Assistive technology- What’s that?
“I am 100% blind and I really love programming in c++”, “Internet browsing and reading online books is my favorite pastime; doesn’t matter whether I can move my hands”, “’BLACK’ is the best movie I have ever seen; and you are reading it right; I am visually challenged”.
People get astonished and sometimes they find it hard to believe when they hear/read such statements. The credit goes to the technologies which make all this possible for differently able individuals popularly known as Assistive Technologies (ATs). These technologies comprise hardware, software or combination of both. They assist user to accomplish the tasks which otherwise the user can not perform. They augment the gap between required abilities and abilities which user have. They adapt the system to the constrained operating environment user is living with.
As a concept Assistive technology was always known to us, the most ancient assistive technology Mankind uses is magnification glass. But focus of this note is ATs relevant to human machine interaction.
Here are some examples:
· screen readers, programs those transform the GUI into stream of audio
· screen magnifiers, programs to enlarge the information on the screen
· sip and puff devices to control the mouse movement using breath
· Voice recognition software to accept spoken input
· On screen keyboards
· Touch screens
Usually these products are highly sophisticated and technology intensive.
Author: Shrirang_s@infosys.com
