Wireless Accelerometer Based Mouse Pointer
June 17th, 2008Caught this via Hacked Gadgets.
Accelerometer based input devices could be a great boon for alternative access.
Dave
Technorati Tags: adaptive
Dave - LifekludgerThe touch barrier — responses
June 15th, 2008After my previous post about the “Touch Barrier” as referring to the inherent issues of the pervasive use of touch technologies I had some good responses.
@lucychili pointed me to work Peter Hutterer is doing with MPX
Laurel wrote a blog post “Disabilities social networks games” pointing to a article DISABLED GAMERS’ COMPRISE 20% OF CASUAL-VIDEOGAME AUDIENCE
Mike wrote his ideas in a blog post response urging manufactures to ‘bake accessibility IN‘
Garth wrote a comment pointing me to the “Pogo iPhone Stylus”. The manufacturer’s site says “The stylus keeps you efficient, even through thick gloves”
I’ve ordered a couple of these Pogo Stylus to test out and also left them an email and will let you know how things go.
Not bad for the same day.
Further responses I’ll also aggregate here.
Technorati Tags: accessibility, adaptive, touch, touch-barrier, touchpad
Dave - LifekludgerThe Touch Barrier - Accessibility and usability issues around touch technologies
June 14th, 2008
I’m Worried. Worried about recent technology developments - actually the application of one technology in particular - touch. In this instance, when I say ‘touch’ I’m referring to devices requiring skin - a finger as opposed to a stylus - ala the iPhone and nearly every laptop on the market.
For the past 60% of my life on earth technology has been anything but a worry. It’s been a (necessary) tool, a gift, a friend. It’s given me opportunity, empowerment, advantage, joy, and at many times maddening frustration. But never worry. However now, for the first time in 26 years I am worried that technology is going stop offering advantages - to me and to others who live with disability.
This is a real concern to me - I feel it keenly and have a vision about it. In my vision I’m walking down a very familiar street in my home town and there’s a lot of new construction happening. New buildings are springing up everywhere on both sides of the street. It’s all very exciting. Even old established buildings we are used to seeing every day for as long as we remember are now being furnished with new facades. However the one common aspect of all this new found vigour in building is the entrances — everyone is building steps. There’s not a ramp to be seen, some are even being pulled out in the name of progress …. in the name of utility … in the name of ‘normalcy’.
Okay, so that’s obviously allegory. But the underlying reality is no fable. Boiled down to its most base level it’s about access and in this instance the barrier to access that the proliferation of skin-based touch devices brings with it. I’m specifically talking about touch devices that require skin to work. There’s inherent access issues with the other types of touch, but I want to focus on the new issues skin-based touch raises.
Barriers aren’t new to me and neither is finding ways around, over or through them. But what’s different is the pervasive nature of ‘touch’ technology of today. Here’s an exercise, try and find a laptop that doesn’t use a touch pad or that has an alternate input method. (only one I can find is Lenovo…and Apple won’t let me run OSX on that! — maybe this will!)
So I want to talk about it. I want to start a conversation — raise the issue into the social consciousness, as it were.
The time to think about access is at the design stage…we may’ve missed that but the earlier we start thinking about this the better. Sooner or later these issues are going to need to be addressed for any number of reasons. This is a usability issue and will at some stage effect, or at least be an annoyance to, more than just those living with disability.
To start it off, here’s my thoughts.
Traditionally it seems that most of the action about solving accessibility problems has been around the software realm. We have seen software solutions to provide alternate input solutions that have been caused by hardware design characteristics. So you get ’sticky-key’ software that emulates two or more finger presses on a keyboard or screen magnification software to overcome small text on small screens.
A lot of the work in information access online revolves around marking up guidelines and standards - software again. Interestingly we don’t see a push for accessibility guidelines or standards in hardware design. Hardware gets made and problems associated with access are left to the realm of alternative input devices.
So, again, with the ‘touch barrier’, I can foresee that issues with say gestures requiring more than one finger, like pinching, could have a software solution. Like “Accessibility” control panel on Windows and “Universal Access” on Mac, have evolved to allow access to the system, these utility type programs will need to evolve to encompass touch.
We have also seen the rise of voice technologies for input as well, but often these are not great at complete replacements for traditional methods of input. Voice recognition software thats good for dictation may not be great for software control, and vice versa.
Voice on mobile devices too has its limitations. Noise or capacity or different action required to activate the recognition, being examples. Nuance have developed voice recognition for the iPhone - however here’s the rub - first you need to touch the screen to activate the voice recognition! [video here] So it seems voice is an augmentation rather than a replacement or alternative input choice.
