Firsthand reviews on accessibility products: 5 Things podcast
On today's episode of the 5 Things podcast:
Reviewed, a sister news site to USA TODAY recently launched a new review category for accessibility products. It's got firsthand reviews from people with disabilities using adaptable products. We sat down with accessibility editor, Sarah Kovak to talk about the gold mine of resources being offered in the new coverage. To read some of Sarah's stories click here. Sarah can be reached @sarahkovak on Twitter and via email at skovac@reviewed.com.
Podcasts: True crime, in-depth interviews and more USA TODAY podcasts right here.
Hit play on the player above to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript below. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
Shannon: Hey there, I'm Shannon Rae Green and this is 5 Things. It's Sunday, January 16th, 2022. These Sunday episodes are different from what you're hearing all the other days on this podcast. We're focusing on just one topic instead of five, to do a deeper dive. I spoke recently about how I have multiple sclerosis, and while it's stable, I know that when I'm in a flare up I'm looking to my doctors and the people in my life who love me to help me get through. So when I heard that Reviewed.com, which is a sister news organization to USA Today, has launched a new category on their site for accessibility, I was really excited. I've asked the accessibility editor at Reviewed.com, Sarah Kovac, onto the show today to chat with me about why people like me, and many others who care about people who need adaptable products, have a gold mine of a resource in this new coverage. Sarah, thanks so much for joining me.
Sarah: Oh, I'm so happy to be here. Thank you for inviting me.
Shannon: Sarah, you shared with me earlier that you've been working at Reviewed as our resident smart home writer since 2018. I just have to say, I can't believe our paths haven't crossed sooner, because I really enjoy talking about how tech can be adapted for accessibility purposes, and smart home products have been so helpful to folks in the disability community. So tell me about how Reviewed.com started working in this area, and how you personally have started covering this beat as an editor.
Sarah: Well, I think, from what I understand, that they had been talking about covering accessibility products for years, probably before I even came on as the smart home writer. I personally have a disability, a physical disability called AMC. All my life, I've been finding ways to do things and finding ways to make the world more accessible to me. Smart home was a really cool beat for me because, as you said, that technology does so much for people with disabilities. I do things with my feet. If I'm typing with my feet, and my back starts to hurt or whatever, we've got all this different technology that I can use to type with my voice, or navigate my computer with my head.
When I had heard sort of whispers about them possibly doing more accessibility coverage in my smart home beat, I started trying to do more articles that were accessibility related. That was my way of sort of live the life that you want, or whatever. When they started talking about it more seriously, I was like, "Hey, I'm over here. I would be happy to be involved in whatever, however you could use me," and they needed somebody to start it up. So my managing editor and I, her name is Meghan Kavanaugh, this was our baby up till now. We're going to be expanding our staff, so we're going to have to share our baby, but it's been really fun getting it up and going, and finding freelancers, and working with the other categories, because everything accessibility is going to cross over to another category. So there's a lot of teamwork involved in it.
Shannon: That's lovely. I feel like I don't know how to talk about my own experience with disability because the nature of multiple sclerosis, at least the kind that I have, is relapsing-remitting. That means that I could have a flare up and have an issue, and then if I'm lucky it remits, which means I can get some of those abilities back. There was a time earlier this year, I was having trouble being able to really move at all for about a week. I wasn't able to type because I would have these really intense and painful muscle contractions upon movement. So the nice thing is that it wasn't luckily, at least for me, it wasn't a permanent change, but it was the kind of thing that I was just like, "Well, what would I do if I can't type?"
So I started exploring on my computer that I can really type with my voice. I have always used speech to text on my cell phone. I think that even before I needed to think about typing adaptation, I would think about different things that could happen to me with an attack, with MS. I used to, I guess, just kind of geek out in preparing for what may or may not happen to me, which is a little bit silly, but I would just kind of ...
Sarah: No, I think that's a really smart thing to geek out about.
Shannon: Yeah. Yeah. It's just kind of interesting to learn about these options because they do exist, to just think to myself, "If I'm having problems with my peripheral vision or if I'm having trouble with a spot that's missing on my vision," because I knew people who had MS that I'm friends with who had that issue, and they used accessibility tools on their smartphones to be able to make it so that they can use their phone even if they couldn't see a certain section, or they had low vision. It's just really cool to learn about all this stuff that is in existence. I know that I'm going to be talking to you in our virtual newsroom about this stuff, Sarah.
