Disability Futures

Imagine for a moment what your life would be like without a phone, corded or wireless.  How would you contact emergency services if there was a fire or a serious injury?  How would you contact a potential new employer, or keep in touch with a current one?  How would you contact your utility company about a power outage, or a doctor about your sick child?  How would you keep in touch with your loved ones and your community?  In this day and age, telecommunications services are a real necessity, and not being able to afford them is a real liability.

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Ms Austin, who has been a wheelchair user since 1996, developed the chair with help from dive experts and academics.

The model is powered by two dive propulsion vehicles and steered with a bespoke fin and foot-operated acrylic strip.

She is staging a performance with it in a swimming pool in Weymouth this week.

Creating the Spectacle forms part of the Cultural Olympiad celebrations.

Ms Austin, from north Devon, says she first had the idea after learning to scuba dive in 2005.

"When we started talking to people about it, engineers were saying it wouldn't work, the wheelchair would go into a spin, it was not designed to go through water - but I was sure it would," she told the BBC

His innovation, dubbed “Le Chal” ("take me along" in Hindi) pairs a smartphone app with a small actuator sewn inside the sole of one shoe via Bluetooth. The user tells the phone his desired destination, which is translated into electronic commands using voice-recognition software. The app, which can be programmed to run in the background, fetches the local map of the area. The phone’s Global Positioning System (GPS) tracks the person’s location in real-time, telling the actuator to vibrate when it is time to turn. The side of the shoe where the vibration is felt indicates which way to go. Mr Sharma opted for a vibrating signal because for the blind, who rely on their sense of hearing to make sense of the environment, audio feedback is a distraction.

Google is looking to make Google+ more accessible to users with hearing-impairments. Today, they announced a new app that makes Google+ Hangouts more accessible to hearing-impaired users at the National Association of the Deaf’s annual conference in Louisville, KY. The app, named Hangout Captions, does exactly what its name suggests, creates a chat transcript for the deaf while in a Hangout on Google+.

Hangout Captions allows two options of transcription. The first is professional transcription through StreamText, and the second is basic transcription which you do yourself by typing on the keyboard. I am sure that machine-powered transcription is on the way, but for now the two options should suffice. Naomi Black, the leading developer for Hangout Captions, has posted a video which describes the functionality of the app.

On Friday, Dr. John Hart — medical science director at the Center for BrainHealth at the University of Texas at Dallas — appeared on a panel titled “What Can We Learn from Studying Concussed Brains of Live Retired Professional Athletes?” held during the annual meeting of the National Athletic Trainers’ Association in St. Louis. Hart spoke to the fact that out of 34 former players he studied, 41 percent were cognitively impaired, meaning they suffer from memory loss or can’t find words on the tips of their tongues. But more troubling: Some of the men were depressed and didn’t even know it.

Duh! of the week. Of course these players have brain injuries.

"Low levels of MAO A are one basis of the predisposition to aggression in humans. The other is an encounter with maltreatment, and the combination of the two factors appears to be deadly: it results consistently in violence in adults," Bortolato said.

The researchers show that in excessively aggressive rodents that lack MAO A, high levels of electrical stimulus are required to activate a specific brain receptor in the pre-frontal cortex. Even when this brain receptor does work, it stays active only for a short period of time.

"The fact that blocking this receptor moderates aggression is why this discovery has so much potential. It may have important applications in therapy," Bortolato said. "Whatever the ways environment can persistently affect behavior - and even personality over the long term - behavior is ultimately supported by biological mechanisms."

Importantly, the aggression receptor, known as NMDA, is also thought to play a key role in helping us make sense of multiple, coinciding streams of sensory information, according to Bortolato.

"As migraine specialists, we cannot ignore the fact that traumatic brain injury (TBI) is an increasingly common medical problem today and that those who experience severe and untreated blows to the brain may end up with serious neurological damage and long-lasting medical and psychological problems," said Elizabeth Loder, MD, MPH, president of the American Headache Society (AHS) and Chief of the Division of Headache and Pain in the Department of Neurology at the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. "We owe it to our nation's military as well as to our children in contact sports to raise awareness of TBI and make this issue a national health priority."

Welcome to our information hub about phones and innovative ways to communicate, especially for people who may have a disability.

The FCC is dedicated to ensuring that all Americans – including Americans with disabilities – have full access to our nation’s communications’ revolution. The 21^st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act put into motion new requirements to ensure that everyone has access to communications as well as the ability to send and receive emergency information and services.

You can fill out register to vote and absentee ballots. I didn't try Michigan, but it looks like it works.