Posted on March 25th 2020 by Siobhan Long

Using technology to support people with disabilities, their families and those who support them during the Covid 19 pandemic

Some initial suggestions

Note: This is an evolving ideas post which we encourage you to contribute to: together we can be creative in how we use technology to support people with disabilities who may be feeling isolated and worried, and we can also consider innovative ways of remote working to benefit all.

This is already a very worrying time for people with disabilities, being constantly reminded that they are in a high-risk group when it comes to Covid 19. With schools and services shut down, how can we use technology to facilitate communication, prevent people feeling isolated and maybe provide some kind of distraction?

Disclaimer: By means of this website, Enable Ireland provides information concerning accessing and using technology. Every reasonable effort has been made to ensure that the information provided by this website is reasonably comprehensive, accurate and clear. However, the information provided on or via this website may not necessarily be completely comprehensive or accurate, and, for this reason, it is provided on an “AS IS” and “AS AVAILABLE” basis. Each individual or organisation accessing and relying on the information shared should carry out their own review of the suggestions we make from a legal and regulatory point of view.If you think you may have noticed any error or omission, please let us know by contacting Siobhan Long at: slong@enableireland.ie. It is our policy to correct errors or omissions as soon as any error or omission has been established to our satisfaction.

WhatsApp or Viber Groups

This is something most of us use and find very useful. Disability services could set up a group/groups and use them as a way to keep communication open while people are at home.

WhatsApp is very accessible as it allows people to contribute to a group chat using recorded Video or Audio or text. It’s a good way to share jokes and funny stories and keep morale up. It supports individual and groups (up to 4) video and audio calls.

Advantages

• Accessible (to many)
• Familiar

Disadvantages

• Needs a smartphone, computer or tablet.
• Only supports groups up to 4 in real-time calls or video
• Your privacy is not guaranteed using these forums

Echo Dot or Echo Show

For some people, speech is the easiest way for them to access technology. The Amazon Alexa powered devices can be a very intuitive way of getting information, entertainment (music, radio, audiobooks adventure games). They also support a feature called “Drop-in”. When setting up a device you can add friends or contacts who also have Echo devices and allow them to “Drop-in”. This could provide a good means of keeping contact with people who may not be comfortable enough with technology to use a smartphone or WhatsApp. It works basically like an intercom. The person being dropped in on does not have to do anything other than answer, no buttons to press or commands are needed. It’s like talking to them if they were in the room with you. The Echo Show (only £50 on Amazon at the moment) has a screen and camera also. We are not sure if you can Drop-in with video of if you need to use a video calling service. (Maybe someone reading this already knows the answer?)

Advantages

• Very easy to use natural speech interface.
• Lots of entertainment options
• Can open communication channels in a natural way with user input

Disadvantages

• GDPR/Privacy/Consent considerations are an issue as you may not receive the privacy you expect

Video Conferencing

MICROSOFT TEAMS

Microsoft Teams is a hub for teamwork in Office 365. It is currently free to download and use, during this Covid 19 pandemic. It is most likely to be initially at least, most useful to staff, as there is a degree of learning and familiarization involved: Here’s an introductory video illustrating how Teams works.

SKYPE

Skype should be familiar with being the original voice and video calling service. Perhaps not as popular as it once was it is still used by many people. Once someone is set up and signed in it should be easy enough to navigate. Skype is keyboard accessible, which will allow us to use alternative input methods or create a simplified interface using software like the Grid 3. Unfortunately, Skype no longer supports games like checkers and chess but it is still a good option especially if people are already using it.

ZOOM

Currently free, the video conferencing tool Zoom is a great way of bringing larger groups together via video. It supports all the main platforms (Windows iOS, Android and macOS). It’s quite an easy app to use and is free to install and use for up to 40 minutes. This could be used to bring everyone together at a certain time every day and would be probably the best way of simulating the atmosphere people would be familiar with within the services they normally attend. When hosting a meeting, you can select ‘share screen only’ to ensure that there is no potential for making any changes to attendees’ own devices. Without selecting this feature, it would be possible to remotely access devices, and this is something that would require written/recorded consent.

Note: Corporate IT Departments may have concerns re: this solution as they may not have any prior agreement with them. So for service providers, best to check with their IT and Data Protection officer before considering it.

