Helping hand for the handicapped

One in ten of the world's population is handicapped in some way. But should this huge human sector be bypassed by the information revolution? Anand Parthasarathy reviews what is being done worldwide, to bring the physically challenged into the mainstream of the cyber highway.

ANJALI IS a diabetic. She needs to monitor her blood sugar reading very carefully - and keep tight control of the calorific value of whatever she eats. That way she may escape the more serious consequences of this widely prevalent disease. From June 1 this year, her task has been made a bit easier. That was the day the palm handheld computer was introduced in India - and Anjali became the proud possessor of a recent model, thanks to a voluntary organisation that underwrote the stiff cost, Rs 40,000.

Anjali has downloaded a share ware programme that runs on the Palm, something she traced when surfing sites dealing with medical uses of handhelds. Now her Palm is a portable friend and guide, helping her keep all her dietary records in one place, and log her complex prescription routines. And latched on to a mobile phone, it enables her to join online chat sessions where other diabetics worldwide exchange useful information.

Anjali is one of the lucky ones. Her medical condition never prevented her from using a standard PC at her work place, surfing the Internet and enjoying the advantages of access to the world wide web of information. Indeed that is where she learned how a handheld computer of her own could enhance the quality of her life. But every tenth person in the world suffers from even more serious physical and mental challenges - visual, auditory, cognitive or motor challenges - which make tasks like reading information off a monitor, or hearing a spoken sound or just hitting a keyboard seem like an impossible task. Such persons are stopped at the every entrance to the information superhighway, because they lack the capacity to make the first move.

But there is hope - albeit in small measure - that all this is about to change for the better. The global Information Technology industry, goaded by thousands of volunteer organizations and a few humane governments, is finally realising that it has a duty to those millions who need a small helping hand to access the tools and resources of the computers-and-communications world. Usually in fits and starts, but sometimes in concerted action, IT majors have begun to spend their resources in extending the reach of their products to embrace the world of the challenged.

The major software vendors have built features into their frontline products aimed at improving its accessibility to those who may suffer from minor disabilities of sight, hearing or locomotion. The creators of the two main PC operating systems - Microsoft and Apple have provided options in their respective control panels about which the majority of users may not even be aware. Windows 95 and later versions provide a route ( Settings - Control Panel - Accessibility options ) as does Apple's MacOS (Control Panel - Easy Access/Close View) to customise the PC for easier accessibility. Both operating systems can be adjusted for ``sticky keys''. That means keys that need to be pressed simultaneously (like control-del-alt or the shift key for capital letters) can now be pressed one after another.

Similarly many children with learning challenges keep their finger pressed on a key causing the character to repeat. The ``Filter Keys'' option in Windows and ``Adjust Key Repeat Rate'' in MacOS will ensure that only one key stroke is implemented. If the user for any reason is unable to operate the mouse at all, there are provisions to assign the mouse click operations to the numeric keypad portion of the keyboard. For those with partial visual impairment, the High Contrast option in Windows or ``CloseView'' in MacOS will convert the screen to a white on black mode for easier viewing. Screen magnification is also possible. Macintosh always provided a ``talking alert'' option where alert messages are spoken out loud ( Speech - options - talking alerts -Speak the Phrase). The new Windows XP version due in October is expected to have a similar feature. For those with hearing impairment, both operating systems allow the user to opt for a mode where the alerts are visual rather than aural.

Indeed Microsoft has been playing ``catch up'' when it comes to accessibility features - and in some of its releases, particularly the ``pre installed'' versions that come even with branded PCs these days, the manufacturers do not provide the CD version. Hence if any feature of accessibility is missing from the hard disk, one has the hassle of having to go online and downloading the options from its website (microsoft.com/enable).

To ensure that more and more Web sites build in features that will enable the impaired user to access them, the World Wide Web Consortium has created a resource called ``Web Content Accessibility Guidelines'' where one can check the readability of one's site, and even download some free utilities. (www.w3.org/tr/wai-webcontent)

These features cannot provide a solution for those whose visual or aural impairment is total. For them too there is hope: a number of third party initiatives - an umbilical to the `connected ' PC:

For the visually challenged, there are ``talking browsers'', where the textual content of a web page is read out by a synthesized voice. IBM was an early leader here and created a Home Page Reader, a trial version of which can be downloaded from its Web site www.ibm.com/able/products.htm. Another popular alternative to the Browser leaders, Netscape and Internet Explorer is FastBrowser which embeds more than 500 search engines and allows you to open 180 Web pages at once. It has recently come out with a ``talking'' version which can be tried out free from its Website www.fastbrowser.net, but which costs about $ 30 for a full version. One talking browser that is still free, comes from WeMedia, an online resource specializing in tools to make the Internet more accessible to the disadvantaged. The WeMedia browser can be had from www.wemedia.com and it could take around 30-40 minutes to download the 8 MB software, which ``speaks'' the text one selects within a browser. One can go from link to link using the up and down arrows of the keyboard and can either select the text to read or let the browser read everything on the page. Since this requires atleast a minimum navigation with the mouse, the WeMedia browser may not address the needs of the totally blind.

