VIRTUAL EXCLUSION?
HIGH-TECH DESIGNS OFTEN IGNORE NEEDS OF DISABLED
The Calgary Sun
IAN HARVEY, CONNECT EDITOR;
09-15-1999

In the perfect world, the wonders of technology would give sight to the
blind and set the paralyzed free from their wheelchairs.

However, that Utopia exists only in television fantasies like Star Trek:
The Next Generation where blind chief engineer Geordi's sight is restored
by his funky visor and Col. Steve Austin is bionically rebuilt for a mere
$6 million.

Still, there are a few shining examples of how technology has positively
impacted the world of the disabled, notably perhaps, Prof. Stephen Hawking,
the Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge University in England,
who has been hailed as the intellectual heir of Albert Einstein.

Hawking has Lou Gehrig's disease, which affects his motor skills, and he
"speaks" through his laptop computer which then synthesizes his words as
speech, making his the world most recognizable virtual voice.

But, by and large, the great expectations of technology for the disabled
have not materialized, says Mel Graham of the Canadian Council for the
Disabled in Winnipeg.

"It looked like it was going to be great things, but we seem to be moving
away from that," said Graham.

That's true for the deaf and hearing impaired also, said Rev. Bob Rumball
of the Rumball Centre for the Deaf on Bayview Ave. in Toronto.

"I've seen people spend lots of money on hearing devices that can be
programmed for different frequencies, but many just end up in their
dressers, unused," he said. "Until they can plug into the nerves of the
brain, it's going to be difficult."

The biggest controversy and disappointment is probably in the area of
cochlear implants, he said.

"They can be of some benefit, but I know someone who has one and can't talk
to me on the telephone, but she can talk to her sister (because his voice
frequency doesn't register), and that's a benefit of course, to her," he
said. "But she still needs help picking up messages and relies on visual
language."

Still, the biggest impact of technology has been that computers open up
career opportunities where deafness isn't an issue.

And, he said, the Internet and e-mail are wonderful tools of communication
for the deaf and hearing impaired.

"They just have to want to learn to use the technology," he said.

Ironically, it was the introduction of the graphic user interface (GUI) --
what we know as Windows or Mac OS -- that began closing the door to the
disabled.


PRODUCTIVE LIVES

"In many cases DOS (Disk Operating System) was a better way for many
disabled people to use computers," notes Graham. "Graphics aren' t much
good if you are mobility or visually impaired."

While there are obvious advances that have made a huge impact, there are
still many barriers created by technology itself which are effectively
preventing the disabled from leading more productive lives.

Tom Nantais of the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute who works with the
Canadian Paraplegic Association to assist quadriplegics regain some control
over their lives, says many questions revolve around cost.

"There's a device which attaches to a wheelchair which allows the user to
speak commands, such as 'turn on the lights in the livingroom, ' " he said.
"The problem is cost. Just the transmitter is $5,000. By the time you wire
the house it's tens of thousands of dollars. In terms of social justice,
though, is it right to have to pay more than the cost of a luxury car just
to turn the lights on?"

The hope is that as the concept of the "smart house" expands to mainstream
markets, the cost will fall.

Even a device as a simple as a mouse, creates a hurdle, Nantais notes with
the alternative head-activated mouse designed for quadriplegics costing
$3,000.

And that's what is driving the chorus from advocates.

"We still need to grasp the concept of universal design, that we design
things so that everyone can use them rather than trying to go back and
retrofit them which is really expensive," notes Mary Frances Laughton,
Industry Canada's director assistive devices industry office.

The key is to target couch potatoes, she said.

"Call display isn't much use to a blind person, but a 7 cents chip could
provide spoken call display," she said. "A couch potato might also benefit
from that as much as a disabled person."

By designing for everyone, she said, huge economies of scale are realized
and barriers fall.

Things like Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software which allows
scanned documents to be converted to editable text, was originally
developed for blind people but has wide appeal now.

Similarly, advances in voice-recognition software have made it easier to
dictate text to a computer while faster, more powerful machines have made
that software much more practical. The original concept, developed to
assist the blind and other disabled people interface with a computer, ran
on machines that cost $11,000 each as recently as 1991. Today, they're less
than $4,000.

David Best, an IBM Canada systems analyst on loan to the Canadian National
Institute for the Blind, echoes her concerns.

"In the late 1970s and early '80s computers were very simple machines, " he
said. "It looked promising. You'd give a blind person a computer and wow
you got text. Then came GUI and the door was slammed in their faces."

He said disabled representatives can't sit back and wait for software
companies to develop a Beta product and test it.

"You have to be there at the alpha level, as the engineers and developers
are designing it," he said. "The same thing is happening in the wireless
world. A blind person can only use about five to 10% of a cell phone's
functions. The cost of putting a chip in the phone to give it speech is so
small, but the manufacturer still says it' s too expensive."

At the same time disabled organizations must become better at aggressively
courting partnerships with the private sector and pressing their case,
clearly spelling out what they want in terms of access and design, not just
in terms of making lives more livable, but also in terms of creating
employment opportunities, Best said.

As wireless communication, complete with Internet access, becomes more
common, the gap will become more acute, he said.


'IT'S EXPENSIVE'

On the flipside of that, the power of the Internet and its ability to bring
people with shared interests together irrespective of geography has been a
boon to Hamilton-area amputee James Stewart, whose CAPS (Chedoke Amputee
Peer Support) group has reached out to other amputees around the world to
share information and solve problems.

"You find that you have contact with the same people in your area and that
you're isolated geographically," he said. "But the Internet allows you to
e-mail and find out about advances in prostethics."

Still, he said, even if technology advances could create a bionic limb, the
issue still remains cost and reliability.

"The more you build into it, the more can go wrong," said Stewart. "And
it's expensive. A simple above the knee device, for example can cost
$20,000. But there have been improvements, prosthetic feet, for example,
aren't just a block of wood anymore."

Being ignorant is not so much a shame as being unwilling to learn
                    -- Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack
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