THE BRAILLE MONITOR January, 1997 _Barbara _Pierce, _Editor Published in inkprint, in Braille, and on cassette by THE NATIONAL FEDERATION OF THE BLIND MARC MAURER, PRESIDENT National Office 1800 Johnson Street Baltimore, Maryland 21230 NFB Net BBS: (612) 696-1975 Web Page address: http://www.nfb.org Letters to the President, address changes, subscription requests, orders for NFB literature, articles for the _Monitor, and letters to the Editor should be sent to the National Office. _Monitor subscriptions cost the Federation about twenty-five dollars per year. Members are invited, and non-members are requested, to cover the subscription cost. Donations should be made payable to __National Federation of the _Blind and sent to: National Federation of the Blind 1800 Johnson Street Baltimore, Maryland 21230 __THE NATIONAL FEDERATION OF THE BLIND IS NOT AN _ORGANIZATION __SPEAKING FOR THE BLIND--IT IS THE BLIND SPEAKING FOR _THEMSELVES _ISSN _0006-8829[LEAD PHOTO DESCRIPTION: The lead photograph is a view of the entire length of the International Braille and Technology Center for the Blind. A number of work stations filled with equipment are visible. CAPTION: The tangible expression of the NFB's commitment to assisting blind people make sensible technology choices is the International Braille and Technology Center for the Blind (IBTCB) housed on the second floor of the National Center for the Blind in Baltimore. Every screen-reading product, every Braille embosser, every refreshable Braille display, every note taker, and every reading machine on the market today--all these are on display and can be tried in the eighteen-thousand-square-foot facility. No wonder then that those attending the third U.S./Canada Conference on Technology for the Blind seemed to gravitate to the IBTCB in their free time to examine and work with the displays.] THE BRAILLE MONITOR PUBLICATION OF THE NATIONAL FEDERATION OF THE BLIND CONTENTS January, 1997 Proceedings of the Third U.S./Canada Conference on Technology for the Blind Note from the Chairman What Technology Can Contribute by Ray Kurzweil, Ph.D The Role of the International Braille and Technology Center for the Blind by Richard Ring Low-Tech Devices: Do We Have What We Need? by Judith M. Dixon, Ph.D. Universal Access: The Goal and the Reality by Curtis Chong A Touching View of the World by Tim Cranmer, Ph.D. The Future of Braille by Joseph E. Sullivan Teaching Science to the Visually Impaired: The VISIONS Lab by David Schleppenbach Why Doesn't Technology for Blind People Cost Less, and What Can We Do About It? by Larry Israel Better, Smaller, Cheaper by Tony Schenk Technology for the Blind: What Is Left to Do? by David Andrews The Rehabilitation Services Administration and Technology by Fredric K. Schroeder, Ph.D. Summary of Remarks Access, Literacy, Equality, and Change by Jim Halliday Discussion and Comments Copyright (c) 1997 National Federation of the Blind __PROCEEDINGS OF THE THIRD U.S./CANADA _CONFERENCE __ON TECHNOLOGY FOR THE _BLIND November 14-15, 1996 [PHOTO: Dr. Jernigan and Euclid Herie are seated at the east end of the fourth-floor conference room at the National Center for the Blind. The U.S., Canadian, and NFB flags can just be seen flanking them. CAPTION: Dr. Jernigan opens the third U.S./Canada Technology Conference for the Blind. Dr. Euclid Herie is seated to his left.] __TECHNOLOGY FOR THE _BLIND __AS WE APPROACH THE TWENTY-FIRST _CENTURY Planned and Hosted by the National Federation of the Blind Kenneth Jernigan, Chairman Note from the Chairman The first U.S./Canada Conference on Technology for the Blind was held in Baltimore in September of 1991 at the National Center for the Blind. The occasion was historic since it was the first time that the decision makers of all of the major organizations of and for the blind and of the major vendors of technology in the field had come together to discuss common problems. The meeting was also significant because of the exchange of information and the decisions concerning technology which came from it. At the conclusion of the first U.S./Canada Conference on Technology for the Blind it was decided that a second conference would be held in 1993. Again invitations were restricted to decision makers. This meant that the organizational authority of the participants was sufficient, and the numbers small enough, to permit meaningful discussion and follow-up. We now convene the third U.S./Canada Conference on Technology. The theme is __Technology for the Blind as We Approach the Twenty-first _Century. The National Federation of the Blind, as host and coordinator, welcomes you. We believe that this meeting will be as positive and productive as the ones held in 1991 and 1993. That statement appeared at the beginning of the agenda of the third U.S./Canada Conference on Technology. Dr. Jernigan opened the first session at 9:00 a.m. Thursday. President Maurer and Dr. Euclid Herie then welcomed the guests. Following the keynote address by Raymond Kurzweil, the first panel of five speakers presented papers. After lunch two more panels made presentations. That evening the NFB hosted a reception and dinner for conference participants in the dining room at the National Center for the Blind. The Friday morning session began with remarks from the Commissioner of the Rehabilitation Services Administration and the representatives from IBM and Microsoft. The remainder of the day was devoted to discussion and plans for the future. As one might expect from speakers as diverse as those invited to present at this third Conference on Technology for the Blind, the topics, points of view, and outlooks diverged widely. The problems caused by the graphical user interface (GUI) and the increasing complexity of visual control panels on consumer electronics and public-access information kiosks continue to escalate. On the other hand, real advances are being made in a number of areas. Conferees were eager to define the problems facing this field, discuss useful directions for further research and development, and describe the advances being made. As accurately as possible, here is the report of what was said. We begin with an alphabetical list of attendees. David Andrews, Director Communication Center Minnesota State Services for the Blind Susan Benbow, Senior Policy Advisor Rehabilitation Services Administration Deane Blazie, President Blazie Engineering Geraldine Braak, Past President Canadian Council of the Blind John Brabyn, Program Director Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Foundation Brian Buhrow, Chairman, NFB Research and Development Committee John Bullen, President Canadian Council of the Blind Elizabeth Carr, National Vice President Blinded Veterans Association Brian Charlson, First Vice President American Council of the Blind Curtis Chong, Designer/Consultant American Express Financial Advisors Charles Cook, President Roudley Associates John Cookson, Head, Engineering Section National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped Tim Cranmer, President International Braille Research Center and Director of Rehabilitation for the Blind (retired) Commonwealth of Kentucky Frank Kurt Cylke, Director National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped Suzanne A. Dalton, President Association of Instructional Resource Centers for the Visually Handicapped Judy Dixon, Consumer Relations Officer National Library Service for the Blind/Physically Handicapped Paul Edwards, President American Council of the Blind Emerson Foulke, Director (retired) Perceptual Alternatives Laboratory University of Louisville and Director, International Braille Research Center James R. Fruchterman, President and CEO Arkenstone, Inc. Ritchie Geisel, President Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic Doug Geoffray, Co-Owner & Vice President Product Development and Support GW Micro William Gibson, President National Council of State Agencies for the Blind and Director, Utah Division of Services for the Blind and Visually Impaired Jim Halliday, President Humanware, Inc. Ted Henter, President Henter-Joyce, Inc. Euclid Herie, President & CEO Canadian National Institute for the Blind Larry Israel, President Telesensory Corporation Kenneth Jernigan, President Emeritus National Federation of the Blind Rosemary Kavanaugh, Executive Director CNIB Library for the Blind David Kostyshyn, President Syntha-Voice Computers, Inc. Raymond Kurzweil, President Kurzweil Applied Intelligence, Inc. and Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Kurzweil Educational Systems Mary Frances Laughton, Chief, Assistive Devices Programme Office Industry Canada Carlene Lebous, President National Council of Private Agencies for the Blind and Visually Impaired David Lepofsky, Lawyer Government of Ontario Gary Magarrell, Executive Director Ontario Division Canadian National Institute for the Blind Vicki Mains, National Director, Technology Canadian National Institute for the Blind Marc Maurer, President National Federation of the Blind Brian McCarthy, President Betacom Inc. Dale McDaniel, Vice President for Marketing Artic Technologies Herb Miller, President Council of Schools for the Blind Caryn Navy, Vice President Raised Dot Computing, Inc. Dennis T. O'Brien, Product Manager IBM Special Needs Systems IBM Corporation Charles Oppermann, Program Manager Windows Accessibility Group Internet Products and Tools Division Microsoft Corporation Gilles Pepin, Directeur VisuAide 2000, Inc. Kevin Perry, Senior Program Coordinator Assistive Devices Program Ministry of Health, Ontario, Canada David Pillischer, President Sighted Electronics, Inc. William M. Raeder, Managing Director National Braille Press Lloyd Rasmussen, Senior Staff Engineer National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped Richard Ring, Director International Braille and Technology Center Noel Runyan, President Personal Data Systems Sharon Sacks, President Association for Education and Rehabilitation of the Blind and Visually Impaired Mohymen Saddeek, President TFI Engineering and Myna Corporation James Sanders, National Director Government Relations and International Services Canadian National Institute for the Blind Tony Schenk, President Enabling Technologies Company David Schleppenbach, Director VISIONS Lab at Purdue University Elliot Schreier, President 4X Products, Inc. Fredric K. Schroeder, Commissioner Rehabilitation Services Administration Dave Skrivanek, President Repro-Tronics Larry Skutchan, President Microtalk Susan Spungin, Vice President National Programs and Initiatives American Foundation for the Blind Ian Stewart, President Association of State Educational Consultants for the Visually Impaired Joseph Sullivan, President Duxbury Systems, Inc. Tuck Tinsley, President American Printing House for the Blind Jocelyn L. Tremblay, Directrice Direction des Services hors-Qubec et programme d'aides techniques Robert Trimbee, Executive Director National Broadcast Reading Service Robert Wynn, President Hadley School for the Blind [PHOTO/CAPTION: Ray Kurzweil] __WHAT TECHNOLOGY CAN _CONTRIBUTE __by Ray Kurzweil, _Ph.D. __Chairman and Chief Executive _Officer __Kurzweil Educational Systems, _Inc. It is a great pleasure to be here and see so many people I have known and worked with over the years. This conference marks twenty-three years that I've been in this field, and it is remarkable to me how many of the people who have devoted their careers to this field have remained the same over the past couple of decades. I'd like to talk to you today about the nature of information technology and the impact it is having on our world, particularly in creating opportunities for those with disabilities, especially visual disability. I would also like to comment on the proper role of technology--what it can contribute--but also what is outside its province. Incidentally, I have always felt that there is a salient difference between the word "disabilities" and the word "handicaps." A disability does not necessarily need to result in a handicap. Through technology and the fostering of improved public attitudes, I believe most handicaps can be overcome. Computer technology in general has been a very positive development in providing access to information for persons with visual impairments, and indeed the blind population is significantly more computer-literate than the rest of the population as a result. Information in computer form can be made readily accessible through screen readers, Braille displays, and the like although the graphical user interface (GUI) has been a bit of a setback. A GUI, such as Microsoft Windows, is a computer operating system which uses those little icons, a mouse, and bitmapped graphics. It is difficult to translate into speech because it places information on the screen in two dimensions. If you recall the last U.S./Canada Conference on Technology for the Blind over two years ago, someone asked "What is Windows anyway?" Euclid Herie responded "it's a real pane." I'll have more to say about technology for the visually impaired, but let me start with a little story that my parents liked to tell. They were from Vienna, so they liked to talk about Viennese pastries: Four pastry shops competed on the same street, eking out a living, but the market demand was not sufficient to support four shops. So one shop brought in a management expert, and the next morning there was a small sign in the window, "Best Pastries in Vienna," and they started to get a lot of curious pastry shoppers, and pretty soon they had a booming business. So the second shop brought in their own turnaround consultant, and the next morning they had a bigger sign in their window, "Best Pastries in Austria," and they too attracted a lot of curious shoppers. The third shop soon followed suit with a really big, six-foot-high sign--"Best Pastries in Europe." So shoppers flocked to this shop. Finally, the fourth shop owner decided that she needed to do something as well, so the next morning there was a really big sign that took up the entire window--"Best Pastries on this Block." The moral of the story is that you don't have to be the best in the world; you only have to be the best in your neighborhood, and you have to be in the right field. In the Vienna of 1930, the right field was pastries. I grew up eating those Viennese pastries, but I don't eat them anymore, not since my nutrition book came out. In 1996 the right field is software. But you don't have to be in the right neighborhood anymore. It doesn't matter whether you're in Vienna or Massachusetts or St. Louis because the Internet is the great leveler, the great equalizer. Everyone has ready access to the marketplace. A couple of Yahoos in California can be as prominent as Microsoft. I was in Israel recently, where access to export markets used to be a big issue, but with the Internet high tech, and software in particular, is booming. So Israel today has a gross national product that is twice that of Saudi Arabia. Software and the intellectual content it represents exceed the value of oil. Some of you remember the movie _The _Graduate; for some of you it may be before your time. Remember the enigmatic advice that Dustin Hoffman received? (I don't remember the name of his character.) I remember thinking at the time, "Plastics?" Even then I thought "computers" would have been better advice. Today, the advice would be "software." Some might say Internet, but in my view that is just another manifestation of software. After all, NetScape is a software company. You've no doubt noticed the extraordinary value of software companies. In my view this is not a passing trend; it