Advantages

• Free and relatively easy to use
• Supports large group video calls
• Great casting tool

Disadvantages

• GDPR concerns given your privacy is not guaranteed
• Requires a computer or mobile device
• Will be new and unfamiliar to most (all)

FaceBook Groups

Enable Ireland Communications Department have created guidelines for designated staff authorised to start Facebook Groups for the purpose of communicating with clients and their family’s. These guidelines offer some do’s and don’t in regard to moderating these groups and suggest the appropriate privacy settings that need to be applied. You can request a copy of this document from our Communications Department.

communication@enableireland.ie

Set up an Internet Radio Station

There are services that allow you to create an online radio station (for example https://radio.co/). This would be a great way of keeping people in touch with news and entertainment custom made for a specific audience. Rotate DJs between services, have chats, play music, share the news. Bit of a mad idea but could be fun for everyone. If a live radio channel is a bit of a stretch we could maybe produce a daily podcast. Get people to record introduction to songs on their phones and send us the audio. Record thoughts, news, jokes, and we can try to put it all together and send out a link for everyone to listen. Video could also be used and make private links on YouTube.

Advantages

• Accessible to (almost) all as listeners
• Offers opportunity to be a producer as well as consumer of news/entertainment
• All content curated by surface users

Disadvantages

• Totally new to us, not sure of the requirements for setting it up but happy to hear from others more familiar, and happy to try it out.

Watch Together

YouTube is very popular and supports synchronised watching of YouTube videos and real-time chat.

https://www.watch2gether.com/?lang=en

Online Games

There are lots of games available online that allow you to invite friends to play remotely. Why not curate and manage a range? Suited to Draughts, Battleship, Ludo, Scrabble, Chess although younger players might be more interested in Fortnite

Advantages

• Many of these games will be familiar to people already
• Great distraction; Start a league!

Disadvantages

• Many of the sites that offer these games are funded by advertising and can be difficult to navigate (auto-playing videos, links to products, flashing ads designed to trick people into clicking on them. This is not an insurmountable problem but it would be a good bit of work identifying appropriate platforms. iOS might be better.

Virtual photo walks

This is a lovely idea we came across. The original uses Google Hangouts but any video conferencing app would work.

Books – reading, looking and listening audio books

Story Weaver https://storyweaver.org.in/ is an open platform for the creation and distribution of books aimed at children under 16. Although a lot of the content has been created by and for other cultures & languages with almost 20,000 currently in the catalogue there should be plenty of interest there. The real potential with this site, however, is creating your own richly illustrated books with their easy to use web app.

Audio Books are hugely popular, they are accessible and can be consumed while completing other activities like your daily.  Audible (free for 30 days and linked to Echo/Amazon/Kindle) is the big name with the largest catalogue. 

Bookshare Ireland is available for people with visual or print disabilities. You can also download Audio Books or eBooks from your local library https://www.librariesireland.ie/elibrary/eaudiobooks.

Do you have a nice voice, or rather has anybody else ever told you have a nice voice? If so and you have a good quality microphone why not volunteer for https://librivox.org/. The Librivox project has been creating high-quality audiobooks from all public domain literature for a number of years. There is a huge selection to download and listen to as well as for instructions on how to begin creating your own.

Webinars

AbilityNet

 https://abilitynet.org.uk/free-resources/webinars  have a webinar in conjunction with the UK Stroke Association next week. They are also planning weekly webinars (Tuesdays and Wednesdays) over the next month. https://abilitynet.org.uk/news-blogs/abilitynet-live-free-events-about-technology-and-disability

AHEAD

 https://www.ahead.ie/conference2020  have moved their conference online, with a series of webinars over the next 10 weeks, starting this afternoon and tomorrow. They also have an archive of past webinars https://www.ahead.ie/Digital-Accessibility-Webinar-Series

AbleNet

 https://www.ablenetinc.com/resources/live_webinars have some webinars scheduled over the coming weeks, but also have access to a large bank of recorded webinars at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnqbFTy0VIQ6fVxXY2HiOJw/videos

Perkins Learning

has some prerecorded webinars https://www.perkinselearning.org/videos/webinar/assistive-technology

Call Scotland

also have scheduled and archived webinars available https://www.callscotland.org.uk/professional-learning/webinars/

Pacer

have cancelled a lot of their webinars for April/May https://www.pacer.org/workshops/ but they have an extensive list of archived webinars – https://www.pacer.org/webinars/archive-listing.asp

Shane Hastings Giveback Directory of free products / services available during COVID-19

Education (26)

Business Resources (9)

Health & Wellbeing (17)

Sports (7)

Entertainment (6)

Music (8)

Technology (7)

As mentioned, this is just for starters: if we all think creatively we can harness technology in many ways to support service users and staff through this difficult time. Please contact us with your suggestions and we’ll add them to this document. Thanks!

And check out Enable Ireland’s National Assistive Technology Training Service’s free online content on Assistive Technology for Creative Expression: on enableirelandat.com

Stay safe and well, and please share/respond/add your own suggestions/ideas. We’re all better together:) Or as we say in Ireland, Ní neart go cur le céile

Siobhan, Karl, Juliann, Sean and Shirley: The Enable Ireland AT Team