If you have a few minutes to read this message you might just be able to make a big difference to the lives of some very disadvantaged people. If you can't help, don't worry. Sorry for bothering you. There's a project that needs help.
The chuzer project is moribund (the rest of this message explains what it is). I accept responsibility for that. I have had a lot on my plate recently, but everything is relative, and my information from other sources tells me that some recipients of this email have far worse problems than I. Paul McNett said in a recent email "this seems like too noble a project to die", and I agree with him. It seems to me that a really quite small amount of development time could see us producing a system that would add a huge amount to the lives of some of the most needy people we can imagine. Or not. Frankly, it's the imagining that scares me. I am having real difficulty imagining what it might be like to be in a position where I can't easily tell someone what I need. The chuzer project will allow severely disabled people to express the most basic needs. Maybe "what I want for pudding" wasn't a particularly good example, but it was the one the project was motivated by, and it's hard to think how frustrating it must be when being able to tell someone what you want for pudding represents an improvement in your quality of life. There are quadriplegics out there with such a limited range of expressive ability that the only way they can express any choice at all is to watch a series of selections tick by until the right one comes up, and then puff into a pipe or bite down on something - basically, perform one of the very few movements of which they are capable - to say "that's what I want". Yes, it might be "what I want for pudding", but how about even more basic choices: a) I need to pee b) I have to take a dump c) I am hungry d) I am thirsty e) Please hug me f) My bedsores are hurting The big problem for a lot of quadriplegics, as far as I understand it, is that uninformed people treat them as though their brains were as damaged as their bodies. Most readers of this email will be able-bodied. Please try and imagine what it would be like to be entombed in a full-body plaster cast and be unable to speak, but to still retain your full mental faculties. Don't you think you might really appreciate even something as simple as a choice program? I was intending to try and recruit assistance at PyCon, but sadly on the Saturday I received news of my mother's death, so that kind of put the kibosh on that, and I had to leave early. I also recently realized rather too late that this project would be an excellent candidate for a Google Summer of Code project, but that's already underway now. Again, I apologize for not having the time to bring chuzer to enough people's attention to get it on the GSoc radar. My bad. I don't know if Google are planning to run a Highly-Open Participation event this year, but if they are then maybe we could establish a few tasks for that. Basically this is a project that really needs some help right now. There's a basic working model, around which an image-selection and audio-recording infrastructure needs to be built so that it's easy for carers to set up appropriate choices and easy for users to indicate choices. It's not rocket science, it just needs a few of us to care enough to keep moving this project forward until it's done. It would make an excellent wxPython learning project. If anyone who reads this email has anything to offer - time, money, equipment, whatever, I'd be *really* grateful to hear from them. I can put you in touch with people who know about things like the range of interface devices available for paraplegic and quadriplegic people. Ideally the program would be adaptable to a wide range of hardware accommodating a broad spectrum of disability, but many quadriplegics use equipment that emulates a standard keyboard and/or mouse, so that would be a great start. Please help, even if only by publicizing this project. You don't even have to code, just to help with ideas for recruiting coding assistance. http://chuzer.org/ Even better, please join the mailing list linked on the site, and help to make the world a better place. regards Steve -- Steve Holden +1 571 484 6266 +1 800 494 3119 Holden Web LLC http://www.holdenweb.com/ Watch PyCon on video now! http://pycon.blip.tv/ -- Steve Holden +1 571 484 6266 +1 800 494 3119 Holden Web LLC http://www.holdenweb.com/ Watch PyCon on video now! http://pycon.blip.tv/ -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list