is not a bubble that's going to burst, which is not to say that there will never be a correction or that none of today's high flyers will crash. But what we are seeing today is a fundamental transformation of the nature of wealth away from commodities and towards knowledge, as embodied in intellectual property. In fact, you can draw a reverse exponential curve where the y axis is the percentage of value of a product represented by natural resources and the x axis is time, and the percentage of value represented by natural resources is asymptoting to zero as we go forward in time, and every product and service is on the curve. Some are closer to zero than others, and some categories of products are moving faster than others as they travel down the curve, but every product is on the curve, marching on down to nearly zero contribution from material resources and nearly 100 percent contribution from intellect. Indeed, over the past twenty years the value of commodity resources, as measured in constant dollars, has fallen substantially, about 40 percent, and this trend is accelerating. So sell short on your natural resource stocks. That is my only stock tip for today. Today the correct answer to the question of how to advance economic competitiveness is to foster the creation of intellectual property, which is information--that is, sequences of 1's and 0's that have economic value. And that has not always been the case in human history. Now what is fueling this extraordinary and, in my view, permanent shift to knowledge, to intellectual property, to software as the foundation of wealth and power in this second industrial revolution? The answer in my view is Moore's Law. Moore's Law is the driving force behind a vast revolution. Okay, now what is Moore's Law? Moore's Law states that computing speeds and densities double every eighteen months. In other words, every eighteen months we can buy a computer that is twice as fast and has twice as much memory for the same cost. Now I won't subject you again to my chessboard analogy since I think that most of you have heard it before. If you recall, it concerns the reward that the inventor of chess receives from the Emperor of China. He gets one grain of rice for the first square, which is then doubled for each square of the chessboard. And we end up with a very big number of grains of rice--about eighteen million trillion as I recall, which would require rice paddies covering twice the surface area of the Earth, oceans included. So actually I've ended up sharing the chessboard analogy with you anyway. That might remind you of the Presidential debates when Senator Dole said he was not going to bring up Whitewater and then went on to talk about it anyway. The chessboard analogy is meant to illustrate the power of exponential growth. What appears to start out in a subtle fashion ends up being rather overwhelming. Now one might object to the notion of Moore's Law continuing for very much longer on the basis that exponential trends cannot continue indefinitely. For example, if a species happens upon a new habitat, its numbers will grow exponentially for a time until its needs outstrip the capacity of that habitat to provide for those needs. But it would be premature in my view to predict the demise of Moore's Law anytime soon. First of all, Moore's Law is not a recent phenomenon. It has actually been going on for at least one hundred years from the mechanical card-based computing technology of the 1890 census, to the relay-based computers of the 1940's, to the vacuum tube-based computers of the 1950's, to the transistor-based machines of the 1960's, to all of the generations of integrated circuits that we've seen over the past thirty years. If you put every calculator and computer for the past 100 years on a logarithmic chart, it makes an essentially straight line. Actually, it has been going on even longer than that. In my view, Moore's Law is a corollary of a broader law I modestly call Kurzweil's law on the exponentially quickening pace of technology that goes back to the dawn of human history--I mean, not much happened in, say, the tenth century, technologically speaking. In the eighteenth century quite a bit happened. Now we have major paradigm shifts in a few years' time, but that's another speech. If you look at the computing technologies currently in development, we can have confidence in at least several more decades of the turning of Moore's screw. We have not even begun to explore the third dimension in chip design. Chips today are flat, whereas our brain is organized in three dimensions. We live in a three-dimensional world; why not use the third dimension? Improvements in semiconductor materials, including the development of superconducting circuits that do not generate heat, will enable the development of chips (I should say cubes) with thousands of layers of circuitry, which when combined with far smaller component geometries, will improve computing power by a factor of many millions. There are more than enough new computing technologies being developed to assure a continuation of Moore's Law for a very long time. Moore's Law is providing us the infrastructure in memory, computation, and communication to embody all of our knowledge and methodologies and to harness them on inexpensive platforms. It enables us to live in a world today in which all of our knowledge, all of our creations, all of our insights, all of our ideas, our cultural expressions: pictures, movies, art, sound, music, books, and the secret of life itself are all being digitized, captured, and understood in sequences of ones and zeroes. Now I would like to examine some of the ways in which technology can contribute in the future, but before we do that, I think it would be worthwhile reflecting for a moment on the proper role of technology. The delegates to this conference hail from two great democratic nations, and perhaps the most important goal of a democracy is to provide equal opportunity for all of its citizens. To accomplish the goal of equal opportunity for people with physical and sensory disabilities, there are in my view three requirements. The first is education. Consider the issue of mobility for the blind. A blind person can travel across town and across the globe as the participation at this conference attests and as Euclid Herie's travels over the past four days particularly attest. Despite efforts at creating effective mobility aids, it can be said that technology has not yet made a contribution to this issue, nor does it need to. The requirement is education--in this case mobility training. The state of the art is a low-tech device --the modern, lightweight cane, together with modern mobility training. An effective means of reading and writing literacy for blind persons is Braille. But Braille needs to be learned, so again education is the critical requirement. The second requirement is the fostering of positive attitudes, specifically the attitude that a disability, such as blindness, is a characteristic--a characteristic which does not impart limitations on what a person can accomplish. The positive attitudes needed are both social and personal. Society needs to understand what its citizens, blind or sighted, can accomplish and contribute. And an individual needs to appreciate her own capabilities and reject the negative stereotypes that the deeply ingrained prejudices of society may attempt to impose. I won't belabor this issue. One could examine it engagingly at great length. It is an issue in which we have made great progress, in large part because of the devoted efforts of people in this room, such as Dr. Jernigan, Dr. Herie, and all of the organizations represented at this conference. As just one small example, if you remember, at the last U.S./Canada Technology Conference almost three years ago, we watched a video of a then current TV show in which the basic premise was how hilarious it was that the show's blind star was apparently unable to walk across the room without knocking over numerous lamps, vases, and other breakable objects. That was considered funny, at least by the show's producers. That was the entire premise of the show. The show was quickly canceled, in large part, apparently, because of the strong reaction of people in this room. Today such a show would be unthinkable, at least on mainstream TV. But that was not the case three years ago. There's certainly a lot left to do, but progress is being made. And finally there is technology, which also has a part to play. Technology can also provide a means for independence, particularly in the area of access to information and knowledge. Blindness is a sensory disability and therefore involves access to information. Human intelligence has a great deal of redundancy, and there are many routes to access information. Technology can provide a bridge to supply visual information through our other senses. An obvious example is a reading machine, which provides the information from printed documents through either spoken words or Braille displays. So, using Moore's Law as our road map, let's consider where we are headed in the area of technology for the disabled. Reading machines for the blind have certainly benefited from Moore's Law. I examined this issue recently with regard to reading machines. I have incidentally started a new company, Kurzweil Educational Systems, Inc. which is devoted to creating the next generation of reading technology. I've gathered up some of the best people that I've worked with in this field over the past twenty-three years, and we have created a new type of reading machine for the blind, for persons with low vision, and for persons with learning disabilities and dyslexia. I recently did a comparison of the first reading machine, the Kurzweil Reading Machine, which I introduced in 1976, to OMNI 1000, which is my new reading machine. Without tracking through all the details, the 1996 product provides about 256 times the performance of the 1976 product, at about one forty-second of the price, which is a price-performance improvement of 10,752. Interestingly, that's just about what you'd expect from Moore's Law in twenty years. Now reading machines constitute an area of technology with which I have some familiarity, so let's consider the future of reading machines. Moore's Law will continue to improve all aspects of reading machine price and performance in the years ahead. Recently two-dimensional scanning chips have emerged which can scan a full page of text with 300-spot-per-inch resolution without any moving parts. These two-dimensional scanning arrays, which have over 5 million pixels, are prototypes and are, therefore, expensive. But within a few years these chips will permit the development of pocket-sized scanners the size of a small camera that can snap a full page instantly. Thus, within a few years a full print-to-speech reading machine will fit in your pocket. You'll hold it over the page to be scanned and snap a picture of the page. All of the electronics and computation will be inside this small camera-sized device. You'll then listen to the text being read from a small speaker or earphone. You will also be able to snap a picture and read a poster on a wall or a street sign or a soup can or someone's ID badge or an appliance LCD display and many other examples of real-world text. This reading machine will cost less than a thousand dollars and will ultimately come down to hundreds of dollars. Algorithmic improvements will also provide capabilities to describe non- textual material such as graphs and diagrams and page layouts. These devices will also provide on-line access to knowledge bases and libraries through wireless connection to the World Wide Web. By the end of the first decade of the next century, the intelligence of these devices will be sufficient to provide reasonable descriptions of pictures and real-world scenes. These devices will also be capable of translating from one language to another. The scanning sensors of the future reading machine will ultimately become very small and could be built into a pair of eyeglasses. The advantage of doing this is that it would allow the user to control the direction of scanning through motion of the head in the same way that a sighted person does. Once these devices can provide reasonably intelligent descriptions of real- world scenes, they will evolve into navigation aids. I will point out that access to the world of print has been a more important issue than navigation. Braille, of course, is a vitally important technology in that it provides access to the world of literacy for both reading and writing. It does, however, have the limitation that only a small percentage of books and topical literature is available in this alternative medium. Recorded material has the same limitation. Thus reading machines have provided the opportunity to overcome a principal handicap associated with the disability of blindness: access to ordinary print. Until a navigation device can provide a level of intelligence sufficient to be truly helpful, the most useful navigational technology will, as I pointed out earlier, continue to be the modern lightweight cane. Electronic navigation devices have already been developed, but they have not yet proved useful. Unless such a device incorporates a level of intelligence at least comparable to a guide dog, it is not of much value. Systems have been demonstrated which use satellite positioning systems to determine a person's location. Arkenstone, for example, has demonstrated systems of this type. These systems, using an on-line map of the community, will be able to inform a blind traveler of the location of nearby buildings, mail boxes, phone booths, and other permanent fixtures. It will sound like the buildings are talking to you, saying something like "I'm the library, and I'm over here." I think such a system will be useful for people, sighted or visually impaired. I'd like to have buildings talk to me as I walk by. General purpose artificial vision is now being developed for robots and is in an early stage, although progress is being rapidly made. Today robotic factory inspectors can outperform human inspectors in many visually demanding tasks. Vision has lagged behind other developments in artificial intelligence because of the enormous flows of data required to process visual information intelligently. With the advent of massively parallel computing and the continuing progress made through Moore's Law, this difficulty is gradually being overcome. Such a combination reading machine-navigation aid will be an assistant that will describe what is going on in the visible world. The blind user could ask the device (verbally or using appropriate manual commands) to elaborate on a description, or he could ask it questions. These artificial visual sensors need not only look forward; they may as well look in all directions. And they will ultimately have better visual acuity than human eyes. Everyone--visually impaired or not--may want to use them. Persons with other disabilities will benefit from the continuing advance of computer technology as well. Another company I founded, Kurzweil Applied Intelligence, Inc., has developed speaker-independent, large-vocabulary speech- recognition, and one of our primary goals is to develop a speech- to-text sensory aid for the deaf, which I believe will be introduced within the next several years. We expect to introduce a device next year which will be able to understand fully continuous speech with a large vocabulary. Its primary limitation will be that you will need to restrict your topic