Highlights from the RESNA 2018 Conference

The RESNA 2018 Conference featured three intense days of sharing and networking among leaders in assistive technology. It’s impossible to get to everything, but here we highlight a few things of particular interest.

A photograph promoting the RESNA 2018 conference in Washington DC. Photo shows the National Mall and Washington Monument in the twilight.
I attended RESNA’s 2018 Annual Conference recently, as I do pretty much every year. This year’s was held in Arlington, VA in mid-July. A friend asked me why I invest the time and money to go to the conference. I’ll try to address that in this post, with a focus on the learning and new ideas that the conference inspires.
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Text entry rate data: what can we learn from a histogram?

Continuing our series on examining text entry rate data for people with physical disabilities, we look today in more depth at the statistical distribution of those data. A histogram is a great tool for visualizing a distribution and providing insights into a dataset.

As promised in our previous post, today we’re going to delve more deeply into our dataset of text entry rate across 177 individuals with physical disabilities. (If you haven’t seen the infographic and read about the creation of this dataset already, you might want to read that earlier post first.)
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Text entry rate for people with physical disabilities [Infographic]

We gathered the available data on computer text entry by people with physical disabilities and created this infographic. Results suggest that there is a long way to go to better support computer users with disabilities.

Sajay Arthanat and I continue organizing the available research evidence on text entry rates (typing speeds) for people with disabilities. I shared an overview of the findings in an earlier post. Here, I’ve added two new studies to the dataset and created an infographic describing the distribution of text entry rate across 177 individuals. Continue reading “Text entry rate for people with physical disabilities [Infographic]”

New Compass version 2.5 released

We’ve released Compass version 2.5, which adds Arabic language support.

I’m happy to announce that we’ve released a new Compass version that adds Arabic language support. To choose Arabic language for a Compass test, simply go into the configuration screen for that test, and select Arabic as the Test Language. Screenshot of Compass configuration screen for Sentence test, showing Test Language set to Arabic Continue reading “New Compass version 2.5 released”

KPR presenting at RESNA 2018 Conference

Join KPR along with practitioners and researchers from the assistive technology community at the RESNA 2018 conference. We’ll present on our AT-node research database along with tips on conducting assistive technology research.

As always, I’m looking forward to the RESNA annual conference, this year to be held in Washington, DC from July 11-15. I’ll be giving 3 presentations, along with Sajay Arthanat. Continue reading “KPR presenting at RESNA 2018 Conference”

Study published on effectiveness of Scanning Wizard

We developed Scanning Wizard, then researched whether it actually helped improve performance for people who use switch scanning to communicate.

We’re pleased to announce that our paper on the effectiveness of Scanning Wizard has been published in the journal Disability and Rehabilitation: Assistive Technology. Scanning Wizard is a free tool that helps assistive technology teams optimize switch and scanning setups for individuals who rely on switch access. This post summarizes the study and provides links to the published paper. Continue reading “Study published on effectiveness of Scanning Wizard”

Scanning Wizard in the Classroom

A hands-on experience teaching switch access to occupational therapy students

Grand Rapids, MI — This summer, a Western Michigan University class of occupational therapy graduate students experienced assistive technology first-hand. WMU instructor Cara Masselink included Scanning Wizard in her Therapeutic Use of Technology curriculum to demonstrate an innovative service—- and to foster empathy in her students.

Occupational therapy student using Scanning Wizard, showing a grid of letter items on computer screen
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Evidence on computer text entry by people with disabilities

Ever wonder how quickly people can type with different accessibility interfaces? Is it useful to know the typing speed for the “average” user with cerebral palsy on an assistive keyboard?

Sajay Arthanat and I have been working together to organize the available research evidence on text entry rates (typing speeds) for people with disabilities. This has been a fun project that’s allowed us to revisit the literature published since 1986. Continue reading “Evidence on computer text entry by people with disabilities”