How you can turn your apple iphone and iPad into capable assistive technology

How you can turn your apple iphone and iPad into capable assistive technology

als Assistive Technology augmentative communication ipad iPhone mnd

Via Tech Radar http://archy-news.com/how-to-turn-your-iphone-and-ipad-into-capable-assistive-technology-techradar/

Once triggered, swipe right or left anywhere on screen to maneuver the selector, that will signal Voice-over to see the choice aloud. Should you arrived at an market that you’d like to click further into, tap the screen two times.
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-iOS products overall offer robust support for subtitles and closed captioning. Situated within the Ease of access menu, “Subtitles and Captioning” enables customers to activate and personalize the way the protecting text will appear. The feature supports 50 plus different font styles, four font dimensions varying from promising small to huge and eight font colors to select from.

-Once triggered, an online button the same shape as a square seems on the watch’s screen. Getting together with an easy tap blossoms the button right into a full-fledged menu where one can fly through configurations and dive into features which are usually multiple layers of navigation deep, like Siri and Safari.

Siri, the intelligent personal assistant

-Within the Ease of access menu, customers can pair a Bluetooth-enabled assistive hearing device for their iOS device with the “Assistive Hearing Devices” option. Once connected, all audio (music, podcasts, movies) will stream towards the hearing apparatus much like how streaming audio works together with wireless earphones.
-Apple incorporated a swath of various languages and regional dialects just in case you need to change Siri’s spoken language. In the same menu in which you enabled “Hey Siri”, scroll lower just a little to obtain the language configurations.
-To activate Siri, press and contain the home button with an iOS device for any couple of seconds. When you hear the double-chime, Siri’s prepared to assist.


-Activating the Voice-over feature also triggers seem effects which will trigger to own user audible feedback on their own gestures and touches. These may be switched removed from exactly the same menu.

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Voice-over

-AssistiveTouch condenses every gesture-triggered feature into one virtual button placed in the forefront on screen for simple access. To activate this selection, scroll to the foot of the Ease of access menu and click on through to obtain the toggle switch.

-Within the Ease of access menu, choose “Bigger Text” to allow the feature, then personalize your chosen font size to enhance readability while using the an iOS device. In the event that does not have the desired effect, the font may also be bolded by flipping the switch alongside “Bold Text”.
-Customers may change how big the magnification window itself and also the lighting filter which you’ll view text and photographs through (Grayscale, Low light, Grayscale Inverted, Inverted.)
Here is a full introduction to the built-in features that provide clever methods for individuals with hearing, vision and physical problems to savor the apple iphone and iPad.
-If hearing your phone if this rings is definitely an problem, the Brought on the rear of apple iphones (versions 4 and more recent) could be triggered to expensive whenever you have a text or call. It is a subtle alert, but very noticeable. Activate this selection by toggling the switch alongside “Brought Expensive for Alerts”.
-For people which are responsive to certain colors, the choices to improve color contrast, invert or set the screen’s color scheme to grayscale are each easily available within the Ease of access options.

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Zoom

-Customers may change the audio balance from right to left to be able to get the full audio delivery within the ear that serves the finest. The slider is situated within the Ease of access menu.
Think you realize everything about present day technology? It is time for any reality check. Mine only agreed to be a couple of years back. It did not involve getting trained around the internals of computer systems or understanding the variations between os’s. No, all it required was the humbling experience with seeing you aren’t an image impairment navigate an iPad, a tool which i naively assumed could only be utilised by individuals having the ability to see.
-Double-tapping the screen with three fingers brings in the Zoom window, which zooms in on the body of text or photo.
You’re ready to discard that magnifier. Your iOS device consists of a built-in feature that does greater than take its place. It provides a lot of extra functionality the physical tool cannot match up with.

-After that, you are able to drag your window round the screen while you please by pressing and holding a finger around the Zoom anchor at the base from the magnified window.
-Saying “Hey Siri” may also grab Siri’s attention. To allow this selection, open the Configurations menu. After that, navigate to “General”, then make use of “Siri” and lastly, choose “Allow ‘Hey Siri'”.

