Digital Outcasts

Last week I had the pleasure of delivering the keynote address for the John Slatin AccessU Conference, held by Knowbility in Austin, TX. Among the case studies I presented was the use of the Kinect by the Lakeside Center for Autism, located outside of Seattle. If you haven’t seen the video, I recommend having a look below to see the benefits this emerging technology is having on Lakeside students:

A great new development is the creation of Kinetix Academy, the result of LCA winning the “Innovation in Issaquah” award for their use of the Kinect in therapy. They are putting together a wonderful educational program designed around the capabilities and potential of the device. The program’s origin and intentions are detailed on the LCA blog:

[Our great idea] is to create a comprehensive curriculum of educational and therapeutic games specifically designed for children with autism to support their development of motor, speech and language, cognitive, academic, and social skills….and it’s called Kinetix Academy. Ever since I caught wind of the Kinect (back when it was still called Project Natal) I’ve been dreaming about how we could use this technology to support kid’s gross motor skills. Over the past six months or so I’ve slowly put some of those ideas down on paper and started to think through the developmental sequences, feedback and reinforcement schedules, and opportunities to target other areas of development.

The Center is now assembling its pitch team to collect funding interest, and have already recruited a graphic designer and Kinect developer to create some quick prototypes. This is the sort of innovative endeavor that deserves wider attention among the corporate healthcare industry. Follow their progress on Facebook and Twitter.

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Watching how children move their bodies while playing provides potential clues to a behavioral disorder. is a real giveaway. (Image: Raffaele Meucci/Superstock)

According to this article in New Scientist, early detection is key because speech and interaction therapies work best when begun earlier in a child’s life. There are many subtle differences in symptoms among spectrum disorder kids, and the idea is that the Kinect may pick up certain tendencies in behavior. An experienced pediatrician may then have more detail to make a proper diagnosis:

“The idea is not that we are going to replace the diagnosis, but we are going to bring diagnosis to everybody,” Guillermo R. Sapiro says. “The same way a good teacher flags a problem child, the system will do automatic flagging and say, ‘Hey, this kid needs to see an expert’.”

Using the Kinect for children on the spectrum is not new. The Lakeside Center for Autism, located in the Seattle area, has been using the Kinect with their students since last year. Watch the video below for a peek:

The system will be presented at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation in St. Paul in May 2012.

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Lee Ridley, born with cerebral palsy and unable to speak since birth, transforms himself as a working stand-up comedian at London’s Soho Theatre. Helped by the iPad and text-to-speech software, Ridley operates under the stage name “Lost Voice Guy.” His act is quickly becoming one of the best stories in contemporary entertainment.

Ridley’s routine is funny, intelligent, and softly self-deprecating:

“In case you were in any doubt I really am disabled. It’s not just really good acting and I’m definitely not just in it for the parking space.”

“When I realized I would never be able to talk again I was speechless.”

“I am not related to Steven Hawking in any way. However I do hate the way people take the *** out of the way he speaks. I can really synthesize with him!”

“People have often asked me why I want to put myself in a position where everyone can look and stare at me. The truth is that it happens to me every day any way. At least this way there’s a scheduled time and place for it.”

Presenters with disabilities who use an iPad is not new; at CSUN 2011, Glenda Watson Hyatt told a wonderful story through the device and captivated a full ballroom. It is nice to see folks transcend the use of technology for a greater purpose, such as expressing oneself or to pursue a career goal.

Many thank to Char James-Tanny for bringing this story to my attention via Twitter.

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As reported by the New York Times on Tuesday, two studies emerged this past week questioning the pairing of “food deserts” with the rate of obesity among urban populations. These findings have instigated much conversation among social analysts, both in support and refute of the study results.

The studies – one from the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California, the other from the RAND Corporation – suggest that access to healthy food has no bearing on citizen health. In fact, the studies indicate that people living in food deserts actually have more access to food than comparatively affluent neighborhoods:

Poor neighborhoods had nearly twice as many fast food restaurants and convenience stores as wealthier ones, and they had more than three times as many corner stores per square mile. But they also had nearly twice as many supermarkets and large-scale grocers per square mile … living close to supermarkets or grocers did not make [middle] school students thin and living close to fast food outlets did not make them fat.

Coming so quickly after my recent post on food deserts and mobile technologies for digital outcasts, I feel compelled to offer a response. First thing to note is that both studies are authored by credible organizations, and I’m not looking to discredit their findings or research methods. The numbers are what the numbers are.

The second item to note is perhaps more diffused: physical access to stores is not the sole attribute by which we should define a food desert. There are additional contributing factors that earn this designation including nutritional literacy, logistical difficulties (such as work schedules or transportation options), quality of available stock, and regional tendencies that dictate buying habits.

