Table of contents 1 Ask the expert Blind man fights for secret voting right
2 Business commentary Union Card or Master Card -- How a Nation of Workers Became a Nation of Debtors
3 From the soap box Are people with disability at risk at work? A review of the evidence
4 The reader’s choice Blind Korea masseurs win case
5 News and views Scientists get around paralysed muscles in monkey
6 Helpful tips
7 Accessibility news A professor turns cell phones into aids
8 Editorial Seniors facing an accessibility gap
9 Comments to the editor 10 Notes
Acknowledgements
We would like to acknowledge the following contributors to this month’s STAE issue. The Sterling Creations accessibility team, the Sterling Creations business team, the Sterling Creations research team, Scott Savoy our managing editor, Christian Robicheau our assistant editor, our readers, and Donna J Jodhan our president.
Donna J Jodhan is the founder and president of Sterling Creations which was founded in 1994. As a blind woman she has had to overcome mountainous challenges in order to get where she is today. She is a very successful business woman, consultant, and author and she continues to help produce daily blogs that contain weekly features on topics of interest and relevance. She is never tired, always willing to help others, and never gives up when it comes to helping others to voice their opinions. As she puts it: "My undying commitment is to ensure that the kids of tomorrow have a more level playing field when it comes to such things as employment opportunities, equal access to the Internet and technology. I think that if I can do my little part to help someone else succeed then in turn they will help others."
We are all very proud to be part of the Sterling Creations team but above all, we are pleased and delighted to have Donna J Jodhan as our leader.
Now you can view blogs written by our unstoppable president at: http://numpadplus.com/blog/?page_id=7 (access and accessibility) http://www.accessibilitynews.ca/acnews/editorials/donna.php (accessibility issues in Canada) http://www.accessibilitynewsinternational.com (accessibility and disability issues on the international scene) http://www.onestopbookcafe.com (under the café talk link) http://www.untappedwealth.com/businessdesk.html (important answers to consumers concerns) http://www.sterlingcreations.ca/magazine.html (monthly editorial) http://www.sterlingcreations.ca/blog/blog.html (blogs for language professionals and special needs business consultants) Our Winter 2008 newsletter is now available in Word document format. To receive a copy, please send an email to info@sterlingcreations.ca
Ask the expert
Blind man fights for secret voting right March 2009 By the Sterling Creations Accessibility team
Hello there! This month we are going to share an article with you in answer to several queries that we have continued to receive over the past few months. Especially in light of the not too long ago well-publicized American Presidential elections and the lesser known Canadian elections. Many persons have written in asking about the accessibility of such things as election information, party websites, and ballots. We think that the following article will shed some light on accessibility issues in another part of the world.
Blind man fights for secret voting right
A blind man has taken the Electoral Office to court alleging it has denied him the fundamental right to vote in secret.
The Equal Opportunity Tribunal heard that David Rankin needs someone else to fill out his ballot papers.
Mr Rankin, from Golden Grove in Adelaide, has been blind for more than 30 years.
Having unsuccessfully lobbied for a computer-assisted voting system for the last SA election, he chose not to vote.
Mr Rankin wants the Tribunal to force the Electoral Office to introduce computer system or at least a braille system for the 2010 state election.
The Office is expected to argue that the cost of implementing such a system would be too high.
Union Card or Master Card -- How a Nation of Workers Became a Nation of Debtors March 2009 By the Sterling Creations Research team
Dear readers We would like to publish an article this month that is truly in keeping with the times that we face today. This article is great food for thought and should be taken seriously. Please take a few minutes to read and reflect. This article was published a few months ago but it still holds much relevance today.
Union Card or Master Card -- How a Nation of Workers Became a Nation Of Debtors
By Frank Joyce, AlterNet October 23, 2008, Printed on October 24, 2008 http://www.alternet.org/story/103863/
It has been apparent for some time that the 20th Century US social contract is defunct beyond repair. Now the economic system faces the prospect of collapse as well. Not surprisingly, these developments are related. They did not come about overnight.
Looking back, it's easy to see that the system which emerged from the post-Bolshevik revolution, mass industrial production era of the 1920's, 30's and 40's was beginning to unravel by the end of the 1970's.
Union membership provides a helpful lens through which to view the process.
