Assistive Technology

Your first name is Chris, your last name begins with a P. CHRISP Crispy, and you shall be known as Crispy for evermore amongst all the tech stuff listeners show. I degree great. Actually, we're actually going to be a little bit more somber than usual, serious stuff to talk talk about. Um and um yeah. I mean we've had a couple of people right in and ask us about technology for people who have you know, yeah, yeah, we're

talking about a system of technology. Yes, and it's specifically technology that assists people who otherwise would find it difficult to lead. Uh. Well, I hesitate to say a normal life, but what we would normally what we would consider a normal life. I suppose basically helps them accomplished tasks that

they cannot do normally exactly right. So this has a very wide range, um, because there are lots of different things that you could need assistance with, and there are a lot of things that technology can do to help you. So um, this is probably really just kind of a general overview because there's no way we could cover everything in a normal podcast. It would take hours and hours to talk about some of the incredible innovations that are out there that can help people. And some of them

are very basic. Some of them aren't necessarily the super high tech solution, but they're very clever and they are effective, so we should talk about them. Some of them actually aren't even brand new. Um. One of the first ones I thought of as I started writing down ideas is the hearing aid. That's a good example because I mean, of course they haven't always been like they are now, but uh, you know, the pieces, the earpieces that people

wear now are almost indistinguishable. I mean, they're very very difficult to tell that someone is even wearing a hearing aid, and they're very very efficient. But inside that tiny little package you've got, you've got to have a number of things in there, including a microphone, a speaker, and an amplifier and you know, the battery and it and it has made people's lives very very easy people who have difficulty hearing. Basically UM transferring those sounds to the the

little hairs in your ear and UM. Through that you can you can hear, not completely normally, but that is you know, I wasn't even thinking of that as an assistant technology, but that's been around for you know, for decades now. A similar one that's been around for a few decades is the teletypewriter. Oh yeah, So this is something that people who have other people who might have, you know, a hearing impairment would use, uh in order

to communicate over phone lines. Now, before we had cell phones where you could text like crazy and all that that kind of mess if you wanted, if you were if you were someone who had a really serious hearing impairment, if you were deaf or just had a very poor hearing, um, there weren't too many options that you had in order to communicate over the phone. One of the few ones was the teletypewriter. And the teletypewriter it looks like it looks kind of like a typewriter and uh that connects

to a phone. It actually transmits information over phone lines. Um. And in order to really communicate with one, you essentially needed to have one on both ends of the line, or you needed to have an operator between uh, the person who was calling normally and the person who was on the teletypewriter, because you couldn't just you know, receive voice over the phone line and have the teletypewriter transmit

that into into text. It didn't work that way right, right, And speaking from personal experience, UM, if you receive a call from from an operator uh working with someone using a teletypewriter, it's it's kind of nerve wracking because you want to be respectful to the person on the other end, but you may not necessarily necessarily know how that works.

So it's kind of difficult because they're transcribing everything you're saying, and when you basically say, hey, well I have a question, they're typing that like no, no, I'm asking you, the operator, can you help me with this because I don't know what you know, right, And if you get a smart test for an operator, they're saying things like they're totally saying that you're ugly yeah, I haven't had that problem. Yeah, well we can talk about my previous job experience in

a different podcasts. So yeah, the teletypewriter, that was another example of technology that's been around for a while where was just a clever use of tech to allow people to have more options when they're communicating. I mean, it's it's a simple idea, but it was definitely a revolutionary thing in the lives of many millions of people. But

that's just the tip of the iceberg. I was gonna site another every night every day when before we got into the super duper high tech closed captioning good, which actually is is very similar in some ways to the teletypewriter in the operator because, um, when you have a live show going on, um you have somebody listening to what's going on during the show and you know, trying to transcribe it as they are speaking, which can be I imagine amazingly difficult, especially judging when you see the

typos that pop up on the screen, and I'm you know, I I smirk it those, I admit, but I think I wouldn't have done any better. As a matter of fact, I probably would have been far far worse. So I appreciate their you'll see some interesting homonyms throwing and there are things like that. But yeah, you know, these these are even when they're using special keyboards that have macros or or certain common words already programmed into them, so that way all you have to do is hit one

