Videos

Videos

Understanding Accessibility- Videos of users using Assistive Technology

February 6, 2009

There is no better way to understand the problems faced by specially abled users if you need to code website front end keeping accessibility in mind.

Being passionate about web accessibility, I ended up as the creator and owner of the global accessibility distribution list (and the wiki node on accessibility) at Sapient besides having given a presentation to peers on the advantages of coding accessible websites in relation to SEO. A rather common question I was asked by site developers was about how could they quickly get a grip on coding accessible websites. And I’d give a simple anwer- watch videos of the specially abled using the web.

There’s no better way to grasp the concepts of creating accessible websites than watching those who you’re creating them for use the web.

Below are a number of videos that will help you learn about how the specially abled use the internet and how frustrating it can be when they need to use like the rest of us but are restricted to varying levels from doing so.

Accessibility in Yahoo! Messenger

An interview and demo with Victor Tsaran, Accessibility Program Manager at Yahoo!, about using the JAWS screen reader with Yahoo! Messenger.

Karo Caran: An Introduction to Screen Magnification Software

Karo Caran takes you on a tour of screen magnification software — tools used by partially sighted users to enhance their experience of screen-based user interfaces. Karo shows you the basic toolkit and then applies those tools to some typical web sites to give you some perspective on how she uses magnification software while she browses the web.

Victor Tsaran: An Introduction to Screen Readers

Victor Tsaran is an accessibility engineer at Yahoo! who focuses on developing best practices for the creation of websites that work well with screen readers. In this video, he provides an introduction to some of the things that work well in the world of screen readers and others that fare more poorly

Doug Geoffray: From the Mouth of a Screenreader Part-1

GW Micro founder discusses the evolution of screen readers on the desktop and the nature of the challenges we face as we start addressing similar issues in the context of rich internet applications.

Doug Geoffray: From the Mouth of a Screenreader Part-2

GW Micro founder discusses the evolution of screen readers on the desktop and the nature of the challenges we face as we start addressing similar issues in the context of rich internet applications.

A pivotal role in the household

Marie-France has lost her voice and can only move a jaw muscle because of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), also known as Motor Neurone Disease (MND) or Lou Gherigs Disease. She shows how, with a single switch and AssistiveWare’s Proloquo, KeyStrokes and SwitchXS software, she continues to perform a pivotal role in the household by doing the shopping, managing the bank accounts and even designing her own web site.

Everything I can’t do in the real world I can do with my Mac

Joe Barnick was born with spinal muscular atrophy and cannot use a keyboard or mouse, yet thanks to assistive technology he can use his computer to do all those things he cannot do in real life.

Simon - Assistive Technology Case Study

An interview with Simon who uses a range of Assistive Technology to allow him to have control over some essential aspects of his life.

This video shows Simon using his:

  1. communication aid to talk
  2. environmental control to control his household equipment
  3. powered wheelchair, using a specialised control
  4. computer, using a scanning interface
  5. integrated system - using two head switches to access all of this equipment

One Thumb to Rule Them All

Mike Phillips is a gamer and freelance technology writer born with spinal muscular atrophy (SMA). Using his thumb and a proximity switch to access his computer he is a prolific journalist and has contributed chapters to several books. Assistive technology has opened the world for him.

Me and my computer

Elina was born with athetoid cerebral palsy. She is now 10 years old and her computer means life to her. Thanks to her computer she can write independently, correspond through email with her friends and express herself in school papers.

We can because we think we can

Leigh-Anne Tompkins was born with cerebral palsy. This did not stop her from making her dreams come true. She graduated magna cum laude in Fine Arts and now has her own company: Graphics Afoot Studio Design.

Ellen - Using Assistive Technology

Ellen uses Assistive Technology to go about her day to day life - both at home and in college. Ellen has Cerebral Palsy and has difficulty controlling her body - she is able to access her Assistive Technology using two head switches. Through these head switches, Ellen is able to drive her powered chair, communicate with people, access the computer and internet and control her TV and household equipment.

Head-designed

Giesbert Nijhuis is paralyzed from the neck down due to a spinal cord injury caused by a car accident. He now designs t-shirts, CD covers, film posters and much more using a head pointer, an on-screen keyboard and his Mac.

Russ - Eye Gaze Communication

Russ uses his eyes to communicate and control his environment - other than a system of blinking that he uses with his wife, this is his main form of interaction.

Russ has very limited eye movement - only up and down - and so the system had to be customised specifically for him. To choose things Russ looks at it on the screen for a certain amount of time.