of conversation to a particular domain, such as medicine or law. It will take several more years before our large-vocabulary, continuous speech-recognition technology is capable of understanding human speech without a domain restriction. I do believe, however, that a speech-to-text sensory aid for the deaf will become a popular device by early in the next decade. A principal physical handicap is paraplegia, the loss of control over the legs. The most common prosthetic aid for this disability is the wheelchair, which has changed only in subtle ways over the past two decades. It continues to suffer from its principal drawback, which is the inability to negotiate doorways and stairs. Although federal law now requires most public buildings to accommodate wheelchair access, the reality is that access to persons in wheelchairs is still severely restricted. By the end of this decade we will see the first generation of effective exoskeletal robotic devices, called powered orthotic devices, which will restore the ability of paraplegic (and in some cases quadriplegic) persons to walk and climb stairs. Overcoming the handicaps associated with disabilities is an ideal application of artificial-intelligence technology. In the development of intelligent computers, the threshold that we are on now is not the creation of cybernetic geniuses. That will come later. Instead we are today providing computers with narrowly focused intelligent skills, such as the ability to make decisions in such areas as finance and medicine, and in recognizing patterns such as printed letters, human speech, blood cells, and land terrain maps. Most computers today are still idiot savants, capable of processing enormous amounts of information at very high speed and with great accuracy, but with relatively little intelligence. When one considers the enormous impact that these idiot savants have had on society, the addition of even sharply focused intelligence will be a formidable combination. It will be particularly beneficial for the disabled population. A disabled person is typically missing a specific skill or capability but is otherwise a normally intelligent and capable human being. There is a fortuitous matching of the narrowly focused intelligence of today's intelligent machines with the narrowly focused deficit of most disabled persons. Our primary strategy in developing intelligent computer-based technology for sensory and physical aids is for the focused intelligence of the machine to work in close concert with the much more flexible intelligence of the disabled person himself. There are an estimated twenty million disabled persons in North America. Many are not able to learn or work up to their capacity because of technology that is not yet available or technology that is available but not yet affordable or pervasive and because of negative public attitudes toward disabled persons. As the reality changes, the perceptions will also change, particularly as formerly handicapped persons learn and work successfully alongside their non disabled peers. By the end of the first decade of the next century, I believe that we will come to herald the effective end of handicaps. Finally, let's consider the long-term impact of Moore's Law. I made a rough estimate of the computational ability of the human brain, which comes to about twenty million billion calculations per second, give or take a couple of orders of magnitude. When does Moore's Law predict that your standard personal computer will be capable of that capacity--twenty million billion calculations per second? Without taking you through the details of this prediction, it turns out to be around the year 2020. Now matching the raw computing speed and memory capacity of the human brain, even if implemented in massively parallel neural nets, will not automatically result in human-level intelligence. The architecture and organization of these resources--that is, the software--will be at least as important as the capacity itself. There is, however, a source of knowledge that we can tap to accelerate greatly our understanding of how to design intelligence in a machine, and that is the human brain itself. By probing the brain's circuits, we can essentially copy, that is to say, reverse engineer, a proven design, one that took its original designer several billion years to develop. And it's not even copyrighted. Just as the Human Genome Project, in which the entire human genetic code will very soon be fully scanned, recorded and analyzed, to enable our understanding of the human biogenetic system, a similar effort to scan and record the neural organization of the human brain can help provide the templates of intelligence. Now I won't track you through these details either, but I do believe that this will be accomplished as well by around the year 2020. And when that does happen, I think we will finally realize just how revolutionary Moore's Law really is. So I'll leave with a final thought to underscore the revolutionary nature of Moore's Law. Another revolutionary, Mao Tse Tung, said that power comes from the barrel of a gun. That statement was true when he said it. But he said it in the last possible decade that one could make that statement because through physical coercion you could control natural resources. If you could control natural resources and compel people to labor, you could control wealth. And while not providing the happiest or most productive workers, it worked well enough. The second industrial revolution, however, the one that is now in progress, is based on machines that extend, multiply, and leverage, not our physical, but our mental abilities. A remarkable aspect of this new technology is that it uses almost no natural resources. Silicon chips use infinitesimal amounts of sand and other readily available materials. They use insignificant amounts of electricity. It's a fortunate truth of human nature that, whereas labor can be forced, creativity and innovation cannot be. But there's something else Mao said that is true today, although not in the sense he meant it, that is, the reality of permanent revolution. The exponential progress being created through Moore's Law and the move towards an economy based on knowledge and intellectual property is a permanent revolution. It's not just that densities of memory double and that computing speeds double; Moore's Law constantly changes everything--the means of education, the needs of the market, the methods of development, the channels of distribution. It is a continual paradigm shift, and to understand how to create a product or an educational program or a program of social change, one needs to understand how our ideas will fit into, not just the world of today, but the world one year from now and two years from now, which will be very different. History is full of missed paradigm shifts. When the telephone was first invented, the chief engineer of the British post office said, "This is no big deal; we have plenty of messenger boys." But the mayor of Philadelphia had considerably more insight into the importance of this new development. He saw the paradigm shift. "This is of great significance," he said, "Someday every city will have one." __If you or a friend would like to remember the National Federation of the Blind in your will, you can do so by employing the following _language: __"I give, devise, and bequeath unto the National Federation of the Blind, 1800 Johnson Street, Baltimore, Maryland 21230, a District of Columbia nonprofit corporation, the sum of $__________(or "______ percent of my net estate" or "The following stocks and bonds: ________") to be used for its worthy purposes on behalf of blind _persons." [PHOTO/CAPTION: Richard Ring with Charles Cook (left) and Duane Gerstenberger (right) behind him] __THE ROLE OF THE INTERNATIONAL _BRAILLE __AND TECHNOLOGY CENTER FOR THE _BLIND __by Richard Ring, Director International Braille and Technology Center for the _Blind It is an honor and a privilege for me to share some thoughts with you today regarding the role of the International Braille and Technology Center for the Blind. As its new director, I have to consider this question in one form or another every day. We are the world's largest demonstration and evaluation center, and because of this we come into contact with more consumers than perhaps anybody else in the field. I believe that we have a responsibility to highlight both the barriers to access and the possibilities that may cause those barriers to fall. We must also do all that we can to find solutions that fit the needs of individual consumers, whether those solutions consist of the newest technology available or that which is tried and familiar. Since we are able to work with all of the technology on the market, we must also point out the areas where technology needs improvement. This is what consumers look to us for; this is what vendors and manufacturers look to us for; this is what governmental and private agencies look to us for; and this is what the general public is coming to look to us for. I might add that this is also one of the most challenging aspects of our work. The International Braille and Technology Center for the Blind opened six years ago this very week, on November 16, 1990. Our goal at that time was to house under one roof every screen-review program, every speech synthesizer, every note taker, every Braille embosser, every refreshable Braille display, and every Braille-translation software package being produced anywhere in the world. We also wanted to house an example of every reading machine as well. Why, one might ask, did the National Federation of the Blind create, and why does it continue to maintain, the International Braille and Technology Center for the Blind? Why have we spent so much time and money putting this facility together? Is it simply an elaborate showcase, designed to amaze the constant stream of groups and individuals who come here to see what we have and study our programs? If that were the only goal, one would have to say that we had achieved a resounding success. One cannot help being impressed when visiting the International Braille and Technology Center for the Blind. My first such visit occurred in August, 1992. At that time the facility was housed in the central courtyard building here at the National Center. I was the editor of a cassette-based magazine for blind computer users, and I was excited about the opportunity to see nearly every piece of technology that blind people use to access computers, take notes, and emboss Braille. Where else could one find such a vast array of hardware and software gathered together in one place? True, the IBTC wasn't nearly as spacious then as it is today, but it was still an unforgettable experience. In visiting the Center, I had two goals in mind. First, I wanted to interview its director, David Andrews; and second, I wanted to record live demonstrations of some of the devices. Though I was able to interview Mr. Andrews and with his assistance gain valuable exposure to many pieces of technology, it was the tried and true device that failed. The computers worked flawlessly, but my tape recorder battery pack didn't hold its charge. Could it have been operator error? So none of the demonstrations were recorded. But I came away with something memorable. It was not simply because I was dazzled by a wonderful roomful of electronic marvels. Nineteen ninety-two saw the introduction of the first screen-access program for use with Microsoft Windows. SLIMWARE Window Bridge from Syntha-Voice Computers was released that summer, and during my visit to the IBTC I was able to see it for the first time. Though the program was quite primitive compared to its current version and to the many other Windows screen readers we have today, it was thrilling just to know that perhaps we who are blind weren't going to be left behind by the emergence of the graphical user interface. It was the International Braille and Technology Center for the Blind that gave me the chance to understand the barriers while seeing the possibilities. What, then, is the role of the IBTC? In part it is to make it possible for the technology here to be made available to blind people throughout the world, no matter what their expertise or their needs. Employers, rehabilitation specialists, those interested in high-speed Braille production, and those interested in learning for other reasons can come to the International Braille and Technology Center for the Blind and receive hands-on experience with hardware and software they have hitherto only read about. They can use cutting edge technology, something that has never before been possible, something that has been only a distant dream. Yet we are not here merely to watch while visitors enjoy their first experiences with computers or Braille embossers. Our role is to help those who come acquire the ability to find the right solution for them. Consider the man, president of his own company, who recently lost his sight because of the rapid onset of diabetes. His self- confidence seemed nearly gone. He simply could not see a future in which he could continue to play a productive part. But he wasn't ready to give up. He still wanted to go on running his business as he always had. He visited the IBTC this spring looking for answers. Before he lost his sight, he had been using two programs in order to get his work done--Lotus 123 and Wordstar. We were able to show him that with the assistance of a DOS screen reader he could resume many of the duties he had thought were permanently beyond his reach. There is no doubt that technology alone cannot overcome the problems faced by those losing their sight. The basic skills of blindness, such as cane travel and a thorough knowledge of Braille, are essential. However, this man needed a taste of success. Fortunately, a solution was available--one we could help him find, and we did. During the last week of September an individual who told me she was employed by the Department of Justice visited the technology center. She came armed with numerous questions regarding Windows 95, refreshable Braille displays, and note takers. She also wanted to look at computer-based reading machines. She explained that her employer was switching within the next six months to Windows 95. We looked at several software packages, Braille displays, and embossers, as well as note takers and PC-based reading systems. After choosing several items she decided would work well for her, she called her office to determine exactly what kind of system she would need. Perhaps this should have been her first call, but it was a telling one. After talking with her systems administrator, she realized that she was going to have to make a rather quick decision about what equipment she should buy. The Federal Government's fiscal year was almost at an end. If the money didn't get spent in the next several days, it would be gone. So she stayed several hours longer and asked more and better questions. It may be that, because she was faced with a decision she had to make immediately, she was better able to focus on her needs and whether the solutions we could offer would work. I discovered during my lengthy interview with her that she was actually an employee of the FBI. I assured her that I was doing my best to live a clean life and that she would surely discover this for herself if she checked my records. In keeping with the spirit of my remarks, she said, "I already have!" Sometimes the role of the International Braille and Technology Center for the Blind is not such a pleasant one. Even with state- of-the-art