Access on Main Street

Yet another disruptive Google service, for voice communications.  Two years ago Google bought GrandCentral, the call routing and answering service that let you coordinate all your phone lines and devices and manage them by schedule, by caller, etc.  GrandCentral has just re-opened as “Google Voice”, with all the old features and a few new ones.  For example, voice messages are transcribed by default.  Deaf users will not need to do back-flips to get spoken messages in text form, and other users may take advantage of such a feature to help manage their days and to-do lists.  The fact that Google Voice is free leads us to wonder if they’ll be massaging our messages the way they do with our Gmail and Google searches.  Available now only for existing GrandCentral users; open enrollment “in a matter of weeks”.

Google Voice: Google Voice Emerges from GrandCentral, Transcribes Voicemail

As if Kindle weren’t already embroiled enough in accessibility matters, now you can get a free iPhone app with Kindle functionality for downloading and reading books.  You can even sync bookmarks between the 2 devices.  As to whether the iPhone Kindle app can read aloud (if permitted by the publisher), no news yet.

UPDATE: no, it can’t.

Kindle: Amazon Kindle Now Also an iPhone App

A new offering from Ditech Networks will allow you to access online information like calendars and social networks, just by saying the trigger word “TokTok”.  No technical details on how this works, or what phones and networks it will work on.  But folks, this may be a serious step forward for accessibility.  If we can get voice controlled access to information on a portable device for a reasonable price, can Triple-Stuffed Oreos be far behind?

Use Voice to Access Web Email, Calendar, Contacts, and Social Networks During a Phone Call with toktok – SlashPhone

“Page minimizers” are web services that take a rich media web page and strip out cluttericious layouts and graphics, yielding a faster-loading text-only page.  For users with attention issues, this may be as good as it gets; the resulting pages may be more screen reader friendly as well, although they omit the alt text along with the image.  This new page minimizer, IYHY, got a good review from Lifehacker, which is as good as it gets for those of us with attention surplus disorder.

Web Utilities: IYHY Strips Websites Down for Fast Text Browsing

Slydial lets you leave a voice message in any US mobile user’s mailbox, without ringing their phone.  This is sort of like texting, but by voice instead.  Call Slydial’s number, hear an ad, enter the recipient’s number, and record your message.  The recipient gets notified in the usual way, sees your CallerID, and hears your message.  (There’s an ad-free version, too.)

Slydial may be useful for people who can’t text due to vision, speech, or dexterity impairments, but want to get in on the fabulous forestalling fashion of one-way communication.  And some people are just shy.

The world of RFID gets more interesting and useful with a starter kit from Tikitag.  You get 10 adhesive-backed RFID tags and a USB reader, plus kewl applications.  For instance, put a tag on a person’s photo, then swipe it over the reader to place a phone call, or visit that person’s website or YouTube videos.  Put a tag on a souvenir, and swipe it to see a photo album and narration of a favorite remembered vacation.  Put a tag on a toy and swipe it to see a cartoon of that toy’s character in action.  It’s the “Internet of Things”, with great potential for people with cognitive or sensory disabilities.  Swiping is pretty physically easy, too — no contact or specific path is required.

Latest Applications | tikitag

Neuros has a prototype settop box that allows a text stream to be superimposed onto the video image.  This could be snarky comments from your witty buddies, or a super-professional captioning service.  What’s strong is the idea that the video can come from one place and the captions from another, or many others — the viewer chooses which stream to view.  So your choice could be a straight transcription for deaf viewers, or a cognitive support system for complex video programming that needs some additional explanation.

Neuros open set-top box lets you crowd-subtitle the presidential debate – Boing Boing