iPhone preview
C’mon, you knew we were going to have an iPhone post sooner or later. Fortunately, David Pogue has done a lot of our work already: we now know with authority that the iPhone will be inaccessible to people who can’t see the screen or who can’t activate the screen with their bare fingers, but will be pretty friendly for one-handed users. Oh, and it doesn’t support Java, Flash, and some other technologies that can also cause accessibility problems.
Happy happy joy joystick
Zacod has come up with a prototype cellphone keyboard that has full QWERTY capability using only 15 keys. Each key can be tilted in three directions to provide three different functions–that’s 45 options total. Certainly of interest to texters with range of motion issues; wonder how much tactile feedback it provides to let you know you’re tilting correctly?
Access to grind
We like to start Monday mornings with a pleasant surprise–and this ain’t it: a recent survey found that implementation of Web 2.0 features can result in an accessibility drop of 38%. Says our fellow accessibility blogger Paul Crichton, “The irony is that Web 2.0 features are usually introduced to make websites more user-friendly.” Sure, if the user has guaranteed 20/10 vision and fingers of steel…
Brain, sustain train
We’ve always been suspicious of technology that claims to read user’s thoughts and translate them into action. But Hitachi has finally come up with a brainwave analyzer that makes sense: it activates a device–in this case, a toy train–when it senses the existence of prefrontal lobe activity, and stops when the brain activity stops. The next likely application seems to be for remote control, for the benefit of people with mobility and/or dexterity disabilities, not to mention couch ‘taters.
Throw out the towel
When the infrared sensor on the Towel-Matic is activated, it dispenses one or two sheets depending on user preference, then anchors the roll while the user tears off the sheets. Sounds great for one-handed use, or possibly even for retrieval via foot or mouth.
The Green Head: Towel-Matic - Automatic Paper Towel Dispenser
Sly and the family phone
The Ipevo Free.2 phone lets users record their VoIP calls and save them to their hard drive (only for computers running XP and Vista, though). Great not only for spies, but also for anyone who would have difficulty taking notes during a conversation.
NYT: A Phone for the Sly Can Record Calls and Store Them on a Computer
Speak up to pay up
Voice Pay is a new service that uses your mobile device to authenticate purchases by speaker recognition, right at the checkout counter if need be. Your voice coming over your phone is a pretty solid security path, and it will eliminate troublesome card swiping.