Hacking technology to provide low cost tools for people with disabilities: The Eyewriter.

On Saturday, I went to Pecha Kucha in New York City where Steven Holl, Stefan Sagmeister, and many others spoke about their work with all proceeds going to Architecture for Humanity's non-profit division. One of the presenters was Zachary Lieberman. Zachary has created The Eyewriter: "The EyeWriter Initiative is an ongoing collaborative research effort to empower people who are suffering from ALS with creative technologies via low-cost eye-tracking apparatus & custom software to draw using only their eyes." The important thing here is that technology to support people with disabilities is being created by small firms like this to provide very inexpensive tools at very little cost using off the shelf parts. The "competition" provides tools like this for upwards of $20,000. I'd like to see more of these types of solutions-- a "technology hacking" culture to provide low cost tools for people with disabilities. The Eyewriter reminded me a lot of Johnny Lee's Wii Remote hack to "bend the $40 game part so it powers a digital whiteboard, a multitouch display and a head-mounted 3-D viewer" to provide a low cost solution for schools with minimal funding.