You can’t spell “complain” without “LA”
Using an Apple iPhone app, L.A. citizens can now take a picture of a broken sidewalk or other municipal flaw and send it directly to the city government for instant relief. How about reporting blocked curbcuts or illegal use of handicapped parking spaces?
L.A. city government: Residents have a finger on problems with iPhone app - latimes.com
Beam me up, Numi
Most of us have wallets or keychains bursting with loyalty and membership cards for various stores, and it doesn’t even take having a disability to experience difficulty finding and retrieving them when needed. Enter the Numi Key, which stores all your card information electronically, then lets you retrieve as needed and wirelessly transmit to a POS device. The display looks pretty legible (can we beg for a voice-output option in a future release?), and the buttons could well be tactilely discernable.
The Gadgeteer: Consolidate your loyalty cards into one device
Buddy system
We’ve written before about automated Twitter messages as a communication strategy, but most examples were either hacks or left little leeway for consciously choosing a desired message. Enter Buddy Radio, a simple device currently being tested with elders by the UK’s National Health Service. Turning the dial sends one of several messages indicating the user’s mood–not clear whether this is preprogrammed or personalizable. Apparently it works not only with Twitter, but also with Facebook, email, and so on. It’s currently being evaluated as a signaling system; off-site family, friends, and other message recipients would presumably be able to interpret when a user needs some type of intervention services. But we have cause to wish it were commercially available now so that people in hospice, recovering from serious injury, etc., would have a nearly effortless way to just provide brief but treasured messages to their circles.
Welcome to the Hotel Call-lock-for-ya
Holiday Inn will soon be installing special room locks that open when you play a coded song for them from your smartphone. Both the unlock tones and your room assignment will be sent to your phone automatically, so you can skip the front desk. The OpenWays system may help customers who have dexterity or visual difficulty using keycards, but it also makes the accessibility of smartphones that much more essential — as these mobile devices become ever more integral, being left out really means being left out.
Soon You’ll Unlock Hotel Room Doors By Playing Songs on Your Phone–Gizmodo
iPad your pad
Environmental control has always been a huge issue for people with mobility disabilities; if you can’t control the TV from afar, for example, you may be stuck watching bad reruns long after your program of interest has ended. Ability to integrate environmental control for multiple devices into a single, easy-to-control unit is always good. If that unit is a widely available and affordable mainstream device such as an iPhone or iPad, so much the better.
Crunchgear: Is this the first home controlled solely by iPads and iPhones?
LookTel
Continuing in the parade of useful smartphone apps: LookTel (price TBD), uses graphic codes, image recognition, and live human support to identify and announce any object you point the camera at. It’s touted for blind folks, but we think it’s got even more applications for cognitive assistance, especially for people with aphasia and similar injuries for whom a little assistance could head off a whole lot of frustration.
Largesse
Intel has come up with a pretty cool wireless capability. Hook a small box up to a TV, press a button on your laptop, and voila: a large computer display. This has terrific implications for accommodating students with low vision in classrooms and elders in their homes in particular, especially in future product generations when higher resolutions will be supported.
Anandtech: The Best Thing at CES - Intel’s Wireless HD Technology