Verizon

Proposal Narrative

Our colleague Brian is blind. He is amazingly self sufficient in life with his wife and 3 kids. He loves technology and the ways it empowers him in his daily routine. He uses JAWS, a screen reader, to use his computer and programs it to automate and solve his own problems. He even writes a blog about his trials and tribulations with accessibility.

We treat Brian no differently than we treat anyone else at our space. The day he found us we put an Arduino in his hand and expected him to program it. Arduino was designed to make electronics design, programming and prototyping easy enough for kids, but deep enough for professionals. It took some time to explain its non accessible layout to him but within a few hours he had programmed it to play Pink Panther through a speaker!

He was hooked on programming which could make changes in the real world, where he could solve his own problems. He decided to pursue a degree in computer engineering. However, when he talked to the Disability Resource Office they warned that his chances of success in that degree program would be very limited. Without a tactile representation of the different components and access to the tools needed to interact with these components they couldn't guarantee a fair playing field.

We talked with Brian many nights about this, about his success with Pink Panther, and about the problems he had to admit to himself. The Arduino IDE was barely accessible. He was only able to program the Arduino in the first place because a sighted person counted out the pins on the board to him and gave him the speaker explaining which pins would go where on the board.

But there was too much potential for this device for blind people. If the micro processor could control robots, access wifi, control cameras, lights, speakers, and lots of other components for sighted users, why could it not do the same for the blind?

Blind people love technology because it allows them to be self sufficient and solve their own problems. There are devices out for the blind that cost hundreds of dollars if not thousands to assist them in measuring water, identifying colors, and notify them of things around them. But how can the world be made accessibly by those who don't understand the needs of the blind? And how can the blind solve their problems if the tools are not accessible?

With the Arduino the blind person could program their own device to do these same functions for a fraction of the cost, or solve NEW problems.

And it wouldn't be that difficult to make Arduino accessible. All of the hardware and software designs are available for free online. The Arduino team is a loose confederation of liked minded individuals around the world working to make the product better.

We intend to make TOOLS of life accessible to the blind so they can participate and solve their problems on their own.

Join us.

Program Participants

The focus of this project is directed towards the blind and/or low vision. Students, professionals, kids, adults, it doesn't matter. Anyone with a passion for technology and a love of problem solving and learning. As a development project, though, we would need some software engineers with a knowledge of the Arduino software and the java langauge. We would also need hardware engineers that can make changes to the Arduino hardware.

For Whom Will You Address This Cause

The program will directly effect the blind and low vision technology enthusiasts around the world who have never before had access to programming or building on a micro processor. As an open source program the Arduino IDE will benefit blind users around the world with a simple download. The Arduino hardware is a micro processor that is low in cost ranging any where from $30 to $80 depending on the components included.

Providing Service

The Arduino language has great tutorials found online, along with example scripts found right in the menu of the IDE. For the blind users we will provide a detailed layout and description of the hardware,. Also as a supplement to the description of the hardware we will have Braille or tactile labels for each component of the hardware. There are online forums and mailing lists directed towards programmers of the arduino found online at www.sparkfun.com.

Partners & Organizations

Locally we have ties with the CUBIC lab at Arizona State University. For a decade they've worked on accessibility problems from the user point of view.

ACBVI locally works to enhance the quality of life for blind and visually impaired. Cubic has worked with them to understand the needs of the blind community and to evaluate products in development.

Other important establishments to reach out to will be blind schools such as state schools for the Deaf and Blind, and training centers for the blind as in Colorado center for the Blind. Partners like this could be trained and deliver the training to many ethnic backgrounds, age groups, and genders of the blind community.

Global community of other makerspaces.

Verizon Volunteers

I think this could be useful if we get to a point where we need drivers to locations, assistance in training, or in making calls for feedback and stats. We could also look into an accessibility tech support chatline and hotline to answer questions.

Mission

HeatSync Labs' mission is to provide the tools, space and the community for students, entrepreneur, artists and garage tinkerers to come together and create their dreams. We are a community workshop which promotes Do-It-Yourself science and education and prides ourselves on application -in addition- to theory.

Our vision is a world where we re-awaken our population and reinstate the knowledge of creation in opposition to our throw-away society. We will empower our population delivering the confidence to once compete on a global scale.

Achievements

Monthly we run a free to attend arduino workshop where we train kids to adults how to program microcontrollers. Hundreds of people, from children to adults have attended our monthly meetings with the goal of empowering themselves with technology to solve their own problems. MORE HERE

Most recently we had been asked to create a workshop series on soldering and programing for UrbanStew another local nonprofit. Again, we wanted to instill the values of creation, having our attendees actaully BUILD the computer they would eventually program. Demystifying these devices which are increasingly becoming ubiquoutous.

