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Bose SoundLink Revolve Bluetooth® Speaker | Tobii + Bose = Communication Success

Megan Fry recently shared her experience using Tobii and a Bose Speaker for communication.

Megan Using Bose SpeakerCan you hear me? Adding a speaker to my device gets me… in the conversation!
by Megan Fry

Integrating my Tobii Eyegaze device into my world so that I could project my own thoughts was a long process, but so empowering for me. I have the complete support of my family, my friends, teachers, and anybody who I want to speak to. They already knew how to stop and wait for my response. However, an additional challenge was being in conversation with multiple people at once. Not only does it take me a little while to formulate what I want to say before I can say it, often times there are people already speaking and they don’t hear what I have to say, even at the device’s highest volume level. Or more often, they don’t feel comfortable with silence and just simply move on with the conversation. I don’t want to stop conversation just so people can stop and listen to me. and I don’t want them to feel bad. I want to integrate myself into their world instead of them into mine. It is an important step for me to become more into everyone else’s daily life.

An issue I was having with Tobii was that the volume was never strong enough. So, I needed to think outside the box. I thought it was an easy enough solution to just buy a bluetooth speaker that could amplify sound from my device. I started with a very small expensive speaker that really did get the volume up, however in trying to save battery, the manufacturer would make it turn off if you did not use it after 10 minutes. That’s a great idea for most uses of a bluetooth speaker, however I’m not talking constantly.  So it would automatically turn off and I did not have the ability to turn it back on myself. Someone else would have to do it for me… which slowed down conversation.

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After a few different trials, I found Bose SoundLink Revolve+ Portable & Long-Lasting Bluetooth 360 Speaker that, can be set to ‘never turn off’. Now, I even scare myself when I speak…lol. People can definitely hear me and it works great in noisy places too, restaurants or outside.  And, I am really enjoying group conversations.

Some of the negatives to the speaker are that it is big. I currently have it hanging on my device mount because putting in my backpack muffles the sound. Also, someone else must download the “settings app” on a cell phone that allows the user to set the speaker to not automatically turn off. But, once it is set, you don’t have to do it any more. Another con to the Bose SoundLink is that it is expensive at nearly $300.

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