Imagine being at war in the midst of battle without being aware of what was going on around you. Imagine having the desire to serve your country and help your fellow soldiers but you needed an aid to walk. This has been a problem for British soldier Craig  Lundberg for the past three years.  Craig Lundberg lost his vision after he was struck by a rocket propelled grenade in 2007.  

After his incident Corporal Craig Lundberg was the first to get his hands or should I say tongue on a new device called Brainport. You can say that he was a pioneer in using this device. Brainport allows him to see images from his goggles which are then translated with a simulation pattern to his tongue and converted into signals that can be understood by his brain. People who are visually impaired will learn to use this device by recognizing patterns, movement and also high contrast objects. What concerns me is what happens if this particular soldier gets the device damaged while on a mission? Does the device have some sort of backup software and is it durable enough to withstand the different environments and situations a soldier has to deal with in the time of war?

According to Lundberg he says that the device feels like “licking a nine volt battery” or “like popping candy”. This device has a great potential to change the lives of many people if released to the public. This device could help those who are visually impaired see their loved ones which could be an enormous advancement in life of people affected by this disability. Lundberg says “ One of the things it has allowed me to do is pick up objects straight away, I can reach out and pick them up when before I would be fumbling around to feel for them”. The value of this simple action is taken for granted by so many people. You can tell that life is a lot more easier for Lundberg and his family ….even more so than before. There has to be some feeling of relief within him that now he has the ability to do more things for himself as well as others.

Currently this revolutionary device being used is only a prototype according to Disability and Health News. hopefully the British army will find answers to these problems before it is used by other visually impaired soldiers.The neuropsychologist supervising this trial Maurice Pitito says that “ It’s a concept in which you replace a sense that was lost by another one.” Brainport can allow people who are visually impaired walk around without a cane. It gives them the opportunity to navigate obstacles and even the opportunity to read signs. It also allows them to get a feeling of the world from their tongue and that gives them a sense of seeing. Most people do not understand that you do not only see with your eyes but you see with your brain.

Forcing everyone to use Microsoft Office because they have good disability readers allows that monopoly to charge large sums of money for word processors and spreadsheets. With programs like Open Office and Oracle’s Star Office there is no reason to pay these large sums of money or to force everyone to buy a product merely because they make it easier to manipulate data. This is a good reason for the disabled to join a open source project and help them to be more disability friendly. Open source, or free programs only work when everyone donates some time and effort to make the program better. In this case the developers of the open source programs do not know what needs to be done to help those with poor eyesight or those that have problems manipulating things in their hands. Many of us have plenty of time on our hands and have access to a computer. That is everything you need to join an open source application and make it more disability friendly.

SourceForge is an excellent website to start looking. Programs that are the most popular are posted that you can look at. These programs have people that you can send emails to or there are chat rooms that you can post your willingness to help. Almost everyone is looking for help and you will be integrated into the development of a program that is used worldwide. This is a win-win situation where you get a chance to go back to work on your schedule without bosses beating you on the head because you are disabled. Rather than sitting in front of the television all day and night you can do things that are fun and worthwhile and meet up to make new friends. This has been a very powerful way of generating programs that everyone needs and there is no reason why the disabled cannot make their mark on how all these programs work.

This is a monumental problem that the disabled community needs to address. The different communities do not talk to each other, and in some cases work against each other to get the same things accomplished. We can no longer think that only one disability exists and as such we can ignore everyone else and not even try to help them. To help ourselves it is easy to hook up with a open source program and help them. All of these programs are looking for help and guidance and would love to have disabled people on their team to make things better and easier to use. But we have to do the work, it doesn’t happen by itself. Sitting in front of the television is not a good way to run your life and getting back to work and helping others at the same time is an excellent thing to do.

I have watched many wheelchair bound people just sit and do nothing in front of a television 18 hours a day. There is no reason that they cannot write a blog, letters, or make phone calls to their elected officials or others to make things better for the whole community. I guess that it depends on your own personal drive but there has to be something else in life than what toi watch on the travel channel. By volunteering for something as simple as a free and open source software package you are using your brain again and interacting with people all over the world. They appreciate the work you are doing and you get to help other disabled people that need access to these programs but they cannot until functionality and documentation exists to use them. Don’t let yourself drop down to nothing as you just watch television. You have skills that are in need and you should figure out the best way to use them. Open Source products are just one place that you can help a lot of people by doing what you know best.

