As it is Twitten
Carmen Gonzales has come up with a summary of pretty convincing arguments about why Twitter has made a huge difference for people with physical disabilities. Some of these involve the potential for generating and receiving information with little effort, but there is also the fact that if everyone is communicating in 140 characters, assistive tech users or slow typists will be able to generate messages of an acceptable length with less effort than, say, typing a full email. There are parallel arguments to be made for cognitive access as well.
Twitup: Twitter remaking the persona of the physically challenged
When in Rome, do like a Roman
Now that we think about it, it makes sense: fear of H1N1 may be driving development of touch-free products light years forward. Take the Holy Water dispenser that some Italian churches are installing and which work on the same principle as the auto faucets that have become commonplace in the U.S. The side benefit is that many devout folks who couldn’t use the traditional font should now have a significant measure of accessibility. Let’s hope this technology stays in place after the flu has flown.
New Launches: Auto Holy Water dispenser, Italy’s religious swine flu prevention technique
Comfortably Nimbb
What if you want to get in on social networking, but typing is difficult, or you communicate better by voice or sign language than text, or you just prefer video? Nimbb is a new service that lets you record brief videos and then post them to either a single Twitter-like page or to other types of sites. There is a free option, but paying a monthly fee ensures that your video won’t disappear after 30 days and will be of higher quality. This seems to be the next generation of video Twitter sites such as 12seconds.tv.
Card trick
James Alliban, a Flash programmer in London, has come up with an augmented reality business card; point it at a webcam, and it gives you a 3D representation plus audio–think Leia’s virtual “Help me, Obi-Wan” incarnation. The video still leaves something to be desired; much of the time, the image looks rather like something assembled from colored Post-It notes. However, the audio quality seems quite good, and this could be a way to create talking business cards for the benefit of folks with visual or cognitive disabilities, especially if something more ubiquitous than a webcam (a cellie, mebee?) could trigger playback.
Sense and sensitivity
The good folks at Dartmouth’s MetroSense initiative are hard at work prototyping two interesting mobile applications with potential access implications. SoundSense can analyze audio information and provide feedback on whether it’s a voice, music, or just noise; imagine this being used by deaf people to know when someone is trying to speak to get their attention, or to get a feeling for what the latest hot tune is like. CenceMe uses programmable gestures or ambient events to interpret what an individual is up to and send this information to social networking software, which could be a useful communication strategy for people with severe communication or physical disabilities. Dartmouth’s motto is “A voice crying in the wilderness;” let’s hope some commercial entity is listening.
Estonia and then they’ll say “good luck”
Starting in 2011, citizens of Estonia will be able to vote via any cell phone equipped with an ID chip. Will the interface follow WAI guidelines for designing for mobile devices? Will it be friendly for, say, both voice-output and voice-input users? Stay tuned.
FaceLickBook
We know Fido has been begging for his own Facebook identity, and a company called SNIFtag (motto: “tails told, friends made”) has just made it easier to indulge him. The eponymous tags allow social Setters and convivial Collies within reasonable proximity to exchange detailed information paws-free; the uploaded data is then transferred to the pooch’s Facebook account for further examination. Theoretically, this could be adapted to exchange information between people who would have difficulty presenting or interpreting business cards because of physical or visual disabilities. It’s also a green solution to everyone’s problem of hanging on to cards and remembering their relevance.