This video shows Russ using his system.

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Free Video Tutorials on Prototyping with Adobe FireWorks CS4

January 27, 2009

Creating HTML click-through prototypes


(Length: 7 minutes 19 seconds)

Creating interactive prototypes for reviews


(Length: 11 minutes 10 seconds)

Fireworks Rapid Prototyping Tips and Tricks


(Length: 9 minutes 42 seconds)

You can find more Adobe product videos at: Adobe TV.

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Anand Agarawala on BumpTop- a 3 D desktop environment

January 23, 2009

Anand Agarawala, interface designer, software developer and inventor, presented BumpTop in mid 2007 at TED.

BumpTop is a user interface that takes the usual desktop metaphor to a glorious, 3-D extreme, transforming file navigation into a freewheeling playground of crumpled documents and clipping-covered “walls”.

It was created as Anand Agarawala’s Masters Thesis at the University of Toronto. It is aimed at stylus interaction, making it more suitable for tablet PCs and palmtops.

BumpTop is set to release by April 2009. Sign up at the BumpTop website to receive a beta invite as soon as they open up the private beta which is on at the moment.

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The Zygote Interactive Ball by Tangible Interaction

January 6, 2009

Summary
Emitting light via internal LED lights, this lightweight helium filled orb responds to human touch – changing colour as it is punched, tapped, slapped or squeezed.

Zygote at Building Interactive Playgrounds, Florence, Italy

Zygote At SIGCHI Vancouver

Zygote at Sensation White ‘08, Amsterdam

(As put by Tangible Interaction- the creators of Zygote)

Zygote is a lightweight inflated ball, illuminated from within, that responds to pressure applied to its surface. Interacting with the ball is simple: punch it, bounce it, squeeze it, or tap it and the ball’s internal LEDs react instantaneously. With the ability to communicate each touch back to a computer program, zygote can also be used to control and manipulate music and video in real time.

Conversely, zygote can be controlled dynamically via computer, making it a stand out piece of decorative light which requires no physical interaction to change colour. This unique ball transforms otherwise ordinary events into multi-dimensional, interactive playgrounds that actively engage audience members in a holistic shared experience.

Furthermore, without any interaction, both the Zygote or Telophase can be used as a stationary light installation controled, live, like a DJ mixes music. Creating completely holistic, fun, interactive experiences is easy with the Zygote or Telophase.

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Microsoft releases SeaDragon Mobile for the iPhone & iPod Touch

December 21, 2008

Link to download SeaDragon Mobile free from the iTunes App store

Video: Using SeaDragon Mobile on the iPhone


(Length: 5 minutes 44 seconds)

What is SeaDragon Mobile?

SeaDragon Mobile is a free application available at present only for the iPhone and iPod Touch that lets you explore and deep zoom in and out of collections of gigapixel images over the web smoothly without any irritating time lags. There are 50 sample images that are included with the application for you to enjoy. Besides that, you can add content through other Photosynth users and RSS feeds such as Flickr and Deep Zoom Content.

More about SeaDragon?

SeaDragon is a Microsoft Live labs project and is also at the core technology behind the Photosynth photo browsing program. Here’s a interesting TED Talk video SeaDragon and PhotoSynth you can watch if interested.

What is a gigapixel image?

A gigapixel image is a digital image bitmap composed of one billion pixels (that’s more than 150 times the information captured by a 6 megapixel digital camera).

Is SeaDragon Mobile available for my phone?

If you’re phone is the iPhone or you own an iPod touch, yes. At present, SeaDragon mobile is available only for these devices.

Where can I download the SeaDragon Mobile from? And for how much?

SeaDragon can be downloaded for free from the iTunes App store.

Why did Microsoft release SeaDragon on the iPhone/ iPod Touch instead of a Windows Mobile phone?

This is how Alex Daley, group product manager for Microsoft Live Labs, reasons it:

The iPhone is the most widely distributed phone with a (graphics processing unit). Most phones out today don’t have accelerated graphics in them. The iPhone does and so it enabled us to do something that has been previously difficult to do. I couldn’t just pick up a BlackBerry or a Nokia off the shelf and build Seadragon for it without GPU support.

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Jan Chipchase- Nine trends shaping the future of social interactions

December 17, 2008


(length: 23 minutes)

Moderated by Bruno Giussani, this talk by Jan Chipchase where he details the nine trends he thinks will shape the future of social interactions. He identified these trends through extensive field work he and his team are conducting around the world. Jan’s work shows how the digital devices are creating new practices and usages by becoming smaller and smaller, opening up a new design space for the mobile industry.

