Computer Aids for the Blind

Computer Aids for the Blind

The Braille Monitor

January 2003

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Computer Aids for the

Blind

.by Stacey Hirsh

.From the Editor: The

following article appeared in the October 24, 2002, edition of the Baltimore

Sun. It provides a clear summary of where technology for the blind is and

how far we still have to go. Here it is:.

Jim Dickson is a smart

man. He graduated from Brown University, has a job as a vice president for a

national organization, and considers himself a quick study. But when a report

arrived recently that his computer could not translate into voice, Dickson,

who is blind, had to rely on others to do his work for him. He phoned eight

of his colleagues before finally finding one who had time to read the lengthy

report to him over the phone..

"That's

annoying; it's humiliating; it's inefficient," said Dickson, a vice president

at the American Association of People with Disabilities in Washington.

.While technology has helped

the blind read e‑mail and computer documents, it is still riddled with problems.

Many technologies are difficult or impossible for the blind to access, and the

result is a giant gap between those who are blind and those who are not..

The

problem affects hundreds of thousands of blind people. The consequences can

make it difficult for the blind to peruse Web sites, and they can be as devastating

as costing blind workers their jobs. Several experts say anecdotal evidence

indicates that the problem is widespread.

."If the technologies

that we use fit in with the technologies that everybody else uses, we can accomplish

great things," said Curtis Chong, director of technology for the Baltimore‑based

National Federation of the Blind. "But if the technologies don't mix, we

either find other ways to do it that cost a lot of money, or we don't work.".

Today

two products will be introduced that could help narrow the gap between the blind

and the sighted. Microsoft Corporation and St. Petersburg, Florida-based Freedom

Scientific, Inc., will launch the PAC Mate, a hand-held personal computer for

the blind. Also the Department of Commerce's National Institute of Standards

and Technology will unveil technology that it is developing to enable the blind

to feel graphics through a device that connects to their computer.

.Still the problems that the

blind face with technology are growing, Chong said. Even if a blind person is

looking for a job that has nothing to do with technology, that person must make

sure the company runs software on its computers that is compatible with technology

for the blind, he said..

About

30 percent of the 669,000 people between the ages of twenty-one and sixty-four

with severe difficulty seeing were employed in 1997, according to the most recent

survey by the U.S. Census Bureau.

.For those who are employed,

technology can create overwhelming roadblocks..

Gary

Wunder, forty-seven, is blind and has been a computer programmer at University

Hospital in Columbia, Missouri, for more than two decades. Several years ago

he was promoted to the job of project manager, but Wunder said that in 1995

he was demoted back to senior programmer because the computer programs he used

had so many graphics.

."So we take a couple

of steps forward and get some things to work, and then we take a couple of steps

back," Wunder said..

Dickson

has given up on using the Internet. On the job he has one of his employees do

Internet research and then e‑mail it to him-‑a task that Dickson

estimates costs his organization a day's work for one staff member each week.

."The way we accommodate

access to the Web is I drive my staff crazy," Dickson said..

Some

say moves to diminish the digital divide for the blind are underway. Glen Gordon,

chief technical officer for Freedom Scientific, which makes technologies for

people with visual and learning disabilities, said that, when Windows 3.1 was

released in 1993, it was years before a device that turned printed text into

the spoken word was available. When Windows XP came out in 2001, he said, devices

were ready in hours.

.With the technology being

introduced today by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, blind

students will be able to feel maps or pictures of animals that appear on their

computers..

With

the PAC Mate, the blind will be able to send e‑mail from the road and

load messages from the device onto their desktop computers, the way sighted

people have long been able to with their pocket PCs. Still the PAC Mate costs

$2,595, compared with the iPAQ pocket PC, which can cost as little as $500,

according to Hewlett‑Packard Company's Web site.

.Madelyn Bryant McIntire,

director of the accessible technology group at Microsoft, said the Redmond, Washington‑based

software giant began putting features for the blind into the operating system

in 1988. She believes that what technology can do for people with disabilities

will be well known by the end of the decade and that the technology will be much

further along by then as well..

"We

really think that this is going to be a decade of incredible change, and change

for the better," she said.

.A survey of the blind by

the Rehabilitation Research and Training Center on Blindness and Low Vision at

Mississippi State University found that more than half of the 166 respondents

felt not being able to read printed materials was the greatest barrier to employment.

Technology, however, has helped the blind read e‑mail and computer documents..

"Technology

has been wonderful. Technology has come a long way," said J. Elton Moore,

director of the center. "But by the same token there are still significant

problems."

...To solve those problems,

advocates said, companies must consider the blind as they design new technologies-‑not

after the fact..

Susie

Stanzel, a technology specialist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture in

Kansas City, Kansas, said technology is developing fast, and the tools to make

it accessible for the blind simply can't keep pace.

.For Stanzel, who is blind,

the problem will come when her office upgrades to a computer system that is more

graphical. The new system, she said, will not be as accessible..

"I will be at some

disadvantages," she said. "It is a fact that I'm just not able to

do all the things that everybody else does because of technology."

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