I am pleased to find that Sara Morely, who developed the excellent
windows and windows 95 explained tutorials has been recognized for her
good work.
kelly
Stevie Wonder, SAP spotlight applications for disabled
(InfoWorld)
Stevie Wonder, SAP spotlight applications for disabled
By Marc Ferranti
InfoWorld Electric
Posted at 6:56 AM PT, Aug 14, 1998
NEW YORK -- It's hard to just say no to Stevie Wonder. After
all, the blind musician is one of the great pop icons of the
last three decades, and as an inspirational speaker for the
young and disabled and an activist for the African-American
community he has a certain moral force.
So two years ago when he asked to speak to SAP America's Chief
Executive Officer Paul Wahl about an idea he had, the company
said yes.
The germ of that idea turned into the SAP/Stevie Wonder Vision
Awards program -- which just capped its first year with a gala
celebration and concert by Wonder here Wednesday night --
spotlighting computer technology that helps the blind and the
visually impaired with access in the workplace.
The program also comes at a time when SAP, a developer of
enterprise resource planning (ERP) technology, is trying to take
its traditional image as a company whose products are difficult
to work with, and turn it around. ERP technology covers a range
of business management, accounting, logistics, and human
resource applications.
More than 200 award applicants from 12 countries participated in
the awards program Wednesday night, which gave out a total of
$500,000 to winners in a variety of categories, including the
Product of the Year -- a new version of the Kurzweil reader
system that lets vision-impaired and blind people scan documents
into a scanner, which then converts the text into speech output.
Technology from finalists, shown at the awards ceremony, covers
a broad range of enabling devices, from a mouse that lets blind
people "feel" the icons on a graphical user interface to Windows
training material for the blind.
Corporate use of these tools is not just charity -- visually
impaired and blind people can be a great asset to any workforce,
according to Wahl.
"We now have blind people [at SAP], some of them are
programmers, and we are delighted to see how quickly they become
a very talented work force to build applications," Wahl said.
"Some of them are even going into the research side to build a
very complex, innovative search engine for information for
business that can be used by blind people."
For blind people, the graphical user technology that almost all
new applications use doesn't do much good, Wahl noted. The
awards program was founded to encourage the development of
software and hardware that lets visually impaired and blind
people -- of which there are about 170 million in the world --
take advantage of contemporary advances in technology.
The plan for the program was hatched two years ago when SAP
asked Wonder to play at a user group conference.
"I was very happy to be asked to be part of their celebration
.. and I said I'm fine doing the concert and performance, but
what I want to do is get together with the president and talk
about an idea I had," Wonder said.
As it turned out, the idea to set up a program to encourage
enabling technology for the blind had a special interest for
Wahl, whose daughter Carolin is blind and works at SAP AG in
Germany.
"The common vision of Stevie Wonder and SAP is that we want to
take the workforce of blind people and make it available for
many companies around the world," Wahl said.
Wonder, an avid user of technology in his work as a musician,
was one of the product testers in the program.
The awards program Wednesday night spotlighted finalists
including:
Kurzweil Educational Systems, whose Kurzweil 1000 took the
Product of the Year award. The program is a PC-based reading
tool that converts print into speech. Features include text
editing, white-on-black scanning, and text enhancement for
people with low vision. For pricing and other information, the
company can be reached in Waltham, Mass., at
http://www.kurzweiledu.com.
GW Micro, whose product line includes the Sounding Board, a
speech synthesizer that offers capitalization alert, format
alert, fast forward, and rewind. The company is in Fort Wayne,
Ind., at http://www.gwmicro.com.
Sarah Morley, who took the Pioneer of the Year award for her
work on Windows training materials for the blind and visually
impaired. The material explains Windows 95 features and concepts
from a non-visual point of view, and are available in print,
diskette, Braille, and cassette formats. Information on Morley's
materials can be obtained at the Export Department, Royal
National Institute for the Blind in Peterborough, United
Kingdom, or from Morley's Web site at http://www.winguide.co.uk.
Control Advancements, which puts out the VRM Virtual Reality
Mouse, which gives users tactile feedback, allowing them to feel
their way around a Windows 95 graphical user interface. The
company can be reached in Kitchener, Ontario, at
http://www.controladv.com.
F.H. Papenmeier GmbH & Co., whose products include the Braillex
2D Screen, a display and accompanying keyboard that incorporates
the use of the Braille raised-dot reading technique to let blind
people "read" Windows and OS/2 interfaces. In Germany the
company can be contacted in Schwerte; in the United States,
contact Sighted Electronics Inc. at http://www.sighted.com.
SAP America Inc., in Philadelphia, can be reached at
http://www.sap.com. Its parent company, SAP AG, in Walldorf,
Germany, can be reached at http://www.sap-ag.de.
Marc Ferranti is the New York bureau chief for the IDG News
Service, an InfoWorld affiliate.
Related articles:
"SAP to list on New York Stock Exchange"
Go to the Week's Top News Stories
Please direct your comments to InfoWorld Deputy News Editor,
Carolyn April
Copyright (c) 1998 InfoWorld Media Group Inc.
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