Where It's AT – Assistive Technology Blog

The Maryland Office of the Attorney General has just published its 2012 ” A Consumer Guide for Seniors. Covering a range of topics, it addresses many specific scams that are often geared at seniors including Home Medical Equipment scams, hearing aid scams, and medical insurance problems.

You can access the guide online here or you can contact the AG’s office to request a free copy by mail by calling (410) 576-6500 or toll-free 1-888-743-0023.

If you’re not already listening, now’s the time to start!

Assistive Technology Radio is a series of podcasts created by the Indiana Assistive Technology Act, Indata. Running 24/7, 7 days a week, you can catch the Assistive Technology Update and Accessibility Minute, to name a few. And be sure to check in every few days because new shows are continually being recorded.

This week in AT news 4/23 – 4/27

Hearing loss a hidden — and correctable — problem for seniors

From CSUN12- Making Information Graphics Accessible for Visually Impaired Individuals

Blind Creators of Visual Art

Newly revised Braille Formats guidelines available

Guide dog calls cops when blind woman is attacked!

Georgia Tech students develop autism education app

Have a hard time finding good disabled parking? Check out It’s a parking spot helper app!

Deaf Kids Hearing Aids aren’t school funded – Courthouse News Service

iPads providing a voice for disabled children – ABC Local

WorkABILITY LOAN PROGRAM

A Program of the Maryland Technology Assistance Program / Maryland Department of Disabilities, the WorkABILITY Loan Program helps Maryland residents with disabilities qualify for low-interest loans to buy equipment to gain or maintain employment.

Who Can Apply?

Anyone who intends to use the loan to buy equipment for a Maryland resident with a disability to enable him or her to establish home-based work or start a small business. By increasing opportunities to home-based work and self-employment, current barriers to employment such as inadequate transportation, fatigue, inaccessible work environments, and the need for personal assistance are reduced and eliminated.

Will Everyone Be Able To Get A Loan?

No. You must have a good likelihood of repaying a loan. The program will look at your income, debt, credit history, etc. Some applicants will be denied.  But the program’s criteria -much less stringent than banks use- will enable many people to get loans whom banks would turn down.

How Much Can I Borrow?

From $500 to $50,000. * Unsecured loans available up to $7,500. Other restrictions may also apply.

What Is The Interest Rate?

All loans have below-market interest rates. Most loans have rates below prime.

What Types Of Equipment Can Loans Be Used To Buy?

• Computers, printers, and related peripherals
• Software
• Fax machines, scanners
• Office machines (e.g. fax machines, scanners, calculators)
• Telecommunications devices
• Telecommunication system installation charges (i.e. DSL)
• Office furniture Home and/or home office modifications for accessibility
• Assistive technology (a device or item that enables an individual with a disability to live and work more independently or productively with an improved quality of life)

Contact The Program To Get An Application:

loans@mdtap.org, 410-554-9233 (Voice), 1-800-832-4827 (Voice-toll free), 1-866-881-7488 (TTY-toll-free), 410-554-9237 (Fax)

Large Clickable Targets

Some mouse users have may have difficulty with fine motor control, so it is important that clickable targets be sufficiently large. Radio buttons and checkboxes should include properly-associated labels (using the <label> element). Small icons or text, such as previous/next arrows or superscript links for footnotes, should be sufficiently large or combined with adjacent text into a single link.

Notetaker Comparison

Review by Joel Zimba, Special Projects Coordinator, MDTAP

On February 24th  ACB Radio’s technology show, Main Menu, launched a series of podcasts to provide an in depth comparison of five models of notetaker.  For those who have never seen one of these devices, the notetaker, often called a Braille notetaker, is a personal data assistant machine which first  appeared in the 1990s.  The original models had Braille keyboards and speech output, but other variants quickly appeared sporting qwerty-style keyboards and refreshable Braille output in addition to synthesized speech.

In a sense, the blindness-related assistive technology community was ahead of it’s time.  While basic “note taking” capability was a feature common to all of these notetakers, they also allowed all kinds of organization and management of personal data including contacts, calendars, document editing, printing and e-mail.

In general the feature set of any given notetaker is augmented every year or two and there are occasional jumps in technology, such as the switch to  an embedded version of Microsoft Windows as the dominant operating system.  We are poised on the brink of another one of these jumps, but for now, you can listen to 5 of the most popular notetakers being systematically compared in this excellent Main Menu piece.

In most of these segments, which run through mid-April, and are released every Friday, an experienced user of each notetaker demonstrates how particular tasks are accomplished with their chosen device.  The discussion can get technical at times, though this should not discourage someone with little notetaker experience from listening.  If you are thinking of purchasing one of these notetakers in the near future, these podcasts are an excellent resource.

Additionally, two of these notetakers, the Braillenote Apex and the Braille Sense OnHand can be found in the MDTAP equipment library, available for short-term loan. Contact MDTAP at 410-554-9230 if you’re interested in borrowing any of our devices.