We would like to acknowledge the following contributors to this month’s STAE issue.
The Sterling Creations accessibility team, the Sterling Creations research team, Jeff N Marquis and Kerry J Harrison who are our resident business consultants, Scott Savoy our managing editor, Christian Robicheau our assistant editor, and Donna J Jodhan our president.
We are especially delighted to have both Jeff N Marquis and Kerry J Harrison as part of our magazine staff and as our resident business experts because of their in depth knowledge and expertise as special needs business consultants. Both Jeff and Kerry have written many articles and they have released two editions of their most recent hot selling book called “Untapped Wealth Discovered.”
The first edition of this book was released in mid August 2005 and it has surpassed all promises and expectations of being dynamite, explosive, and seismic and we are very sure that many of you will find it extremely valuable, useful and informative. The second edition was released in April 2006 and it too has gone way beyond all expectations re recognition and sales. Both the U.S and British governments have given their blessing to this book and several business experts have also jumped on the band wagon. Marquis and Harrison are off to a flying start.
We believe in this book because it is unique in that it can help you to get back on your feet if you suddenly find yourself without a job, if you are looking for ways to put money away for your kids’ education, or if you need extra income to help you live more comfortably. The beauty about this book is that it is based solely on realities and logic and not on those fool hardy get rich quick schemes and false and empty promises.
Here are just a few quotes from some U.S government officials and experts to peak your interest.
“Block buster material. This book has the potential to change the way we reduce our costs, increase our revenues, expand our customer base, and stay ahead of our competition.”
“If you are looking for safe ways to protect the future of you and your kids then you should pick up a copy of Untapped Wealth Discovered.”
“Marquis and Harrison have affectively provided their readers with logical and common sense ways to generate and create business ideas that will work because they are based on markets that exist. Moreover these markets are going to be around for a very long time to come.”
“This book is meant to help the little guy. It’s a book for almost everyone. The woman, the entrepreneur, the small business owner, and even the retiree and the college student.”
“If you want to avoid those get rich quick schemes and keep your money safe then Untapped Wealth Discovered is an absolute must read for you.”
Here is what some readers have to say about "Untapped Wealth Discovered."
From Kelly Strasberg vice president of a mid sized computer company in San Francisco:
"As a woman I am really impressed to see that these authors truly understand our plight in the business world. They acknowledge that there is indeed a glass ceiling for women and they show us how to deal with it in a positive way."
From Mark Gregory a foreman who unexpectedly lost his job at a GM plant in Michigan in 2005:
"It's so hard to know what to do when you suddenly find yourself without a job but this book has helped me to deal with things and turn my life around in a very quick time. I'm back on my feet and making very good money. Enough to be the bread winner once more."
From Rick Stone a small business owner in Washington DC:
"This is the first book that I've come across where the authors don't even mention a single thing about getting rich quickly. Instead, they talk about ways to take advantage of niche markets, lucrative opportunities, and rising demand."
From Melissa Goldatt a stay at home mom in Baltimore Maryland:
"I like this book because it presents fresh new approaches to creating your own employment. It also helps you to evaluate yourself and that's important to me because I am seriously thinking of getting into some kind of business to earn some extra income to help out around the house and I don't want to do something new without first examining all of my options."
From Chris Farrell a retired banker in New York:
"I wasn't sure what I would be reading when I bought a copy of this book but I'm sure glad that I did. If anyone is seriously looking to develop a business then this is the book for you. Marquis and Harrison have truly captured the essence of some very important trends and they talk about using these trends to build safe and sound businesses. Something that most of my colleagues should be thinking of before they retire."
From Laura Peterson a professor in business studies in London England:
"I'm glad to see that someone is finally paying attention to women in the business world. After reading this book I am convinced that women can have more than a better chance of being successful in their own businesses."
From Pierre LaPage a recent graduate in Montreal Canada:
"I was just browsing Amazon when I came across "Untapped Wealth Discovered" and the cover looked interesting enough so I bought it because it did not cost too much. It's cool! It has some very interesting techniques. It does not BS you into false hope and the authors don't try to fool you with big terms and cute phrases. No smoke screens here."
The excitement continues to build at break neck speed as these two authors have already been booked solid till the end of 2007 in promotional appearances across North America, Britain, and Europe.
