January 2007 — Features
Print this article | Email this articleClick here to receive your FREE subscription to T.H.E. Journal
Assistive Technology :: Making the Impossible Possible
KEYED IN: Its maker says the New Standard
Keyboard makes typing easy for everyone.
Parkinson sees the potential to serve users with a variety of needs. Seniors in particular, he says, have difficulty with tasks that rely on short-term memory for new learning and would benefit, and a colleague suggested that “this is just what they need at the VA hospital, where they have brain injuries and memory problems. They can learn on this because they already know the alphabet.” Plus, Parkinson has recently received correspondence from blind typists, who he says seem ideally suited for the new keyboard.
Diane Hogan says it took her son some time to get used to the new keyboard, but he gradually caught on. Whereas before, Kevin wouldn’t participate in writing activities, now he’s asking her to set him up with his own e-mail account. “It allows him more independence from me,” says Diane, who, interestingly, taught traditional keyboarding for more than 10 years. “We’re seeing him take more risks and be more successful.”
Diane bought a second New Standard Keyboard for Kevin to use at the learning center, while keeping the first one for use at home. The keyboard helps him in at least two ways. First, of course, is his academic work. And second is his self-image. “He’s cognizant of his deficiencies and has a lot of anxiety,” says Diane. “By using the keyboard, he doesn’t feel so out of it.”
Parkinson says that his next move is to put the keyboard into a laptop. People such as the Hogans have made quite an impression on him. “I had set out to make the difficult easy for lazy people like me,” he says, “and what I had done was make the impossible possible for someone who really needed it. There may not be much profit in that, but it seems infinitely more worthwhile.”
“I can do anything any kid can do.”
Joe Bauer Griffin is in sixth grade now. Paralyzed below his shoulders as the result of a spinal cord injury when he was 2, he uses Activpanel, a 15-inch touchscreen panel made by classroom solutions provider Promethean, which he controls with a pen attached to his visor. He moves his neck, the pen writes. “I can do anything any kid can do,” Griffin says, including responding to questions, bringing up a calculator, writing, and drawing. At a recent school board meeting, for being such an inspiration, he was presented with two Activpanels, one for home and one for school.