technology for the blind, solutions are not always easily attained. That, incidentally, is one of the principal reasons for holding this conference. All but two of the screen- review programs designed to provide access to the Windows 3.X and Windows 95 operating systems are equipped with some form of copy protection. If an employee's job requires that he or she be able to work interchangeably at any number of computers, such copy- protection systems can pose a significant problem. An individual recently visited us whose job description required that he be responsible for trouble-shooting any computer on the premises when necessary. This meant that he was required to use screen-reader software on an ever-changing group of computers. Since he would be the only one using the screen-reader software, he was sure that his employer would be unwilling to pay for a site license--a license, incidentally, that cost thousands of dollars. Unfortunately he turned out to be right. Copy protection is almost a thing of the past in mainstream software, but in the world of screen readers and other devices for the blind the practice is alive and well. In fact, it is growing. There was a time when only one or two of the DOS screen readers had copy protection. Now only one or two of the Windows screen readers don't. What if you experience the loss of a hard disk? Though the producers of screen readers for the blind do provide solutions to problems like this, they are a nuisance--and except for copy protection, they would be unnecessary. We recently purchased from Artic Technologies their new note takers. These are Braillepad, Ergobraille, and Sqwert. The products seem to be well designed, and though they don't have all of the features contained in some of the note takers manufactured by the competition (such as built-in calculators and the ability to run external programs), their lower price tag makes them a viable option. But consider: note takers are often purchased by individuals who do not own a computer. How then could an individual without a computer read the manuals shipped with these products? The only documentation for these machines was provided in print and on diskette. Without some kind of immediately accessible manual, one wouldn't even be able to turn one of these devices on! I would suggest Braille, cassette, or both. When people come to the International Braille and Technology Center for the Blind, we show them any product they want to see. However, it only stands to reason that, when we are asked which products work best with specific software, we will emphasize the products we believe will best meet the needs of the person asking the question. Products for which documentation is written clearly and available in multiple formats will receive a better recommendation than those that offer documentation only on diskette. Software developers that take the time to provide reliable technical support will find that their products are being recommended over those that do not, even if those products are otherwise well engineered and robust. The Graphical User Interface has made computer use by blind persons challenging enough that any advantages that one software package has over another will be discussed. Yes, sometimes the role of the International Braille and Technology Center for the Blind is to advise caution when considering a major purchase. All of us in this room are involved in one way or another with the challenges that new technology brings. Whether you are a software developer, an educator, or merely a sophisticated user, you are directly affected by new ideas and concepts, whether yours or somebody else's. We here at the IBTC for the Blind are in the business of providing either the means by which new technology can be made accessible or information regarding solutions that already exist. Accordingly, when problems become easier to solve, when software becomes more stable, when manuals become more comprehensible, all of us benefit. We want to provide solutions that make doing a job easier, not ones that barely make it possible to accomplish the task. In closing let me say that all of us have too much at stake to do anything but cooperate with each other. We need better, more meaningful, and more frequent dialogue among the people in this room. We need to insure that, when problems occur, they are addressed. Developers need to listen, not just to the agencies of government who will be making many of the purchases, but also to end users as well. Governmental and private agencies need to listen, not only to the sales representatives from the various developers, but to the end users. We at the International Braille and Technology Center for the Blind are constantly listening to consumers. Many of them simply do not believe that there is a future for blind people when it comes to computers. I think otherwise. Though I believe that the future is not necessarily bright, I think it is altogether possible that it can be--that we can not only hold our own but advance, both in relative and total terms. But we won't do it unless we approach the task with goodwill. And we won't do it unless we understand what our long-term self-interest really is. As a final thought, let me say something to those of you who produce technology. Your technology will be displayed at the International Braille and Technology Center for the Blind. Blind consumers will come to see and work with it. And representatives of the governmental and private agencies who make purchases will also come. Both consumers and agency employees will be here without the influence exerted by a salesperson. This is threatening only if you do not produce a quality product and if you do not support your products effectively. Otherwise, it is a wonderful opportunity. This is the role of the International Braille and Technology Center for the Blind (and also one of the roles of the National Federation of the Blind) as we approach the twenty-first century. We want to provide an environment and an opportunity for the best solutions that can be found to the problems faced by the blind in an age of ever-increasing technology. It will take hard work and good will by all of us, but it can be done. Ultimately the blind consumer will determine what products will survive in the marketplace, but those products must first be invented and made available. Otherwise, there will be no choices to make. We stand at the nexus, and we will exert every effort to be fair, to be diligent, and to be absolutely fearless and impartial in calling the shots as we see them. This is what I think I must do; this is what I think the International Braille and Technology Center for the Blind must do; and this is what I think the National Federation of the Blind must do. [PHOTO/CAPTION: Judith M. Dixon] _LOW-TECH _DEVICES: __DO WE HAVE WHAT WE _NEED? __by Judith M. Dixon, _Ph.D. _Consumer _Relations _Officer __National Library Service for the Blind and Physically _Handicapped _Library _of _Congress With all the attention being given to high-tech solutions these days, it is important that we not neglect the low-tech items that affect so many facets of our everyday lives. As wonderful and valuable as all the new technology is, there are many important tasks that can best be done quickly and simply by using a low- tech device. I refer to such items as label makers, Braille slates, and Braille watches. While we have enjoyed recent advances in new high-tech items, it seems that some of the basic low-tech devices have not benefited from any development at all. How many new or improved low-tech devices have we seen in the past decade? Could modern manufacturing methods and materials be used to develop better low-tech devices? I have considered several definitions of "low-tech." Are low- tech devices simply mechanical items? Or should we include in our consideration all devices without a microprocessor, i.e., devices that can't think for themselves? I have opted for the more inclusive definition for this discussion--any device without a microprocessor. Even though nearly all consumer electronics and even many toys these days are microprocessor-controlled, there is still a large universe of gadgets left for our reflection. In an examination of the 1971 American Foundation for the Blind catalog of devices to assist blind people in performing everyday tasks, one finds a wide array of aids and appliances that are amazingly similar to what we find in comparable catalogs today. This catalog of twenty-five years ago included Braille and large- print watches, clocks, and timers; Braille-writing devices; handwriting aids; measuring devices; kitchen gadgets; thermometers; and much more. The most obvious difference between a catalog of low-tech devices of twenty-five years ago and one today is the current preponderance of talking items, ranging from functional talking watches, clocks, calculators, and thermometers to items intended to be humorous like talking salt and pepper shakers. The introduction of the low-cost speech chip for consumer products has no doubt benefited many people, especially the elderly blind person for whom a talking watch or clock is often more efficient than a tactile one. If the output of a device can be made to talk, then we now have a wide variety of inexpensive and useful examples of new products. But what if the nature of the product or its use does not lend itself to speech output? Have we fared as well in these areas? _Braille _Writing In the United States we have seen some minor improvements in Braille slate design in the last twenty years: for example, the development of the cassette-label slate from Howe Press and the modification of the interpoint slate from the American Printing House for the Blind. But there are many areas for improvement in Braille-slate design. Many of the Braille slates made in other countries incorporate a variety of intriguing features such as magnets to hold the paper in place, top-hinged designs to facilitate interpoint writing, folding designs, quiet-writing designs, very small and very large Braille characters, Braille line numbers, and holes that allow storage in a loose-leaf notebook. There is also a wide variety of shapes and sizes, from a tiny four-cell hingeless slate for making marginal notes to full-page models. There are bookkeeping slates and even antique varieties designed for writing print. However, it is usually not just a matter of importing these items for use in this country because, while they might include some clever ideas, their possible usefulness is frequently limited in other ways. They are often poorly made; lack features we are used to, such as notched Braille cells; are designed for nonstandard paper sizes; or are no longer available. At the recent Closing the Gap Conference Quantum Technologies from Australia held a session entitled "Braille Dinosaurs." The company showed some pre-prototype Braille-slate designs they are considering making. Quantum is concerned that there is not enough interest in Braille-slate technology to warrant the up-front investment in mold-making. The meeting was well attended and included several dozen teachers of blind children. These teachers spoke eloquently of helping their blind students learn to use the Braille slate. So manufacturers can look forward to a continuing market for Braille-slate equipment. And what about styluses? There are many sizes and shapes of hands but a limited array of styluses available in the U.S. Maybe styluses should be like shoes--one size doesn't fit all. What about the Braille writer? We have had no significant improvements since 1951. Is a small, lightweight mechanical Braille writer that would accommodate an eight-and-a-half-by- eleven-inch sheet of paper even a remote possibility? _Handwriting _and _Templates I am a great fan of Tim Cranmer's pencil for the blind. Many times a computer is not available, and jotting a quick hand- written note would be a handy thing to do. I personally know many blind people whose handwriting is clear and legible, but for many others of us this skill is elusive. Some handwriting tasks such as check-writing can be accomplished very nicely with templates, but an area needing further development is the ability to write on things, either for quick labeling, where the print can be read tactilely, or for allowing others to read the text, such as writing a postcard while on vacation. _Labeling I believe we desperately need a number of things in this area. Many people feel that the old metal Dymo label maker was superior to anything available today. Although one can make labels with a slate, it is tedious and time-consuming. Many blind people are reluctant to use appliances with flat, pressure-sensitive panels, but if labelled properly, many of these are easy to use. However, this kind of labeling can be some of the most difficult. How about a device enabling the user to apply a Braille character to a flat surface as though using a glue gun. The material would have to be durable enough to survive many readings without rubbing off but removable when necessary. With such a device we could easily label flat control panels; very small controls; and maybe even CD's, cassettes, and the like. __Measuring and Drawing _Devices The measuring and drawing devices available today are pretty much what we have had for years. No real improvements have been made on the Sewell Raised-Line Drawing Kit, which was fairly imprecise to begin with. I think that current rulers, yardsticks, and tape measures are functional enough, but when precision is required, can we be as precise as the task warrants? Many people have devised their own measuring tools. We have had a lot of discussion in the last few years about meter-reading devices, LCD-reading devices, and so forth; but as far as I know, none of these has made it to commercial fruition. Things could be worse; we could still have the circular slide rule made from thirty- three-and-a-third rpm records that many of us used in high school. _Kitchen _Items While a number of the kitchen items found in the catalogs may strike many as unnecessary, even ridiculous, here again there is little new. Personally, I would like a measuring device that could dispense specified amounts of batter and the like by volume or weight. This would be a very useful device for quickly and reliably making candy, filling muffin tins, making drop cookies, and the like. And what about a device to assist with reliably and attractively frosting a cake without touching it to see how you're doing? __Watches, Clocks, and _Timers While today's watches and clocks are functional enough, doing what watches are intended to do best--keep time and effectively communicate it--the only real breakthroughs have been the emergence of talking items. Braille watches have remained virtually unchanged for quite some time. Compared to the high- tech watches available today to the general public--watches that tell the time in twenty-five sites around the world and are equipped with calendars, telephone directories, and even little keyboards for recording short notes--our watches are limited indeed. What do we need? A wrist-watch-sized organizer? A fashionable Braille watch for blind women? _Travel _Aids Here we may already have the best low-tech solutions we will ever find. Improvements in materials are possible, but we have all seen numerous high-tech approaches to solving travel problems, none of which have come close to replacing the low-tech long white cane or guide dog. _Conclusion This, of course, has been a very brief overview of low-tech items, but I believe that we need