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Q: You’re now offering a choice of Android, Windows and Chrome OS. Do you find that certain operating systems are a better fit for certain schools or certain levels?A: I think for certain that mobility is taking over. We’ve found that, especially in the mature or developed markets, where broadband availability and streaming availability are pretty pervasive, it’s enabling new workflows which enable new products that can depend on the cloud. We’re seeing that, and we’re seeing that students want products that are sleeker and lighter.There are also sets of management tools, like Google’s Chromebook Management Console or Windows Intune or even Active Directory that help IT managers manage these assets and deploy and provision applications in a much easier fashion. They’re a lot less complicated than a traditional PC and therefore perfect for schools.

Q. When you went out to schools and asked What are you looking for in an education notebook?, what did they want to see in the future?A: They want unlimited battery life and products that don’t break, and from a physical side we try to get as close to that as possible. And they want to get it as close to free as possible. In terms of usability, screen size, etcetera, touch was really important, even on laptops.Having a pen for a handwriting experience was really important to teachers, especially in the primary and late primary sector, and from a software perspective they wanted tools that were usable online and offline, but would also allow learning out of the box and make the teacher feel more comfortable.Those are some of the key findings, but what we tried to do was aggregate all the feedback we got from the UK, Ireland, the United States, Singapore –- but also countries in Africa and countries in the Middle East – and that informed our decisions and our process in the industrial design as well as the features.

A: Right, and not just based on our opinion of education technology, but based on what educators’ opinions were of education technology. We really went to the source, and we even bought in a bunch of students as well.Q: Are educators looking for such a wide range of screen sizes and form factors?A: Some of it depends on the content and some of it depends on the user. Physiologically, a student in year one is very different to a student in year eleven, so you have those industrial design and human factors, but we also have the curriculum. What a Year 1 or Year 2 learns is very different from what a Year 10 or Year 11 learns.Furthermore, what is expected of them in terms of creation is different. As you move up the continuum from primary to secondary and tertiary we see an increase in what students actually have to create and deliver back to be evaluated, and that means an increase in utility and the creative aspects of the technology.

Q: Where do you see future trends going in the education technology market?A: I think you’ll find one of those future trends in our booth, and that’s blended reality. We’re merging the physical and digital to enhance learning outcomes.You’ll see the Z-Space monitors, which we announced at CES a few weeks ago, you’ll see the reader application, where we work with publishers to create invisible as well as visible watermarks in books, so that if a student is trying to learn Pythagorean theorem, and they’re confused about what it means, they can take their mobile device, put it over the Pythagorean theorem and see a video about it and why it works.What we’re trying to do is increase the number of modalities that a student uses to learn one learning objective. In its physical manifestation that’s known as blended learning, and in the digital it’s known as blended reality.

Apple is rightly championed for its accessibility efforts. More than its rivals, Apple has embraced the notion that everyone should be able to use its products; OS X and iOS alike have extensive options for assisting people with impaired vision, hearing and motor control.But Apple has largely glossed over a key area of accessibility that’s of increasing concern: vestibular disorders. While this encompasses a range of conditions and symptoms, broadly speaking, those affected suffer adverse reactions — dizziness, vertigo, panic attacks — to animation that’s prevalent throughout modern operating systems.Those affected suffer adverse reactions — dizziness, vertigo, panic attacks — to animation that’s prevalent throughout modern operating systems.
When Apple released iOS 7, this came to a head. Zoom, parallax and sliding effects made the system unusable for those affected. It was a month before a “Reduce Motion” setting could be enabled to block parallax and zoom effects, and a further five months until the iOS App Switcher’s lurching entry/exit animation was quelled. Today, iOS and OS X upgrades are imminent, and yet current betas worryingly position the systems to make users sick all over again.

