For those who have not yet seen it, check out the Dec 28th issue of U S News
and World Report or check out the online version
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/981228/28viol.htm


They list 18 American Innovators that are changing the way things will be in
the future.  It is a 16 page feature.    William Kennard (commissioner of
the FCC) is #2 and George Kersher is #10.    There is a full page devoted to
George.


George Kersher Page is http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/981228/28kers.htm

William Kennard Page is http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/981228/28kenn.htm

The text for the George Kersher article (including the caption under the
picture in the magazine) is below.



George Kerscher

Making the world work for the blind

BY JOSEPH P. SHAPIRO

For George Kerscher, the world is a puzzle worth solving. There's little
choice when you lose your sight at midlife. How does a blind man watch his
daughter's basketball games? Find a retired sportscaster to provide a
personal play-by-play. How does a blind man ski? His wife follows him
closely, describing terrain ahead via two-way radio. But Kerscher's most
important puzzle was to create a new generation of talking books for blind
and dyslexic students.

Currently, the "print disabled" have only a few, flawed options. They can
find or hire someone to read books to them. They can buy a computer that can
read text aloud. They can get books on tape or in Braille. But these
solutions all have downsides, as Kerscher discovered a decade ago. Losing
his sight to retinitis pigmentosa, a condition that starts as tunnel vision
until the tunnel closes completely, he gave up work as a high school
literature teacher to study computer science. The readers he hired worked on
their schedules, not Kerscher's, and they stumbled when reading complex
programming codes. The tinny monotone of a computerized voice synthesizer
was deadly to listen to hours on end. Braille was hard to learn. Few of the
specialized books he needed had been taped. Even if they were, the typical
recorded text runs 30 hours and the only way to look up something is to
fast-forward or rewind through piles of cassettes. Kerscher figured out how
to digitize those audio books, so that one book fits on one CD-ROM and
finding a quote is as easy as searching for a word on a computer. "This is a
Gutenberg revolution," says Nolan Crabb of the American Council of the
Blind, who calls digital books "the equalizer" that allows him to get
information as quickly as a sighted person.

Kerscher calls himself an innovator, not an inventor. He takes existing
technology and finds ways to use it for the blind. Recently, in a hardware
store, he came across something new-a wireless, battery-operated doorbell.
You may see Kerscher one day at an airport baggage claim carousel. He's the
tall, blind guy pulling a small doorbell buzzer from his pocket and then
grabbing the suitcase that starts chiming.

Today, recorded books for the blind are used most often by people with
dyslexia. Kerscher's employer, Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic, changed
its name in 1995 to note that 67 percent of its users are learning disabled.
A recent study for RFB&D shows that reading speed shoots up among dyslexic
kids who use Kerscher's digital talking books because they get "dual
reinforcement" from hearing spoken words while seeing them on a computer
screen. RFB&D will start providing these books to three pilot schools in
1999 and hopes to digitize the bulk of the 77,000 volumes in its collection
by 2002.

Kerscher also knows that technology applied carelessly can cut off the
disabled. Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in search of a device
to help his deaf wife. But no other technology did more to isolate the deaf.
So Kerscher globe-trots 100 days a year trying to make computer technology
accessible to the blind. His office is wherever he sets up his laptop. Home
is Montana, where he lives with his wife, Gail, a hospice nurse. Every few
months he visits Princeton, N.J.-based RFB&D, where he is a research fellow.
It was started in 1948 to record books for blind World War II soldiers so
they could use the GI Bill to go back to school. This year, RFB&D sent
nearly 250,000 audio books to some 55,000 students. Volunteers record the
texts, down to arcane scientific formulas. Computers and the Internet create
opportunities for learning that those first blind GIs never imagined. Says
Kerscher: "I want to develop the technology for the next generation."


BORN:  March 16, 1950, Chicago
EDUCATION: BA English, Northeastern Illinois, 1974
ROLE MODEL: Yuri Rubinsky
PROUDEST ACCOMPLISHMENT:  25 Years with Wife, Gail; three children; creation
of e-text
GOAL: to make information accessible to all
FAVORITE BOOK: Les Meserables by Victor Hugo
FAVORITE COMPUTER TECHNOLOGY: Screen readers for the Blind.


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