developments in these areas just as much as in computer access and other microprocessor- controlled devices. [PHOTO/CAPTION: Curtis Chong] _UNIVERSAL _ACCESS: __THE GOAL AND THE _REALITY _by _Curtis _Chong For the past few years advocates for people with disabilities have begun promoting an idea they call Universal Access. They have said that, if universal access is built in during the early design stages of any piece of technology, the cost of implementing it will be less than the cost of retrofitting the technology. The goal of universal access is to ensure that regardless of sensory, physical, or cognitive disability, everyone will be able to use and benefit from the Information Superhighway and the technology required to travel along it. This is indeed a laudable goal. The idea here is that if proper attention is given to the design of hardware (the physical devices themselves), software (the computer instructions which tell the hardware what to do), information content, and information presentation, technology will be accessible to everyone, regardless of any physical, cognitive, or sensory disability. How does this concept of universal access apply to the blind? Will it improve our chances for equal access to the technology which, more and more, is becoming an integral part of our daily lives? Can technology really be designed to ensure equal access for everyone in a way that ensures that the needs of one group do not supplant those of another? Is there today any piece of technology that is really universally accessible? Generally speaking, just about everybody agrees with the notion that technology should be accessible to everyone. It's like saying that everyone should follow the Ten Commandments or that no one in this country should be the victim of a crime. In other words, you would be hard pressed to find a person who would quarrel with the goal of accessibility for all. It is only when we begin to consider the specific steps to achieve the goal that we run into problems. Consider the question of access to electronic textbooks. Since February of this year, I have been serving on the Texas Task Force on Electronic Textbook Accessibility. It was organized by the Texas Education Agency to determine ways in which information contained in electronic textbooks could be made available to blind and visually impaired students. The task force looked at some electronic textbooks used in schools today. There was a program for very young children which taught the alphabet by singing the alphabet song and highlighting each letter on the screen. Another program reinforced a reading lesson by speaking or spelling words that a student could highlight with a mouse. We talked about some more elaborate electronic textbooks designed to teach science--for example, an animated chemistry experiment which allowed the student to combine dangerous chemicals in a test tube and watch the resultant explosion. All of these programs required sight--not only for their operation but also for learning about what has taken place. In fact, the program designers probably never envisioned that they would be used by a student who couldn't see the screen. As you might imagine, the task force had some difficulty figuring out how these and other electronic textbook applications could be made accessible to the blind. We talked about providing descriptive video (audio descriptions of pictures) on alternate audio tracks, providing static text in hard-copy Braille, using refreshable Braille displays, eliminating the need for the mouse by providing keyboard input for all functions, and making it possible to stop the video action so that it could be described by someone who could see the screen. Our efforts to come up with strategies specifically tailored for blind students were hampered somewhat by the natural desire to consider accessibility issues for all disability groups. For example, in some of our initial discussions blindness-specific recommendations were often interspersed with admonitions to ensure that closed captioning was available for the deaf. I should point out that I personally have nothing against closed captions for the deaf. It is just that the task force was charged with recommending strategies for the blind--not for all people with disabilities. Closed captioning may be right and proper for someone who is deaf or hard of hearing, but for the blind it is only usable if seeing the screen is not a problem. To put it another way: the natural desire of some members of the task force to ensure access to electronic textbooks for all people with disabilities interfered with our charge to focus specifically on issues pertinent to the blind. I myself have given considerable thought to the question of electronic textbook accessibility. Although it pains me to have to say this, I do not believe that blind children can really benefit from electronic textbooks in their current form. Although it is possible for static electronic text to be Brailled or read using assistive technology for the blind, we cannot benefit from the purely visual methods of presentation used by today's more sophisticated electronic textbooks. Until the developers of these textbooks design their products specifically with the blind in mind, it will be difficult, if not impossible, for blind children really to learn what the textbooks are supposed to teach. Moreover, it will be difficult, if not impossible, for blind students to participate in instructional programs in which electronic textbooks are a major component. How does all of this relate to universal access? For one thing, I believe blind people will not benefit from considerations of universal access unless the specific characteristic of blindness is taken into account. Talking about universal access in purely general terms may help people understand the goal to be achieved but will not result in meaningful strategies that will benefit the blind. The experience of the Texas Task Force on Electronic Textbook Accessibility clearly illustrates this. As I said, everybody agrees that technology should be accessible to everyone. However, the current state of technology is such that we will inevitably leave out the access requirements of one person or another. There will always be someone who can't use the keyboard, someone who can't see or read the video display, someone who can't speak into a microphone, someone who can't hear what is being spoken, someone who can't read a Braille display. Unfortunately, the human-machine interface is still relatively crude. Even under the best of circumstances with the best of intentions, technology cannot be made accessible to everyone today. However, technology can and must be made accessible to many more people. We must ensure that as a group, the blind are not forgotten in the quest to make technology accessible to all. We must develop the strategies and propose the solutions which will allow as many blind people as possible to use as much technology as possible. What we propose must be specific; achievable; and, above all, targeted at the specific characteristic of blindness. This is the only way I can see for us to help achieve the long-term goal of universal access in a meaningful way for the blind. [PHOTO/CAPTION: Tim Cranmer] __A TOUCHING VIEW OF THE _WORLD __by Tim Cranmer, _Ph.D. In the next few minutes I hope to bring to you a touching view of the world from the perspective of one blind person--not a total view, of course, just a glimpse where it comes close to the subject of our conference. With this purpose in mind and a hope of finding the right words, I went to my desk to write. I was sitting before my computer with both hands on the keyboard waiting for the muse to point the way, when a clear three-dimensional image of a golf ball I had held in my hands more than sixty years ago plopped into the center of my mental tactile field with the vividness of a real golf ball dropping into the cup at a real golf course. I could hold in the hands of my mind this sixty-year-old memory of the first golf ball I ever saw. I was about ten years old and had been totally blind for a year. It's surprising how vivid a tactile memory can be after so many years. I rotated this old memory in my mind's hands and felt again its roundness and the dimpled texture of its slightly resilient surface. Always a curious child, I had reached for my pocket knife and quickly cut a shallow equator around the ball to facilitate peeling away its tough outer cover, revealing an interior tangle of a thin rubber strand, endlessly wound layer after layer to form the springy mass of the ball. It took a long time to unwind this filament of rubber and uncover a marble-size sack of viscous liquid that filled the very center of the assembly. I wonder: Do they still make golf balls that way? Recall is often fleeting. The golf ball was soon replaced with another ball--one with the weight of a feather and a surface as smooth as paper, but with the plastic feel of celluloid. Surely they no longer make ping-pong balls and other toys of flammable celluloid. I don't know exactly when I first saw a ping-pong ball, but it must have been before I became totally blind, because the tactile image in my mind was white! Jumping from one image to another, as one does in undirected thought, I remembered: A clear blue sky with a brilliant sun; A blue sky with drifting clouds that momentarily obscured the sun; A night sky with a moon that followed me a little behind and to my left as I walked along the sidewalk on the street where I lived. Passing telephone poles, I could make the moon disappear, then reappear in the exact same position over my left shoulder. This state of quiet reflection continued longer and with much more detail than I will recount here. It ended with an understanding of this first message that I bring to you: These memories that I have described were formed from things I have seen and things I have touched. There is no qualitative difference between them. The tactile sense is a worthy peer of sight for perceiving the real world and for building an understanding of material objects, concepts, and relationships. It is a parallel channel of perception that should be developed for the blind in the same way that improving visual acuity has long been the focus of research for the larger population of sighted people. Scientists through the ages have been preoccupied with making visible those things and phenomena that cannot be seen by the unaided eye. The telescope was invented and endlessly improved for several centuries, enabling man to see ever fainter points of light from stars ever-farther from Earth. And to detect the presence of dark matter, we study the distorted orbits of the visible stars and infer the mass of their invisible companions. At the other extreme we invented the microscope to view ever- smaller particles and again infer the presence of other, still invisible, particles by photographing trails of their passage through liquids, plasmas, or other electromagnetic fields. We harnessed x-rays to peer inside the human body and other opaque objects of interest. We sense electric waves and print their shapes on paper to see functions of the brain, heart, and other biological structures. The list of tools and techniques invented to permit visual observation could be greatly extended, and volumes of information about each have been written. And yet the effort to improve our ability to see continues. I invite you to substitute the word "feel" for the word "see" and its conjugations in the preceding paragraph. You will then know where I am coming from and where I am going in this paper. Much of what I know about the real world I have learned through touch. Knowledge acquired by touch is, by definition, palpable, solid, and durable. I have heard it said that the retina is a direct window to the brain. In a very real sense, the sense of touch is also a window to the brain. Both sight and touch are hard-wired--that is, physically connected to the brain. Reading by sight and by touch are essentially the same. Seeing an object is direct observation. And feeling an object is also direct observation. The power of visual observation is so well understood and widely accepted that it seems useless to argue this point further here. Suffice it to say that the history of science and education is recorded in advances made in tools and techniques for extending the power of vision. The magnifying glass, telescope, microscope, magnetic resonance imaging, x-rays, electrocardiographs are but a few examples of the ways scientists have worked to make things visible that cannot be seen by the naked eye. So I arrive at the major proposition of this paper: We should embark upon a sustained effort to develop the tools and techniques that enhance the tactual communication path to the brain to the same degree we have achieved to enhance human vision. We should pursue development of the tactile transducer that enables observation of things too hot, too cold, too large, too small, too distant to permit direct physical contact. To put it more plainly, we must develop the tactile equivalent of the eyepiece, of the telescope, microscope, and the other tools of observation to which I have just referred. To free us from endless monitoring of optical instruments, the eyepiece has long since been replaced by photographic film, chart recorders, and other means of capturing and storing images over a period of time. We can do the same. Let us apply currently available technologies to produce tactile representations that will let us feel the untouchable. That is, we should begin by developing the transducer that creates tactile images over several minutes or hours. Only after achieving time-delayed tactile images should we expect to make a display that operates in real time. There is another persuasive reason for beginning our quest with a time-delayed tactile transducer. We already know how to make one. In fact, we know of several technologies that may serve this purpose. Most of these are currently in use in rapid-prototype manufacturing and in phase-change printing methods. These technologies can be adapted to produce solid, three-dimensional models using computer algorithms. An example: Photolithography, a process for solidifying a liquid polymer using a computer-controlled laser, has been used by Dr. William Skawinski and his colleagues at the New Jersey Institute of Technology to produce three-dimensional, solid models of several molecules. Dr. Skawinski has provided me with three molecule models for showing at this conference. I will mention only one at this time. Cyclohexyl chloride, C6H11C1l, as the formula indicates, contains six carbon atoms, eleven hydrogen atoms, and one chlorine atom. But the practicing organic chemist needs to know more than the quantitative analysis of the compound. He needs to know the physical arrangement of the atoms in order to understand the chemical properties and how to manipulate the molecule. To describe the precise arrangement of atoms on a molecule of cyclohexyl chloride may require hundreds of words. And even then the mental picture of the molecule could be inferior to a haptic examination and study of the solid model. I will leave the molecule at the podium for your later examination. Skawinski et al. produced these models of organic molecules with a photolithographic machine controlled by an algorithm derived from chemical databases. It may be equally plausible to produce solid models from other databases, like 3-D, CD-ROM clip art, biological specimens, topographical maps, etc. Any practical method of producing tactile models must include provision for magnifying and reducing images so that the results will be scaled to the requirements of tactile interpretation. Thus a model of a molecule must be magnified by many orders of magnitude, and a tactile view of a portion of the cosmos must be reduced by many orders of magnitude. We see this process of scaling for tactile perception to be a subject of investigation by the International Braille Research Center. I would like to conclude by suggesting a minimal approach to produce tactographs. A tactograph, as you might guess, is a three-dimensional photograph--not a true photograph, but something like one, except that it extends into the third dimension. Start with a human face as our subject. Using currently available rapid prototyping techniques, deposit on paper or other substrate successive layers of material representing cross-sectional slices of the image, until a cameo is formed. The X and Y dimensions of the solid image should be accurately scaled to the original model. However, the Z axis of the cameo is foreshortened to avoid exceeding tolerable depth. This limit might be on the order of two or three hundred one thousandths of an inch, but can best be determined experimentally. In any case, it seems likely that it will require a non-linear adjustment from the real value. The final result should be an accurate image of a face in relief with high resolution and with details customized for tactile interpretation. Once the basic technique for creating relief images has been perfected, we can move on to the challenge of illustrating textbooks, manuals, and magazines. It's time to begin this research! Thank you. [PHOTO/CAPTION: Joseph Sullivan] __THE FUTURE OF _BRAILLE __by Joseph E. _Sullivan __President, Duxbury Systems, _Inc. Let me start by confessing that my very presence here today is proof that I am not always very good at predictions. For when I was first introduced to Braille almost thirty years ago, I could not help thinking that surely such an old technology-- invented in the early nineteenth century, after all!