{"id":115895,"date":"2020-05-23T01:44:16","date_gmt":"2020-05-23T01:44:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/developer.apple.com\/news\/?id=15u3zxkk"},"modified":"2020-05-23T01:44:16","modified_gmt":"2020-05-23T01:44:16","slug":"meet-the-developer-david-niemeijer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2020\/05\/23\/meet-the-developer-david-niemeijer\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet the Developer: David Niemeijer"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

In 1995, Giesbert Nijhuis was touring through Europe with his ska-reggae band when his van tumbled off the road. The accident left Nijhuis paralyzed from the neck down. He was 26 years old.<\/p>\n

\u201cI couldn\u2019t move anything except for my head, and only had an eighth of my normal breathing capacity. There was almost no hope of healing or repairing the spinal cord,\u201d says Nijhuis, a professional graphic designer and photographer. \u201cAt first I was questioning if I wanted to continue life like this.\u201d<\/p>\n

David Niemeijer, a friend of Nijhuis\u2019 since childhood, remembers that dark time well. \u201cHis new physical challenges drained the life right out of him.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Giesbert Nijhuis (top) inspired his friend David Niemeijer to create AssistiveWare.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The accident affected every part of Nijhuis\u2019 life, including his very livelihood. To edit images on his Mac, he needed to be able to enter key combinations, but the assistive onscreen keyboards available then didn\u2019t allow for that. In his new situation\u2014or his \u201csecond life,\u201d as he likes to call it\u2014he was facing serious accessibility issues. <\/p>\n

So Niemeijer, who has a degree in agricultural and environmental sciences and was working at a university at the time, created his own assistive keyboard\u2014what would become the Mac app Keystrokes<\/em>. He soon scaled back his work at the university to focus on founding a software company, AssistiveWare, which released a number of pioneering accessibility tools for the desktop.<\/p>\n

And then came the launch of iOS, which changed everything for Niemeijer by untethering assistive software from the computer. In 2009, just a year after the iOS Software Development Kit launched, AssistiveWare released its breakthrough product: Proloquo2Go<\/em>.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

*Proloquo2Go* is a symbol-based keyboard to aid people with difficulties in speaking.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Proloquo2Go<\/em> gives a voice to those who have difficulty speaking (proloquo is Latin for \u201cto speak out loud\u201d). Paired with an iPhone or iPad, it also made this assistive technology more widely available. \u201cIt enables people to start learning to use it much earlier. It used to be that you\u2019d get an expensive machine when you were 7 or 8 years old,\u201d says Niemeijer.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith an iPad or iPod touch, you can start around 2 or 3 years old, which makes a huge difference, because some kids then can go to regular schools and are not reliant on special education.\u201d <\/p>\n

Proloquo2Go<\/em> presents a variety of simple drawings; tap them to create sentences that the app will read aloud. Instead of providing only a limited number of predetermined sentences and phrases, Proloquo2Go<\/em> lets you combine words in infinite ways.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt offers users total communication,\u201d says Niemeijer. \u201cIt allows people to not just use utilitarian language, such as asking or answering questions, but also to share stories or emotional anecdotes. It allows them to tell a joke.\u201d<\/p>\n

AssistiveWare currently has a half dozen apps available across iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. Pictello<\/em> lets users create storybooks using text-to-speech and the photos on their iOS device. Keeble<\/em> is a highly customizable keyboard app that supports users with motor challenges, low vision, and dyslexia. And News-2-You<\/em> publishes a weekly newspaper, written with both text and symbols, for beginning readers. <\/p>\n

Nijhuis is proud of what Niemeijer has managed to build. \u201cI love having seen David\u2019s works grow from the software he made just for me to the company it is today, serving so many people all over the world.\u201d <\/p>\n

The designer continues to influence AssistiveWare\u2019s evolution: He created the company logo and the app icon for Proloquo2Go<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\n

Originally published on the App Store.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 1995, Giesbert Nijhuis was touring through Europe with his ska-reggae band when his van tumbled off the road. The accident left Nijhuis paralyzed from the neck down. He was 26 years old. \u201cI couldn\u2019t move anything except for my head, and only had an eighth of my normal breathing capacity. There was almost no […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":115896,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-115895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-apple-developer-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115895"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115895\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115896"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}