Rubber bands rule (If you have a spare hour watch the much longer chat here)

A little montage from my walk round town

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Mark & Sam. Two fab people who use AAC & AT highlighted by the Guardian Christmas Appeal for the ACE Centre.

(via ACE Centre Christmas charity appeal – video)

Dogs driving cars. Awesome. Now cats - follow that!

Please vote for Hilary’s Straws on Vimeo - a great video contender for the Focus Forward Films. Particularly worthwhile if you have an interest in AT. More information on Hilary here if you are interested.

Some brief highlights from my recent trip to Arches National Park, Moab, Utah. A big thanks to Doug and Brent who gave me the tour last thing on Friday which resulted in some shots other than balanced rock!

Not totally happy with the processing just yet - working on it over this weekend. Any suggestions gratefully received! For more see this set on flickr

Grid 2 Scientific Calculator

The Grid 2 provides a number of workspaces to do neat things; control a mobile phone, environmental control using a plethora of connecting devices, computer control and programme control to control windows based programmes and many more. If you would like to have a simple calculator there is also “Calculator” workspace which allows you to have a simple addition, minus, division and multiplication calculator. Currently if you want a higher level scientific calculator you have a number of options; the obvious is to use the calculator in windows and use a computer control grid to control the calculator (hint and hint). Although programme/computer control is very neat - it can mess a keyguard user up as you need to make space for the programme. So the alternative in this case? Well you could get more advanced things like 1/x, exponentials and so forth in the standard Grid computer control workspace - simply by programming the formulae into Grid cells - but only if you can do it using the +,-,*,/ signs.. and you quickly come unstuck when you need to reference variables..

As a different approach I wondered “could we create a more complex calculator using an external programme to handle the math!?”. To do this I tried creating a small executable that you pass a mathematical argument to (e.g. –command=sinh ) and a value (e.g. –toeval=121 - if no argument passed takes what is in the current copy buffer) and then the output is passed back within the paste buffer.

The answer to my query is “Kind of”. The difficulty is that the grid doesn’t have any neat ways of passing variables or functions back and forth - either within it or externally via an API. The only way (thanks to Barney for this tip off) is using the copy buffer of Windows.

This is ok - but it means that if you wanted to do a sum like (121 * 45) + 16² = you can’t simply. Currently you would have to do 121 *45 on its own, remember the result then do a 16² and add that to the previous result. If anyone has a neat way of creating a Memory button then that would help!

(There is another way - I guess you could use a text chat workspace and replicate what the calculator workspace does by firing every piece of text off and analysing it.. thing is though you have to put a wait command on the grid for the exe to run and its all a bit slow..)

Anyway - if you fancy using what I have created in its current form and want to hack it go ahead. The code:

The Grid Bundle and Executable (nb: its windowless) (to use place the GridSciCalc directory at C:/ - feel free to edit the paths in the bundle The source code of the Executable

' .Google HQ . ;

                                                       ' .LA  - where are the trees?   . ;
                                                                                                                       
                           
                       
                                                       ' .View from inside Charlies cafe looking out.   . ;
                                                                                                                       
                           
                       
                                                       ' .You need some time off to get a haircut?! Don't be silly now - we have one at work..  . ;
                                                                                                                       
                           
                       
                                                       ' .Why walk when you can ride!  . ;
                                                                                                                       
                           
                       
                                                       ' .A view from the Google earth booth - this is a view from the top of the Shard in London  . ;
                                                                                                                       
                           
                       
                                                       ' .The toilets have notes while you read.. a little long IMHO but interesting. Not sure if intentional but this one on Accessibility could be found in the disabled loo  . ;
                                                                                                                       
                           
                       
                                                       ' .The chocolate room! Yes, a room full of chocolate. Thanks GSoC!  . ;
                                                                                                                       
                           
                       
                                                       ' .You want snacks while you work? Free on demand.. snacks  . ;
                                                                                                                       
                           
                       
                                                       ' .An indicator that its not all fun & games. Thats staff toothbrushes in the loos..  . ;
                                                                                                                  Thanks to Google for my weekend in California last week for the GSoC unconference. Apart from feeding me non-stop (the bacon was amazing) I learnt quite a bit too. Thanks to Jorge & KomodoOpenLab for inviting me and of course Elyas on the fab work on Tecla. It’s been fun :)

I had to visit didn’t I. (It’s Apple’s HQ in Cupertino, California if you were wondering)

Many Congrats to Richard & Elaine last weekend. Was much fun :-) (you can spot them - look for the little white dot walking along the pier)

A typical high school graduate has a vocabulary of 60,000 words. That equates to [learning] one word every two hours from the age of one — Steven Pinker: Linguistics as a Window to Understanding the Brain (youtube, 14:35 in for the exact quote). Its a good hour spent if you are new to Linguistics/Language & Cognition. Buy one of his books though if this floats your boat.

