I love the CS407, although the price was what originally discouraged me from purchasing one. I was upset that it doesn't support RAID 5+1, but considering I can have it suspend disks after 30 minutes of inactivity, I don't have many worries about disk failures. It's quiet, cool, and a lot cheaper than running a Fedora box with Samba/NFS/AppleTalk. The integrated iTunes sharing is also handy for when guests come over and use my wireless network.
A few months ago, I received a panicked call from an administrative assistant that one of our attending physicians was having technical issues with some of the hardware in our clinic. I informed her that I had just pulled up to the hospital and would be there momentarily to correct the issue. Upon getting into the parking lot (a mere two minutes later), I received another phone call from an equally panicked medical assistant claiming that Dr. ******** said, "One of the head-desks isn't functioning."
My reply, of course, was, "what is a head-desk? Does he mean one of the desktop PCs or the TabletPCs?"
"I don't know; all he said is to get up here because the head-desk isn't working."
Rushing from the parking lot to the clinic, I blow through the door and head straight back to the Triage area of the clinic. Standing in front of the aptly named head-desk (a computer monitor), I see a medical assistant working without any problems. I ask the attending physician (who initiated the calls) which computer had the problem. He points to the functioning devices and I look at him and say, "It's working just fine."
"Well it wasn't."
Apparently, he was just too impatient to check the monitor's power button and move the mouse to bring the desktop PC out of suspend mode.
"In that case, next time--before you make panicked calls to everyone--make sure to check the power button and move the mouse."
"I'm not stupid, I know how to do that!"
I bite my lip, turn for the door, and say to myself, "I think the jury's still out on that one."
My father was recently blinded as a result of injuries in a motorcycle accident. Not only is he legally blind, he is completely blind; the optic nerves were both severed and detached. He also only has feeling in his pinkie-finger on his right hand, thus making a Braille reader useless. He is attempting to learn how to type with a right-handed Dvorak keyboard and his typing is relayed to him by an application known as Read & Write. We just purchased JAWS from freedomscientific.com and are awaiting its delivery.
Although I have not used JAWS and I am not aware of all its capabilities, I do believe there should be better accessibility applications in any standard desktop OS. JAWS will set you back around $800-$1100, and that's quite a price to pay--especially since the person who injured my father didn't have insurance and we're forced to cover the cost of all these items. (Keep in mind: this is one of those very rare situations.)
I, for one, would be interested in seeing a graphical user interface capable of succinctly displaying information and reading it back to any user without bombarding them with data. With all the bells and whistles in any office productivity software suite and every new web site these days, it's very difficult to understand what you are listening to when you have an application play back the text on screen. Some people do not label the ALT tag in image placeholders, so no text can be read for those items. FLASH animations are useless unless there is actually real plain-text on the web page. In addition, opening items and getting the PC setup is very difficult. My father is quickly learning where things are located and can easily get himself setup in front of the computer as long as you put him in front of the right applications. However, I still have to verify that all the system settings are correct every time I turn on the computer.
It is very difficult and extremely disorienting to go from having sight to not having it when using computers (even though you have used them for years prior). This is especially difficult when nothing gives very good verbal clues and you have poor use of your fingers. Everything needs to be done with the keyboard; a mouse is totally useless to my father. I have to place special markers (pieces of felt or rubber buttons) on certain keys.
What I have been trying to do is modify not only the way Windows XP Pro works, but also how the other applications function. Keyboard shortcuts (and Sticky Keys) are a definite must, but you can only have so many before you need to memorize an entire keyboard of commands. Voice Recognition is terrific (my father's cellular phone is entirely voice activated and he is just amazed that he only needs to flip the phone open to do anything), although it does need to be trained to function well. To train voice recognition, my father would at least have to read what is on the screen (i.e., see the screen) for it to be effectively trained. My workaround is to just do all the training exercises myself, record them to a CD, and then play them back to him on a set of headphones so he could repeat aloud what he hears.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that I really don't have many ideas for how to build an OS or GUI for visually impaired users so much as I have suggestions. I guess one of my biggest concerns is that you have to pay for an operating system that comes with poor and limited accessibility functions and then pay another $1000 for something that will effectively give verbal output for the operating system. What I am really looking for in any accessibility application, though, is the ability to simplify the most common pitfalls with a combination of keyboard shortcuts and voice activation. I see this as an opportunity to push a specially designed USB keyboard--something visually switchable from QWERTY to Dvorak (standard, right-handed, or left-handed) that contains special keys for shortcuts, possibly an integrated microphone. Even creating a keyboard with its own interna
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I love the CS407, although the price was what originally discouraged me from purchasing one. I was upset that it doesn't support RAID 5+1, but considering I can have it suspend disks after 30 minutes of inactivity, I don't have many worries about disk failures. It's quiet, cool, and a lot cheaper than running a Fedora box with Samba/NFS/AppleTalk. The integrated iTunes sharing is also handy for when guests come over and use my wireless network.
