Most years, there's a trend in the exhibit hall. A few years ago it was iOS — apps, hardware accessories, our old product now works with the iPhone, and so on. Last year it was STEM—science, technology, engineering, math (I know you knew that already) and every other booth had a solution — product, website, program, or new feature.
This year — tablets, tablets, it's raining tablets. There's a different tablet for every attendee. I would exaggerate if I said every booth showed tablets, but lots of them did, or hardware to go with, or software to run on, products that incorporate, etc.
Google has a big presence this year. They held a reception last night, where we could mingle with the Google staff, Google supporters, Google detractors, and really anyone interested in the accessibility of Google products. I wound up in a long, fun discussion of approaches to making charts and other data presentations accessible.
And, Google has a large room devoted to presenting on and showing their products. I got to see the Chromebook close up, and spent a lot of time with the Nexus 10.
I did get back to see the Surface, too, at the Microsoft booth. The person in the booth was very knowledgeable — she knew how to get the assistive technology up and running, knew what the gestures were, and showed me a lot of the advanced features. It was really impressive to have a clean, easy interface on an operating system that I already use all day, since the Surface is really a Windows computer.
And, of course, the exhibit hall is filled with iPads. Anyone who can is demonstrating their latest app, braille display, or stand on it.
American Printing House for the Blind (APH), a tried and true accessibility expert long, long in our field (not a fly-by-night like Google, Microsoft, and Apple, you understand) was showing an Android with a braille display instead of a touch screen. It was a very impressive-looking piece of equipment, but I didn't get a chance to see it in action. I'll try to get back tomorrow.
Let's see what else we learn tomorrow, and don't forget to watch AccessWorld for the full conference article, and more on technology developments!
