• Neuropsychology - (To check my mood during my treatment. I think I did okay with this as it was but it’s part of the program for just about everyone)
• Occupational Therapy (To be sure my day-to-day activities and responsiblities could be maximized and potential compensations for any supposed or indentified deficiencies be brought forth)
• Physical Therapy (To be sure my energy level and my body was performing as normally as possible)
• Speech and Language Therapy (To help in areas related to visual scanning, language processing, and deductive reasoning) In actuality my OT and SLT sessions sometimes overlapped and my therapists threw several curve balls my way to be sure I could reach my fullest potential. As self-revealing as that was, it was very effective

There were other experiences that led up to this point in time, but suffice it to say, I’ve been performing well. My supervisor and co-workers have been very supportive. My clientele routinely tell me they can’t tell me any difference in my personality. That’s an inside-the-box, vs. outside-the-box perspective issue. The charts and graphs of my cognitive rehabilitation exercises show that considerable progress was made. In order to justify considerable, the tasks that patients in this program all go through include doing paper-pencil exercises and other tasks that stretch and bend your mind so that new neural pathways can be made and if not, what compensations could be made.

As part of all this, one of my new side-projects I’m taking on is to take some of the assessment tools and exercises I was given as paper-pencil tests and try to digitize them into programs that anyone can do online at home. My platform of choice is likely going to be Adobe Flex/AIR as that is what I’m most familiar with. I’ll keep everyone updated as I progress.

This is Sarah Outwater, a young woman who has been blind since she was 3 years old. She’s a cancer survivor (metastatic retinoblastoma) and has been in her condition ever since she had surgery on her eyes to protect her from the deadly disease.

I was invited to participate in a charity project for a little girl she had heard of on the news who was in a similar condition as she was at her age, except technology has advanced and this little girl (last I heard) was free of her cancer and still able to see.

Sarah is an extremely intelligent girl and can play several different musical instruments and uses technology to support her education and professional career goals. In her charity project, she was compiling a music album and asking for donations to help the family of the girl who was receiving cancer treatments. As part of my donation, I offered to build a web site and create/donate some multimedia presentations for benefit concerts and post them on the website (This was before I heard of YouTube). Sarah brought her laptop to my workplace and we cut some video interviews together and I showed her how to edit content for the website. Later we were joking together in a group meeting about how people and technology interact. I made the quip that people who talk to their technology to get it to do obscure things are borderline bonkers, and she retorted "well that’s nothing. My technology talks to me!"

Of course it was true. In our interactions for her laptop was equipped with screen reading technology that allowed her to complete her work for school and work on her music projects. This is a prime example of adaptive use of technology for a population that predominantly gets their work done despite the fact that they can’t see what they are doing.

However, that’s not the only way people who can’t make use of their eyes to do their work continue to survive. They must be able to use their other senses. Audio alone in my humble opinion is not the savior of interaction with technology. People must be able to use their other senses too. Which of the remaining  4 senses makes the most sense for HCI for blind people? Touch or tactile surfaces is what’s coming to mind.

Here is something that Macrodobia (Adobe the company and Macromedia‘s Technology) have been pushing for a while…the idea that consistent technology for authoring multimedia content be available on a multitude of devices. What this means is that soon someday we will be seeing flash on tons of personal handheld devices.

I also suspect we will see flash interfaces on other devices too such as kitchen appliances and home entertainment center components. Even more sobering would be to see it in public facilities and transportation devices such as elevators.

Adobe is really pushing their flash platform which is really good for people like me who enjoy learning about their platform. What I would really like to see is an concerted effort to research what accessibility options exist for persons who can’t use their eyes to interact with interfaces that will potentially be flat and non-tactile.

Even Apple’s iPhone with all its glitz and glory has its issues. How does a person who can’t see be excited about an iPhone for their communication needs? Sarah had no problem using her cell phone to communicate, and could very easily find the buttons to push because she could feel them with her fingers. Voice activation is probably on the horizon and may become mandatory for devices using these interfaces, and I will be waiting to see what advances are on their way with Adobe’s technology.

[flashvideo width="320" height="240" filename="videos/video.flv" /]

Adobe announced early last week that they are extending new capabilities into their acquired Flash technology:

Adobe Extends Web Video Leadership with H.264 Support

Basically what this means is that traditionally fat-client-like video technology is coming to the desktop via a primarily thin-client channel. For a discussion or definition of fat vs. thin video client technology, please see my article on CTLPedia

Adobe’s official Labs page describes it here: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer9/

A very thorough techie discussion about what this does in terms of this upcoming video technology available to users of the web is posted here: http://www.kaourantin.net/2007/08/what-just-happened-to-video-on-web_20.html

My takes, and its implications on what will happen to online education?

• In terms of a video technology that will give us a great out of the box experience and just work, if it catches on and doesn’t succumb to the competition by not restricting it to a proprietary platform, it has the potential to be a ubiquitous media platform for the web. If this is the case, learners will become unaware of the technology and just use it without worrying about configuring their computer.
• Educational media producers could potentially target both HD television displays AND the web at the same time using similar production workflows. Especially with the advent of services like YouTube and AppleTV becoming integrated.