Does this product exist off-the-shelf and what is it called if so? I've searched many variations of "smartphone keypad screen cover", "smartphone finger guide", "smartphone touch screen key guard", and got nothing. Inspired by this keyguard for an iPad AAC app but I have not been able to find anything similar for phones, let alone this particular usecase.
(iPad thing for reference)
This is to help a blind person use their phone. They cannot navigate with their screen reader software at all, cannot use the internet at large. They can place calls using a very very small library of voice commands, but if that call lands in a telephone tree - as many calls to doctors, help services, shops, etc do - then they can't respond via numbers on the keypad at all.
So: a thick cover which fits over the front of their phone with cutouts for the numbers (plus "show keypad" and "end call"), so that they can find the number outlines by touch and then tap them accurately. Does this exist? Where can they get one?
If it is not avaliable to buy then I will try making one for real (this was a prototype with scraps at work to explain the concept), out of cardboard and/or 3D printed. I'm not that good at building stuff and I've never 3D printed before in my life and I'm not keen to start now, I just don't want someone to starve because of supermarket phone trees.
Also tossing around the idea of a plug-in physical number pad, but you may have gathered they are Not Good With Technology and I think introducing another electronic product, no matter how simple, is unlikely to work.
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I would love to see voice control and eye tracking technology used on screen buy actual disable people in present day settings.
I swear I only see it in futuristic sci-fi settings, or in dystopian settings where is used to show that a character is getting too absorbed in social media.
I just wish that I could see it being used how it is, buy regular disabled people in the current day doing every day things
I can't remember where I first saw this, "please hesitate to contact me" meme, complete with Lisa-Frank--esque dolphin and design (possibly one of the long hauler or covid safe accounts?) ... I can say it's something of a mantra lately.
Before times me prided herself on, being available. Available emotionally, physically, mentally, socially for family, friends, neighbors, students, colleagues ...
Since November of 2023, when a COVID infection nudged mostly invisible & mysterious chronic illness into full on disability, my view on for who, when, and why I make myself accessible and available has shifted almost 180 degrees.
Reading about the power of the decision part of becoming disabled, in How To Get On, I feel ground shifting.
The practice of this shift, struggling to walk the walk Is The Work of the season. Most days I spend 15+ hours/day in bed, resting.
This is lunar emergence from the rut pre-dawn of this initiating year. Cosmic, karmic, and comically mundane.
While my visible-tracked functional capacity hovers around half mast, I get to absorb a lot of TV.
Can't stop thinking about CONTINUUM a few days after the final episode gasped its last soliloquy, and how it began to collapse under its own self-aggrandizing weight in szn 3. Aside from an ensemble led by smart, sexy,badass women, t's a glut of ideology and unlubed consequence dicks in a famine of humor / playfulness.
Over breakfast at the table w/ feet up, TMFH helps me crystalize these thoughts, re-watched the whole series with me. We discuss how Stargate Universe suffers the same fate, but got more air time probably because the Patriarchy. He's perfected this weekly quiche.
For a quantum antidote to all the telly too real future creeps, turn to Eureka! Science, slapstick, and the authorities' quieter ways of disappearing people.
And, ever irreverently reveling in Tank Girl the movie and print matter including The Way of Tank Girl. In 2023, for reasons I can't remember exactly, I dedicated the month of May in my life as TANK month, dedicated to reading and re-watching, and made it complete with a special playlist.
image text reads:
you are beaten
you are berated
you are tortured
and isolated
you are caught
you are dissected
you are tested
you are infected
you are bought
you are sold
you're too young
you're too old
but you are loved
by me and booga
we both think
you are super
*
Lately I'm grateful to be consistently getting 1-3 up & functioning hours/per day. I was asked recently by a couple of well meaning friends, variations on what do I do with that "up time" and, "have you thought about doing xyz from bed?"
Truth is I think about doing SO MUCH all the time, but it doesn't give me the spoons to do anything about them, and when it comes to doing things in bed, on the couch, from the floor ... Sure, I've tried that. I do when i can.
