Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello, everybody,
Speaker 1: welcome to tech Stuff. My name is Chris Pollette, and
Speaker 1: I'm an editor here at how stuff works dot Com.
Speaker 1: Sitting across the table from me as usual as senior
Speaker 1: writer Jonathan Strickland. Hey there, Crispy. I don't know where
Speaker 1: you've got that from, but you can put it right back.
Speaker 1: Your first name is Chris, your last name begins with
Speaker 1: a P. CHRISP Crispy, and you shall be known as
Speaker 1: Crispy for evermore amongst all the tech stuff listeners show.
Speaker 1: I degree great. Actually, we're actually going to be a
Speaker 1: little bit more somber than usual, serious stuff to talk
Speaker 1: talk about. Um and um yeah. I mean we've had
Speaker 1: a couple of people right in and ask us about
Speaker 1: technology for people who have you know, yeah, yeah, we're
Speaker 1: talking about a system of technology. Yes, and it's specifically
Speaker 1: technology that assists people who otherwise would find it difficult
Speaker 1: to lead. Uh. Well, I hesitate to say a normal life,
Speaker 1: but what we would normally what we would consider a
Speaker 1: normal life. I suppose basically helps them accomplished tasks that
Speaker 1: they cannot do normally exactly right. So this has a
Speaker 1: very wide range, um, because there are lots of different
Speaker 1: things that you could need assistance with, and there are
Speaker 1: a lot of things that technology can do to help you.
Speaker 1: So um, this is probably really just kind of a
Speaker 1: general overview because there's no way we could cover everything
Speaker 1: in a normal podcast. It would take hours and hours
Speaker 1: to talk about some of the incredible innovations that are
Speaker 1: out there that can help people. And some of them
Speaker 1: are very basic. Some of them aren't necessarily the super
Speaker 1: high tech solution, but they're very clever and they are effective,
Speaker 1: so we should talk about them. Some of them actually
Speaker 1: aren't even brand new. Um. One of the first ones
Speaker 1: I thought of as I started writing down ideas is
Speaker 1: the hearing aid. That's a good example because I mean,
Speaker 1: of course they haven't always been like they are now,
Speaker 1: but uh, you know, the pieces, the earpieces that people
Speaker 1: wear now are almost indistinguishable. I mean, they're very very
Speaker 1: difficult to tell that someone is even wearing a hearing aid,
Speaker 1: and they're very very efficient. But inside that tiny little
Speaker 1: package you've got, you've got to have a number of
Speaker 1: things in there, including a microphone, a speaker, and an
Speaker 1: amplifier and you know, the battery and it and it
Speaker 1: has made people's lives very very easy people who have
Speaker 1: difficulty hearing. Basically UM transferring those sounds to the the
Speaker 1: little hairs in your ear and UM. Through that you
Speaker 1: can you can hear, not completely normally, but that is
Speaker 1: you know, I wasn't even thinking of that as an
Speaker 1: assistant technology, but that's been around for you know, for
Speaker 1: decades now. A similar one that's been around for a
Speaker 1: few decades is the teletypewriter. Oh yeah, So this is
Speaker 1: something that people who have other people who might have,
Speaker 1: you know, a hearing impairment would use, uh in order
Speaker 1: to communicate over phone lines. Now, before we had cell
Speaker 1: phones where you could text like crazy and all that
Speaker 1: that kind of mess if you wanted, if you were
Speaker 1: if you were someone who had a really serious hearing impairment,
Speaker 1: if you were deaf or just had a very poor hearing, um,
Speaker 1: there weren't too many options that you had in order
Speaker 1: to communicate over the phone. One of the few ones
Speaker 1: was the teletypewriter. And the teletypewriter it looks like it
Speaker 1: looks kind of like a typewriter and uh that connects
Speaker 1: to a phone. It actually transmits information over phone lines. Um.
