Magic touch?
Researchers at the University of Tokyo are working on an interface that uses Wiimotes and ultrasound to create interactive holograms that provide the illusion of touchability. This has obvious gaming implications for blind individuals, who could use it to manipulate objects and controls. But what if it could be extended further–say, to create tactile maps on the fly, or to provide an interface for simulating scientific experimentation?
Engadget: Touchable Holography uses Wiimotes to add touch to holograms
Camera with training wheels?
Nikon has a new model camera aimed at novices, so they did a smartie and added educational menus to their large LCD. These don’t only describe the settings, they tell you what the settings are for, how to use them, and how they’ll affect your shot. A great feature for people with cognitive disabilities, like the 90% of us who take pictures infrequently enough not to remember the meanings of those tiny, obscure flower-runner-mountain-moon icons. Will we see this feature duplicated on copy machines? Diffused to humidifiers? Adopted for baby monitors?
Gizmodo: Nikon D3000: Beginner’s 10MP DSLR With Educational Menus for $600
Kustom Keyboard Kapers
We’ve been following the pricy, exotic Optimus keyboard for a while, with its promise of a tiny display on every key. This feature would let you connect the key’s image to a specific program or function, which may help users with cognitive disabilities. Now a modestly-priced ($US135) knock-off arrives: regular-looking keyboard, but with 9 extra keys that have monochrome (yellow on black) icon capabilities. It comes with a software utility that will convert any image into a key’s icon. We’re buying one just to play Hollywood Squares.
Engadget: OCZ’s Sabre OLED gaming keyboard now shipping, priced at $135
Microsoft’s motion move
Ever since it was released, Nintendo’s Wii and its handheld gesture controllers have dominated the buzz in gaming interfaces. Microsoft fired back at today’s E3 conference with Natal, a gesture and speech recognition system with no physical controller at all. Using cameras and directional microphones, Natal will let players control the Xbox with kicks, twists, finger-pointing, and spoken commands. The cameras will identify players and their motions, interpreting them for whatever game is being played. These virtual gesture input systems can be adapted for use by people with dexterity impairments to play games, or, with suitable programming, to perform other functions. You could turn it into a virtual keyboard to control a word processor, for example.
If Natal enters the market at the estimated price of $99, it could revolutionize the field of alternative input devices.
Microsoft’s Project Natal: What does it mean for games industry? | Gaming and Culture – CNET News
Off on a tangible
Everything goes in cycles, man. I mean, like, it used to be that all controls were things you touched, like keys on a keyboard. Then we got heavily into virtual controls, like “buttons” on a screen. Now somebody has reminded us that there’s a real world out there, man, with tangible stuff that can do stuff. But it’s better this time around! Tangible interfaces can take any object — a block, a salt shaker, whatever — and tag it so the interface responds to its location, rotation, or color. Tangible interfaces could benefit people with physical, sensory or cognitive access issues, but it depends on how they’re built — they may impose new barriers themselves if there’s no alternative. Some days, you just can’t say “redundancy” too many times.
Trackmate, a prototype, is a great example of a flexible tangible interface, suitable for almost any type of application. Inexpensive, too: all open source, with hardware costs under $100. It’s easy to get started, but if you want to do something off-road, there’ll be heavy hacking ahead. A growing user community may be able to help.
Phone-y degrees
A Tokyo university is giving away iPhones to its students, with a little extra something inside: a tracking application to make sure the kids are really in class and not snoozing away the morning. Our first thought was that this app could also be relevant for caregivers of people with Alzheimer’s and other conditions associated with wandering. But these iPhones also have capabilities that will let students download lecture podcasts, complete their homework, and even take tests, which could make life easier for many undergrads with various types of disabilities, especially if text-to-speech and/or speech-to-text capabilities are available.
Crunchgear: Big Brother in Japan: University tracks students via free iPhones
The check’s in the phone
NCR has come up with software that lets you use the camera on your cell phone to scan checks; it then verifies the amount and sends the deposit info straight to your account. Short-term good news: this could save a lot of people–with and without disabilities–from having to make extra bank runs. Long-term good news: this type of scanning capability could have much wider implications. For example, there are already cameras that take pictures of printed materials, convert them to machine-readable text, and read them using voice output software–for a few thousand dollars. If the same capabilities could be available through a cellie, they would be affordable to many, many more people who have difficulty accessing print formats.
Gizmodo: Did you ever think you could deposit checks using your phone? Neither did I