From the New York Times and seen on some other lists
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Bill Gates Column (NYT Syndicate) 8/13/97
Helping people with disabilities helps everybody
By BILL GATES
I have lots of things to be thankful for, not the least of which are
eyeglasses.
Like many people, I have a permanent disability. My eyesight isn't the
greatest. Fortunately, my disability is mild and easily overcome with
prescription lenses.
I don't begin to equate my minor disability with the kinds of serious
disabilities that many people encounter. I'm grateful that my eyesight
isn't worse. And I'm grateful I have glasses.
Eyeglasses are one kind of "accessibility aid." A wheelchair is another.
An elevator chime is yet another. Any tool that lets a person who has a
disability gain better access to the world is an accessibility aid.
Maybe you have a permanent disability, too. Many people are colorblind,
dyslexic, or have debilitating back problems or other chronic illnesses or
injuries, including repetitive-stress injuries such as carpal-tunnel
syndrome. As the average age of the population increases, the number of
people with significant disabilities will grow.
Helping accommodate people with disabilities makes sense. Just imagine how
much worse off society and millions of individuals like me would be if
eyeglasses had never been invented.
When ways are found to keep people productive, everybody benefits--not
just the individuals, but their friends, relatives, employers and the
whole economy, too. It's an intelligent use of resources.
Sometimes investments or regulations intended to help people with
disabilities prove to offer unexpectedly widespread benefits.
The chimes and lights that announce the pending arrival of an elevator car
were installed to give people with sight, hearing or mobility impairments
a little extra time. Everybody takes these accessibility aids for granted
now, and if an elevator didn't have them you might be annoyed.
The sloped "curb cuts" that provide gentle ramps from the sidewalk to the
street at many U.S. street corners were installed to benefit people in
wheelchairs. But people pushing carts or strollers, or riding bikes or
skateboards, rely on them too.
Closed-captioning for television programs was devised to help people with
hearing impairments, by displaying in written form the dialog of a show.
Now many people who hear just fine use closed-captioning merely to watch
TV in bed without disturbing a spouse, or to watch the news while working
out on a noisy exercise machine.
The flip side of this is that some innovations meant for society at large
have had disproportionate value to the disabled. The PC and the Internet
are great examples. They are, in effect, accessibility aids for many
people.
People with speech impediments can "chat" via text on the Internet or
other computer networks.
Many older individuals and others who may not be able to get out much
participate in social groups that communicate over the Internet. They keep
up with friends and the doings of their grandkids and other relatives.
A lawyer can sit in front of a computer and call up every brief her law
firm has ever filed and every deposition. She doesn't have run to
somebody's office, or shuffle a lot of paper, or go to and from a file
cabinet. She may even be able to work from home.
Anybody with limited mobility--or even just limited time--can appreciate
how the Internet and electronic databases have opened vast amounts of
information to easy access.
The PC is one of the greatest accessibility aids ever created but people
who are blind have actually lost ground in recent years.
A decade ago most computer screens displayed only text, and it was
relatively easy for software to "speak" this text aloud to the blind. The
immediate result was a new level of independence for people who could not
see the printed word.
But today's more powerful PCs and software, which use graphics heavily to
communicate large amounts of information to the sighted person, have
proven problematic for people who don't have eyesight.
Similarly, as the Internet's World Wide Web becomes more graphical and
interesting for people with sight, its content threatens to become less
accessible to the blind than it is today.
Fortunately, a growing number of computer hardware and software
innovations are being developed specifically for people with disabilities,
including blindness.
Pioneering work has been done at universities and non-profit research
centers, such as the Trace R&D Center at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison. Federal funding played an important role in these early
initiatives, and now commercial companies are getting involved.
Enhancements are being built right into operating systems and software
applications. The broad goal is to make the interface between the computer
and the person so flexible that there are a variety of ways to accomplish
any task.
Because some people can't use a mouse efficiently, there are now
alternatives to the mouse. Because not everybody can hear sounds, there
are visual as well as audio cues available. Because not everybody can see
a screen well, or even see it all, there are enhanced ways to convey
information--from high-contrast settings to software that allows a speech
synthesizer to describe and read aloud even screens that are richly
graphical.
Microsoft will soon release technology to make it easy for authors and
third parties to add closed-captioning and audio description to Web pages
and software applications. Encarta 98 will be the first multimedia
encyclopedia to be fully closed-captioned. Windows 98 will feature
numerous new features for people with disabilities, including a screen
magnifier and an easy way for individuals to customize their machines.
Good accessibility work is under way at several other big companies,
including IBM and Sun. And numerous small companies are making important
contributions by providing everything from speech synthesizers to foot
pedals for people who have trouble holding down keyboard keys.
Still, the industry has a long way to go in establishing and promoting
these techniques so that they will be used everywhere, in every software
product, with the benefits available to everybody.
We'll get there. I can see the day coming, even with my glasses off.
(For information about current and future accessibility aids, visit
http://www.microsoft.com/enable/.)
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