Dear R&D Friends:
Not to be outdone by Curthis Chong, (grin), here is the text of the speech I
will present at the second U.S./Canada Conference on Technology. I would
guess that all the speeches, or most, and the proceedings will appear in a
future Monitor, probably January or February, 1994.
OBSERVATIONS ON THE
STATE OF TECHNOLOGY FOR THE BLIND
by David Andrews, Director
International Braille and Technology Center
for the Blind
As the Director of the International Braille and Technology Center
for the Blind, I have the opportunity to look at and work with all of the
computer-related technology which is available for blind persons. This
unique opportunity gives me a broad view of what is happening today with
technology. I would like to take the next few minutes to reflect on what I
have observed, both good and bad, including some of my pet peeves.
I got my first taste of technology in 1983 with the old Kurzweil
Reading Machine. Even though I had one in my office, at the New Jersey
Library for the Blind and Handicapped, I found myself using it rarely. This
was in part because it was usually broken. It was also in part because it
was difficult to understand and really didn't do that great a job. I sat down
with the machine and read a whole book about telecommunications. It of
course repeatedly mentioned AT&T, which the machine insisted upon calling
a7&7. The machine was a technical achievement, and my hat goes off to you,
Ray Kurzweil, and certainly it was necessary to get us where we are today.
Unfortunately, it was more of a marketing achievement than a reading
solution. Today's generation of machines is very reliable and much more
able.
I next moved on to a VersaBraille Classic. We just called it the
VersaBraille at the time in 1984. By 1985 I added an Apple 2e computer and
Braille-Edit and an old Echo II. These tools were necessary to realize much
of the power of the VersaBraille. In 1987 I got my first MS-DOS computer, an
old Zenith Z-159 XT, a powerful machine I thought at the time. In 1988 I moved
up to a NEC 286 machine, and I added a 286 laptop and laser printer in 1990.
In 1991 I bought a 33 Mhz 486 Zeos Computer, and I later bought a smaller
486/sx to use to feed mail and messages to computer bulletin boards in the
Baltimore area. Along the way I have bought, traded, and sold various
pieces of access technology--I sold my Optacon to buy my first computer,
and I sold my VersaBraille to buy my second computer. I have also bought,
sold, and used various speech synthesizers, owning as many as five at one
time.
All of this is the long way of saying what is best in this field is
competition. This is true both in the general computer market and the
access technology field. In the early 1980's, you could count the number of
high-tech devices on your two hands and have fingers left over. Now in the
International Braille and Technology Center for the Blind we have twenty
Braille embossers, nine Braille translation programs, over twenty-five
speech synthesizers, twenty screen review programs, five stand-alone
reading machines, nine computer-based reading systems, eight kinds of
refreshable Braille displays, two Braille laptop computers, seven portable
electronic note takers, three kinds of printers for creating Braille and
print on the same page, two devices which allow a deaf-blind person to use a
telephone, and a wide variety of miscellaneous software and hardware, all
designed for blind and deaf-blind persons. It is truly amazing when you
consider that most of this development has happened in the last five years
or less. In less then three years the International Braille and Technology
Center for the Blind has filled a 3,000-plus square foot room with devices
and has had to move to a space over twice as large. Dr. Jernigan, our
Finance Chairman, may well hope that the rate of acquisition slows down a
little so that we can stay in the new premises for a longer period of time.
A good example of competition and how it has improved things is in the
area of stand-alone reading machines. The first machines cost over 50,000
dollars (financed, incidentally, through the National Federation of the
Blind) and came on the market some 15 years ago. I am sure that Dr. Jernigan
and Ray Kurzweil could tell us some war stories about those days.
Kurzweil's current model is priced at about 10 percent the cost of the
original, is smaller, and better. I have said to people in the past that
Kurzweil Computer Products made the reading machine market, and
Arkenstone made it competitive.
The other thing that has helped reading products immensely, but isn't
as available in other access technology areas, is piggybacking on
commercial developments. Optical character recognition products,
scanners, and OCR software are now widely available and used. This has
encouraged a number of companies to develop products in these areas.
Arkenstone, Kurzweil, and others have benefited from this interest and
effort. Unfortunately for us as blind persons, Braille printers, Braille
Translation software, screen review programs, and speech synthesizers
aren't general market items. I would expect that this could change in the
case of speech synthesizers, but not for five years at least. I believe
that ultimately most computers will operate in part by recognizing the
operators voice and responding to his or her commands. If you are talking
to your computer, you won't necessarily be at the keyboard, and won't be
looking at it. Thus, speech synthesis and voice prompting are natural
outgrowths of speech recognition. At this point, cheap and improved speech
synthesis is possible. Until then, our numbers are too small to promote
much research and development in this area. For all intents and purposes,
there has not been any major improvements in speech for approximately 10
years. We have seen incremental improvements, and a number of new
products, and in a couple cases, lower prices, but there has not been a
major improvement in speech synthesis in some time.
The price of the DEC-Talk has dropped dramatically, and it is
increasingly used. However, the danger is that because it is pretty good,
and more affordable, we will accept it as the norm, and depend on it. Its
widespread availability and acceptance don't promote new development.