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Features to improve screen readability

-To activate it, press and contain the home button to obtain Siri’s attention after which say “Switch on Voice-over.” Alternatively, scroll lower with the Configurations menu before you find “Ease of access”. Click “Voice-over” and slide the switch to switch on the feature.

iOS is filled with awesome features that may be utilized with gestures like swiping and pinching the screen. And fortunately, Apple has additionally made these unique functions readily available for individuals with physical disabilities.

Much like Siri, VoiceOver’s spoken language or regional dialect could be transformed. However, additionally to Siri’s more limited configurations, customers can download greater-quality voices that seem more realistic when utilizing Voice-over.

How iOS products assist hearing-impaired people

-And in the Ease of access menu, customers can make custom gestures for his or her iOS device. These may be used to perform a number of tasks, for example unleashing the unit or typing a fast text. If you are a gamer, you can even program gestures to manage a game’s menu effortlessly.
iOS products provide a couple of features to create words more legible and photographs simpler to determine on screen.

She could make use of this technology because of ease of access options, which enable some awesome methods to assist individuals short of funds. Your iOS device packs some incredibly wise features which help people of almost all conditions enjoy the fun of a number of present day best tech – you simply haven’t found them yet.

How iOS products assist physically-impaired people

Siri personalization does not hold on there. You may also change its voice from female to male or the other way around. Continue, request it something!

The intelligent personal assistant within iOS products includes a simple goal: that will help you find your articles easily, send messages and uncover new information using simply your voice. Siri is really a well-known feature, however it does not get enough credit because of its potential being an aid for individuals with physical and vision problems.

Voice-over is paramount feature which makes using iOS products more intuitive for vision-impaired people. This selection switches the default navigation that formerly depended on precise finger presses in support of one where broad strokes and gestures can complete nearly any task.
-Zoom is placed in a default zoom level, however the intensity could be elevated as much as 15 occasions the default font size. You can do this at the end from the Zoom menu.

-The Zoom feature enables you to definitely magnify a portion of the screen to improve readability. To activate the feature, navigate to “Ease of access” within the Configurations menu. Then, make use of “Zoom” and tap the switch.

iOS provides a couple of neat options within the Ease of access menu to help customers with hearing problems.

iOS products also support using exterior switches instead of while using touch screen to do functions. The support for switches varies from exterior physical buttons to cameras that may track mind movement to navigate round the phone or tablet.

-Voice-over may also help with reading through notices, for example incoming e-mails, texts, aloud because they arrive in your iOS device.

Technology that lets 'locked-in' syndrome sufferers communicate makes Invent 2015 shortlist

Technology that lets 'locked-in' syndrome sufferers communicate makes Invent 2015 shortlist

                   

• 

The finalists have been selected in the Invent 2015 competition, which aims to turn the best innovations into businesses

By Margaret Canning – 01 June 2015

Wearable technology enabling sufferers of 'locked-in' syndrome to communicate by translating their brainwaves is among the finalists in a competition to find our best inventions.

 

Dr Damien Coyle from NeuroConcise has been working on his innovation for 15 years - and now it's one of 12 to make it through to the final of the Invent 2015, a programme run by the Northern Ireland Science Park.
The Londonderry man said: "NeuroConcise will benefit people who have no means of communication whatsoever.
"A lot of them have been in a so-called "locked-in" state or in some cases, people don't even know if they are aware of their surroundings or not. Our technology will first of all provide clarity around their awareness and secondly, offer them a movement-free communication channel."
The technology can non-invasively measure and translate brainwaves into control signals, allowing people to communicate and interact without moving.
Dr Coyle had to pitch his technology to a team of entrepreneurs to be in with a chance of winning a position on the NI Tech Mission to California, a share of the £33,000 prize fund, as well as mentoring, networking and business development from the NI Science Park's NISP Connect.
The final of the programme will take place in October - but last Thursday night, 24 hopefuls had to present their concept, before facing questions from the judges.
Other finalists who emerged from Thursday night's event include Chirag Gujral of Queen's University, who has discovered a method of reducing the effects of eye diseases, and brothers from the north coast who have used their love of surfing to set up their own surfboard company Skunkworks.
The animal world is also represented by EquiNutritive Equi-Liquid Gold - an anti-inflammatory supplement for horses which helps their general well-being.
Alexandra Frazer from Equi-liquid Gold said: "I'm looking forward to what's to come over the next few months in the lead-up to the final.
"I definitely want to tap into the export markets and expand with other product ranges and become a leader in the equine supplement industry. It's a long road ahead but this competition is definitely an amazing step up the ladder for new technologies."

