Thoughts on Assistive Technology

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

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

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

For Assistive/Adoptive Technology and Rehabilitative professionals, Dragon Naturally Speaking  from Nuance has become the go-to software for people with fine-motor challenges. It's almost a knee-jerk reaction to recommend Dragon to people that have trouble manipulating Mouse and Keyboard. It maybe arguably true that as far as accuracy goes, few can out-perform Dragon Naturally Speaking, it may also be true, that, as far as Adoptive Software goes, Dragon is as affordable as it gets. ($49 for Home Edition and $20+- on Ebay or Amazon if one wants to find an unused older version), perhaps it is that affordability that makes it a knee jerk reaction to recommend Dragon and not bothered to look at the alternative options, even when it is freely available . From the Microsoft's Point of view, it is not making money from the Accessibility features that comes standard with every Windows 7/8 Computers, so why bother spend cash marketing what's essentially, a freebie.  The result

I can write a three page essay on why the sales figure for the Amazon Fire Phone has been so dismal, but it’s a combination of poor market research, failure to understand smart-phone eco system,  mediocre software development and of course, pricing. The reason why pricing isn’t the most important factor is because, all other things being equal, people were perfectly willing to spend $600+ on LG G Flex on December 2013, Galaxy Note 3/LG G3 on June 2014, and Galaxy Note 4 and iPhone 6 in January 2015; Releasing in July 2014 as an AT&T exclusive, Fire phone with its October 2013 specification (Snapdragon 800/13 MP camera with optical stabilization) was a very late entrance to the game. It has the same specification as my LG G Flex (minus the optical stablizer), and I already bought my G Flex in February that year, there was no reason for me to buy the almost exact same phone, unless Amazon gives me some serious incentive. Well, the incentive came last week (January 7, 2015) Amazon put