Presentment or resentment?
E-presentment is a fancy term referring to “the process of delivering traditionally paper-based documents online in electronic formats,” focused on the mainstream audience. Automatic boon for screen reader/text reader users? Not necessarily; the presentation is likely to be in PDF, which is at best iffy for speech output compatibility, or TIFF, which speech output can’t access at all. Strikes us that with just a little more thought, e-presentment could be a major accessibility service rather than just another barrier.
TechNewsWorld: The Vital Role of E-Presentment in Online Self-Service
Audi’s precedents yen
Handwriting recognition using stylus input is nothing new, nor is word prediction, but Audi is the first company we’re aware of that’s put the two together. Their forthcoming R8 multimedia interface will have a feature that lets you draw one letter at a time and brings up a word prediction list accordingly. The specific application is for destination finding, but we can see this being implemented in all kinds of situations and thereby benefitting people with reduced fine motor dexterity, where drawing a fairly large letter may be easier than pressing a teensy key.
Engadget: Audi’s next-gen R8 MMI recognizes handwriting, probably increases your insurance premium
uCan uCord
We’ve previously written about automatic cameras for dogs, but the idea has now been appropriated by people, presumably to continue the every-little-moment-has-a-meaning-all-its-own mentality encouraged by Twitter. However, this wearable audio/video recorder does have consequential applications for people with severe dexterity, speech, and/or cognitive disabilities; it could be used to record and therefore communicate about experiences, as well as serving as a safety cam. Wish the battery life were more than 2 hours, but if this catches on we might see some improvements.
Hold the phone!
Joby’s Gorillapod is an adorable adjustable tripod for stabilizing your camera on uneven surfaces; you can set them on rocks, or wrap them around bicycle handlebars. Now they’ve got Gorillamobile, which has the camera attacher, but also a suction cup and gluable connector. It’s meant to hold your phone or mp3 player for hands-free access. We can imagine it on wheelchair laptrays, desktops, bedside tables, etc. — everywhere that a portable device needs to be firmly positioned and angled for convenience or accessibility; $30.
Engadget: Joby’s Gorillamobile keeps your phone firmly affixed to whatever
Camera with training wheels?
Nikon has a new model camera aimed at novices, so they did a smartie and added educational menus to their large LCD. These don’t only describe the settings, they tell you what the settings are for, how to use them, and how they’ll affect your shot. A great feature for people with cognitive disabilities, like the 90% of us who take pictures infrequently enough not to remember the meanings of those tiny, obscure flower-runner-mountain-moon icons. Will we see this feature duplicated on copy machines? Diffused to humidifiers? Adopted for baby monitors?
Gizmodo: Nikon D3000: Beginner’s 10MP DSLR With Educational Menus for $600
Grande resolutions for pico projectors?
The latest news on the pico projector front is that we’re moving towards high def resolutions, which is likely to provide increased benefits for people with low vision. Anyone out there yet who’s using a pico projector for accessibility purposes? What d’yall think?
Cupertino coups
Apple continues hard at work on interesting ideas with accessibility implications. One recent patent filing is for a system that eliminates the need for “ejecting” a USB or similar device before it is disconnected from a computer. Disengagement occurs when the device is touched or “if an impending touch is detected”; this could be helpful for people with dexterity disabilities, not to mention anyone who forgets, doesn’t understand, or has never heard of the ejection requirement. Another filing covers a way to have the contents of text messages automatically sent to a text-output device, to the benefit not only of the people with low vision mentioned in the patent but also many people with learning disabilities.
AppleInsider: New Apple patent filings cover device ejection, text to speech