4 replies to this topic

[niallabrown]

I'm looking for a volunteer who can make (what I hope is) a simple program that I can use with individuals who have severely limited mobility and use a touch screen computer.

All the program needs to do is allow a communication facilitator to load several images. Then the individual draws their finger (or the pen) across the screen and the image changes every couple of centimeters in sequence.

The idea is that someone with just a small pull can change the images and stop when they see the thing they need... i.e. a medical problem they need addressed.

If you can help please consider portability, can it be made to run on all OS's if someone wants to tweak it and is it likely to work with future versions of windows? This work is not for profit and will never be sold. I am also looking for someone who will be willing to licensed under a free license that will allow others to contribute and freely pass the program around.

Please let me know if you can help.

Thanks!

[WingedPanther]

SourceForge.net: Alphalogic may be a useful resource. I haven't investigated it carefully. It also occurs to me that what you're doing could be handled with a fairly simple PHP site. Since it runs under Apache, it will run under WAMP/LAMP with no problem. Just let the OS handle treating the touchscreen as a mouse.

[niallabrown]

Hey, Thanks so much for taking the time to let me know about Alphalogic resource, I'd never heard of it before, that was above and beyond and I can think of some individuals who could benefit from that type of program. What I'm focusing on in this project is simplifying the choice making method to be absolutely as conceptually basic as possible. I would like 2 lateral movements to give an individual access to 2 to as many as even 25 choices. To select they would simply stop scrolling.

What I have in my head would look a bit like coverflow except you wouldn't flick, just the whole screen is like a scroll bar. Would typical interfaces have difficulty as the pen or finger touches the screen? Does it count that as a click?

Do you, or anyone on the board, know of anyone who would be interested in writing some PHP to achieve this? Also, would a facilitator/therapist/parent be able to add their own pictures easily?


Thanks WingedPanther and everyone who took a moment to read the post!

[WingedPanther]

Basically, what you would need for the PHP version is a simple content management system. It gets a directory listing of a particular folder and displays the image files contained in it. I don't know that I have the skill set to pull that off quite yet, but several people here do.

Regarding the input, use OS settings to control what counts as a click/double-click. Generally, a combination of usability settings in the OS and will handle the input. If necessary, you could use a customized version of FireFox (either modify the source code or use a plugin) to facilitate handling the input as desired.

[niallabrown]

I see, Ive never gotten past the most basic install Joomla but I it sounds fairly simple. I'll start searching for someone with PHP skills. Thanks very much for the advice!