WearAbility for Inclusive Design 24
MAY 14, 2014
They say 2014 is the year of wearable computers and devices. While marketed mostly towards the busy professionals and health conscious athletes, there’s far more to these devices.
This presentation looks at the intersection of wearable computers and accessibility. How can these sensor filled devices provide alternative displays and gestures? How can they help a blind person see the world, a person with a mobility issue explore, track health and detect traumatic events before they happen?
This presentation was created for the Inclusive Design 24 series of webinars that celebrate Global Accessibility Awareness Day 2014
Wearable Computers
History of wearable assistive technology
Facial prostheses, 1919 Anna Coleman Ladd fashioned much-admired face masks for WWI soldiers in the European theater. Facial prosthetics and reconstructive surgery advanced significantly because of the war.
Obstacle Detection
The obstacle detection device from WLVAfrom 2004 consists of three major components:- head mounted display (HMD)
- backpack mounted equipment
- software.
The HMD incorporates the scanning fiber display and optics mounted in a tube on one side of a spectacle frame, and a video camera with IR light emitting diodes mounted on the other side. The backpack-mounted equipment consists of a laptop computer, an embedded processor, and hardware to drive the scanning fiber display.
Iglasses have obstacle detection and vibrate when the user gets close to a low hanging branch or other object.
Google patent on eye frame based obstacle detection.
Acceptance and Ubiquity
Which of these kids is using an assistive technology device? Tablets, phones, and assorted mobile devices are so common that stigma associated with earlier devices has diminished.Complexity in the right place
“What made the Rio and other devices so brain dead was that they were complicated. They had to do things like make playlists, because they weren’t integrated with the jukebox software on your computer. So by owning the iTunes software and the iPod device, that allowed us to make the computer and the device work together, and it allowed us to put the complexity in the right place.” -Steve Jobs
Internet of Things
IPV6 allows every object to have its own ip address. Wearable devices can surround and work within your body and be uniquely defined. Lamprey inspired nano-robots are being developed that can migrate through your body for healthcare. photo: pacific lamprey by USFWS Pacific...
Read the full article at Wearability
http://wearability.org/wearability-inclusive-design.html
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