Getting rid of CEO Travis Kalanick has apparently not magically resolved all of ride-hailing giant Uber’s many, many problems, with the company now facing a lawsuit in New York over its near-total lack of cars accessible to people with wheelchairs.
According to the Telegraph, the World Health Organization will change its definition of disabilities to classify people without a sexual partner as “infertile.” The controversial new classifications will make it so that heterosexual single men and women, as well as gay men and women who are seeking in vitro…
Using a computer can be difficult or even impossible for some people with disabilities. Now, Samsung's eye-tracking technology allows people who would struggle to use a mouse to navigate their computer with relative ease.
If someone with a hearing disability wants to watch a film that isn't already subtitled, they have very few options. But now, Sony UK is developing a pair of glasses that display subtitles in time with a given film.
The latest Kinect feat is part of the wi-Go project, as designed by Luis de Matos. With the help of a laptop and a Kinect, this shopping cart can make the lives of the disabled, elderly, or pregnant women easier.
Victor Pauca has a genetic disorder that makes his speech development slower than other kids. So his father, Paul Pauca, along with his students at Wake Forest, made an iPhone and iPad app that helps Victor speak. It's rather inspirational.
Lance Blair was 18 when a truck blew a red light and removed his lower leg. "There was about a pinky-width of meat holding it on." So Lance did the obvious thing: He built a diesel-powered wheelchair-accessible 4x4 adventure truck.
Two Japanese companies are teaming up to develop a karaoke system for the blind called the Seika. Hooking up to a PC via USB, custom software will import karaoke lyrics and convert them into 40 characters of braille on a separate "display." The result is a realtime, networkable lyrics feed for those who may not have a…
One of the pet projects of Ray Kurzweil, genius inventor and futurist, is camera-based reading for blind and learning-disabled people. His original designs were chunky by our standards, a Canon Digital Elph literally strapped to a PDA. Now, working with the National Federation of the Blind, Kurzweil's group has shrunk…
This touchless keyboard system's breakthrough is that it combines both the typing and the mousing in a single sensor. When configured on a standard PC, the user wears the headgear shown in the picture, and navigates and types by moving their head and neck. Here's what separates this product from similar ones:
The August, 1976 issue of The Futurist magazine ran this blurb about the need for humanized machines, which would make technology less intimidating for the average user. The piece appears to have originally appeared in Hal Hellman's 1976 book Technophobia: Getting Out of the Technology Trap.
Swedish company Tobii is about to release its MyTobii P10, a PC that can be controlled by tracking your eye movements using its own proprietary hardware and software. Follow a calibrating dot on the screen with your eyes for 30 seconds, and that's all it's necessary to make it so you can control this PC without…
Inventor Raymond Kurzweil has worked for many years trying to improve the quality of life of the visually impaired and his latest creation, the K-NFB combination PDA+digital camera, finally does so affordably. What the K-NFB does it take pictures of objects—menus, signs, gadget blogs, etc.—and then reads aloud the…