Speaker 1: And in order to really communicate with one, you essentially
Speaker 1: needed to have one on both ends of the line,
Speaker 1: or you needed to have an operator between uh, the
Speaker 1: person who was calling normally and the person who was
Speaker 1: on the teletypewriter, because you couldn't just you know, receive
Speaker 1: voice over the phone line and have the teletypewriter transmit
Speaker 1: that into into text. It didn't work that way right, right,
Speaker 1: And speaking from personal experience, UM, if you receive a
Speaker 1: call from from an operator uh working with someone using
Speaker 1: a teletypewriter, it's it's kind of nerve wracking because you
Speaker 1: want to be respectful to the person on the other end,
Speaker 1: but you may not necessarily necessarily know how that works.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of difficult because they're transcribing everything you're saying,
Speaker 1: and when you basically say, hey, well I have a question,
Speaker 1: they're typing that like no, no, I'm asking you, the operator,
Speaker 1: can you help me with this because I don't know
Speaker 1: what you know, right, And if you get a smart
Speaker 1: test for an operator, they're saying things like they're totally
Speaker 1: saying that you're ugly yeah, I haven't had that problem. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well we can talk about my previous job experience in
Speaker 1: a different podcasts. So yeah, the teletypewriter, that was another
Speaker 1: example of technology that's been around for a while where
Speaker 1: was just a clever use of tech to allow people
Speaker 1: to have more options when they're communicating. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: it's a simple idea, but it was definitely a revolutionary
Speaker 1: thing in the lives of many millions of people. But
Speaker 1: that's just the tip of the iceberg. I was gonna
Speaker 1: site another every night every day when before we got
Speaker 1: into the super duper high tech closed captioning good, which
Speaker 1: actually is is very similar in some ways to the
Speaker 1: teletypewriter in the operator because, um, when you have a
Speaker 1: live show going on, um you have somebody listening to
Speaker 1: what's going on during the show and you know, trying
Speaker 1: to transcribe it as they are speaking, which can be
Speaker 1: I imagine amazingly difficult, especially judging when you see the
Speaker 1: typos that pop up on the screen, and I'm you know,
Speaker 1: I I smirk it those, I admit, but I think
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have done any better. As a matter of fact,
Speaker 1: I probably would have been far far worse. So I
Speaker 1: appreciate their you'll see some interesting homonyms throwing and there
Speaker 1: are things like that. But yeah, you know, these these
Speaker 1: are even when they're using special keyboards that have macros
Speaker 1: or or certain common words already programmed into them, so
Speaker 1: that way all you have to do is hit one
Speaker 1: key stroke too to do an entire word. Even when
Speaker 1: you're doing that, you're still talking about having to type
Speaker 1: an incredible rate. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. But my favorite when
Speaker 1: you have the clothes captioning turned on is when they
Speaker 1: have the shows that have already been captioned, um, and
Speaker 1: there's music and it says music and it has that
Speaker 1: little note because I just thought it's kind of nice
Speaker 1: they bother to include that. M yep, yeah, you get
Speaker 1: the little anyway. Sorry, well, here here's some other we
Speaker 1: can go some other basic technology things like they're very
Speaker 1: various special keyboards that are out for people who have
Speaker 1: other problems, Like there are keyboards that have oversized keys,
Speaker 1: and they're they're maybe extra sensitive, so people who have trouble,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe someone who couldn't push down on an
Speaker 1: normal key the way that that you and I could
Speaker 1: could be able to type without any problem using one
Speaker 1: of these. They're also key keyboards that are especially made
Speaker 1: for people who have only the use of one hand. Um.
Speaker 1: So there are a lot of those on the market
Speaker 1: as well, and I mean they all are designed for
Speaker 1: very specific kinds of of of disabilities in mind. So
Speaker 1: that's also a a pretty common thing that you can
Speaker 1: find out in the world of tech. Yeah. UM. Text
Speaker 1: to speech software also very important. Yeah, because people who
Speaker 1: wouldn't otherwise be able to type. Um. Would you know
Speaker 1: that would be speech to text. Well, that's text to
Speaker 1: speech would be the other way around, that's true, Okay,
Speaker 1: speech to text. Well, we'll go in both directions. Speech
Speaker 1: to text, um would be very useful for someone who
Speaker 1: you know, may not be able to type necessarily, but
Speaker 1: they could speak into a microphone and have the computer
Speaker 1: transcribe and email someone um or um. You know, maybe
Speaker 1: even print out a letter, you know, for someone else
Speaker 1: to mail for them. Um. And then you have your
Speaker 1: text to speech, which I mean, hey, the Amazon Kindle
Speaker 1: has got it. Yeah, it's not necessarily enabled for every title, No,
Speaker 1: that your Kindle could read to you if you were
Speaker 1: not able to work the Kindle with your hands, right,
Speaker 1: if if the publisher enables that particular UM function, I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna take a moment here. Amazon. UM, I don't
Speaker 1: really blame you. It's not your fault. Amazon. You're working
Speaker 1: with lots and lots of publishers, and these publishers are
Speaker 1: afraid of technology because they're uh, their industry is based
Speaker 1: off a very old, venerable business model that has served
Speaker 1: them well for decades. So it's very scary to move
Speaker 1: into a new format where uh you have this electronic
Speaker 1: version of what you used to print out and hard copy.
