It’s simple, sure, but Ruble says it’s been very effective not only for people dealing with aphasia. So far, the service has been available as a public beta for the past four months or so and counts people with autism and those coping with traumatic brain injuries among its hundreds of users. As you’d expect from a beta service it’s all still a little rough around the edges, but it works mostly as intended and Ruble pointed to the possibility of native apps down the road to help make the experience of communicating via Tapgram a little smoother. If nothing else, it’s already helping some people (and the folks that care about them) communicate easier, and that’s worthy of some praise in my book.
#whatcouldgowrong
This was a tough week, because there were so many possible choices.
Almost 900 people are RSVPed for a July 4th march on Washington, D.C. where protesters plan to carry loaded rifles. In D.C., openly carrying guns is against the law. But the organizer of the event, libertarian radio host Adam Kokesh, says the march is an act of “civil disobedience” that attempts to prove gun advocates’ point in the “SUBTLEST way possible.”
The event’s Facebook invitation describes the march as a nonviolent demonstration, “unless the government chooses to make it violent”:
The technique involves releasing the HIV virus from “reservoirs” it forms in DNA cells, bringing it to the surface of the cells. Once it comes to the surface, the body’s natural immune system can kill the virus through being boosted by a “vaccine”.
I had always believed, incorrectly it turns out, that doctors wrote real words on prescriptions, and I was merely terrible at reading what they wrote. In reality, they were using sig codes, which is like shorthand, and it’s rather important for pharmacists to know what they stand for—especially since I could easily see a “B” getting mistaken for a “D,” or an “E” being mistaken for an “F.”
So let’s start with something simple. If it’s only a single code that you’re looking to define, no problem. Many sig codes are abbreviations of Latin, so the sig code BID means “bis in die,” or twice per day. We also provide similarly written codes and their descriptions. (Darn it, Jim, I’m a doctor, not a linguist.)
New research highlights a memory strategy that may help people who suffer from depression in recalling positive day-to-day experiences. The study is published in Clinical Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
Researchers at Royal Holloway University have developed software that converts electronic books into a single line of continuously scrolling text, allowing people with macular degeneration to read.
Sufferers of the condition lose sight from the centre of their field of vision, meaning they find it difficult to focus on detail, especially large chunks of text.
via telegraph.co.uk
In a thread on rightsnet.org.uk on Thursday Reading Community Welfare Rights Unit deputy manager Sam Harney noted:
Client’s husband is in hospital in a coma. He was sent ESA501.
Client contacted DWP to explain situation and was asked to obtain letter from hospital confirming he is in a coma. Did so. Was told to send it to ATOS rather than local BDC. Did so. Husband has now received decision letter – yep, as he has failed to return the ESA50 without good cause and is therefore capable of work [he is] no longer entitled to ESA…
The decision is part of a lengthening list of seemingly nonsensical judgements handed down by ATOS healthcare since it was appointed to oversee benefits claims in 2005 – another notable case is that of Larry Newman, who was told to stop slacking and get back to work despite having an incurable lung disease, which killed him just months after his assessment.
via libcom.org
From England-What we can expect in the near future
Turner uses digital books that allow him to speed up a synthesized reading voice without getting that chipmunk effect. To sighted people, the new digital books look similar to what you’d see on a Kindle. Turner says the key element is their operating system, which is called DAISY. It lets him navigate the books by tapping on the screen in response to audio prompts or by using an electronic Braille machine."It allows someone who’s reading an electronic book to have anchor points they can quickly move to," Turner explains, "beginnings of chapters, beginnings of sections, specific pages, that sort of thing."
These days, Turner works for a company called Benetech that makes these books. The Silicon Valley nonprofit began its online library a decade ago. Since then, it’s become clear that the books created for blind readers can actually help lots of kids learn to read, such as nine-year-old Jonas Wagner (pictured).
Jonas can see just fine, but his teachers say he has a learning disability that makes it hard for him to interpret text. But he has no trouble using a school computer to access a digital version of his fourth-grade reading textbook.
"If you want to change your page, you just have to click the numbers," he says, as he unplugs his headphones so visitors can listen in. "Then you click the “speak” button." As he does this, the machine begins to read aloud.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently released a comprehensive report on the prevalence of sexual violence, stalking and IPV in the U.S. The report relays the alarming findings that 35.6 percent of women in the U.S. are raped, assaulted or stalked by intimate partners at some point during their lives, and approximately six percent experience these events in a given year. Men are also at risk: 28.5 percent report lifetime victimization and five percent report past year victimization. The annual health care costs for women who are experiencing ongoing IPV are 42 percent higher than those for non-abused women, and it has been estimated that the cost of providing health care to adult survivors of IPV ranges from $2.3 billion to $7 billion in the first year after the assault.
Rates are higher for persons with disabilities
Once you see this pattern—a new story rearranging people’s sense of the possible, with the incumbents the last to know—you see it everywhere. First, the people running the old system don’t notice the change. When they do, they assume it’s minor. Then that it’s a niche. Then a fad. And by the time they understand that the world has actually changed, they’ve squandered most of the time they had to adapt.
It’s been interesting watching this unfold in music, books, newspapers, TV, but nothing has ever been as interesting to me as watching it happen in my own backyard. Higher education is now being disrupted; our MP3 is the massive open online course (or MOOC), and our Napster is Udacity, the education startup.
via shirky.com