get the stand fitted because the dimensions are slightly different. So we’re going to be switching over to the newest one here in another month or so.
SB: Okay. So your software that’s on top of the iPad is going to do the OCR and the magnification using the iPad camera. And how does somebody move between the iPad environment and your software’s environment?
CP: Okay. So it has a Home button along the side that you’ll be able to press to get right into the normal operating system –
SB: Right.
CP: -- of the IOS. And then, we do have our software written that you’ll be able to open up with one of the icons called Magnifier – is the application that we have.
SB: So it behaves like an app, basically?
CP: Pretty much.
SB: Yeah.
CP: It’s like an app that we wrote, and then we have it uploaded. Yup.
SB: Okay. So tell me some of the features. You mentioned OCR, but are there other things that the app does? And, sort of, CCTV-familiar features like color schemes and magnification – heavy zoom – extensive zoom, I take it, and what else?
CP: It does. So in addition to the CCTV mode, which is basically your magnification on Live mode with the different color modes, it’s got all of them on there that a standard CCTV would have. It also has the OCR mode, and then in the OCR mode, there’s two ways that you could read out loud. One is it’ll take a frozen picture of the image. You’ll see, like, a frozen still picture, and you could actually just navigate with one finger around that document that you took a picture of and have it read out loud or read on your own, that frozen picture. And also, that’ll be able to change all the color modes in that mode.
The other way would be Wrapped mode, where it kind of goes word by word, so you’re able to follow along a lot easier while it’s reading out loud to you, the document. And you’re still able to, kind of – it’ll be like a solid text background, like a white on black, black and white -- just a solid kind of layout. And that’s a – quite a bit easier to read along as it’s going. It has all the color modes on that mode as well. Magnification is kind of customary for all of the modes that you’re in.
And it also has a bunch of different languages, so if someone is bilingual or if someone’s in a different country. In addition to English, of course, there’ll be Spanish, German, Italian, Dutch – so there’s quite a few languages that we cover.
SB: Are you using the native iPad speech, or did you put something on top of that?
CP: So it does integrate with our software, it does integrate the Apple voices. So whatever voices you download off of the settings in the Apple software itself, it actually automatically gets uploaded to our software.
SB: Right.
CP: So it’s using, like, Tom – for English, let’s say, it uses Tom, Samantha, Nicky, and a few other –
SB: Right.
CP: -- common English voices. But if you were to download additional ones off the app store, it’ll be able to integrate automatically. It is our text to speech engine that we wrote ourselves, so it is proprietary, but we do use regular Apple voices to –
SB: So that limits the number of – well, limits is the wrong word. But that means that the languages are dependent on your engine, not whatever Apple supports in IOS?
CP: That’s correct. That’s correct.
SB: Okay.
CP: Now, we are – I was going to say, we are working on adding more languages too, like Russian, we’re about to finish as well. And then, there’s a few other languages over in the west side of the Pacific.
SB: So how does this integrate with VoiceOver? Would you suggest a VoiceOver user turn this off when using your speech, or – I mean, what’s the behavior?
CP: So we’ve actually made it very compatible with VoiceOver. So when VoiceOver is turned on, which we actually configure it so it’s just three times – three presses on the Home button will turn VoiceOver on -- it will actually detect in our software that VoiceOver is on, and it’ll – if – for someone that, kind of, doesn’t know how VoiceOver works, it removes the ability for us to use hand gestures like zooming in, which would be pinching in or out, tapping with two fingers is kind of removed as well, with VoiceOver on. But with our software on, now that it knows that VoiceOver would be on, it has all the additional icons that you’re missing with the hand gestures along the bottom of the screen. So you would be able to select, with VoiceOver on – you would be able to swipe left or right to get to the icon you want, like zooming in, zooming out, and then you would actually be able to still control it. So it is VoiceOver compliant. It’s actually pretty neat.
SB: Yeah. So – that’s cool. So if you’re not a VoiceOver user, then you would have those icons that would give you control inside your software that are separate from VoiceOver. So if I’m a low-vision person and I normally use zoom or something like that, that’s not going to be – that’s – obviously, there’s not going to be conflict with that.
