by Kirk Aranda, YO! Disabled & Proud Youth Advocate It’s that time of the year once again everyone! It’s time to celebrate Disability History Week 2014! Disability History Week (DHW) is a fun and exciting time where youth from the program Youth Organizing! (YO!) Disabled and Proud go into classrooms or auditoriums at their local…
At the September Ability Tools Southern Regional Meeting, held at the Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center in Downey, my colleagues and I got the chance to learn more about Google Glass and what this new technology could potentionall mean for people with disabilities. We also even got a chance to actually try out Google…
*This post was originally posted by Disability Work Tools. Disability Work Tools (DWT) makes adaptive tools readily available so people can independently perform hands-on tasks in spite of injury, aging or disabling condition. Check out their easy to navigate website, where they have a great Assistive Technology search function to find different types of AT…
This week’s blog post comes to us from Laura Hall who works with the Michigan Assistive Technology Program. Many of these AT items can also be found to borrow for FREE for 30 days in California at our Device Lending Libraries. Check them out and happy back-to-school! Enjoy! Living and working near a college town,…
by Nubyaan Scott, Program Coordinator for Ability Tools Tremors are involuntary movements that can make it harder to perform daily tasks. The most common of all involuntary movements, tremors can affect the hands, arms, head, face, voice, trunk, and legs. However, most tremors occur in the hands. While some people take medication in order to…
The following short closed captioned video provides a great, simple and easy AT idea for executive function or episodic memory loss. The idea? Use Twitter – a free program/app – to tweet to yourself about your daily activities. Then, you can search them easily if you don’t remember something that you did or what happened…
Here at Ability Tools, we enjoy following other assistive technology blogs, forums, and reviews from various sources. Here are a few for you to check out! 1. Bmeerz: This is an ambitious AT reviewer that offers many different reviews/demos of AT devices in a video format on Youtube. You can click on CC to open…
This year, in Zurich, Switzerland, a 15-unit apartment building opened, unique because it is “Europe’s first chemical-free housing complex” (chemicalsensitivityfoundation.org). The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) tried something similar in 1994 but there were a lot of mistakes made – and a lot has changed since then, too! After looking into Multiple…
by Nubyaan Scott, Program Coordinator for Ability Tools Many of you may know Amazon for its widely diverse online marketplace where you can buy anything from a squat stand to a Roswell soil sample. But, did you know they also make a smartphone? A couple of weeks ago the company revealed that it had designed…
By Chi Hung Luke Hsieh Assistive Technology Advocate I have recently—yes, only recently—gotten friendly with swype input. As someone who has the word “technology” in his job title, the shame and dishonor of such wilful neglect brought upon my person is incalculable. However, thanks to my new state-of-the-art Android phone, I have had the chance…