[real-eyes] Fw: [CCB-L] FW: [vipnews] For the Blind, Technology Does What a Guide Dog Can't
- From: "Terrie Arnold" <tanderson3@xxxxxxxxx>
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- Date: Sun, 4 Jan 2009 06:11:07 -0600
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From: "Richard Rueda"
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To: "Leadership"
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Sent: Sunday, January 04, 2009
1:10 AM
Subject: [CCB-L] FW: [vipnews] For
the Blind, Technology Does What a
Guide Dog Can't
>
> FYI: ACB is mentioned in this
> article.
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: vipnews@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:vipnews@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]On
> Behalf Of editor@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Sent: Saturday, January 03, 2009
> 6:58 PM
> To: vipnews@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [vipnews] For the
> Blind, Technology Does What a
> Guide Dog Can't
>
>
>
> January 4, 2009
> For the Blind, Technology Does
> What a Guide Dog Can't
> By MIGUEL HELFT
> MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.
>
> T. V. RAMAN was a bookish child
> who developed a love of math and
> puzzles at
> an early age.
> That passion didn't change after
> glaucoma took his eyesight at
> the age of
> 14. What changed is the
> role that technology - and his
> own innovations - played in
> helping him
> pursue his interests.
> A native of India, Mr. Raman
> went from relying on volunteers
> to read him
> textbooks at a top
> technical university there to
> leading a largely autonomous
> life in Silicon
> Valley, where he is a
> highly respected computer
> scientist and an engineer at
> Google.
> Along the way, Mr. Raman built a
> series of tools to help him take
> advantage
> of objects or
> technologies that were not
> designed with blind users in
> mind. They ranged
> from a Rubik's Cube
> covered in Braille to a software
> program that can take complex
> mathematical
> formulas and read them
> aloud, which became the subject
> of his Ph.D. dissertation at
> Cornell. He
> also built a version of
> Google's search service tailored
> for blind users.
> Mr. Raman, 43, is now working to
> modify the latest technological
> gadget that
> he says could make life
> easier for blind people: a
> touch-screen phone.
> "What Raman does is amazing,"
> said Paul Schroeder, vice
> president for
> programs and policy at the
> American Foundation for the
> Blind, which conducts research
> on technology
> that can help visually
> impaired people. "He is a
> leading thinker on accessibility
> issues, and his
> capacity to design and
> alter technology to meet his
> needs is unique."
> Some of Mr. Raman's innovations
> may help make electronic gadgets
> and Web
> services more user-friendly
> for everyone. Instead of asking
> how something should work if a
> person cannot
> see, he says he prefers
> to ask, "How should something
> work when the user is not
> looking at the
> screen?"
> Such systems could prove useful
> for drivers or anyone else who
> could benefit
> from eyes-free access
> to a phone. They could also
> appeal to aging baby boomers
> with fading vision
> who want to keep using
> technology they've come to
> depend on.
> Mr. Raman's approach reflects a
> recognition that many
> innovations designed
> primarily for people with
> disabilities have benefited the
> broader public, said Larry
> Goldberg, who
> oversees the National
> Center for Accessible Media at
> WGBH, the public broadcasting
> station in
> Boston. They include curb
> cuts for wheelchairs, captions
> for television broadcasts and
> optical
> character-recognition
> technology, which was fine-tuned
> to create software that could
> read printed
> books aloud and is now
> used in many computer
> applications, he said.
> With no buttons to guide the
> fingers on its glassy surface,
> the touch-screen
> cellphone may seem a
> particularly daunting challenge.
> But Mr. Raman said that with the
> right
> tweaks, touch-screen
> phones - many of which already
> come equipped with GPS
> technology and a
> compass - could help blind
> people navigate the world.
> "How much of a leap of faith
> does it take for you to realize
> that your phone
> could say, 'Walk
> straight and within 200 feet
> you'll get to the intersection
> of X and Y,' "
> Mr. Raman said. "This is
> entirely doable."
