You oughta be in pictures
Picture phones are nothing new, but GE is demonstrating the first one we’ve heard of that starts picture transmission before the recipient picks up. We think this could be a great tool for people with cognitive disabilities who may find it easier to recognize faces than phone numbers when deciding whether to pick up or not.
Think lovely thoughts
What if you could identify the word a person is thinking just by comparing it with previous brain activity patterns? Some folks at Carnegie Mellon are doing just that with an MRI machine, and are getting pretty good results with 58 words and 9 users. This would be great for data entry, especially for people who cannot type.
“Thought recognition”, join speech recognition in the promised panacea parade. We’re not sayin’ anything, we’re just sayin’.
Talk to the glove
It’s unusually chilly for late May here, so we’re still open to wearing gloves, especially if they have a built-in cell phone. This prototype from Nikola Design has a standard keypad, a simple display, and an emergency button in the index finger. Could be a good all-weather accommodation for folks who can push buttons but not grasp phones, especially if it could be made a little more stylish–a Michael Jackson model, anyone?
Pot luck
The prototype Digital Pot gives you feedback on how the plant inside it is doing, both via digital emoticons (great non-verbal communication) or via reports to your computer (ideal for people with mobility disabilities). The design could be applied to fishtanks and other items that need regular maintenance.
New interfaces climb the charts
If all the attention to Microsoft Surface and Apple iPhone were not enough, now Microsoft’s next operating system, Windows 7, confirms it: multitouch and gesture are the next dominant interface families. They’re powerful and cheap (in terms of sensor hardware and memory/processor requirements), and people take to them quickly and enthusiastically.
But for accessibility, they’re the typical two-edged sword. They may overcome some of the barriers inherent in touchscreen technologies, but may demand too much dexterity from some users. They’ll need intense accessibility research and user testing, redundant options, and comprehensive collaboration with industry developers before we can be sure they’re optimized for inclusion.
Ars Technica: Windows 7 demo: all multitouch and no meat
For a more thorough discussion of this topic:
Let’s do the twist
We’ve reported before on an application that takes advantage of the iPhone’s position sensors; apparently this type of sensor is about to become a more standard issue for all types of gaming and information management applications. This trend means that several functions could now be easier to use for people with a range of dexterity disabilities.
Sony coaxes coax access
Sony and 6 major cable companies have announced their commitment to a new cable technology called Tru2way, which may do away with your set-top box. Instead it uses small CableCARDs for authentication and decoding, which plug right into your TV. Tru2way will allow the cable company to download software for controlling your TV, including the electronic program guide. On the theory that accessible software is easier to create and distribute than accessible hardware, we’re hoping that this means we can expect talking TV navigation with customized interfaces for people with different disabilities, or even compatibility with PC-based AT.
Ars Technica: Sony, six cable companies adopt two-way CableCARD tech