Jan Chipchase is the Principal Researcher at Nokia Design and lives and works in Tokyo.

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A fantastic Creative- The Happy Dent Palace TV Ad

November 26, 2008

This “Happy Dent Palace” ad is one of the best television ads I’ve ever seen. It’s been running since a long time, with svelte music and an awesome concept, it’s seems hard to ever get tired of this watching this ad.

Credits
Title: Happy Dent Palace
Executive Creative Director, Creative Director: Prasoon Joshi
Art Director: Prasoon Joshi/Anirban Sen
Director: Ram Madhvani
Music - Artist/Title: Shantanu Moitra/Prasoon Joshi
Sung by: Kailash Kher, Pranav Biswas, Shantanu Moitra and Prasoon Joshi
Sound Design/Arrangement: Jiten Solanki
Ad Agency: McCann Erickson, Mumbai, India
Production Company: Equinox Films, Mumbai, India
Post Production: Prime Focus Plus Agency: McCann-Erickson Mumbai
Filmed at: Panvel, near Mumbai, India

Transcript
(As given at The Inspiration Room)
A young man on a bicycle crosses a bridge, clearly in a hurry to reach his destination. However his bike collapses, the wheel falling into the river. He tries hitching a lift from a car with men sitting where the headlights should be. The young man enters the town at dusk. As he passes lamp posts in the town we see men hanging from them. The young sneaks into the grounds of a palace. He passes a tennis court, a swimming pool, a ballroom. The young man reaches a balcony from which he jumps into a chandelier hanging over a dining table. He takes out his HappyDent White gum and starts chewing, his incandescent smile starting a chain reaction. Other men follow suit, lighting up the dining table, the swimming pool, the tennis court and even the road.

Did you like the ad too? Which ones are your favorites? What’s the one ad you love the most?

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g-speak: Minority Report Gesture based User Interface now Reality

November 23, 2008

What we see above is no longer something that’s can only be part of sci-fi movie. The g-speak spatial operating environment (SOE) is a new computing platform that has been developed by Oblong Industries. The platform on which multiple users can work at a time using interacting through the gesture based interface is optimized for largedata sets and time critical work.

As is mentioned on Oblong’s website:

…g-speak will fundamentally change the way people use machines at work, in the living room, in conference rooms, in vehicles… Its idiom of spatial immediacy and information responsive to real-world geometry enables a necessary new kind of work: data-intensive, embodied, real-time, predicated on universal human expertise.

Some of the SOE’s core ideas are already familiar from the film Minority Report, whose characters performed forensic analysis using massive, gesturally driven displays. The similarity is no coincidence: one of Oblong’s founders served as science advisor to Minority Report and based the design of those scenes directly on his earlier work at MIT. The g-speak platform braids development arcs begun in the early 1990s at MIT’s Media Laboratory, where Oblong’s principals produced radical user interface advances, distributed and networked language designs, and media manipulation technologies.

From academia; into popular cinema; and out broadly into the world as commercial product: it’s an unordinary path for technical thought and effort, but one — leading to g-speak — that seems now logical and even necessary. The people who work in Oblong’s Los Angeles and Barcelona laboratory offices are as concerned with design as with programming, with humanist principles as with running a company. Synthesizing these concerns is the only way to insure that the metamorphosis of human-computer interaction we offer the world will be one of beauty and durable worth.

What do you think if g-speak? Have you come across other cool stuff that was part of the movies but is pretty real now?

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The Philips Green Cuisine Concept Table/ Kitchen/ Cooking Top

November 19, 2008

The philips green cusine table with a sink and heating and cooling table top

The above image and video display the new Philips ‘Green Cuisine’ concept.

What is the Philips Green Cuisine Concept about?

  • It’s a table
  • that has a sink in it
  • and an under-table composter that produces soil tablets to grow fresh herbs into the mini garden (which is also built into the table).
  • You can cook on it and then eat on it. Save space!
  • Cook or cool anywhere on it. Place the kettles and pans (or wine cooler) where ever you please. Move it around. The energy (and the interface) will follow the surface of the object.
  • The interaction with the table is gesture based. The GUI consists of concentric rings and sliders allows temperature levels and timings to be set easily.
  • It comes with a healthy steamer, smart kettle & cups set, and cooling compartments (including a wine cooler set).
  • It’s not available in the market yet. It should be available in 3-5 years, according to it’s creator, Philips.

To know more about it, read the “Philips Simplicity Event 2008 - Green Cuisine Concept” press release.

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