Speaker 1: That electronic version it so ephemeral, and it could be
Speaker 1: spread around and there's you know, you think about how
Speaker 1: much money you could lose if what if one person
Speaker 1: gets hold of that book and then just spreads copies
Speaker 1: around for free. However, I don't think you can really
Speaker 1: uh it publishers. I don't think you would like to
Speaker 1: stand on when you say that that the the text
Speaker 1: to speech feature and endangers the sales of audio books,
Speaker 1: because an audio book is a completely different animal from
Speaker 1: a book read using text to speech. There's no real inflection,
Speaker 1: and text to speech there's no characterization. Uh. It's really
Speaker 1: a useful tool for people who have visual impairments. It
Speaker 1: is not something that you would want to listen to
Speaker 1: just for entertainment purposes. If you want that, you would
Speaker 1: obviously go out and buy the audio book version. I
Speaker 1: don't think anyone would think, oh, well now I can,
Speaker 1: I'll just buy the text copy because that text of
Speaker 1: speech voice. Let me tell you, that's so much better
Speaker 1: than hearing the novelist read it in his own voice
Speaker 1: or her own voice. So publishers, um, come on enable
Speaker 1: that function on more titles. Seriously, I just I think
Speaker 1: it's the right thing to do. That's Jonathan's opinion. Chris
Speaker 1: is just gonna sit back and let me rant your editorialize.
Speaker 1: I I feel very passionately about this. So but yes,
Speaker 1: those are very important features. I was also going to mention, um,
Speaker 1: you know you might you might say, well, this is
Speaker 1: a technology assistant. Technology is a very important field. But
Speaker 1: you know, you wonder why people, uh honestly, why some
Speaker 1: companies spend so much time and effort in in researching
Speaker 1: this stuff, because when you get down to it, like
Speaker 1: if you're going to be cold blooded and talk about capitalism, um,
Speaker 1: the market is, it's it's a niche market. But then
Speaker 1: you think about what would we lose if we didn't
Speaker 1: invest in assistive technology and the human element, like the
Speaker 1: the contributions that that people can make when with this
Speaker 1: assistant technology are amazing. And there's one example that just
Speaker 1: is forefront of my mind. It's obviously Dr Stephen Hawking.
Speaker 1: Now Doctor Hawking of course a brilliant mind, absolutely brilliant,
Speaker 1: and back when he started to to require technology in
Speaker 1: order to communicate after surgeries and disease um, originally he
Speaker 1: had a device that all allowed him to do was
Speaker 1: communicate one letter at a time. He had to build
Speaker 1: sentences one letter at a time. It took forever. And
Speaker 1: he points out now that with the technology has that
Speaker 1: you know, if if he had to rely on the
Speaker 1: old technology, he probably wouldn't have written several of the
Speaker 1: books that he's written, or been able to have the
Speaker 1: lectures that he's given at various universities, and the world
Speaker 1: would be a poorer place without those contributions. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's just the way it boils down. So this technology
Speaker 1: is very important because a lot of these people have attributions.
Speaker 1: I can't even begin to imagine sure, and without it
Speaker 1: we would never see it. So that's my other editorial.
Speaker 1: Uh boy, we should have let Jonathan get onto this podcast.
