Accessible Technology Meets the Mainstream
I’ve been communicating with an accessibility advocate who lives in Seattle. He’s one of those rare people who pays attention to the issue because he cares about people with disabilities and how access to technology can make a big difference in the quality of their lives. Mike is a former corpsman (medic) in a VA hospital and comes by his concerns from the eyes of a veteran who’s seen a great deal. He and some friends publish a Blog to promote accessibility.
Mike points out that many technologies we take for granted today in mainstream life were originally design to accommodate people with disabilities. For example, just consider “closed captioning” that entertains us as we stand in line at the bank or glance at during Happy Hour at the local watering hole. This innovation was created specifically to provide equal access to the deaf and hard of hearing.
How about the ramps at street corners designed to make locomotion safer for blind and disabled? This simple design scheme is greatly appreciated by young mothers pushing baby strollers, the postman with his heavy cart, the elderly who have vision and mobility challenges. It’s clear that accessible technology has its own multiplier-factor. An unintended consequence of accessible technology is safety and convenience for mainstream citizens.
Mike was particularly excited by an innovation created by Microsoft. “The house would contain its own computer to process and store data, in this case a large list of UPC items that you find on every grocery item you buy,” Mike writes. “A person could simply grab ingredients and set them on the counter and a wall monitor would automatically list recipes that could be made with whatever ingredients were set down. Who wouldn't like that?” Yet another convenience designed for the disabled but offering attractive benefits to just about anyone!
We’ve all seen how quickly computing technology is changing and Mike foresees a time when mainstream users will access technology that’s already available to people who can no longer use their hands, are blind or have some other disability. He predicts that, due to this technology, keyboards may become obsolete. “I expect our ways of typing will cease down the road as screen readers and voice recognition allow us to literally train our computer to our voice, accents and slang,” Mike posits. “In turn we simply talk and the computer does what we tell it. ‘open new mail’, ‘type text’, ‘open internet home page’, will probably be the most common way of using our computer in the future. No more keyboards.”
These examples demonstrate the benefits of designing technology that can be used by the broad spectrum of people – not only for users with disabilities. Certainly, industry can already see the economic sense of accessible technology. Nonetheless, we have a long way to go. Software that converts text to speech can be very expensive, and I’ve personally found my intentions to turn my newly published children’s book into an accessible e-book is costly and beyond my own modest technical abilities.
But, time is the proving ground and successful applications of accessible technologies are making strides on a journey that’s already taken decades. Today’s innovations hold the promise to quicken that pace.
Read more articles by Darby Patterson published here at SimplyRaydeen.com
Read more information at The AccessPond
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