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Organiser Peter Edgar said: "QuickPitch is the semi-final stage of Invent, which is all about telling the story of a breakthrough idea which has the potential to change an industry or solve a global problem which can make people's lives better. It's fast and exciting."
Julie Ann O'Hare, director of business banking at Bank of Ireland UK, which sponsors Invent 2015, said: "I congratulate all 24 finalists on their excellent pitches and encourage them to stick with it."

This smartphone connects for those with disabilities

This smartphone connects for those with disabilities

aac als Assistive Technology augcomm augmentative communication mnd

Via CBS

ByAmy LangfieldMoneyWatch

 

 

Sesame Enable co-founder and CEO Oded Ben Dov (right) with a user of the company's smartphone. Basti Hansen                

 

In some quarters, the growth of the smartphone market may finally be slowing, but it's just getting started elsewhere.
Sesame Enable, a company that modifies smartphones so that people with disabilities can control a cursor with only slight head movements, just shipped its first 50 phones, said Oded Ben Dov, the Israel-based company's co-founder and CEO.
That means people with spinal cord injuries, cerebral palsy, multiple sclerosis, Lou Gehrig's disease, muscular dystrophy, severe arthritis and other conditions can now make unassisted phone calls, check email, play Angry Birds and just about anything else a typical smartphone addict does daily.
All they need to do is say "Open Sesame" to turn the phone on, and then look at the phone's screen so its camera can capture slight left and right head movements.
About 2 million people in the U.S. could benefit from such a device, Ben Dov said. The market is indeed large. All told, about 6 million Americans live with some form of paralysis, according to Peter Wilderotter, president and CEO of the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation.
"Smarter devices that can be activated by voice, vision or slight movement have the potential of transforming many lives, increasing independence, access and communication," he said in an email.

Basti Hansen

The foundation has already been in touch with Sesame Enable and has been keeping tabs on other companies investing in related technologies, such as Nokia (NOK), Samsung, Apple (AAPL) and Microsoft (MSFT).
"Other tech trends that will benefit individuals living with disabilities include the connected home -- or smart home. As an emerging innovation, there are a number of players at the table from Verizon (VZ) to AT&T (T), Samsung, GE (GE) and even Google (GOOG)," Wilderotter said.
Sesame Enable's other co-founder, Giora Livne, was also its first customer. An ex-navy officer and electrical power engineer, Livne is now a quadriplegic as a result of a fall off a ladder. The co-founders started the work with their own money, and received $215,000 from an Israeli Office of the Chief Scientist matching grant and an angel investor.
From there, they launched a $30,000 Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign, which turned into gravy once they won the $1 million Verizon's Powerful Answers Award and then $100,000 from Michael Bloomberg's Genesis Prize.
They're not courting the venture capital market at this point, in part so they aren't pressured to focus on developing the technology for games or another larger market.
"I really think our focus on the disability market is also the right thing to do morally, and also from the business angle were building on a very solid need," Livne said.
With the unexpected Verizon grant in hand, they were able to give away 23 of the first phones. "We decided to donate all funds raised on Indiegogo -- past, present and future -- toward devices that will go to people in need," Ben Dov says in his updated video on the crowdfunding site. People who want to buy a smartphone directly can also purchase one on the site for $700.

Basti Hansen

Currently the phone is only available as a Google (GOOG) Nexus 5, but the company is working on other models, including tablets, Ben Dov said. The Sesame Enable technology is something of a cross between an app and an operating system, and can be used with almost any app in the Google Play store. They're working on integrating with Google Now personal assistant and a voice command that will allow users to dictate emails rather than tap out text on a keyboard with the head-controlled cursor.
Now that Sesame Enable has gone from futuristic prototype to Version. 1.0, users are offering feedback and are anxious for more.
"What really surprised me, the questions were already into the experience: 'How do you do this, how do you change that?'" Ben Dov said. "We got the 'Oh my god, this is amazing!' six months ago when we had the crowdfunding campaign. Someone had said he's been waiting for this technology for the past 15 years. 'You have no idea what you've done. It's like you've opened the Matrix.' But we're past that excitement, and now it's: Let's get down to business."