Furthermore, I work to keep my actual bed a resting place, and when one is doing anything (even actively watching tv), they're not really resting. Brain work takes so much energy. Paradox upon paradox unfold, my head stays resting on a satin pilllow.
Sports viewing provides a perfect level of background noise and plot-less activity that can either draw focus & give one something to root for or fade into the background so the brain can be at rest when it becomes a quiet drone of sneakers on court floor or thuhd-heaving wrestlers going for frontal push out.
The May Sumo Tournament on NHK world and WNBA szn opening make it even sunnier.
Yesterday, I went on a fun date to the second half of the Phoenix Mercury home game vs the Mystics. It gave us the opportunity to try out some assistive tech (walking stick, neck brace, compression clothing, sensory protection wear). It really does make living and leaving the house significantly less painful and more possible.
It was great, even though I came home and crashed on the couch, too tired for a bath, barely energy to eat food made for me, then spent ~16 hours in bed and am still exhausted / on the couch today!
Without the planning & resting ahead, I know I would be way worse off today, and that also feels good. Just because progress and growth don't look like / feel like what I expected them to, doesn't mean it's not happening.
Please make sure you know how to use speech to text on your phone and what app you're going to use in case you suddenly lose your hearing and have to communicate to a doctor about it.
And make sure your aging parents (or other friends and family) know this. This is not something you want to be figuring out while you or they are sick and or disoriented. And you definitely don't want to be trying to do tech support over text while someone's in the hospital and if you can't this very soon they'll get inadequate or slow care.
It's possible to write on paper or a white board but my experience is it's much slower and people use confusing shorthand to speed it up.
I really encourage people to experiment with and learn all the adaptive technology in your pocket even at a basic level because really big disability impairments—temporary or permanent—can happen way faster then you imagine and it's much scarier and more frustrating if you don't know what to do to compensate.
There is so much adaptive technology already in your pocket that was science fiction even 20 years ago, or wildly expensive and harder to set up. What we have today is truely incredible for aiding disabled people.
Learn when it's easier, less stressful, you can take it in more slowly, and get used to it off and on. Not while you're having an emergency. And itt will also teach you how you can take small daily actions to ensure access for disabled people (like writing alt text and captions and video transcripts).
Hey I don't know what you can do to classify your fic against plagiarism that makes it add text when downloaded, but whatever y'all are doing can we add a tag about it?
Like. Okay.
For reasons, I read almost all the fic that I read nowadays by downloading the work onto my phone and having Google Play Books' mobile screen reader read it to me. And there have been a handful of fics that I have downloaded where in AO3's browser the fic appears just to contain the story, but once it's on my phone, every few pages, I'll encounter a wall of text that reads:
D O N ' T C O P Y . D O N ' T R E P O S T . D O N ' T P L A G I A R I Z E .
Over again about fifteen times. The first time it happened I thought I got hacked or something.
And my screen reader reads each individual letter, so it was as auditorially unintelligible as it is visual.
The point – pretty blatantly – is to make it a mess to run through a program and/or repost without the author's knowledge, and I totally get and support that effort. But y'all can we please make up some kind of tag like "Not Screen Reader Friendly"?
Because it's a nightmare to be listening to something all interesting to have the story suddenly cut into a robot voice reading off repetitive letters.
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honestly wild that abled/nt people are so critical of disabled people using adaptive technology as if the ENTIRETY OF HUMAN CIVILIZATION WASNT BUILT ON ADAPTIVE TECHNOLOGY like “you’re gonna become dependent on that you’re not always gonna have—” bitch ur a hairless ape who fills out spreadsheets for a living and has to wear layers of outside insulation and nearly set your food on fire every time you eat so you don’t die
Printed off the Glifo adaptive pen holder to try with my student who has super limited hand function but loves drawing!! Love to see tech like this out there :)
You know what really isn't an accessible feature? The iPhone "try again in 5/10 minutes" thing when you type in your passcode wrong too many times in a row. Sir. It's 2am. My hands shake on a good day. I use the assistive touch feature in lieu of the home and side buttons since my fingers won't coordinate to click those. I misclick buttons every second of the freaking day.
Stop locking me out of my phone when I'm just trying to set my alarm for the next day. Seriously.