But we are still left with the problem of actual access to operate a device that uses a touch panel for input. Again this is a hardware issue. The ideal solution would be a dual-touch pad - that responds to skin as well as a stylus in the same device - somewhat like the dual-mode screens some tablet pcs have that allow use of any stylus (or finger) as well as the special active ‘pens’ on the same screen on the same notebook. To try and incorporate a dual mode skin/stylus screen on these mobile devices, like the iPhone, iPod touch and laptop input panels, is something I can’t se manufacturers seeing much value in and a solution is therefore most likely going to fall onto an alternate input method rather than an expectation that hardware will change anytime soon. An after market pad that could be swapped out for the ’skin touch only’ one would be a possibility.
Now I know someone is going to say plug in a trackball to the laptop, and sure, in some instances that will be enough - but it kind of defeats the purpose of the compact, portable nature of a laptop. And the actual layout and characteristics of laptops offer other benefits for access and usability beyond the obvious which means keeping the form factor the same is a consideration.
So the other way to approach the touch-barrier is to emulate a finger in hardware, just like the stick key programs emulate a finger in software. This means finding some material that has the characteristics of a finger that actually enable these touch pads to work. I don’t know what those characteristics are so can’t offer a solution.
The closest I got to finding one was a ‘touch pencil‘ that Suck UK were developing and I caught wind of last year.
I wrote to them and they were still in development so I was asked to contact them at the start of this year, which I did. The response was that “Unfortunately the pencil failed its tests. To redesign it to pass worked out too expensive.” This is really a shame, as I think that that avenue of finding a material that could act with the properties required would be a good way to go, especially if such could then be manufactured into different shapes for different uses - even incorporated into gloves etc?
So, to summarise, touch input requiring skin is going to start causing different usability issues. Some of the solutions will need to be hardware and some software - remembering of course that often you need access TO a device before you can make use of software resident IN the device (viz above Nuance example). But the sooner we start thinking and talking about ways of dealing with the barrier effects these technologies bring with them the better.
I’d originally envisaged writing about this issue as an “open letter to Steve Jobs” as I’m so keen on Apple products (having my very first Mac in 1984) yet increasingly becoming so locked out by the design that makes them so good. Yet I soon realised that it isn’t just Apple - the technology is becoming so pervasive that even an open letter to the two Steves (Jobs and Ballmer) wouldn’t even cover it.
So there it is, my thoughts on the issue taking perhaps a wider scope. I’d be interested to hear your thoughts.
Dave - Lifekludger
Related post:
Thinking about Three Levels of Technology Access
Update:
DISABLED GAMERS’ COMPRISE 20% OF CASUAL-VIDEOGAME AUDIENCE [Hat tip to Laurel Papworth]
[Flickr photos by cinefil_ & PappaJack]
Technorati Tags: adaptive, lenovo, iphone, accessibility, nuance, touchpad, apple, stylus, lenovo, touch-barrier
Dave - LifekludgerBluetooth Wireless Input Pen
June 11th, 2008
SMK Corp developed “Wireless Input Pen,” which can transmit characters written in the air and displays them on a monitor.
According to SMK, it is the world’s first pen-type device that can transmit characters written in the air to a monitor …
I caught this via a story on Engadget.
Engadget mention the pen can operate by ‘flittering the device about in mid-air’ — I see no reason why it must be. I can envisage the pen being used as a kind of universal ‘wireless stylus’. It thereby becomes as good as a tablet input pad without the restriction of a fixed size pad or position.
Dave - LifekludgerEquipment becoming even harder and costlier to get
June 3rd, 2008
Interesting article on the state of getting medical equipment in the States over at New Mobility.
It certainly is an indicator of how the available funds for equipment is becoming scarce — how much is artificial is another argument.
My point is that when something becomes scarce we need to start looking at how something abundant can fill the widening gap.
Lifekludger maintains that the social web has the inherent ability of being able to shrink the isolation that causes scarcity and connect a world full of people in a collaborative force for good.
As Shirky summarises his book ‘Here comes everybody‘ in 5 words — “Group action just got easier“.
Dave - Lifekludger
Getting Equipment Gets Harder
By Tim Gilmer
June 2008Wheelchair users in the United States are finding out that getting the durable medical equipment they need — and getting it when they need it — is getting harder and costlier. Restrictive documentation policies as well as outdated “in-the-home” language that governs claims decisions in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services are creating hassles for DME dealers and consumers. What’s worse, power wheelchair reimbursements made by Medicare — already reduced by 27 percent in January 2007, will be reduced by another 19 percent on July 1 due to Medicare’s national competitive bidding program. Since private insurance companies follow CMS’ lead, these new policies portend a growing nightmare of denials, delays, red tape, and economic hardship for DME dealers and end users alike. <read more>