The second edition comes as a result of tremendous demand from both readers and clients as well as from the American, British, and Canadian governments. The first edition sold over 50,000 copies in just six months and we are happy to report that the experts were right when they predicted that the second edition would sell even better. According to our yearend figures for 2006, the first edition sold over 100,000 copies between September 2005 and December 2006 and the second edition sold over 115,000 copies between April 2006 and December 2006. What a wonderful picture for these two authors!
Mr. Marquis is a motivational speaker and a highly paid consultant to both the U.S and British governments. He has over 20 years of special needs business consulting and is absolutely delighted to be co-authoring “Untapped Wealth Discovered” with Ms Harrison. His time is filled with speaking engagements, consulting, and traveling around the world to help set up new ventures.
Ms Harrison also has over 20 years in the special needs business-consulting field and her expertise is constantly in demand and among other things she works as a consultant to the U.S government, she is a motivational speaker, and she finds time to work on other projects for large corporate clients, small businesses, and even entrepreneurs.
These two are indeed an unbeatable combination and if you’d like them to help you keep up to date with up to the minute news then you should visit www.untappedwealth.com and check out the business desk. There you will find daily postings by Jeff, Kerry, and their fellow consultants and you can view all of this at no charge.
If you are looking for easy ways to keep abreast with news flashes, news from off the wires, and important developments and trends in the business world then the business desk is definitely for you.
Hello! This month we’d like to share a very exciting article with you. This article focuses on the development of radio technology for the deaf, hard of hearing, and blind and visually impaired persons. We often get asked how could deaf and heard of hearing persons take advantage of radio media, and now we’d like to share an article with you that focuses on just that.
It is awefully difficult for deaf and hard of hearing persons to find accessible media and the same could be said for the blind and visually impaired. Hopefully this venture will go a long way in helping to break down barriers and open up a whole new world for millions.
NPR Receives Department of Education Grant to Develop Accessible Radio
Technology for Deaf, Hard of Hearing, Blind and Visually Impaired
Communities NPR and WGBH's National Center for Accessible Media Partner to Research and
Create Services Washington, D.C., October 11, 2006 - The Department of Education's National
Institute of Disability Rehabilitation and Research has awarded a grant to
NPR and WGBH's National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM) to develop
accessible radio technology for people who are deaf, hard of hearing, blind
or visually impaired. The Accessible Digital Radio Broadcast Services grant
- in the amount of $150,000 for the first year - will help fund an
anticipated three-year research and development project to prototype, field
test and assess the cutting-edge radio technologies to serve the needs of
people with sensory disabilities. NPR and NCAM are internationally
recognized experts in digital radio technologies and accessible media
service models.
"As radio moves into the digital transmission arena, public radio is
committed to providing people with sensory disabilities equal access to
news, entertainment and emergency services," said Mike Starling, CTO and
Executive Director of NPR Labs. "Thanks to the Department of Education's
support through this grant, NPR and our WGBH partner will leverage our
shared abilities to deliver on this promise."
"The time to address the needs of people with sensory disabilities is now,"
said Larry Goldberg, WGBH's Director of Media Access. "Considering those
who are deaf or blind at birth, through trauma or illness, or baby boomers
reaching retirement age over the next few years, the numbers of Americans
with hearing or visual loss are expected to climb. It is crucial for us to
address the unique needs of this growing population as we further develop HD
radio services."
In creating radio technologies specifically geared to people with sensory
disabilities, NPR and NCAM will bring together experts from broadcasting,
academia and non-profit service organizations to best serve the needs of
people who are deaf, hard of hearing, blind and visually impaired. The
overall goal is to guide the design of prototype digital radios for
evaluation by consumers with special needs. At the conclusion of the study
period, the design criteria - to be developed with collective input from a
representative cross section of disabled consumers - will be turned over to
receiver manufacturers as best operating practice. NPR has teamed with Dr.
Ellyn Sheffield of Salisbury University, a widely recognized researcher of
consumer adaptation to digital radio services, to help design and test the
technology in development.
The project's total budget for the first year is $227,810. The Department
of Education grant will cover 65 percent of the project costs for the first
year, while NPR will fund the remaining 35 percent. Additional federal
funding after the first year is dependent on congressional appropriations.
