Where It's AT – Assistive Technology Blog

AT in the news for the week of 3/31 thru 4/4

The Need for Congress to Pass the ABLE Act

Robbie the Robot: Personal Assistant for Limbless Teenager

A Gold Gadget That Would Let You Stop Heart Attacks With a Smartphone

‘Avatar’ could care for elderly in future

Wearable Tech Isn’t Just Fashionable, It’s Improving Lives

This robotic exoskeleton is helping the paralyzed walk again

Banks, energy providers and public bodies should be subject to web accessibility rules, vote MEPs

Equal Access App Development: Create an App with Assistive Technology

Dyslexia Software for Windows Tablets Released by Ghotit

A ‘smart cane’ for the visually impaired

Bionic Olympics will come to Switzerland in 2016

Disabled musicians find an Equilibrium

Lehigh University graduate invents fingertip markers for children, disabled

New app lets special students express themselves

Gifted+Learning Disabled = No Desk For You, Says New Study

Amazing story of a 15-year-old theater workshop for deaf-blind actors

Liftware cancels tremor to bring the joy back to mealtime

Ever wonder what we’re featuring in our monthly AT Updates? Maybe you get the monthly email but don’t have time to read it or maybe you’ve accidentally deleted it without reading. Well, no hard feelings, we understand. So, to make things a little easier, now you can catch up on all the updates at your convenience.

Visit the MDTAP Publications page and read all of the 2014 AT Updates (including info on new AT in the library, new AT devices on the market, upcoming events, heartwarming stories, and much more).

And, if you’d like to get these emails sent directly to you (just one email a month), join our email list here.

aria-labelledby

Difficulty: Advanced

Category:

• Structure

Traditional form labeling with the <label> has distinct limitations; you can only have one label for each form element. You cannot have one label for multiple form elements (consider “Telephone Number” as a label for 3 text boxes to comprise a complete telephone number). You also cannot have multiple labels for one form element (consider a text box that has a label preceding it and the word “required” immediately after it, both of which provide important information). The aria-labelledby attribute (part of the ARIA specification) overcomes these limitations by allowing any element to be labeled by any other page element.

Contributed by Lori Markland, Director of Communications, Outreach and Development, MDTAP

It’s been a week that this app, Personal Zen, has been on my phone and my severe anxiety is far from cured. For that matter, it’s barely under control. But I didn’t download this game with the expectation that it would somehow make all my anxieties disappear. However, I hoped that maybe, just maybe, it would help me find a way to stabilize during the worst of my panic attacks. And somehow, it has.

The concept is simple – there are two spritely faces that appear on the screen. An angry, unpleasant face and a calm, peaceful face. They appear in a field of green grass. Only the pleasant face moves and creates a trail of moving grass blades. All I need to do is trace the trail that the peaceful creature creates. After I trace these trails for about a minute, I receive a “badge.” Then the faces reappear and I do it over and over and over again, trying to beat my own time. The trick is training my eyes and brain to initially focus on the pleasant face every time they both appear on the screen. Easier said than done. And perhaps that’s the key to this game.

As someone who suffers from severe anxiety, my inclination is to always fixate on the worst, the catastrophic , the bad. It’s a real art to “see” the pleasant face first, and stay focused on it. Because I want to look at the other face. I mean really, really want to look at the “angry” face. But I don’t because that would slow me down and hurt my time. Inevitably, when I start the game, the first couple of times I focus on the angry face, but as I play longer and longer, I re-focus. I shift. I calm down. And that’s the key here. To find a way to bring my heart rate down, to focus (even scarcely) on something other than my worries, and try to see the positive in what is often an overwhelming sense of doom.

Thanks Personal Zen. It might not change me forever, but it calms me for the moment. Sometimes that’s all I need.