During the 1960's union membership bounced up and down within a narrow range ending the decade slightly higher than it began. But starting in 1970, it began a steady decline. In 1970 union workers were 29.6 percent of the work force. At those numbers, unions were able to exert considerable leverage over the wages, benefits and working conditions of all workers. By 1980 union workers were down to 23.2 percent of the total workforce. By the year 2000, union members represented just 13.5 percent of all workers. Today it is about 12.1 percent.
Conventional wisdom holds that Ronald Reagan caused the decline of unions by busting the air traffic controllers union (PATCO) in 1981. Not so. What Reagan and his advisors understood was that union power was already on the wane. Did they know for certain that they could attack PATCO and get away with it? Probably. But even if they didn't, they deemed it a risk--a "probe," if you will--worth taking.
Either way, they did bust PATCO. Consequently, the message that unions could be beat came through for all to see. Employers got the point and stepped up their already fierce resistance at the bargaining table. And they devoted new and effective resources to defeating organizing efforts by their workers.
Workers also got it that unions were weakening. That too made organizing tougher. Corruption scandals and other difficulties added to problems of unions. As the power of unions declined, real wages for workers declined too. Most economists agree that measured in constant dollars, wages in the US have been effectively stagnant since about 1975.
Unions were indisputably an effective instrument for building a broad "middle" class. They did so by applying sufficient power to assure that workers shared in the value that they were helping to create. As industrialization brought enormous innovation and productivity, workers waged epic struggles that won them the wages to buy what they were making. Working conditions improved. Home ownership, car ownership and college for the children of workers became widespread. Pensions and employer paid health care became the norm.
But. But. But. For many reasons unions were less effective at sustaining the newly huge middle-class than they had been at creating it. (The how and the why of the inability of US unions to perceive, let alone counteract, the new forces coming into play in the 1970's is an interesting and important but different topic.)
Declining union membership and power is, however, only one variable in the equation that has brought us to the white hot economic and political meltdown now dominating our news and our lives. Another critical variable is this: as the wallets of workers held fewer and fewer union cards, credit cards were filling up those very same wallets. Workers were in effect trading union cards for MasterCard's.
In the process workers became the proverbial frogs in the pot on the stove. The temperature kept getting closer to the boiling point. But the water felt just fine. Because even though worker power was in decline, worker consumption was going up. Color TV's replaced black and white TV's, only to be replaced again by bigger screen TV's and now LCD's and Plasmas. Vehicles got bigger and better and working families had more of them. Shopping malls proliferated and shopping itself became the national religion. Cell phones, computers, video games, boats, iPods and snowmobiles--workers had stuff, lots and lots of stuff. The whole economy grew.
How could this happen in the face of stagnant real wages? Three reasons. Technological political and economic forces made global production both possible and necessary. That in turn made it possible to stabilize and in many cases lower costs and prices for goods and services.
The social upheaval of the 60's helped create conditions that brought women into the workforce in great numbers. The added income helped to offset the decline in wages for men.
Last and anything but least, credit, not wages, came to drive purchasing and consumption. For workers, debt came from all over: credit cards; longer and longer terms for auto loans; huge college loans; "creative" financing for mortgages. A whole kit and caboodle of financial entanglements enmeshed workers, students, just about everybody. The "middle" class became the debtor class.
Between 1970 and 2000, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis of the Federal Reserve Bank, household debt relative to disposable personal income nearly doubled. In 2006, David A. Gaffen reported in the Wall Street Journal that "households'...debt-to-income ratio reached an all time high 131.1%." (Exploding public debt is an important component of this dynamic too. According to Federal Reserve Board data, between 1957 and 2007 the inflation adjusted total debt load per person in the US increased $145,432, equivalent to an increase of $581,728 per family of 4. That number, of course, does not include long-term costs of the war in Iraq or of ongoing taxpayer funded bailouts of financial companies.)
That debt is bondage is a profound moral truth. But it is an important shaper of political and economic consciousness as well. The more you are in debt, the less likely you are to rock the boat. Take on your employer? Go on strike? Risk your job by trying to start a union? What, and miss a credit card payment? Don't you get it? I'm maxed out. Risk getting my car getting reposed? You've got to be kidding.
Some of this attitude is quite conscious. Much of is more below the surface. Either way, this kind of debt profoundly changes many things including the relationship of the worker to the employer. It's one thing to "owe my soul to the company store." But this debt is different. This debt creates a mindset by which the paycheck and the employer who provides it come to be seen as a protector from the demands of the lender. It is the credit card company and the collection agency that become the greatest source of worry and harassment.
