It's All About Access

By Ericka Chickowski, editor of Computer Source Magazine. Excerpted with permission from the December 2004 issue of Alaska Airlines Magazine, Seattle, Washington.

When Randy Hayhurst woke up from his coma, his world had gone dark. The middle-aged salesman doesn't remember the instant his life changed forever, but the doctors at Harborview Medical Center filled him in on the details. Coming off a Seattle freeway on a rainy day, he was unable to stop his car before it hit the pickup truck in front of him.

Hayhurst was lucky enough to keep his life, but at that moment he lost his vision.

In the first days after waking, he began to move beyond the initial hopelessness of the trauma and started to assess the situation. He had no sight, no college education, and his sales experience was no longer his biggest asset—as a salesman he needed to make calls, and without the ability to drive, Hayhurst could not continue his life's work.

"I had never been a person to sit behind a desk all day," he says. "So when I woke up from my coma, I had to gather my wits and start thinking about the future. I just kept asking myself, what in the world can a blind man do?"

Whatever new career he chose, it would likely be in an office setting, and he had never used a computer before. "I knew I needed to learn how to use a computer," Hayhurst says. "But I never thought about how I was going to access the computer without being able to look at a monitor."

Fortunately, somebody else had.

For more than two decades, since the earliest days of personal computing, a diverse group of innovators has worked in relative obscurity to create products that make computers accessible to people with disabilities. And due to their ingenuity, Hayhurst hasn't had to worry about looking at a monitor. In fact, he has choices: Rather than viewing characters on a screen, he can either listen to text read aloud by special software, or he can use a Braille reader that forms letters with moving pins that coincide with the text on the screen.

The technology doesn't stop at solving problems for people with blindness, either. These products have been designed to help people with virtually any kind of impairment not only access computers, but a whole new life.

"A computer is a personal empowerment tool," says Madelyn Bryant McIntire, director of the Accessible Technology Group at Microsoft. "Computers don't care if you have a disability or not, if they are designed well. When that happens, computers have an incredible equalizing power."

In the heart of Microsoft's main campus, a bright hallway leads to a darkened computer lab. Each morning, the whirring hum of at least a dozen computers greets a staff of Microsoft software testers. This is the Accessible Technology (AT) lab, a product proving ground where employees test compatibility between Microsoft software and hundreds of adaptive computing products, from Braille readers to speech-recognition software to specialized keyboards.

The testers are here because they believe they can make a difference for people with disabilities by working at Microsoft.

Along with Apple Computer, Microsoft has some of the best opportunities for making computers accessible to people with disabilities. Each creates the fundamental software that a computer user must use every day, and without some way to access these programs' features, a person's participation in computing comes to an abrupt halt.

Testers at the AT lab are able to participate in setting the standards, in raising the bar for the interface between computer users and their machines.

Since 1985, with the introduction of the Apple Macintosh, and 1988, with the early versions of Windows, both companies have worked to include features that make working with computers easier for people with disabilities—such as magnification tools and sticky keys, which make it possible for people with slow motor skills to use multiple-key commands. "We want to deliver that same ease of use that we are known for to all people," says Chris Bourdon, senior product line manager for Apple's Mac OS X operating-system software. "This is just an extension of our dedication to user experience."

As director of the Accessible Technology Group at Microsoft, McIntire's job is to not only ensure that the Windows operating system includes accessibility features, but also that it works seamlessly with any kind of product a person with disabilities may install.

That has led Microsoft to partnerships with other companies developing accessibility products. The company last year opened the AT lab where lab manager Michael Grade, who has a disability himself, works on the front lines with partner representatives who are flown in from all over the world to test their products on the Windows platform. "We provide the developers and testers the support they need to get these products working," he says.

Though the next Windows operating system isn't due out until 2006, the company is already working with partners to guarantee compatibility.

"We've been working with them for years, walking line by line through code," McIntire says.