> ADVOCATES for the blind have
> long complained that technology
> companies have
> done a generally poor
> job of making their products
> accessible. The Web, while
> opening many
> opportunities for blind people,
> is still riddled with obstacles.
> And sophisticated screen-reader
> software,
> which turns documents and
> Web pages into synthesized
> speech, can cost more than
> $1,000. Even with a
> screen reader, many sites
> are hard to navigate.
> Last year, the National
> Federation of the Blind reached
> a settlement of a
> landmark class-action
> lawsuit against one company
> whose site advocates found
> unusable, Target. In
> the settlement, the
> retailer agreed to make its Web
> site accessible to blind people.
> The
> federation assesses the
> usability of Web sites and
> currently certifies only a
> handful as being fully
> accessible.
> One challenge is that technology
> often evolves much faster than
> the
> guidelines that ensure Web sites
> work well with screen readers.
> In December, the World Wide Web
> Consortium,
> an Internet standards
> group, released Version 2.0 of
> its accessibility guidelines for
> Web sites.
> The previous version
> dated back to 1999, when the Web
> consisted largely of static Web
> pages
> rather than interactive
> applications.
> Obstacles on the Web take many
> forms. A common one is the
> Captcha, a
> security feature consisting of
> a string of distorted letters
> and numbers that users are
> supposed to read
> and retype before they
> register for a new service or
> send e-mail. Few Web sites offer
> audio
> Captchas.
> Some pages are just poorly
> designed, like e-commerce sites
> where the
> "checkout" button is an image
> that isn't labeled so screen
> readers can find it.
> "The overwhelming percentage of
> the industry really hasn't
> stepped up to the
> plate to provide the
> blindness community with equal
> access to their products," said
> Eric Bridges,
> director of advocacy
> and governmental affairs at the
> American Council of the Blind.
> Mr. Bridges
> and other advocates argue
> that accessibility should be
> built into new technologies, not
> added as an
> afterthought.
> People with other disabilities
> face similar challenges on the
> Internet. "On
> the deafness side, the
> frustration is huge because of
> all of the video out there
> without captions,"
> Mr. Goldberg said.
> MR. RAMAN, who before joining
> Google in 2005 worked at Adobe
> Systems and as
> a researcher at I.B.M.,
> is intimately familiar with
> accessibility problems, both
> personally and
> professionally. In 2006, he
> developed a version of Google's
> search engine that gives a
> slight preference
> to Web sites that work
> well with screen readers. The
> system had to test millions of
> Web pages.
> "You wouldn't have found a
> single page that fully complied
> with the
> accessibility guidelines," Mr.
> Raman said. Still, the system
> could detect which pages worked
> reasonably
> well with screen readers.
> The service is not being used as
> widely as he had hoped. Still,
> it has had
> an impact. Several Web
> site operators whose sites
> weren't showing up prominently
> in Google search
> results asked Mr. Raman
> how they could fix their sites
> so they would rank better.
> The service includes a screen
> magnifier that enlarges
> individual search
> results. Mr. Raman says the
> feature is intended to help
> low-vision users, but it could
> also prove useful
> to a much larger
> population, especially on
> cellphones and other devices
> with small screens.
> For his own use, he has built a
> highly customized system that
> allows him
> efficient access to much of
> what he needs on his PC and on
> the Web, stripping out anything
> that could
> slow him down. For
> instance, the system goes
> directly to the article text on
> the news sites he
> reads regularly,
> bypassing navigational links and
> other features found on most Web
> pages.
> On a recent day, Mr. Raman was
> working on a research paper
> about the future
> structure of the Web. A
> monitor hung above the desk. It
> is usually turned off, unless he
> wants to
> show a colleague or
> visitor what he is working on.
> He typed at his keyboard, his
> head slightly
> tilted to one side,
> listening to his screen reader
> through a pair of wireless
> headphones.
> The screen reader is calibrated
> to speak at roughly triple the
> speed of a
> normal voice. To the
> untrained ear, the output is
> incomprehensible, but it allows
> Mr. Raman to
> "read" at roughly the same
> speed as a sighted person.