Likewise, reliance on the SSI 263 chip, used by Artic Technologies, Aicom's
Accent, the Braille 'n Speak, and others, doesn't promote new products. It
offers relatively low cost, good performance, and acceptable speech
quality, and people know how to write for the chip, but it really isn't that
great. We are just used to it. In my opinion, the best thing that could
happen to the speech synthesis field is that the SSI 263 chip would go away.
It would force us to develop alternatives.
Another positive development is the increased involvement of blind
persons in the access technology field. There are quite a number of very
talented blind programmers out there, and a number of important companies
are owned and run by blind persons. Caryn Navy of Raised Dot Computing and
Noel Runyan of Personal Data Systems, both of whom are here, are notable
examples, and there are others. I wasn't trying to leave you out, Ted,
Larry, and the others. There just isn't time for everyone.
There still aren't enough of us at the top though. Look around the
room and observe how many of you are sighted and how many are blind.
Further, some of the big companies (TeleSensory, Humanware, and Kurzweil
spring to mind) have few if any blind sales reps. You might take note of
Arkenstone, which has in large part made its fortune thanks to the efforts
of large numbers of locally-based entrepreneurs, many of whom are blind.
In a few years, technology has become very important to many of us.
While it won't and can't replace basic skills like cane travel and Braille,
some of us couldn't do our jobs without it.
Now to my pet peeves: In working with all the technology, I think that I
have a unique perspective on what could be better overall.
With the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, access to
information has been put in a whole new light. It is now becoming much more
commonplace to get Braille agendas at meetings or menus in restaurants. It
has become easier to get a Braille menu, in some cases, than to get a
braille manual out of some of you. Let me give you a couple examples. We
purchased the $15,000 David Braille computer from Baum U.S.A. in the summer
of 1992 and did not get Braille manuals until a year later. We did not get
Braille manuals for the DMFM/80, the $25,000 refreshable Braille display we
bought from Baum, until late October of 1993. We bought the DMFM/80 at the
same time we bought the David. This is inexcusable for completely Braille-
oriented products which will just be used by blind people. Baum U.S.A. said
that it was making changes and didn't want to publish the manual too soon. If
they had that many changes--well, maybe the product was released too
soon.
I am not trying to pick on Baum. There are other offenders. I finally
printed my own Braille manuals for the Braillex IB80 and Notex 40 from
Papenmeier of Germany. I was unable to get manuals from two different
companies--Adhoc Reading Systems, and ATR Computer. I am still waiting on
Braille for the $16,500 Braillex 2D refreshable Braille display.
While I got Braille with the Alva Braille Carrier (a $9,000 Braille note
taker/display sold by Humanware), it was unformatted, unburst, unbound,
and all in computer Braille. American Thermoform did the same thing with the
manual for the Braillo Comet, a $3,795 braille embosser. On the low end, the
Braille manual that came with the Porta-Thiel (an $1,895 Braille embosser,
which is sold by Blazie Engineering, among others) was atrocious. It also
was unformatted and in Computer Braille.
Further, those of you who send out Braille need to be more
conscientious at times. For years, TeleSensory has distributed Braille
spec sheets on its VersaPoint embosser. These sheets are usually in
Computer Braille. All people see is that it isn't in Grade 2 Braille. You are
only hurting yourself by not translating and proofreading your documents.
Speaking of TeleSensory and Braille, I just got a Braille document from
them. It concerns the Everest printer, which they sold in the past, and the
problems it has had for many with feeding the paper properly. The paper
handling notice was in Braille, but the backs of all the pages, which were
printed in interpoint Braille, had words missing from the right side of each
line. It made for difficult reading, as you can imagine. While the formatting
and translation were fine, it is obvious that none of the pages was proofed
by a Braille reader. TeleSensory is not the only offender in this area
either. They just come to mind as the last one to cross my desk.
Most of the screen review vendors do not offer Braille, not even a
reference card. Omnichron with Flipper, and KANSYs, Inc., with PROVOX have
traditionally offered Braille manuals upon request. IBM had a nice extra
cost hardcover manual with Screen Reader for DOS, but took over a year to
come up with a Braille reference card for Screen Reader/2 for OS/2. Many
of you do not label your disks and/or cassette tapes in Braille either.
So that I won't be perceived as entirely negative, there is some good
Braille out there. Telesensory, Enabling Technologies, Kurzweil, and
Arkenstone, among others, have all traditionally offered good Braille
manuals. Enabling Technologies is noteworthy in that some of their manuals
have contained servicing instructions. They are also willing to send some
kinds of parts out to individual blind users for them to install themselves.
It is nice to be treated like the adults we are.
You are in the business of providing hardware and software products
to blind people. Some of us read Braille; some of us like tape; some of us
prefer disk-based documentation; and some of us would rather have large
print. It is what we need though, and this won't change. You need to consider
this as a part of the cost of doing business with us. It isn't always enough
just to put the manual on disk and leave it to us. You owe us more than
that, particularly with expensive Braille-oriented products.
