The future is Here. I finally received my Oculus Rift, and It’s amazing. The Rift is the first affordable Virtual Reality headset that has the potential to deliver immersive experiences to the mass consumer market. As large of an impact that smart phones and tablets have had, these devices
Update: It’s real and it’s called HitStarter you can download the codebase or donate to the project at https://github.com/Miserlou/HitStarter. Why we need anonymous donations Many activities lie in a legal grey area. These activities may be believed to be accepted by a majority of
After 3 years of living in the bay area, it’s time to head back to Pittsburgh. My time in Palo Alto and San Francisco was extremely formatve. I learned more there than I think any other time in my life. I hope to continue that trend once in Pittsburgh.
The Speech+ Speaking calculator designed for the blind, on display at the Computer History Museum. It’s the great grandpa of the calculator I mentioned last week, the speaking TI-84.
I just returned from my trip to the biggest(?) conference on accessibly in the county, CSUN 2013. I owe big thanks to Knowbility and Sharron Rush for making it possible for me to attend. They sponsored my ticket to the conference, and their kindness and eagerness to support my interest
One of the biggest benefits of the rise of the internet has been the disruption of those industries which have survived based on the difficulty of accessing information. The quintessential examples of these have been the travel industry with the rise of sites like Expedia and Travelocity as well as
Bit torrent is a service which stands for the freedom of information, but is that information free to everyone? I decided to check out how accessible the the top tormenting websites like the Pirate Bay were. I also tried using three clients for the Mac of which only one was
Google Glass has inspired a lot of talk about how socially acceptable wearable devices are. The Atlantic recently ran an article where 2 people wore them into a bar. Needless to say, the reaction wasn’t positive. Google is of course aware of this and is actively responding, even promoting
Sina Bahram, a brilliant PHD candidate in Human Computer interaction had a great response post to my last article on why Audio interfaces might not be the best solution. He makes some great points and I wanted to share and respond to them here: I believe that we need to
Over the last few years we’ve seen a rise in alternative interfaces, Minority Report style technologies meant to demonstrate a future without physical controls: the Xbox Kinect, the Leap Motion, and IBM’s Perceptual computing to name a few. This rise is as much a factor of improving technologies
I’ve been researching digital accessibility for the blind for the last few months now and have spoken with many people in the industry as well with users of accessible tech. It seems that the industry has been slow to innovate, but things are looking up thanks to iOS and
How do you convince a product manager to spend the resources on making their site accessible? The same way you convince them to build a mobile version of their website: show them how many of their users would benefit. Site owners prioritize development based on who they see coming in