--would soon be supplanted by advances that would give blind people direct access to print. I figured that, in about fifteen years or so, Braille would take its place in museums, alongside the telegraph and other outmoded means of communication. At least I can say that I learned better, and before the fifteen years were up. Today we still regularly hear that Braille is disappearing for one reason or another--sometimes from people who are advocating some supposed replacement, and sometimes from people who genuinely fear that a cherished resource may be declining into scarcity. I no longer agree. Rather it seems to me that Braille is not only holding its own but poised for a strong resurgence, not so much despite our modern technology, but partly because of that technology in conjunction with its own inherent characteristics. Before considering any influence of other technologies, it is well worth reflecting on Braille itself as a technology. In particular we should ask ourselves why it came into widespread use--despite many rivals from Louis Braille's own time--and remains so solidly popular among its users to this day. First and foremost, users of Braille are unanimous on one point: Braille is reading and writing; all else is something else. If that message needs to be elaborated for those who use print but who think that audio alone is an adequate way for blind persons to access text, think again. Considering all the wonderful ways you may use audio in your own life, do you consider dispensing with the printed word or, for that matter, your pencil and notepad? It is the same with Braille. That leads us to Braille's most basic and arguably most important property: its simplicity. Braille is easily and rapidly read by the fingers. That is, the dots allow the information to flow at a speed well matched to the tactile sense--much more so than would be the case if print letters, which after all were designed for visual scanning, were raised. Braille is also easily and rapidly created by simple means, the slate and stylus, which do for Braille what paper and pencil do for print. The dot system that Louis Braille devised thus has the elegance of simplicity. There are also other claims to elegance in the ways that the dot patterns are arranged and assigned meaning, which require closer study to appreciate. Specifically, we find that the sixty-three possible combinations of one or more dots have not been ordered arbitrarily or in purely numeric sequence as in a binary computer code. Rather they have been arranged and assigned in groups so that principal information, such as the alphabetic characters, are in upper-cell Braille while ancillary and connecting information, such as punctuation marks and indicators, are carried in cells having only lower or right-hand dots. As a result, Braille provides not only speed in the flow of information but also a discernible pattern and rhythm, which is both aesthetic and useful as an aid to understanding. Louis Braille thus clearly achieved an elegant, eminently practical, and deeply human design. For that reason, far more than for any other technology of the past or foreseeable future, Braille has stood the test of time. We could almost say that Braille endures primarily because it is not deeply dependent on sophisticated technology. _Technology _as _Challenge Nevertheless, it remains true that advances in technology, especially at the seemingly breakneck pace of the present age, pose many challenges for Braille and indeed any kind of access to information by blind people. These challenges are due to the sheer volume and speed of information flow on the one hand and the type of information on the other. I doubt that there is any need to elaborate on the increased volume of information, which has overwhelmed the traditional manual transcription process, just as it has overwhelmed just about everything else. An even more difficult challenge is attributable to the type of information that must now be accommodated. No longer is it the norm for print information to come in the form of the simple text for which our standard Braille codes were devised. Rather that text is now more likely to be liberally interspersed with complex technical notation, such as mathematics or fragments of computer programs, which must be transcribed in a special way. Finally, we are also more likely now to encounter diagrams, pictures, icons, and similar visual elements in the material that must be transcribed, which require even more difficult specialized attention. In the meantime the blind worker in an office or student in a university has the same need as his sighted colleague to assimilate and respond rapidly to the overall flow of information. __Technology as Ally--Three Key _Technologies But certain technologies, including some of the very same ones that have contributed to the problem for Braille, have also provided at least part of a solution. Three technologies in particular may be regarded as natural allies of Braille: computer software and hardware, communications methods such as the Internet, and Braille embossing and display devices. Computer Software and Hardware Because computer software is the focus of my own work for Braille, I naturally tend to consider it first, and I like to think that computerized transcription software in particular has made a positive difference. With a computer program doing the routine but high-volume transcription work, scarce human resources are freed to concentrate on the more complex material. The result is a great increase in the overall availability of Braille. Software to enable access to computers, usually through speech, has also been advancing steadily. Essentially the same software can be made to drive a Braille display device. Even apparently graphical systems, such as Windows, are becoming more accessible as these techniques are tied into the underlying system structures. Last, scanners and OCR [optical character recognition] software have contributed significantly to the quantity of text available for automatic translation to Braille. Communications Improvements in communications, now most notably the Internet, also contribute to the quantity of available text. But perhaps even more important, a part of the Internet, the World Wide Web, is setting a standard for the representation of documents in a way that is highly beneficial for the conversion to quality Braille. That is because Web documents are coded in a form, called HTML, which is a particular kind of Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML). This means that proper HTML documents are not merely finished text and images but rather contain definitive information about which parts of the text are headings, subheadings, footnotes, author references, and so on--information that can be put to good use by computer programs that transcribe to Braille. This is a very important advance because, in cases where only finished documents are available for transcription, it generally takes human judgment to discern the document's structure reliably--for example, to decide whether an isolated line is a heading or perhaps a quoted line of poetry. As the HTML standard itself is improved and as it is even more widely observed (areas where we must acknowledge there is still much to be done), the potential for Braille is truly unbounded. Braille Embossers and Displays Turning to the output mechanisms for Braille, we must first acknowledge the great strides that have been made towards production in the traditional medium, namely paper. Today Braille embossers regularly put out paper Braille at quite high speeds, embossing on both sides of the paper, with capabilities for 8-dot Braille and in some cases graphic images as options. There are also machines capable of embossing plates, preparatory to press Braille production. Even more varied are the methods that have been developed for producing Braille to be used on signs to be affixed to buildings, vending machines, and so on. Today it is routine to create a sign that contains not only Braille but also large-print text and graphic images, all of them raised, using computer software that shows the complete working image on screen while it is being created. Methods for creating raised graphics on paper also deserve mention here. For example, there are now computer programs that allow blind users to compose and edit tactile images and even combinations of special papers and pens that permit blind persons to create tactile images by direct drawing. While we may expect Braille itself to remain in use for the text, there are clearly a great many potential uses for augmenting the text with tactile graphics. But while devices for preparation of paper and other fixed forms of Braille are certainly important and will remain so, I believe that there is an even more significant future for electronically-driven devices that can show arbitrary Braille text, and perhaps one day even tactile images, that may vary from one moment to the next. Such devices already exist, of course, and have for some time. However, the goal of a Braille display that allows rapid and reliable switching, and that is also inexpensive, has so far proved elusive. Nevertheless, if we have the resolve to keep working on the problem, we can certainly anticipate that one day there will be portable, affordable, full- page Braille displays that can be attached to portable computers for instant access to Web and other documents in Braille anytime, anyplace. __Two Consequences for _Braille So we have explored three technologies: computer hardware and software, communications methods such as the Internet, and Braille embossing and display devices. We have noted a very desirable consequence of these technologies, namely that Braille is already more quickly and easily produced from a wider selection of sources than ever before, and we have projected that the trend can only be expected to improve. In short, Braille is more available and will become more so. With availability it is only reasonable to expect that there will also be increased interest in learning to use Braille. Besides availability there is a second and less obvious consequence that these developments will have on Braille--a push towards unification of the Braille codes. To understand what unification means and the reasons for it, it is useful to look back to an earlier period--typically several decades ago--when most of the codes were designed in their present form. I am not talking about the original, very solid basic design of Louis Braille himself, which still forms the core of all Braille. Rather I am speaking of modifications and additions that have been made since his time to meet various real and perceived needs. At the time we are speaking about, computers had not arrived on the scene, and all Braille was transcribed by human labor. Moreover, the material itself was likely to be fairly easily divided into categories--ordinary literature vs. mathematics and science, for example. Finally and perhaps most significantly, the reader was assumed to be working or studying in an environment isolated from the world of print and, therefore, to have little or no interest in the print representation as such. What mattered, therefore, was that the meaning rather than the form of the material was to be conveyed in the Braille. Those conditions and assumptions, and the perfectly natural decisions that flowed from them, have greatly influenced our present Braille codes. The most obvious effect is that, even for a given natural language, there are usually several codes, according to subject matter. For example, in American English Braille we use one code for literary material; a different code for material containing mathematics; and a third code for computer notation, such as the text of computer programs. Note that this requires subject matter to be determined, which can be tricky even for human transcribers. A second effect is that preciseness is sometimes sacrificed to convenience. In literary Braille, for example, the actual punctuation marks in dates, whether they be hyphens, slashes, or periods in print, are supposed to be written as hyphens. Likewise in mathematics Braille, any spacing around the "plus" sign is to be ignored. Note that these rules typically require the transcriber to judge whether a particular series of numbers and punctuation marks is a date or something else that may have a similar appearance. Note also that meaning can be lost in cases where the precise form of notation does have significance, and in any case the reader is prevented from knowing the precise form, significant or not. As we have seen, conditions at the present time have changed, so corresponding changes in the Braille codes are inevitable. Those changes are in the direction of unification, which interestingly enough is something of a return to Louis Braille's original straightforward design, which was based on a direct representation of symbols regardless of meaning. For as the history books tell us, Louis Braille actually set aside a complex, sound-based system (Charles Barbier's "Sonography") in favor of the simpler spelling-based system that comes down to us today. His example remains instructive for our time. Unification implies preciseness as well as universality. Preciseness means that Braille is parallel and equal to print in representing all that is significant about symbols. This is not to be confused with print ornamentation--such as most uses of fonts. This characteristic has two beneficial effects: first, the