Sarah: Well, I sure look forward to that. Yeah. I mean, 15% of the population has a disability. As I had said to you before, not having a disability is a temporary state of being, at best, because we're all going to have a point in our life when we need help. We might need a walker someday, we might need crutches when we break a foot. Accessibility tools benefit everybody, and sometimes the tools that we end up using for accessibility weren't really even meant for that. We just kind of repurpose things to work in our favor. When I had my little ones, there were always specific baby products that worked better for me. There was a baby carrier that was easy for me to get on, so I could carry my babies better. It wasn't intended to be an accessibility product, but there's not a place I can go that tells me all the great products out there that might be available, until now. So we're kind of creating the resource that I wish I'd had up to this point.
Shannon: You are being the change you wish to see in the world. That's amazing. I think that another thing you and I talked about was that it's such an underserved community. I was thrilled to drop this link to my virtual MS support group, because they also have this sort of similar personality to mine in that okay, of course I don't want to deal with the fact that I'm going to need a little extra help, but if I have these options, it makes me feel less worried about it, less stressed. That's why I was just thrilled to share it. The comments when I dropped it in our Facebook group were just like, "This is so cool, Shannon," and now I can't wait to draw this episode to this group too. I'm going to give them a little plug. The group is a virtual MS support group, it's called Speak MS. Hit me up on Twitter if you're interested, I'm @ShannonRaeGreen.
I think it's really cool that it meets virtually because we need that kind of support when we're isolated this way with the pandemic. Earlier this year, I had our tech editors, they have a tech podcast, it's Brett Molina and Mike Snider. They were on the show when CES was happening. That's the Consumer Electronic Show that happens in January every year. I really love seeing your story about the accessibility products at CES, because I had already geeked out with Mike and Brett about others, but there's two on the list that your team rounded up that I was pretty wowed by, especially for just people I know in my life who I've had conversations with about some of the things that are just problematic for them, and how these products might be able to help them. There was two that I thought were very cool. It's the Dignity Lifts, I guess it's WL1 Toilet Lift/Washlet, and the Tover magic table. If you can tell me what you learned about them when your team was working on this.
Sarah: Well, when I saw the Dignity Lift, I had never or seen anything like that. It was like, "Whoa," because it's a seat that's warmed, and then it lowers you down onto the toilet. It can fit over any toilet, and then it's got a bidet built in, and a dryer, like an air dryer built in. Then it stands you back up on your feet. I think it's got a 300 pound weight capacity that it can handle. You basically just back up to it, and then everything happens automatically. They have several different models, and the one we saw at CES was the top of the line, most exciting, most expensive one, but they have some more basic models that would probably be more accessible financially for a lot of people.
I just thought it was really cool. It was a problem that I hadn't even thought about solving. I don't have lower body mobility issues, so when you're not the person, it's hard to think about what they might need. That's part of the reason why we're doing what we're doing. We're bringing in writers that know what people with disabilities need because they are the people with disabilities, and I think there's so much on the internet of people who've never been in my shoes telling me what would work for me. I appreciate the sentiment, and I think people are beautiful and generous, but I need somebody to talk to me about what I need who actually has been where I am and struggled with what I've struggled with.
It was really exciting to see the Dignity Lifts that are clearly ... this is an issue that clearly they're very close to the people that actually need it. They're obviously serving a community and being very close to them, if not ... I don't know anything about the founders or the people running it, but I would bet you money that somebody in their life has had trouble getting on the toilet and off, and that's why this was created. I bet you a million dollars, because that's the kind of product this is.
Shannon: Yeah. I remember being at an event for people who have MS, and I actually talked to someone about a product that helps women be able to stand up and urinate. It's just things that you talk about because these are things that we are all experiencing sometimes, and we want to kind of share ideas and come up with solutions. So thankfully, I think that bringing this community together to talk about these things is just really impactful, and in a very supportive, and intimate, and vulnerable, but also safe, I'm throwing all the adjectives at this, kind of way. The Tover Magic Table, I loved that because it talked about gaming, and how this is a product kids, and how you can purposefully play to really engage kids that have a specific type of disability. So tell me about the table.
Sarah: Well, it's for folks with intellectual disabilities and of all ages, and also really where I picture it is in a nursing home for the people with Alzheimer's and things. There are specific games just to engage their brains and to help them stay sharp, because it seems like, from what I've been able to see, there are group games. So it's this light shining down on a table, and you can interact with the lights on the table. You can reach out and push a light, and it'll move. I don't know if anybody else's McDonald's are like this, but we actually have a McDonald's that has this same technology in the play area. The kids will go, and you tap on the lights and move them around. It's really great to see that technology used for such an important ... it's just such a big deal to keep people engaged, and keep people thinking, and to help them feel sharp, and I love to see that they're using the technology that way.
