No keyboard, no hands – no problem!

There is this little project called dasher that basically can be used to “type” by zooming through sentences using an amazingly intuitive pre-emptive text tool. I’ve been showing it off to people who have an interest in accessibility for users who are physically limited, one handed, or even for mobile devices where typing can be a drag.

Anyway, one person I showed it to has just emailed me with another surprising application of this cute little tool. He has just had another child and while he is holding the baby in one hand he is able to use dasher to compose emails and other stuff with the other hand. Nice!

I had installed the program on Ubuntu when I was looking for accessibility software that may be of interest to the education sector (and boy are they getting interested!) and now that I’m looking through the website I’m flabbergasted! They can use breath or buttons, tilt sensors and an eye sensor to write!

It is great to have people working on projects like this. After all, the Digital Divide isn’t just socio-economic.