iPad Opens World to a Disabled Boy From: New York Times - 10/29/2010 By: Emily B. Hager Owen Cain depends on a respirator and struggles to make even the slightest movements — he has had a debilitating motor-neuron disease since infancy. Owen, 7, does not have the strength to maneuver a computer mouse, but when a nurse propped her boyfriend’s iPad within reach in June, he did something his mother had never seen before. He aimed his left pointer finger at an icon on the screen, touched it - just barely - and opened the application Gravitarium, which plays music as users create landscapes of stars on the screen. Over the years, Owen's parents had tried several computerized communications contraptions to give him an escape from his disability, but the iPad was the first that worked on the first try. Representative Edward J. Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, who wrote recently enacted legislation that will require mobile devices to be more accessible to users with disabilities, said approximately three-fourths of communications and video devices need to be adapted for blind and deaf people. "Apple," he said in a statement, "is an outlier when it comes to devices that are accessible out of the box." Read the entire article at: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/31/nyregion/31owen.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss Video: Becoming Han Solo - A Device for the Masses Aids Those with Disablities http://video.nytimes.com/video/2010/10/29/nyregion/1248069258198/becoming-han-solo.html Submitted by Jamie Prioli