To be sure, there are those who have felt little or no grief at all. Others have overcome financial challenges and setbacks. There is no denying that for quite a long time, this system seemed to work just fine. In garden variety daily life terms, living standards were going up. Millions of working class families had fulfilling and decent lives. Many still do.
But this arrangement changes politics too. Economically satisfied workers can "afford" political engagement on social issues such as gun ownership or abortion if they choose to be involved at all. And if you have a growing 401 K--which you have been led to believe is far more secure than Social Security--why wouldn't you have a literally "conservative" political outlook? Why not align with the politics that come with living in a "gated" community to defend against the less well off hordes? From that outlook, it's easy to imagine immigrants and/or "angry" African Americans as being seen as a much bigger threat than financial shenanigans on Wall Street. Thus are born "Reagan Democrats."
Moreover, from church, media and political pulpit alike comes a very sophisticated propaganda drumbeat. Relentlessly it pumps out the message that is that if you are on debt overload, you and you alone made bad choices. You didn't manage your money well. You should be contrite, even ashamed. The last thing you should do is think you have anything in common with any one else--even if millions are in exactly the same situation. Even less should you consider that you are a victim of extremely cynical and deliberate manipulation.
Did not the Credit Card Masters of the Universe barefacedly testify before Congress that it was they who needed protection from irresponsible borrowers? And did not a substantial majority of the "people's" representatives from both political parties in Congress agree with them? (As the righteous Elizabeth Warren has pointed out, those very same credit card companies routinely troll bankruptcy fillings to get names of bankruptcy filers to whom they then send credit cards solicitations! See here for terrific information on debt dynamics from Elizabeth Warren and her band of researchers. The New York Times recently published an excellent article on this subject as well.)
But credit card solicitations are not the only toxic Kool-Aid that's been on offer. The same institutions told us too that 401-K's are safer and better than either social security or a union negotiated pension. Why? Because private investments and personal responsibility are good and government and collective action are bad, that's why. It's all enough to make your head swim. Partly that's because through it all You're On Your Own (YOYO). Even now, workers have some degree of union protection--whether they belong to a union or not. Unions and the threat of unions retain a small degree of leverage over some employer behavior.
Debtors have nothing. No one even pretends to care about them except lenders who will offer more credit at terms worse than what you have now or "credit counselors" who will help you--oh, and incidentally help themselves and help the lenders who got you into trouble in the first place too.
The result is now before us. Absent any restraining force whatsoever, the financial masters of the universe went wild. They invented ways to make money out of whole cloth. They ENRONed the economy of the world.
Let's take a deep breath and go back to the beginning for a minute. The "cost" of forming or joining a union seems high. As a worker, you are told over and over again that you might lose your job because you'll get fired for being a union supporter or that your employer will close up shop altogether if it goes union. And enough employers do just that, so the threat is entirely credible.
And even if you get a union you'll pay dues. And you will hear again and again what a dumb thing that is. You will learn repeatedly about workers who go on strike only to settle for wages and benefits that are worse, not better. The media will tell you over and over about union companies that shrink or move all their work to Mexico or China or go out of business entirely.
At the same time workers get offers of "cheap" credit in the mail virtually every day. The choice seems clear. Union membership? Expensive. Risky. At least a little bit scary.
The credit that gets you your car(s), your plasma TV, your home and college tuition for your children? That seems "cheap." Isn't the word "free" the single most common word in credit solicitations?
Admittedly sometimes there can be a downside to all this credit. Well actually, more often than not the lenders, especially credit card companies do treat their customers like shit. They raise rates and add incomprehensible and ever more expensive fees. When you call them to argue or just get an explanation you enter voice mail hell. Or if you do reach someone they might respond by lowering your credit limit or adding yet another fee. Collection agencies can really make your life miserable.
And yes, politicians of both parties do keep changing the rules so that lenders can basically do whatever they want. Until just the last few weeks they were virtually all for "deregulation." (Suddenly they are all "born again" regulators. Hmmm.) Speak up as Dennis Kucinich, Danny Schecter and others have done and you will be marginalized as a kook, a whiner or an extremist.
And yes it can be annoying that the perpetrators of this economic bondage are living very large while you are struggling more and more every day.
