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Access and Inclusion through Technology

Access Technology - Today and Tomorrow

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Workshop on Expanding Disability Access with Wireless Technologies

Ok now this is worth a watch - its an important event as the FCC recognised the importance of wireless and mobile technologies for people with a disability. It reflects my own experience in both the UK, europe and the Middle East which suggests that the key battle ground for accessibility is…

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and so the time is near and so I face the final curtain .......A personal review of the last 10 years

As I leave AbilityNet in two weeks I thought this was a good time to look back at what weve done and the things that im most proud of from that period. Im going to look ahead to the potential of the next stage of my career in another Blog.

One of the things in which I take most pride is in the develo…

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The ethics of pirating ebooks you already own - a continuation

I read with interest the article by Randy Cohen on Gizmodo (see link above). In which he argues that whilst it may be illegal to download an ebook without paying for it, it isnt unethical, as long as you own a copy that you have purchased from a bookstore with money going to author and publisher. In…

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Enabling Technology - Time to stir things up

Now hear me out, but let's be honest, quite often accessibility is a bit boring. We are  all well meaning people and committed to social change and all that stuff. But when it gets down to it, when you really get down to it, we are all just a little bit geeky. Im sure that when the creators of "Big …

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Things that make you go hmmmmm - Paying through the nose for AT

As anyone who reads my blog knows, I get irate about stuff. At the moment my pet rant is the cost of hardware. Its not just the cost that riles me, its the comparitive price from specialist suppliers versus mainstream. Disabled users trust the specialists, trust them to understand their needs and re…

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Putting YouTube AutoCaption Feature through its paces

I saw the announcement from YouTube that the initial trials of the machine genrated captions had been well received so they were making the service available to all users. Great timing, I was just working on completing my first videocasts for YouTube using xtranormal state to create a virtual animat…

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Lets hear it for the BBC - Accessibility and the Future

Lets be honest it cant have been a great week to be an employee at the BBC. Closing radio stations, public outcry and hidden in the press the announcement that the web team would be cut.
Now im not going to argue the merits or otherwise of the need to reduce their output, I happen to listen to 6Music…

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The State of the Internet - and accessibility

Interesting perspective on the current use of the Internet from Jesse Thomas on Vimeo





Now this is quite interesting showing the scale of use of the internet, especially social media and rich media. We can see the discrepency between countri…

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Glove Controllers for Rehab

I spent a little while in Barcelona recently and was fortunate enough to visit UPF to look at some of the new technologies that they were working with. I know its a tough job, but i rose to the occasion as ever. One technology I managed to get my hands on (or in) was a set of Glove controllers.

Whils…

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AT of the Week - Potential New Service

I was thinking the other day about what can I do to help make access technologies more widely available. In the past I've worked with large IT companies to help integrate free and open source technologies into gold build systems for schools and companies, and Ive supported the work of Raising the Fl…

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Introduction to AAC

This slideshare is from my colleagues at Enable Ireland

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Welcome to my Personal Blog

Hello to anyone who comes this blog. For those who dont know me I work as Director of Developmnet at AbilityNet in the area of assistive technology and access technologies. For the past few years Ive managed our web 2.0 presence and developed our online communities. More recently Ive wanted to talk …

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Some thoughts on Apple

Why do I not love apple products - its not rational I know - I admire their build, their interface, the clarity - all of that stuff, but for some reason I dont love them
I was sitting here looking at my Ipod today, its silver and shiny and plays back music, shows me my videos photos all sorts of th…

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eBooks - killing a new media

Ok so Im not in the best of moods tonight, despite a 3-1 win for England, I still feel grumpy.
But thats not been helped by my recent visit to Waterstones online, I thought I'd cheer myself up by actually purchasing a new ebook for the great Sony eBook reader. At this point I felt myself transform in…

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Wearable computing - a new generation

Very interesting idea at www.genoaconnections.org - The technology described appears to take a heads up camera or audio headset and allow a remote guide to provide a report on visual information that a blind user cant make sense of. The technology is intended to enhance the work done by a guidedog w…

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4x4's in the parking bays

We took my father in law out this week, he's nearly 90 and very slow on his feet. As the weather wasn't great we decided to go for lunch. He has a blue disability badge so we hoped to park near the entrance in the disabled bays. It wasn't to be - 5 spaces, 2 taken up by 4x4's driven by folsk with ki…

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$100 Laptop - Not like this

October 24th, 2008
I opened the parcel eagerly, a new portable PC £99, was this the tools by which we could help bridge the digital divide ? Nicely packaged - big corporate logo and inside the box a matt black device awaited me. I slowly lifted it out of the box, actually quite slowly b…

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So the keyboard and mouse are dead ?

October 28th, 2008
When Bill Gates announced that the Keyboard and Mouse were dead, I took each word with a pinch of salt as usual. But events seem to be proving him right. my local train station is festooned with posters for new mobile phones - now we wont go into the pros and cons of …

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Shout and Shoot !

November 6th, 2008

I dont excited that often - you may have noticed. But Ive just seen an advert on The TV that got the juices flowing. Endgame a new game for PC and Xbox 360 claims to be the worlds first game that can be completely controlled by voice alone. There have been other voice games, but no…

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Time for TASBO's?

November 3rd, 2008
I do need to get out more, I know that. But I was surfing the web last night, looking for information about local fireworks and as I did so was struggling to find information on our council website - poor design, poor navigation just poor everything. That led me to th…

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20 blog posts