We have hosted over 24 free public educational events this year. Every 1st and 3rd Thursday we invite in a speaker to invigorate us, and them. From materials, to tools, to processes we want to empower our people with the knowledge they need to succeed. Topics have included: *Astronomy

• Eagle PCB Layout and Design
• PCB Chemical Etching,Heat Transfer, with FeCl
• Haptic interfaces
• Lock Picking
• Cube.ly 3D printer
• PaperCraft
• Thermoforming
• Idaho Near Space Project Balloon Communications Payload
• High Speed Photography
• Haystack Project
• Working with acrylic
• Glass Working
• Rep Rap made easy
• Teardown party(everyone brings a peice of electronics to tear down for parts in order to understand)
• Lathing for fun and profit
• EL Wire
• Monster plush party (Disassembling plush dolls and sewing them back together with electronics)
• Coffee Science and Arduino
• Arduino and VOIP - Dial-a-Lulz
• CAD/CAM introduction
• Home Brewing

Throughout this past year we also took time out to coach a pair of First Lego League teams. Our kids, mostly 9r olds, worked throughout 2010 Body Forward Challenge, as the FLL put its to "explore the cutting-edge world of Biomedical Engineering to discover innovative ways to repair injuries, overcome genetic predispositions, and maximize the body's potential, with the intended purpose of leading happier and healthier lives." They learned computer programming, mechanical engineering and biological engineering concepts culminating in a team presentation and robot competition! The goal, again here, was to empower them to solve THEIR OWN problems. It was entirely discovery learning and the adults were only there to supervise and answer questions. It was the first year for our kids and they had amazing fun. In addition our mentor won best mentor for the season.

Similar Groups

We're most like a vocational school, though without the classes. We're also like a traditional academic incubator model mixed with the newer accelerator model where entrepreneurs and skilled tradespeople who don't wish to work in an office alone but would rather work side by side with the other brightest minds in the community in order to build their workspace in public

More specifically, we are part of a larger maker/do-it-yourself culture exemplified by Make Magazine. There are spaces are popping up throughout the united states, and globally, all with different visions and goals, but all listing themselves at hackerspaces.org.

Locally we are most like our peer coworking/collaboration sister and previous landlord, Gangplank. Gangplank, much like us, intends to revolutionize education, community, and collaboration. They currently are comprised more of web and mobile development, marketing and branding.

What makes us different from all these is our focus on infrastructure and creation. Even our schools are cutting vocational work due to budget constraints. We refuse to back down. We intend to bring the tools of creation back to the people.

Participants

We will utilize our members and connections to the blind community to leverage our technological skills. We are technologists who have several blind in our midst, friends and families. In addition we will utilize our allies within the blind community including XXXX

Approach

We then must survey and poll the blind and low vision community to find out more about their needs. We intend to hold workshops documenting the struggles blind and low vision users have when attempting to utilize the Arduino platform.

Our goal here is to specifically not reinvent the wheel. We will extend the existing Arduino hardware and software to make them accessible. Our approach will be to talk extensively with existing Arduino community on how to make our changes in such a way that they will be accepted with the least amount of resistance.

Our work will be focused in three areas:

Hardware-figure out a way to leverage existing technologies to represent braille on a pcb to identify components, inputs and outputs --through holes? --solder mask? --label chips somehow? -replace lights with motor or sound feedback

Schematics -its like a map really, how might they see maps now -really should jump in with fritzing somehow

Software-figure out how to make ide interface accessible -rewrite so screen readers can utilize all areas -debug and error messages, line numbers

To do this we will need to hire a software engineer to modify the IDE, a hardware engineer to modify the hardware designs, and a blind liaison to connect with the community and work with us day to day as we develop our solutions.

Intended Outcomes

We will empower the blind to solve problems for themselves by making the tools of creation accessible. Specifically blind and low vision users will be able to hold and understand a commodity microcontroller board, utilize the programming environment through their screen reader, hold commodity products and understand them and how they connect, read schematics, and develop prototypes to enrich their lives.

Broader Gains?

We will bootstrap an incredibly successful microcontroller project, make subtle changes to make it accessible, and push those changes back into the main project for them to include in all future releases of the hardware and software.

As a result, this work will only need to be funded once. Every Arduino microcontroller made then now on and every download of the Development Tools by sighted users from now on will be accessible should the user be blind or visually impaired.

This is because Arduino is Open Source Hardware and Software. It is how the Arduino platform was built and why we're able to do this project, and why people after us will be able to build on our work.

Half Way goal?

This project is naturally divided between hardware and software projects, which are about equal in time and effort required. The natural progression is that we would be halfway done when either the hardware prototype is ready to be manufactured, or when our software changes our in the mainline Arduino IDE.

However, these efforts could also be done in parallel if more than one person is hired to work on the project. The general progression is an iterative development process, where a number of prototypes are developed before the final product is completed. After our initial design phase, we would have a good overview of how many iterations we would need, and would be able to define milestones and dates.