A decent sort
We hear a lot of complaints from clients about their clogged Email inboxes–especially from folks with cognitive disabilities, who may be unsure what’s reasonably safe or not to open, who may have unreliable spam filters, or who may simply be overwhelmed. Enter the Priority Inbox feature for GMail, which prioritizes your inbox based on “who emails you the most, who you reply to the most, keywords taken from the emails you open most often, and how a message is addressed.” Users can also “train” the feature by indicating when Priority Inbox made a miscall. Not a full solution, but a likely helper.
On tap
There are a couple of new products that could make water faucets more accommodating to people with various types of upper body impairments. The Smart Faucet is a lever you can add to your current faucet; water only flows when the lever is pressed, eliminating the need to twist knobs on and off. The Tapi is a rubber cup that turns the water flow into a drinking fountain when squeezed. If they require minimum activation pressure, they could work for a lot of people.
Gizmodo: The faucet gets smart
Gizmodo: Tapi, a rubber adapter that turns your faucet into a drinking fountain
One order of iPad Thai
Sharp is trying out a restaurant app in Japan that would let individuals browse the menu and place their order by iPad. If implemented with even a soupcon of thoughtfulness, this could address a variety of access issues, from working with VoiceOver to provide an audio menu, to allowing non-literate people to find and select a picture of what they want, to providing a non-verbal ordering strategy for people with speech impairments. Tasty!
Crunchgear: iPad used as self-ordering system at restaurants
Lean, baby, lean
Some folks at the Ithaca College Tots on Bots project have the AoMS philosophy down pat: They’ve taken Wii Balance Boards and builds them into tiny robotic wheelchairs. When a very young child with physical disabilities sits in the chair and leans, the board senses their movement and steers the chair in the corresponding direction. Will this be expanded into wheelchair design for other ages, so that we’ll have Teens that Lean and Geezers on Wiizers?
Engadget: Wii balance board-controlled robot a hit with toddlers in Ithaca
Gaze into the past
Eyegaze systems have been around for quite some time as a computer access strategy for people with ALS and other causes of near-total paralysis. Now it’s being used as a mainstream hack to operate an old-style Nintendo system, at least for Super Mario Brothers. Will this help advance the quality of the technology for accessibility purposes? Don’t blink or…
Wired: DIYers Mod a Nintendo to Play Mario by Moving Their Eyes
Here’s the scoop:
We’re keeping an eye on the relevance to wheelchair users of the Roboscooper, which looks like a commercial variation of the iRobot Create modification for the Roomba. Roboscooper picks up objects and puts them in a “cargo bay” (unclear if this is a set area or can be specified by the user), or knocks them around (and out of the way?). We do like that it has a variety of clear spoken messages in response to a variety of situations, including encountering an object that’s too big or heavy, and that it can run either automatically or via remote control.