key stroke too to do an entire word. Even when you're doing that, you're still talking about having to type an incredible rate. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. But my favorite when you have the clothes captioning turned on is when they have the shows that have already been captioned, um, and there's music and it says music and it has that little note because I just thought it's kind of nice they bother to include that. M yep, yeah, you get

the little anyway. Sorry, well, here here's some other we can go some other basic technology things like they're very various special keyboards that are out for people who have other problems, Like there are keyboards that have oversized keys, and they're they're maybe extra sensitive, so people who have trouble, you know, maybe someone who couldn't push down on an normal key the way that that you and I could could be able to type without any problem using one

of these. They're also key keyboards that are especially made for people who have only the use of one hand. Um. So there are a lot of those on the market as well, and I mean they all are designed for very specific kinds of of of disabilities in mind. So that's also a a pretty common thing that you can find out in the world of tech. Yeah. UM. Text to speech software also very important. Yeah, because people who wouldn't otherwise be able to type. Um. Would you know

that would be speech to text. Well, that's text to speech would be the other way around, that's true, Okay, speech to text. Well, we'll go in both directions. Speech to text, um would be very useful for someone who you know, may not be able to type necessarily, but they could speak into a microphone and have the computer transcribe and email someone um or um. You know, maybe even print out a letter, you know, for someone else

to mail for them. Um. And then you have your text to speech, which I mean, hey, the Amazon Kindle has got it. Yeah, it's not necessarily enabled for every title, No, that your Kindle could read to you if you were not able to work the Kindle with your hands, right, if if the publisher enables that particular UM function, I'm just gonna take a moment here. Amazon. UM, I don't

really blame you. It's not your fault. Amazon. You're working with lots and lots of publishers, and these publishers are afraid of technology because they're uh, their industry is based off a very old, venerable business model that has served them well for decades. So it's very scary to move into a new format where uh you have this electronic version of what you used to print out and hard copy.

That electronic version it so ephemeral, and it could be spread around and there's you know, you think about how much money you could lose if what if one person gets hold of that book and then just spreads copies around for free. However, I don't think you can really uh it publishers. I don't think you would like to stand on when you say that that the the text to speech feature and endangers the sales of audio books, because an audio book is a completely different animal from

a book read using text to speech. There's no real inflection, and text to speech there's no characterization. Uh. It's really a useful tool for people who have visual impairments. It is not something that you would want to listen to just for entertainment purposes. If you want that, you would obviously go out and buy the audio book version. I don't think anyone would think, oh, well now I can, I'll just buy the text copy because that text of

speech voice. Let me tell you, that's so much better than hearing the novelist read it in his own voice or her own voice. So publishers, um, come on enable that function on more titles. Seriously, I just I think it's the right thing to do. That's Jonathan's opinion. Chris is just gonna sit back and let me rant your editorialize. I I feel very passionately about this. So but yes, those are very important features. I was also going to mention, um, you know you might you might say, well, this is

a technology assistant. Technology is a very important field. But you know, you wonder why people, uh honestly, why some companies spend so much time and effort in in researching this stuff, because when you get down to it, like if you're going to be cold blooded and talk about capitalism, um,

the market is, it's it's a niche market. But then you think about what would we lose if we didn't invest in assistive technology and the human element, like the the contributions that that people can make when with this assistant technology are amazing. And there's one example that just is forefront of my mind. It's obviously Dr Stephen Hawking.

Now Doctor Hawking of course a brilliant mind, absolutely brilliant, and back when he started to to require technology in order to communicate after surgeries and disease um, originally he had a device that all allowed him to do was communicate one letter at a time. He had to build

sentences one letter at a time. It took forever. And he points out now that with the technology has that you know, if if he had to rely on the old technology, he probably wouldn't have written several of the books that he's written, or been able to have the lectures that he's given at various universities, and the world would be a poorer place without those contributions. I mean,

that's just the way it boils down. So this technology is very important because a lot of these people have attributions. I can't even begin to imagine sure, and without it we would never see it. So that's my other editorial. Uh boy, we should have let Jonathan get onto this podcast.

