Mike’ll more?
The Roadrunner Bluetooth headset snuggles up close to your larynx to reduce ambient noise–and possibly work better than traditional headsets for people with some types of speech disabilities. Please tell us it goes great with speech recognition software…
Light conversation
Holy talking light switch covers, Batman! Yes, that’s right: record your 20 second message and this gadget will repeat it whenever one of the switches is turned on or off. Probably intended to hold “Turn me off when you leave”, it might just as well hold “Go back to your room”. Too bad it doesn’t say different things for “on” and “off”, but as a memory aid or simple communication device, $13 is pretty cheap.
Tweet talk
The avian market has long been demanding its own toy resembling a cell phone, and human developers have finally responded. The Talk ‘N Play Bird Toy holds four MP3 phrases, and the buttons light up when pressed. Not clear if the MP3s can be changed; if they can, this could be a super-simple, super-cheap, lightweight augmentative communication aid–and since it has a mirror, it might be used for basic speech therapy as well.
Will it Blendie?
Blendie is a prototype device that consists of a 50+ year old Osterizer ramped up with hardware and software. Growl in low tones and it blends slowly; raise your pitch and it speeds up. Fuhgeddabout the developer’s woo-woo assertion that “[t]he experience for the participant is to speak the language of the machine and thus to more deeply understand and connect with the machine.” Its real destiny is as the perfect margarita maker for people with both dexterity and speech disabilities.
Gee o geotagging
The just-about-released Apple Mac OS 10.5 (”Leopard” to ailurophiles) will support geotagging, which is a way of generating a map based on the coordinates of where a digital photo was taken. Imagine the possibilities for people with speech disabilities to be able to communicate where they’ve been, or for people with cognitive disabilities to figure out how to get back to a favorite place.
Prime rib directive
A restaurant in Germany has replaced waiters with robots–punch in your order on a touch screen, and it comes down a slide a few minutes later. A step forward for people with communication-related disabilities (we hope the design uses pictograms instead of/in addition to text descriptions); several steps backward for blind folks and the flirtatious.
Ball talk
The Soundball looks like an ordinary soccer ball, but it’s been outfitted with motion sensors that “knows whether it’s being hit, thrown, or spun.” This information is then transmitted, via Bluetooth, to a computer, which produces different noises based on how the ball was handled. We could see this modified and used as a very simple communication device, particularly for individuals with disabilities like autism that do not necessarily affect their agility; for example, kicking the ball could produce the computerized response, “I’m hungry” while spinning it could produce “I’m tired.”