His Royal Highness The Duke of Kent visited The Aidis Trust yesterday (Monday 17th October 2016) to see how it provides vital support for disabled people of all ages, enabling them to benefit from and be empowered by the latest computing technologies.
Speech recognition was initially designed for people who felt they needed to do lots of typing but couldn’t touch-type, otherwise known as the one-finger typing brigade or ‘hen-peckers’. However, it soon became apparent that there were disabled people out there, who couldn’t type by hand or struggled with literacy, who were suddenly thrown a computer life-line.
This week, I’ll be discussing how speech recognition can be used to control computer technology. This is nothing new, however, it is often misunderstood and as it’s being rolled out to different computer platforms with differing success and considerations, we thought we’d better take a fresh look.
In my 14 years of working with disabled people and the technology designed to help them, I have spent a lot of time with Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC). The type of AAC that I have been involved in is provided by computer technology, a branch of electronic assistive technology (eAT).
As part of my latest insight into the world of Electronic Assistive Technology, I’ve decided to dip into the world of Switches. An alternative way for people with greatly reduced mobility and/or cognitive ability to access computers.