Speaker 1: Should we all right, let's get back to some more technology. Okay, Okay, well, um,
Speaker 1: you know, and and that's the other thing too, is that, um,
Speaker 1: some of this some of the research and development that
Speaker 1: goes into creating assisted of technologies for differently able to people, UM,
Speaker 1: sort of bleeds over into real life into other things
Speaker 1: that um, you know, everyone else can use too. I'm
Speaker 1: thinking back to our our podcast that we did on
Speaker 1: Ray Kurtzwile and the reader that he created, which has
Speaker 1: basically made its way over into the music industry. Sure, Um,
Speaker 1: you know Stevie Wonder being one of the very first
Speaker 1: people even lay his hands on one, which is you know,
Speaker 1: made them fast friends. I think that's pretty cool. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And there's other technology that has been used in vious
Speaker 1: UM devices that have found its way into two completely
Speaker 1: different inventions. For example, Dean came and we did a
Speaker 1: whole podcast on Dean came, and we mentioned his I
Speaker 1: bought the the very advanced electric wheelchair that he developed. Now,
Speaker 1: this wheelchair has got some really cool features on it,
Speaker 1: including the ability to climb stairs. It also has the
Speaker 1: ability to raise up on two wheels, so it suddenly
Speaker 1: allows the the person sitting in the chair to be
Speaker 1: at about eye level instead of at waist level, which
Speaker 1: for you know, someone who's standing up, which is fantastic.
Speaker 1: Was actually listening to a testimonial from someone using one
Speaker 1: of these chairs, and she said, I went to a
Speaker 1: hotel to make a reservation and I went up on
Speaker 1: two wheels, and I can you know, no one has
Speaker 1: to lean over the desk or come around the desk
Speaker 1: in order to talk to me, because now I'm suddenly
Speaker 1: standing I'm over the desk with this feature. Now that
Speaker 1: technology has found its way into other devices like the segue,
Speaker 1: the the the gyre of scopes that allow you to
Speaker 1: move the segway by leaning forward or leaning backward. That's
Speaker 1: also in this wheelchair, so people who are in the
Speaker 1: wheelchair can when they're up on the two wheels, they
Speaker 1: can manipulate the wheelchair by leaning forward and leaning backwards.
Speaker 1: I would be willing to bet that some of that
Speaker 1: technology is also in the center, which may never make
Speaker 1: it to market, but it looks super cool. Hint. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I mean. And while we're on the subject,
Speaker 1: with Dean came in it, we have to talk about
Speaker 1: the Luke arm. Okay, because now This is named after
Speaker 1: Luke Skywalker from a little movie. I didn't know that
Speaker 1: it is. You didn't know that. Yeah, it's named after
Speaker 1: Luke Skywalker. It's the Luke Arms, the robotic arm. And
Speaker 1: of course Luke spoiler alert gets his hand cut off
Speaker 1: an Empire, strikes back and then gets a an electronic
Speaker 1: one attached at the very end. Um, so that's a
Speaker 1: lot like his dear old dad, Darth Vader other spoiler alert,
Speaker 1: And so the Luke Arm is. What happened was Dean
Speaker 1: the way Dean came and talks about He says that
Speaker 1: someone from the Department of Defensive, very high level man
Speaker 1: came up to him and said, um, we have all
Speaker 1: these these soldiers coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan, many
Speaker 1: of whom have lost an arm. And the problem is
Speaker 1: that the technology for replacing a lost arm hasn't really
Speaker 1: advanced since the you know, the seventeen hundreds. So he says,
Speaker 1: the way he describes it, says, it's essentially a stick
Speaker 1: with a hook at the end, and they want something
Speaker 1: more advanced. They wanted something that was so advanced that
Speaker 1: you would be able to lift a grape or raisin
Speaker 1: off a table, be able to tell the difference without
Speaker 1: looking at it, and be able to lift it to
Speaker 1: your mouth and eat it without crushing it. So there
Speaker 1: were all these different UH parameters that came and had
Speaker 1: to put in the mind. And he first said, you're crazy.
Speaker 1: There's no technology that exists that would allow us to
Speaker 1: do this, especially on a level where the arm would
Speaker 1: be light enough for a human being to comfortably be
Speaker 1: able to use it. But came and went around, talked
Speaker 1: to some neurologists, He talked to some of the soldiers
Speaker 1: who came back. Was convinced that this was a worthy cause.
Speaker 1: He formed formulated a team, and after about a year
Speaker 1: of development, they had a nine pound arm that could
Speaker 1: do many of the things that they had hoped it
Speaker 1: could do. Now granted, right now, the arm is mainly
Speaker 1: controlled through a series of sensors that you actually attached
Speaker 1: to your shoes, so you use you you know, you
Speaker 1: might lean forward to make the arm go up, and
Speaker 1: you might lean to the right to make the wrist
Speaker 1: rotate a certain way. It's got fourteen points of articulation.