But, hey, don't be ungrateful. You live in the "ownership society"!
Really? Do you own your stuff? Or is it in effect rented? Or is it maybe that the finance companies own you? And by the way, if they are so morally and otherwise superior, how are they doing at managing the system they created?
Sisters and brothers, the debt society truly is a house of cards. MasterCard's, VISA cards, Discover Cards, Debit cards. And it is built on sand at that. The whole damn thing rests on a foundation of credit default swaps and commercial paper and sub-prime mortgage bundles and hedges and leverage and god only knows what other hocus pocus.
But now. But now? Make no mistake about it--the financial equivalent of Hurricane Katrina is blowing that house down. Naturally, the very same people who built the house in the first place are trying to patch it up. Why wouldn't they? In the short term we should probably wish them the best. So far, however, the only solution they seem to have to the debt crisis is to create a more debt. A lot more debt.
Clearly, we need to start designing and building a new house altogether. In the 20th century, the Flint sit-down strike and the Montgomery Bus Boycott stand as icons of successful struggles by working men and women to win economic and social justice against daunting opposition. It's time to do it again.
Frank Joyce is a journalist and labor communications consultant. He is writing a book on reinventing unions.
Are people with disability at risk at work? A review of the evidence March 2009 By Scott Savoy
Hello all! My choice of article this month is in keeping with our company's dedication and commitment to highlight important issues as they pertain to persons with disabilities. The following article reveals some very startling facts and we hope you take the time to read through it. Have a great March.
Are people with disability at risk at work? A review of the evidence
Su Mon Kyaw-Myint and others / Office of the Australian Safety and Compensation Council 08-09-2008
The Australian Safety and Compensation Council (ASCC) undertook research in response to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission's WORKability1:Barriers report as part of its comprehensive research programme.
This report shows that workers with a disability are not an increased occupational health and safety risk. The research findings suggest that workers with a disability have on average, a lower number of OHS incidents and have lower workers' compensation costs, in comparison to other employees. Contrary to common perceptions by employers that people with disability pose an increased OHS risk in their workplace, this research shows that the opposite is true...
This snippet is from the latest number of Australian policy Online, Australian Policy Online www.apo.org.au
Colin Moore Social Worker Adult & Community Support Services Wooloowin Service Centre Ph. 36303200 Fax.33579536
The reader’s choice
Blind Korea masseurs win case March 2009 Contributed by Sung Mai of Korea
Dear Sung, thank you so much for your contribution. We always welcome articles from those so far away from us and we feel that this article shines the spotlight on the picture for persons with disabilities in Korea. Thank you again.
Blind Korea masseurs win case http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7699114.stm
A blind masseur protests outside court in Seoul Kim Jang-soo, a masseur for 25 years, staged a protest outside the court
A South Korean law which states that only the visually impaired can be licensed masseurs has been upheld in the country's Constitutional Court.
The licensed masseurs - who must be registered blind - have been protesting against moves to change the law.
They say it is a legal protection that provides many blind people with autonomy and an income.
Sighted masseurs said that the law infringed on free employment rights and criminalised them in their trade.
"The court decision is not only a verdict on our right to live but also a measure of South Korea's conscientiousness," said Lee Gyu-seong from the Korean Association of Masseurs.
Noisy protests The group - which has about 7,100 visually impaired members - has led noisy protests over the court case, with some blind masseurs even jumping off bridges into the Han river which runs through Seoul.
The law goes back to 1912 when Korea was under Japanese colonial rule. The US military government abolished the protection in 1946 but it was reinstated in 1963.
Blind masseurs battle police in Seoul (Sept 18 2008) The masseurs association has led noisy protests against the change in the law
South Korea's estimated 200,000 unlicensed masseurs said the law denied them the right to practise their trade.
Unlicensed masseurs can face heavy fines and even prison sentences, but they say there is high demand for their skills.
Although they won a 2006 court decision to overturn the law, parliament has now agreed to continue the monopoly for the blind as licensed masseurs.
"Massage is in effect the only occupation available for the visually handicapped and there is little alternative to guarantee earnings for those persons," said the Constitutional Court in a statement. Welfare experts say that although the law helps blind people to make a living, it makes employers in other fields less likely to hire the visually impaired, thus adding to workplace discrimination.