Shannon: That's so lovely. Yeah. I did want to share a legal disclaimer that when you go to, we're going to drop a few links to your stories in our episode description, and Reviewed.com staff make recommendations, and they're independently chosen. If you do click through on any of the links to make a purchase, those links may earn Reviewed.com a commission. So talk to me about how Reviewed has a scientist on staff. I actually have toured your newsroom in Boston years ago, pre-pandemic, and there's just such rigorous testing standards that you follow on-site in Boston, but also that you have reporters and freelancers that are testing these products in real life. They want to have the most up-to-date information, have the experience of using it, because the whole point is to help consumers make purchases, that they're reading reviews that they feel they can trust in order to you have what they need to know. How are you all testing the products that are going to be featured in the accessibility section?
Sarah: Yeah, it's a little different. We have our appliances and things like that that we test in our labs, which as you saw were pretty intense. There's all kinds of testing apparatus everywhere, that and the home video or home audio stuff is also really intense with the technology of the testing.
Shannon: I think my favorite was the video and photo, the cameras with all the different ... they have this model that they always take pictures and video of that is hard for certain cameras maybe to follow. So it's just like a very specific scientific way of comparing them to each other with the same exact standards, because it's science. It totally fascinated me, clearly.
Sarah: Yeah, it's very science-y. Now, when I was doing smart home, and now with this category of accessibility, to me, it's a little more fuzzy because you can test smart home things or accessibility products, but these things are going to live in your home, and you're going to interact with them. Until you've lived with them, you don't really realize how well they're going to work for you. A perfect example was smart light bulbs. I have a million of them, and I don't like them because have big storms here in the Midwest, and if the power goes out in the middle of the night and comes back on, all of our lights turn on at full blast. When you've got a baby in their bedroom trying to sleep, it's just this moment of sheer panic, running around, trying to turn the lights off, but you wouldn't know that unless you lived with it for a while. So I always would plug smart switches instead of bulbs, but that's beside the point. I think with accessibility-
Shannon: [crosstalk 00:14:17] That is the point, that you have that experience to be able to give people the good information, the good review. The solid, trustworthy review. Yeah.
Sarah: You don't get that in a lab, so I think there needs to be ... there's a lot of science that we do, but in smart home and especially accessibility, there's more of an, "I need to try it. I need to live with it and tell you what my experience was," because seeing if it's the best toaster oven in a lab, yes, you can do that, but if I'm blind and I need to be able to feel the buttons in a certain way, that's not something you can test in a lab. A lot of what we do in accessibility is just, "I have a disability, here's a product, I'm going to try it out for a while," or, "I've used this product for a while and I know that it's really good, and I want to write about it." It's really more personal.
What I love about editing the stories that I get in is I'm getting people's stories. It's not just like, "Hey, I have this thing, and we tested it and it's awesome." There's almost always an intro of, "Well, I was injured in this way, and I've been living like this, and this frustrated me about it, and I was so excited to find this product." It's so cool to be able to even hear those stories, and I feel so honored that our writers share that with us. It's so important that we would get this out and people would understand what we're going through on a daily basis, because I think unless we tell them, how are they going to know?
Shannon: Sarah, that sounds so gratifying and meaningful. That's wonderful.
Sarah: It is.
Shannon: I'm going to ask you the question, anything I haven't asked you that I should?
Sarah: We're looking for more writers, so if there are any disabled journalists or folks who are aging, we have seniors writing for us who can talk about what works for them. I'm always open to new writers of all kinds, of all abilities, and so they would be welcome to find me on Twitter, @SarahKovac, or email me at SKovac@Reviewed.com. I would love to at least meet you and hear your story, and talk about how you could contribute.
Shannon: Yes, and we will drop your Twitter account into the show description. Yeah, and shout-out to caregivers. I want to talk to all kinds of people about accessibility. I know that I'm shouting out my Twitter handle all the time, but it's @ShannonRaeGreen. I would love to talk to people on this topic. I find it so interesting. Sarah, thank you so much for being on the show today.
Sarah: Oh, my pleasure. It was so lovely talking to you. I can see why you do what you do. You're easy to talk to.
Shannon: Hey, thanks. If you liked this episode of 5 Things, please write us a review on Apple Podcast. You can also tweet us @USAToday. I really mean it when I say I want to hear from you about accessibility. Let's talk, you know where to find me on Twitter. I'd love to discuss the cool products that we just learned about from Sarah. I want to say thanks to Alexis Davies for editing this episode. Taylor Wilson will be back tomorrow morning with 5 Things You Need to Know for Monday. Thanks so much for listening. I'm Shannon Rae Green. I'll see you next time.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Reliable reviews on adaptable products for people with disabilities