Speaker 1: There's some other sensors that attached to the you know,
Speaker 1: any remnant of an arm that the person might have
Speaker 1: or their shoulder that kind of thing, um, and they
Speaker 1: hope eventually to get to a sort of a neural
Speaker 1: muscular control system where you would actually have the controls
Speaker 1: implanted into the person's body and they would be able
Speaker 1: to control it with their mind and so you don't
Speaker 1: have to use any motor controls at all to to
Speaker 1: adjust it. There's some amazing videos online. I highly recommend
Speaker 1: you check them out because, um, this is the sort
Speaker 1: of technology that I find really inspiring. Um. I mean,
Speaker 1: these are very very smart people who see the need
Speaker 1: to solve a specific problem and they put everything they've
Speaker 1: got into it. So it's pretty it's pretty cool stuff. Yeah. Uh,
Speaker 1: let's see, I've got a lot of other like like
Speaker 1: not you know, important things, maybe not as impressive as
Speaker 1: the Luke arm or the iBOT, but like screen readers. Now,
Speaker 1: this is technology that's again for people who are visually impaired.
Speaker 1: A screen reader is essentially an an application that will
Speaker 1: uh analyze the contents on a screen and then translated
Speaker 1: in some way to convey that to the person sitting
Speaker 1: at the keyboard. Now that might be through a um,
Speaker 1: a text to speech uh program. So it may be
Speaker 1: that the computer talks to the person saying at the keyboard,
Speaker 1: or they they may have a brail keyboard. Rail keyboards
Speaker 1: are these these pads that have a section where little
Speaker 1: pins can pop up and they essentially spell out words
Speaker 1: and brail. So the visually impaired person would put his
Speaker 1: or her fingers over the this section and feel the
Speaker 1: pins as they come up, and they use piezo electric effects, so, um,
Speaker 1: you put a little electricity through and it pops the
Speaker 1: pin right up and they can read what's on the
Speaker 1: screen because it's been translated from whatever the text is
Speaker 1: into brail and then that is translated through the pins.
Speaker 1: It's pretty cool stuff. Actually, it's really cool. I've seen
Speaker 1: one working and it's I'm always astounded at how fast
Speaker 1: they move and how fat quickly people can read because
Speaker 1: it's just so foreign to me to be able to
Speaker 1: read through your sense of touch, and I mean, that's
Speaker 1: just it's amazing to to to see. Yeah, um, you know,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of standards out there to The
Speaker 1: Worldwide Web Consortium actually has standards for basically for screen
Speaker 1: readers to be able to read web pages. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: so it is possible that there, you know, that everyone
Speaker 1: can create web pages that other people can read as
Speaker 1: long as they conform to those standards, and the manufacturers
Speaker 1: of operating systems to also have a lot of assistive
Speaker 1: technology built right into the to the operating system. You
Speaker 1: can turn on features such as high contrast and um,
Speaker 1: you know, alter the the size of letters on the
Speaker 1: screen to make them easier for people who are have
Speaker 1: difficulty seeing to read the screen a little better. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: there's some that also will translate any audio cues into
Speaker 1: visual cues, so it might make the screen flash to
Speaker 1: let you know an alert has come through when normally,
Speaker 1: you know, you might just hear a chime. Um. So
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's little things like that that seem
Speaker 1: very simple, but they do make a big difference. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, thinking on it, you're like, well, yeah, that
Speaker 1: makes perfect sense, but someone had to come up with that.
Speaker 1: It's it's when you're when you're designing something for a
Speaker 1: wide audience, it's there are a lot of things that
Speaker 1: you may not take into consideration. Um. It's the same
Speaker 1: problem that people that I see with people who developed
Speaker 1: really really cool websites. They're developing really cool websites for
Speaker 1: the latest version of whatever browsers they want to support.
Speaker 1: But as you and I know, not everyone's using the
Speaker 1: latest browser. In fact, a relatively small number of people
Speaker 1: are using the latest browser. Most people are are at
Speaker 1: least a generation, if not two generations behind, and so
Speaker 1: when they go to visit the super cool website, their
Speaker 1: browser isn't able to display it the way it's meant
Speaker 1: to be displayed, and so it becomes a jumbled mess.
