Technology hepling the disabled
This is Tris your favorite geek scientist. Well at least I hope on your favorite geek scientist. So I’m not actually writing this blog post, I’m dictating it! One of the great new features in Windows Vista is speech recognition, so I’m dictating this post into windows live writer instead of typing it.
Speech recognition software as been around for a long time, but until recently computers haven’t been fast enough to really make it worthwhile for most people. Not only that, you had to buy extra software, in addition to a microphone, to make it work.
This got me thinking about the work my dad did with his paraplegic patients, and the really amazing things that he did even in the early eighties with computers to help people live their lives better. One of the coolest things I remember, because voice recognition was really not feasible that time, were the computers that quadriplegics and could control with a straw!
It was pretty amazing to watch, a quadriplegic using just his mouth to control a computer. By nudging the straw up down left and right and using a series of puffs and sucking on the straw, he could do just about anything on computers of that time. I know it’s got a lot better, now computers wererudimentary and so was software. But really, this is one of the great things about using science to help people. You see a problem, and apply the science and technology of the day to make someone’s life better.
So while I’m sitting here, barely touching the keyboard, I can imagine how much better someone’s life could be using the new technology available today.
Of course, even the software amusing now isn’t perfect. I do have to correct the words that are chosen sometimes, I do have to manually add it the text as well. Part of this is, that I’m speaking instead of writing, which adds a whole different style and aspect to how I’m writing or dictating, as it were.
So what advances in science have you seen that you think will be able to be applied to help the disabled?
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