I saw this article on another list, how facinating!
	My bigest complaint now with anything, and it doesn't have to be
computer related my first question is how user friendly will it be?The
touch screen phone was what I found facinating, but that can be time
consuming with mis dialed numbers.





On Sun, 4 Jan 2009, Lynn Evans wrote:

>
>
> January 4, 2009
> For the Blind, Technology Does What a Guide Dog Can't
> By
> MIGUEL HELFT
> MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.
> T. V. RAMAN was a bookish child who developed a love of math and puzzles at
> an early
> age.
> That passion didn't change after glaucoma took his eyesight at the age of
> 14. What
> changed is the role that technology - and his own innovations - played in
> helping
> him pursue his interests.
> A native of India, Mr. Raman went from relying on volunteers to read him
> textbooks
> at a top technical university there to leading a largely autonomous life in
> Silicon
> Valley, where he is a highly respected computer scientist and an engineer at
> Google
> .
> Along the way, Mr. Raman built a series of tools to help him take advantage
> of objects
> or technologies that were not designed with blind users in mind. They ranged
> from
> a Rubik's Cube covered in Braille to a software program that can take
> complex mathematical
> formulas and read them aloud, which became the subject of his Ph.D.
> dissertation
> at Cornell. He also built a version of Google's search service tailored for
> blind
> users.
> Mr. Raman, 43, is now working to modify the latest technological gadget that
> he says
> could make life easier for blind people: a touch-screen phone.
> "What Raman does is amazing," said Paul Schroeder, vice president for
> programs and
> policy at the American Foundation for the Blind, which conducts research on
> technology
> that can help visually impaired people. "He is a leading thinker on
> accessibility
> issues, and his capacity to design and alter technology to meet his needs is
> unique."
> Some of Mr. Raman's innovations may help make electronic gadgets and Web
> services
> more user-friendly for everyone. Instead of asking how something should work
> if a
> person cannot see, he says he prefers to ask, "How should something work
> when the
> user is not looking at the screen?"
> Such systems could prove useful for drivers or anyone else who could benefit
> from
> eyes-free access to a phone. They could also appeal to aging baby boomers
> with fading
> vision who want to keep using technology they've come to depend on.
> Mr. Raman's approach reflects a recognition that many innovations designed
> primarily
> for people with disabilities have benefited the broader public, said Larry
> Goldberg,
> who oversees the National Center for Accessible Media at WGBH, the public
> broadcasting
> station in Boston. They include curb cuts for wheelchairs, captions for
> television
> broadcasts and optical character-recognition technology, which was
> fine-tuned to
> create software that could read printed books aloud and is now used in many
> computer
> applications, he said.
> With no buttons to guide the fingers on its glassy surface, the touch-screen
> cellphone
> may seem a particularly daunting challenge. But Mr. Raman said that with the
> right
> tweaks, touch-screen phones - many of which already come equipped with GPS
> technology
> and a compass - could help blind people navigate the world.
> "How much of a leap of faith does it take for you to realize that your phone
> could
> say, 'Walk straight and within 200 feet you'll get to the intersection of X
> and Y,'
> " Mr. Raman said. "This is entirely doable."
> ADVOCATES for the blind have long complained that technology companies have
> done
> a generally poor job of making their products accessible. The Web, while
> opening
> many opportunities for blind people, is still riddled with obstacles. And
> sophisticated
> screen-reader software, which turns documents and Web pages into synthesized
> speech,
> can cost more than $1,000. Even with a screen reader, many sites are hard to
> navigate.
> Last year, the National Federation of the Blind reached a settlement of a
> landmark
> class-action lawsuit against one company whose site advocates found
> unusable, Target.
> In the settlement, the retailer agreed to make its Web site accessible to
> blind people.
> The federation assesses the usability of Web sites and currently certifies
> only a
> handful as being fully accessible.
> One challenge is that technology often evolves much faster than the
> guidelines that
> ensure Web sites work well with screen readers. In December, the World Wide
> Web Consortium,
> an Internet standards group, released Version 2.0 of its accessibility
> guidelines
> for Web sites. The previous version dated back to 1999, when the Web
> consisted largely
> of static Web pages rather than interactive applications.
> Obstacles on the Web take many forms. A common one is the Captcha, a
> security feature
> consisting of a string of distorted letters and numbers that users are
> supposed to
> read and retype before they register for a new service or send e-mail. Few
> Web sites
> offer audio Captchas.
> Some pages are just poorly designed, like e-commerce sites where the
> "checkout" button
> is an image that isn't labeled so screen readers can find it.
> "The overwhelming percentage of the industry really hasn't stepped up to the
> plate
> to provide the blindness community with equal access to their products,"
> said Eric
> Bridges, director of advocacy and governmental affairs at the American
> Council of
> the Blind. Mr. Bridges and other advocates argue that accessibility should
> be built
> into new technologies, not added as an afterthought.
> People with other disabilities face similar challenges on the Internet. "On
> the deafness
> side, the frustration is huge because of all of the video out there without
> captions,"
> Mr. Goldberg said.
> MR. RAMAN, who before joining Google in 2005 worked at
> Adobe Systems
>  and as a researcher at
> I.B.M.
