Comments on: Home Safety Castle- designing for people with disabilities As a hearing impaired individual, I am happy to provide some input and testing for Ann as she develops ADA compliant virtual worlds. I agree it will be quite a challenge but perhaps collaborative efforts can evolve into a defacto standard. In the end, 508 compliance is only "costly" in the customer's view - its value will be determined by the market for this level of design. When you consider the benefits for education and the growing population with impairments that impact the user's ability to be "competitive" in virtual worlds and games, it is worth the attempt. Customized avatars can be built to accommodate those with motion impairments but often we see users with motion impairments in everyday life do not want to emulate that in virtual worlds. As for Kinetic, we can hope that the interface developer is working on ADA compliance for the mobility impaired user. Imagine how many discharged military personnel could remain active if they had the ability to control the UAV's with adapted Kinetic devices. I applaud the initiative - it is a start! As a hearing impaired individual, I am happy to provide some input and testing for Ann as she develops ADA compliant virtual worlds. I agree it will be quite a challenge but perhaps collaborative efforts can evolve into a defacto standard. In the end, 508 compliance is only “costly” in the customer’s view – its value will be determined by the market for this level of design. When you consider the benefits for education and the growing population with impairments that impact the user’s ability to be “competitive” in virtual worlds and games, it is worth the attempt. Customized avatars can be built to accommodate those with motion impairments but often we see users with motion impairments in everyday life do not want to emulate that in virtual worlds. As for Kinetic, we can hope that the interface developer is working on ADA compliance for the mobility impaired user. Imagine how many discharged military personnel could remain active if they had the ability to control the UAV’s with adapted Kinetic devices. I applaud the initiative – it is a start!

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By: Dean Calver/2011/05/31/homesafetycastle/#comment-5025 Dean Calver Tue, 31 May 2011 15:56:50 +0000 Thanks for your interest. What I did was to make every clue and response both visible and audible. For instance, when you are in the kitchen, and you see the cleaning supplies on the counter. If you click on them, they will light up, play a siren sound, and give you a note card that explains why they are a hazard. One more level of that will be adding in a sound clip that tells you why they are a hazard. In terms of evaluating the effectiveness of the changes, and the actual usage of the game, I'm afraid we are still to early in the process. I am working with several folks with great expertise in this field, and as it develops we will start to document the results. As I said in my post, it is still a work in progress, so stay tuned. If you would like to visit the actual site, please contact me directly at anncdesigns@verizon.net for a user account. Thanks for your interest. What I did was to make every clue and response both visible and audible. For instance, when you are in the kitchen, and you see the cleaning supplies on the counter. If you click on them, they will light up, play a siren sound, and give you a note card that explains why they are a hazard. One more level of that will be adding in a sound clip that tells you why they are a hazard. In terms of evaluating the effectiveness of the changes, and the actual usage of the game, I’m afraid we are still to early in the process. I am working with several folks with great expertise in this field, and as it develops we will start to document the results. As I said in my post, it is still a work in progress, so stay tuned. If you would like to visit the actual site, please contact me directly at anncdesigns@verizon.net for a user account.

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By: gasche/2011/05/31/homesafetycastle/#comment-5012 gasche Tue, 31 May 2011 11:02:26 +0000