esearch and Development: An Area of Increasing Emphasis

esearch and Development: An Area of Increasing Emphasis

Future Reflections Spring/ Summer1989, Vol. 8 No. 2
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RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT:
AN AREA OF INCREASING
EMPHASIS
by Tim Cranmer
[PICTURE] Dr. Tim Cranmer is internationally recognized for his
preeminence in technology for the blind.
Editor's Note: The following article is reprinted
from the April, 1988, issue of the Braille Monitor.
Four years ago Dr. Kenneth Jernigan (then President
of the National Federation of the Blind) initiated
a program of research and development
by appointing a committee with the responsibility
of finding new applications of technologies and
influencing emerging technologies aimed at solving
problems resulting from blindness. The
Research and Development Committee is the
result of that decision. Selecting members for
the R & D Committee was easy. Federationists
had already distinguished themselves in the field
of technology through their participation in the
Committee for the Evaluation of Technology and
the Division of NFB in Computer Science. The
present R & D Committee came largely from
these training grounds. Our very active committee
meets two or three times a year and maintains
continual contact by phone between meetings.
Our last meeting in February of 1988 at the National
Center for the Blind in Baltimore was typical.
We
studied and examined firsthand the newest
tools available to engineers--tools like programmable
logic arrays that enable an engineer to
design special purpose circuits that meet specific
design requirements. These PLA's, as they are
called, may contain hundreds of logic gates (and,
or --not gates and latches) that can be interconnected
and changed at will to build circuits
needed in such things as future versions of the Speaqualizer.
Another state-of-the-art technology studied at
our meeting is "surface-mounted components,"
which allows integrated circuits to be mounted
onto printed circuit boards without using wire
leads. These tiny parts sit directly on copper pads
etched on the circuit boards, where they are
soldered by heating the entire assembly. The
Braille 'n Speak uses surface mount technology
to achieve its small size while retaining a large
memory and other sophisticated features.
Our Committee experienced firsthand the
potentially useful material variously called
Nitinal, Biometal, Memory metal, etc. This fascinating
material possesses the property of
remembering any shape that it is forced to assume.
For example, if you bend a piece of nitinal
metal into the shape of a print letter S while it is
heated a little above room temperature, you can
then cool the wire to room temperature and bend
it into a complete circle. It will keep its new
shape until it is warmed a bit and then it will forcibly
snap back into the shape of an S. This is
more than a parlor trick. This property of Nitinal
is being applied to the design of a full page Braille
display that really looks promising.
All of our meetings include exploration of current
concepts, tools, and materials that enable us
to maintain our position of leadership in the application
of science and technology to products
useful to all of us.
A committee is an excellent mechanism for exploring
questions like what is needed and what
are the best methods to achieve a goal. But when
it comes time to implement the committee's
ideas, you need one person to take charge. Once
the project leader is identified, other committee
members'direct their input to him or her. That's
how we usually work.
In the short life of the committee we have pursued
a fair number of projects. Some have been
outstanding successes while others must be accepted
as learning experiences. Here are
samples of both:
The Speaqualizer exemplifies the R & D
Committee's design skills. This powerful tool
enables blind computer users to read IBM and
compatible personal computer screens. The
Speaqualizer is discussed elsewhere in this issue
of the Monitor. Suffice it to say here that for
those entering the IBM personal computer
world, the Speaqualizer is the screen reading tool
to start with. It will prove to be all you will ever
want or need.
It should be noted here that the availability of the
Speaqualizer should significantly improve by the
time this appears in the Monitor. We have just
learned that the American Printing House for the
Blind (which we have named as our distributor)
is now producing 200 Speaqualizers and plans to
stay ahead of future demand.
The R & D Committee continues to improve the
NFB synthetic speech. Our "voice" is heard in
the PocketBraille machine produced by the Kentucky
Department for the Blind and manufactured
and sold by Southland Manufacturing
Company of Lexington, Kentucky. The committee
is currently developing a unique standalone
speech synthesizer using the NFB speech algorithm
and circuit design. This unit features small
size battery or a.c. operation, a nonvolatile user
dictionary of pronunciation, and a low price.
Negotiations look promising for acquiring synthetic
speech in other languages (French,
Spanish, and German) for our synthesizer. This
product is not now available. It's just one of
several things our committee is working on.
Also under developing is the NFB scientific calculator,
which could be added to many speech or
Braille devices, including the Speaqualizer or the
products based on the Kentucky PortaBraillePocketBraille
technologies. The Braille 'n
Speak is perhaps the best known member of this
family. The NFB scientific calculator will be
available --we don't know just when or in what
form.
The R & D Committee did the work of translating
the typesetter codes used to produce the ink
print edition of the Random House Concise Dictionary
into Grade II Braille. This work was done
in cooperation with the National Association to Promote the Use of Braille (NAPUB). The dictionary
may be obtained from NAPUB by contacting
President Betty Niceley, 3618 Dayton
Avenue, Louisville, Kentucky 40207. A talking
edition of the dictionary has been prepared for
the Apple II Computer. It should be available
later this year. A version for MS/DOS is planned.
Did I promise to cite "a learning experience?" It
once seemed like a good idea to read a computer
screen by moving a "mouse" (not the cat kind but
the kind used with computers) on the desk top.
As the mouse is moved horizontally across the
desk, the computer's cursor moves across the
screen and a speech synthesizer reads aloud the
contents of the line. Or, by moving the mouse
vertically, the synthesizer could be made to speak
the contents of columns. We made it work. We
fine- tuned it and debugged it and concluded that
it was not a good idea after all. We decided to
throw no money down the rat hole. As a matter
of fact, we learned a great deal from the mouse
experiment pertaining to how we blind computer
users can relate gross manual movements to spatial
relations on visual screens. It sounds like a
good subject for a master's thesis in psychology.
I'll leave it there.
The National Federation of the Blind is a recognized
leader in research for the blind. Scientists
and engineers are coming to us in increasing
numbers. They ask for our endorsement of their
proposals to funding sources. They seek our
professional guidance. Most of all they seek our
knowledge and skill as technically competent
blind men and women.
The Research and Development Committee is
composed of the following members: Tim Cranmer,
Chairman; Curtis Chong, President of the
National Federation of the Blind in Computer
Science and Systems Programming Specialist,
IDS Financial Services, Minneapolis, Minnesota; Charles Cook, owner of his own computer
consulting company and developer of the
NFB Braille translator and the other computer
systems at the National Center for the Blind in
Baltimore; Emerson Foulke, Professor of
Psychology and Director of the Perceptual Alternatives
Laboratory at the University of Louisville;
Mike Freeman, Computer Systems
Programmer, Bonneville Power Administration,
Vancouver, Washington; Abraham Nemeth,
eminent mathematician and inventor of the
Nemeth Mathematical Code; Mary Ellen Reihing,
Assistant Director, Job Opportunities for the
Blind, Baltimore, Maryland; Harold Snider,
Director, Access for the Handicapped,
Washington, D.C.; Curtis Willoughby, Systems
Design Engineer, Northwestern Bell Telephone,
Des Moines, Iowa; James Willows, Electronic
Engineer, Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratories, Livermore, California.
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