Thoughts on Assistive Technology

As an assistive technology advocate, it has been a part of my job to write up a requisition form for devices in the lab, and perhaps due to the ethnic/cultural heritage; the price tag on those devices simply did not make sense, and of course, buying them at those prices made even less sense to me. Although I have to concede, devices built by Enhanced Vision really is in a league of their own, but still, how does one expect a $10.00 per hour wage earning lower middle class person to afford $2800.00 device affectionately named "Merlin" or "Jordy"? Even naming them Chi-Hung Luke Hsieh wouldn't make them more affordable! When my supervisor saw the 13 years old webcam that I have lying around in my office, he asked me if I could turn it into an electronic magnifier using a Windows computer and USB port. The technology involved really isn't rocket science; as a matter of fact, Bierly Trademark has a USB based monomouse magnifier selling at about $500 a piece, a

After spending two articles lauding Apple to the moon, let's come back to reality and examine assistive software for Windows PC. A few articles ago, I wrote about Ginger, a grammar assisting software that may provide tremendous help for people with dyslexia. However, thanks to Google Adsense, I was introduced to another grammar software that purportedly does the same thing. That was when my curiosity kicked in, and I could not resist buying a copy of my own to compare. There is another less high sounding side story to why I bought the Whitesmoke software: Mainly, I was duped.  On their website, it stated that a discount offer of 80% on their software was going to end on April 21st 2010, well a month later, the same website still offers the identical discount with the dates changed. https://buy.whitesmoke.com/incp/purchase.php? I am not here to discuss whether such antics are ethical, as ethics always take second place in the face of profits; the point is that I now have both G