There are however, a number of ``screen readers'' which speak out everything on a displayed page. Many public bodies in the US are mandated by the Disabilities Act of 1990 to provide talking versions of their online forms - like income tax returns - which are compatible with the industry-standard screen readers.

Some other software tools that enable the blind to exchange email and perform other PC-related operations have been described in a useful article in the May 2001 issue of the Indian monthly ``Computers @ Home'' by Dr Rina Bhargava (rina-b@vsnl.com), entitled ``Software for the disabled'' (pages 78-79). In the current (June) issue of the same journal can be found details of courses conducted by the Mumbai-based Victoria Memorial School for the Blind, which enable the visually challenged to master PC operations(pg. 95).

At a more basic level the urge to enable the blind to use touch as a substitute for sight, has motivated a few developers. A Jerusalem- based company started last year by a Russian-born psychologist, Dr Roman Gouzman, whose own daughter was rendered blind in a skiing accident, recently launched the ``VirTouch'' mouse. This is a special device which consists of three sets each of 32 pins similar to Braille readers. As the cursor moves over the page, the mouse responds: the pins move ``up'' in a black area, ``down'' in white area and somewhere in between to describe shades of grey. The height of the pins helps the user to ``feel'' curved surfaces - and text is read as standard braille alphabet. It is also provided with an audio component to read out the text. The VirTouch ``seeing'' mouse is not cheap -at $ 5000 - but the inventor is hoping for some global sponsorship by agencies for the disabled. It is currently being tested in a 400 piece programme by the Israeli Ministry of Education and a Dutch social services agency has pitched in with $ 1.25 million in venture funding.

Nearer home, two students of the National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad, Chetan Sorab and Badve Chandrasekhar, have created the design for a novel navigation aid for the blind: a Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite receiver, receives the coordinates of the location; a Wireless Internet link collates the fix with local map information and a speaker fitted in a special pair of goggles, translates the information into spoken instructions to the wearer. According to a report in The Times of India, the idea won the Patrick de Haas Prize, at an industrial design competition in Tokyo, Japan, recently. It remains to find an agency to translate design into reality.

In April this year other students at the Singapore Polytechnic, addressed the problems faced by the severely paralyzed when they tried to operate a PC. The students designed a special flexible keyboard fitted underneath with magnetic microswitches. They added some more keys to simulate the left and right buttons of a mouse. The disabled user could operate the keyboard with a very light touch from a pointer held in the mouth.

Indeed, the conventional computer keyboard - a throwback to the ``qwerty'' keyboard of the early typewriters - may soon see radical change as the industry deals with the medical side effects of sustained use.It has been estimated that a typical data entry operator performs over one lakh keystrokes a day and that the striking force expended is equivalent to lifting 1.25 tonnes with the fingers alone! This is the cause of repetitive stress injuries (RSI) and musculoskeletal disorders that account for many productive days lost and health destroyed. ``Ergonomic'' keyboards have now appeared on the market where the stress to wrist, arms, shoulders and neck is minimised. Some of these keyboards like the DataHand are radically different: the 100 plus standard keys are replaced by key switches clustered around the tip of each finger, five around each finger in north, south,east and west directions, with one key below the finger. The thumb has 6 key switches, including two-stage switches for changing modes of all other keys, from normal, to numeric or symbol. The makers assure that finger travel is reduced by 88%. Another way-out design is the ``OrbiTouch'' keyboard from KeyBowl Inc, which is recommended for users with upper extreme disabilities (UED).

