A sad piece of news : my wonderful son passed away in my arms on July 31st of this year.

I would be honored if you could join us in the celebration of his life by subscribing and viewing the five videos we have produced : https://forever.link/arbormemorial-kelly-orleans/kyram-dear

This topic remains incredibly pertinent, however, as the lack of an onramp for those with physical disabilities to the Wolfram ecosystem remains a barrier that must still be surmounted.

I strongly believe, more so as I continue to listen to Stephen Wolfram's videos, that having this kind of onramp for those with physical disabilities who rely on assistive technology to perceive the world and interact with it would expose many fine new minds to the wonderful ecosystem Stephen has created. I truly believe we need EVERY voice to move forward to develop this New Kind of Science.

Who is with me?

Thanks, Kyle, I'll take a look at this second draft skeleton. As noted below in my Dec 30 post, any buttons cannot be smaller than 21 pixels by 21 pixels (which will appear five times larger when completely zoomed into with his zoom mouse).

It is good to see that Kyle Keane has reached out to you. I am also curious if I can help a bit. Both the Basic Math Assistant and Classroom Assistant palettes were created with the idea that a keyboard was not available and they could be made large by changing the magnification level. However, as you have noticed, they are packed with functionality that is not useful to your son is this year. How would you suggest modifying the palette(s) so they could better serve your son? You can email me directly: ericschulz at mac.com.

Send me a PM and we can have a zoom chat. I teach assistive tech at MIT and am an avid Wolfram user.

Regarding item #1, I believe I've found a link that may help, I'll investigate further : https://reference.wolfram.com/language/howto/ConnectToARemoteKernel.html

Hello Myles Dear,

I hope you find a great way for Mathematica to help your son! Regarding why Graphics[] did not accept Rectangle[], could you perhaps put an example? I couldn't find one in the notebook, but if there's one there, you can direct us to that. Both Graphics[Rectangle[]] and Graphics[{Rectangle[]}] (where you can add more items to the list in the curly braces) should work.

Thanks for the replies, everybody. I really appreciate your kind interest in my son's development.

1. Could you please give me some pointers on how I can run Mathematica on my resource-constrained PC (using the palettes feature), while running the kernel on my more capable home-based server, with both located on my home network? Would doing this require more than one license?

2. I had a meeting with Andy Giddens (Sales) and Andy Dorsett (Sales Engineer) and they explained I could set magnification settings on a palette to ensure the targets were bigger for my son. They also recommended use of the CreatePalette command. This looks like a fairly complex command, does anybody have any examples on its use (other than the very few examples in the product documentation)? I am a software developer and am a quick study.

3. I looked at the built-in Classroom Assistant palette and although it had some good things my son would benefit from (basic algebraic entry, expressions and equations, navigation, evaluation to name a few), only around 40% of it would be immediately useful. Rather than starting from scratch, I'd love to be able to take a copy of the code that generated this template and cut it down to include only the basics for an early learner. Any idea how to best approach this ?

4. I'm attaching a sample 2d exercise I created to demonstrate to my son's tutor that Mathematica could be used to help my son with his daily work. Any idea why the Graphics[] function did not accept a Rectangle[] object as input ?

Attachments:

Kyram2D_Exercise.nb

To Myles Dear,

By the way, have you been here: https://www.wolfram.com/legal/accessibility/wolfram-mathematica/ ?

In listening to National Public Radio, I learned much from Edward Reynolds Price (February 1, 1933 – January 20, 2011). His cancer treatment with surgery and radiation led to paralysis below the waist. Chuck Close,[Born: July 5, 1940 (age 80 years)], the artist came up with this phrase: ‘temporarily abled.’ Mr. Price embraced it and ran with it[so to speak]. https://adogcalledpain.wordpress.com/2016/01/04/reynolds-price-a-whole-new-life-an-illness-and-a-healing/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/entertainment/books/1994/06/12/though-much-is-taken-much-abides/e06d08f7-e315-42d2-abd7-4b9667ec5daa/ http://chuckclose.com

Mathematica has a Command Line Interface as well. I am using a Macintosh. There is a terminal that can be used the way MS/PC-DOS is. Would that be a workable interface, Windows Command Prompt? In graphical mode, palettes can be used to enter data, symbols, equations and operators more readily than solely by keyboard.

You've told us your son is a quadriplegic. Can a head pointer be used? Is there enough head motion control? I suppose eye control needs a certain amount of stability to make a selection, and have the machine accept the input. I know of people with spinal cord injury, but this sounds more like motor control issues and possible spasticity. How accomodations can be made is interesting. I have followed what can be done for those with ALS, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Technology has aided fighter pilots with on screen displays, to what the general public has available in automobiles as a better human machine interface.

My son is nonverbal, so would rely on eye based access to interface with his computer. He is doing math at a Grade 8 level and we are bridging him with various online tools manually. However, he will reach a point very soon in which doing things in his head becomes next to impossible and he requires some kind of tool to allow him to write things such as algebraic equations so he can reduce/solve them. Rather than just having him use a "dumb" sketchpad app, I am looking for tools that could provide a higher level of value and help him engage with his math more independently.

Hi Myles
I don't have much experience with Tobii, but I know that it supports an on-screen keyboard with English layout. If your son can successfully click on the buttons of this keyboard using Tobii, then he probably will be able to use it to type in Wolfram notebook. If you are using Windows 10, this page can help

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/get-started-with-eye-control-in-windows-10-1a170a20-1083-2452-8f42-17a7d4fe89a9