Should we all right, let's get back to some more technology. Okay, Okay, well, um, you know, and and that's the other thing too, is that, um, some of this some of the research and development that goes into creating assisted of technologies for differently able to people, UM, sort of bleeds over into real life into other things that um, you know, everyone else can use too. I'm thinking back to our our podcast that we did on Ray Kurtzwile and the reader that he created, which has

basically made its way over into the music industry. Sure, Um, you know Stevie Wonder being one of the very first people even lay his hands on one, which is you know, made them fast friends. I think that's pretty cool. Yeah. And there's other technology that has been used in vious UM devices that have found its way into two completely different inventions. For example, Dean came and we did a whole podcast on Dean came, and we mentioned his I

bought the the very advanced electric wheelchair that he developed. Now, this wheelchair has got some really cool features on it, including the ability to climb stairs. It also has the ability to raise up on two wheels, so it suddenly allows the the person sitting in the chair to be at about eye level instead of at waist level, which for you know, someone who's standing up, which is fantastic.

Was actually listening to a testimonial from someone using one of these chairs, and she said, I went to a hotel to make a reservation and I went up on two wheels, and I can you know, no one has to lean over the desk or come around the desk in order to talk to me, because now I'm suddenly standing I'm over the desk with this feature. Now that technology has found its way into other devices like the segue, the the the gyre of scopes that allow you to

move the segway by leaning forward or leaning backward. That's also in this wheelchair, so people who are in the wheelchair can when they're up on the two wheels, they can manipulate the wheelchair by leaning forward and leaning backwards. I would be willing to bet that some of that technology is also in the center, which may never make it to market, but it looks super cool. Hint. Yeah, um, but yeah, I mean. And while we're on the subject, with Dean came in it, we have to talk about

the Luke arm. Okay, because now This is named after Luke Skywalker from a little movie. I didn't know that it is. You didn't know that. Yeah, it's named after Luke Skywalker. It's the Luke Arms, the robotic arm. And of course Luke spoiler alert gets his hand cut off an Empire, strikes back and then gets a an electronic one attached at the very end. Um, so that's a lot like his dear old dad, Darth Vader other spoiler alert,

And so the Luke Arm is. What happened was Dean the way Dean came and talks about He says that someone from the Department of Defensive, very high level man came up to him and said, um, we have all these these soldiers coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan, many of whom have lost an arm. And the problem is that the technology for replacing a lost arm hasn't really

advanced since the you know, the seventeen hundreds. So he says, the way he describes it, says, it's essentially a stick with a hook at the end, and they want something more advanced. They wanted something that was so advanced that you would be able to lift a grape or raisin off a table, be able to tell the difference without looking at it, and be able to lift it to your mouth and eat it without crushing it. So there were all these different UH parameters that came and had

to put in the mind. And he first said, you're crazy. There's no technology that exists that would allow us to do this, especially on a level where the arm would be light enough for a human being to comfortably be able to use it. But came and went around, talked to some neurologists, He talked to some of the soldiers who came back. Was convinced that this was a worthy cause.

He formed formulated a team, and after about a year of development, they had a nine pound arm that could do many of the things that they had hoped it could do. Now granted, right now, the arm is mainly controlled through a series of sensors that you actually attached to your shoes, so you use you you know, you might lean forward to make the arm go up, and you might lean to the right to make the wrist rotate a certain way. It's got fourteen points of articulation.

There's some other sensors that attached to the you know, any remnant of an arm that the person might have or their shoulder that kind of thing, um, and they hope eventually to get to a sort of a neural muscular control system where you would actually have the controls implanted into the person's body and they would be able to control it with their mind and so you don't have to use any motor controls at all to to

adjust it. There's some amazing videos online. I highly recommend you check them out because, um, this is the sort of technology that I find really inspiring. Um. I mean, these are very very smart people who see the need to solve a specific problem and they put everything they've got into it. So it's pretty it's pretty cool stuff. Yeah. Uh, let's see, I've got a lot of other like like not you know, important things, maybe not as impressive as

