Category: Technology

Global Public Infrastructure Initiative

Earlier this summer, I read a short article in a library blog about an innovative project, the Global Public Infrastructure Initiative (GPII), which has great potential to provide individuals with disabilities with the assistive technology they need and are entitled to have. Although the article talked about the project in the context of libraries, the benefit and application of GPII is not limited to libraries. All aspects of life and work stand to benefit if the project is successful.

In a nutshell, this ambitious project would create a paradigm shift by moving everything to the cloud. Right now, the burden rests with the individual who needs assistive technology.  Typically, the individual has to figure out what he needs and how to meet those needs in the environments (work, home, school etc.) in which he needs the technology. Moreover, employers, educational institutions, libraries, and other entities are often faced with the challenge of also figuring out what can be vague legal requirements and identifying what assistive technology to purchase that would best fit the needs of the individual, or the largest number of users, and to do this within a tight budget and extremely limited staff time.

The growing use of the Internet in government services, employment, education, and the marketplace has led to a corresponding reduction in other means of accessing those entities. Consequently, the ability to access and use broadband technologies is moving from discretionary to essential for effective participation in society. If broadband technologies are no longer optional, then everyone needs to be included or society will have an increasing digital divide because of disability, aging, and low literacy.

The GPII Project will combine cloud computing, web, and platform services to make access simpler, more inclusive, available everywhere, and more affordable. When completed it will provide the infrastructure needed to make it possible for companies, organizations, and society to put the web within reach of all — by making it easier and less costly for consumers with disabilities, public access points, employers, educators, government agencies and others such as assistive technology and information and communications technology companies to create, disseminate, and support accessibility across technologies. The GPII would use the cloud to create a secure personalized interface for each patron using a one-time only, Wizard guided process. Accessibility software and information about a patron’s devices would be a part of that profile. This would allow any person to access assistive technologies and extended-usability features on any device connected to the Internet anytime, anywhere.

The project is the brainchild of Geneva-based, “Raising the Floor“ (RtF), an international coalition of individuals and organizations working to make sure that the Internet, and everything available through it, is accessible to people experiencing accessibility barriers due to disability, literacy, or age. Consortium members include a wide range of assistive technology consumers, developers, researchers, and manufacturers. Funded through a U.S. Department of Education grant and the Adobe Foundation, the mission of RtF is “To make the web and mobile technologies accessible to everyone with disability, literacy and aging-related barriers, regardless of their economic status.” Of particular interest are individuals that are underserved or unserved because of the type or combination of disabilities they experience, the part of the world they live in, or the limited program or financial resources available to them.

The GPII Project is RfT’s signature project to carry out its mission; the purpose of the Project is to “ensure that everyone who faces accessibility barriers due to disability, literacy, or aging, regardless of economic resources, can access and use the Internet and all its information, communities, and services for education, employment, daily living, civic participation, health, and safety. Organizations endorsing the project include the American Library Association, the National Federation for the Blind and United Cerebral Palsy. The GPII project has a five-year timeline and has about $4 million in funding from a variety of U.S., Canadian, and European Union sources, and there’s a request for $10 million before Congress for fiscal year 2012.

This video provides an introduction to the GPII project 


Weightless, Technology and Disabilities

When I think about the way technology has changed the world and our lives,  in my own lifetime, I marvel at what has happened. In my lifetime, technology has change how we cook, clean, learn and more. For example, cameras have become more sophisticated and have become even easier to use; typewriters went from manual to electronic models; a phone is no longer “just” a phone; computers have become smaller and smaller and ever more powerful– many tools and appliances we use in daily life are heavily influenced by computer-based technology. The mind boggles to think how much every aspect of life has been altered in some way by technological innovation.

So it is with adaptive technology. Many technologies initially marketed to the disabled community have now gone mainstream or are appreciated by society at large. Three such technologies that come to mind are dictation software e.g., Dragon Dictate, automatic door openers and the lowly “curb-cut.” The former is often used by executives and attorneys, the latter two are appreciated (perhaps unconsciously) by anyone with an arm full of packages or who is attempting to manage a stroller or a rolling suitcase.

I recently happened to see a demonstration on CNN of a “zero gravity” industrial arm that attaches to heavy tools like riveters and grinders, making them effectively weightless for their human operators. The idea came from Steadicam, a stabilization arm that eliminates jolts and shocks from television camera movement. Called “zeroG” the industrial arm uses the same fundamentals that drive Steadicam technology. Both technologies were invented by Garrett Brown. Although Brown developed the zeroG device, the idea originally came from an industrial engineer at Honda, who approached him in 2006 to ask whether Steadicam arms could be used to hold tools. Brown teamed with a start-up company, Equipois, to bring the product to market.

The zeroG devices are roughly the size of human arm and are made of aerospace-grade aluminum and steel. The “arms” come in two sizes, and require no outside power to operate. Instead, they simulate weightlessness by creating a counterbalance: each arm uses a large spring that pulls upward with constant force on a tool. According to Gordon, “the actions cancel each other out, when the arm holding the tool moves, the position of the end of the spring changes to compensate for the movement.”

The zeroG arm uses a gimbal, a structure to hold the tool in place while allowing it to rotate freely, so factory workers can manipulate familiar tools the way they always have. And the arms can be mounted almost anywhere: on walls, tables, floors or mobile carts. In the CNN video, Brown and Gordon talked about how as industries become more familiar with the zeroG device, more and more applications are being suggested and tried.

The zeroG has proven itself in in the world of industry; this unique technology reduces injuries, increases productivity, and decreases costs in the workplace by enabling workers to maneuver heavy objects as if weightless, but with total freedom of motion. According to Brown, he sees great potential for the arm to aid the disabled and I would agree. Initially I can see the technology being of benefit for those with disabilities who have limited range of motion or strength. With time, experience, user input and innovation, I expect this “weightless” technology to be developed for other applications for those with disabilities.

Pictures of the arm in use may be viewed at the Equipois Facebook site, http://www.facebook.com/equipois?sk=photos. More information and two videos are available at the Equipois site, http://www.equipoisinc.com/.