More than a dozen speakers and assistive technology vendors descended on the L.P. Young Student Center for Keene’s World Usability Day exhibition on Thursday, Nov. 13.
The conference was organized by Diana Petschauer, the Assistive Technology professional and the founder and CEO of Assistive Technology for Education and Access for Employment.
Colton McCracken / Equinox Staff
World Usability Day is, “A single day of events occurring around the world that brings together communities of professional, industrial, educational, citizen, and government groups for our common objective: to ensure that the services and products important to life are easier to access and simpler to use,” according to the official website worldusabilityday.org.
Petschauer stated, “World Usability Day is completely volunteer run and organized. The event was designed to be one of hundreds events worldwide. We wanted to really emphasize usability, accessibility and assistive technology and how intelligent smart design can allow people of all abilities to engage in learning and employment.”
The conference found its way to the Keene State College campus thanks to Petschauer’s connection with Alyssa Marinaccio, the assistive technology coordinator in KSC’s Disability Services Office.
“I have a very good relationship with Diana [Petschauer]. We work together and present together and I actually do some work for her company,” Marinaccio said.
“All of our speakers and exhibitors came from all over New England to talk about usability and accessible design. Assistive technology can be anything that helps somebody with a disability or just a challenge to do something they may not have been able to do before or make something difficult, easier,” Petschauer explained.
Richard Sundermier, a regional account manager from Humanware, was at the event to display vision assistance monitors, GPS devices and keyboards for the vision impaired.
The company’s “Prodigi” product line digitally magnifies the text read by its camera and can even read out loud to the user. The device uses a detachable tablet that makes the technology portable.
“The user can just take the tablet with them when they go out. It makes it possible to read menus at restaurants on their own,” Sundermier explained.
Marinaccio said that such technology is available to students at KSC who are registered with the Disability Services Office. Devices such as the Livescribe Pen are used by, “Students with ADHD or a learning disability,” who, “will use [it] to take notes. What it does is sync their written notes with audio recordings,” Marinaccio said. She explained that when the student is reviewing their notes, they can touch the page with the Livescribe Pen and it plays back what was recorded while that note was written. “You don’t have that anxiety of having to keep up,” Marinaccio said.
Marinaccio added roughly 20 students are currently enrolled in the Livescribe loan program.
“We received a lot of thank-you’s from people who attended and asking for copies of the presentations which we are putting on the website. People had a hard time deciding what session to go to because there were so many great speakers. We had close to one-hundred-and-fifty to two-hundred people involved, so it really went well,” Petschauer explained.
“Keene State College ended up being a great venue,” Petschauer said.
Marinaccio stated, “It was great to have the college open up awareness and I know some of the staff were able to attend. It was good for awareness especially with the growing field of [accessibility] technology.”
David Walsh can be contacted at dwalsh@keene-equinox.com
