#Fun4thedisabled presents a series of three short videos about various tools for the disabled from Oak Hill Brands; the Giraffe Bottle for hands-free drinking; the Modular Hose, a mounting apparatus for increasing independence for wheelchair users and those with limited mobility; and a metallic universal mount for tablets, phones, gaming systems and cameras.
Part 1: GIRAFFE BOTTLE
[Upbeat instrumental music begins as the fun4thedisabled logo is shown. On screen text reads: Check out all the videos and written transcripts at fun4the disabled.com. DAVE ZEBUTIS: Simple Tools for Simple Fun. Part 1: Giraffe Bottle. Vanessa is seen chatting with Dave as he displays his products.]
[Vanessa] Hi, this is Vanessa Harris with fun4thedisabled, I’m here with Dave at modularhose.com. Hi Dave!
[Dave] How’s it going?
[Vanessa] Okay, how are you?
[Dave] I’m doing pretty good.
[Vanessa] Good, you’ve got some really cool products to tell us about!
[Dave] Well I think so, but yeah!
[Vanessa] Yeah so tell us about the giraffe bottle.
[Dave] Ok, so the Giraffe Bottle is our new hands-free drinking system. It allows you to have a flexible neck so you can position it right where you need to and that way if the user needs to stay hydrated it can sit on the chair, maybe bend it around, you can position it right up to their mouth. Gives them another level of independence. It includes an integrated check valve that allows you to, once you sip, it doesn’t drain all the way back into the bottle, so you don’t have to drink it all the way up the hose each time.
[Vanessa] Uh huh.
[Dave] So that’s our Giraffe Bottle.
[Vanessa] How do you clean that straw?
[Dave] Ok, so we do have it, our kits come with a cleaning brush that would just go right down the middle of it.
[Vanessa] Really?
[Dave] Yeah, and then all the components are replaceable so if the neck is too long or too short you can take off the neck, you can take off the neck and have a bottle, a spare bottle, or an extra bottle sitting in the fridge or freezer. The drinking tube is replaceable, the check valve is replaceable. If you took the neck off you can put this cap on so it completely seals the system. So you can have a spare bottle at the ready if you want it.
[Vanessa] Yeah, okay!
[Dave] And then we made it clear so that OTs and other PTs could see when the bottle needs to be replaced.
[Vanessa] Can you drink hot liquids out of it?
[Dave] You can drink warm liquids, I wouldn’t recommend hot unless you’re not touching the bottle because it’s not an insulated bottle, so if you’re drinking like a hot coffee, it could become hot to the touch.
[Vanessa] Yeah, okay.
[Dave] But if it, we have a bottle cage as well that sits on the side of the chair that would hold this bottle perfectly off to the side. It actually comes in six different lengths, from 9 inches all the way up to 36 inches. And then as far as how long the bottle will last, um, the bottle components should last a very long time. The replaceable items would be the drinking tube, and the check valve. The check valve like I said just has a flapper in it, so over a period of time there could be, depending on what your drink is, um, small particles could get in there to keep the flapper open. So it might dent the seal as well.
[Vanessa] Uh huh.
[Dave] But the drinking tube can easily be replaced, uhm the check valve and we try to make all the components replaceable.
[Vanessa] Okay, okay. So how much does a bottle cost?
[Dave] So we sell it in different configurations, so you can get the bottle without the bottle cage, one of the shorter lengths I want to say starts at around $55.
[Vanessa] Uh huh.
[Dave] And at its longest range with the bottle cage I think maxes out at about $85.
[Vanessa] Okay, okay. Umm…is this, can this be covered under insurance or anything?
[Dave] We…it could be, we don’t manage it through insurance. Our purchases would be a lot of, more, I would say off the shelf purchases. We have worked with some organizations that packages– packages the, maybe the Giraffe Bottle and some of the mounts into an insurance package, but we don’t work directly with the insurance companies.
[Vanessa] So do you have any social media presence?
[Dave] Uh we do, we have our Facebook page, and then I think that’s pretty much it for now. Giraffe Bottle is fairly new, I wanna say we came out with it about October of 2018.
[Vanessa] Oh really?!
[Dave] Yes, it’s fairly new for us, um, so we’re just kinda growing it and kind of getting our feet wet in terms of different industries and different ways to market it. So that’s certainly something we’re looking forward to.
Part 2: MODULAR HOSE
[Upbeat instrumental music begins as the fun4thedisabled logo is shown. On screen text reads: DAVE ZEBUTIS: Simple Tools for Simple Fun. Modularhose.com. Part 2: Modular Hose. Vanessa is seen chatting with Dave as he displays his products.]
[Dave] The Modular Hose system is a good, low cost mounting solution. So we have some kits that start as low as $25 and they go up to about $100, depending on really what you’re doing. Even our two arm tablet holder, like this, I want to say is just about $85 and it comes with our tablet holder, like I said that scales to different sized tablets. Um, so it really depends on what you need. Um, and how you want to mount it.
