Entries Tagged Blind

Michael sent email saying

My friend Michelle’s son Alex is autistic. We visited them on Saturday night. While Michelle and the rest of us were doing whatever, Alex was playing with an R2D2 toy.

This toy performs actions based on speech recognition.

Alex: “Hey R2″
R2: affirmative beep (sounds like “Boo-Boop”)
Alex: “Do yamgine?”
R2: negative beep (sounds like “Bee-Bawp”)
Alex: “Do you ‘magine?”
R2: negative beep
Michelle: “Do you remember?”
R2: affirmative beep
Michelle: “Darth Vader?”
R2: scared noise and shaking head and moving in circles (sounds like “wa-a-a-hoo!”)

REPEAT w/o michelle for like an hour

the kid was HIGHLY motivated to say the right stuff, and kept at it.

what if there was a web framework (through flash or silverlight?) and a teacher could program in like the vocab, and a storyline (maybe somehting like tarheel reader could help create some default storylines (TANGENT: we should try to have some of your projects seed other as possible) and then the kid tries to say it, this would be for kids with speech issues.

maybe the kid’s a detective, and has to go around quesitoning people, maybe at first it acknowledges bits and pieces (i.e.”Hey ” “where were you?” “?”) then later it only acknowledges at the end

maybe how tolerant it is of sound deviating depends on the kid’s level and their recent success rate…

I love it! This could make a very interesting student project and would take our work in a different and exciting direction.

Tricia from Texas wrote to say:

Who would benefit? students with visual impairment – and students that need more cuing than they get from visual supports on the printed page

Use vibration feedback in TTS, screen readers, digital auditory text

• To cue for bold text, boxed info, important information
• Software could “read” the text/page and insert vibration to cue the student

But more importantly, to allow the student to tag the auditory text – when they “re-read” the text, the tags trigger vibration. Use different types of vibration (intensity, pattern, etc) for different types of tags.

• Tag as a highlighter, tag a phrase or a paragraph
• Tag specific info they need to capture (main characters, literary action)
• Tag for references
• Tag as notetaking – retrieve only tagged information for later?

Karen suggested long ago and I failed to blog about it, that the WiiMote could be useful for “keeping beat with reading. Kid reads along with program, keeps beat. Shakes the controller on the key words. That way you know the kid is reading.”

Seems to me there is great synergy between these ideas. This would make a great student research project.

I saw iDaft today and think it rocks! You play the samples by typing the corresponding keys on your keyboard. Not surprising technically, its just Flash. But it makes me think about combining fun, music, and literacy. What could we do with music and samples like this to make fun and even educational games for kids with disabilities?

How about putting the samples on the 16 pads you get with 2 DDR pads? Then we could have a game that was something like Guitar Hero where you put the samples in the right places. DJ Hero? Or maybe DJ Revolution? I think our blind visitors would have a ton of fun on Maze Day trying to “sing” along with Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger by stepping on the DDR pads. Think Daft Hands or Daft Bodies on the DDR pad.

Or how about making an AAC device more fun by changing the pitch of the voice like this? Or somehow linking a “word wall” to music so when you put words together in appropriate ways they go with the music?

Suppose you could provide a list of words or word combinations to a web site and it would automagically assign them musical pitches like this. What cool games could we make where students play with words while making music? How could we integrate reading into it? Perhaps the “score” (the words to be spoken) is presented something like the Guitar Hero notes so you have to at least recognize the words to know which to play.

How do we make such a game switch accessible?

I’m thinking out loud here. Help me out folks, some of you have to be more musical and creative than I am. Post a comment.

Can We Find It? Yes We Can!

Come see if you can find “it” at Maze Day 2009 on the University of North Carolina Campus at Chapel Hill. What are we looking for? We’ll be looking for bus stops, intersections, building entrances and much more. Using Trekker Breeze, students, teachers, parents and peers will participate in a “Talking GPS” scavenger hunt on campus. During the activity we will use the newest in GPS technology for the blind and visually impaired to find out “What’s around.” Join us to learn about this exciting technology and be ready to have some fun in the process.

Maze Day is for visually impaired and blind students in grades K-12, their parents and teachers. Your students will enjoy fun and educational computer applications developed especially for them. UNC students will learn how well their accessible applications work with real users. And everyone will have a good time!

Continue reading →

Atool is an extension to our previous CamKeys project. Like CamKeys, atool allows keyboard input based on a cheap webcam. Atool adds DDR pads (or other game controller buttons) as an additional input and it allows playing recorded sounds on input events.
Continue reading →

A US federal appeals court on Tuesday ruled that the country’s one-sized paper money discriminates against the blind and told the government to change the currency’s size and texture. It’s taken six years to get this far, and the government may well appeal again. I say give it up and switch to an accessible design.

Maze Day is for visually impaired and blind students in grades K-12, their parents and teachers. Your students will enjoy fun and educational computer applications developed especially for them. UNC students will learn how well their accessible applications work with real users. And everyone will have a good time!

Continue reading →

Excellent post from Pete on real the benefits of spatial audio in the user interface.

Alex sent a pointer to www.helpyouplay.com has some cool game ideas including an accessible version of Guitar Hero similar to our project last semester. I’m glad to see more work on accessible games.