If you'd like to post an announcement here, please E-mail it to Amy Ruell, VIBUG President.
In addition to donating a Netbook computer to VIBUG, ABISee, Inc. of Newton, MA. is offering VIBUG members a 25% discount on the purchase of any of the company's products. If interested, please email me at president@vibug.org with the word "ABISEE" in the subject line. To take advantage of this generous opportunity, we need to have 5 people who will purchase by the time of our November meeting. If you are interested in buying any of ABISee's products, please let me know as soon as possible.
For additional information on ABISee products, visit www.abisee.com.
Amy Ruell, VIBUG President
If you are interested in participating in the Wayfinder study described by Mish Madsen from MIT at our last meeting, go to: http://themish.net/wayfinder.
Contact Mish directly by sending an email to: mish@mit.edu.
We are a team of five seniors at Boston University’s College of Engineering. For our senior design project, we are developing a system that will alert blind pedestrians of oncoming hybrid/electric vehicles with quiet engines. We would like to ask you a few questions about yourself and your opinions on this issue. Your answers to these questions will help us to better understand this problem, and your answers will allow us to develop a more complete and effective solution. Thank you very much for your time and participation. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please contact Alex Ng by phone at 617-320-7995 or by email at abng88@bu.edu.
Questions:
1. What is your name, gender, and age (you can give an age range like 30-40)?
2. Were you blind at birth? If not, at what age did you lose your vision?
3. How do you feel about hybrid cars? What about bicycles? Which of these do you feel is more of a problem and why?
4. My understanding is that blind folk have better hearing. Can you please elaborate about your hearing ability? Do you feel that you hear things that other people may not hear? If so, please describe a common situation where this has occurred.
5. Do you feel that the weather has an effect on your hearing (rain, wind, etc.)?
6. What information would you want to be alerted with from our traffic safety system (speed of car, distance, etc.)?
7. Do you use anything other than the walking cane as a visual aid? Are you aware of any other products that are out there and you don’t use?
8. Would you be opposed to carrying around a device to alert you of oncoming hybrid/electric cars? If yes, why? What if the device was integrated with the walking cane?
9. How do you feel about having to recharge your electrical devices such as cell phone?
10. If anything was possible, what would be your ideal solution to this problem?
11. Lastly, would you be interested and willing to participate in a hearing test?
Thank you again for your time.
The John R. Mattioli Jr. Technical Innovation award recognizes individuals or companies whose contributions demonstrate innovation and excellence in the work of technology developed for, or provide clear benefit to, blind and visually impaired persons.
Through their developments in software and/or hardware, Award nominees have made significant contributions to the way we work and live. This award is given on an annual basis as warranted by the Blind Information Technology Specialists affiliate through its established award committee.
To be eligible for the John R. Mattioli Jr. Technical Innovation award, the individual or company must have created or introduced a technology product and/or service that has had a positive effect in the lives of visually impaired persons.
For more information, please visit the BITS Website at http://www.acb.org/bits/
Last updated: Saturday, October 17, 2009