Vestibular conditions are “invisible”, but according to accessibility and UX consultant Greg Tarnoff, they can be far from trivial: “When things are small and isolated — say, taking up a quarter of my vision — that usually isn’t a problem. But when there are multiple levels of motion across a larger area, things quickly turn.”Greg’s particular vestibular disorder has been called Chronic Subjective Dizziness. “The short of it is that my brain receives data, but it can’t process it — it’s like a compiler in my head is expecting one language, but getting another,” he explains. When triggered, this results in his surroundings starting to spin, panic attacks, and the feeling of strength leaving his body, making him prone to falls. “It’s as if my brain has used up all available resources, and nothing else works,” he continues, “and depending on the severity of the trigger, attacks last between 30 seconds and five minutes”.

Greg isn’t alone, and other affected parties spoke of additional symptoms, including stomachaches and headaches, with post-trigger problems sometimes lasting for days. The question is what you can do, bar attempting to shut your eyes during every onscreen transition.Technology writer Kirk McElhearn — who has some balance issues, slightly impaired eyesight, and finds excessive motion disturbing — naturally immediately heads towards existing beneficial accessibility controls: “In iOS, that’s Reduce Motion, as well as Increase Contrast | Darken Colors. In OS X, it’s all the translucency features; it’s harder to read text when the background is blurry.”

Greg also finds Reduce Motion useful, although notes it rarely extends to third-party apps: “Scrolling through social-media apps can trigger attacks, primarily when I come to an auto-playing video or GIF with motion going in a different direction to the scroll.” On the Mac, he avoids the Dock, disables “genie effects”, and closes his eyes while using Mission Control. Mostly, he tries to work using a laptop and two extra displays, to entirely avoid using Spaces and switching between apps.The problem is that while Apple offers the aforementioned settings, none go far enough. More worryingly, the company in one case appears to be going backwards. The iOS 9 app switcher unveiled during Apple’s June event has a more aggressive trigger than its predecessor, and doesn’t yet respond to Reduce Motion in the current beta. In addition, although OS X is about to receive its fourth major update since extensive animations were introduced in OS X Lion, accessibility controls for vestibular disorders remain absent.

The iOS 9 app switcher unveiled during Apple’s June event has a more aggressive trigger than its predecessor, and doesn’t yet respond to Reduce Motion in the current beta.
One concern among accessibility advocates is that the term “accessibility”, in the context of computing, is starting to become synonymous primarily with helping the visually impaired, rather than opening up devices and software to everyone. “Accessibility often gets over-simplified, because it’s so complex, and so designers must be made aware that it can mean many things. There’s no single definition of accessibility or one type of disability,” affirms designer, animation and UX expert Val Head, who adds that talking about motion, balance and vertigo issues “helps make app creators more aware of the issue” and may “encourage more change at the OS level”.

Greg is quick to state that he “loves that accessibility is gaining headway in the tech and design industries, and that we’re seeing more articles about it and getting more people involved,” but he has similar concerns that “it’s often relegated to whether something works with a screen reader”. Echoing Val, he argues that accessibility “means so much more than that,” and the main areas of consideration should include vision, hearing, physical, learning, and neuro-diversity variances. “Folks with neuro-diversity issues, such as vestibular disorders, make up a surprisingly large proportion of the public. According to Veda, as many as 35% of people aged 40 and above have experienced some sort of vestibular disorder, either chronic or temporary,” he says. “Making products that alienate a third of your audience is bad form in any market!”

The question is where we go next, and the consensus appears to be Apple must — as it has in other areas of accessibility — take the lead, encouraging developers to follow. Kirk would like Apple to offer “a master setting to turn off all the visual fluff that looks good in product demos, but is nothing but a hindrance to many users,” and make the facility prominent rather than burying it deep in the Accessibility settings.Val reckons finer-grained controls for iOS would be useful, too, rather than forcing someone to turn off all animations when only some may be triggers. “And something similar on OS X should be in the works,” she adds. “Larger screens amplify the effects of motion on those with vestibular disorders, and so not including controls there is a huge oversight.”Greg simply argues that while Apple has “pushed the accessibility front with features such as VoiceOver, it’s time to give users more control of their experience: “Some folks need to read light text on dark backgrounds, so accommodate that. And for those of us with issues related to motion sickness, let us set how much motion we use.”http://www.dearbattery.co.uk/acer.html

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