News and views
Scientists get around paralysed muscles in monkey experiment March 2009 By Christian Robicheau
Hey there! My selection this month zooms in on a possible break thru for stroke victims and those suffering from spinal chord injuries. I hope that this article is just one of many of such to come.
Scientists get around paralysed muscles in monkey experiment ; Research seen as step toward treatment for victims of strokes, spinal cord injuries
Margaret Munro Ottawa Citizen
Researchers have made a detour around paralysed muscles to get monkeys flicking their wrists and playing video games.
A U.S. team, whose work is seen as a step toward treatment for stroke victims and people with spinal cord injuries, enabled monkeys to regain use of paralysed muscles by learning to control the activity of a single brain cell.
Electrodes implanted in the monkeys' brains picked up the neural signal and rerouted it around paralysed muscles to restore movement in the animals' arms.
The team at the University of Washington says the technology may one day enable maimed and paralysed people to regain control of everyday actions such as picking up a cup of coffee, brushing their teeth and perhaps even walking again.
However, they stress the monkey experiment, published in the journal Nature yesterday, is just an "initial" demonstration.
"Certainly we are several years away, if not several decades away, from this being ready for a clinical application," lead author Chet Moritz said during a media teleconference.
Before it could be used in people, better and more reliable methods are needed to pick up signals from brain neurons, eliminating the need for wires through the skin and repeated electrode replacements, Mr. Moritz and his colleagues say.
For the experiment, the scientists trained two macaque monkeys to play a simple video game that entailed moving their wrists to get a cursor to hit a target. After the monkeys had mastered that game, anesthetic was injected into the monkeys' arms to block transmission of signals from the brain, temporarily paralysing the wrist.
Fine electrode probes, which had been previously implanted in the animals' brains, picked up signals from cells in the motor cortex, which controls movement, and routed the signals to a cellphone-sized computer outside the body. The signals were turned into weak electrical signals, typical of what would normally flow from the brain, and routed into the wrist muscles.
The monkeys quickly learned how to use their brain cells to tense the muscles so they could play the game, demonstrating they had regained control of the otherwise paralysed wrist.
All it required was the signal from a single neuron, and it did not matter which one, Mr. Moritz said, noting the monkeys learned quite rapidly.
This latest study is said to be the first to combine a brain-computer interface with real-time electrical stimulation.
"A robotic arm would be better for someone whose physical arm has been lost, or if the muscles have atrophied, but, if you have an arm whose muscles can be stimulated, a person can learn to reactivate them with this technology," says Dr. Eberhard Fetz, senior author on the Nature paper and professor of physiology and biophysics at the University of Washington.
The scientists say one of the more intriguing aspects of their work is that it indicates any of the brain's motor cortex cells, regardless of whether it had been previously associated with wrist movement, was capable of stimulating muscle activity.
"The cells don't have to have a preordained role in the movement," Dr. Fetz says.
They also say the monkeys' ability to control the neurons stimulating the wrist muscles improved with practice.
There are plenty of engineering and technical challenges to overcome before the techniques could be used in people, including developing more durable electrodes that do not lose their ability to pick up signals as scar tissue builds up around them, the researchers say.
They say it may eventually be possible to pick up neuron signals from outside the scalp, eliminating the need for implants altogether.
Helpful tips
March 2009 By the Sterling Creations Research team
Hello there! It’s your favourite Research team and this month we have a bunch of tips to pass on to you. Please read on and enjoy your month!
Helpful tips for March:
What's this about keeping cheese in your freezer? Truth be told, you can definitely store cheese in your freezer to keep it longer.
Want to know some very important facts about keeping healthy skin? Eating Your Way to Healthy Skin « Be Inspired Eating tomatoes for example provides a healthy does of anti-oxidants from the inside which is good for your skin and body. Bell peppers contain a lot of good things including folic acid which helps your body to produce new skin. Check out the following url: http://inspireskinandbody.wordpress.com/
Want to know a bit more about those dried herbs that we often use for cooking? Dried cilantro is tasteless. Rosemary, thyme, bay leaf, and oregano are some of the best dried herbs that you can use for cooking.
Where can you find vitamin D? In Omega3, eggs, cereal, and yes! In sunshine. A 10 minute soak in the sun each day, letting the sun touch your arms and legs can give you doses of vitamin D.