NPR and the NPR Member stations have a long history of pioneering inclusive
access for people with sensory disabilities. More than 100 radio reading
services for the blind operating in the United States are offered by NPR
stations, providing the reading of text from daily news, books and
magazines.
In another effort to make radio programming accessible to the deaf and
hearing-impaired community, NPR has in recent years tested Web-based
real-time captioning of radio programs through www.NPR.org. For a two-hour
special on deaf culture and education airing this Thursday October 12, NPR's
Talk of the Nation has collaborated with WGBH's Media Access Group, the
pioneer of captioning for television, to provide live captioning of the
program. The October 12 broadcast will feature an interview with Dr. I.
King Jordan, retiring president of Gallaudet University, the world's only
university dedicated to deaf and hard of hearing students and a look at the
shifting debate over the cochlear implant. Details can be found at
Hello there! We guess that many of you will be surely surprised to know that paper and snail mail is on the rise. For a few years now email and everything else electronic have been ruling the world but we found an article that seems to refute this. It’s an interesting article and we thought that it would be of interest to you.
What would be most interesting is that if for some reason paper and snail mail were to truly take over from email, then what? Read this article and make up your own minds. Have a wonderful month of March.
Paper, 'snail mail' use soars in computer age: StatsCan
Carly Weeks
Ottawa Citizen, Nov. 11, 2006orps, off a train carrying veterans from
Computers may have transformed our lives, but they haven't reduced the
amount of paperwork piling up on desks across the country.
In fact, between 1983 and 2003, the use of paper for printing and writing
more than doubled, according to a new Statistics Canada study.
But the dawn of the computer age does seem to be causing some behaviour
changes among Canadians.
The study, which looked at the changes computers were expected to make in
our lives and whether they materialized, found that people are talking on
the phone and communicating via e-mail more than ever.
Yet the amount of "snail mail" Canadians send is on the rise. However,
instead of the traditional mailbox, Canadians are using couriers and local
messengers to a greater degree, according to the study.
And despite continued improvements in digital technology and the ability to
conduct video conferences, the amount of business travel Canadians do is
increasing.
Another expected change that didn't materialize is the widespread use of
online shopping that some feared would put an end to in-store sales.
Although private sector sales more than quadrupled between 2001 and 2004,
the transactions still made up only about one per cent of total sales.
Similarly, volumes of postal mail have been rising, although the composition
of mail has changed, and couriers and local messengers are proliferating.
This is the case even as Internet use and e-mail are common in Canada.
Despite the fact computers haven't made some of the expected changes to our
daily routines, the amount of money Canadians spend on such electronics is
on the rise.
From 1997 to 2003, average household spending on computer equipment and
supplies rose to $326 from $299 -- particularly significant considering
computer prices declined in that same period, according to Statistics
Canada.
From the soap box
The social welfare state: Beyond ideology
March 2007
By Scott Savoy
Hey everyone! Hope all is well with you. This month I’ve chosen to publish and article that was sent to us by Mark Falcon of Chicago. I read and reread this article and chose it because of some very hard-hitting points. So many of us tend to shy away from thinking about topics such as this one but hopefully this article would give you some insight. Thank you Mark.
The Social Welfare State: Beyond Ideology
Are higher taxes and strong social "safety nets" antagonistic to a
prosperous market economy? The evidence is now in.
By Jeffrey D. Sachs
One of the great challenges of sustainable development is to combine
society's desires for economic prosperity and social security. For
decades economists and politicians have debated how to reconcile the
undoubted power of markets with the reassuring protections of social
insurance.
America's supply-siders claim that the best way to achieve
well-being for America's poor is by spurring rapid economic growth and
that the higher taxes needed to fund high levels of social insurance
would cripple prosperity.
Austrian-born free-market economist
Friedrich August von Hayek suggested in the 1940s that high taxation
would be a "road to serfdom," a threat to freedom itself.
Most of the debate in the U.S. is clouded by vested interests and by
ideology. Yet there is by now a rich empirical record to judge these
issues scientifically. The evidence may be found by comparing a group
of relatively free-market economies that have low to moderate rates of
taxation and social outlays with a group of social-welfare states that
have high rates of taxation and social outlays.
Not coincidentally, the low-tax, high-income countries are mostly
English-speaking ones that share a direct historical lineage with
19th-century Britain and its theories of economic laissez-faire.
