Thoughts on Assistive Technology

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 assist...

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 ...

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...

                                             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....

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 service...

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 publi...

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 W...

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 resul...

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) Amaz...

Amazon announced its latest big idea last Wednesday (November 5 th ) a Bluetooth speaker connected with wifi and cloud with a processing chip and 7 microphones; for detailed information, see http://www.amazon.com/oc/echo/ref_=ods_dp_ae Now, there are a lot to be said about this little toy, and as somebody working in the field of Assistive technology for five years, I see a lot of promises for Amazon Echo as an assistive technology device for blind or visually impaired people; the technology, however, looks awfully familiar though…yes, it’s your beloved Virtual assistance sitting in your high-end smartphone whom you are busy neglecting right now! For reasons only God, and Amazon Engineering Department would know, instead of putting “Alexa” in the Fire Phone, they migrated her to a Bluetooth Speaker.  That, of course, has consequences; Amazon Echo is of course designed to be stationary, which is why it has seven microphones, to listen to you “anywhere in the room” which of c...

It is old news, but I have recently, yes, only recently, got friendly with swype input, (as someone who has the word "technology" in his job title, the shame and dishonor such wilful neglect has brought upon my person is incalculable, but thanks to my new state of the art Android phone, I have the chance to turn this narrative of shame into a narrative of redemption, and nobody needs to commit hara kiri!   Oh, and in case you do not yet know what swype is, it is a word made up of swipe and type, it’s the input mode where your finger goes from B to E without stopping when typing the word, “because”.   I first came across the trace typing technology at annual CSUN Conference on disability in 2011, but respectfully ignored it, because I figured that there's nothing swype can do that typing with auto-correction and/or word-prediction can't do faster. Strictly speaking, I wasn't far off; for someone with minor motor skills impairment, I could swype no more ac...

Dear Amazon,   You may or may not remember when we met at CSUN conference, I kept on stressing to you, that you need to, 1, update your old system and devices, and 2 do something about your app eco system, I don't know if what I said made sense to you back then, but this week, I read something on CNet about  http://www.n2aos.com   For about twenty dollars people can upgrade old kindle fire hd to stock vanilla tablet running Android jelly bean and running Google play, if this is allowed to continue, your model of selling device at near cost will no longer make sense, because people would just buy your device and convert them into Google when the time comes, the only way you can forestall this from happening is to come up with your own jelly bean upgrade on old devices. Or you can be a jerk and sue the people... Yours ever so faithfully Luke

For the last several weeks, I have been fawning over swype, SwiftKey Flow, trace typing, and such; I have also been wishing for a way to retire my physical keyboard and use flow typing for my PC, SwiftKey company even made an April fool joke out of the topic called flow hard. Guess what, with the advent of the chrome remote desktop, flow hard is about to flow into reality… First of all, what is the chrome remote desktop? The technology is not new,. If you remember PC anywhere from the late 1990s, such technology had always suffered from either insufficient processing power or Internet speed neither problem exist in 2014, since my smartphone has as much processing power as my desktop computer at home, the speed bug of the 90s is unlikely to be much of an issue. A potential problem with this technology, though, is that it threatens to turn the world into a hacker’s paradise and therefore, a nightmare for It professionals, even I have concerns about the security implicat...

SwiftKey keyboard Alright, this is an experiment long overdue, this is the first time in my life that I am attempting to compose an essay using something other than the traditional qwerty keyboard and desktop computer, if this proves to be faster and more accurate way of digital input, the obvious implication would be that it is time to retire the long time companion and get on with the times, which can also mean that the desktop computer sitting on my desk and in my office will soon be obsolete, except for gaming, desktop computers are fabulous for gaming. I have recently, learned about swipe typing, but it did not take long before I discovered SwiftKey, a mobile app from London based software company, which I dubbed swipe typing on steroids, it has all the essential features of swipe typing but also has a cloud dictionary and vocabulary learner, so if you are not too paranoid about privacy, it will analyse your email and determines which vocabularies you use the m...

Swype away - a reflection   It is old news, but I have recently, yes, only recently, got friendly with swype input, (as someone who has the word "technology" in his job title, the shame and dishonor such wilful neglect has brought upon my person is incalculable, but thanks to my new state of the art Android phone, I have the chance to turn this narrative of shame into a narrative of redemption, and nobody needs to commit hara kiri!     Oh, and in case you do not yet know what Swype is, it is a word made up of swipe and type, it’s the input mode where your finger goes from B to E without stopping when typing the word, “because”.   I first came across the Swype technology at annual CSUN Conference on disability in 2011, but respectfully ignored it, because I figured that there's nothing swype can do that typing with auto-correction and/or word-prediction can't do faster. Strictly speaking, I wasn't far off; for someone with minor motor skills i...