What are some types of common depression? Social Anxiety Disorder Seasonal Affective Disorder (S.A.D) Bipolar Disorder Clinical Depression Schizophrenia Panic Disorder (having panic attacks) Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.
Do you know what you should be eating when you have a case of diarrhea? Bananas, plain boiled rice, apple sauce, and plain toast. You can drink unsweetened tea as an added bonus.
How long should you keep mayonnaise, mustard, and ketchup in your fridge? For mayonnaise, no longer than three months after you have opened the jar. The same for mustard. For ketchup, no longer than five months.
What's this about the benefits of eating an apple a day? The old saying is that an apple a day keeps the doctor away but there is more! Apples are good for taking care of bad breath and keeping one's teeth clean.
How many teaspoons are there in a tablespoon? The answer is three, not two!
Would you like to know some important facts about your body's internal clock? Between the hours of 8 am and 11 am: Your body is ready to deal with pain such as going to the dentist. Between the hours of 4 pm to 6 pm: Your long term memory is at its peak. Between the hours of 5 pm to 7 pm: Your hand-eye coordination is at its best. Time for the casino. Nothing wrong with an afternoon nap.
All you wanted to know about coffee filters! Coffee filters.. Who knew! And you can buy 1,000 at the Dollar store for almost nothing.
1. Cover bowls or dishes when cooking in the microwave. Coffee filters make excellent covers. 2. Clean windows and mirrors. Coffee filters are lint-free so they'll leave windows sparkling. 3. Protect China. Separate your good dishes by putting a coffee filter between each dish. 4. Filter broken cork from wine. If you break the cork when opening a wine bottle, filter the wine through a coffee filter. 5. Protect a cast-iron skillet. Place a coffee filter in the skillet to absorb moisture and prevent rust. 6. Apply shoe polish. Ball up a lint-free coffee filter. 7. Recycle frying oil. After frying, strain oil through a sieve lined with a coffee filter. 8. Weigh chopped foods. Place chopped ingredients in a coffee filter on a kitchen scale. 9. Hold tacos. Coffee filters make convenient wrappers for messy foods. 10. Stop the soil from leaking out of a plant pot. Line a plant pot with a coffee filter to prevent the soil from going through the drainage holes. 11. Prevent a Popsicle from dripping. Poke one or two holes as needed in a coffee filter. 12. Do you think we used expensive strips to wax eyebrows? Use strips of coffee filters. 13. Put a few in a plate and put your fried bacon, French fries, chicken fingers, etc on them. Soaks out all the grease. 14. Keep in the bathroom. They make great "razor nick fixers." OH YEAH THEY ARE GREAT TO USE IN YOUR COFFEE MAKERS TOO.
What are some of the benefits of using toothpaste in addition to teeth brushing? Well, you can use toothpaste to do such things as: Take scuff marks off your sneakers, Clean your swimming goggles, and remove crayon marks.
Accessibility news
A professor turns cell phones into aids for the disabled March 2009 By the Sterling Creations Research team
Hey there! We're back for our second contribution and we really hope that when you read this one you will be as excited as we were when we read it. Have a terrific March.
A professor turns cell phones into aids for the disabled By CATHERINE RAMPELL
http://chronicle.com/free/v54/i42/42a01302.htm
Three years ago, in the depths of a Pittsburgh winter, Priya Narasimhan saw a blind man trying to catch a bus.
Stepping in and out of pools of slush, the man called out to passing pedestrians to ask if a vehicle he heard arriving was his ride home. Buses passed by.
"We can do better than that," Ms. Narasimhan said to herself.
Ms. Narasimhan, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, soon became the hub for student research projects that develop technologies to assist the disabled by doing such tasks as identifying buses or translating sign language into spoken words. Their creations turn the most ubiquitous device on a college campus - the cell phone - into an independence-enhancing machine.
Some of these endeavors are now being spun off into a small company. Ms. Narasimhan's and her students' accomplishments have come after countless hours of work, some for credit but much uncredited, and almost always not financed
save for a small grant cadged from the university.
Shortly after the bus incident, Ms. Narasimhan began kicking around ideas about ways to make blind people's lives easier using technology. Her main priorities were convenience and affordability, so her first inclination was to upgrade something many blind people already use: canes. Perhaps, she thought, she could create a cane that would give audio clues to the surrounding environment.
