Hi, all!
Curtis Chong has largely said everything I was going to say. I therefore will
not go over what he said but will make these additional comments:
In the computer area, asside from our UNIX project, I think that we should
concentrate upon considering what sort of description most blind persons would
like to hear of the physical GUI screen. We should even get more fundamental
than a description of "windows", even down to what the screen really looks
like in our attempt to come up with a system which would at one shot convey
the information which a sighted person gets spacially from the GUI environment
and also a good enough physical description that a systems programmer could
debug GUI problems as well as his/her sighted colleagues. IMHO we must get
beyond the "linked list" approach to GUI access.
Longer term, we should probably investigate ways of reliably conveying 3D
information tactually. By this, I mean perspective drawings. I am not as
sanguine about our success in such a venture as is Dr. Nemeth; I am somewhat
suspicious that looking for a reliable tactual perspective drawing mechanism
is rather like trying to explain color to a toally-blind person. But we can
try.
I also think we should put a lot of thought into what sort of interfaces for
common household appliances would be satisfactory. This would include info
kiosks but IMHO we should first concentrate on the appliances as these have
immediate impact on our lives.
AS a practical design project, I concur with Mr. Chong that we should strongly
encourage the design of a practical nonmagnetic compass. It should have at
least two modes: it should be setable such that a person could travel in a
given direction with the gizmo beeping or warning via verbal announcement if
the traveler deviated from that direction by more than, say, a degree. It
should also announce (a) what direction is north, (b) what direction a person
is facing (assuming that the device were pointed a certain way) and (c)
relative bearings. It might also be a good idea to have a magnetic compass
builtin for comparitve read-out.
More thoughts later.
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