Speaker 1: So it's another one of those things where and when
Speaker 1: you're designing something now it might pay off to really
Speaker 1: take these sort of things into consideration. UM. I don't
Speaker 1: know if you saw this. It was a pretty recent
Speaker 1: news story. Did you hear about the the car developed
Speaker 1: by the Virginia Tech College of Engineering that allowed a
Speaker 1: blind man to drive? No? I didn't. Yeah, Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was interesting. It's a little doomed uggy style vehicle and
Speaker 1: I watched a video on it and they allowed this. Uh.
Speaker 1: One of the members of the teams a blind man
Speaker 1: who was behind the wheel of the car. Another student
Speaker 1: set next to him, and UM, it uses a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of different technologies to allow the blind person to drive.
Speaker 1: UM has laser range finders, it's got voice command software, um.
Speaker 1: And it's got a feedback system. It tells the driver
Speaker 1: which way to turn, so it starts to detect something
Speaker 1: that you might collide with us. You might want to
Speaker 1: turn left now so that the the driver doesn't collide
Speaker 1: with anything on the road. Now, granted, this is not
Speaker 1: something necessarily that we're going to see implemented on the
Speaker 1: streets any time in the foreseeable future. Not to use
Speaker 1: a horrible pun, but the you know, it's just it's
Speaker 1: an interesting use of technology. And now if you could
Speaker 1: fine tune it to a point where the car could
Speaker 1: definitely detect everything, then maybe, But I just don't I
Speaker 1: don't think that's possible really, although it could be a
Speaker 1: very good step in the direction of full full automation.
Speaker 1: That's true, However, um, I think the biggest problem in
Speaker 1: this case would be you need everybody to adopt that
Speaker 1: technology at the same time to prevent because I think
Speaker 1: the biggest hazard in that case would be other drivers
Speaker 1: because it's impossible to predict what they're doing right well.
Speaker 1: And and when you think about your car would become
Speaker 1: the ultimate backseat driver, yeah, because it would say things
Speaker 1: like this jerk is cutting you off. Flip them off.
Speaker 1: And cut to the left. I mean that's just you know,
Speaker 1: that's all right. I mean that's the way I would
Speaker 1: do it. But okay, so do you have any other
Speaker 1: technologies you wanted to talk about? UM? Yes, UM, sure,
Speaker 1: I do. Think one of the coolest things that I've
Speaker 1: seen is, uh, you know, they're there's it's sort of
Speaker 1: um still in the earlier implementation stages, but for people
Speaker 1: who can't use um, their hands to operate a computer
Speaker 1: and really may be unable to use their voices as well. UM.
Speaker 1: I've seen some uh, some scientists working on systems that
Speaker 1: sort of it sort of involves a combination of different
Speaker 1: technologies cameras and uh measurements of electrical impulses, but basically
Speaker 1: they follow um the user's eyes track eye movements. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they track eye movements, and basically they can operate the
Speaker 1: computer with you know, their eyes rather than you know,
Speaker 1: with their hands or with their voices. Which it is
Speaker 1: very cool technology. And I and I you know, have
Speaker 1: seen a little bit on it, and I know that
Speaker 1: it's not extremely far ahead, but just the idea that
Speaker 1: we would be able to do that, um and have
Speaker 1: it you know work, it's it's you know, fairly effective
Speaker 1: to UM. And you know, I have the feeling, based
Speaker 1: on what little I've read about it, that it will
Speaker 1: be a little while before it's commonplace and affordable enough
Speaker 1: for people who, um, who really need the technology to
Speaker 1: be able to use it. But um, this is another
Speaker 1: thing that could be very useful uh for all kinds
Speaker 1: of people once more search is done on it and
Speaker 1: you know, it becomes more commonplace. That's cool stuff. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I mean I've had a chance to see some
Speaker 1: of this technology at places like ce S and it's
Speaker 1: always really uh, one of my favorite spots to to
Speaker 1: stop on the show floor, just because, I mean you
Speaker 1: really see what how creative people can be with the
Speaker 1: technology too, to make it do things that you you
Speaker 1: just take for granted, you know, every day. So that's
Speaker 1: really cool. Um. Well, I don't have any other technology,
Speaker 1: but I do have a list of organizations and uh
Speaker 1: and government groups that um that are all about assistant technology.