In the process, she began consulting with Dan Rossi, a systems administrator at Carnegie Mellon who has been blind since childhood. Mr. Rossi has strong views about what kinds of technologies can help blind people. He told Ms. Narasimhan flatly that upgrading the cane, as other inventors have tried to do, was a terrible idea.
"A cane is a cheap tool," he said. "You know, it's 20 bucks. You can break them, you can throw them away, you can get them wet, and they don't have to be recharged. It's like a pencil. You really don't want to soup up a pencil."
Four Technologies
Casting canes aside, the budding engineers starting looking at cell phones, which can be bought already outfitted with text-to-speech software and which many disabled people also already use. So far Ms. Narasimhan has advised three student projects that adapt cell phones for use by the blind, and one for use by the deaf.
The first adaptation helps solve the problem faced by the blind man waiting for the bus. Her students' software program allows users to retrieve scheduled bus routes on their smart phones from the transit system's Web site. The schedules are then read aloud by the phone.
But buses tend to be off-schedule, so Ms. Narasimhan said she is also lobbying the local transit authority to give her access to buses' GPS locations. That way a blind person can know for certain if the vehicle he hears approaching is the one he needs to board.
The second project assists blind people in shopping for groceries or other goods by connecting a tiny bar-code reader to a cell phone, which retrieves product names from a free Universal Product Code database that is already available on the Internet. This way, Mr. Rossi said, he doesn't need a sighted person to help him determine if the cookie box he is holding is oatmeal raisin or chocolate chip.
Ms. Narasimhan is hoping to build a new version of the public UPC database that will include nutritional information, pricing, and other details that a visually impaired shopper might want to know.
Devices already exist that allow people to create custom-made bar-codes, which could be added to the new database so that blind users could label and then identify objects at home or at work.
The last vision-related project Ms. Narasimhan and her students have been working on may receive more attention thanks to a major lawsuit.
In May a U.S. appeals court ruled that the U.S. Treasury must change U.S. paper currency to make bills accessible to the blind. Unlike paper currency from most other countries, U.S. bills of different denominations are the same size and have the same texture. Blind people thus must ask sighted people to identify the bills they are given, and then usually rely on folding or organizing tricks to remember which bills are which.
Ms. Narasimhan's students have provided an alternative. They have populated a database with images of bills, crisp and crumpled, well lit and shadowed. With special software, a blind person can take a picture of a bill using a cell phone camera. The software will transmit the picture to the database and name the bill based on an image match.
There are already text-reading currency identifiers that can also read words
from a variety of other sources. A blind person using these products must zoom in directly on the word "FIVE" or number "5," though, rather than any other part of the bill. Image matching, with the Carnegie Mellon system, does not have this limitation, though it has the disadvantage of not being able to identify unknown text such as that on menus.
Mr. Rossi and Ms. Narasimhan said that for years they have been trying to get the ear of the Treasury Department - the defendant in the currency accessibility suit - about this project.
"My point to them was 'You guys can either spend a whole lot of money modifying your currency or you could just buy a bunch of cell phones and give them away,'" Mr. Rossi said.
He said department officials have always wished him well but are reluctant to support any particular company.
So far Ms. Narasimhan has been financing most of the research out of her own pocket, though she recently secured a grant from the university for $50,000. She is trying to figure out how to get the prototypes off the ground, bundling them into a spinoff company called BeaconSys. When talking to potential financers, she and Mr. Rossi emphasize ways that this software created to help blind people could be useful to sighted customers - for example, the bus-schedule software would be helpful to anyone using public transportation - thereby expanding the market and bringing down prices.
Attracting Outside Interest
"I don't know what our exact price point will be, but it will be in the tens of dollars," rather than the hundreds or even thousands of dollars that specialized devices for the blind like currency readers and bar-code scanners currently sell for, Mr. Rossi said.
Major national blind organizations have also shown interest, though Mr. Rossi says he is wary of aligning the projects too closely with either group.
"The two main organizations, the National Federation of the Blind and the American Council of the Blind, are kind of along the lines of Democrats and Republicans. They hate each other, and if one says one thing, the other is against it," he said, noting that the NFB has sharply criticized the AFB's lawsuit against the Treasury. "We're not getting into bed with anybody just yet."
