Everybody who works with people who are blind or visually impaired knows those reluctant technology adopters, or complete non-technology adopters. When the Pew Research Center says 15% of Americans are not connected, who are these people? They're in my singing group.
Since I love technology more than singing, I at first found this puzzling. Technology is a tool to let me do things. I can listen to the songs I want to learn, record lessons and practice sessions, and listen to the key parts over and over. I can go online and hear our past performances—all this before we get into any sophisticated technology, like Sonar, Lime Aloud, or any of the fancy music tools we talked about a few weeks ago.
Frustrated that a number of my music friends were stuck, I conducted an experiment. Try this at home.
First problem that everybody in the group wants to solve: How can I record the sessions and learn my part? Most of them used to use tape recorders, and at least one still does. This technology still has all the drawbacks it always did, and now it's hard to buy recorders and cassettes. So, it's not a real solution.
A Victor Reader Stream would be a good solution—it records, and plays MP3 files. It's also a book player, making it a superb tool in the toolbox. It has a bit of of a learning curve, and the user needs to have skills and equipment to get the songs and books into it. And, it has a significant price tag.
A number of us have iPhones, and one has an Android phone. With our mainstream devices, we're light-years ahead of the reluctant adopters. We learn our voice parts, we have the original song handy, we listen to previous practices while in transit. But an iPhone or Android is much too complex for the reluctant-technology-adopter crowd; they've already decided they aren't doing these things. They want tape recorders to come back.
What I needed was a mainstream device—one that reluctant learners could get help with from people around them and that didn't have a prohibitive price. And if it would introduce them to more modern technology, and act as a "gateway device," even better!
So I bought four color-coded iPod Nanos. These are the little flat ones, a little longer and thicker than a credit card. I also bought four sets of iPhone headsets, the ones with the microphone. If you try this at home, be sure to get a mic. The iPod won't even offer voice memos unless there is a mic connected.
I asked each person what color he/she wanted, then set up that one with the name "Crista's Blue[Red, Pink, Green] iPod" so I could keep them straight. (Just mentioning this in case it isn't obvious that we won't know what color each is if they get mixed up. I was imagining practice sessions with identical iPods scattered around under all the chairs.)
When I set each up on my laptop, Voiceover, the screen reader, started up on the device. If you're trying this at home, you'll need to know that Voiceover on the Mac or Window-Eyes on the PC needs to be running when you set up the device in order for this to magically happen. Otherwise, you can set it manually, but that requires either eyesight on the iPod or skill with iTunes on the computer, so make sure you have one of those if you don't have a screen reader on the computer.
Then, I tweaked the settings on the device for each person. For example, Pink could sort of see the display if I reversed the contrast and picked a large font. She also liked the screen reader, so she has it all. Blue and Red were happy with the screen reader defaults. I ended up keeping Green for myself, which turned out to be a good thing, because the interface is just different enough from that of the iPhone that I had to try things on it before telling people how to do tasks.
We had one-on-one lessons with how to record and play back voice memos. This cut into the singing time, but this experiment with technology was never going to work if we didn't practice together. I plugged the headphones in, and we shared the same set so we could both hear what was happening. Trying this at home, remember the two of you need to be good friends, or you will be by the time you're done! If you plug in a speaker, and there is no mic, the voice memo option disappears from the iPod (built-in mic is one big advantage of the iPhone, clearly).
So, how did it go? We had several lessons. I finally had to stomp my feet and flail my arms and say I was taking them all back if people didn't record their lessons (exaggerating only a little). This is the advantage of having them with my name on them—I could end up with a colorful collection of redundant toys, or I could move them on to other people who needed a way to record. There is an infinite supply if the learners stayed reluctant.
Pink caught on pretty quickly. She has had computer lessons, and has never used a computer outside the lessons, but this seemed to give her a vocabulary and general concept of hitting buttons and getting actions—as well as an intro to the concept of buttons with no physical reality, since the iPod has a touch screen. It does thankfully have physical on/off, next/previous track, and play/pause buttons. Recording, though, and playing a particular recording, had to be done from the touch screen.
Red needed several lessons and most of the foot-stomping (on my part), but now happily records everything as a matter of course.
Blue is tentative about recording, but plays songs easily. A few more lessons might bring him around.
The major downside to choosing a mainstream device is that these singers all know people who can help them with it. Did I say earlier that was an upside? Really, it is, but Pink and Red came back erased the first week. Why? Helpful family members. But Pink and Red were determined by this time to get songs loaded into the devices. Big promises from the family to share music, big hopes—it truly was a gateway device.
Pink is talking about getting an iPhone—stay tuned.
Share your ways of bringing reluctant technology "users" into the twenty-first century!