> Processing information quickly
> is a skill he has developed over
> the years: a
> video on YouTube shows
> him solving his Braille Rubik's
> Cube in 23 seconds. When he is
> not typing,
> Mr. Raman, who wears
> large sunglasses, is often
> folding and unfolding pieces of
> paper into tiny,
> origami-like geometrical
> shapes at prodigious speed.
> He shares a work area at Google
> with Charles Chen, a 25-year-old
> engineer,
> and Hubbell, Mr. Raman's
> guide dog. (Hubbell has his own
> Web site.)
> Mr. Chen, who is sighted,
> developed a free screen reader
> for Web pages that
> works with the Firefox
> browser. Working together, the
> two recently added keyboard
> shortcuts that
> help blind and low-vision
> users navigate quickly through
> Google's search results. They've
> also
> developed tools to make
> sophisticated Web applications,
> like e-mail and blog readers,
> suitable for
> screen-reading software.
> Now, much of their effort is
> focused on touch-screen phones.
> "The thing I am most interested
> in is all of the stuff moving to
> the mobile
> world, because it is a
> big life-changer," Mr. Raman
> said.
> To show their progress, Mr.
> Raman pulled his T-Mobile G1, a
> touch-screen
> phone with Google's Android
> software, from a pocket of his
> jeans. He and Mr. Chen have
> already outfitted
> it with software that
> speaks much like a screen reader
> on a PC. Now they are working on
> ways to
> allow blind people, or
> anyone who is not looking at the
> screen, to enter text, numbers
> and
> commands.
> That development would
> complement voice-recognition
> systems, which are not
> always reliable and don't
> work well in noisy environments.
> Since he cannot precisely hit a
> button on a touch screen, Mr.
> Raman created
> a dialer that works
> based on relative positions. It
> interprets any place where he
> first touches
> the screen as a 5, the
> center of a regular telephone
> dial pad. To dial any other
> number, he simply
> slides his finger in its
> direction - up and to the left
> for 1, down and to the right for
> 9, and so
> on. If he makes a mistake,
> he can erase a digit simply by
> shaking the phone, which can
> detect motion.
> He and Mr. Chen are testing
> several other input methods.
> None of these
> technologies have been rolled
> out, but Mr. Raman, who is
> already using the G1 as his
> primary cellphone,
> hopes to make them freely
> available soon.
> (Few screen readers are
> available for smartphones today,
> and they can often
> cost as much as a phone
> itself.)
> What may become the most
> life-changing mobile
> technology - a phone that can
> recognize and read signs
> through its camera - may still
> be a few years away, Mr. Raman
> said. Already,
> some devices can read
> text this way. But because blind
> users don't know where signs
> are, they
> can't point the camera at
> them or align it properly, Mr.
> Raman said. Once chips become
> powerful
> enough, they will be able to
> detect a sign's location and
> read skewed type, he said.
> "Those things will happen," he
> said. When they do, sighted
> users will
> benefit, too.
> "If you have the technology that
> can recognize a street sign as
> you drive by
> it, that is helpful for
> everyone," he said. "In a
> foreign country, it will
> translate it."
> Mr. Raman's innovations have
> already made their way onto
> millions of PCs. At
> Adobe in the 1990s, he
> helped to adapt the PDF format
> so it could be read by screen
> readers. That
> was required for PDF to
> be used by the federal
> government, and it eventually
> led to the technology's
> being embraced as a
> global standard for electronic
> documents.
> "It was incredibly important to
> us as a business, and to the
> blind," said
> John Warnock, the chairman
> and founder of Adobe.
> Mr. Raman says he thinks he has
> the largest impact when he can
> persuade
> other engineers to make
> their products accessible - or,
> better yet, when he can convince
> them that
> there are interesting
> problems to be solved in this
> area. "If I can get another 10
> engineers
> motivated to work on
> accessibility," he said, "it is
> a huge win."
>
> SOURCE (Printable)
> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/04/business/04blind.html?_r=1&pagewanted=prin
> t
>
>
>
>
>
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