These countries include Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the
U.K. and the U.S. The high-tax, high-income states are the Nordic
social democracies, notably Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden,
which have been governed by left-of-center social democratic parties
for much or all of the post-World War II era. They combine a healthy
respect for market forces with a strong commitment to antipoverty
programs. Budgetary outlays for social purposes average around 27
percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in the Nordic countries and
just 17 percent of GDP in the English-speaking countries.
Friedrich Von Hayek was wrong
On average, the Nordic countries outperform the Anglo-Saxon ones on
most measures of economic performance. Poverty rates are much lower
there, and national income per working-age population is on average
higher. Unemployment rates are roughly the same in both groups, just
slightly higher in the Nordic countries. The budget situation is
stronger in the Nordic group, with larger surpluses as a share of GDP.
The Nordic countries maintain their dynamism despite high taxation in
several ways. Most important, they spend lavishly on research and
development and higher education. All of them, but especially Sweden and
Finland, have taken to the sweeping revolution in information and
communications technology and leveraged it to gain global competitiveness.
Sweden now spends nearly 4 percent of GDP on R&D, the
highest ratio in the world today. On average, the Nordic nations spend
3 percent of GDP on R&D, compared with around 2 percent in the
English-speaking nations.
The Nordic states have also worked to keep social expenditures
compatible with an open, competitive, market-based economic system.
Tax rates on capital are relatively low. Labor market policies pay
low-skilled and otherwise difficult-to-employ individuals to work in
the service sector, in key quality-of-life areas such as child care,
health, and support for the elderly and disabled.
The results for the households at the bottom of the income distribution are
astoundingly good, especially in contrast to the
mean-spirited neglect that now passes for American social policy. The
U.S. spends less than almost all rich countries on social services for
the poor and disabled, and it gets what it pays for: the highest poverty
rate among the rich countries and an exploding prison
population. Actually, by shunning public spending on health, the U.S.
gets much less than it pays for, because its dependence on private health
care has led to a ramshackle system that yields mediocre
results at very high costs.
Von Hayek was wrong. In strong and vibrant democracies, a generous
social-welfare state is not a road to serfdom but rather to fairness,
economic equality and international competitiveness.
The president’s feature
Target fights the wrong fight
March 2007
Sponsored by Donna J Jodhan
Hello! This month I’d like to zoom in on an article that focuses attention on a company that just does not get it! The company in question is Target and the sooner that they understand that the ADA legislation is here to stay the better off they would be.
For those of you who do not know, ADA stands for Americans with disabilities act. This act has been around for some time now and it’s high time that companies start paying closer attention to it. It’s not going to go away, it’s here to stay and if companies continue to ignore it then I’m afraid that sooner rather than later they will start to see a drop in both their revenues as well as their customer bases.
Have a great month and enjoy the article that I’ve chosen.
On Handicapped Access, Target Fights the Wrong Fight for the Wrong Reason
Evan Schuman
PC Magazine, Sep 24, 2006 17:47:47 GMT
When a federal judge in California agreed that a lawsuit from the National
Federation for the Blind can proceed against Target, e-commerce executives
should have breathed a collective sigh of relief.
The lawsuit essentially argues that Target's online operation violated the
Americans with Disabilities Act because it is not designed to be easily
accessible to blind users.
Target's defense has been that the ADA does not explicitly talk about Web
sites, so, Target reasons, it's not covered.
That argument is wrong for so many reasons. For the moment, let's set aside
that the argument is wrong legally (the California judge already dealt with
that one). From Target's perspective, it's more relevant that the answer is
wrong from a marketing, customer service and an IT and design perspective.
The original intent of ADA was to allow consumers with physical handicaps
the same access to public places-including retailers-as the rest of the
public. The e-commerce sites of large retailers today are natural extensions
of their physical storefronts and the intent of the initial law clearly
should apply to Web sites.
What if Target took this argument to its next stage and decided that
discrimination laws and hate laws didn't apply to their Web site because
those federal laws-many of which were written long before today's Web was
prominent-didn't specifically mention them? Would it feel free to flout
those laws on its Web site by publishing racial slurs and hate-filled death
threats?
E-commerce is such an ingrained part of retail today that all physical
laws-where possible-must apply. But even if Target had a more sound defense
to this litigation, why in the world would it want to pursue it? Why is it
spending a mountain of legal dollars to justify keeping a large segment of
potential consumers from easily using its site? And it's doing so in a very
public manner.
