| tags: ideas, links, enabling technology
Ian Bicking's interesting and provocative blog post on HTML Accessibility is a good read. Empirical accessibility is a good idea. I think by this he means making it work for real users. Fred Brooks' ideas about the computer scientist as toolsmith seem very relevant.
| tags: ideas, links, enabling technology
Jonah sent a pointer to AudioSurf , a new game that lets you "ride your music".
| tags: ideas, links, enabling technology
The Koolu Works Everywhere Appliance and the fit-PC could make nice platforms for delivering ET applications as appliances (or toys) rather than scary computer programs.
| tags: ideas, links, enabling technology
Engadget has an article on Swinxs , a new game platform introduced at Toy Fair 2008. Its the size of a small drink cooler and comes with RFID bracelets the kids wear. It apparently has some lights and audio output. The included games encourage running around and include stories as well. The part that intrigues me is the promise of an SDK and the ability to develop and share games. Perhaps we could develop some accessible games for kids with various disabilities.
| tags: programming, ideas, links, enabling technology
Meg pointed out the Raw Input API for Windows. This would allow us to distinguish among multiple mice and keyboards. It might be interesting to use multiple numeric keyboards as specialized input devices, or multiple mice to provide 2 or 3 switches per hand.
| tags: motor impaired, enabling technology, links
Minh-Tri Pham wrote with info on his PyCV package . This could be very useful for locating kid's faces for games and therapy for kids who are motor impaired. His demo works fine on my Ubuntu system.
| tags: mac, programming, enabling technology
I regularly get requests from teachers at schools that are Mac based for versions of our software that will work for them. I want every kid to have access to our stuff so I bought a Mac mini for development. I'd rather be running OS X in a virtual machine but Apple won't let me do that. So I've got the mini sitting here with its video out connected to one of the inputs on my right projector and I hacked a python wrapper for synergy server to switch the projector source when I move the mouse off my Ubuntu desktop onto the mini. It works great. Combine that with MacFusion for file sharing and routing the mini's audio output into the line-in on my Ubuntu machine and it is just about as good as a VM would be.
| tags: deaf, enabling technology, links
Steve pointed me to an interesting article about using PlayStation Portables with children who are deaf .
| tags: motor impaired, enabling technology
This software is no long supported. Anyone is free to attempt to make it work with the new versions of OS/X.
SerialKeysX is an implementation of the SerialKeys protocol for Apple's OS X operating system . It allows control of the computer's keyboard and mouse over a serial connection from devices such as the EyeGaze and other augmented communication devices . You may download and use the software for free.
| tags: enabling technology, links, literacy
Literacy Bridge , a $5 digital audio player and distribution system for electronic books sounds like a great idea.