[Dave] We also have our modular metal system, which is a similar concept where you can make these longer or shorter, if you need it to. But it also has the articulation that you can use if it’s attached to the chair and need to bend it around, maybe for holding up a phone, again a tablet or even an AAC communication device. This features our quick-click system that allows you to add and take off components really quickly and easily. So this is our phone holder, so if one day you wanted to use the phone holder you just put it in here and it clicks into place. And then say later you wanted to use the tablet holder you can take quickly and easily and add a tablet holder. And then same with the other side, so if you had– if you wanted to attach it to a wheelchair using one of our clamps that adjusts for a flat surface or for round tubing by just taking out this little insert so it works for flat surfaces or for round tubing. You can add that to the quick-click system. And then say you want to now use it on the bed or somewhere else, you can just quickly take off that mount and use a spring clamp, depending on what you needed that day. So it’s something quick and easy which is great for the users, great for OTs because they can really adapt to an ongoing situation, however they need to.
[Vanessa] Okay, okay.
[Dave] And then we’ve grown on the quick-click system, uh, we realized the way you attach it to tables, desks, and chairs, all kind of change. So as you know we have our spring clamp, we have our kind of our pro-clamp, we even have a little mini clamp. We are also pretty excited about our, kind of our newest member, uh we designed it so it will work with uh wheelchairs, on wheelchair rails. So we kind of call it our universal mount, so this universal mount this is a permobil rail, um so this just attaches to the permobil and then you can have a nice solid surface to take your quick-click system, have a mounting arm, take it on and off and just however you needed to utilize it so this, this piece itself is universal because it works on permobil but will also work on quantum wheelchair rails as well.
[Vanessa] Okay, and how about some powerchairs?
[Dave] Well it work on any rail that is similar to the permobil because I do think permobil and quantum do make some uh, power scooters as well? As long as it has the rail on there that– that piece would work on it as long as it had the rail.
For some of the power chairs, power scooters I should say, this works really well if they have a handlebar right in the front. This works out well because some just may want a phone right in front of them so they attach this to kind of their handlebar and just have a little bit of hose, modular hose, or something like this and they can hold their phone right up there, which is great for just being able to communicate by Facebook or answer calls or texts. So yeah.
Part 3: OAK HILL BRANDS
[Upbeat instrumental music begins as the fun4thedisabled logo is shown. On screen text reads: Check out all the videos and written transcripts at fun4thedisabled.com. DAVE ZEBUTIS: Simple Tools for Simple Fun. Mogo mounting solutions. Part 3: Oak Hill Brands Mogo Solutions. Vanessa is off screen chatting with Dave about his products.]
[Vanessa] Was assistive technology where the products first began? Or did it begin somewhere else?
[Dave] No, it began in the 80s in the industrial application. So there was a need to run coolant to machine tools.
[Vanessa] Okay.
[Dave] And that’s where the modular hose really started. Umm…it did that for, seemingly forever until other people started using it randomly for different applications and then when we go to the assistive technology, there was a couple of incredible OTs, Gretchen Hanser and Linda Burkhardt, two that I know right off the top of my head. They started using the modular hose and the assistive technology for holding head switches.
[Vanessa] Okay.
[Dave] So that they could have some way to communicate. And with the modular hose you can really position it right where you need to, so it’s great for evaluations, it’s great for, you know, kind of somebody moves throughout the day you can make fine movements and not get tools out and you know, kind of readjust.
[Vanessa] Yeah.
[Dave] So they started using it and that’s really how we got started was those two just really started talking to us about some of the things that they wish they had. And we just kind of grew from there.
[Vanessa] What were you doing before you got involved in this?
[Dave] Well as far as before the assistive technology stuff, we sold just a handful of products on the internet, we had ecommerce sites, sort of distributing them and just shipping them and then like I said once the OTs started contacting us and we realized there’s this whole industry that is really underserved for mounting options and some of the other things as well. So we really just kind of, kind of kicked around the idea of creating more and started doing more and more assistive technology shows and that kind of brings us to today where we have a whole range of different products. Whether it’s for holding up smartphones, tablets, or even the Xbox adaptive controller.
[Vanessa] Alright. How many people on the staff there work on your brand?
[Dave] So we’re a pretty small organization, uh, but we have about seven, I think about seven people right now. Um, but it’s seven passionate people that really care about, you know, creating a quality product and just providing a good solution.
[Vanessa] Okay. You have all kinds of people with all kinds of backgrounds. Um you have at least one engineer.
[Dave] We do! Yeah, we have an engineer on staff um he helps us design some of our mounting options. Um, because things are always changing, whether it’s the wheelchair, way to attach it to a chair, a way to hold up a phone. Sometimes the tablets change sizes or the devices change. So we have an engineer on staff and we also have a designer as well, so yeah, we’re trying to keep everybody on board.
[Instrumental music plays and the video ends with a credit roll. Transcribed and captioned by aslcaptions.com.]
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