Thursday, November 15, 2012

Tisha UnArmed

I haven't blogged at all this semester! I've been busy writing a bunch of grants with my partner, Joe Picone. Hopefully a few of them will pan out and we'll have some interesting work to look forwards to. The topic of those grant proposals will be the subject of a future blog post.

In the meantime, I wanted to post this video which I've just come across. This individual has posted a series of videos about how she does her daily tasks even though she has no arms. I find it fascinating if only because its a reminder of how functional many "disabled" people are. Folks like myself who are interested in using technology to "better the lives" of such people would do well to reflect that Tisha can drive a car, dress herself, cook, bathe, and hold down a job. I've watched a handful of the videos and they are great.

The video reminded me of the blind volunteer I worked with during my postdoc in Brussels. My friend would come to the lab by train from another city, taking taxis to and from the train station, and he didn't use a cane or a seeing eye dog. He would just walk, talk, ride the train, and so on. You could easily talk to him for ten minutes and not notice he was blind.

I was also reminded of Ben Underwood, the blind teenager who used echolocation to navigate his world.

We are wonderfully adaptive creative people, we humans. Enjoy.


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