Let's take a look at what is at play here. To make a large site such as
Target's accessible, it needs to add in text mouse-overs (alt-text) so that
screen readers can speak what images represent. But many highly designed
sites simply don't work without being able to see the images, so a more
radical redesign is often required.
Those more substantial redesigns can cost money, but it's not an obscene
amount. A site such as Target's would likely cost anywhere from $800,000 to
$2 million to make accessible. Although not pocket change, it's a one-time
expense that Target could easily absorb. Their legal costs in fighting
this-not to mention the loss of business from the associated bad
publicity-will surely be more. But ROI concerns are also not the real reason
for Target to not fight this.
The real reason to make those one-time changes is that it would result in a
more-efficient, faster and simply superior e-commerce site for all
consumers.
For years, retailers have gone for flash (as well as Flash) and multimedia
and arresting graphics with little regard to download time, increased
probability of programming glitches and incompatibilities. with multiple
OSes, different browsers, tons of updated add-ons, firewalls, spyware/pop-up
blockers and computer screen sizes, it's hard enough getting a design that
will work for all.
Add to this today's mobile demands (PDAs, smart phones) and site design is
going to find it more difficult to present one appearance to all. And yet,
having multiple versions of the identical site rarely makes sense, and it
certainly would be a nightmare for retailers with constantly changing stock
and prices. Maybe a car company could get away with it, but probably not.
The types of changes that the ADA is asking of retailers' Web sites
would-unintentionally-make
so much of that better. It can then be justified under the
marketing-friendly label of making the site more open to all.
The question of retail sensitivity to those without perfect vision is
nothing new. A wide range of recent stories have shown retailers being more
open to visually impaired consumers, from various and studies on
Terry Golesworthy is the CEO of a research firm called The Customer Respect
Group. (I probably should say that it's a group that apparently doesn't
include certain Target execs, but I'll be nice and not say that.)
Golesworthy's firm watches major retail sites and assesses how well they
handle consumer interaction issues, including site accessibility.
"I think Target
is just the unfortunate test case, but it is nowhere near the only company
to be at risk," he said.
"The clarity the case might bring to the area of accessibility means we
might see a lot of projects fired up for defensive reasons. The Y2K issue is
the closest thing we have seen recently that might be an analogy. "This is,
of course, smaller, but represents the same type of potential behavior with
executive management throwing money at a problem they really do not
understand but have a perceived business downside. This time, though, it's
for litigious and
PR reasons."
Agreeing with Golesworthy is veteran retail technology analyst Paula
Rosenblum, who today is a vice president with the Retail Systems Alert
Group.
"This lawsuit, assuming it is successful, is a double-edged sword. The
'beauty' of government mandates and singular events like Y2K is they drive
enterprises out of their short-term ROI mentalities," Rosenblum said.
"Complying with new regulations will either be a huge distraction for
retailers as they rush to comply with a government mandate, or will serve as
an opportunity to not just comply with the mandate, but take the opportunity
to clean up their online and cross-channel acts. This is long overdue."
In Golesworthy's latest study of the Web sites of the Fortune 100, his team
found that only 12 sites were "fine," 52 had "real problems" and 36 were in
the in-between "amber" stage, he said.
Target was among the 52 with "real problems," and Wal-Mart was in the amber
in-between zone.
For the record, the 12 whose sites were found to indeed be ADA-friendly were
three tech players (IBM, Microsoft and HP), three financial firms (Wells
Fargo, Bank of America and Washington Mutual), three manufacturers (Delphi,
Dow Chemicals and John Deere), one insurance company (Nationwide Mutual), a
pharmaceutical (Johnson & Johnson), and one lone retailer: Walgreens.
Golesworthy's advice to Target is to give up and salvage as much of this
mess as possible. "You basically fall on your sword and say, 'We're good
people. Really,'" he said.
Like all other corporate issues, this one resists being made neat and clean.
For example, consumers are not neatly split into sighted and non-sighted.
The visually impaired-which includes colorblindness-is potentially a much
bigger audience of lost consumers.
