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Case Studies

General Motors Provides Needed Assistive Technology to Help Employee Who is Blind Be More Effective in His Work

Willie Jones is a guy who really loves cars. He's restored a variety of old cars himself, researching and finding parts on the Internet when necessary. Jones gets a lot of personal enjoyment out of cars. He is also one of those lucky people whose profession reflects his preferences: he works as technical liaison in the Technical Assistance Center for General Motors Corporation (GM), supporting the service departments of GM dealerships nationwide in their repair of customer vehicles. He has held his current position for four years and has been with GM since 1985.

Assistive Technology Lets "Car Person" Pursue His Passion

Jones does just about everything you can do with cars—except drive them. He doesn't drive because he has been blind since birth. But, with the use of assistive technology, Jones is able to pursue his passion—cars—and make a living at it.

"I'm a car person," Jones says. "I grew up around cars. I relate to them the way people who can't play the piano sometimes have them in their living rooms—for looks and for the enjoyment of company. I enjoy it when someone comes over and enjoys one of my restorations. Half the fun is working on it. The other half is going cruising in a car I've restored with a friend at the wheel. I wouldn't be able to enjoy the things I do in my personal life if it weren't for assistive technology."

Assistive Technology Enables Full Productivity on the Job Too

Assistive technology makes it possible for Jones to be fully productive on the job, where he serves as a liaison between the frontline GM consultants to dealers and GM's own engineering community. When the consultants can't solve a dealer's question, Jones provides his expertise or involves an engineer as needed. He's one of 18 technical liaison staff members in GM's Pontiac, Michigan, facility, directly supporting 180 GM consultants for GM van products.

Although the assistive technology Jones uses is effective, it's not intrusive. Jones's desktop computer is the same Windows Compaq Pentium 233 MHz computer he's been using since 1997, with only 64 MB of RAM. Among the key assistive technology products Jones uses is the JAWS for Windows screen reader and voice synthesizer from Freedom Scientific.

JAWS Effective With Virtually All Applications Used By Jones

JAWS starts automatically when Jones turns on his PC, and he uses it for virtually all of his applications: sending and receiving e-mail messages, accessing the in-house knowledge base for engineering solutions, utilizing Microsoft Office, and browsing the Internet.

"JAWS is very user friendly," says Jones. "When I'm navigating, I don't use the mouse. To navigate, I use the arrow keys on the keypad or on the numeric pad to move word-by-word or line-by-line as I prefer. JAWS can be programmed to give me error messages spoken in different tones of voice from the default for text, so I can distinguish it easily from the document I'm working with. It can read punctuation or not as I prefer. It can even use a different voice to distinguish capital letters. And I can control the rate of pitch of the voice as well."

Jones also uses JAWS to read back his typing letter-by-letter as he works. The faster he types, the more the read-back becomes a blur, which allows Jones to pay more or less attention to it by varying the speed with which he types. To further illustrate the simplicity of his desktop configuration, JAWS works without external speakers or a voice synthesizer card.

Assistive Technology Helps Facilitate Web Browsing for Helpful Information

JAWS also works with Microsoft® Internet Explorer to facilitate Jones's Web browsing on the job for GM specifications and other documents. He uses the arrow and Tab keys to move from link to link, to learn how many links are on the page, and to hear the tagged descriptions of Web graphics. This solution eliminates the need for a separate program to assist in Web browsing—something he needed before adopting JAWS—and also allows him to print Web pages for the first time.

General Motors Takes Steps to Improve Web Support for People with Visual Impairments

Jones's increased facility with Web pages mirrors GM's own increasing implementation of Web support for people with visual impairments. For example, GM consulted with experts to ensure that its public, e-commerce Web site was as accessible as possible. "Everything on the GM site is tagged for accessibility," says Jones.

GM's Approach to Accessibility: Provide the Tools That Are Needed

Jones is particularly complimentary of GM's approach to accommodation. "I let my supervisor know what I think I need, I have the business case and the information ready, and we take it to the IT department." A solution is chosen and a productive employee gets back to work with the tools he needs to do his job.