Access on Main Street

Hooking up a usable world, one mainstream product at a time.

Prompt system

Posted by Jane Berliss-Vincent 28 June 2010

Prompt-It is a hardware device that turns text from your smart phone into a teleprompter. Could be a lifesaver for people with any type of dexterity or memory difficulties who have to give a presentation in situations where using other types of notes is difficult or undesirable.

Ubergizmo: Prompt-It iPhone teleprompter

Tune in, turn on

Posted by Jane Berliss-Vincent 28 June 2010

Auto-Tune is software that can make bad singers sound competent, or game show hosts sound stoned. Wonder if the technology could also be used to modify the voices of people with dysarthric speech so that speech recognition applications would recognize them better?

Gizmodo: What Is Last Week’s “Alex Meets Auto-Tune” Jeopardy Category?

There’s no mouse like…no mouse?

Posted by Jane Berliss-Vincent 17 June 2010

We’ve been used to the mouse for some time; grab it and move your hand to navigate a cursor around the screen. But what if a computer could just track your hand instead? Enter Mouseless, a prototype infrared system that directly interprets hand movements for cursor control; wonderful for people whose dexterity makes grasping difficult. You still have to tap your index finger on the table to click, though, which begs the question of whether a different finger or even a different strategy could be assigned.

Gizmodo: First the mouse, then Mighty Mouse, then Magic Mouse and now the Invisible Mouse

Beam me up, Numi

Posted by Jane Berliss-Vincent 2 June 2010

Most of us have wallets or keychains bursting with loyalty and membership cards for various stores, and it doesn’t even take having a disability to experience difficulty finding and retrieving them when needed. Enter the Numi Key, which stores all your card information electronically, then lets you retrieve as needed and wirelessly transmit to a POS device. The display looks pretty legible (can we beg for a voice-output option in a future release?), and the buttons could well be tactilely discernable.

The Gadgeteer: Consolidate your loyalty cards into one device

Buddy system

Posted by Jane Berliss-Vincent 1 June 2010

We’ve written before about automated Twitter messages as a communication strategy, but most examples were either hacks or left little leeway for consciously choosing a desired message. Enter Buddy Radio, a simple device currently being tested with elders by the UK’s National Health Service. Turning the dial sends one of several messages indicating the user’s mood–not clear whether this is preprogrammed or personalizable. Apparently it works not only with Twitter, but also with Facebook, email, and so on. It’s currently being evaluated as a signaling system; off-site family, friends, and other message recipients would presumably be able to interpret when a user needs some type of intervention services. But we have cause to wish it were commercially available now so that people in hospice, recovering from serious injury, etc., would have a nearly effortless way to just provide brief but treasured messages to their circles.

Fast Company: Could oversharing save the lives of seniors?

Look, Mazda, no hands

Posted by Jane Berliss-Vincent 1 June 2010

The Swing Pro Solo Auto concept basically does away with the steering wheel. Instead, you make the car turn simply by leaning in the direction you want to go. This has obvious benefits for upper-limb amputees and anyone who has difficulty with grasping or turning a wheel. We can also see elimination of the wheel as improving driving comfort for people who are obese or pregnant. Finally, for people with cognitive conditions such as left/right dyslexia, leaning is probably going to require less effort and allow faster reaction times than steering.

Yanko Design: Swing Pro Solo Auto

ShapeWriter

Posted by Jane Berliss-Vincent 1 June 2010

ShapeWriter is a mainstream iPhone/Pod/Pad app that lets users perform data entry by gliding a finger (or a capacitive-friendly stylus?) across a virtual keyboard, which is likely to be accommodating for a range of people with dexterity disabilities who find standard keyboards problematic. As a bonus, ShapeWriter includes word prediction, so that even the gliding is kept to a minimum.

AT Mac: ShapeWriter - iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad Typing Without Lifting Your Finger

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