While it is great that a group has taken up the job of trying to help the disabled community to make good decisions on which games play well and which ones that are missing basic help for them, all game companies should think of the ADA during design phase. Typically it is not difficult to add difficulty levels or to add closed captioning since the characters are speaking the words anyways. Changes to keep colorblind players happy is also a relatively simple process because there are well known color combinations that cause grief and those could be easily changed in the graphics engine without any other modifications to how the game plays or how it looks.

One would think that game companies would want to add to the number of customers that can purchase and play their games if the work to do that is easy and cheap. But instead the game companies completely ignore the disabled community because there is no one to club them over the head to let them know that we exist. The lawsuit against Sony will wake that company up, but what about the others? The idea is to get them to make minor changes without pricing the company into bankruptcy because of legal costs or dramatically increased development costs. This could be fixed by adding a few disabled people to the testing teams so that fixes can be worked on right away and the company can get write-ups in disability magazines and websites saying they are working with the community to make their products available. This would open up a brand new market for arcade games to people that would love to play and pay for them but can’t because they are unplayable. But with a few changes we all can have fun on our computers and game consoles.

Adaptive Driving Devices

http://www.sylacaugahandicap.com/adaptive_devices.htm

 Shows various adaptive devices for driving a car. It does not include the prices of the devices as pricing depends on the vehicle to be installed in.

Toyota Mobility Program

http://www.toyota.com/toyotaSearch/search?keyword=wheelchair&locale=en

Most car manufacturers have programs in place to allow the disabled to drive their products. This page shows the various vehicles that can be converted along with special pricing and rebates that are available. Also note that many states will pay to convert a vehicle as long as it is not more than three years old. There are also companies that will sell used vehicles that are already adapted and ready to go. You save money and get a vehicle that already has the equipment you need.

National Mobility Equipment Dealer Association

www.nmeda.org

This site is for consumers and shows all the different programs that are available to the disabled to get them back on the road. Go to the "Consumer" area and click on the "rebate" section to see what is available in your state. Each has its own programs and money available depending on the level of disability. It is best to get paperwork in early in the year because that is when everyone has their new budget. The sooner you get in line the better chance you have of getting the funding you need to get in that new vehicle or to convert the minivan or other small vehicle.

This political football has created a group of people that cannot pay for their drugs because of a crazy program that is based on Social Security that was never supposed to give people enough money to pay for their medical bills. So instead we have a drug industry that makes billions of dollars in profits on the backs of those that pay for research on the pills that we are charged $1000+ a month for. These companies due to keep generic drug makers from creating drugs that can be afforded by all. It is interesting that the costs of the same drug in the US is a fraction of that amount in Canada or even India. Each country pays a different amount but we are too stupid to make these same deals with the drug makers. To add insult to injury Medicare is not allowed by law to purchase drugs from other countries for less than what we are charged for them now. The US pays for all of the research but does not gain any of the benefits of that research. Instead the poor of the country are forced to pay outrageous amounts of money for drugs that they need to stay alive. We need to make some decisions as a country on how we deal with those that are disabled and elderly. Either we are going to pay for their medical care or not – not the bits and pieces we are now. By only allowing these people to take their drugs every 6 months, their health is deteriorating to the point that they are dying before they should because of the damage caused by not taking their medications. Lets close the doughnut hole and give people the medical care that they need to live useful lives.

It is sad that these companies are fighting to keep books out of the hands of disabled people across the globe. We all know that knowledge is power and that the better educated a person is t he easier time it will be to find a good job or continue in college. By tightly controlling what books are available to the blind, they are deciding what books the blind should read. The individual no longer has control over what materials they have access t, instead large corporations decide that and put whatever price tags for entry on these products so they can control the disabled. The Library of Congress, Google and the Gutenberg Project all pay  the publishers to convert the books into electronic format so that they will be available to many people including those using electronic book readers and the blind. Those works are then placed in public libraries so that they are available to everyone. Evidently the book publishers believe that libraries are really large groups involved in stealing all of their works by making them available to everyone without charging them a fee.

