Today is Global Accessibility Awareness Day

The augmentative market has always been an important one for TabletKiosk, and so today we honor our customers who use our Tablet PCs as non-traditional, augmentative/alternative communication devices (AAC). 

Whether you participate in a public or private event to mark Global Accessibility Awareness Day, on May 9, we encourage designers, developers, usability professionals, and everyone else to take an hour to experience first-hand the impact of digital accessibility (or lack there of).

Go Mouseless For An Hour

Go ahead and unplug your mouse and only use your keyboard alone (tab/shift tab, arrow keys, enter and spacebar) to navigate and interact with your favorite websites and applications. If you use a touchpad, trackpad or similar input method, disable it, and use the keyboard instead.

Developers and designers, we encourage you to visit a site you were involved in creating and take it for a test-drive.

Surf The Web With A Screen Reader For An Hour

There are a number of free/open source screen readers available for Windows users. One of the more popular ones is NonVisual Desktop Access (NVDA). Take a bit of time beforehand to download the software and learn some of NVDA’s documented basic keystrokes.

On May 9, unplug your mouse (blind users do not use the mouse), launch your screen reader, and spend an hour using some of your favorite sites strictly using the keyboard alone (tab/shift tab, arrow keys, enter and spacebar) and not the mouse/trackpad. Why not turn off your screen and depend strictly on the information conveyed by the screen reader.

Developers and designers, we encourage you to visit a site you were involved in creating and take it for a test-drive.

Learn About And Use Accessibility Features

The Windows 7 Operating System has a number of built-in accessibility features, Take an hour to explore what these are and try them out on the Web. In the case of the mobile devices, why not try using some of your favorite apps with different accessibility features enabled.

 

Technorati Tags: TabletKiosk,GAAD,Assistive Technology,AAC

Microsoft has a new logo

Some say it’s been “Metro-ized”, even though the name Metro has now been expunged throughout the Microsoft kingdom.

Personally, I think that the logo has been Polarized!

 

What do you think?

Sahara Slate PC i500 – the 4th generation of 12” Tablet PCs from TabletKiosk

Did you know that the Sahara Slate PC i500 represents the fourth generation of the Sahara Slate PC Brand from TabletKiosk?
We’ve been manufacturing and distributing touch screen Tablet PCs running full Microsoft Windows Operating Systems since 2003!

Microsoft Surface Computing Hits Las Vegas

Interesting article in the LA Times this weekend about how Microsoft has rolled out the Surface Touch Screen Table Computers at the i-Bar in the Rio Hotel and Casino.  At a current cost of $10,000 each, I hope that this sophisticated technology will be used for more than flirting and customizing drink orders.

At least it's a start.  Congratulations to the Microsoft Hospitality team for getting these initial units rolled out.

Click here to read the full article.

Talking Tablets with other OEMs

While reading industry blogs I often see entries describing informal  meet-ups between  bloggers, Tablet PC enthusiasts and members of the Microsoft MVP program. Aside from the Tablet gathering at CES, I rarely get to participate in these fun and informal opportunities for networking with my peers from other mobile computing companies.

Yesterday that all changed.

I am writing this blog from Florida where I am attending the Microsoft North America Channel Partner Summit (CPS), an event that brings together hundreds of MS partners including OEM manufacturers, ISVs, distributors and system builders. Included in the agenda yesterday was a lunchtime round-table mobility discussion for direct OEM partners including TabletKiosk, Motion Computing, OQO, General Dynamics Itronix and Mobile Demand.

We covered a broad range of subjects including the challenge of transitioning customers to Vista, vertical market overview, consumer vs. enterprise markets and recent announcements about the ULCPCs. It was a very productive meeting, which was put together by Debbie Martin who is the Microsoft OEM Account Manager for Mobility.

Later in the evening, some of us continued the meeting on a much more informal basis over a couple rounds of drinks in the hotel bar. It was really cool to have such a positive experience with my peers, and sometimes competitors, who face similar challenges everyday; and I look forward to developing these new business relationships.

