International Business Machines Corporation

James Patrick Bowman

Newton James Smith, Jr

Herman Rodriguez

Clifford Jay Spinac

Herman Rodriquez

An impaired person is provided with a personalized accessibility device, which communicates an identification of a disability or impairment to an assistance device, which provides assistance. Also provided is a method and apparatus for providing feedback to a person with impairment. The feedback may be configured based on the type and extent of impairment, as well as personal preferences, such as a preferred language. The assistance device may also request a response from the disabled or impaired person, thus solving the person's Special Needs in a conversational manner without calling attention to the impairment.

Personalized accessibility identification receiver/transmitter and method for providing assistance

A keyboard that may be utilized as a pointing device for disabled users is presented. The keyboard has one or more large buttons that allows the keyboard to be toggled between two different states. The first state corresponds to using the keyboard as a pointing device. A movement sensor is activated that may detect movement of the keyboard. The detected movement of the keyboard is then used by a computer system to control the movement of a cursor about a display screen. Additionally, one or more keys on the keyboard are grouped together to form compound keys that correspond to the pointing device buttons. The second state of the keyboard corresponds to that of standard keyboard operation in which a user may utilize the keyboard to type in letters, numbers, and commands in the typical fashion.

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Austin, TX, United States of America

James Patrick Bowman