The disabled are usually at the bottom of the economic ladder, trying to live off of Social Security Disability payments and eking out a life for themselves and their families. Most do not have money to purchase books at $15-$50 a pop, especially for technical or college texts. By making these available in formats like Daisy the blind can keep up with the latest trends and make themselves useful to the market for jobs. By locking them out of millions of titles available around the world you lock them out of works that everyone who is not disabled can access. This creates a group of underserved that can only access what companies deem they need to read rather than letting the consumers make that decision. What books and literature should we not allow the blind to read? How about the Jewish population or African Americans? Are we hiding books that show how the have been systematically discriminated against? Is this how we keep the disabled from ever moving up the economic food chain? 

The fight against allowing people to read what they want is a scary idea that needs to be stopped. The free press needs to publish stories on what is happening to the blind so that advocacy groups can step in to protect the rights of the disabled in the United States and Europe. Wile you finish this article, think about what books you should not be allowed to read by corporate america.

Research points people in new and strange directions, and it is great to see that work has moved forward in helping people suffering from fibromyalgia. There are probably other areas of the body where receptors are found by not well understood. Pain and how the brain receives and processes that data is an area that needs more research. Certain classes of pain drugs are known to work on pain receptors or areas of the brain that receive that information, but exactly how the interaction works is a mystery. That needs to be cleared up if we are to get better pain medications that only work on the receptors we want and not on muscle receptors like we have now with drugs like Oxycontin. While this drug is a strong pain killer it also dramatically slows down the bowel forcing the patient to take addition drugs to keep their lower intestines working properly. There are other contraindications for these drugs that patients need to work with that would be nice if the pain drugs were better aimed at where the damage is.

There are devices that can be implanted near the spine with either electrodes or needles that are implanted in the damaged area of the spine. Electrical stimulation or drugs are sent to the location at regular intervals and can be adjusted by either the doctor or the patient. In this way the drugs are sent to only the place that they are needed and the patient can stay relatively clear minded from the drugs and since a smaller dose is used the bowel is now as effected. While these are very effective the patient must go through an operation and recovery, both of which can have issues of infection that require more drugs and therapy. Many people find these implants to be very effective and work better than the drugs they were taking and do a better job of handling pain spike because the patient can control extra doses if a problem crops up. Normally addition drugs are taken by mouth and can take anywhere from 10 minutes to over an hour to become effective which is a long time to wait for pain relief. 

 The disabled are not usually thought of when designing a game, so it is great to see someone create a database of games and who can play them based upon ability. Perhaps if the disabled were to send letters to game companies like Electronic Arts and let them know that we buy games and would like them to keep us in mind when they design a new one. That we are customers that spend money like everyone else and that a little bit of work on their part to make games easier for the disabled to play could translate into more money and profit. In this way we all win, the game company gains a new player and the disabled person has something that they can get some joy off of rather than just surfing the Internet. It can be difficult to find games that match up with different medical problems, and it is not fair to expect that shoot-em up games or fast driving games are going to be easily played by those that are quadriplegic. We have to expect that all games will not fit everyone and that lawsuits will just turn the game companies away from us when we want them to think of us as a group that wants to play.

When I was first injured I was still able to play most arcade games well. However, after complications from CRPS (a nasty pain generator from spinal cord injuries) I can only play turn based games or card games. That is ok for me because I can still do fun things and just have to change what I look for in a game. The moral of the story here is to pick the game that fits with what we can do and not expect miracles from game companies or console producers. Most controllers have tiny joysticks and lots of small buttons to press. No quads need apply to those controllers and the games that use them. However not all consoles are the same – Nintendo has changed the game with their WII console. The WII controller is a dramatic change in game controllers and may be the first to be disabled friendly. By allowing the user to swing or twist the controller the gamer can duplicate the swing of a tennis racquet or the turn of a car steering wheel. This makes for a fun experience that does not require hitting a zillion buttons to make a game work. Hopefully the other game makers will take the WII controller and expand on it so that everyone, including the disabled will have an easier and fun time playing games.