Before we leave manuals I would like to touch upon the writing itself.
It looks as if some of you don't own a spelling checker, and/or don't have
access to a good human editor. If this part of your products is so sloppy,
it makes me wonder about the programming or inner workings. I have also
come to hate most European manuals. They tend to rely on many figures,
tables, and drawings--and the translation is often terrible. If you are
going to import a product to the U.S., you need to take the time to produce
a good manual that Americans can digest. We aren't stupid--but the style,
usage, and conventions are different here.
My next cross to bear is difficult installation programs. This is
particularly a problem with screen review programs, and to a certain extent
may be unsolvable. If you don't have a working synthesizer, it can be
difficult to get speech up for the first time. There are things you can do
though.
Make initial installation instructions and warnings accessible in a
variety of formats so everyone can read them. I get programs all the time
that have the instructions on disk and in print. If I don't yet have speech
up, I am already stuck until I can get a human reader. Don't bury important
warnings. SlimWare Window Bridge did this with warnings about the memory
manager QEMM-386. I didn't figure it out until I had lost one of my two
possible installations from their copy-protected installation disk. This
copy-protection is another bone of contention with me. Virtually everyone
in the general software market, as well as the access field, has dropped
copy protection because of the problems it causes users. About the only
people using it anymore are game makers, who generally sell their products
for less than $50 a pop. If Synthavoice was offering SlimWare Window Bridge
at a minimal cost, the copy-protection might make sense, but at $695 it is
one of the more expensive Microsoft Windows access products.
The Window Bridge installation does do one good thing. They are able
automatically to identify and configure themselves for a wide variety of
synthesizers, simplifying the process. Others are starting to identify more
synthesizers automatically, but Window Bridge initially made big progress
in this area.
The Thiel Bax-10, a high-speed interpoint Braille printer, that cost
over $80,000 at the time we bought it, comes with a software-based setup
program that is virtually impossible to use with speech. It seems that they
could do better.
Some of you could engage in more responsible marketing. I realize that
the competition at times is fierce, but you will ultimately not do
yourselves any good by misportraying the abilities of your products. As I
said earlier, technology, as important and useful as it is, isn't a
substitute for good basic skills. We have seen both the BrailleMate and the
Mountbatten Brailler portrayed as solutions to our Braille literacy
problems. While these devices and others may be aids to literacy, they will
not magically make a blind child know Braille. They should also not be
substituted for using the slate and stylus.
A marketing ploy that seems unethical to me is the practice of pre-
announcing new products. This is telling people that something bigger and
better is just around the corner. It is a problem for two reasons. First, it
has the effect of freezing the market, and the competition suffers.
Secondly, some people perpetually wait for the bigger and better thing. You
and they are denying them the use of potentially useful technology while
waiting for that perfect solution that XYZ, Inc. just announced.
It is understandable to me that some pre-announcement is necessary.
It would seem to me that 1 to 3 months, maybe 4 months, is reasonable. We
have seen wait times from six months to a year or more from companies like
Artic Technologies, Blazie Engineering, and Index, among others. These
periods seem unduly long. As a consumer, I don't want to buy product X on
Monday and find that the company started selling Y on Tuesday, and that Y
is much better. On the other hand, if I am waiting around for Y for a year or
more, then I didn't get the use of X for all that time. There comes a time
when we all must make the technology plunge. If it is good and appropriate
technology for us, it will still be useful even if it isn't the latest and
greatest. Companies might offer trade-ins, or upgrades, or suspend sales
of a given device, prior to a new one's coming on the market. Ultimately all
of you will be better served by attending to the needs of your customers,
not by bad-mouthing the competition or trying to take their business away
by pre-announcing new products and freezing the market.
Finally, some of you exaggerate the specifications and benefits of
your products. Fudged specs are most noticeable in the Braille embosser
segment. You might rightfully point out that you are not fudging. You are
just measuring noise or printing speed differently from me. While this could
be true, I think some of you could be more practical and realistic in your
measurements. One example is the Everest printer. Index and TeleSensory
have said that it prints at 100 characters per second. While I have not
measured this scientifically, this appears to me and others to be the
measure for printing one sheet of paper. It doesn't take into account the
time it takes to change to a second sheet of paper on this sheet feeder
type embosser. Most of my documents, while not hundreds of pages, are
longer than one page. A realistic measure would account for a multipage
document.
One of two things needs to happen. The first is that all of you agree
on how these things should be measured and described. The second solution
is that someone (those of us at the International Braille and Technology
Center for the Blind, for instance) will measure them in the way we see fit,
and tell the world. We may do this anyway!
I hope that you accept my remarks in the spirit in which they are
offered. While there are problems in this field, there is also much good to
be admired and noted. Your energy, dedication, and commitment are
outstanding. Most of us, if we were in it for the money, should have taken
the advice offered to Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate, and gone into
plastics or something. Most of you vendors are doing this because you are
doing what you want to do. I hope that we can all work together so that you
can make an honest living and offer blind people better and cheaper
technology at the same time. While not easy, it is possible.
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