I have watched with envy the development of touchscreens. I cannot use my hands and fingers. I heard on the television an item about someone who had developed a long nose so that they can use their touchscreen in the bath.
Of course the people on the TV said “just get out of the bath” but it set me thinking that it is possible to use something like a long nose to push the images around the screen.
I can use my head, the screen needs to be far enough in front to be able to view it easily, a stick like pointer would need a guard if it was held by your mouth (like a babies dummy) to prevent choking.
I am sure there are lots of other design features required but I would love to be able to use a touchscreen.
Anne
There are a few different kinds of touchscreen. The cheapest and least-responsive is Resistive. It has 2 really thin layers on top of the glass that when touched, make contact with each-other, and the computer becomes aware of it. The other main kind of touchscreen – and the kind seen in iPhones and iPads, is Capacitive. It has a thin layer of material on top of the glass that conducts electricity. When a finger touches it an electrical circuit is made, and the computer becomes aware of it. This is a much more responsive system but it does require a finger (or a nose!) in order for a circuit to be created, so I don’t think a long stick would work. But long sticks are good for poking scientists with, in order to encourage them to develop a more ‘enabled by design’ touchscreen.
Incidentally, I’m not a scientist, so sticks don’t work on me.
Thank you for your very informative reply.
I do think it would be possible to use a material for the “stick” that would create an electrical circuit when it touches the screen.
I like your joke about poking the scientists. I did wonder how much thought they had given to people who cannot use their hands when they designed these very desirable items.
Hi Anne,
David is right, but actually I think it would be fairly easy for you to find a way to use an iPad, as there are a lot of styluses available for the iPad – they mimic the electrical condictivity of the skin. I have one, and it works fine.
Take a look at this page: http://atmac.org/accessing-the-ipad-mouthsticks-and-styluses, where someone has tried out a few ways of doing this.
Also, take a look at http://www.beststylus.com/physically-handicapped.html as it has some ideas / possible products.
Hope this helps!
Anu
thank you for the extremely useful Web addresses and comments, I realised when I read your post that of course I am not the first person to have met up with this problem – I am embarrassed that I did not do more research before I made my post.
Thank you again
Anne
There are also these gloves i’ve seen.
http://www.agloves.com/pages/Glove-Science.html
Maybe a similar material could be used?