Baltimore Sun
Thursday, February 26, 1998
Maryland Section
Harnessing technology for everyone
Blind demand equal access in information age
Programs
The National Federation of the Blind at 1800 Johnson St. has
national programs:
Jobline: For a phone demonstration, call 410-539-0818.
Job Opportunities for the Blind (JOB): an assistance program.
Parents of Blind Children: a support network.
Student scholarships of more than $100,000.
Resource Library: Free recorded, printed literature.
Kernel Books: Helpful paperbacks in large type.
Information: 410-659-9314.
By Ernest F. Imhoff
SUN STAFF
New technology is both a boon and a curse for blind people.
It has allowed them to hear six daily newspapers, listen to
Internet texts converted to voice and take pages of notes in a
portable Braille computer.
But another facet of technology is ominous: the lack of nonvisual
access to information and procedures.
Blind people can't use devices increasingly available to sighted
people who touch menus on a flat computer screen. The problem has
begun to apply to many automated teller machines, airport and hotel
information kiosks, and new generations of microwave ovens, washers
and certain televisions and videocassette recorders.
"It'll get worse before it gets better," said Betsy A. Zaborowski.
She is director of special programs for the National Federation of
the Blind (NFB). The Baltimore-based nonprofit organization
describes itself as the country's leading advocate and the world's
foremost technology center for the blind.
"There are different kinds of challenges," she said. "More and more
information on the Internet is graphics. Unlike text, they can't be
translated to speech or Braille."
For the blind, who want to be independent, it's an old story: one
step forward and one step back, Zaborowski said.
Many of the newer household goods off-limits to the blind were
usable when they had knobs, buttons and switches that could be
felt.
"These devices are not designed for rocket scientists but for
people of average intelligence. I can't use them because I'm
blind," said Richard A. Ring, director of NFB's International
Braille and Technology Center.
Manufacturers ignore the blind, he said. About 1 million legally
blind people live in the United States -- people who have less than
10 percent normal vision.
Staffers such as Zaborowski and her husband, James Gashel, director
of governmental affairs, fight in the political arena for nonvisual
access for the blind.
"For the second year in row," she said, "we support bills in the
General Assembly requiring any technology the state buys to be
suitable for nonvisual access.
"We need that, like the physically disabled need ramps."
At the technology center, in a building the size of a city block at
1800 Johnson St. in South Baltimore, Ring and Curtis Chong,
director of technology, oversee the development of innovations. An
example is software that offers accessible menus and synthetic
speech created by computers. The technology has made possible two
new programs:
Newsline: About 600 blind people in the Baltimore area can hear for
free, through synthesized speech on the phone, any news or
editorial portion of that day's Sun, Los Angeles Times, New York
Times, Washington Post, USA Today and Chicago Tribune. The program,
at 36 Newsline centers in 17 states and Canada, expands to
Montgomery County in March and later to the Eastern Shore.
Jobline: Job seekers -- both blind and sighted -- in Maryland will
become the first in a nationwide program. Within about a month,
they will search for work by using a touch-tone keypad and phone to
comb through a regularly updated help-wanted data base in the state
or the nation. It is for people in rural areas, shut-ins and others
as well as the blind.
A major NFB goal is to revive the use, declining since the 1960s,
of Braille, the system of raised dots representing letters.
Four-day seminars on the importance of Braille for parents of blind
children will be held here in May and October.
Only 9 percent of America's blind can read Braille, Zaborowski
said. "The blind were told years ago `Don't be so blind: use large
type, tape recorders, voice synthesizers.' "
Ring's center is a large room with $2 million worth of what he
calls the world's largest collection of advanced technology for the
blind. It is part laboratory, part classroom, part destination.
"I'm loving every minute of this, there's so much here", said a
blind visitor, Stacey Revis, 29, of Egg Harbor Township, N.J.
Her fingers roamed over the Braille embossers and reading machines
as though she were an antique dealer examining Meissen porcelain.
At home Revis has electronics that produce synthetic speech or
Braille, but she came to learn more. She begins a job this week as
a computer specialist at JFK Hospital in Edison, N.J.
Patricia Maurer and her husband, NFB President Mark Maurer, who are
both blind, chatted with the visitors. "They love to come here,"
she said.
The NFB also hears from hundreds of blind people -- including
parents of blind children -- who telephone to seek an objective and
comprehensive view about the latest gizmos, Chong said.
"There's no other place in the world where the blind can find all
the latest equipment and software with no bias toward one vendor or
the other," he said.
"We bought everything here. We accept nothing for free from
vendors. We make no money. We explain and show the differences. If
we're asked, we can make a recommendation."
He was surrounded by scores of computers and dozens of specialized
devices such as Braille embossers (printed words or computer text
to Braille), reading machines (printed words to speech), portable
note-takers (typing Braille notes to Braille storage or speech).
At the high end was a $77,000 Braille embosser converting at high
speed printed words to pages imprinted on both sides with Braille.
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