Beyond mere PC and Internet access, the blind and deaf have been enabled to enjoy such simple but hitherto inaccessible pleasures like going to a movie. When ``Star Wars: Episode 1'' was released by its maker George Lucas in 1999, it became the first mainstream feature film that was seen by thousands of physically challenged persons. At the initiative of the producers in cooperation with a foundation, The National Centre for Accessible Media (NCAM), set up by the Boston-based public service TV station WGBH (www.wgbh.org/pages/ncam), a few theatres were equipped with ``Descriptive Video Services''(DVS), a laborious process of narration where everything on the screen, including colours and the action is recorded orally by a professional narrator, and played back through headphones to the blind . For the aurally challenged, a few cinema halls were fitted with the ``Rear Window Captioning System'', where the caption text is reversed and displayed on an LED panel in the rear of the hall. It is then reflected to be readable the right way, on acrylic panels placed besides selected seats. A cinemagoer who looks at the main screen through the acrylic panel will seem to see the captions superimposed on the print, while the rest of the audience will see an unsubtitled film. This process could cost about $ 20,000 per theatre but is much less than the cost of a subtitled main print - and as voluntary agencies tell Hollywood's studios - this is still a tiny fraction of the millions of dollars that a big film makes at the box office.

But the next wave of accessibility may be something that is beyond our wildest wish lists. IBM's research in a new Natural Language Understanding Engine holds out the hope that in future a telephone will do the job of a PC and Internet in helping users interact with many public services. The engine currently has a vocabulary of 35,000 words and a pilot trial by a US firm of stock brokers - T. Rowe Price - showed that the system could interact using natural speech with a customer who wanted to buy or sell shares. The time for the transaction was cut to about 45 seconds compared with 5 or 6 minutes using today's ``if yes, press one, if no, press two'' type of guided interaction that we are familiar with - at railway or airline booking facilities. In another demonstration, reported by Reuters earlier this month, a woman spoke English at one end of the phone with a person speaking Turkish at the other - both at conversation speed, while an IBM computer in between furiously translated.

Another futuristic possibility was unveiled on June 13 at the Infocomm exhibition in Las Vegas, US. JesterTek Inc, a company specializing in video gesture technology, took the touch screen and video kiosk a step further with ``JestPoint'' - a technology which allows a user to change a monitor's content by pointing at it from afar. The system understands intuitive gestures and translates them into scroll, zoom and rotate commands. Pointing at a score board for example one can zoom to a particular cricket game and get the score of one batsman or the previous averages of a bowler. This may open up the world of computer based information for another level of disadvantaged users.

In Mumbai, 22 year old Krishnakant More, is a computer engineer and co-founder of the Amateur Software Developer's Foundation. He runs his own company, Compact Software Solutions. Hardly any among his hundreds of customers know that More is blind - and if they knew they couldn't care less. He has overcome his disability to offer a competitive service, because the IT world is made for people like him.

Far away in Minneapolis, Minnesota, US, Dolores and Budd Hagen are busy organising the next Annual Conference on Computer Technology in Special Education and Rehabilitation between 18 and 20 October this year. They have been doing so for 18 years under the aegis of their organization ``Closing the Gap'' ( www.closingthegap.com) which they started as they brought up a deaf child, to share their experiences in harnessing IT for the disabled. Dolores has written a ``Microcomputer Resource book for Special Education'' and in one para she says it, for all like her who participate in the joys and the woes of those more challenged than the majority of us:

``The world of tomorrow will include the computer revolution. My world as well as that of my children will be influenced by that revolution. As a family we have chosen to join rather than ignore the changes around us. We have found the waters to be inviting, the challenges stimulating and the results rewarding''

Let's say ``Amen'' to that.

* * *

An Indian ``communicator'' for Stephen Hawking

THE VISIT to Mumbai earlier this year of the astro physicist Dr Stephen Hawking, who suffers from the muscular disease Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), has motivated an Indian software company, Net Radiophony, to try and improve the somewhat primitive DOS- based text-to-voice synthesizer that Hawking uses.

The new Hawking Communicator which is being designed with the renowned physicist's cooperation, will enhance his ``speech'' from the current 12 words a minute to something much faster. The voice when synthesized, can be adjusted for tone, intonation, speed and pitch as well as accent.

Net Radiophony's Arun Mehta and Vickram Crishna are careful to work their solution around what Prof Hawking has got used to: he looks at a glossary of words ands clicks the ones he wants to speak. He also uses a number of Windows-based mathematical tools for his professional work. The researchers undertaking the project want to work in a way that will help other physically challenged users as well. So they have decided to write the programme in an ``open'' source code that will be available to all, under General Public Licence. They have posted their preliminary code on the www.soureceforge.net website where they invite improvements and additions from volunteers.

Twenty two software engineers are already participating in this venture which will hopefully prove that collaboration can achieve what commercial competition may not - a viable and life -improving product for tomorrow's challenged community.

- AP

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