Group items tagged

providing computers throughout the world to make a positive impact in education, health, and science

Links to short pieces about how donations of ICT makes positive impacts

"18-20 March 2009, New York, UN Headquarters, Milan, European Parliament Office Infopoverty is a common platform aiming at fighting poverty through the innovative use of the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), able to provide broadband services such as telemedicine, e-learning, e-government, etc. to disadvantaged communities. Infopoverty is a Programme born in the ambit of the United Nations and coordinated by OCCAM, the Observatory for Cultural and Audiovisual Communication created by UNESCO in 1997. The Infopoverty Programme involves more than 100 international institutions that have taken part, in various forms, in the Infopoverty World Conference."

Blog on ICT that is worth reading and following to help you prepare for exams.

"Visually impaired customers of American Express say they can no longer read their credit card statements online. In December Amex changed its format for UK statements from HTML to Portable Document Format or PDF. However, it failed to encode the new PDF documents so they could be read by "screen readers," special software used by blind or partially sighted people. "

"Deaf children have been testing software that enables them to see a visual representation of sound waves. Called Lumisonic the software translates sound waves into circles that radiate on a display. It creates a real time representation of sound and is designed to elicit responses quickly in the human brain. "

"Kuniholm is a biomechanics researcher at Duke University who lost his arm in an explosion while serving in Iraq. His efforts at Guitar Hero are more than just fun and games. He is trying out a system developed by Jacob Vogelstein and Robert Armiger of the Applied Physics lab at Johns Hopkins University who hope to use games like Guitar Hero to train people to use prosthetic limbs."

"Jason Perkins, 34, talked to blind people in Cardiff to develop a handset that tells users which way to turn by vibrating their index or ring finger. Owners hold the GPS device in the same hand as their guide dog's lead. "

"Gowrings Mobility - a specialist in adapted vehicles - is marketing the BB Nav, developed by Navevo. The system contains a database of Blue Badge parking bays, accessible toilets, disabled-friendly petrol stations and accessible accommodation. "

"Trials are under way of a UK service allowing people to contact emergency services by text message. The system is aimed at people who cannot make normal voice calls to the 999 service due to disability"

"A device that allows blind people to attach and read audio labels on everyday objects has gone on show. The PenFriend uses minute barcodes which - when scanned by a digital pen - trigger MP3 files recorded on the unit."

""There aren't enough therapists available for the number of children who have movement difficulties in the UK," said Professor Mon-Williams. "So increasingly we need to move towards assisted technologies to fill the gap." He said that in the past it had been assumed that children like Tom would 'grow out' of their dyspraxia, but this has turned out not to be the case."

"Vint Cerf, vice president at Google, is widely recognised as a founding father of the internet. He is also hard of hearing and has worn a hearing aid since the age of 13. "One of the big challenges of the video medium is whether it can be made accessible to everyone," he told news agency AFP. "

"We tend to think of hacking as bad, and hackers as evil. But as well as the ones wearing white hats, ie the ones who are on our side and checking out vulnerabilities that others might exploit, there are the techno-geeks who are all dressed up and with nowhere to go. Until now. On the 11th March, the UK's Home Office, Cabinet Office and Ministry of Justice opened their doors to 10 technical experts from http://www.rewiredstate.com who used data.gov.uk and the web to develop tools and services that help people."

"The project will exploit the current infrastructure consisting of Internet cafes in larger towns, mobile phones available to most families or communities, and radios that are an important way of providing information to people. We expect the following outcomes: "

This project looks interesting. I wonder if any issues have arisen from it. It was only established this year as a service project of W3C, but what are the potential issues here?