In June 2006, GW Micro, of Fort Wayne, Indiana, announced the release of the Portable SenseView closed-circuit television (CCTV), which the company describes as the world's smallest portable CCTV on the market. The unit is small enough to travel anywhere for reading price tags, package labels, menus, or other printed material on the go, yet is powerful enough to enable individuals with low vision to read print.
Electronic braille files can finally be read on a screen reader or refreshable braille display, thanks to WB-View 1.0. The first software designed to read electronic braille files, WB-View is also compatible with plain text files. Developed with funding by NLS, WB-View's features include automatic return to the last line read, support for up to 10 bookmarks, auto-read with custom speed settings, and support for "find" commands. The cost is $69.
Pulse Data HumanWare recently announced the appointment of Jonathan Mosen as its product marketing manager for BrailleNote and VoiceNote, the company's personal digital assistants. Mosen takes over for Larry Lewis, who now reports to president Jim Halliday as the new general manager of Pulse Data HumanWare's Blindness Division. Blind since birth, Mosen has a long affiliation with ACB (American Council of the Blind) Radio, and he formed the Out of Sight company in 1999 to manage the Internet radio station.
State and federal web sites were recently analyzed in terms of disability accessibility standards by a public policy watchdog and a consumer group. In Brown University's Taubman Center for Public Policy's fourth annual Internet readability survey, which scrutinized 1,600 state and 60 federal web sites, 47% of federal and 33% of state web sites met the World Wide Web Consortium (WC3) accessibility standards <www.w3.org>.
It's cold outside, at least in the northern hemisphere. Why not curl up next to a warm computer with some good reading material? The following news stories detail a number of products, web portals, and services that are designed to allow you instant access to information.
The Aladdin Rainbow is Telesensory's newest line of color video magnifiers. Each magnifier has a 14-inch monitor, a large depth of field for viewing three-dimensional objects, and a smooth, nonglare reading table that supports heavy books. The CCTV is sold in three configurations. The Rainbow has six settings, including full color, black and white, and several selectable foreground and background colors. The Rainbow Pro features an added tint and color saturation control, vertical and horizontal line markers, and shadow mask to help track text.
Sendero, the developers of the global positioning satellite system for the BrailleNote personal organizer, are hard at work on a version of the device that can be used indoors. Said Sendero founder Mike May in a New York Times interview on the need for indoor GPS technology, "As pumped-up as I am about outdoor navigation, what happens when I get to the mall?" Sendero has been leading a consortium of U.S.
Share your assistive technology expertise as a speaker at the 2005 Assistive Technology Industry Association (ATIA) Conference, the industry's leading conference in educating and showcasing the latest advances in assistive technology. Assistive technology specialists and professionals in the blindness field are invited to submit proposals to present during the ATIA Conference, to be held for the first time at the Caribe Royale All-Suites Resort in Orlando, Florida, January 19-22, 2005.
At conferences in June and July, Kurzweil Educational Systems demonstrated Version 9, an upgrade for the Kurzweil 1000 scanning and reading software, to be released in September.
The DECtalk USB is a small small speech synthesizer measuring 5.5 inches by 3.6 inches by 1.1 inches and weighing 9 ounces. It has a built-in speaker, volume control, and output jack for headphones or external speakers. The unit is powered by the USB port, a 9-volt battery, or an external power supply (which is included). It can be connected to either a USB or serial port, and offers speech which is similar to the DECtalk 4.2. The $695 price includes the DECtalk USB, power supply, USB cable, serial cable, headphones, and shipping costs.