Welcome to Access on Main Street. We cover mainstream products that, by chance or design, make life easier for an elder or a person with a disability. We want to inform consumers, inspire designers, and wake up marketers to opportunities with these underserved customers. Please comment on our articles, and point us to your own mainstream nuggets.
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Found objects
We’ve commented before on a few hardware-based strategies for finding lost keys, remotes, etc. “Where Is My Phone,” however, is an iPhone app that lets you find your…iPhone. It responds to your whistle (so it’s hands-free) with either one of its preprogrammed noises or with your sound recording. Since it’s response is user-specific, we’re hoping you can substitute a different sound if you’re whistle-impaired. We also assume it’s TSR, unless you plan in advance to lose your phone. All this for a buck; not bad.
ShinyShiny: Whistle and your phone will respond: the Where is My Phone App
Heinzsight
Forget the iPad; the first great design innovation of the ’10s might be the revised Heinz ketchup packet. It will now let you peel off a corner and dip or tear off the top and squeeze, which among other things may accommodate people with a wider range of dexterity limitations. Care to condiment?
Universal touch
A company named Displax is developing a thin film that can be put on any piece of glass or wood as well as plastic to turn it into a touch screen. Not only does this hold promise for people whose dexterity or cognitive disabilities make touch screens preferable to the traditional keyboard and mouse interface, but it also means the possibility of making green/hypoallergenic devices more widespread.
Handy mouse
The Airmouse fits on your hand and lets you perform mousing functions based on ligament movement without having to touch an actual mouse. When you move your hand to a typing or other non-neutral position, the Airmouse automatically puts itself on pause. This, plus the supposed one-week battery life, makes it a good alternative mouse candidate for people with any type of hand injury or limitations.
Just you weight
PhD candidate Fabian Hemmert is doing a lot of thinking about how cell phones can convey information by changing their weight distribution, width, or “emotional” state. The ability to provide navigational information by shifting the phone’s weight to correspond to the desired direction is very promising as an aid for blind individuals, particularly those who also have limitations to their hearing and/or their fingertip sensitivity.
Ubergizmo: Shape shifting cell phone prototype interacts with you
iPad gives users more than one finger
As the hallucinatory haze of Apple’s latest product announcement dissipates, tech analysts have begun looking at what the iPad may offer in new features. One clear category is the gesture interface, which is dramatically more powerful than on the iPhone. You can use several fingers at once, including fingers from both hands in orchestrated ways to re-size, rotate, and otherwise control your applications, and the duration of some presses will alter what function you’re performing. Assuming you have, and can use, all of that digital flesh. Without carefully designed alternative input, a sophisticated gesture interface may pose a serious barrier to people who are missing fingers, have difficulty controlling them, or who have trouble understanding the gesture scheme.
The iPad’s Interface and Gestures: What’s Actually New Video - apple ipad - Gizmodo