the Luke arm or the iBOT, but like screen readers. Now, this is technology that's again for people who are visually impaired. A screen reader is essentially an an application that will uh analyze the contents on a screen and then translated in some way to convey that to the person sitting at the keyboard. Now that might be through a um, a text to speech uh program. So it may be that the computer talks to the person saying at the keyboard,

or they they may have a brail keyboard. Rail keyboards are these these pads that have a section where little pins can pop up and they essentially spell out words

and brail. So the visually impaired person would put his or her fingers over the this section and feel the pins as they come up, and they use piezo electric effects, so, um, you put a little electricity through and it pops the pin right up and they can read what's on the screen because it's been translated from whatever the text is into brail and then that is translated through the pins.

It's pretty cool stuff. Actually, it's really cool. I've seen one working and it's I'm always astounded at how fast they move and how fat quickly people can read because it's just so foreign to me to be able to read through your sense of touch, and I mean, that's just it's amazing to to to see. Yeah, um, you know, there are a lot of standards out there to The Worldwide Web Consortium actually has standards for basically for screen

readers to be able to read web pages. Um, you know, so it is possible that there, you know, that everyone can create web pages that other people can read as long as they conform to those standards, and the manufacturers of operating systems to also have a lot of assistive technology built right into the to the operating system. You can turn on features such as high contrast and um, you know, alter the the size of letters on the screen to make them easier for people who are have

difficulty seeing to read the screen a little better. Oh yeah, there's some that also will translate any audio cues into visual cues, so it might make the screen flash to let you know an alert has come through when normally, you know, you might just hear a chime. Um. So I mean it's it's little things like that that seem very simple, but they do make a big difference. Um. You know, thinking on it, you're like, well, yeah, that makes perfect sense, but someone had to come up with that.

It's it's when you're when you're designing something for a wide audience, it's there are a lot of things that you may not take into consideration. Um. It's the same problem that people that I see with people who developed really really cool websites. They're developing really cool websites for the latest version of whatever browsers they want to support. But as you and I know, not everyone's using the latest browser. In fact, a relatively small number of people

are using the latest browser. Most people are are at least a generation, if not two generations behind, and so when they go to visit the super cool website, their browser isn't able to display it the way it's meant to be displayed, and so it becomes a jumbled mess. So it's another one of those things where and when you're designing something now it might pay off to really take these sort of things into consideration. UM. I don't know if you saw this. It was a pretty recent

news story. Did you hear about the the car developed by the Virginia Tech College of Engineering that allowed a blind man to drive? No? I didn't. Yeah, Yeah, it was interesting. It's a little doomed uggy style vehicle and I watched a video on it and they allowed this. Uh. One of the members of the teams a blind man who was behind the wheel of the car. Another student set next to him, and UM, it uses a whole bunch of different technologies to allow the blind person to drive.

UM has laser range finders, it's got voice command software, um. And it's got a feedback system. It tells the driver which way to turn, so it starts to detect something that you might collide with us. You might want to turn left now so that the the driver doesn't collide with anything on the road. Now, granted, this is not something necessarily that we're going to see implemented on the streets any time in the foreseeable future. Not to use a horrible pun, but the you know, it's just it's

an interesting use of technology. And now if you could fine tune it to a point where the car could definitely detect everything, then maybe, But I just don't I don't think that's possible really, although it could be a very good step in the direction of full full automation.

That's true, However, um, I think the biggest problem in this case would be you need everybody to adopt that technology at the same time to prevent because I think the biggest hazard in that case would be other drivers because it's impossible to predict what they're doing right well. And and when you think about your car would become the ultimate backseat driver, yeah, because it would say things like this jerk is cutting you off. Flip them off. And cut to the left. I mean that's just you know,

that's all right. I mean that's the way I would do it. But okay, so do you have any other technologies you wanted to talk about? UM? Yes, UM, sure, I do. Think one of the coolest things that I've seen is, uh, you know, they're there's it's sort of um still in the earlier implementation stages, but for people who can't use um, their hands to operate a computer