All of this meticulous testing has made Hayhurst's life much easier. Since his accident 10 years ago, he has learned so much about accessible computing that he landed a job at the Special Technology Access Resource (STAR) Center in Seattle. As executive director for STAR, he helps people with disabilities learn to use adaptive computing products.

At the back of the STAR lab is a wall of cubbyholes that Hayhurst uses to store an assortment of specialized devices. Like a craftsman in his workshop, Hayhurst likes to show off his tools. Out of one compartment comes an assortment of buttons that users who lack the dexterity to type can use to tap out words in Morse code. From another comes an apparatus that can be worn on the head to control a screen cursor. A signal emitted from the headpiece communicates with a sensor on the monitor, so that when the user moves his or her head the cursor moves, too.

"This little number is one of my favorites," Hayhurst says as he pulls out an awkward-looking keypad that has only seven keys. "It works like a guitar. People with only one hand form chords to type different letters."

Called the BAT keyboard, this simple device was invented nearly two decades ago by a small firm named Infogrip. At the time, the Ventura, California-based company was one of only a few companies specializing in adaptive computing. Since then, dozens of others have entered the market.

As the number of these companies has grown, Infogrip has become a leader in the industry by selling and distributing adaptive computing products from many other companies, as well.

The key is finding the right fit between product and user, says company vice president and part owner Aaron Gaston. "My question is not, 'What disability do you have?' Instead, it is, 'What can you do? Can you move your finger? Can you move your head?' Once we know that, we can find them the right product."

Carol Casperson is thankful for the company's attention to detail. Casperson represents one of Infogrip's largest customers, the Los Angeles Unified School District. As coordinator for the district's Assistive Technology Department, Casperson daily sees the difference that companies such as Infogrip are making for children with disabilities. The district operates more than 800 schools and serves more than 85,000 children with disabilities, which range from dyslexia to paraplegia.

As a result of progress made by these businesses, kids that were once relegated to special schools can now participate in the regular classroom and do their homework with everyone else, she says. "We are light years from where we once were. Everything is becoming more user friendly. We are moving into a world that is much easier to navigate for these kids."

And that's what keeps people such as Gaston passionate about their work.

"When you are there to witness a young kid typing 'I love you, Mom' into a speech synthesizer for the first time, it is pretty powerful. The look on the parent's face is priceless."

Technology even enables lighthearted moments. At the offices of the United Cerebral Palsy Association in San Diego, Sharron Bray has learned to type preprogrammed phrases into her speech synthesizer. Though her disability prevents her from speaking, Bray still likes to tell jokes. If she thinks someone needs a laugh, she just presses a button on the synthesizer attached to her wheelchair to play a joke she had typed in earlier.

Because every disability, is different, people deal with them in unique ways. But the hope offered by adaptive computing is universal, says Brewster Thackeray, vice president of the National Organization on Disability.

"For some people, it is hope for a cure that keeps them going," he says. "But for most, it is hope for progress, the hope for things that will make life easier."

Computers are making it possible for people to live more productive and enriched lives, no matter how insurmountable their physical challenges seem.

"When I go out and somebody I know sees a blind person or someone with cerebral palsy and says something like 'Don't you feel sorry for them?' I say 'No,' " says Infogrip's Gaston. "I know what they can do and achieve for themselves with the help of this technology."

People such as David Smith prove Gaston right every day. Since a threewheeler ATV accident in the Southern California desert 10 years ago, Smith has been paralyzed below his shoulders. In a time before computers, something as simple as turning on a light would have been impossible for him. But with some clever homemade engineering and the power of a PC, Smith has achieved a degree of independence on his own.

When puttering around the house, Smith can turn lights on and off, make phone calls and change TV channels from his computer terminal. By speaking commands into a microphone, Smith tells the computer what he wants it to do. "Anything you can plug into a wall, I can control," Smith says.