Braille reader is better informed about details that matter, and second, computer programs are better able to carry out accurate transcription because less judgment about meaning is involved. Universality is the ability of a Braille code to represent wide subject areas without resort to separate codes and associated judgments. This makes computer transcription easier, for one thing. But there is also a considerably more important benefit of universality: a user of Braille need not undertake substantial new learning, that is, the acquisition of a whole new code, when venturing into new subject areas. Rather one can simply build upon prior knowledge, learning just the new symbols and their meanings as one goes along. For all these reasons Braille unification projects for several languages, including English, have been underway in recent years. __A Single Bright and Busy _Future We have projected a future for Braille that is encouraging on many fronts, both for the system itself and in benefits for its users. I could sum up by saying that the future is bright, but I think that a better word might be "busy." For those of us involved with Braille must remain busy with the work of carrying forward the technologies that will help to bring Braille into the coming millennium, busy also with the task of unifying the Braille codes so that they will work better for meeting present and future users' needs, and of course busy with teaching, promoting, and just plain making Braille. At the same time no doubt the users of Braille will be equally busy, not so much with Braille as a subject in itself, but in a more important way: with Braille as a means for simply living one's life in an information age. __TEACHING SCIENCE TO THE VISUALLY IMPAIRED: THE VISIONS _LAB __by David Schleppenbach, Director, VISIONS _Lab __Purdue University Department of _Chemistry The areas of science and mathematics have traditionally been inaccessible to students with visual impairments. Complex and high-tech fields such as chemistry, physics, engineering, biology, and mathematics are rife with visually presented concepts and information. Historically this complex visual information has not been made available for widespread use in a format easily accessible for blind and visually impaired students. This lack of information, in turn, leads to decreased interest in scientific fields by the blind, and thus few visually impaired scientists exist both to provide standards for imparting scientific knowledge to the blind and to serve as mentors and role models for those visually impaired students wishing to pursue careers in the sciences. The Purdue University VISIONS Lab, which stands for Visually Impaired Students Initiative on Science, is a research laboratory dedicated to providing access to the numerous science courses at Purdue. Since its inception in the summer of 1995, this university- funded lab has served both as a production facility for providing visually impaired students with educational materials and as a research lab for developing new adaptive technologies. The VISIONS Lab was part of a university-wide response to the problems that visually impaired students face when attending a major university and included the efforts of individuals from the Office of the President to the individual Teaching Assistants themselves and everyone in between. As of Spring 1996 the VISIONS Lab has worked with two blind pre-medicine majors and one low-vision graduate student in chemistry. The VISIONS Lab has been involved with course work from many different departments, including but not limited to Mathematics, Chemistry, Physics, Engineering, Computer Science, Psychology, Biology, Agronomy, and Spanish. As can be seen, the VISIONS Lab has rapidly expanded beyond its initial design to become a gestalt facility, encompassing and supporting the daily needs of the students as well as predicting and planning for future needs. The approach of the VISIONS Lab to solving specific academic problems encountered by visually impaired students can be divided into two halves: educational needs and technological needs. Often the technology is most easily provided; however, it is of paramount importance that the educational requirements of learning not be lost in the forest of high-tech, glamorous equipment. To this end the VISIONS Lab administrators participate in planning the student's course needs each semester with the help of case conferences with the student, his or her instructors, and several university student-service organizations such as the Dean of Students Office. After the needs have been assessed, the scientists involved in the daily operation of the lab take charge and develop the necessary technology to solve the educational problems. The VISIONS Lab currently employs several graduate and undergraduate students, under the administration of the director, who develop and produce the educational materials needed by the students on a daily basis. In order to understand the power and usefulness of this approach, the two halves of the VISIONS Lab problem-solving strategy will be examined for two courses from two disciplines-- organic chemistry and calculus. These classes serve as excellent examples of the technological and educational advances developed by the VISIONS Lab and available as educational standards on the World Wide Web. In every case the adaptive technologies used for a particular class depend primarily on the abilities and strengths of the students. For example, a student skilled in Braille will receive most of the course information in tactile format, whereas a student used to learning by ear will receive taped lectures, computer-synthesized screen readers, and other vocal learning methods. The VISIONS Lab was originally conceived as a means to solve a nagging problem in mathematics specifically dealing with a particular calculus course. Calculus is a special challenge for the blind because it is very difficult (and sometimes not possible) to interpret all of the mathematical information orally. What was needed at Purdue was a way for the blind students and faculty to interact quickly and easily and communicate complex mathematical ideas. Since the two blind students at Purdue were different types of learners, one auditory and the other tactile-oriented, a general strategy to serve both was desperately needed. The solution to this problem, which was produced by the VISIONS Lab during its initial development stages, was to develop a software program that would translate mathematical and scientific equations into a format appropriate to blind students. The initial approach was to convert the equations into the standard Nemeth Braille code for mathematics; later, modifications were made to allow speech output of the equations (this is still in development). The program is available on the VISIONS Lab homepage at http://www.chem.purdue.edu/facilities/sightlab.index.html and is freeware, together with a manual explaining its use. Also available is a tutorial manual to the Nemeth code that follows most example equations in the Nemeth Braille Code for Science and Mathematics, 1972 rev., and translates it into Braille, using the program. The program was created as a giant macro for WordPerfect for Windows version 6.0 or 6.1 and produces all output in proper Nemeth Braille code. This allows the various secretaries at Purdue who type materials for the calculus courses to submit the tests in electronic format to the VISIONS Lab. The secretaries must follow a few simple typing conventions when creating the documents, but these conventions in no way prevent the final document from being used by both sighted and blind students. Also the typing conventions are clearly detailed with examples in the manual and are usable by someone with no knowledge of Braille. Upon receipt of the electronic copy of the document, the VISIONS Lab converts the equations into Braille using the macro. The literary portion of the document is then translated using a commercially available Braille translator, the Duxbury(tm) Braille Translator for Windows. Many other translators would be suitable as well, however, such as MegaDots(tm) from Raised Dot Computing. The final Braille document is embossed on a Braille printer such as the VersaPoint Braille embosser. This entire process, from receipt of the electronic document to the printing of the Braille copy, takes on average about five minutes per page. Of course, documents that are not in electronic format or that include special items may take longer. This process is certainly easier than translating the entire document by hand, which may take days or weeks. After the development of the Braille translation software, the next natural step was to allow for speech output of equations as well. This project, currently under development, will allow students to translate the equations themselves and have the information read to them via a standard software package (TextAssist(tm) for the SoundBlaster(tm) family of sound cards). Concomitant with this project is another in sound imaging. This project attempts to image vocally two- or three-dimensional objects (such as matrices in math or molecules in chemistry) in three dimensions around the listener's head. This is currently being done with the SoundBlaster(tm) card and the Qsound(tm) software technology, as well as a pair of Altec Lansing(tm) SurroundSound(tm) speakers. Of course, some aspects of calculus require more advanced treatment. For example, much of advanced calculus deals with the interpretation of two- and three-dimensional graphs and the way aspects of them relate to mathematical equations. This information simply cannot be communicated orally, yet it is vital that the student understand graphical relationships since many key ideas in science and math are too complex to be interpreted symbolically. Indeed, the use of models and visualization to simplify complex ideas is a critical skill for future scientists; blind students, like any other students, must be able to assimilate vast amounts of data at a glance by the use of graphs and diagrams. In order to deal with this problem, the use of a Tactile Image Enhancer(tm) from Repro-Troniks(tm) was used. Various standard computer graphing packages such as MathCad, Maple, and Mathematica were modified to produce graphs with Braille labels created by the Duxbury Braille Font for Windows(tm). After these images were printed in ink, they were transferred via Xerox to Tactile Image Enhancement paper and converted into a raised Tactile Image via the Tactile Image Enhancer. When appropriate, these graphs and diagrams were embedded in the Braille text of the document by cutting and pasting. For images that are not reproducible by the computer or available in electronic format, scanners were used with a graphics program like CorelDraw(tm) to produce ink output for subsequent image enhancement. This general technique, like the equation translation, has two advantages: the ability to accept electronic forms of diagrams for enhancement and the overall speed of the process. For diagrams received in electronic format, the entire process from modifying to pasting into the Braille document can take less than fifteen minutes. The second subject dealt with by the VISIONS Lab, and perhaps the most challenging, is organic chemistry. This field involves several problems that are especially difficult for blind students. First, organic chemistry involves a tremendous volume of material, which is barely tolerable to many sighted students and can be too much for some blind students to keep up with. This is mainly because of the lengthy process of listening to taped or read materials. Second, most of the material in organic chemistry is two- or three-dimensional in nature, and it is critical to have an understanding of spatial relationships of molecules to be a functional organic chemist. Finally, the laboratory part of the class must be modified to allow blind students to use the laboratory equipment, perform experiments, and take data. For the organic chemistry lecture the main problem was in translating the material into Braille or tactile images for the blind students. The main process once again involved the translation macro, which can also translate all chemical reactions not involving complicated two- or three-dimensional molecules. For those molecules which are not expressible in linear format, tactile images were once again embedded in the appropriate part of the text. For producing Braille tactile diagrams of chemical structures, several standard chemical drawing programs were used, including HyperChem, ChemDraw Pro, Chem 3D, and Chem Windows. These modifications have been standardized and are available on the World Wide Web. Also, some modifications and/or additions to the existing Nemeth code had to be developed to allow for complex chemical reactions and structures since this was not a part of the existing code. Whenever possible, the spirit of the Nemeth code was kept in mind when developing new conventions. Thus, many of the conventions are very small adjustments to existing rules and symbols to allow for inclusion of information from the world of chemistry. These new Braille conventions are also available via the VISIONS Lab homepage on the World Wide Web. One problem with converting chemical diagrams is that often the diagrams are too complex or too crowded for successful tactile interpretation. Because it is difficult to decide what information (if any) can be excluded from a complex chemical diagram without loss of meaning, careful consideration was given to educational adaptations. With the help of chemistry faculty and teaching assistants, the diagrams are simplified on a case- by-case basis, with the main goal of remaining as true as possible to the original diagram. In general, many diagrams can have their original meaning preserved by simply enlarging the details to allow proper tactile resolution of things such as location of atoms, movement of electrons, etc. A final problem for the blind chemistry students was in the evaluation of their learning. Often, when taking tests or quizzes, the organic chemistry student must demonstrate knowledge by drawing detailed diagrams of reaction mechanisms or chemical structures. Three different approaches were used to combat this problem. First, a Velcro box was constructed with Velcro pieces that attach to the surface and stick. The pieces are differently shaped and their identity labeled in Braille. (The geometry of the piece indicates its identity as well.) For example, carbon atoms are squares labeled with a "C," and in chemical reactions carbon bonds with four other atoms (indicated by the four sides of the square). Electrons are represented by small circles. This allows the student to work with a tutor, teaching assistant, or proctor and demonstrate a reaction to someone who does not know Braille but does know chemistry. A second approach was the use of raised-line drawing kits, such as the Swail dot inverter or the Sewell raised-line drawing kit, both available from the American Printing House for the Blind. Here both the student and proctor can draw stick diagrams (which are commonplace means of expressing reactions in organic chemistry) and interact in real time just like a sighted student with an ink pen. A final approach was the creation of software, still in development, that will take Braille-typed-on carbonless copy paper (which makes an ink image of the Braille dots), scan this Braille into electronic format with a scanner, and re-convert this scanned Braille into text. This would allow blind students