[laptop-accessibility] neophyte with an interest in accessibility for old folks

[Peter Korn]

Hi Paula,

I very much hope to see the XO become a good option for this use 
(speaking as a non-OLPC employee).  Depending upon your father's needs, 
this may take a shorter or longer amount of time.  In particular, with 
the keyboard designed for a child's hands, his decreased manual 
dexterity will at a minimum likely benefit greatly from an 
external/additional input device - whether it is a full keyboard, or a 
specialized keyboard like the IntelliKeys family, or a single switch 
interface, or a head tracker.

If you are seeking a computer for him in the very short term, you may 
want to look at other options, including open source UNIX options (using 
many similar underlying components to the XO - namely X Windows & GNOME 
& Linux).  There are a number of relatively inexpensive laptops (<$400) 
which will run things like Ubuntu 7.10 which might be a very interesting 
option for him - and on which AT tools for folks with physical 
impairments like GOK and Dasher work very nicely.  GOK can be driven 
from a single switch device (essentially a USB mouse button, but costing 
significantly more and coming in a wide range of sizes and styles - see 
http://www.enablemart.com/Catalog/Switches for a catalog of them; and 
get one either with USB built in, or a USB converter box).  Dasher is 
optimally used from an (x,y) tracking device (e.g. a head mouse, though 
a standard mouse will also work).  GOK can also be driven by [head] 
mouse (and Dasher also by switch).  GOK & Dasher are core parts of 
GNOME; have been for several years now...


Regards,


Peter Korn
Accessibility Architect,
Sun Microsystems, Inc.


> Greetings,
> I just ordered an XO this evening (G1G1), and started looking around this
> site and the support wiki. I'm a layman in terms of computers and
> networking, and have no formal education or experience with the disabled. My
> informal experience is that I care for my elderly parents and have been
> educating myself online about mental decline and physical accessibility
> issues and have subsequently done quite a few adaptations in their home.
> 
> My big idea for the XO is to give my father access to the Internet. He's 81,
> mobility impaired, has decreased manual dexterity and some short-term memory
> loss. His cognitive function is still good, though, so I am hoping that he
> will be able to operate a laptop that has intuitive controls even if he's
> not able to remember how it works. Essentially, he'll have to figure out how
> to use it each time, until the knowledge seeps into his long-term memory. He
> has been using computers for years, at work and at home since the early
> 1980s, but he hasn't been able to sit at a desk or follow multistep command
> paths for about 10 years.
> 
> Is this an area of interest for developers and users here? Using the XO
> laptop to improve quality of life for the elderly population? If so, and if
> there's anything specific you'd like me to keep track of, please let me
> know. I'll be learning how to use the laptop along with him.
> 
> Now I'll go back to lurking.
> Regards,
> Paula
> 
> Paula Gordon
> Wilmington, DE
> 
> 
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