Forum Proceedings

Frank Askinazy

Secondary Consumer
Searington, New York

Dear T²RERC,
Anyone who joined me in any of the conferences already knows my two pet crusades, and how vocal I have been about them.

First, regarding software and hardware manuals, I firmly believe that use should be so intuitive, that one should not have to even read the manual for most things. Whatever can't be made intuitive should adhere to defaults and be ubiquitous. For example anyone can rent a car and get into it (even at night) and drive away. We know where the key goes, where the gas and brake pedals are (and approximately how hard to press them). We might open the manual if we need to change the clock from Standard Time to Daylight Time, and even then we might be able to figure it out from similar car clocks. With today's cheap, high memory chips, most devices should be able to configure themselves for our use, without much attention from us. Microsoft's "Plug and Play" was a first step it that direction. It needs to be greatly expanded.

Second, regarding new technology, no small AAC company can afford to develop new technology. It will inevitably be too little, too late and much too expensive. AAC companies should be adapting currently available technology already developed for industry and government. It is actually much less expensive to adapt a full operating system like Windows or Windows CE to a limited use than it would be to privately develop even the simplest new system. When I heard Users ask for cellular additions to their devices, I knew that this already existed. Any device that is already using a standard operating system can easily be adapted to take a Plug in PCMCIA type Cellular card. An AAC device that incorporated cellular technology would now have to comply with a myriad of new FCC telecommunication regulations. With the simple plug in card, only the card needs to comply. This compliance has already been done by the large computer peripheral companies.

I am writing now because of an article that was in this week's PC Magazine. At the meeting I first learned of a new, on (or over) the horizon technology called "BlueTooth." This promised many new advanced high-tech features for AAC users. It was projected, however, to be very expensive to develop. Without knowing much about it, I was still sure that it would soon be developed as a standard computer peripheral. I said to the group that it would probably soon be available from a computer peripheral company like 3COM as a PCMCIA card. The September 25, 2001 edition of PC Magazine features the new 3COM BlueTooth PCMCIA card on page 45.

As my daughter uses a Windows compatible Tablet computer as her AAC device, it can already accept this "Plug and Play" addition. The list price is only $199.95. It would require only very simple software programming from the AAC company to incorporate these new features directly into her AAC software.

Sincerely,

Frank Askinazy
September 3, 2001

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