Great advances being made in assistive technology

Great advances being made in assistive technology

As one researcher notes, “I think we’re in the middle of a revolution in technology for people with impairments.”

By: Kate Allen Science and Technology reporter, Published on Sun May 31 2015

    

• 

Pizza delivery apps. Fitness trackers. Dashboard GPS. Often, technology makes life easier for people whose lives are already very easy.

But what about next-generation wheelchairs or 3D-printed prosthetics?

In the field of assistive technology, scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs are also making life easier for people with disabilities, chipping away at truly big problems at steady pace. Their successes are likely to accelerate.

“I think we’re in the middle of a revolution in technology for people with impairments,” says David Reinkensmeyer, a biorobotics researcher at the University of California, Irvine.

“This field, from when I started 15 years ago until now, has really seen an attraction of younger people wanting to get involved,” says Alex Mihailidis, a University of Toronto professor who holds a chair in rehabilitation technology.

“People are seeing this as a challenging and exciting application.”

Richard Lautens

Wire inputs used in a video game that helps Parkinson's patients retain their ability to speak clearly. Users attach sensors to their mouths and then control a dragon that lights trees on fire.

Yet these researchers are often confronted with hurdles that designers of mainstream tech — whether silly or genuinely useful — are not: regulatory barriers, marketplace fragmentation, and even our own unconscious biases.

 

Growing up in Alberta, Gary Kurek was a high school science-fair phenom, ranking provincially, nationally and internationally. In his senior year, after watching his grandmother struggle with the effects of cancer, he set out to build a better wheelchair.

 

His novel design piqued the interest of Silicon Valley investor Peter Thiel, who chose Kurek for a prestigious $100,000 Thiel Fellowship for entrepreneurs under 20. Among other mobility devices, Kurek built a wheelchair that could climb stairs.

 

But he eventually dropped the project, in large part due to regulatory struggles.

 

“We got really bogged down . . . It was going to take a ton of money and a ton of time,” he says. The market for his product wasn’t big enough to justify the investment. Though he would like to come back to mobility products, Kurek is now working on automated manufacturing.

 

Because many assistive technologies fall under the banner of medical devices, they must be approved by oversight bodies such as Health Canada or the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Those in the field acknowledge that safety is paramount, but say the process can sometimes stifle innovation: it is lengthy, costly, and “still quite prohibitive to a lot of startups,” says Mihailidis. “That’s one of the big next hurdles we need to tackle as a field.”

 

Compounding that problem, the market for assistive technologies is highly fragmented, even though it is large and growing rapidly with the aging populations of most developed countries.

 

“For sure there’s a big, big need ... but the market is pretty heterogeneous, in the sense that there are a vast numbers of impairments that cause disabilities to arise,” says Melanie Baljko, a York University professor who specializes in assistive technology.

 

“Everyone experiences their impairment differently.”

 

Even reaching those consumers is a challenge. Many people who need these products don’t buy them directly: insurance companies, caregivers and clinicians all act as mediators.

 

At the same time, other technological advances have begun to carve new pathways forward. The advent of 3D printers, Baljko and Mihailidis both note, has fuelled a thriving DIY culture where designs for items like modified light switches and spoons are shared openly online, circumventing the need for a traditional marketplace and allowing for low-cost customization.

 

“This is really putting the power of technology development into the hands of people who know best,” Baljko says.

 

Other general advances have spurred assistive tech too: the price of sensors is dropping, and machine-learning algorithms are only getting smarter. Smartphones and tablets have created a platform for the proliferation of interactive games that help people with challenges.

 

Shifting social attitudes have also helped. “It’s becoming increasingly socially acceptable to have technology on your body — Apple Watch for example,” says Reinkensmeyer. “We’re all just using technology to enhance our abilities.”

 

But attitude is the most invisible barrier for assistive tech, he adds. “You know what holds us back? The attitude the people can’t: ‘You can’t have a spinal cord injury and play basketball, or ski . . . ’ How long did that societal attitude hold back the development of technologies?” he asks. “We don’t even know what our assumptions are.”

 

For Kate Allen, writing about assistive technologies hits home

Here is a typical email from my Dad, who has Parkinson’s disease:

               

Peter Allen chats with Yana Yunusova, a U of T professor of speech language pathology who is beta-testing a video game that helps Parkinson's patients.

