Wiimote, Rocking Horse Combined to Create Makeshift Racing Sim. Variations on this would be so great for kids with disabilities.
Entries from November 2007
Wow! Great Wiimote idea!
November 29th, 2007 — Enabling Technology, Ideas, Links, Wiimote
Very interesting read on learning and mindset
November 29th, 2007 — Links, Random
From Scientific American “The Secret to Raising Smart Kids” by Carol S. Dweck. Hint: Don’t tell your kids that they are. More than three decades of research shows that a focus on effort—not on intelligence or ability—is key to success in school and in life.
I see these differences in our students.
CamKeys is a simple camera-based alternative keyboard
November 18th, 2007 — Enabling Technology, Motor impaired
People with severely impaired movement often use one or two switches to control their computers and/or communication devices. Even though the switch is arguably the simplest electrical component, when it becomes an assistive technology it is likely to cost the end user hundred’s of dollars. On the other hand, a fantastically complex electronic device, the USB camera, is available at discount stores for a few dollars. CamKeys is a simple python program that makes a cheap camera emulate any number of switches. It simply generates key events when user-specified regions of the camera image change.
Python file-like object for use with print in pygame
November 16th, 2007 — Programming
I wanted my print output to show up on pygame display. This python code implements a simple file-like object that handles multiple lines and wrapping.
Sending Key Events to pygame programs
November 16th, 2007 — Programming
I needed to send key events from one python program to another. Using SendKeys on Windows worked fine in my tests but when I tried to send key events to a pygame program it completely ignored them. Some searching revealed that DirectInput ignores events generated with SendKeys. I learned that I needed to use SendInput. I found lots of partial examples but nothing that quite did the job. Here is some code (scraped together from multiple web pages) that works for me:
Text To Speech for Linux
November 15th, 2007 — Blind, Enabling Technology, Links
TTSynth.com is offering IBM’s speech technology for Linux for $40. This is like the speech engine used in JAWS.
CoScripter and Accessibility
November 14th, 2007 — Enabling Technology, Ideas, Links
Pete pointed me to CoScripter, a tool from IBM intended to automate web processes. He and I have been talking for a while about “grass roots” accessibility in which end-users are enabled to easily make and share accessibility improvements for web sites. CoScripter looks like a step in that direction.
AxsJAX
November 13th, 2007 — Links, Programming
Tom sent me to a pointer to AxsJAX, an AJAX variant designed to be accessible a framework designed to make AJAX accessible.
Tar Heel Typer in the news!
November 13th, 2007 — Enabling Technology, Links, Motor impaired
Daniel’s alternative pencil project has hit the email lists and has a nice review over at All Together We Can Do Our Best. I’m excited to see how user’s respond to his hard work.
One-handed SMS keyboard?
November 12th, 2007 — Ideas, Links
The cre8txt keyboard might work for one handed computing apps and their software to decode SMS slang might be fun too.