CP: Exactly. Yeah. Like, if you have VoiceOver off, it’ll know to remove those icons you don’t need, and then you have the hand gestures to zoom in or out. And if VoiceOver’s on, then you – since you don’t have the hand gestures to zoom in or out, it’ll add the icons along the bottom. So – yeah.
SB: So one thing I’m curious about. You’re not the only folks that have an iPad-based solution this year. And in the past, that’s not been the case. Folks have used Android for their platforms. And I’m wondering why you chose the iPad.
CP: So the iPad – we – what we first -- actually, believe it or not, started off with the Android version, which we still have available. That’s been out for about three years, I would say now. Same kind of concept, where it folds into a little metal stand, it’s just out of an Android Samsung tablet. Android is a lot easier to work with because they’re open-source. That’s why we decided to start off with them first.
We did have a lot of trouble in the beginning with Apple, trying to get it approved through the Apple Store and their regulations and everything and being compliant with the IOS and Apple in general. But we’ve been working on it for a little over two years, and we just now got finished with it. Just about two months ago, we started shipping the iPad, which is the Patriot Pro 12.9.
And most people are preferring iPads now. A lot of school systems are using iPads, a lot of the Veteran's Administration, and even just the everyday work person, they prefer iPads over Androids, so the aim –
SB: So it’s more of a market-driven thing?
CP: More of a market-driven thing --
SB: Yeah.
CP: -- as well as the – if you, kind of, see side by side, the iPad version, between the camera – not just the camera on the iPad, but also the screen that it uses, it’s just a phenomenal image. I’ve never seen –
SB: Right.
CP: -- anything like it, as far as that CCTV mode. And you could put it up next to, like, a desktop machine, one of these big machines here, and then you’ll see that the image quality, it beats it all the way around.
SB: So this product is available now; right?
CP: It is. It is. So it’s – we are – we just started shipping about two months ago.
SB: Okay.
CP: And we’ve been having great feedback so far. There’s a lot of people that have, kind of, bought into it already. So – yeah.
SB: And what’s the cost?
CP: The cost of it brand new, which is the whole entire bundle that includes our stand, software, and a brand new iPad included, is 3 thousand nine ninety-five in United States currency. Now, the Android version does go a little bit lower on price, which is two thousand six ninety-five. It’s just going to be a little bit of a smaller sized screen and then of course, it being Android, it won’t be the most ideal.
SB: Are you going to have to change the pricing when you use the new Apple iPad?
CP: The same – no. When the new iPad, the third generation, is out, it’s going to be the exact same price. So we’re going to be including that one for free going forward.
SB: Right. So tell people where they can find out more about this product and the rest of what you do at Patriot Vision.
CP: Absolutely. So you can reach us – our phone number, area code (1-800) 364-1612. If you have any questions, I’m more than happy to answer them, or my office. You could also reach us at patriotvisionindustries.com, and you’ll see a lot of our contact information there, including Email and our address if you would like to mail in an import.
We do carry a few other products. Like we talked about last year, the Patriot Viewpoint, which is a pair of goggles that someone could wear to help them, not just magnify or read out loud, but also do distance viewing with. We actually have a lot of people doing a lot of cool stuff like watching TV across the room, going to a grand sporting event like a hockey or soccer game. There’s actually one gentleman that was able to put on the Patriot Viewpoint -- and he actually told us a couple months after he purchased the unit -- but he said I would have never thought I saw the day, but I actually had – I was able to watch my daughter walk down her wedding aisle. So there’s a lot of cool stories that we’ve been getting with the Viewpoint and getting distance viewing with.
SB: Very cool. Charles Palmer, thank you so much for being on Blind Bargains.
CP: Thank you so much, Shelly.
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Joe Steinkamp is no stranger to the world of technology, having been a user of video magnification and blindness related electronic devices since 1979. Joe has worked in radio, retail management and Vocational Rehabilitation for blind and low vision individuals in Texas. He has been writing about the A.T. Industry for 15 years and podcasting about it for almost a decade.


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