A-Tech Review

IBM's Assistive Mistake

IBM has a great new offering called WebAdapt2Me.

Developed at the company's Accessibility Research unit in Yorktown Heights, NY, the software was tested at the University of California in Long Beach, which won a 200-seat license in exchange.Color, contrast, size, and style of an online textbook can all be changed at a flash with the software, making it ideal for use in online learning.

What could possibly be wrong with this?

One big thing.

Orca!

One of the continuing problems for disabled people is that they remain locked into a proprietary, Windows environment.

This locks the rest of us into the same environment. Microsoft lobbies against anything that might benefit open source, saying that if a change were made it would be discrimination against the blind.

To get out of this box, I want to highlight tools that work in open source environments, doing the same things that Windows tools do.

We'll start with the Orca screen reader.

More on the Good Bytes Cafe

I'm writing this in the Good Bytes Cafe, a spot in San Antonio I wrote about a week ago.

A few important points occur to me as I type on the comfy chair opposite a counter where three women work the kitchen, counter, and cash register:

1. Helping those who need assistive computing services is just one small piece of the mission here.
   This is actually a good thing.
2. The main purpose is to run a small cafe and coffee shop at a profit, catering to people who might not be able to afford such luxuries. Featured are soups, simple sandwiches, wholesome food at low prices.
3. There's a TV picture displayed on one wall, which comes out of a unit attached to the ceiling. The result is a huge picture that doesn't take up any floor space.
4. For those in wheelchairs, the big news here is the flat cement floor, and the fact that all the furniture can be moved easily, out of the way of the widest chair. The computers all have small office chairs in front of them, but these can easily be pushed aside for your wheelchair, and the extra technology works as advertised.
5. It's unobtrusive. That is, when you roll in here you're not a big deal, you're just another client. And that, too, is a good thing.

The Right Use of Internet Resources

Here is something American agencies can learn from.

AbilityNet, an English charity that works with disabled people, helping them become more productive, is using the Internet to do "virtual service calls" on its clients.

Peter Abrahams of Bloor Research notes that it was becoming impossible to get clients to come to the center, and it was cost-prohibitive to send people out to client homes. So the center is giving clients broadband connections and simple Internet cameras. Once those are installed, service can be handled remotely.

Canada Takes the Lead

Thank God for Canada.

Whenever I get discouraged over the ignorance of my fellow Americans, I can generally look to the north and see another way forward.

Today it takes the form of ICAST, an effort by York University in Toronto and a non-profit research group called Precarn to develop new technologies for disabled workers.

As with the efforts of the Gates Foundation and AIDS, the idea here is to share resources and ideas and hopefully come up with breakthroughs.

Among the initial members are the

University

of

British Columbia

;

University

of

Toronto

; Toronto Rehabilitation Institute; Neil Squire Society; the Health Technology Exchange of Markham; Systèmes Lifelink Inc. of

Ste-Marie-de-Beauce

,

Quebec

; and Quanser Consulting Inc., of

Markham

,

Ontario

.

More on Goodwill Cafe

The blog SeniorCitizen has more information on the cafe for the disabled we mentioned earlier.

And it's pretty cool.

The place is called the Good Bytes Cafe, and it sits next to a Goodwill store in downtown San Antonio, just a few blocks from the Alamo and Riverwalk.

What makes it unique, writes Physorg, is just how much thought has gone into the design for the wheelchair crowd.

• The floor is concrete.
• The computers have a joystick mouse.
• There's magnifying software built-in.
• You can also point-and-click with eye movements.

Who's Selling Us?

One of the continual frustrations in having any disability must be who is selling you stuff, and why.

Without a disability the motivations are clear. People are trying to make a dollar. Competition keeps them relatively honest. At least the dishonest ones (attention "opportunity seekers") are fairly easy to ferret out.

But disabled markets don't have that kind of intense competition. Finances are constrained, insurance is always a question, and it may be that the patient isn't even making the buying decision. (It could be a doctor or family member, or that drat insurance outfit.)

A Tale of Two Chairs

ActionOnline has two posts today about wheelchair design, which represent the hard choices facing every handicapped person on a budget.

First there is the Action Chair designed by Randy Kwapis for his son, Matt. It looks like any other chair. What makes it different is a shock absorber that lets it go through grass and over sidewalk cracks easily.

Kwapis designed the chair so his son could play, and it's a great little chair. The company that now sells the chair as the AC-2 is called Mobility Sports, and he's continuing to try to improve it, for example allowing it to fit easily in a car.

It's not a cheap chair (no price is listed on the Web site) but in production quantities it should be affordable.

JAWS for Jim

I hadn't really heard from Jim since his second wedding.

But I knew things hadn't gone well. She left him. His alcoholism became totally disabling. He was living in a group home in South Georgia, his daughter living with the ex, grown now, working in a fast food shop and hoping to get into Junior College.

It was gratifying this morning to hear he is recovering. He's four years sober. He even works sometimes. That's thanks to JAWS, a collection of screen reading applications from Freedom Scientific of St. Petersburg.

Jim, you see, is now totally blind.

Another Form of Computer Assist

We often think of assistive technology as meaning systems that allow folks with disabilities to use computers.

But it's a lot more than that.

It can also mean computerized systems that make life for the disabled more livable.

One quick example today, from the United Spinal Association blog.

Terry Moakley, the group's historian, notes that a computer measuring seat pressure, which became a traveling seat clinic, was a life-changing technology for many people.

Most people who can't walk also can't feel their butts. They may stay in the same position for days, in a seat that puts pressure on one place more than others. They may develop horrible bed sores, until the only way to get through is to stay in bed, to become truly inactive.

He writes:

Our veteran members could have their seating pressure checked, and then either through adjustment to the personal wheelchair or a prescription for a better cushion, be empowered to sit in the wheelchair appropriately. “Weight shifts” in the chair every 15 minutes are still highly recommended by therapists (by mine just two weeks ago), but I’m betting that seating pressure computer saved our members thousands of days of bed rest, having prevented many pressure sores.