In other words – simply having a source of food is near your home doesn’t automatically improve your access to or awareness of healthier diet choices. Nor does living some distance from a grocery store decrease a community’s health quotient. Anyone who makes these assumptions is conflating multiple socioeconomic trends into a single, flawed data point.

Consider the claim that “within a couple of miles you can get basically any type of food,” according to Rolan Sturm of the RAND Corporation. In cities where higher-quality supermarkets are more than a mile away, residents without cars must rely on public transportation. Climate conditions, unsafe streets, misaligned work shifts, and long walking distances compound the problem – which only worsens when having to carry bags of groceries back home.

Faced with limited transportation options, residents are more likely to make purchases at small, local stores. The quality of stores’ contents varies widely from shop to shop, block to block, zip code to zip code. In the bodegas of Harlem, for example, shelves are stocked with artificially sweetened soft drinks and beer. Sandwiches are lathered with full-fat cheese and mayonnaise, the counters bursting with candy bars and potato chip packets. What produce remains is of insufficient quality to even meet baseline nutritional benchmarks.*

And even if one is fortunate to have a supermarket nearby, there’s no guarantee that it will be any better than the corner bodega. Stocking decisions are primarily driven by revenue demographics, creating a vicious cycle where wealthy consumers control the market for higher quality produce. Less affluent shoppers suffer with fewer choices, because their wallets don’t resonate with the same level of impact among corporate decision-makers.

What results is a crisis of abundance, where free enterprise collides with human nature. The body’s physical demand is to fill it with calories; the brain knows that 50 calories from a mixed vegetable medley is better than a serving of French fries, but that’s not how hungry people make decisions. A 12-year-old is going to choose the McDonald’s across the street for her daily snack, even though she knows the corner grocer is ten blocks away. She does this every afternoon on her way home from school, simply because one option is within her sight and the other isn’t.

And yet – observed through the single metric of store location, rationale supporting the existence of food deserts seems flawed. Rejecting the concept, however, requires an assumption that people will logically travel longer distances to buy products of marginal value. Or that given the option of “easily acquired and healthy” vs. “difficult to obtain and unhealthy,” they’ll choose the latter every time.

From a universal design standpoint, that is just ridiculous. People want healthier choices, but they also want something they can prepare quickly and easily – especially at the end of a long workday when the baby is crying, the bills have to be paid, the kids won’t do their homework and an elderly parent needs her medicine.

Yes, Virginia, there are food deserts. They exist in the contextual vacuum that fails to recognize that access doesn’t equal availability. They exist in the decisions retailers make when they evaluate spending habits among demographic groups. They exist in the homes of families who (seriously) don’t know the difference between a beet and a potato. They exist in the minds of political pundits, those who would rather mock food deserts as some sort of fictional Sasquatch than address empirical truths behind the data.

This is where the real food deserts exist – not on the streets of Urban America, not in the dilapidated corner shops infested with roaches, but within every household that makes up a social constituency and the businesses that serve them. It’s not just whether or not you can get to a store. It’s about what’s inside that store and whether a visit is even worth the trip.

*An initiative is taking place to bring healthy food into Harlem bodegas. Greenmarket is a project of New York City’s Council on the Environment, gifting refrigerators to bodega owners to stock seasonal fruits, vegetables and pure juices.

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Dylan Viale wanted to share his enjoyment of video games with his grandmother, who is blind. He could either narrate his only gameplay adventures or teach himself how to make an audio-only game.

The result is a version of Game Maker, a maze game where players navigate through sounds distinctive to objects and environments. Wonderful example of bridging several gaps, from digital outcasts to the division of age across generations. Read the full story from Joystiq.

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Fourth in a series of sample excerpts from the book Digital Outcasts.

The gunshots I hear on this gray morning in February are startlingly loud, probably no more than a couple of blocks away from where I’m standing. Four figures in bulky coats are seen running across a nearby street. I must look alarmed because my tour guide sees the need to reassure me. “It happens,” he says, evincing the calm demeanor of someone who sees this sort of thing a lot. Me, I’m just a tourist on his East Baltimore turf; I’m here because I want to know if it’s possible for Orleans Street residents to buy a carrot.

A food desert is a term given to any part of the industrialized world where healthy, affordable food is difficult for consumers to obtain. Thought to be primarily an inner city phenomenon, food deserts can be found in rural as well as urban areas. They are widespread across the continental United States, though they are most prevalent among low-socioeconomic communities.

