This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
IDK if we should be calling something that requires so much training and dexterity an "accessibility device".
With the expense of the hardware, the learning curve for the user, and the friction of wearing all that stuff, this is going to have to solve a compelling problem to be useful. Especially when "good enough" solutions are everywhere and free.
I possibly disagree — I'm a part time wheelchair user (as well as other disability related devices/aids) and I'm always fascinated by how dynamic and relative the concept of "accessibility" is, even if we're only considering the perspective of one person. For example, for me, using my wheelchair often means trading one kind of pain for another, and depending on specific circumstances, that might not be worth it. Being disabled often forces you to get creative in hacking together many different solutions, balancing the tradeoffs such that the "cost" of using one tool is accounted for by the benefits of another. I wish I could recall some specific examples to share with you, but I have seen friends be incredibly inventive in using regular items in a context that makes them into accessibility devices, if that makes sense.
This is all to say that expensive hardware, learning curves, unpleasant tradeoffs like friction of wearing — all of these things are core to my experience of most accessibility devices I've ever used. For any prospective accessibility device, the key question is "given the various costs and inconveniences, are the benefits of this thing worth it?". Even without knowing much about this specific device, I would wager that for some disabled people, it absolutely would be net helpful.
That being said, you raise a good point, in that "accessibility" is often used as marketing hype, and in its worst form, this looks like disabled people's experiences being exploited to develop and sell a product that doesn't actually care about being accessible, so long as it has the appearance of such for investors. I'm not saying that's what this product is doing, but certainly I am primed to be wary of stuff like this.
Even besides the exploitative instances that I allude to, you're right to draw attention to existing products on the market. It's possible that some disabled people struggle to make use of devices that would be "good enough" for most (and maybe these people are who this new device is aimed at helping), but with accessibility stuff, it's far too easy for well-meaning people to jump to making new gadgets or tools, instead of meaningfully examining why the existing "good enough" solutions are inaccessible for some. A specific example that's coming to mind is someone I met who had a super high tech prosthetic limb that was so hilariously impractical compared to her existing options that this new one literally never got used. She said that it's a shame that such an expensive bit of kit is made functionally useless by much more basic designs, but she's learned that excited engineers are rarely receptive to being told about the practical problems with their new devices.
TL;DR: i think your instinct to be cautious about invoking accessibility is wise, though my own caution comes from a different context
Edit: I watched the video and I feel less dubious of this device after learning that this particular project arose following an email from someone who was mute and would find something like this useful. It helps that CharaChorder's chording keyboards are established (albeit super niche) products, and this project is less about a fancy new device, and more like "chording keyboards like ours allows for faster typing than any other method, with training. Maybe this means it could be an effective text-to-speech input method. Let's find out".
That is insanely awesome!
That was an awesome demo. I love seeing stuff like this.
The negative comments in here genuinely surprise me, though. It's not a bad thing if the "market" for this sort of thing is small. If people exist who want it and can benefit from it, and if the business practices aren't predatory, then it seems to have real value.
Chording keyboards are never likely to become mainstream because they have a steep learning curve. That doesn't mean they aren't a great idea or that they don't work quite well. This looks like an unusually clever implementation of the concept.
The particular application makes a lot of sense. The combination of a wearable keyboard with extremely fast typing and text-to-speech would solve a real problem for people who can't talk.
Personally, I've played around with chording, but came to the conclusion that I actually don't need that much typing speed. Most of my typing is either coding or writing emails. In either case, I stop to think about what I want to write often enough to keep my maximum word rate quite low. I can type around 90 wpm on a regular keyboard, which is still faster than I can compose.
Yeah, awesome accessibility device.
It sure seems like a cool accessibility tool, but he spent the whole time taking about why he did it, and magnets, that it glosses over the "how does it work?" Part that really matters. It's not just a keyboard, so I'm sure there's more to it. I'm hoping he has other videos that explain the concept.
I checked out the website and the basic principle is that you can type words with "chords" or a specific combination of keys. The wikipedia page for Chorded keyboard has their product as an example on it.
For anyone who doesn't want to have to sit through ads and dig through menus just to get to the website: https://www.charachorder.com/
So he reinvented stenography?
