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AT, where we are and where we are going (maybe)

By September next year, I will have worked a full decade as an assistive technology specialist for an Independent Living Center.   The first generation iPad sitting silently in my drawer was once the darling of the tech world; it is now old enough to attend grade school.   It still feels like yesterday when I was still obsessed over which voice engines produce the most human sounding voice, when there is already commercially available companion robots and artificial intelligence those are capable of not only understanding vocal commands, but physically altering the environments of one’s surrounding. Technology evolves faster today than it has ever been at any point in human history.   We are fortunate to live in a time when tomorrow not only promises new technologies, but delivers them like clockwork.   Today, so much assistive technologies have been incorporated into mainstream consumer electronics it’s become almost impossible to tell what constitutes an assistive technology device
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CoWriter and the Subscription model:

The CoWriter Universal:  The Subscription model: When it comes to Word Prediction Software; none is, perhaps, better marketed than CoWriter by Don Johnston. Like Dragon Naturally Speaking by Nuance is for speech recognition, CoWriter by Don Johnston is often the first thing an AT professional think of when Word Prediction is being discussed.  In case there is still anyone out there that doesn’t know what a Word prediction software is, it’s what we often use when we type on the smartphone and other mobile devices. The little bar above the smartphone keyboard that guesses what we are trying to type is called, Word Prediction; and before the advent of the smart devices and their touch screens, Word Prediction Software had already been widely used by people with disabilities to make typing less of a pain. I first saw CoWriter on ABC News in early 2009, and its selling point was the copious vocabularies it is capable of predicting. It could be used by anyone from K12 to Postgraduat
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AT in Taiwan

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AT (or AD in Taiwan): A systematic comparison: I have just returned from a two-week vacation in Taiwan (my place of birth); during which I visited three very different disability service institutions. I also had the pleasure of being briefed on about the state of Taiwanese disability services, and how much it has improved since I bid my farewell in 1989.               The first thing I noticed was that in most public men’s room, there was at least one urinal equipped with handrails. Taiwan, like Europe and Japan, is facing the similar problem with aging population. I remember I had 45 classmates in first grade, today, the class size is down to 20. So it makes sense the infrastructure must make allowance for an aging population. Beside urinals, there was also an alarm installed inside the bathroom stalls at the Taipei High-Speed Rail Station, in case someone requires assistance, Also, there are wheelchair-stair-glides installed at newer small shopping centers.
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The transformers come!

                                             While there has been little exciting news in the realm of high-tech consumer electronics other than the soul-eating-time-devouring-productivity-killing Pokemon Go sometimes masquerading as therapeutic app for people with agoraphobia, and, more generally, a cure for most Americans' aversion to outdoor exercises; the iPad got faster and bigger, and not to be outdone, Samsung sported an enormous 20 inch Android tablet called Samsung View; The bloated Android tablets, of course, have been with us since 2011, with Viewsonic's Smart Monitor and HP's all-in-one Android Computer. However, with the popularity of carbon fibre and other metal alloys, there has been a welcoming move by the Durable Medical Equipment (DME) industry to make traditionally bulky and heavy devices more mobile and portable.                 I first saw Luggie (a foldable scooter) in late 2014, when the vendor did a presentation at my work in Riverside, Cali
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Making your AAC app Multilingual

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As many of you know, due to my moderately severe speech impediment, I have been paying close attention to the development of Augmented Assistive Communication (AAC) devices/apps and Text to Speech  Technology/Voice Engines. Those, who have paying attention to my articles through the years, may note, that as far as Text To Speech Voice Engine goes, I swear by IVONA, a Polish software company that was acquired by Amazon in 2012. And as far as reproducing human-like quality speech goes, IVONA Voice Engine is still second to none; however, while offering 23  High Quality European languages, the conspicuous absence of Asian Languages, even the major ones, such as Chinese Mandarin, Hindi, Japanese, Vietnamese and Korean has left something to be desired. This is why, if one wants one’s AAC app to speak Asian languages, one has to turn to Google TTS. Most of you linguistic enthusiasts probably encountered Google Text to Speech Engine from Google Translation app and web services, and the
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Hello, Felicia: Firstly, congratulations on the recent publications of the memoir, I schemed through it last night, and it looks extremely entertaining, so I'm looking forward to the actual perusal of your megna opus. Secondly, my name is Chi-Hung, or Kikou, if you wish to pronounce the Chinese Characters in Japanese, I have been a fan of yours since 2011. I am both an disabled person and also, working as a assistive technology advocate for a local Independent Living Center here at Riverside California. I am writing you today, to see if I can get you to convince your publisher Simon and Schuster, to enable the Text to Speech function on the Kindle Version of your memoir. As a fellow geek, you are probably aware that owners of Kindle Fire tablets can have their tablet read to them in mechanical voice (IVONA), and if one owns both the Kindle and Audible copies, the mechanical voice would be replaced by the human voice. However, such function cannot be accessed if the publish
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Amazon Echo Part 2: Let's catch a glimpse of the future:

Around last November, Amazon announced their talking-joking-music-playing cylinder which they called Echo; I even wrote a blog questioning the wisdom of porting a virtual assistant from one's mobile phone to a stationary wifi-reliant device.  The said cylinder has been made available to the public for $179, and has been dutifully sitting in my living room since June, and well, the experience is something very similar to the Star Trek movie from the 80s. While it is true that almost everything Alexa can do, Siris can do faster, there is just something about the voice-controlled nature of the Echo that made it especially charming. I can walk into a room saying, "Alexa, News." or, "Alexa, what's the weather like tomorrow." or I can take a look at my Smartphone, the result isn't going to differ much. The same goes with environmental control features in conjunction with Belkin WeMo switches, and/or Philips Hue. I can either say, "Alexa, turn on/off Wem
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