Access on Main Street

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

Holiday Inn will soon be installing special room locks that open when you play a coded song for them from your smartphone.  Both the unlock tones and your room assignment will be sent to your phone automatically, so you can skip the front desk.  The OpenWays system may help customers who have dexterity or visual difficulty using keycards, but it also makes the accessibility of smartphones that much more essential — as these mobile devices become ever more integral, being left out really means being left out.

Soon You’ll Unlock Hotel Room Doors By Playing Songs on Your Phone–Gizmodo

Apple has patented a technique to hide sensors beneath the skin of a product.  They will be completely invisible and undiscernible any other way as well (in direct contravention of 1194.23(k)(1) of Section 508, which is now under review).  But embedded LEDs may announce their presence via patterns of micro-holes drilled by frickin’ lasers.

We love seamless input devices, we really do.  We’re sleek as seals ourselves.  But unless there is some redundant alternative or accessibility technique, blind and low vision users are going to be excluded.

ArsTechnica: Apple combines touch, laser etching for “disappearing” input

A company called Cypress is working on TrueTouch technology for mobile device screens. TrueTouch can respond to a finger that is hovering above it, and respond differently to an actual touch. When we first found this article, we thought this would mostly have implications for people with dexterity disabilities, and it could–for example, people for whom any physical contact with the screen would be painful might be able to carry out some functions without requiring actual touch. But what really hooked us was that the demonstration shows how hovering provides magnification of whatever is being hovered over–an obvious boon to many people with low vision, and to some with cognitive disabilities as well.

CrunchGear: Soon you won’t even have to touch that touchscreen

Hmm…spend $2,400 on an Optimus Maximus keyboard, or spend $10 for fluorescent keyboard labels that will at least let us pretend we have an Optimus. The Glowing Keyboard Stickers could be useful for some people with low vision, but we wish the letters/numbers were in large print.

ThinkGeek: Glowing keyboard stickers

The Toshiba TubeTop isn’t what fashion-savvy lady nerds will be wearing this summer; it’s a laptop with a built-in inner tube beneath the keyboard. Advertised for use in pools, it would also be invaluable for anyone who needs their computer positioned up off the table, airplane tray, etc. so they can see the monitor or reach the keys a bit more easily. We wish the keyboard toggle for inflation/deflation were a little less complicated than Ctrl+Alt+ P-U-M-P; we also sort of wish it had been announced some other day of the year.

Toshiba: Oh buoy! Meet the Toshiba TubeTop

Oh, how we look forward to the product announcements that come out this day each year. First up: the Pad-Dock, which enhances the iPhone with a touch-screen magnifier so that it has the same large display as an iPad. Hmm…

Iwantoneofthose.com: Pad-Dock iPhone to Tablet Converter