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Krista Caudill, left, and Beth Finn talk to one another via
keyboard, computer and a phone unit connected to the PC's
sound card.

;Deaf, blind student builds new world

NET OPENED DOORS TO OTHERS, LAPTOP DEVICE COULD GO FURTHER

By Miguel Llanos
MSNBC


Sept. 18     For Krista Caudill  who has been deaf
and blind since the age of 5  the Internet has allowed her
to communicate with others without the need of an interpreter.
It s also inspired her to work on an engineering first:
a laptop-based system that will  speak  as she
types in Braille and also translate speech back into Braille,
making communication even easier.

















Prof. Richard Foulds explains how the system will work, as
Krista Caudill uses the Braille keyboard and  reads
sign language by feeling an interpreter s hands


       CAUDILL, 24 and an undergraduate
at the University of Delaware, was once limited to communicating
only with people who knew Braille or through expensive and
sometimes hard-to-find interpreters who acted as go-betweens.
Now she uses software that converts computer text into Braille,
thus allowing her to surf the Web, read e-mail and meet new
people online all the time.
       But the Net is just a slice of
Caudill s life and, if a research project she and others
are developing comes to fruition, Caudill and thousands of
other blind and deaf people could be using a laptop to strike
up communication anywhere, anytime in the physical world
in an office, a classroom, at home, or in a store.
       And not just one-on-one conversations
either.  I would be able to have conversations with
a group of people such as a study group,  she says.
 I could carry around the laptop and use the system
in public.

TRANSLATION BUGS
       Prof. Richard Foulds, a University
of Delaware computer scientist, encouraged Caudill and fellow
student Beth Finn to conceptualize a device in his student-
design course. The two came up with a laptop-based system
that can convert speech into Braille and Braille back into
speech.

Caudill and Finn are using the desktop version of the speech-
to-Braille computer to fine-tune the system.

       Right now, the project uses a desktop
computer but the idea is to scale down to a laptop. And glitches
that need to be ironed out include translation errors. Moreover,
the project will ask questions like: How many mistakes are
acceptable before communication breaks down? What happens
when Caudill wants to talk to someone who has never used the
system?
       Finn said her work as a programmer
had shown her that integrating various components can be the
most difficult part of a project. How best a person should
alert the user of the system that they want to initiate a
talk, for example, remains an unanswered question.

FEDERAL BACKING
       The project has already won a student
design-competition award from the Rehabilitation Engineering
Society and received a $98,000 grant from the National Science
Foundation to build and evaluate a working prototype.
        We know how we want it to
work and we know the components,  Caudill explained.
 We ve basically been in the theory stage and
we have to put into the practice stage.
       Gary Strong, who heads the NSF
s Human Computer Interaction Program, said the two-year grant
was not so much to pay for building an actual system as for
learning more about how computers can be designed to communicate
with people.
        Computers have such potential
to open doors to better communication for people with disabilities
and for all people,  Strong said.  By understanding
how computers can mediate communication, we can not only help
Krista and the deaf/blind community, but potentially everyone.

       The speech-to-Braille project is
based at Applied Science and Engineering Laboratories, a joint
project of the University of Delaware and the duPont Hospital
for Children.
       The system uses a speech synthesizer
developed at the lab, as well as off-the-shelf components
like: JAWS, a Windows program for Braille; a Braille keyboard
and output device; DragonDictate, a commercial voice-control
program; a microphone unit that plugs into the computer
s sound card; and Microsoft Visual C++, a programming language
used to integrate the project components.

IMPROVING THE NET
       Caudill, who s majoring in
computer science with a minor in cognitive science, noted
that the Internet itself could also use some fine-tuning to
be more accessible to those like herself.  It provides
a means of independence,  she said.  And things
are going pretty well but a lot of improvements could be made.

       To surf the Web, Caudill uses an
all-text Web browser called Lynx. But the software cannot
read some of the most graphics-heavy sites or use the latest
encryption technology needed for online commerce.
       Efforts are underway to improve
the design of Web pages to make them more accessible. Tim
Berners-Lee, considered the father of the Web, has called
universal accessibility  an essential aspect
of his creation. Berners-Lee now heads the World Wide Web
Consortium, which develops and disseminates new Web standards.
       The consortium currently has an
 Accessibility Initiative  to improve Web access
through smarter design and use of alternative navigation tools
on Web pages.


       Reuters contributed to this story.


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