lifekludger

Enabling Occupation

EOGS2-2008.JPG

Originally uploaded by dnwallace

I do some occassional lecturing at the University of South Australia in the School of Health Sciences, Occupational Therapy.

The subject is called “Enabling Occupation”, occupation in this sense being ‘undertaking an activity’ - or as I like to call it ‘doing stuff’. I focus on how different technologies and practices have enabled my life and talk about the concepts involved in thinking about helping someone living with disability to ‘do stuff’.

I’m also bringing in aspects of sharing and collaboration to enhance the ability to share knowledge between themselves and introducing using the interwebs as a tool to leverage collective know-how.

I like to take a shot of each group, and so here’s the latest bunch. I also tested out recording it this time - using my camera as recorder. It’s a bit noisy as was near the projector, and is very long. I’ll post it here when I snip it up. UPDATE: Here’s the audio

The slides are below.

Posted in Thoughts

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Lifekludger Project 001 - Goal reached, underway.

What a great response to the first Lifekludger Project fundraising. I’m glad tosay thegoal was reached and Fundable has paid the pledged amount (less it’s 10% fee, of course)

I’ve started a spreadsheet where the funds for project will be tracked and it’s viewable from theLifekludger blog (or right here).

The item has been ordered and I’ve been notified shipmentis underway.

My mate, Mike Seyfang, who’s been tossing these mad-scientist ideas and dreams around with me for the last few years, has written a great blog post summarising what is behind this project and indeed the Lifekludger vision. You can catch the whole post over on his blog. I’ve snipped a few choice paragraphs below:

For several years now I have been working with Dave (LifeKludger) Wallace to envision a way to use the social web to improve people’s lives through effective technology hacks. We can see and almost taste a world in which networks of ‘livers’ emit ideas or issues they are facing and with the help of networks of ’suppliers’ and ‘givers’ end up with pieces of technology modified by ‘makers’ that improve their life in some way. All totally scale-able, all powered by the social-web.

So our little ‘lkp001? experiment is our first dabble into the world of social-web powered micro-finance and it is showing a lot of promise. We have shown that it is indeed possible to have a single project funded using the social web without creating too much fuss, admin overhead or any potential bottleneck to scale.

Thanks to all who support the vision and all who gave to make this pilot funding test a reality (you know who you are).

Posted in Givers

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ASUS Eee Top launched - clever, appropriate use of Touch

ASUS are the smart cookies. They virtually started the consumer Netbook phenomenon with the affordable, linux based, eee pc. Now they release a stylish, all-in-one device with a Touch screen that’s based on XP obviously targeted at friendly family use at, hopefully, a competitive price - the ASUS Top.

The screen must be resistive type as it mentions that there’s a stylus that can be used as well as your finger. The more input options built-in the better I say.

Might just kick-start something in a meaningful way in the Touch arena like they did in Netbooks. Kudos to them for being relevant while thinking outside the square.

[Link]

Posted in Devices, Lifekludger Links, Touch

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Lifekludger Project 001 - Pilot Pledge

Lifekludger has the desire to connect people together around a project to solve a problem. For the long term it’s desirable that  the number projects are scalable as well as the funding for them.  Coming from that thinking I’m running a kind of Pilot project to see if there’s a way that projects can be funded using the site “fundable.com”. If successful it could be used in future projects with other devices.

Mike and I discussed the concept of pledges and this project yesterday on our Extraordinary Everyday Lives podcast. If you’d like to have a listen to get more background.

Lifekludger Project 001 - Kensington SlimBlade Trackball Mouse

The focus of this first project is to purchase a Kensington SlimBlade Trackball Mouse for testing and review for use by someone who has a physical disabilty.

The interesting aspect of this device is its ability to be used as a trackball. Its small size could prove beneficial for a person limited finger movement.

The funds will be used to purchase one of the devices and try it out. A review will be posted on the Lifekludger blog (http://lifekludger.net/) and if found usable by a particular person with a disability will be donated to them.

http://au.kensington.com/Products/ProductInfo.aspx?S=0&P=15007597

There’s many instances where off the shelf devices have the potential to increase the ability of people living with disability to use technology to enhance their life. Unfortunately though, due to the highly individual nature of disability and the often unique way technology is used in these circumstances, often it’s impossible to know if a device or piece of technology can be used by the person. Its often needed to test a device in a certain situation before committing to a purchase.

Fundable provides abilty to pledge with ease an amount towards the stated goal and if the total sought isn’t reached within the time allotted no money will be exchanged. More info can be found on the projects fundable page.

http://www.fundable.com/groupactions/groupaction.2008-11-06.2051953639/view?searchterm=Lifekludger

There is 10 days left to reach the goal.

Thanks

Posted in Devices, Givers

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Revisiting touch on the OLPC XO laptop and hardware access design

“Accessibility is about accommodating characteristics a person cannot change by providing options” — Joe Clarke, 2001

* An outline

* some ideas in olpc first look was promising
* accessibility and usability are hardware issues too
* accessibility should venture out of the online space into hardware design

Last year I had a first look at one of the beta OLPC XO laptops, the experience I wrote about on the blog back here.

On that pre-release XO one of the things that I was very interested in was the comination input pad. It is three panels, and supposedly was to be a section for use with a finger and others for a stylus. On the beta unit the finger-touch section worked and I even managed to get some patchy response when using a stylus, however it was very intermittent and only worked in the top half of the screen. I put this down to beta issues and looked forward to seeing a release version and how things had improved.

Well after a year of trying a few channels to get a look at a XO after it was released (including signing up to the developer program, who I heard no response from) I finally got to get my hands on one last week.

I wanted to pursue the questions I had around the input panels and was hopeful that the effort and obvious thought around access to the hardware that was put into the XO could’ve provided impetus for other areas of the industry to think about hardware access design in general, and touch input in particular.

I was dissapointed. From what I saw things have actually gone backwards with the stylus portion not functioning at all on the XO I saw, and as I understand support for stylus operation on the XO is going to be dropped. This thereby relegates the XO to the level of the rest of the industry offerings around touch - no finger, no operate - no options.

So closes the year long chapter of getting my questions answered about the potential of touch on the XO, and it leading the way in demonstrating options in hardware input options.

And really people, it shouldn’t be THIS hard to get definative questions of access answered.

* Some footnotes:

Starting in 1985 Apple Starting in 1985, Apple had a five-person Worldwide Disability Solutions Group (WDSG). Steve Jobs fired the WDSG in January 1998, saving a paltry million dollars annually. [http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/1998/05/12351]

Joe Clarke Quote from TidBits [http://db.tidbits.com/article/6311]

My thanks to Janet H and Bill K for getting me a look at the XO

Posted in Access, Computing, Devices, Input, Touch

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