> , is intimately familiar with accessibility problems, both personally and
> professionally.
> In 2006, he developed a
> version
>  of Google's search engine that gives a slight preference to Web sites that
> work
> well with screen readers. The system had to test millions of Web pages.
> "You wouldn't have found a single page that fully complied with the
> accessibility
> guidelines," Mr. Raman said. Still, the system could detect which pages
> worked reasonably
> well with screen readers.
> The service is not being used as widely as he had hoped. Still, it has had
> an impact.
> Several Web site operators whose sites weren't showing up prominently in
> Google search
> results asked Mr. Raman how they could fix their sites so they would rank
> better.
> The service includes a screen magnifier that enlarges individual search
> results.
> Mr. Raman says the feature is intended to help low-vision users, but it
> could also
> prove useful to a much larger population, especially on cellphones and other
> devices
> with small screens.
> For his own use, he has built a highly customized system that allows him
> efficient
> access to much of what he needs on his PC and on the Web, stripping out
> anything
> that could slow him down. For instance, the system goes directly to the
> article text
> on the news sites he reads regularly, bypassing navigational links and other
> features
> found on most Web pages.
> On a recent day, Mr. Raman was working on a research paper about the future
> structure
> of the Web. A monitor hung above the desk. It is usually turned off, unless
> he wants
> to show a colleague or visitor what he is working on. He typed at his
> keyboard, his
> head slightly tilted to one side, listening to his screen reader through a
> pair of
> wireless headphones.
> The screen reader is calibrated to speak at roughly triple the speed of a
> normal
> voice. To the untrained ear, the output is incomprehensible, but it allows
> Mr. Raman
> to "read" at roughly the same speed as a sighted person.
> Processing information quickly is a skill he has developed over the years: a
> video
> on
> YouTube
>  shows him solving his Braille Rubik's Cube in 23 seconds. When he is not
> typing,
> Mr. Raman, who wears large sunglasses, is often folding and unfolding pieces
> of paper
> into tiny, origami-like geometrical shapes at prodigious speed.
> He shares a work area at Google with Charles Chen, a 25-year-old engineer,
> and Hubbell,
> Mr. Raman's guide dog. (Hubbell has his own
> Web site
> .)
> Mr. Chen, who is sighted, developed a free screen reader for Web pages that
> works
> with the Firefox browser. Working together, the two recently added keyboard
> shortcuts
> that help blind and low-vision users navigate quickly through Google's
> search results.
> They've also developed tools to make sophisticated Web applications, like
> e-mail
> and blog readers, suitable for screen-reading software.
> Now, much of their effort is focused on touch-screen phones.
> "The thing I am most interested in is all of the stuff moving to the mobile
> world,
> because it is a big life-changer," Mr. Raman said.
> To show their progress, Mr. Raman pulled his T-Mobile G1, a touch-screen
> phone with
> Google's Android software, from a pocket of his jeans. He and Mr. Chen have
> already
> outfitted it with software that speaks much like a screen reader on a PC.
> Now they
> are working on ways to allow blind people, or anyone who is not looking at
> the screen,
> to enter text, numbers and commands.
> That development would complement voice-recognition systems, which are not
> always
> reliable and don't work well in noisy environments.
> Since he cannot precisely hit a button on a touch screen, Mr. Raman created
> a dialer
> that works based on relative positions. It interprets any place where he
> first touches
> the screen as a 5, the center of a regular telephone dial pad. To dial any
> other
> number, he simply slides his finger in its direction - up and to the left
> for 1,
> down and to the right for 9, and so on. If he makes a mistake, he can erase
> a digit
> simply by shaking the phone, which can detect motion.
> He and Mr. Chen are testing several other input methods. None of these
> technologies
> have been rolled out, but Mr. Raman, who is already using the G1 as his
> primary cellphone,
> hopes to make them freely available soon.
> (Few screen readers are available for smartphones today, and they can often
> cost
> as much as a phone itself.)
> What may become the most life-changing mobile technology - a phone that can
> recognize
> and read signs through its camera - may still be a few years away, Mr. Raman
> said.
> Already, some devices can read text this way. But because blind users don't
> know
> where signs are, they can't point the camera at them or align it properly,
> Mr. Raman
> said. Once chips become powerful enough, they will be able to detect a
> sign's location
> and read skewed type, he said.
> "Those things will happen," he said. When they do, sighted users will
> benefit, too.
> "If you have the technology that can recognize a street sign as you drive by
> it,
> that is helpful for everyone," he said. "In a foreign country, it will
> translate
> it."
> Mr. Raman's innovations have already made their way onto millions of PCs. At
> Adobe
> in the 1990s, he helped to adapt the PDF format so it could be read by
> screen readers.
> That was required for PDF to be used by the federal government, and it
> eventually
> led to the technology's being embraced as a global standard for electronic
> documents.
> "It was incredibly important to us as a business, and to the blind," said
> John Warnock,
> the chairman and founder of Adobe.
> Mr. Raman says he thinks he has the largest impact when he can persuade
> other engineers
> to make their products accessible - or, better yet, when he can convince
> them that
> there are interesting problems to be solved in this area. "If I can get
> another 10
> engineers motivated to work on accessibility," he said, "it is a huge win."
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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