Software That Opens Worlds to the Disabled
By JAMES FLANIGAN
ONE computer program would allow vision-impaired shoppers to point their cellphones at supermarket shelves and hear descriptions of products and prices. Another would allow a physically disabled person to guide a computer mouse using brain waves and eye movements.
The two programs were among those created by eight groups of volunteers at a two-day software-writing competition this fall. The goal of the competition, sponsored by a nonprofit corporation, is to encourage new computer programs that help disabled people expand their capabilities.
The corporation, set up by computer science students and graduates at the University of Southern California, is named Project:Possibility...
Computing Technologies Revolutionize Lives of People with Disabilities
By Shelley Schlender
The personal computer has transformed the way people communicate and get things done, but the technology has been nothing less than a revolution for people with disabilities.
Training experts crowded around computers at a recent conference in Boulder, Colorado, as 50 featured speakers took turns explaining how high-tech machines can be even more useful when the person using them is deaf, blind or physically disabled...
..Dean Colby, an organizer of the assistive technology conference, knows the value of these technologies firsthand.
"As a person who's in a wheelchair, such as myself, it's important to have these kinds of conferences and get-togethers so people who are providing people like me with the kinds of technologies they need to succeed in the workplace or go to school or whatever, these kind of people can hook up. 'Cause the technologies are always evolving," he says...
>>> For the Full Article