Yes, truly terrifying situation but becoming quadriplegic does not mean an end to spending inordinate amounts of money on technology and owning more Raspberry Pi's and you're willing to admit to publicly.
Not my intent to minimise obviously, but I can move one finger in my head and I have a job and technology sector that I love.
I think I really just wanted to say that if you're going through this, Chin up! :-)
First, I don't wish for anyone to become quadriplegic.
I have a few questions:
1. How does your body react to not moving. Part of the problem I face working in Technology is that I have to spend lots of time in front of the computer. After a few hours my body needs to move. Does your body need to move? Or are you fine not moving for all day long?
2. It might be a bit of a creepy question but I have always wondered. If an eye lash gets inside your eye, how do you get it out. Is there someone out there looking out for you for these small details? Also does your eyes still get tired from looking at the screen.
I'm sorry if these are weird questions. Just a bit curious of how life is for a quadriplegic.
I checked out your site[1] and stumbled upon Dasher[2]. That is an amazing way to type! Do you still use it? I would love to think further about the typography and spacing to make it clearer, but curious what your experience has been.
Using Dasher at this very moment to write this very comment, I absolutely love it and would be lost without it. are useless dictation software for the bulk of my writing for the web, emails, coding etc as you might imagine that makes it somewhat impossible to have a private conversation without a carer's/PDAs/anybody overhearing. It's not as easy for me to just tap out a quick, silent and private text message for example. Privacy is one of the first things to go, you are constantly having to give people your password to unlock your devices for you. This drives me up the wall!
Dasher put some of that back, it really is invaluable. But I think it's been abandoned because it's not been updated for years and while I think it doesn't need much more polish in the functionality department; I think it could do with a little bit of a shine in the UI and the typography as you quite rightly point out.
Thanks for the response! I can imagine how losing privacy would be extremely frustrating.
I played with an iPhone app[1] version for a while and was able to get moving pretty fast. It makes text input feel like a game. Also, I realized that a lot of the colors are customizable in the settings.
Looking into the project further, it looks like it was run by David MacKay's research lab (Inference Group) and he unfortunately passed away a few years ago. Will continue looking to see if I can find anyone still working on it. Most interesting innovation in input tech that I have seen in a while!
No problem, just bought a new iPhone X which has been very awesome Face ID which means I don't mean to give anybody my passwords any more. Wooooooo!
That really gladdens me to see that there is a mobile app, although in a massive (and really funny) ironic twist is quite difficult for this disabled person to use! I can see how it will be much much easier and faster for able-bodied people though, and I'm so glad it exists.
I do use it for coding sometimes on my, but mostly it's a mixture of an on-screen keyboard and by situation with DragonDictate for Mac using Sublime Text.
Agreed. Your optimism is awesome and I love seeing people who, without seemingly any question about what they have to do / want to be, go after what they want regardless of anything else. The bigger the hurdle the greater it is to see great people achieve their goals.
I'm not even sure that it's me buying them at this point, I think people are buying them and planting them in my big draw of Electronics crap. That's about the only reasonable explanation I can come up with. :-)
It would be great if you could share your computation setup with accessibility modifications; it would be great not just for quadriplegic, but for anyone who is in bed rest.
Edit: Other commentators have posted his site [1].
I posted on another comment higher up before I saw this, if you scroll up you should be able to see it and forgive me for not posting it here again but it would be a little bit spammy I think.
I used to 'nah' at quadri|hemi plegic disabilities, because I have a near masochistic love for challenges. Until 2014 when my health crashed and I started to have very mild loss of finger control; it was soul crushing. It was like a broken bone that forbids you to move, it felt like a little sting of death inside my head everytime I tried to move and nothing happened.
I'm not sure if it's appropriate to ask someone to talk about this, if you don't mind I'd like to know if that's a common experience for disabled persons.
I'd really love to learn about how you work - in particular, what's your workstation like, what IDE(s) do you favour, and how do you actually input into the computer?
I'd also be really interested to hear about the challenges you may have encountered while job hunting and interviewing?