to hand in assignments in Braille to a professor who knows nothing about Braille, to grade later and return. The eventual goal for this would be to have a computer act as the intermediary between professor and student; that is, the computer would translate from print to Braille or vice versa and serve as the interpreter for the blind student and the professor. The chemistry laboratory also presented several formidable challenges. The first concern of many members of the chemistry faculty was the safety of both the blind student and the assistants in the laboratory. Thus any adaptations made must account for safety and prevent any possible dangerous situations from arising. To this end it was decided that a sighted laboratory assistant and technological adaptations would be best for all involved. This situation has proven beneficial for the blind student as well as the other students and teachers because the blind student has the opportunity to explore the laboratory fully with immediate feedback from the assistant and can learn interactively along with the other students. Some modifications were made to the actual laboratory equipment, allowing Brailling of knobs and buttons, and all of the laboratory materials were available in Braille. Most of the readings and measurements were taken with the help of the lab assistant, who acted as the blind students' eyes and arms for some of the work, such as taking a reading from a dial, mixing chemicals, heating solutions, etc. Some work is currently being done in the VISIONS Lab to connect several laboratory instruments such as spectrophotometers to voice-output systems. However, the more promising area of research in the VISIONS Lab has been in virtual instrumentation. With the use of both in- house and commercial programs such as LabView, the VISIONS Lab is currently exploring the creation of virtual experiments on the computer that would have voice-input and voice-output control interfaces. Purdue currently uses virtual instrumentation for a number of its laboratory courses, so the task is to modify the existing software. As can be seen, the VISIONS Lab is both adapting existing technology and creating new technology to solve specific problems presented by having blind students in science. We have made these advances available on the World Wide Web in the hopes that others working on similar problems will join with us in an attempt to solve some very challenging problems. It is our sincere hope that the advances developed in the VISIONS Lab will serve as impetus for blind students to begin to explore the realms of science that have been difficult to learn for so long. Purdue's long-range plan for the VISIONS lab is one of optimism and hope that many blind students both at Purdue and around the world will take advantage of some of the standards developed here. Together with adaptive technologists around the globe, the VISIONS Lab hopes to make the future of science education for the visually impaired brighter indeed. [PHOTO/CAPTION: Larry Israel] __WHY DOESN'T TECHNOLOGY FOR BLIND PEOPLE COST _LESS, __AND WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT _IT? _by _Larry _Israel _President, _Telesensory _Corporation Thank you, President Maurer, Dr. Jernigan, and the National Federation of the Blind for the invitation to be here. The theme for this conference is "Technology for the Blind as we Approach the Twenty-First Century." Many sub-themes could fit under that broad heading. As I prepared my remarks for this conference, it was not easy to choose an appropriate theme from among many I could see. The challenge for all of us who are developers and suppliers of products and services is how we can best advance the interests and needs of our blind clients. But it's essential that be done in an affordable way--affordable for the blind consumer, when that is possible and appropriate, or at least affordable for an appropriate agency or organization whose charter includes dispensing government funds for rehabilitation, education, public access, or similar purposes. Why is stuff for blind people so gosh-darned expensive and often not really affordable? I'd like to answer that question and then tell you what I think might be done about it, although unfortunately with no absolute assurance of success. Let's start with some examples. Why does a stand-alone reading machine, such as Telesensory's new Domino product, or Xerox's Reading Edge, or Arkenstone's Open Book product, cost $5,000 or more? How can people charge $500 to $1,000 for software for blind people when lots of equally complicated software sells for less than $100, and entire suites of software, with many applications in them, can be had for a street price of $200 to $300, or sometimes even less than $100, if you're trading in a competitive suite? The problem is that there aren't really a lot of blind people. Put another way, there aren't enough blind people to permit economies of scale to come into play, to permit mass-market production, and to permit product development costs shared over a very large population. In our field the development and tooling costs for new technologies and products must always be amortized over a relatively small number of units. Let me give you some examples. Consider a TV set or VCR for mass markets: development is spread over many millions of units. There is hardly a consumer electronic appliance around for which the product development costs cannot be spread over hundreds of thousands of units. And once the development is complete, the tooling necessary to allow each individual product to be built at the lowest possible cost can also be amortized over a large number of production units. By comparison, one of the most popular electronic devices in our field, Telesensory's Aladdin video magnifier for people with low vision, involved about a million dollars in product development cost and nearly another million dollars in what we call "hard tooling," to permit the individual products to be made at the lowest possible cost. We wanted to set a new, lower price point in the market with a high quality product, and we did so. The basic Aladdin is priced nearly 20 percent under the Voyager, which it replaced, and nearly 30 percent lower than the Telesensory Vantage CCTV reading machine, which it also replaced. It's the lowest price full-featured quality unit on the market, worldwide; and, to give our customers greater comfort, we also added a five-year warranty, which is unheard of in most any industry. But even so we had to take a considerable risk because, if our startup costs could not be spread over a fairly large number of units, this would have been a losing proposition for Telesensory. Fortunately our market planning was correct, and our unit volume --the number of units we sold--jumped 53 percent in the first year after Aladdin was introduced. In the area of products for people who are totally blind, especially Braille-related products, it's even tougher. To sell as many as 500 to 600 units a year of a particular product using Braille output is a challenge to most manufacturers in this field, and that's a very small number of products over which development costs and hard tooling can be spread. As a result, Braille products seem very expensive, and they are! We can imagine what it would be like if 100,000 Braille displays were being produced every year, such as the refreshable Braille line displays of the type made by Telesensory, Alva, Blazie, and a host of European companies. We could expect costs to drop significantly, probably by at least 50 percent, and perhaps even more. That's likely to remain just a dream, unless someone comes up with a significant advance in Braille-cell technology. And even that is unlikely, because the potential volume is not enough to justify the kind of investment which might produce a low-cost Braille cell. That's what's called a vicious circle, and it's been with us for as long as people have tried to apply technology to meet the needs of blind people more effectively. So there's a problem I've described: there aren't a lot of blind people, so there isn't a large potential user base over which to amortize the costs of product development and tooling. The result? We don't get substantially lower-cost products, as we'd like to have. I've always hated describing problems without at least trying to offer some sort of solution, or at least a path to be followed. So I'll do that here as well and describe an approach to product development and to the application of technology to meeting the needs of blind people better, which I think has some reasonable potential for getting around the dilemma I've just described--at least in some cases. Let me approach this topic by describing two product developments with which most of you will be familiar. Many years ago Telesensory designed and produced what I believe was the world's first talking calculator. It was called "Speech Plus," and many of them are still in use today. It was relatively bulky, had limited battery life, had limited functions, and sold for what seemed like the enormous price of $395. That's probably equivalent to nearly a thousand dollars today. Telesensory sold around 15,000 of the Speech Plus calculators over a period of a few years. Then what happened? You know the story: our Japanese friends came out with talking calculators for the mass market, initially priced under $100, and I understand you can get some today for prices as low as $29. Perhaps they were not as well-optimized for the needs of blind people as was the Speech Plus calculator, but who was going to complain, with that enormous price difference? What's going on here? Was Telesensory ripping off its blind consumers? Of course not! Telesensory's direct internal costs were well in excess of a hundred dollars. The profit level made on the product was reasonable, not excessive. But Telesensory did not have the wherewithal or perhaps did not have the means to attempt to develop a talking calculator which could be sold profitably for less than a hundred dollars in large volumes to mass markets. As soon as the Japanese entered the market, Telesensory dropped out. Well that was a success story for Telesensory for a while, but eventually it had to be abandoned. Let's look at another example. Ray Kurzweil, whose name is familiar to all of you, invented reading machines for blind people. Initially they cost $50,000 or more, well beyond the reach of virtually all blind people, and even unaffordable to public agencies for individual client use. Many years later Xerox acquired Ray Kurzweil's company. Still, almost no reading machines were sold, despite massive subsidies by the Xerox Foundation to place machines in various libraries. It was still beyond the reach of the ordinary blind consumer or even of most rehabilitation agencies. What changed this picture? First, ask yourselves the question: why did Xerox buy Ray Kurzweil's company? Do you think it was because they wanted to enter the field of products for blind people? Think again. Their motivation, from a business perspective, was clearly to obtain access to optical character reading technology for general office use. The product for blind people was an incidental by-product, which they continued to produce, but in which they have invested very modest development resources since then. There's not been much new in that field for quite some number of years, except for a Telesensory product which I'm going to talk about before I'm through. In fact, Xerox's adaptive devices division was, according to industry information, on the market to be sold for quite a period of time, although I don't know whether that's the case at present. Xerox wasn't a bad corporation because of this--it just didn't make business sense for such a large corporation to invest money in such a low-volume industry. Even so, reading machine prices have dropped from $50,000 in Kurzweil's early days to $5,000 or so for stand-alone systems today and $1,000 for the software alone to be used with your own PC and scanner. Now we begin to see the answer. We begin to see what it is that can make technological wonders available to blind people--and not at a high price, but at reasonable prices which can be afforded by ordinary consumers, or at least by the rehabilitation agencies whose mission is to help blind consumers obtain jobs and lead fuller and more independent lives. The key is the connection between mass-market technology and the unique needs of blind people. Video magnifiers, so common today, would not have been possible were it not for the growth of the market which uses video cameras for inexpensive high-volume applications, such as security and surveillance in parking lots, office buildings, and residences, as well as countless other applications. There are not enough low-vision people to justify the development and production of low-cost cameras, but by using cameras developed for mass-market applications, a whole new industry was born in the early 70's. Similarly, Ray Kurzweil's invention could never have been made affordable, as it is today, were it not for the development of personal computers and scanners for mass markets unrelated to the needs of blind people. "Well, that's great!", you might say. "So we're just supposed to sit around and wait for the technological crumbs to fall off the consumer mass-market table." That would be a dismaying scenario, if that were the only way we could hope for truly significant advances in our field, since we would all be doomed to follow, not lead. In addition, we'd be subject to the problems still being experienced with, for example, Windows 95 access, where the mass-market product, Windows 95, just won't work for blind people without significant adaptation, which remains costly and sometimes inefficient or kludgey. There is, I think, another approach which developers of products for blind people can take. That involves tying in other needs--needs which aren't directly the needs of blind people--in order to support the kind of product development which will nonetheless benefit significant numbers of blind people. For example, if Telesensory had been able to develop speech technology in such a way that talking calculators became a desirable appliance for everyone, not just blind consumers, the cost of talking calculators might have been reduced at an earlier stage. Unfortunately that didn't happen. Let me give a more pointed example using some of Telesensory's newer products as an example. Last month, at the Closing the Gap convention in Minneapolis, we conducted private showings of a new device we call Domino. It's the world's first battery-powered, truly portable reading machine for blind people, weighing only fourteen to fifteen pounds and the size of a briefcase. It's lighter, smaller, faster, and easier to use than Xerox's Reading Edge, which had previously been the closest the world had seen to a portable reading machine for blind people and, at twenty-seven pounds or so, not truly portable. We're putting Domino on the market at less than $5,000, which is a fair price and less than anything which is even remotely comparable to it. But even at that price, it won't be a very profitable product for us, and we need profits to pay for development and tooling costs, so that we can keep on doing good things. Are we crazy? No, we're not crazy. We're just betting again, as we did with Aladdin, that we've got some ideas which will have applicability in such a way that we can substantially increase the market base for this product. We want to sell Domino--or parts of it, or other products based o