She deafened me with science
Toshiba is introducing Dolby Volume, which automatically adjusts TV volume that’s too loud–or, presumably, too soft–to a level of the user’s preference. Also works with stereo equipment, for the listening pleasure of the ever-growing Bjork/Metallica fan base.
Watching pictures
Brookstone now has a photo watch that can display up to 60 pictures on a reasonably good-sized screen and has the option of superimposing the time in either analog or digital format. We could see a variety of uses for this as a cognitive aid–what if you brought up the picture of the place you’re going to or the person you’re meeting before you leave the house, so that you’ll remember when you get there? If it had an alarm option that you could tie to a specific picture, that would be even better.
Everything USB.com: Digital photo watch (great grandpa gift?)
Say “goodbye” to saying “hello”
Sprint Nextel is ending its Voice Command service, which allowed users to store numbers and say names to dial them. Is this a tragedy? Not really, but like Hamlet, it is marginally interesting. Voice Command was a network-based service; that is, the names, numbers, and matching voice files were stored on Sprint’s network. Now that so many wireless handsets have voice dialing, the network service isn’t that useful (or billable), but the network cost of maintaining it was probably as high as it ever was.
So chalk this up as another salvo in the endless battle between network/shared resources and those feasible in every pocket.
Sprint discontinuing Voice Command on July 1st - Engadget Mobile
The way the ball bounces
We don’t usually cover one-off devices here, but this one’s too cool not to mention: an audio-only version of Ping Pong. You tilt your head to “center” the sound of an approaching ball; if you’re successful, game play continues at an increasingly faster rate. Of obvious interest to blind individuals, it’s also totally hands-free so it could be playable by folks with dexterity disabilities, too.
Text your vote
A significant majority (61%) of polled Americans said they’d prefer to vote in the next election via text messaging, and the percentage is even higher among those who’ll become eligible to vote by 2016. Reliability issues aside, this could be a boon for people with disabilities–or a nightmare, depending on implementation. How will write-ins be handled? Will the system be able to recognize creative spelling (Barak, Barac, Braq…)? Will verification and confidentiality issues be addressed? We refer anyone interested in the implementation of this strategy to the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines for a comprehensive view of accessibility considerations.
Cellular News: U.S. Cell Phone Users Open to Texting Their Vote for President
More CAPTCHA follies
We’ve posted a good bit about CAPTCHAs, the automated techniques that try to distinguish humans from vile software bots when visiting websites or registering for accounts, such as the blurry letters you have to type into a box. It’s an arms race between CAPTCHA designers and bot designers, with visually impaired users as collateral damage.
The latest design calls for users to click near the geometric center of any image in a composite set of wall-to-wall images drawn from a database. That’s only step one; step two shows you another image, which you must identify from a list of options. They’re gonna have to get really creative to figure out a non-visual approach to this task. And hey, webmaster, is your site’s porn late medieval Italian poetry really worth all this effort?
Ars Technica: Researchers stay step ahead of bots with image-based CAPTCHA
What it sees is what you get
Evolution Robotics has announced that its ViPR visual search engine will arrive on the iPhone this June. What’s a visual search engine? Take a picture of any book, CD, or DVD, and information about it comes back to your mobile phone. Sounds amazing, no? It even works when the object is upside down or partially hidden.
Consider the implications for blind, low vision, and cognitively disabled users, especially once it can recognize other objects, places, people….