Tech firms work hard to help disabled
    More products developed for aging boomers
    _________________________________________________________________

    By BRIAN BERGSTEIN
    Associated Press

    NEW YORK -- To Annemarie Cooke, the world looks somewhat like an
    Impressionist painting. Details and colors are washed out, and
    anything beyond arm's length is almost impossible to make out.

    Cooke was a newspaper reporter when her vision began to fail 25 years
    ago. She had few options for adjusting at work beyond making text on
    her computer appear larger.

    Now, using software that reads aloud what's on the screen, Cooke, 50,
    is an executive at a nonprofit organization for the blind and
    dyslexic.

    "All you have to do is breathe or blink and you can use technology
    effectively," Cooke said. But it's not all easy -- cell phones and
    their tiny controls "are a nightmare."

    Cooke's experience illustrates that while specialized devices offer
    assistance in dazzling ways, technology companies are working harder
    than ever to make computers, gadgets and Web sites better accommodate
    people with disabilities.

    Government regulations are largely forcing the industry's awakening,
    but so is a quest for profit. High-tech companies say that as the baby
    boomers age, business will suffer if computers and other devices
    befuddle declining eyes, ears and fingers.

    "If a boomer goes blind at 50, they're probably going to be far more
    motivated to have their PC remain a part of their life" than an older
    person today, said Madelyn Bryant McIntire, Microsoft's director of
    accessible technologies.

    So it's a matter of numbers: Forty-two percent of people older than 65
    have a disability, according to the Census Bureau. And the number of
    Americans older than 65 is expected to soar from 35 million (12
    percent of the population) to 59 million (18 percent of the
    population) in 2023.

    Some technology companies, including Microsoft and Xerox, have begun
    working more closely with organizations for the disabled and smaller
    companies that design add-on assistive software.

    AT&T and Sprint recently started offering video relay, in which a deaf
    person sets up a Web camera on his computer and uses sign language to
    address an operator, who in turn translates to the hearing party on
    the other end.

    Users say video relay is faster and conveys more emotion than the
    traditional TTY system, in which a deaf person types her end of the
    conversation and an operator reads it to the hearing person and then
    types back responses.

    Even baby boomers who develop hearing loss but don't know sign
    language will have several phone technologies at their disposal.

    In an aid for lip-readers, researchers in Israel have developed
    software that gathers the individual sounds in a phone conversation
    and displays a computer-animated face that appears to speak what the
    person on the other end of the line is saying. Northview Enterprises
    of Clearwater, Fla., plans to adapt the Lip-C Cell software soon for
    American English.

    UltraTec of Madison, Wis., hopes to soon gain regulatory approval for
    its CapTel phone, which uses a captioning service as a silent middle
    man, so a person with poor hearing can read a transcript of a phone
    conversation almost in real time.

    But technology still has a long way to go.

    For example, newer digital cell phones often interfere with hearing
    aids. Preliminary studies show that disabled people buy just as many
    wireless devices as everyone else, but use them much less because they
    are difficult to master, said Ed Price of Georgia Tech's Wireless
    Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center.

    The problem is considered so serious that Price and colleagues are
    leading an extensive discussion on how devices can be better designed
    for people with disabilities at this month's CTIA Wireless 2003, one
    of the industry's most important conventions.

    Despite a 1998 law requiring federal agencies to tailor their Web
    sites for people with disabilities, a recent study by
    PricewaterhouseCoopers found that fewer than 15 percent of federal
    sites made their content sufficiently clear and easy to find.

    Too many Web sites use fine print and light blue colors, which become
    more difficult to see as people age, and layouts that can trip up
    screen-reading software, said Bill Gribbons, a design expert at
    Bentley College in Waltham, Mass.

    "Many times designers simply aren't aware of these things. What works
    well from their perspective can be problematic for an aging user,"
    Gribbons said. "When I talk to my students, I refer to it as designing
    for our future selves."

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