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Assistive technology (AT) is a term for assistive, adaptive, and rehabilitative devices for people with disabilities and the elderly. Disabled people often have difficulty performing activities of daily living (ADLs) independently, or even with assistance. ADLs are self-care activities that include toileting, mobility (ambulation), eating, bathing, dressing, grooming, and personal device care. Assistive technology can ameliorate the effects of disabilities that limit the ability to perform ADLs. Assistive technology promotes greater independence by enabling people to perform tasks they were formerly unable to accomplish, or had great difficulty accomplishing, by providing enhancements to, or changing methods of interacting with, the technology needed to accomplish such tasks. For example, wheelchairs provide independent mobility for those who cannot walk, while assistive eating devices can enable people who cannot feed themselves to do so. Due to assistive technology, disabled people have an opportunity of a more positive and easygoing lifestyle, with an increase in "social participation," "security and control," and a greater chance to "reduce institutional costs without significantly increasing household expenses." In schools, assistive technology can be critical in allowing students with disabilities access the general education curriculum. Students who experience challenges writing or keyboarding, for example, can use voice recognition software instead.
Braille is a tactile writing system used by people who are visually impaired, including people who are blind, deafblind or who have low vision. It can be read either on embossed paper or by using refreshable braille displays that connect to computers and smartphone devices. Braille can be written using a slate and stylus, a braille writer, an electronic braille notetaker or with the use of a computer connected to a braille embosser.
Perkins School for the Blind, in Watertown, Massachusetts, was founded in 1829 and is the oldest school for the blind in the United States. It has also been known as the Perkins Institution for the Blind.
Accessibility is the design of products, devices, services, vehicles, or environments so as to be usable by people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design and practice of accessible development ensures both "direct access" and "indirect access" meaning compatibility with a person's assistive technology.
A screen reader is a form of assistive technology (AT) that renders text and image content as speech or braille output. Screen readers are essential to people who are blind, and are useful to people who are visually impaired, illiterate, or have a learning disability. Screen readers are software applications that attempt to convey what people with normal eyesight see on a display to their users via non-visual means, like text-to-speech, sound icons, or a braille device. They do this by applying a wide variety of techniques that include, for example, interacting with dedicated accessibility APIs, using various operating system features, and employing hooking techniques.
The Perkins Brailler is a "braille typewriter" with a key corresponding to each of the six dots of the braille code, a space key, a backspace key, and a line space key. Like a manual typewriter, it has two side knobs to advance paper through the machine and a carriage return lever above the keys. The rollers that hold and advance the paper have grooves designed to avoid crushing the raised dots the brailler creates.
A braille translator is a software program that translates a script into braille and sends it to a braille embosser, which produces a hard copy of the original print text. Only the script is transformed, not the language.
Altium Limited is a publicly traded software company that provides PC-based electronics design software for engineers who design printed circuit boards. Founded as Protel Systems Pty Ltd in Australia in 1985, the company has regional headquarters in the United States, Australia, China, Europe, and Japan. Its products are designed for use in a Microsoft Windows environment and used in industries such as automotive, aerospace, defense, and telecommunications. Its flagship product, Altium Designer, is a software for unified electronics design.
Winradio is the brand name for the radio communication equipment and the name of the commercial division of Radixon Group in Melbourne, Australia, a subsidiary of Robotron Group. It includes computer-based radio receivers, software, antennas and accessories for software-defined radio.
Milan Hudecek is a Czech-born Australian inventor and entrepreneur. He pioneered the fields of assistive technology for the blind and radio communications. He is a Member of the Order of Australia, winner of the Winston Gordon Award for Technological Advancement in the Field of Blindness and Visual Impairment, and Rolls-Royce & Qantas Award of Engineering Excellence.
The Taiwan Excellence Awards are yearly awards that are given out by the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) and Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) to encourage Taiwan industries to upgrade and incorporate innovation and value into their products. The selection of awards is based on four criteria: R&D, design, quality, and marketing. Each product must score evenly well in each category in order to be selected. An international panel of judges is invited to participate in this selection, in which the finalists surface after several evaluations.
Accessible publishing is an approach to publishing and book design whereby books and other texts are made available in alternative formats designed to aid or replace the reading process. It is particularly relevant for people who are blind, visually impaired or otherwise print disabled.
Telesensory Systems, Inc. (TSI) was an American corporation that invented, designed, manufactured, and distributed technological aids for blind and low vision persons. TSI's products helped visually impaired people work independently with computers and with ordinary printed materials.
The American Printing House for the Blind (APH) is an American non-for-profit corporation in Louisville, Kentucky, promoting independent living for people who are blind and visually impaired. For over 150 years APH has created unique products and services to support all aspects of daily life without sight.
A sighted child who is reading at a basic level should be able to understand common words and answer simple questions about the information presented. They should also have enough fluency to get through the material in a timely manner. Over the course of a child's education, these foundations are built on to teach higher levels of math, science, and comprehension skills. Children who are blind not only have the education disadvantage of not being able to see: they also miss out on the very fundamental parts of early and advanced education if not provided with the necessary tools.
RoboBraille is a web and email service capable of converting documents into a range of accessible formats including Braille, mp3, e-books and Daisy. The service can furthermore be used to convert otherwise inaccessible documents such as scanned images and pdf files into more accessible formats. RoboBraille has been in operation since 2004 and currently serves thousands of user requests each month from users around the world. The service is available for free for strictly individual, non-commercial use. Institutional use by academic institutions is available through SensusAccess.
Caryn Linda Navy is an American mathematician and computer scientist. Blind since childhood, she is chiefly known for her work in set-theoretic topology and Braille technology.
Joshua A. Miele is an American scientist and inventor who specializes in adaptive technology design. Since 2019, Miele has been a Principal Accessibility Researcher at Amazon Lab126, a subsidiary of Amazon that works on hardware products. Before assuming his current position, Miele conducted research on tactile graphics and auditory displays at the Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute for fifteen years. Among his work at Smith-Kettlewell is Tactile Map Automated Production, a web application for generating tactile maps of streets printable with a braille embosser, and YouDescribe, a web platform for creating and listening to audio descriptions of YouTube videos. He received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2021.
References
- ↑ "THE BRAILLE MONITOR April, 1988". www.nfb.org.
- ↑ "First Thai speaking computer for the Blind". ksc.net.th. Archived from the original on February 12, 2003.
- ↑ Andrews, David. "Stand-alone reading machines: A comparative review". National Federation of the Blind .
- ↑ "Winston Gordon Award of Excellence in Accessible Technology". CNIB Foundation .
- ↑ "Object - Eureka A4 electronic secretary". Victorian Collections.
- ↑ "Robotron Sensory Tools - Galileo Reading System (photo of Stevie Wonder with his Eureka)". www.sensorytools.com.
- ↑ "Robotron Sensory Tools (photo of Ray Charles at his last visit to Robotron Group)". www.sensorytools.com.
- ↑ "RADIXON - About us". radixon.com.