Speaker 1: Did you have any others who wanted to talk about
Speaker 1: before I go into that. No, no, no, I do
Speaker 1: have a couple of organizations. I bet you have them too,
Speaker 1: So let's hear your list, all right, These are all
Speaker 1: the ones I have are all North American organizations. Now
Speaker 1: I should go ahead and point out there are organizations
Speaker 1: all around the world for assisted of technology. The only
Speaker 1: reason I stuck with North Americas because that's where it
Speaker 1: happened to be and they're, like I said, lots of them.
Speaker 1: So this is just a small sample. But there's the
Speaker 1: Adaptive Technology Resource Center at the University of Toronto. There's
Speaker 1: the Center for Applied Special Technology, also known as CASTE.
Speaker 1: There's Assistive Technology Industry Association, which is actually a commercial group.
Speaker 1: I mean it's a group of different companies within the industry. Um.
Speaker 1: There's the Rehabilitation, Engineering and Assistive Technology Society of North America,
Speaker 1: which just a mouthful. And there's the Alliance for Technology Access.
Speaker 1: Those are the ones that I listed that I had.
Speaker 1: That's what happens when we try to be creative and
Speaker 1: and uh sort of do independent research. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: a here's a secret for you guys. When we research,
Speaker 1: we do research independently, so there's no telling. One of
Speaker 1: us may come up with something the other one has
Speaker 1: no idea about, or we may find the exact same
Speaker 1: information as is the case today. But yeah, there there
Speaker 1: are lots of these groups. And again I find their
Speaker 1: work very interesting and and I'm very thankful for it.
Speaker 1: So good job, guys, keep up the good work. And
Speaker 1: I do think that getting these companies to cooperate with
Speaker 1: one another is great news for people who need assistive technology,
Speaker 1: because they're going to come up with standards, right that
Speaker 1: are you know, that work with different machines, that work
Speaker 1: with different software, um, and will allow them to work
Speaker 1: with one another, which is incredibly important. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: that's important for any technology. We see that all the time.
Speaker 1: Where the one of the big problems with any new
Speaker 1: technology is that there are no standards in place. When
Speaker 1: a new technology really first emerges and then everybody gets involved,
Speaker 1: there's a big mess. You don't know which way to go,
Speaker 1: and then eventually a sort of standards emerges and then
Speaker 1: it really becomes useful. Yeah. I mean, this stuff is expensive,
Speaker 1: especially when it's when it's new, and um, the eye
Speaker 1: bought wheelchair, as I recalls, twenty six thousand dollars and
Speaker 1: most insurance companies will not cover it, I'm sure. So yeah,
Speaker 1: we're talking pretty expensive stuff but very worthwhile. Well, I
Speaker 1: guess that just leads us right over to a listener
Speaker 1: mail all right, then today's a listener mail classroom Gregorio.
Speaker 1: And Gregorio says, hey, guys, I just listened to the
Speaker 1: podcast on Google street View and I wanted to give
Speaker 1: you my take on it. I am studying to be
Speaker 1: a traffic engineer and we use Google street View and
Speaker 1: Google Earth daily when designing streets. We tried to get
Speaker 1: surveys of the area which would show all existing features
Speaker 1: like dimensions, street signs, and striping, but when budget is limited,
Speaker 1: we have to go out and measure and photograph intersections ourselves.
Speaker 1: We overlay Google map Maps images into our CAD designs
Speaker 1: to help draw the streets, and we use Google street
Speaker 1: View to verify signs and striping layouts. It is very
Speaker 1: it is a very important tool that we use to
Speaker 1: supplement our design data. That's pretty done. Cool. I didn't
Speaker 1: know that. Wow, So going out and you know, taking
Speaker 1: the tape measuring, Yeah, no, I mean, don't remind me
Speaker 1: what you think of Saturday. Well, thanks a lot of Gregorio,
Speaker 1: And if any of you want to write us, our
Speaker 1: email address is tech stuff at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: If you would like to learn more about technology, well,
Speaker 1: there's this handy dandy website we like to call how
Speaker 1: stuff Works dot com. There's lots of cool stuff there.
Speaker 1: I recommend you checking it out and we will talk
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Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff works
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