Though he still depends on his girlfriend and his personal assistant to help with some tasks around the house, he is self-reliant to a far greater extent than were earlier generations of people with disabilities. "It would be miserable without my computer," Smith says. "It runs my entire house."

Perhaps more important than improving home life for people such as Smith is the fact that accessible computers have made it possible for everyone to access the Internet and the tremendous variety of opportunity it opens.

"People who previously had no chance for work are now running businesses from home," Thackeray says. "I know several people who are making a comfortable living on eBay."

And beyond the work situation, there are also the social opportunities offered by technology.

"Many people with disabilities are homebound," Gaston says. "In the past, they may have been isolated, with no social interaction. With a computer and the Internet, they can access this whole other life."

This means staying in touch with family around the world and making friends without being discriminated against because of how they look or talk.

"It is kind of like that old cartoon where one little dog says to the other, 'On the Internet nobody knows you are a dog,' " Thackeray says. "There are some people who I have met via e-mail and the Internet who I have considered to be quite eloquent speakers. When I finally get a chance to meet them in person, it sometimes catches me by surprise because they might be someone with severe cerebral palsy who can hardly get the words out verbally."

Changing the technological landscape for people with disabilities is not just dependent on inventing products that are easy to use. They need to be affordable, too. When Jim Richardson first started developing accessible computing products nearly 10 years ago, he was a senior in high school. His cousin had just suffered an accident that left him incapable of moving anything but his eyes.

It wouldn't be impossible for him to use a computer, though. There were already mice available that would allow him to use eye movement to manipulate a cursor. Move his eyes to the left and the cursor went left. Blink once for a single click and twice for a double click.

The prospect was exciting for Richardson because it held the glimmer of hope that his cousin could still communicate with him. But in 1997, such a device cost more than $25,000, well out of the reach of the family's budget.

Richardson, an electronics enthusiast, wondered why the products couldn't be made more cheaply. And rather than just wonder aloud, he decided to take action. With the help of his friend Birch Zimmer, he started working on an eyetracking device as a senior project. Then, after only a year in Berkeley's engineering school, Richardson had refined his device to the point that he quit school to start a company with Zimmer. Their new product sold for a fraction of the competitor's cost: just $2,500.

Since that point, Corvallis, Oregon-based NaturalPoint has sold more than 16,000 accessible technology devices.

The company has since stopped making eye-pointer devices—it did such a good job changing the marketplace that competitors began selling more sophisticated devices for a similar price.

Richardson and Zimmer conceded the market to their competition and decided to focus on developing even more-affordable head-pointing devices that use head movement to control the cursor.

Despite the shift in development, the company's goal has remained the same. "There are a lot of people out there who have a desperate need for this kind of product. Our concept," Richardson says, "is to make it possible for someone to be able to afford to just purchase the product outright without waiting on the health-care system or government to come through with help."

As peculiar as some adaptive computing products may seem to the average user, this niche field is actually changing the way able-bodied people use their computers, too. Many of the ergonomic products available on the market today were originally developed to help people with disabilities. For example, the track ball mouse that has been gaining popularity in recent years was designed for people with poor motor skills.

And Microsoft has embarked on a project to make its Windows accessibility features known to everyone. You don't have to have a severe disability to benefit from features such as zoomed-in screens. Even those with mild eyesight problems should appreciate them, McIntire says.

This all tracks back to her goal for better awareness of accessible technology products. Because as the population continues to age, more people will need help adapting their computers to their changing lifestyles. To make this happen, companies will need to bring their products to the mainstream, she says.

"When we look at the aging of the population we realize that a lot of people are not being reached," McIntire says. "If you imagine the number of people who don't have adaptive technology, the loss of that intellectual power base in the heads of the boomers has real potential for a negative impact on our country and our economy if we don't teach people how to set up their computers.

"My deepest hope is that the aging of the baby boomers will allow us to have a more sophisticated view of disabilities," she says. "I think there is potential that they will change the dialogue around disability. It could be another significant step in the civil rights movement."