Hi All,
The Site, a show talking about all sorts of computer technology on MSNBC
recently featured an interview and brief demonstration with T.V. Raman.
Raman, for those who aren't familiar with his work, is a researcher who's
blind at Adobe Systems. You can find the interview with assorted links at
http://www.thesite.com/0797w3/iview/iview668_071697.html. What follows is
a text version of the interview.
It's 3pm - you want to transfer funds, but it's Sunday....
MSNBCThe Site
T.V. Raman
T. V. Raman
By Ali Hossaini
July 16, 1997
Can you imagine surfing the Net without a monitor? Or, more to the
point, without working eyes? What if you could read webpages but
lacked the ability to point and click?
Computer scientist T.V. Raman has confronted these questions ever
since he was blinded at the age of 14. He is now a senior researcher
at Adobe Systems, but has a broader mandate than most. Working at a
fundamental level, he's striving to engineer an Internet that
guarantees universal access to information. Unlike the contents of
books and other media, the digital information flowing on networks is
coded within HTML "containers." HTML tags, which your browser can
display as a text file, tell a computer whether their contents are
titles, tables or straight text. These tags can be adapted even
further to let a speech synthesizer describe what the chief features
of a website are, letting a visually impaired person "scan" it for
what he or she needs.
Raman joined The Site to discuss his experience and what universal
access can do for society. He maintains his own homepage, where he
lays out more about his background and work. He has also given us some
tips to help you make your own website accessible to all.
Here are some of Raman's favorite websites
* CNN
* Alta Vista Search Engine
* Trace Research and Development Center
* Scientific American
Soledad: You are a computer scientist at Adobe and work in the
advanced technology group. What exactly do you do?
Raman: I work on making electronic information useful in more ways
than just looking at information. Traditionally, we've consumed and
produced information by looking at it on paper, and the whole world is
changing to the world of electronic information. And one thing I'm
focused on is using that information in more than one way and in more
than one place. So you can get your information when you want and
where you want.
Soledad: How does this tie into your work in universal access?
Raman: Well, if you think about what universal access means, universal
access is basically the ability to use a device wherever, whenever and
however you want.
Soledad: Breaking the traditional boundaries of only being able to
read when you're looking at a piece of paper?
Raman: Yes. Traditionally, different activities assume a standard set
of abilities. So, driving a car assumes a standard set of abilities.
Soledad: You can see, you can use your hands, you can use your feet...
Raman: And maybe it's good that you can't drive if you're walking
around with your eyes closed, but when it comes to computers today
there are a standard set of abilities that almost get hardwired into
the devices we use. So, given that, people don't pay attention to the
fact that that's not the only situation in which you want to use your
computing machinery. You end up having interfaces that assume that you
can see, that you can point, that you have perfect hand-eye
coordination, and that you have a keyboard, and you have a mouse, and
you have a monitor.
Soledad: And either, you're driving and you don't have, you can't see,
you can't point, you can't look at a computer monitor, or maybe you're
blind and you can't see.
Raman: Or you're 70 and you didn't grow up playing Nintendo and you
have poor hand-eye coordination.
Soledad: How has being blind made you better at doing this?
Raman: If you think about doing things differently, you are far more
likely to get interested in it if it's also a need. You know, you can
glibly say necessity is the mother of invention. But that's not a
light statement, it's a fairly profound statement. And, what happens
is that you start thinking about when you say, "How are you going to
do a particular task when some of these standard assumptions are
broken?" You do bring a very different perspective to the problem in
terms of it's not just a question of devising something that works.
It's a question of...
Soledad: Necessity.
Raman: It's also a question of devising an interface that makes you as
productive as your co-workers.
Soledad: Now you've done this, you've created, or modified, some
software. I want you to give me some of your examples-- and right now
our screen has just crashed-- but bring up what you were showing me
earlier. You use email.
Raman: I use email. For instance, let me bring up a sample email thing
here. This is not a demo. This is a real piece of email from my
mailbox. I'm going to slow this guy [the speech software], I'm going
to initially show you this thing with it talking fast, and then we'll
slow it down for people who are not used to listening to the computer
talking at that speed. So here I have an email message-- let me come
back to my mail folder here.
Soledad: This is so quick. It's almost impossible for me to
understand.
Raman: Now we'll slow this guy down. Let's skim this message here.
Soledad: Okay, so now I can understand that. You also have a calendar
that you...
Raman: Umhum. Now, the calendar is an interesting example of what I
mean by devising a speech interface that makes you as productive as
you would be with a visual interface, as opposed to simply taking a
visual interface and speaking it. If I were to do that later, which is
what a lot of traditional adaptive technology software has done, you
see that calendar on the screen as a two dimensional table. And the
screen access program comes along and reads it to you, and expects you
to figure out what that means, so you hear something like... [computer
reads out numbers, left to right]
Soledad: Right. In a calendar, obviously, that's useless.
Raman: It's like you being in an airport and asking somebody to look
up your calendar on the PC and that person saying, "There is cursor
flashing on column 30." That person does not say that. Now let's slow
the speech down here again. That's my clock chiming away. So, notice
here in the calendar, let's move to the beginning of the month.
Soledad: So your software's able to really read this as a person would
be able to look at it and read it.
Raman: Exactly. Exactly.
Soledad: Now, how do you think we're doing as a society in in
technologies for people who are disabled?
Raman: Technology for people with disabilities is a double-edged
sword, and it's a really interesting field because of the potential
for solving problems that, in the past, were simply considered
insoluble. The potential is huge.
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