It’s been a while but we’re back with 3 new things from the world of disability. Sometimes you feel that things are just not progressing fast enough but here we try and show new developments and stylish, modern gadgets that are either available now or in the pipeline. You can see previous ‘D’ List reviews, here.
This time we review the Sabi walking can from designed2enable, a standing assist for your sofa and some gloves that translate Sign Language into speech.
First is another in our series of ‘stylish & trendy’ equipment video reviews. Previously we tested the ‘Jaunty‘ Wheelchair Gloves and this time it’s the Sabi Walking Cane £35 ex VAT, from designed2enable. We’ve always wondered if the look of the cane detracted from its purpose. The curved handle looks uncomfortable but as you can see from the video it’s a good fit to the hand and the invisible rubber stripping on cane handle secures grip and makes it easy to prop against a wall.
Third on the List is Sign Aloud from two students at Washington University who believe that ‘communication is a human right’. The video below is self explanatory, they use sensors on gloves to translate sign language into speech. It means anyone can communicate with deaf people who sign. Each glove contains sensors that record hand position and movement and send data wirelessly via Bluetooth to a central computer. The computer looks at the gesture data through various sequential statistical regressions, similar to a neural network. If the data matches a gesture, then the associated word or phrase is spoken through a speaker.
There’s no indication that these will go into production but by mentioning them here let’s hope someone invests in the idea???
For now we’ll let you digest the ‘D’ List and we’ll be back soon. If you know of anything we should review please get in contact.