With no easy access to supermarkets, populations living in food deserts demonstrate a wide range of diet-related health problems: cardiovascular disease, diabetes, high cholesterol, malnutrition and obesity. A USDA Economic Research Service report to Congress reveals 23.5 million people currently residing in food deserts, with 4 percent of the U.S. population living more than a mile from any quality food supplier.

Brandon Parker is walking through his Cherry Hill neighborhood on a Sunday morning. In his right hand is a cigarette. In his left, a bag of groceries from the Family Dollar Store. Behind him, his 3-year-old son, Rainier, reaches into the bag of Doritos his daughter Na-ayzin, 4, is holding.

“That’s all they ever ask for, soda and chips,” Parker said. “I just bought them breakfast and that’s what they wanted, chips.”

Parker said he would prefer to feed them fresh fruit. He buys organic fruit from the Fresh Food Mart off Patapsco Avenue when he can. But it is early and his kids are hungry. The Family Dollar is within walking distance, so they go there, not for any other reason than because it is close.

The key attributes of food deserts are affordability and access. According to U.S. census tracts, a community qualifies as a food desert if both of the following condition thresholds are met:

• Low-income — communities having a poverty rate of 20 percent or a median family income below 80 percent of the area median
• Low-access — communities with at least 500 persons (or 33% of the census tract’s population) living more than one mile from a supermarket or large grocery store

Residents of food desert areas often have no economic or logistic access to private transportation. They rely on public transit, if it exists and/or they can afford it, or they travel several miles on foot to reach a grocery store. As a result, consumers without cars depend on food sources within the closest proximity to their homes. Unfortunately these take the form of fast food restaurants, corner “dollar stores,” unhealthy street vendors and bodegas overstocked with junk food products.

Real Food Farm serves communities surrounding Baltimore's Clifton Park neighborhood, distributing fresh fruits and vegetables to 27,500 low-income residents with little access to healthy food. Such urban agricultural enterprises continue to emerge through the use of mobile technologies.

Residents of food deserts, however, may one day benefit from an unrelated yet parallel trend — the increased utilization of mobile technologies among African-American and Latino populations. According to a Pew Internet and American Life study conducted in 2010, use of mobile phones among minorities increased by 32%. People in these groups are also more likely than Caucasian users to rely on data applications, with more than a fifth of all Internet traffic taking place through the smartphone.

Traditional models of consumer behavior tend to assume unimpeded access; we don’t consider that buying decisions are formed with invalid or incomplete choices. If consumer guidance is inaccessible, then people have no choice but to downscale the quality of their purchasing habits. This is terrific for food fast outlets, who reap the financial benefits of easy access in food deserts where no other choices are available, but not so great for the health of the communities who live there. With these trends in mind, perhaps a non-traditional approach is required to truly modify behavior among the socioeconomically compromised.

We already see innovative nutrition programs taking place among food deserts. Uplift Solutions endeavors to attract grocery corporations to West Philadelphia neighborhoods through community involvement. New York City officials have revisited zoning regulations to make food businesses more profitable. The Oakland-based People’s Grocery created a roving market on wheels to bring farm-fresh food to where the people are, something also being done successfully by Real Food Farm in Baltimore. And in Illinois, the Let’s Move program joins Food for Every Child to stimulate opening of new grocery shops.

Poster in a Philadelphia subway station that resembles grocery shelves stocked with grocery products. Commuters with smartphones can download an app to scan the bar codes and order delivery.

The next generation of food programs may very well combine the trend of mobile technology with social science. There is a need to incentivize local grocery stores as community health centers, even for large conglomerate supermarkets. Additionally, private label food brands want to be viewed as nutritional experts. One can image a text- and pictorial-based user interface by which consumers can make health decisions at the point of purchase. New pilot apps may one day geo-locate a farmer’s market truck and inform residents when it is scheduled to be in their neighborhood.

Community input helps to culturally sanction new stores in areas containing a predominant ethnic group. Technological profiles aggregate health filters specific to a family or neighborhood, and that translates to increased marketability. Consider what Uplift Solutions has done to encourage supermarket managers to embrace the rich ethnic heritage of their respective constituencies. It’s not impossible to envision a “virtual supermarket” largely distributed through religious and cultural vehicles, providing social markers to grocery stores seeking new ways to move product.

Then there are homebound consumers with disabilities, who are forced to live in a private food desert regardless of geography. Such users may one day enjoy an increased capacity to shop for groceries using “map apps” for the blind and click-to-call technology. Grocery retailers may reciprocate by offering pre-packaged meal bundles that are easy to deliver, prepare and consume. Already we see product billboards where users scan items for home delivery on their way home from work.

