Who says hacking can’t be used for good? A prime example would be in the case of Glenn who is an electrical engineer, who hacked Amazon’s eReader, Kindle, and modified it in such a way that made it easier for his little sister to use, who happens to be suffering from cerebral palsy.For those unfamiliar with the condition, cerebral palsy is generally found in young children that affects both physical and mental development, sometimes leading to physical deformities where their arms/legs cannot be stretched out fully.
So what Glenn did was that he took the keypad from a children’s reader (with the buttons acting as macros) and hooked it up to the Kindle, and used a Teensy USB microcontroller which helped to interpret and passed along the proper input commands.
Unfortunately it appears that there is limited functionality due to the lack of buttons and there’s also the issue of the script he used which made the turning of pages rather slow. A pretty heartwarming story on a Wednesday morning, don’t you think? Check out the video below for more details.