and really may be unable to use their voices as well. UM. I've seen some uh, some scientists working on systems that sort of it sort of involves a combination of different technologies cameras and uh measurements of electrical impulses, but basically they follow um the user's eyes track eye movements. Yeah, they track eye movements, and basically they can operate the computer with you know, their eyes rather than you know, with their hands or with their voices. Which it is

very cool technology. And I and I you know, have seen a little bit on it, and I know that it's not extremely far ahead, but just the idea that we would be able to do that, um and have it you know work, it's it's you know, fairly effective to UM. And you know, I have the feeling, based on what little I've read about it, that it will be a little while before it's commonplace and affordable enough for people who, um, who really need the technology to

be able to use it. But um, this is another thing that could be very useful uh for all kinds of people once more search is done on it and you know, it becomes more commonplace. That's cool stuff. Yeah. And I mean I've had a chance to see some of this technology at places like ce S and it's always really uh, one of my favorite spots to to stop on the show floor, just because, I mean you really see what how creative people can be with the technology too, to make it do things that you you

just take for granted, you know, every day. So that's really cool. Um. Well, I don't have any other technology, but I do have a list of organizations and uh and government groups that um that are all about assistant technology. Did you have any others who wanted to talk about before I go into that. No, no, no, I do have a couple of organizations. I bet you have them too, So let's hear your list, all right, These are all

the ones I have are all North American organizations. Now I should go ahead and point out there are organizations all around the world for assisted of technology. The only reason I stuck with North Americas because that's where it happened to be and they're, like I said, lots of them. So this is just a small sample. But there's the Adaptive Technology Resource Center at the University of Toronto. There's the Center for Applied Special Technology, also known as CASTE.

There's Assistive Technology Industry Association, which is actually a commercial group. I mean it's a group of different companies within the industry. Um. There's the Rehabilitation, Engineering and Assistive Technology Society of North America, which just a mouthful. And there's the Alliance for Technology Access. Those are the ones that I listed that I had. That's what happens when we try to be creative and and uh sort of do independent research. Yeah, this is

a here's a secret for you guys. When we research, we do research independently, so there's no telling. One of us may come up with something the other one has no idea about, or we may find the exact same information as is the case today. But yeah, there there are lots of these groups. And again I find their work very interesting and and I'm very thankful for it.

So good job, guys, keep up the good work. And I do think that getting these companies to cooperate with one another is great news for people who need assistive technology, because they're going to come up with standards, right that are you know, that work with different machines, that work with different software, um, and will allow them to work with one another, which is incredibly important. Yeah, I mean that's important for any technology. We see that all the time.

Where the one of the big problems with any new technology is that there are no standards in place. When a new technology really first emerges and then everybody gets involved, there's a big mess. You don't know which way to go, and then eventually a sort of standards emerges and then it really becomes useful. Yeah. I mean, this stuff is expensive, especially when it's when it's new, and um, the eye bought wheelchair, as I recalls, twenty six thousand dollars and

most insurance companies will not cover it, I'm sure. So yeah, we're talking pretty expensive stuff but very worthwhile. Well, I guess that just leads us right over to a listener mail all right, then today's a listener mail classroom Gregorio. And Gregorio says, hey, guys, I just listened to the podcast on Google street View and I wanted to give you my take on it. I am studying to be a traffic engineer and we use Google street View and

Google Earth daily when designing streets. We tried to get surveys of the area which would show all existing features like dimensions, street signs, and striping, but when budget is limited, we have to go out and measure and photograph intersections ourselves. We overlay Google map Maps images into our CAD designs to help draw the streets, and we use Google street View to verify signs and striping layouts. It is very it is a very important tool that we use to

supplement our design data. That's pretty done. Cool. I didn't know that. Wow, So going out and you know, taking the tape measuring, Yeah, no, I mean, don't remind me what you think of Saturday. Well, thanks a lot of Gregorio, And if any of you want to write us, our email address is tech stuff at how stuff works dot com. If you would like to learn more about technology, well, there's this handy dandy website we like to call how stuff Works dot com. There's lots of cool stuff there.

I recommend you checking it out and we will talk to you again a really soon. For more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff works dot com and be sure to check out the new tech stuff blog now on the House Stuff Works homepage, brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you