Table talk
The prototype Reflect meeting table lights up in front of whoever seems to be dominating the conversation at a given time. This could be an interesting cuing system for lipreaders, as well as a signal to people with, say, autism spectrum disorders that they’re violating social rules for loquaciousness.
Gadgetell: Noise sensitive table identifies the most talkative person in the group
Armed but not yet ready
Japanese university scientists are working on a camera that can capture hand movements and translate them into identical motions on a robotic arm. The idea is that this could become a fully gesture-based input system, which might benefit a number of people with dexterity disabilities who have problems using the keyboard and/or mouse. Let’s just hope the system will be flexible enough to take into account that not everyone has superb fine motor control…
Engadget: Robotic copycat arm promises to taunt you with ease
How much is that in dog ears?
OK, so most of these anti-terrorism product designs are silly, creepy, or both. But we kinda like the doggie earphone that interfaces with a walkie-talkie; if the range were wide enough, people who use service dogs could still give commands when, say, they’re in the laundry room but Fido is lounging on the porch.
The eyes have it?
Eyegaze control has been around the accessibility world for a long time, allowing cursor control by tracking iris movement (not brainwave activity, as the source article suggests). Here it’s popping up as an in-development mainstream way of cell phone and MP3 player control, which of course feeds back into the realm of possibilities for people with dexterity disabilities. One question: if the caller ID shows the number of someone you loathe, will rolling your eyes flummox the system?
Crunchgear: The cell phone of the future could be controlled with your eyes
TV Guide for the perplexed
A prototype uses facial expressions (especially puzzlement) to fine-tune a remote video tutoring application. A quizzical look slows down or repeats the material. This could be great for people with cognitive disabilities, or for those with impaired dexterity who can’t control the playback speed slider, or those with hearing loss who didn’t quite get what was said.
Furrowed brows at the School of Agriculture, no doubt. But is that student nodding from comprehension or boredom?
Binoc-noc, who’s there?
The Pentagon is apparently providing funding for work on a pair of binoculars that “learn” what objects individual users might be interested in by monitoring brainwaves, and then make these objects visually distinctive in situations where they might be inadvertently ignored. Since visual field discrimination normally decreases with age, we could see this technology eventually nano-ized and incorporated into bifocals and such.
Gizmag: Very intelligent electronic binoculars to use brain activity
In a pig’s ear…
…actually, it’s a pig in YOUR ears, or rather a pair of earbuds, each of which has half a silicon pig attached. We can actually see some accessibility potential here: the shape might afford more graspability than the average earbud. If not, at least they should be useful for listening to the Bacon Brothers and “MacArthur Pork.”
Gizmodo: Greenhouse’s New Headphones, For the “Pig Crashed Through Your Brain” Look