Saw this in town today

May work well for someone who uses a single switch - you just put the Wii remote on a box, and tap it.

Bild have published the result of their Hearing from the Seldom Heard Project.

Lots of useful ideas and links to good prjects and work people have done.

A limited number of CDs are available, but all the resources can all be downloaded as pdfs from the website above.

We are working with the great theatre company Oily Cart at the moment on the online component for the residency and new show they are producing for the Manchester Festival in July.

If you haven’t heard of them then here is a video from their previous show, Blue, to give you an idea of how wonderful their shows are.

The new show is called Something in the Air, and they are working with Ockhams Razor to produce it.

Most of the shows will be for the schools they are working with in Manchester during the residency, but there are a few public shows. If you want to take someone to one there are more details here. The tickets are not sale yet, but the audience for each show will be small so I would advise keeping an eye out, or getting in touch with the theatre if you are interested.

I will post more details as the project unfoldes over the next few months.

Mencap have announced the winners for this years Snap! competion.

More details here. And the winning pictures can be seen here.

The BBC have launched an accessible newsreader that works for switch users, and people who struggle with reading.

Its aimed at children, but would be appropriate for many adults too.

You can find it here.

Great to see a mainstream site producing a service using mainstream content and repackaging it for this audience.

Last friday was Blogging against disablism day.

Hi

The new version is now out, and if you are asked to upgrade my advice at the moment is don’t - I will explain why.

There is a change to the behaviour of Cooliris in the new version that i hadn’t noticed, as it is quite subtle when it happens and I hadn’t seen it mentioned anywhere. If you only look at pictures using Cooliris then don’t worry it doesn’t effect you, but if you look at videos on youtube using it then you may have issues.

The behaviour has been changed so that when you watch a video, after it has been playing for around 10-15 seconds the keyboard focus changes so that all keystrokes are sent to the video clip, not to the wall of images (the background wall fades slightly to indicate this has happened). So the left and right arrow keys no longer change the video playing, but jump around inside the video.

The way to go back to navigating through different videos is to click on the background wall, or press the escape key.

If you are using a switch then this is difficult - and if you press the escape key too many times then the  Cooliris view closes and you are returned to the ordinary web page.

They have changed the behaviour like this so that people who are playing flash games in the wall can use keyboard navigation in the game without jumping to a different game.

I hope they will make this a preference setting in the next iteration so you can select whether or not you want this change of behaviour. I have emailed them, and the guy I was in discussion with agrees that this would be the best solution. Lets hope they do it.

Until then don’t upgrade if you are using cooliris to look at videos on youtube using a single switch.

There is a beta version of the next release of Cooliris available on the main page of their website.

It adds a few new things, and is in danger of moving into feature overload.

One of the welcome additions is you can look at folders of pictures on the the hard drive directly (and on a Mac it hooks up to your iPhoto library too)

One of the unwelcome additions is that it adds more text below the thumbnails when you are looking at things. This is some of the meta data you get along with the media, but I can’t see an obvious way to turn it off unfortunately. I have put in a request to have the option of turning it off to keep the screen clean and empty of text. Please request that as well if you think it matters, as the more people who ask, the more likely they are to take notice.

Testing the beta means you don’t mind if it is still broken a bit, and they expect that it will be, but you get to try out new features early. Its the last stage of testing before a new version is released to the general public. It can be a good way to check if the next version that will be released breaks or changes anything you rely on before it is the version that everyone uses.

I have tested the beta with the things we use it for and they are all still fine, which is a relief.

New versions of software always brings mixed feelings - I hope they have improved the features I use and may depend on for the things I use the software for. But there is also the worry that they may have removed or changed features so they don’t work the way they used to (especially keyboard shortcuts).

This time it looks like its ok.

More details at this page. I suspect you will need to look today as the page may only be up temporararily. Check the date.

Camera tracking is a big growth area in computers.

Heres some software that will enable you to control things using coloured objects. Its free, Windows only at the moment but Mac version is also in development. They are pushing it as a way to play games, but it isn’t limited to that.

Its a bit fiddly to setup, but the advantage of that is that there are alot of options in what you can get it to do. Bottom line is if you can do it on the computer using the mouse, keyboard or joystick then you can get this software to do it.