Russ Holland of the Alliance for Technology Access, along with Tom Ross and Dave Grass, hosted a hands-on workshop this morning, demonstrating a selection of "Cool Tools" for promoting accessibility. "The term assistive technology is broadly used to describe any product or piece of equipment used to increase, maintain or improve functional capabilities of individuals with disabilities," Holland explained in his introductory remarks. Holland stated that CTCs must try to offer "consumer specific technology" -- the customization of specialized assistive technologies that can be made available for all individuals.
Tom Ross then introduced Dragon NaturallySpeaking 7, a voice input system for people with motor skill impairments. Using nothing but his voice, Tom was able to use Microsoft Word to write a letter and format it with complex tables. The software does an impressive job at understanding a speaker's natural voice and recognizing the difference between action commands (such as save document, send email or format in ALL CAPS) and text that should be written into a document. Following Tom's presentation, Russ demonstrated text-to-speech software called Text Help that allows users to have computer content read back to them. Participants were then given the opportunity to try the tools for themselves.
Posted by acarvin at June 12, 2004 01:15 PM | TrackBack