"Some companies like to use their corporate colors, which not necessarily
easy to read," Golesworthy said. But a complicated design is the biggest
problem. Even with mouse-over alt-text, a design that relies on tables and
formats will simply jump all over the place when the graphics are turned
off, making it very difficult to navigate, he said.
Another factor is the global market. The has mandated strict accessibility
rules for any retailer that wants to sell to Europeans. Those rules are
slated to take effect in 2010. For multinational retailers, "you're going to
have to do it eventually" so why fight it now, he asked. Why, indeed?
Evan Schuman is retail editor for Ziff Davis Internet's Enterprise Edit
group. He has tracked high-tech issues since 1987, has been opinionated long
before that and doesn't plan to stop anytime soon.
Check out eWEEK.com's for the latest news, views and analysis on
technology's impact on retail.
News and views
Important news on retinas
March 2007
By Christian Robicheau
Hello there! I hope that everyone is getting ready for Spring. I can’t wait to welcome the new flowers, leaves, and nature itself.
This month I’ve chosen an article that has the potential to bring hope to millions of persons who are sight impaired due to retina problems. Hope you find it interesting. Have a lovely March month.
Researchers Create Artificial Retina From Silicon.
Monday, November 06, 2006.
DailyTech - Chicago,IL,USA
Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and Stanford University have made a breakthrough in the field of vision. Kareem Amir Zaghloul and Kwabena Boahen have proposed a silicon retina that reproduces signals in the optic nerve, a technology which could be used to provide vision to those who suffer from blindness-related diseases, such as retinitis pigmentosa.
Unlike previous attempts to create an artificial retina, which relied on external cameras and processors, the silicon retina integrates many functions of the mammalian retina in a package that could be suitable for implantation.
"Here, we present a silicon retina modeled on neural circuitry in both the outer and the inner retina," Zaghloul and Boahen introduced in their paper for the Journal of Neural Engineering. "It is constructed at a scale comparable to the human retina and uses under a tenth of a watt, thereby satisfying the requirements of a fully implantable prosthesis."
It is estimated that the silicon retina will maintain sensitivity over at least 15 years of average use relating to vision.
The mammalian retina was used as the basis for the design of the artificial retina. 13 neuronal types were made into transistor form, each mimicking the function of its biological equivalent.
"We morphed our retinal model into a silicon chip by replacing each synapse or gap junction in our model with a transistor," Zaghloul and Boahen revealed. "One of its terminals is connected to the pre-synaptic node, another to the post-synaptic node and a third to the modulatory node. By permuting these assignments, we realize excitation, inhibition and conduction, all of which are under modulatory control."
Conveniently, the binary nature of transistors lends itself well to replicating the functions of neurons, which operate in a similar "all-or-none" fashion. The silicon retina uses "on" and "off" signals similar to those found between amacrine cells in the mammalian retina.
Another aspect of the silicon retina that's copied from the real retina is that it filters out all the useless, unchanged and redundant data from a scene, which reduces the bandwidth required to produce an image.
While much of this may sound like science fiction, the researchers already have working silicon. The die measures 3.5 × 3.3 millimeters and has 5760 phototransistors, which mimic photoreceptor cells. The phototransistors are then connected to another group of 3600 transistors which act as ganglion cells.
"Our chip design was fabricated in a 0.35 µm minimum feature-size process, with its cell mosaics tiled at a scale similar to the mammalian retina," the paper reads. "Phototransistors are tiled triangularly 40 µm apart; this spacing is only about two and a half times that of human cones at 5 mm nasal eccentricity."
One major difference the researchers had to deal with when designing the artificial retina is that silicon micro-fabrication technology cannot produce three dimensional structures found in the real retina.
Power consumption is an area where the researchers are still currently trying to improve.
"Our artificial retina satisfies the requirements of a neural prosthesis by matching the biological retina in size and weight and using under a tenth of a watt," the researchers stated. "Although this energy consumption is 1000 times less efficient than the mammalian retina, it still represents a 100-fold improvement over conventional microprocessors."
Zaghloul and Boahen are currently working on improving energy efficiency, spatial resolution and dynamic range. According to the researchers, advances in chip fabrication will be of great aid to this technology.
Further development of the silicon retina not only benefits those suffering from impaired vision, as the technology can also be applied to artificial neural systems and robots.
Hi all! Hope our readers are continuing to enjoy our contributions as much as we are enjoying bringing them to you. This month we’ve chosen an article for you that shows how technology is helping to make a difference in the lives of the blind and visually impaired. Hope you enjoy it.
