Technology – the power and the promise

Robin Christopherson @AbilityNet – UK accessibility charity.

Computers can cater for everyones needs. You don’t need to use the keyboard, the monitor, the tower could be in your room/in the screen/ or on the other side of the world.

Accessibility is often approached as a bolt on, something that costs more and you have to do at the end of the project. That’s not the right approach.

iPhone does this well. Screen curtain hides the screen so nothing can be seen – doubles the battery life.

There’s a tonne of additional features if you add VoiceOver.

If you start to internalise accessibility into everything you do that is when you will really reap the benefits how good your apps could be.

Using Goggles to find out what cereal he is getting out the cupboard.

Wordlens – it’s magic. Not technology, but magic.

Using a light detector on the iPhone to work out where the door is, where the window is, did you leave the light on, has the oven light switched off. All great things which are not designed for a blind user but is incredibly helpful.

Iphone 4 brought with it FaceTime, and with that it allowed deaf users to be able to call someone and sign the entire conversation.

iVoice — Larengitis date. Using the iPhone to talk.

Temporary disability is known as TABS – temporarily able bodied.
– In a rush on a lunch break
– Pushing a pram and only having one hand
– In a car – visual and motor impairment

Google Glass — perfect for the blind with the ear bone feedback.

Facial recognition – Deepmind (deep face). This is great for people that don’t know who they’re talking to (can’t remember someones name) or for the blind to know who they’re talking to as well. This could be extended to wifi video for your own house.

HyperLayer is looking to extend this out to showing if someone you’re walking past has a criminal record.

Recognising emotions are done better by computer than by humans. This is great for people with asperges or who are blind to read the feel of the situation.

Smartwear will remind you to take medication, health updates, skin mounted sensors that have bloody sugar capabilities.

Uber private taxi – 268 billion investment for autonomous taxi (250k of them). Goes so far as to be careful if a ball rolls out onto the road to watch for a kid chasing it afterwards. This crunches 750 gigs of data per minute.

Robotic armed drummer, the machine was attached directly to the neural defines.

The unbeatable rock paper scissors robot.

CubeStormer3 – 3seconds to do the rubix cube with LEGO. Robotics are here to stay now, it’s a matter of making the best use.

You need redundancy. The RedBull jumper display frosted up and he missed the longest free fall because there was no redundancy.

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