While trying to secure backing for the technology projects for the blind, Ms. Narasimhan has also been advising a nascent project that uses text-to-speech software on cell phones to assist the deaf. This project involves a gesture-recognition glove that can translate hand movements, such as American Sign Language, into spoken words. When a deaf person wearing the glove makes a sign, sensors in the glove translate each hand position into words that are then read aloud by the cell phone's text-to-speech software. That way, the deaf person can communicate with a hearing person who doesn't know ASL.
This project is still in the early stages and right now can translate only a few test gestures - a thumbs-up sign triggers the phrase "Go, Pens!," for example, in honor of the Pittsburgh Penguins.
Despite the financial straits Ms. Narasimhan's students say they are in, and the fact that they are no longer receiving course credit for this work, they devote many late nights and weekends to the assistive-technology projects. "I spend a little more time on this stuff than I should be, at least if I want to graduate anytime soon," said Patrick E. Lanigan, a graduate student who has been working on the technologies for the blind. But, he and his colleagues say, in this kind of work, they are motivated by more than the desire to obtain a degree, and have learned to get a lot of work done even when resources are scarce.
"This has mostly been a soup-kitchen kind of project," says Ms. Narasimhan.
Editorial
Seniors facing an accessibility gap March 2009 By Donna J Jodhan
Seniors facing an accessibility gap
There is a very interesting yet concerning problem that seems to be deepening these days and I am referring to the accessibility gap being faced by our seniors at the present time. It appears that as more and more seniors begin to lose their vision they become less and less able to access information because of the following reasons. 1. They are unable to access the Internet because they either do not possess the technology to do so or simply because they do not know how to access the Internet. Many of these persons grew up in the pre-Internet era and accordingly they are very hesitant to try new technology. 2. Many of them no longer have sufficient vision to read the newspapers let alone read their own personal mail. 3. Many of them are extremely hesitant to learn new technology that may enable them to read their mail and newsprint. 4. Many of them are unable to read what they write. They did not need to use Braille while they were fully sighted and now they are finding it extremely difficult to adjust to learning Braille or using an accessible note taker. 5. Many of them face financial barriers when it comes to being able to learn and purchase new technology.
For any company or individual listening in: This may be an excellent time for you to look at these facts more closely and see the possibilities and opportunities just waiting for you to explore and develop. There is not just an accessibility gap facing seniors as far as this picture is concerned, there is also a gap in what is being demanded and what is being supplied at the moment and here is where you can use your creativity and imaginations to design and develop services to meet these types of demands. For make no bones about it, these demands are only going to increase as time marches on. In addition, there are some very important big hitters and stakeholders who are also going to be pushing this demand; namely the American government, other global governments, the health industry, the legal profession, plus many others.
So in summary we have the following picture: More and more persons losing their vision at a later age. They are unable to access information for several reasons among them being; Inability to use modern technology, a hesitance to learn new technology, unable to afford to learn and purchase new technology. Seniors are facing an ever widening accessibility gap and this is mainly due to demand outstripping supply.
As I see it, this problem is going to become more serious as time marches on and it may be time for us to work on a solution to find a way for our seniors to stay in touch with the rest of the world. The earlier we find a solution; the better it would be for all of us because we are all going to become seniors one day in the future and chances are that many of us will end up losing various degrees of vision.
Comments to the editor
March 2009 From the desk of the editor
Hello there! Here are this month's comments.
From Kristian Everhart of Sweden: I liked your February editorial. It is so true and I hope that soon companies start thinking like you.
From Catherine Luft of Boston MASS: Great work Donna! I wish I had your energy to write so much and so well!
From Mark Cumberland of Washington DC: I hope and pray that Obama pays some little attention to persons with disabilities. It is about time that a president started doing so.
From Mary Kelly of Liverpool England: Donna, your weekly feature at the business desk on www.untappedwealth.com is really nice. Keep up the good work.
From Steven Quak of Missouri: How about featuring some exciting sports news in this magazine? Sports for the blind?
From Nelda Vaughn of Montreal Canada: The February article on the CAPTCHA thing was very enlightening. We need to have more of these types of articles printed.
From Roberto Casado of Miami: Yeh! More video games are definitely needed. Is anyone listening?
From Shaughn Christy of Dublin Ireland: A very good editorial in your February issue. How many companies are really paying attention?
If you have something to say, an opinion to express, or anything that you wish to share with the rest of the world, then please send it on to info@sterlingcreations.ca. Comments to the editor are yours and yours alone. All comments are reviewed to ensure appropriate language.
Notes
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