To my friends in the bogging community, please know that we are all paying attention to your posts...

Thoughts on the Ultra-Low Cost PC (ULCPC) from the Land of the UMPCs

People keep asking me my opinion about the upcoming Ultra-Low Cost PC (ULCPC) initiative by Microsoft and and how I think they will affect our sales of our eo line of Ultra-Mobile PCs (UMPC).

As a mobile vendor that originally embraced Microsoft’s efforts to market the UMPC, I find it disappointing that Microsoft is embracing these new devices by extending the life of XP without considering some of the obstacles that the original UMPC manufacturers have faced all along.

1. A high cost operating system
2. Limited power to run the full Vista experience

Since TabletKiosk introduced the eo line of UMPCs in 2006, our goal was to offer a lightweight, low cost mobile touch screen device, at a fair price point, that enabled us to meet our margins. The materials required to build a full featured UMPC are not cheap and adding a premium OS like Vista further added to the cost. As much as we wanted to, there is simply no way that we could dramatically lower the cost of our UMPCs when were paying a premium price for the OS. (roughly 1/4 of the of the cost of the unit).

From a power standpoint, some of our UMPCs have less than 1 GB of RAM and Vista just does not run well at this spec. Remember that we market our tablets for specific business applications in the enterprise market. Our customers want the simplest OS possible from XP Pro or XP Tablet and do not want or need all of the bells and whistles of Vista (aero glass etc.) Many of our UMPCs have small hard drives (sub 80 GB) and just cannot sustain a positive computing experience running Vista.

Our goal is to continue to grow the eo line of UMPCs. Our customer base is expanding for those that require a mobile computer with a 7” screen and touch screen input. It is disappointing that Microsoft recognized that Vista is too feature packed for the ULCPC and by excluding the premium Vista OS, manufacturer partners can keep their costs in-line with a low priced unit.

Don't get me wrong. I'm all about new low cost computing initiatives that are beginning to proliferate. I just wish that the distinctions between devices were more clearly defined in respect to the manufacturing partners.

So what are our options...

1) We can continue to sell our UMPCs with Vista, knowing that the computing experience is less than ideal. these customers will still have the option to downgrade to XP on their own.

2) For the next six months, we can continue to offer XP by purchasing licenses from the distribution channel instead of through the Microsoft authorized reseller program,

3) We can steer our customers to XP Embedded

4) We can hope that Microsoft will recognize the merits of the original UMPC platform and will include the original UMPC specs, with touch capabilities, as part of the XP extension for mobile devices.

I look forward to hearing feedback about this...

2 Whirlwind Days on the Microsoft Campus

This week, I spent two days up in Seattle attending meetings at Microsoft which were set up by our OEM Account Manager. The purpose of this trip was to review our long term sales strategy and streamline our marketing campaigns to grow our business and further the visibility of TabletKiosk.

Looking back on the two days, the trip was an exhausting whirlwind of canceled flights (both ways, thank you United Airlines), intense meetings, product positioning, brainstorming and strategizing. In addition to all of the planning, we also had the the opportunity to spend valuable face time with key representatives from our target markets.

One of the most productive meetings we had was with Bill Crounse, MD Senior Director, Worldwide Health for Microsoft. Sitting with Dr. Crounse, we had the opportunity to discuss new areas for growth in healthcare technology as well as the still untapped opportunities for Tablet PCs in healthcare. I know that meetings like this do not happen everyday and I am extremely thankful for Dr. Crounse for sharing his time and thoughts with us.

We also spent some time with members of the Retail Industry team who provided valuable input about how our eo UMPC and Sahara Slate PC Tablet PCs can be most effectively integrated as retail hardware solutions. (They were especially intrigued by the eo i7300 prototype with the customizable modules which we previewed at CES...
No, we still do not have plans to sell our Tablet PCs into retail, but because of touch screen input and add-on accessories, our Tablet PCs make great mobile point of sale devices for retail and restaurants.

All in all, it was a tiring but incredibly productive 2 days. I look forward to our next visit. Just don't get me started about United Airlines...