I have been to plenty of Assistive Technology Industry Association (ATIA) conferences, and this year has all the usual stuff (though gadgets are getting smaller every year!) As I walked the exhibit halls, I was haunted by the recent New York TImes Sunday Magazine article, Listening to Braille, where the author bemoans the decline of [...]
Intel is the first company that greets you at the Assistive Technology Industry Association (ATIA) 2010 conference in Orlando, where I’m checking out new gadgets for people with disabilities. (Great timing, as it’s freezing up north.) It’s always a good sign for the industry when a major tech player sets up shop with a glossy [...]
The media is talking about braille and literacy, a topic jump-started by a New York Times Magazine article, “Listening to Braille,” by Rachel Aviv. The author writes that new technology may be undermining Braille literacy as people who are blind are now “reading” via e-books, iPods, telephone news services and other text-to-speech devices. Aviv’s article centers [...]
On November 6 the FCC held a Field Hearing on Broadband Access for People with Disabilities at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C. The hearing is one of many that will discuss ways to bring access to broadband to the nation’s 54 Americans with disabilities. The meeting included panelists from A.G. Bell, the American Foundation for [...]
I wonder if Intel feels sheepish right now. Here they are, thinking they’ve just launched a great new product for the blind, a mobile device that reads text aloud. Intel partnered with assistive tech pioneer HumanWare and reached out to the blind community to get their input, too. But the Intel Reader, announced yesterday, has [...]
By Suzanne Robitaille If you have trouble seeing whether you’re paying for your lunch with a $20 or a $50 bill, there’s a new banknote identifier on the market. iBill is a banknote identifier from Orbit Research that’s designed for the blind and the visually impaired. The device costs $99, which is less expensive than [...]
An experiment is helping the blind see images they’ve never seen before. The three-year research project involves surgically implanted electrodes, a camera worn on the bridge of the nose and a video processor, according to the New York Times. Scientists involved in the project, the artificial retina, say they have plans to develop the technology to [...]
knfb Reader Technology's Mobile products include cell phone programs that read aloud printed text for those with print disabilities, such as vision loss and dyslexia.
Apple introduces its screen reader for the iPhone, and other accessibility innovations for people with disabilities.
The U.S. and other governments have opposed a proposal to books more accessible to more blind and visually impaired people by extending an American copyright exemption to the rest of the world.