A few months ago, I received a panicked call from an administrative assistant that one of our attending physicians was having technical issues with some of the hardware in our clinic. I informed her that I had just pulled up to the hospital and would be there momentarily to correct the issue. Upon getting into the parking lot (a mere two minutes later), I received another phone call from an equally panicked medical assistant claiming that Dr. ******** said, "One of the head-desks isn't functioning."
My reply, of course, was, "what is a head-desk? Does he mean one of the desktop PCs or the TabletPCs?"
"I don't know; all he said is to get up here because the head-desk isn't working."
Rushing from the parking lot to the clinic, I blow through the door and head straight back to the Triage area of the clinic. Standing in front of the aptly named head-desk (a computer monitor), I see a medical assistant working without any problems. I ask the attending physician (who initiated the calls) which computer had the problem. He points to the functioning devices and I look at him and say, "It's working just fine."
"Well it wasn't."
Apparently, he was just too impatient to check the monitor's power button and move the mouse to bring the desktop PC out of suspend mode.
"In that case, next time--before you make panicked calls to everyone--make sure to check the power button and move the mouse."
"I'm not stupid, I know how to do that!"
I bite my lip, turn for the door, and say to myself, "I think the jury's still out on that one."
My father was recently blinded as a result of injuries in a motorcycle accident. Not only is he legally blind, he is completely blind; the optic nerves were both severed and detached. He also only has feeling in his pinkie-finger on his right hand, thus making a Braille reader useless. He is attempting to learn how to type with a right-handed Dvorak keyboard and his typing is relayed to him by an application known as Read & Write. We just purchased JAWS from freedomscientific.com and are awaiting its delivery.
Although I have not used JAWS and I am not aware of all its capabilities, I do believe there should be better accessibility applications in any standard desktop OS. JAWS will set you back around $800-$1100, and that's quite a price to pay--especially since the person who injured my father didn't have insurance and we're forced to cover the cost of all these items. (Keep in mind: this is one of those very rare situations.)
I, for one, would be interested in seeing a graphical user interface capable of succinctly displaying information and reading it back to any user without bombarding them with data. With all the bells and whistles in any office productivity software suite and every new web site these days, it's very difficult to understand what you are listening to when you have an application play back the text on screen. Some people do not label the ALT tag in image placeholders, so no text can be read for those items. FLASH animations are useless unless there is actually real plain-text on the web page. In addition, opening items and getting the PC setup is very difficult. My father is quickly learning where things are located and can easily get himself setup in front of the computer as long as you put him in front of the right applications. However, I still have to verify that all the system settings are correct every time I turn on the computer.
It is very difficult and extremely disorienting to go from having sight to not having it when using computers (even though you have used them for years prior). This is especially difficult when nothing gives very good verbal clues and you have poor use of your fingers. Everything needs to be done with the keyboard; a mouse is totally useless to my father. I have to place special markers (pieces of felt or rubber buttons) on certain keys.
What I have been trying to do is modify not only the way Windows XP Pro works, but also how the other applications function. Keyboard shortcuts (and Sticky Keys) are a definite must, but you can only have so many before you need to memorize an entire keyboard of commands. Voice Recognition is terrific (my father's cellular phone is entirely voice activated and he is just amazed that he only needs to flip the phone open to do anything), although it does need to be trained to function well. To train voice recognition, my father would at least have to read what is on the screen (i.e., see the screen) for it to be effectively trained. My workaround is to just do all the training exercises myself, record them to a CD, and then play them back to him on a set of headphones so he could repeat aloud what he hears.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that I really don't have many ideas for how to build an OS or GUI for visually impaired users so much as I have suggestions. I guess one of my biggest concerns is that you have to pay for an operating system that comes with poor and limited accessibility functions and then pay another $1000 for something that will effectively give verbal output for the operating system. What I am really looking for in any accessibility application, though, is the ability to simplify the most common pitfalls with a combination of keyboard shortcuts and voice activation. I see this as an opportunity to push a specially designed USB keyboard--something visually switchable from QWERTY to Dvorak (standard, right-handed, or left-handed) that contains special keys for shortcuts, possibly an integrated microphone. Even creating a keyboard with its own interna