Ross Atkin

I helped out with a hackathon about assistive tech and AI and I made a pointing device to help blind and partially sighted people navigate using a #Smartibot board. Combined with the (8 year old) AI in the app it worked surprisingly well allowing Chris to follow me through space

Thanks Pete!
I hope all is well :)

Here's a video where you can better see the setup. With better AI I think this could be quite useful. You can read more about why (and get files and code to make your own setup) here: www.rossatkin.com/wp/?portfoli...

I helped out with a hackathon about assistive tech and AI and I made a pointing device to help blind and partially sighted people navigate using a #Smartibot board. Combined with the (8 year old) AI in the app it worked surprisingly well allowing Chris to follow me through space

The hat he’s wearing is used as the symbol of the pro status quo party (ie against both full US statehood and independence) in Puerto Rico, but they picked it because it’s a symbol for the island itself so not necessarily a centrist dad political statement.

It’s such a shame all those places in London are gone now. I always try to visit ones in other cities when I travel.

If you’re happy with 1:48 or 1:72 (or even 1/32) scale you can have your early jet museum hanging from the ceiling of a room fairly inexpensively.

You know you can buy plastic kits you can assemble and paint and hang from your ceiling, right?

Easily done with a Kendal Mint Cake, a little bit of fondant and a sharp knife

Photo of a cycle only street with 60mm high kerbs between footway and cycle track and a bollards blocking access for motor vehicles with a gap of 1.4m between them

…as well as the introduction of 60mm kerbs where there would have been an undeliniated level surface here. AND the increase in spacing between the security bollards from 1.1 to 1.4m to better accommodate wider mobility aids, in particular adapted cycles

Photos of an part of a street where the road and pavement are at the same height. There is a controlled crossing point marked with blister paving and the areas adjacent to it which are level but not crossing points have corduroy paving between the pavement and road.

The three key changes they highlighted, which they wouldn’t have done if they hadn’t been using the tool, were the full tactile delineation of this level surface (necessary because of the Lord Mayor’s Show) with Blister and Corduroy paving

The second (and final) of these free training sessions on our street accessibility tool is tomorrow. The first went really well and it was great to hear from City of London officers how its use changed aspects of Bank Junction. Details in the thread if you want to come along👇

Does this imply discovery of a Spoonman and a Rhinosaur are imminent?

Super cool pic of @blondehistorian.bsky.social on the header! 😎

This street accessibility training is tomorrow but there are still a few places if you want to come. Also the tool is now at its permanent home on the @transportforall.org.uk website: www.transportforall.org.uk/tess/

We’re running free training in how to use our new improved street accessibility tool at the Guildhall in London this Friday and next Tuesday. It’ll include a case study on how it was used at Bank Junction. Open to anyone who works in street design. More details in the thread.👇

If you work in street design and want to learn more about TESS, and what CoL officers changed about the redesign of Bank Junction thanks to its predecessor CoLSAT, we’re running two sessions at the Guildhall on Sep 26th and 30th. Email Andrea.Larice@cityoflondon.gov.uk if you’d like to come along

Image of a spreadsheet. A column on the left hand side lists 56 street features such as type of crossing and various parameters about tactile paving, kerbs, inclines and street furniture. A row at the top shows icons representing 13 different needs segments covering types of impairment and mobility aid. The areas where columns and rows intersect have numbers between 0 and 4 and are colour-coded with the ones showing 4 being green, those showing 3 being white and those showing 2, 1 and 0 in progressively darker shades of orange.

It’s built on top of the City of London Street Accessibility Tool (CoLSAT - which has been in use by CoL and others since 2021) and uses all the data and insight we gathered for that, but we’ve done 64 more interviews and added more features to better represent streets outside CoL.

I made a new thing 🧵 Working with @transportforall.org.uk we have built an even better spreadsheet for analysing streets (actual or being designed) and showing their likely accessibility for different disabled people. It’s free to download and use www.rossatkin.com/wp/?portfoli...

Schnaps! Actually maybe not worth risking arrest and sight loss.

Photo of a very grand Victorian or Edwardian building with ‘Free Library’ written in stone relief in a lovely organic font above the door. The door itself is obscured by an enormous and unruly bush which is occupying the whole of what was once the route from street to door. In front of the bush are some haphazardly arranged orange plastic barriers. The barriers are the rubbish injection-moulded kind (not the nicer blow-moulded ones)

😢

Making Smartibots in Shenzhen Part1 YouTube video by Crafty Robot

@genmon.fyi loved reading your last update on the Poem/1 and really excited about hearing about your trip to Shenzhen… please please please do a video! Here’s mine from 2018 youtu.be/u4_Vf_uyrtM?...

Isometric view of 3D printed miniature pieces of tactile paving mostly in buff yellow, grey and red

Top down view of 3D printed miniature pieces of tactile paving mostly in buff yellow, grey and red

Making tactile models of various street design features @johnstreetdales.bsky.social, a collage of his and I found around the UK to use in interviews with disabled people. Here’s all the mini tactile paving!

I may be misremembering this but I think about 8 to 10 years ago someone in TV told me an hour of UK made TV drama costs £5million.

Not mine but works on a similar principle and I agree much better than the steel A-frames. Looking at the size of the bases on those I’d be surprised if they pass the wind test with those sign faces attached.

Bad design of public infrastructure imposes costs on individual disabled people which the government needs (and usually fails to fully) compensate them for with PIP. Improving that infrastructure reduces costs for disabled people but also benefits the whole of society.

The best way to reduce PIP (Personal Independence Payments) to disabled people would be to make personal independence easier by improving transport accessibility:
🏘️ improving the accessibility of our streets
🚉 Sorting out level boarding on trains
🚌 Improving bus accessibility, frequency and speeds

Have you tried turning the cover inside out, putting your arms inside, pushing your hands into the far corners, grabbing the corresponding corners of the duvet and then uninverting the whole thing with a single big flourish? It ends up quite planar when it works right.

My dad had these in the fridge at all times between about 1995 and 2020

I’m offended and our 6yo and 4yo would be offended if I told them you’d said that (which I won’t