---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 7 Nov 1997 21:41:52 -0600
From: Steve Bauer <[log in to unmask]>
Reply-To: Access to GUI via Speech <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Point-and-click Web a nightmare for blind Software expert...              (fwd) (fwd)

A friend forward the following article my way and I felt it worth sharing with the list.

We need all the friends we can get on our side with regard to Windows.

SB

-------- Forwarded message --------
Date: Fri, 07 Nov 1997 15:39:08 -0600
Subject: Point-and-click Web a nightmare for blind Software expert... (fwd)

Point-and-click Web a nightmare for blind Software experts working   to improve
                        access to Internet for disabled

It was a bright day when Norman Coombs went blind.

In October 1940, he was scampering about a nearby park, getting into boyish
mischief, when a wayward stick took his vision.

As a student, Coombs had to rely on others to read to him. As a professor of
history at the Rochester Institute of Technology, he couldn't  look up the book
he wrote.

But with the help of computers, Coombs taught classes by e-mailing

and chatting on line with students, many of whom also were disabled.

And he found his book, "The Black Experience in America," in an on-line
catalog  an experience he called "strangely affirming."

To use his computer or the Internet, Coombs, 65, a professor emeritus at RIT,
relies on a program that speaks text at a breathless

400 words per minute. It rips through Internet texts, offering Coombs the same
access to the global network as everyone else.

Now, however, his program often gets tongue-tied, tripping  over complex
documents on the World Wide Web. That's the part of  the Internet with video,
pictures, fancy design  even some music  and audio.

While the Web is expanding lickety-split for those with hot computers and all
their senses, it might well be shrinking just  as fast for others. For the 10.2
million visually impaired and 10.8 million hard of hearing, the Internet is
going dark and silent.

Coombs blames the setback on too-fast development by marketers and designers
eager to promote the Internet as rich, engaging and multimedia. "The typical
guy designing computers and software  is 25 years old and doesn't think he will
ever lose his eyesight or  get arthritis in his fingers," he says.

Peter Wong may not be that young  he's 36  but he knows what Coombs  is talking
about.

Wong is a software engineer at Microsoft, keeping the physically disabled in
mind while he works to improve the popular Windows software.  Windows runs more
than 80% of PCs in the United States, using pictures  and icons instead of
text.

That's a nightmare for someone like Coombs, who relies on his ears and his
screen-reading program. So Wong and his team are developing  smarter software
that can recognize speech and caption audio and  video clips.

Wong is motivated because he also is blind.

Michael Bloomfield, Wong's engineering colleague at Microsoft,  is particularly
concerned about access for the deaf. Profoundly  deaf, he cannot distinguish
most sounds. But he monitors one site  in particular that offers music and news
in an all-audio format.

"If AudioNet would provide captioning, then it would benefit me," Bloomfield
says.

When Apple introduced the Macintosh in 1984 and Microsoft followed

with Windows soon after, computers started using pictures and  icons instead of
typed commands. In 1993, with the invention of  the Web, the Net began to look
a lot like Windows and the Macintosh.

Everything changed. The Internet had pictures and users could simply point,
clicking their way through documents. Sighted people loved it. Blind people
hated it.

Now sophisticated design is common. Movie previews and BBC radio programs are a
click away. This seems like bad news for the nation's 54 million physically
disabled.

Nonetheless, Greg Vanderheiden, the director of Trace Research & Development
Center in Madison and a professor of industrial engineering  at the University
of Wisconsin, touts the tremendous potential of computers and the Internet for
people with disabilities.

"But when it starts getting fancy," he warns, "you lose it."

Vanderheiden has been monitoring access for the physically disabled since 1971,
when he helped a student with cerebral palsy communicate in class.

Disabled-friendly Internet standards could help everyone.  Just look at census
projections: Today, one in three Americans  between 55 and 64 is somehow
physically disabled; of those 75 and  older, three in four are.

And that's where today's computer-savvy Generation Xers will fall in 2050, when
a third of the population will be 55 or older. Like their grandparents today,
they're most likely to lose some sight or hearing.

"We have to make sure they have access to the Internet," Vanderheiden  says of
the disabled. "If we don't, it will be a huge disadvantage  in education and
employment."

(Copyright 1997)

_____via IntellX_____

{A5:MilwaukeeSentinelJournal-1105.01033}   11/05/97