Fine Vine
Microsoft is betting that the next evolution of social networking will be “societal networking”–applications like their Vine prototype, designed to let a specified group of individuals share information in the event of a disaster or emergency (assuming, of course, that the networks stay usable). We could see this also used on a more individual level, so that a person with mobility disabilities would have an easy way to contact a variety of people for help in the case of a wheelchair breakdown, or a group of people could communicate around the status and needs of a person with Alzheimer’s.
Tech News World: Microsoft’s Vine to Reach Out in Emergencies
The check’s in the phone
NCR has come up with software that lets you use the camera on your cell phone to scan checks; it then verifies the amount and sends the deposit info straight to your account. Short-term good news: this could save a lot of people–with and without disabilities–from having to make extra bank runs. Long-term good news: this type of scanning capability could have much wider implications. For example, there are already cameras that take pictures of printed materials, convert them to machine-readable text, and read them using voice output software–for a few thousand dollars. If the same capabilities could be available through a cellie, they would be affordable to many, many more people who have difficulty accessing print formats.
Gizmodo: Did you ever think you could deposit checks using your phone? Neither did I
Two great inters that face great together
“Hey, you got your buttons in my touchscreen!” Is the ancient war between buttons and touchscreens ready for the treaty table? A new prototype manages to build a single input device that has true multi-touch capability as well as a set layout of tactilely discernible buttons. Kludgy but compelling for now, its commercial versions may permit redundant input for all users with disabilities in the same device.
XPditious
We’ve just heard that the much-hoped-for Windows 7 operating system will have a mode for running a virtual version of XP, thereby supporting a level of backwards compatibility for older applications. This is super news for everyone, but especially for individuals whose favorite assistive technology apps still haven’t been released in Vista versions.
Bicep concept pecks away at touch barriers, obliquely
One of the problems with touchscreens is that you can’t tell, by touch alone, where the different controls are or if you have activated one. Now we have a new prototype haptic display from Artifical Muscle that may relieve our touchiness problem. It’s a small membrane that changes shape or location when a current is applied to it. The demo video found at the link below shows how it can respond with vibration, position change, or angle change. Looks like a good direction for blind access to the rapidly growing universe of touch-sensitive devices. Is it small enough to display braille or other tactile markings? Ask again later.
Showing some backbone
A new study indicates that far more Americans than previously estimated–5.6 million people, or about 1 in 50–have some level of paralysis in their arms and/or legs. The reason for the increase has to do with a shift in definition rather than demographics; people or their family members were simply asked about functional capabilities rather than their conformance to a specific medical model. The study didn’t even count non-nervous system causes for limited limb movement, such as arthritis. Moral for product developers: scratch a functional definition and find a more significant market for universal design features than you may have thought.
Zamzar
An important accessibility issue is file conversion–being able to convert text files to speech files, say, for the benefit of people with visual or learning disabilities, or to take files from a digital recorder and turn them into a format that voice recognition software can parse. Zamzar is a new, free online service that can take files up to 100 MB, convert them into a wide variety of text, audio, graphic, video, and other formats, and email you the results. Pay a bit, and it’ll handle files up to 1 GB, plus give you some online storage space. We have it on impeccable authority that the results are “pretty good.”