Your brain can sometimes do funny things to letters. OpenDyslexic tries to help prevent some of these things from happening. Letters have heavy weighted bottoms to add a kind of “gravity” to each letter, helping to keep your brain from rotating them around in ways that can make them look like other letters. Consistently weighted bottoms can also help reinforce the line of text. The unique shapes of each letter can help prevent flipping and swapping.

OpenDyslexic is free like a free beer, and freedom. Go get it here: dyslexicfonts.com

' .The Apple Event Abstract . ;

                                                       ' .Crowds Arriving..  . ;
                                                                                                                  Last night I did a little presentation on AAC at the Apple Store, Covent Garden. We had a range of folk, from parents to Doctors and therapists and some folk looking for solutions for themselves. Thanks to everyone at Apple store Covent Garden for dealing with my slide issues and poor microphone handling skills!

If you came along here’s some of the links: The list of Apps (about to be updated later this weekend!): AppsForAAC, CPC Farnell - a supplier of a range of kit including the Forward, Life Jacket - a fab waterproof and rugged case which only 2 evenings before I happily delivered to a child on my teams caseload. I’ll try and add the slides when I can get them back from Apple :)

Thanks to the GOSH team & Sandra from Logan who came out to give me some support and shared a nice bit of Japanese tuck and beer with after. I fully recommend Hu Sushi, Charlotte Street and the eel rice stuff!

update: Obviously a large chunk of this talk was about AAC & Assistive software on Apple devices. A large chunk was also Communication Matters heavy in directing folk to their local AAC centre.

Tim Kelsey, the NHS Commissioning Board’s first national director of patients and information, is to encourage doctors and nurses and other front-line staff to learn how to program. — Sweet. And OTs! and OTs!

Film 4. It’s a bit like TK Max. Mostly crap bit you occasionally find something half decent — Turning on the telly to find “The day after tomorrow” - certainly not half decent

Eeeeeek!

(Thanks To @SteveALee for spotting this… I think Thanks!)

Wheelchair users in South Africa really must have their brakes checked. (via)[http://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/w9rj1/wheelchair_warning_sign_in_south_africa/]

“What do we want?! Evidence-based change! When do we want it?! After peer review!” (from here)

Hmmm. Interesting positioning equipment to use whilst lying down that.

Eventually a common theme became apparent: Apple’s applications — Calendar, Messages, Mail, iPhoto, even Maps and most surprisingly Camera — are completely usable by blind people. These applications aren’t using any kind of secret API sauce. They’re using the same UIAccessibility framework you and I have access to.

To get your mind blown, fire up Camera and point the camera at a nearby face, preferably a cute infant.

Well I never knew that about the camera app. Thats pretty neat.

This past fall, Obert took a class on assistive technologies. Coincidentally, in the first week the students took turns riding in wheelchairs around campus to better understand the challenges a paraplegic faces. Obert thought the exercise was superficial. “I understand the idea,” she says, “but at the same time it felt a little bit trivializing. People were like, ‘Oh, it’s so hard to open the door’ … and [that’s] such a small, tiny piece of what you actually have to deal with every day if you’re in a wheelchair.” Better, she says, to talk to people with a disability, to shadow them for a day and ask them about what they need. — Wheels on the Ground - Technology Review

It’s roughly equivalent to giving someone a car in which the steering wheel has been replaced by a joystick. Not only do you need to learn how to steer with a joystick, but all of the controls formerly attached to the steering column are now scattered in various spots on the dashboard. The wiper control is a lever above the radio, the high beam lights are a switch on the rearview mirror, the turn signal is a set of buttons under the speedometer, and the cruise control is a dial hidden inside the ashtray. Oh, and you honk the horn by bouncing up and down in your seat. —

Michael Mace, on the issue of how Windows 8 is not the easiest to use if you have spent the last x years on traditional “Start” menu based Windows.

Does this not sound rather like an analogy for users of Assistive Technology? Where even small changes; say a moved switch, a sticky rollerball, a joystick no longer in the same place or the debounce on the keyboard being changed - causes equal amounts of “annoyance”.

In short, if you change something think hard and long about it and keep it that way for as long as possible. Otherwise you may end up making your users feel like they are driving clown cars when they want to be doing far more important things like communicating.