Where this ultimately points is a newly emerging constellation of digital and social tools, all created with the intention of removing existing barriers separating the farm from the fork. We should continue to strive for, and look forward to, new forms of cultural, nutritional and economic literacy. By cultivating evergreen business models around inclusive distribution, we might yet provide ambient health benefit to future generations and the private corporations who serve and employ them.

To learn more or find a food desert near you, visit the USDA food desert locator.

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The passing of any cultural icon is unbearably sad. The passing of said icon due to a self-inflicted shotgun wound is especially tragic. Compound this with the acknowledgment that the icon in question, Don Cornelius, should have received more acclaim than he did, and well … it’s tough to swallow.

Mr. Cornelius was the creator and single sustaining element of ‘Soul Train,’ a music performance television program modeled after the hugely popular ‘American Bandstand.’ While ‘Bandstand’ enjoyed both high budget (network affiliation) and high profile (hosted by Dick Clark), ‘Soul Train’ existed on a meager budget funded solely through Mr. Cornelius and ran largely on syndication. Adding to the ‘Soul Train’ mix was the show’s emphasis on early 1970′s black culture and Mr. Cornelius’ insistence on showcasing African American performers.

It’s important to keep in mind that this era of music was highly polarized. There was a thick line of demarcation between what were thought to be “black” and “white” bands, whose music and influence were promoted through record companies’ predetermined valuations of race. As a result, there were very few opportunities for black musical acts to crossover into another audience and sell more records. ‘Soul Train’ helped to expose such artists as Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye, James Brown and Smokey Robinson to a wider sphere of (well deserved) appreciation, helping their careers financially and artistically.

Innovation takes many forms, and in all cases it involves a certain amount of risk. Sometimes that risk can depreciate other aspects of life. By all accounts, Mr. Cornelius was an intensely private man whose final years were not happy ones. He endured a bitter divorce, served probation for domestic battery, suffered from a variety of health problems, and always resented his lack of sponsorship by mainstream advertisers. Eventually ‘Bandstand’ lost credibility among black entertainers, who all made appearances on ‘Soul Train’ their primary career goals. As the 1980′s arrived and black artists enjoyed greater accessibility, the innovation that drove ‘Soul Train’ began to ironically signal its decline:

The music industry changed quickly in the 1980s, with the advent of MTV and BET, two cable channels that benefitted from Mr. Cornelius’s past but eroded his audience. No longer was there a weekly appointment to see the hottest musicians or latest dance moves, but a constant onslaught.

While Mr. Cornelius had somewhat reluctantly but warmly embraced disco on his show, he had more misgivings about the advent of hip-hop and rap, which he thought were degrading. “I could do it. I could be like ‘yowassup!’ But I’d look stupid,” he once told an interviewer.

I watched ‘Soul Train’ every Saturday and largely kept it a secret. At that time, living in highly conservative upstate PA, caucasian boys did not listen to music invented by talented people wearing wide-lapeled jackets, enormous afros and silver platform boots. When my high school friends declared their love of rap music, I took pride in identifying which R&B chestnut was being sampled underneath the clattering beatbox. This doesn’t make me a good person. It just makes me appreciate how good the music from that era really was, and how Mr. Cornelius was the crucial barometer for a less complicated time.

My lasting impression of ‘Soul Train’ ironically doesn’t even involve a black artist. It is the 1980 United States debut of Yellow Magic Orchestra, an electronic band from Japan that included a young Ryuichi Sakamoto. (Sakamoto has since become a critically acclaimed composer and actor). They started their set with a cover of “Tighten Up” by Archie Bell & the Drells, the largely African American audience dancing and cheering every note. You can feel the excitement in the clip of something special happening, a novelty act interacting with an audience, the prototype of a benign cultural revolution.

Through the bad lip syncing and dated costumes, YMO on ‘Soul Train’ provides a key lesson on integration and inclusion. Millons of Americans had been exposed to a Japanese pop band they had never heard of. Japanese audiences audiences were made newly aware of cross-continental artists, the same acts who had unknowingly inspired their homeland heroes. When Mr. Cornelius leapt onto the stage to interview the band between songs, he chuckled nervously and said, “If you’re out there in TV land wondering what’s happening, I haven’t the slightest idea.” I think he did.

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This week I’ll be presenting at the CSUN Conference for Persons with Disabilities on a topic entitled Yesterday’s Future: How the Technology of Tomorrow is Benefitting Today’s Digital Outcasts. I’m happy to have as my co-presenter the brilliant Lisa Domican, inventor of the Grace App for Autism available for iPhone and iPad.

Below you’ll find a video of Lisa’s daughter Grace, using the app to request a chocolate bar during a walk. Expect more of the same in San Diego, if you’re attending CSUN. See you there?

Update 26 February 2012 - Gracie uses the Grace app to communicate with her therapist:

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