Access on Main Street

A German institute is working on ways to recharge your gadgets using just your standard body heat. Interesting implications for people who can’t plug devices into a recharger, or can’t remember to plug them in. May not work for ectotherms.

Yahoo: Gadgets That Run on Body Heat

Simulscribe is a new service that takes voice mail, converts it to text, and sends it to your mobile phone. Obvious benefits for people with hearing disabilities, as well as for people with (or without) ADD who hate listening to droning messages just to find the one bit of relevant info.

Simulscribe

Trutex, a British manufacturer of school uniforms, ran a poll asking parents if they’d buy clothes with built-in GPS; 59% responded that they would. Assuming this translates into a mandate to develop wash-’n'-wear GPS, it could also be used to develop fashionable garments for people with Alzheimer’s or other disabilities that may result in wandering.

Popgadget: Do You Know Where Your Children Are? – GPS Uniforms

Dying to send text messages, but can’t or won’t use eensy cell phone keypads? Yahoo’s email service has just come to your rescue: when you compose a message using its revised interface, you can choose whether to send it as an instant message, as a text message, or as POBE (plain ol’ boring email). More likely to be compatible with assistive technologies, and easier on the thumbs.

SF Gate: Yahoo Adds Features to Popular E-Mail

NTT DoCoMo’s simplified “Raku-Raku” handset, aimed at elders, has several great features: it can speak SMS and other text; it adjusts its microphone input based on ambient noise for better outbound audio quality, and it can slow down incoming voice to make it easier to understand, with no frequency distortion. That’s right, Grandma hears your phony excuses for not calling more often in lingering clarity.

BTW, does “NTT” stand for “Not Traveling Transpacific?” Why don’t we see this phone in the rest of the world?

NTT DoCoMo handset “slows down” cellphone voices for the elderly – Engadget Mobile

The famously inaccessible Apple iPhone (motto: “Buttons? We don’ need no stinkin’ buttons!”) opens up a little bit to those who cannot navigate or activate its touchscreen-only interface. Speech recognition company VoiceSignal has demonstrated a proof-of-concept application that lets you peek inside iPhone’s functions. Not all of them; in fact, not many at all. But let’s try to stay positive, ok, people?

VoiceSignal ports voice recognition software to iPhone – Engadget Mobile

We’ve all experienced screens so busy that even the most important information and functions are impossible to find and use. Now MIT has developed an automated tool to detect screen clutter and recommend improvements. Great for anyone with difficulty seeing or interpreting lots of simultaneous visual content.

MIT’s ‘clutter detector’ could cut confusion – MIT News Office