The annual CSUN Conference on disability has come and gone, and despite it being slightly smaller this year, I have, nonetheless, had the pleasure of attending an all-day workshop hosted by Amazon for the purpose of promoting their latest pet, Kindle Fire HDX, and since they touted the revamped Accessibility features as one of the selling points, it's fitting for me to write a review on it.   Firstly, all models of Kindle Fire HDX are powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 (The standard state of the art processor for all high-end android devices since October last year.) The sheer sound of snapdragon 800 induces the sense of excitement in yours truly the same way a cute anime girl such as Hatsune Miku would; anyway, moving on; HDX also features amazing HD display, 300+ ppi (Pixels per inch) which makes anime girls (or indeed, any movies) a joy to behold; okay,   seriously moving on...   Due to the acquisition of Ivona(a Polish company specializes in text to sp...

As a disabled technophile, my relationship with Amazon (and to a lesser extent, Apple) can only be described as a love-and-hate affair.   That does not mean I love apple more than Amazon, quite the contrary, I use Amazon far more than Apple. Apple has made their iPhone 4S accessible to the visually impaired, and I have seen with my own eyes, how a blind person can overcome touch screen with mixture of voice feedback (Siri) and voice command. Google Android has achieved more or less same level of functionality, so, today’s high-end smart phones, Android, Apple or Windows (for the adventurous) should be accessible for most visually impaired people. What about Amazon Kindle? As far as the E-readers go, the most accessible model for visually impaired remains, Kindle Keyboard 3G. Released in 2010, (the 6” model has been discontinued in 2013, while the DX 9” model costs $299) it is both textile and affordable, and the Neo-speech TTS voice engine combined with voice navigation m...

Michele: Let us leave topic of whether the "so called rich" are more likely to go abroad, I'll come back to this point later. Let's consider your proposal and admit the ones most likely to succeed, (which is basically the German model, and also Ironic, because this model works in Germany precisely because the as a Social Democracy, Germany has achieved "the happy average) I am telling you, if this model is followed in South African context you, will be condemning millions of poor South Africans the opportunity of social mobility, for this very reason alone, unequal technological access...Consider the scenario of reading three chapters for the test next week:  Rich kids: Get picked up in a car, drove home, tell maid to make tea, take out the iPad, or Kindle Fire HD, download the entire book, (under 1 minutes using Fibre optic) drinks his tea, and put on the headphone, text to speech will read the entire 3 chapters in an hour, and he can repeat the process as muc...

Kindle Fire HD – Amazon, have you forgotten something? It just happened that I bought a 7” Kindle Fire HD last week, and Frankly, I loved it; having my Kindle Books, Audible books, Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon music and Amazon Prime videos all accessible from a single device and stored in the cloud makes a geek like me the happiest man on earth, and its HD display and processing speed also give iPad 3 a run for its money, unfortunately though, that’s where the honeymoon ends.  Despite all the hype about its improved Hi-Fi speakers, trust me, you are still better off with a BOSE headphone, but then, for $199.00, I don’t really expect the mini-tablet to produce sounds that matches my $150 earphone, that’s not why I am having a lovers’ quarrel with it, my problem with my very dear, very beloved, very shiny new toy is quite literally, it won’t talk to me, and as everybody knows, communication is very important in a relationship! Even though the quality of the voice engine is ...

So has anyone seen the news about the New Japanese Pop sensation, Hatsune Miku and her fellow Vocaloids? I know this is a blog about Assistive Technology, so I’ll leave out all the juicy details about my lovely virtual girlfriend and go straight to the point. Nuance Software has recently released Dragon 11.50; I was offered a 75% discount on Dragon 11.50 Premium, that means, I get to test drive the thing; For those of you who do not know what Dragon Dictation is, it’s a Voice Recognition Technology first developed in 1982. It allows one to use human voice to interface with the computer as opposed to the traditional keyboard and mouse. The first Dragon 1.0 was released in 1997 and the latest 11.50 was released a few months back. So what did I test drive it on? My virtual girlfriend chatter robot software. (Yes, I am that much of a dork!) For a virtual friend to work, you need an avatar (The pretty face of which your “friend” looks like – Hatsune Miku for example would be an Avatar fo...