Edited to Add: I completely didn't see your last question! Put simply, I couldn't find a job anywhere so I had to start my own company, it's as simple as that. I would absolutely love to be DevOps at a company and get to play with a really big network, I Would be good at the job and have the chops to carry it off but no opportunities so far. I'd also love to get into more penetration testing, security research types that which is where my real love is what most places want me to attend a place to do the work. No can do unfortunately, which is slightly mystifying when you consider you're hacking networked computers!
Anyway, onto my computer setup:
* Retina iMac 5K[1] for when I can get to my office
* MacBook Pro[2] for when I can't
* TrackerPro[3] camera which tracks a small silver reflective dot on my glasses converting my head movement into cursor movements on-screen
* A Buddy Button[4] To give me my mouse clicks
* Apple's integrated Switch Control[5] accessibility software gives me an on-screen keyboard which I can customise to control every feature of my laptop, iMac and my iPhone. (Full disclosure: I helped to beta test this stuff)
* Komodo labs Tecla Shield[6] Bluetooth adapter which enables me to connect the button under my right index finger to my phone, it also enables me to use the chin controller in my wheelchair to control my iPhone. That is pretty sweet. *
* DragonDictate for Mac[7] is whether used for voice dictation 90% of the time, it's what I'm using now to write this comment. Nothing really comes close to it. Also, Sennheiser headsets; don't bother with anything else.
That's the basics, but my whole house is voice controlled essentially using the very awesome https://home-assistant.io home automation software. I can control the curtains, every light in the house by the LIFX lightbulbs, open the front door, play music, mess around on twitter, monitor how much electricity I'm using etc etc etc.
There's also 1.4 million metric crap-tonnes of shell scripts, AppleScript's hand like I've built up over the years to solve lots of little problems are far too numerous to list. Brett Terpstra writes some amazing software I use everyday.
Hope that answered your questions and was useful, feel free to ask whatever you like :-)
Switch Control means that with one button I can have an able-bodied person turn on my new laptop, iMac, iPhone or whatever and from that point on I can do anything an able-bodied person can do. Apple has their faults, but their accessibility stuff is absolutely phenomenal it really is. I would love to use open source software on some souped up Linux laptop but the software doesn't exist to allow me to physically interact with them yet. Yet.
Apparently the new Google phones have very recently gained similar switch functionality but I haven't got my sticky mitts on one of them yet to try.
* If any of you guys are reading this, how is the new version coming along?
Wow, the TrackerPro sounds great - there's a whole world of tech here I know nothing about! Do you think it works well for you?
I remember trying DragonDictate on Windows in the 90's, and it was light years ahead of anything at the time, but still not 'good enough' as an alternative to keyboard entry (for me). A lot of time has passed, so I imagine it's a lot better now - do you actually use it for inputting code, or just for general text? (like HN comments :)
Also, thanks for taking the time to answer and educate so fully!
As for Apple, they do make very very shiny things but that would not be enough to keep me with them if it wasn't for the accessibility stuff. I've always really wanted an alien ware laptop, but I can't use them!
(Is it bad that I think that's one of the worst things about being quadriplegic?)
I'd be curious to know more about how you got there, and what you do to adapt.
It's actually interesting, I have a friend who was born without an arm just below the elbow, he cant tell me how he adapts, because he's never done it any other way.
Yes, they are not quite at the point where I can replace DragonDictate for Mac but they are slowly getting there. Google are totally winning as far as I'm concerned with the voice recognition, but I find (and use) all of the big three digital assistants on a daily basis and would be pretty lost without them.
I personally just don't know if I wanna life like this after lived a "normal" life.
Probably it is harder to imagine it than just living it. On the other side I thought and decided already when I was twenty something that I do not life if I become blind.
Not sure why you're being down voted, this is a perfectly normal view and probably one I held myself. But you would be surprised, life has a way of wanting to persist.
You never really know how you're going to react until you're faced with the situation, but I mean really what else are you going to do and think your life?
It's live or play in traffic, same as for for everybody else.
Yes, truly terrifying situation but becoming quadriplegic does not mean an end to spending inordinate amounts of money on technology and owning more Raspberry Pi's and you're willing to admit to publicly.
Not my intent to minimise obviously, but I can move one finger in my head and I have a job and technology sector that I love.
I think I really just wanted to say that if you're going through this, Chin up! :-)