 

   

“Kate I hope that your gum problem has lessened and then you I know a virtuous Flossie — try this again — and that you are a virtuous Flossie to Flossie newsflash to the Flossie Turley — what I’m trying to say is if you have seen the error of your ways and now floss your teeth regularly — my God!, It said what I wanted to thank you for his time to say goodbye.”

 

In case you couldn’t tell, he’s trying to urge me to floss better (I’m 30, for the record). But the voice-recognition software he uses — designed to circumvent his shaky hands — clearly had other ideas.

My English-professor father sent the garbled email for hilarity’s sake, as he often does. I forwarded to my brother for laughs and forgot about it. But a few weeks later when I was aflutter over a new app that offers on-demand lunch delivery, I stopped and thought: this is ridiculous. Why are so many people trying to make it easier for me to buy a sandwich, when it was already really, really easy for me to buy a sandwich? How many people are trying to “disrupt” the crappy technology available to my Dad, who actually needs it?

Richard Lautens / Toronto Star Order this photo

Peter Allen, who has Parkinson's disease, poses with his daughter, Kate, for a selfie with sensor wires hanging out of his mouth. Researchers at the Toronto Rehab Institute are beta-testing a video game that helps Parkinson's patients retain their ability to speak clearly.

  

In the course of trying to answer that question, I stumbled across a fascinating new study led by scientists at the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute. The research team, led by University of Toronto speech-language pathology professor Yana Yunusova, is testing whether using video games to visualize speech therapy exercises will be more effective at helping Parkinson’s patients improve their characteristically slurred speech. Users repeat tongue-twisters with electromagnetic sensors in their mouths, and the better they do, the more fire a virtual dragon spits out, burning down a stand of trees.

 

My Dad was game. We showed up the TRI on a Tuesday morning, and the team carefully wired him up. “Super Sue sat sewing,” he said over and over again.

 

He found the process frustrating — “They have a strange idea of what a game is, I must say,” he wrote me later — but recognized the importance of what the scientists were trying to accomplish, and will return to be a full participant in the trial.

As I discovered, it’s just a lot harder to bring assistive technology to market than it is to build an Uber for sandwiches or an app that only says “Yo.” But it’s not for lack of a community of people who care deeply, and who are working extraordinarily hard.

Four Novel Assistive Technologies

AT-Knee

Patrick Brown/Panos

The AT-Knee offers a unique balance between stability, durability and motion to mimic the movement of a natural knee. 

   

Engineered by researchers in the Bloorview Research Institute at Toronto’s Holland Bloorview rehabilitation hospital and backed by Grand Challenges Canada, AT-Knee’s designers spent years studying how to make it as biomechanically efficient as possible, with a novel locking mechanism that mimics the stability of real knees.

 

While the trend in prosthetics has been toward high-tech robotics and motorization, LegWorks’ chief technology officer Jan Andrysek notes that the bulk of lower-limb amputees live in countries and communities where such expensive technology is out of reach.

 

“We came up with very simple concept that provided the function that we need,” said Andrysek. After rounds of clinical testing in Chile, Tanzania, Burma, Canada, and elsewhere, LegWorks is aiming for widespread adoption: “we’re trying to be everywhere.”

Swizzle Shave

University of Toronto

A team of University of Toronto engineering undergraduates designed this razor to accommodate the jerky movements of Huntington’s disease patients. It is a finalist in the 2015 Innovative Designs for Accessibility, a competition for Ontario university students. Michelle Samfira, a co-creator, called the team’s work “really rewarding.”

Music Glove

Courtesy of Flint Rehabilitation Devices

The sensor-filled glove is designed to by worn by stroke patients and played with a game that works a lot like Guitar Hero. The system coaxes stroke survivors to use the kind of hand movements that will help them regain dexterity. It was created by Nizan Friedman, a former graduate student in the lab of University of California, Irvine’s David Reinkensmeyer.

Brian

University of Toronto

Professor Goldie Nejat, who directs the Autonomous Systems and Biomechatronics Laboratory at U of T’s Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department, designed Brian, a socially assistive robot. Using machine learning, Brian can talk and joke, and is designed to help cognitively impaired seniors accomplish tasks like finishing meals or taking medication on time.