Yeah but it’s a different type of steno machine. You can also just type on it without using chords. So you can use it in applications where a steno machine wouldn’t work. Like in programming.
I guess that's why he's more focused on the magnets and such since that's where the innovation lies.
yep, and the debates got so heated in the plover server that the channel for it got taken away lmao
A steno machine is just a kind of chorded keyboard.
This would be really useful with a personal translator device to avoid the awkwardness of saying something and waiting for the translator to repeat it in the other language. You could be wearing glasses or headphones and typing on this and having a totally natural 2 way conversation in a language you can't speak.
This is just portable stenography, right?
Also works as a birth control method.
Yes, the most important concern with accessibility devices: "Does it make me look attractive?"
It also removes humor it seems.
I mean, it's the first prototype iteration of it, I'm sure there'll be aesthetic improvements. Not to mention, this might be something some people would only use for specific situations where faster, more natural feeling conversation could be beneficial (e.g. meetings, presentations, meet and greets, etc) versus all day everyday. Lastly, even if used all day, every day, if you're turned off from someone with a disability because they use a device like this, then honestly it's helping that person avoid assholes.
Edit: I'm apparently wrong, this is the 2nd iteration. But the first iteration was even bulkier and more obvious, so it doesn't really contradict my first point.
Not the guy you replied to, but am the guy below him.
I mean, it’s the first prototype iteration of it, I’m sure there’ll be aesthetic improvements. ...
That's all reasonable and good, post title got me because I was expecting something more refined, but that's mostly my own interpretive fault. Came in expecting a consumer-ready, probably made in china, cool gadget, not a still-under-refinement accessibility device. As an accessibility device it makes total sense...
Yeah I was ready to be excited.
This is just an ad.
A crummy commercial?!
This is actually pretty cool. Originally created due to an email from someone who was mute.
"Is that guy diddling himself in public?"
The grandfather of this device was called the Twiddler.
Leave him alone. This is as close as he gets to intamacy.
That's as close as you get to it as well, and still not quite there...
😉
All I see is
Snow Crash is a fantastic book.
Lmfao is the guys name really "Hiro Protagonist"? And I thought 40k universe names were too on the nose
As others have mentioned, the book knows what it is, and doesn't over reach its ability to make the silly entertaining. It's a popcorn action movie of a book. As boatswain mentioned, the book is simi-satire, something that Ready Player One didn't seem to understand when it ripped it off.
Snow Crash is almost kinda satire, but also not. Also, I believe, the first use of the term "metaverae". It's a fun read.
Alright I'll read it, the Wikipedia made it look sweet
Lol. This will be about as popular as all the speciality keyboards that have claimed to be faster/better at typing.
Specialty input devices are impossible market to crack, because what YOU design the changed input to be is almost 90% not going to translate for other people. This thing looks to have 10 inputs, so there's a massive number of key combos and changes one has to memorize. Not gonna happen.
I think you're just being contrarian for no reason. The market for specialty input devices is much smaller compared to "normal" keyboards but it still exists and has become much more diverse over the past decade, with many new niche products being launched. This isn't even the first commercially available chorded keyboard. From the video, this particular iteration seems to be marketed towards mute people and I'm sure that they or people with other kinds of disabilities are probably glad to have any products at all available to aid them in daily tasks. Not every product or company needs to participate in a high volume market. Apparently, the chorded inputs can also be reprogrammed and it can work in a normal keyboard mode, which should make it more flexible than something designed purely for stenography.
Nope. Definitely got a reason, and it's stated. There have been countless reworks of keyboards, for example, that promise lots of benefits, but it's a problem that doesn't need solving for most people. What's a 30% increase in typing speed with a 200% learning curve going to do for most people? Not much. I've seen hundreds come and go throughout the years in engineering teams, and people always go back to the thing they learned on.
That being said, as someone else pointed out in this thread, this is essentially just a remix of stenography. They're trying to make it seem more useful than it is, which whatever, it's their product. The thing that is most problematic about this particular product is the cognitive dissonance of staring at someone like this guy making weird faces and not speaking, where you're actually listening to his phone.
Now, is this a solution for mute people? Quite possibly. Is it better than natural language conversational translation by a device in normal conversation? Not a chance.
