ISAAC 2012, Day 5

Are you on ISAAC overload yet? Sorry that the post for Day 5 is late and a bit brief. There has been too much going on to keep up with. However, I did want to share one highlight.
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Gregg Vanderheiden, Director of the Trace Center, was an invited speaker who presented on the paradigm shift AAC and AT is now experiencing. Among other things, he gave an update on the Global Public Inclusive Infrastructure, a massive project to build auto-personalized access to information and communication technology.

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Need the screen to be enlarged so you can see the ATM machine? It’ll do that automatically when you go to log in at any kiosk. Use an onscreen keyboard to input information? It’ll be available when you sit down to any public computer. Want a simpler interface to email for someone who has cognitive challenges? It’ll be there on demand, and, if the project delivers what it promises, you won’t have to do much to make that happen. The idea is that through cloud computing, much of the AT you need will be available wherever you need it to be. Here’s a video that explains more.

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It was exciting to see some of the early demonstrations of this work, such as the use of a near-field communication embedded into a ring for quick and easy access. Check out this video to see it in action.
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Dr. Vanderheiden’s talk covered many encouraging topics, but also shared one piece of dismal news: we’re only reaching 15% of the people who need special interfaces to technology due to disability, literacy issues, effects of aging, etc.
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There were many great presentations and meetings today and I hope to have time to write up some of them later on.
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