Primp up the volume!
No one buys a laptop or netbook for audio quality, but lots of people use their portable devices for audio-intensive apps like playing music, watching movies, and talking on VoIP. Now people with mild to moderate hearing loss can improve their audio with a USB device. The X-Tube DTS looks like an old electronic tube, and glows blue when operating. Beyond the classy optics are some impressive acoustics: simulated surround sound, better frequency response, and on-screen sliders for bass enhancement and “voice clarification”. As always, your mileage may vary, but the review at the link below is pretty positive, except for suggesting that you use better headphones than the bundled ones. Only $45 dollars once it arrives.
We’re speechless
Researchers in Germany have come up with a pretty cool piece of technology: measure the facial muscle movement as someone is silently mouthing words, translate that into the equivalent sounds, and send the results via phone or other device. We have a lot of questions–first off, how does it measure tongue movement to distinguish between, say, “pat” and “bat”?–but we still see the potential of this as an augmentative communication method.
Applecalypse Now
Not content to ban suggestive iPhone apps from their store, Apple has decided they can also ban apps based on “minimal user functionality.” So the quirky utility that might just solve an access problem–like the air blower–won’t be available via the most central app resource. Not good.
Gizmodo: Apple rejects app for containing minimal user functionality
A wonderous bird is the Pelikon
The Pelikon MorphPad can light up different sections of a mobile device’s keyboard based on the active function–just the numbers for telephony, just the control keys for a game. Should be useful for people with low vision, as well as providing cuing to people with cognitive disabilities. Take that, Optimus!
Magnetic poetry
The next step in telephony: magnetic rings that can be used to perform a variety of functions using gestures without requiring any contact. The MagiTact app will work with phones that have built-in compasses. Not released yet, but we’ll look forward to it.
MagiTact hands-free phone control makes multitouch seem absolute
Two thumbs infuriated
We’ve previously discussed the benefits of running augmentative communication software on mainstream platforms, such as computers and iPhones, over having monopurpose AugCom devices. Cost efficiency is one argument; normalization another. But in the middle of this month’s moving Esquire interview with Roger Ebert, a striking advantage emerged: the broad functionality of mainstream tech permits creativity of expression in a way that developers of specialized devices might never foresee.
“This time, the anger [over Disney's deletion of videos honoring Gene Siskel that were linked from Ebert's website] lasts long enough for Ebert to write it down. He opens a new page in his text-to-speech program, a blank white sheet. He types in capital letters, stabbing at the keys with his delicate, trembling hands: MY TRIBUTE, appears behind the cursor in the top left corner. ON THE FIRST SHOW AFTER HIS DEATH. But Ebert doesn’t press the button that fires up the speakers. He presses a different button, a button that makes the words bigger. He presses the button again and again and again, the words growing bigger and bigger and bigger until they become too big to fit the screen, now they’re just letters, but he keeps hitting the button, bigger and bigger still, now just shapes and angles, just geometry filling the white screen with black like the three squares. Roger Ebert is shaking, his entire body is shaking, and he’s still hitting the button, bang, bang, bang, and he’s shouting now. He’s standing outside on the street corner and he’s arching his back and he’s shouting at the top of his lungs.”
Dog bytes man
As usual, the development dollars are going into assistive technology for the canids. Cf. Puppy Tweets, which translates doggie activities into one of 500 texts (e.g., “Guess what I’m licking right now.” Um…we’ll pass). With a little linguistic tinkering, we could see this turned into a useful way for people with various types of physical or cognitive disabilities to communicate, whether practical–a specific movement could send a message requesting help–or social.
Engadget: Puppy tweets will turn your pooper into a world-class Twitterer