Passengers told when next bus due
By: Nigel McFarlane
This is Lancashire (UK), September 21, 2006
A SEEMINGLY endless wait for a bus with little idea of when it will arrive
could be a thing of the past for passengers in Blackburn Road, Bolton.
Bus stops along the route out of Bolton are among 260 in Greater Manchester
to have been fitted with new technology which tells passengers when the next
service is due.
The initiative has come about through a partnership between Surtronic, a
Belgian information system developer, and Interalia, a Canadian company that
manufactures voice announcement technology.
A spokesman for Interalia said: "The whole thing uses wireless communication
and computer software.
"A black box on the bus transmits information to a central computer via
radio link, and this enables the computer to track the progress of the bus
and update the information unit at each bus stop."
The information is displayed visually by information units, and there are
also speakers to give audio information.
These are activated by an electronic key fob, and hundreds of these have
been distributed by charities and support organizations to visually impaired
passengers and those with learning difficulties.
The system has been designed to meet the requirements of the Disability
Discrimination Act (DDA), which came into force in October, 2004.
Gary Davies, head of Transportation Product Marketing at Interalia, said:
"The Disability Discrimination Act demands that all public services provide
the disabled with equivalent facilities as those enjoyed by the able bodied
where reasonably practical.
"This new system enables transport companies and local authorities to comply
fully with the new DDA regulations."
The system can also support other methods of obtaining real-time
information, including live feeds to the Traveline call centre, internet
access and text message. This allows passengers to have access to live data
without having to go to a bus stop.
The system can also give priority to buses at traffic lights by making a
direct request to the Traffic Control Centre, where the traffic lights are
Hello there! For our second contribution to this month’s issue, we have assembled a few interesting titbits for you.
Have fun!
Helpful tips for March:
Looking for a way to relieve those poor aching feet after a long day in those uncomfortable shoes?
Before you slip on your shoes, sprinkle some talcum powder in them.
You can even lightly powder your feet before slipping them into your shoes.
It works like a charm.
Thinking of using credit card insurance protection?
Take some time to examine your insurance policy.
Many of these policies do not cover layoffs from part-time employment.
They only cover minimum monthly payments.
Many policies do not cover you if you're fired from a full time job.
Thinking of using a dating service to find your next significant other?
Be careful with this.
Almost all of these agencies do not guarantee finding you an initial contact let alone finding you Mr. or MRS right.
Can the taking of too many vitamins be harmful?
According to several health experts the answer is yes.
Too much iron can get you constipated.
Too much vitamin C can cause a build up of acid in the blood which can lead to irritations in one's mouth, and pimples over one's body.
Some suggestions to avoid bladder and urinary infections?
Take more vitamin C and drink lots of cranberry juice.
Is it a good idea to go out and buy the newest Microsoft operating system now?
Not really.
Best to wait for at least a few months for Microsoft to iron out the bugs.
You don't want to buy a system that is still so new on the market.
Besides, Windows XP is still a very good operating system.
Letters to the editor
March 2007
From the desk of the editor
Hi readers, here are this month’s contributions.
From Jean LeGault of Paris:
I came across this magazine recently and I absolutely love what it has to say. I’ve told my friends about it and I ask the editors to put more helpful tips.
From Edith O’Grady of Dublin Ireland:
Can anyone tell me how I go about contacting the authors of untapped Wealth Discovered?
I’ve read the second edition and would like some help in setting up a home business.
From Steve Ryan of Kansas City:
I’d like to see more organizations be made accountable for the needs of special needs folks. The horror stories that I’ve been reading about the CNIB in Canada, sounds like an organization that needs to be booted in the right place to get them to wake up.
From Carol Thatcher of London England:
I’d like to see the president focus a bit more on women’s issues. After all, she says that she is a small business person so surely she should have lots of ideas for women thinking of opening up their own business.
From Marcus Davinsky of Missouri:
I’m looking for ways to sell refurbished computers at a low price to persons who can’t afford to buy new ones. Can someone tell or give me some suggestions?
If you have a comment or contribution to make to our magazine then please send us an email at info@sterlingcreations.ca. We would be delighted to print your comments as long as they do not contain offensive language.
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Notes
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