[il-talk] FW: [Nfb-announce] NYTimes: Interesting technology article

Mon Jan 5 01:45:47 UTC 2009

my Dad told me about this story today!
Di

> From: corbbo at gmail.com> To: corbbo at gmail.com> Date: Sun, 4 Jan 2009 
> 14:55:20 -0500> Subject: [Nfb-announce] NYTimes: Interesting technology 
> article> > 
> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/04/business/04blind.html?pagewanted=1&ref=todayspaper> > 
>  > The New York Times> > January 4, 2009> For the Blind, Technology Does 
> What a Guide Dog Can’t> By MIGUEL HELFT> > MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.> > T. V. 
> RAMAN was a bookish child who developed a love of math and > puzzles at an 
> early age.> > That passion didn’t change after glaucoma took his eyesight 
> at the age > of 14. What changed is the role that technology — and his own 
>  > innovations — played in helping him pursue his interests.> > A native of 
> India, Mr. Raman went from relying on volunteers to read > him textbooks 
> at a top technical university there to leading a largely > autonomous life 
> in Silicon Valley, where he is a highly respected > computer scientist and 
> an engineer at Google.> > Along the way, Mr. Raman built a series of tools 
> to help him take > advantage of objects or technologies that were not 
> designed with blind > users in mind. They ranged from a Rubik’s Cube 
> covered in Braille to a > software program that can take complex 
> mathematical formulas and read > them aloud, which became the subject of 
> his Ph.D. dissertation at > Cornell. He also built a version of Google’s 
> search service tailored > for blind users.> > Mr. Raman, 43, is now 
> working to modify the latest technological > gadget that he says could 
> make life easier for blind people: a touch- > screen phone.> > “What Raman 
> does is amazing,” said Paul Schroeder, vice president for > programs and 
> policy at the American Foundation for the Blind, which > conducts research 
> on technology that can help visually impaired > people. “He is a leading 
> thinker on accessibility issues, and his > capacity to design and alter 
> technology to meet his needs is unique.”> > Some of Mr. Raman’s 
> innovations may help make electronic gadgets and > Web services more 
> user-friendly for everyone. Instead of asking how > something should work 
> if a person cannot see, he says he prefers to > ask, “How should something 
> work when the user is not looking at the > screen?”> > Such systems could 
> prove useful for drivers or anyone else who could > benefit from eyes-free 
> access to a phone. They could also appeal to > aging baby boomers with 
> fading vision who want to keep using > technology they’ve come to depend 
> on.> > Mr. Raman’s approach reflects a recognition that many innovations > 
> designed primarily for people with disabilities have benefited the > 
> broader public, said Larry Goldberg, who oversees the National Center > 
> for Accessible Media at WGBH, the public broadcasting station in > Boston. 
> They include curb cuts for wheelchairs, captions for > television 
> broadcasts and optical character-recognition technology, > which was 
> fine-tuned to create software that could read printed books > aloud and is 
> now used in many computer applications, he said.> > With no buttons to 
> guide the fingers on its glassy surface, the touch- > screen cellphone may 
> seem a particularly daunting challenge. But Mr. > Raman said that with the 
> right tweaks, touch-screen phones — many of > which already come equipped 
> with GPS technology and a compass — could > help blind people navigate the 
> world.> > “How much of a leap of faith does it take for you to realize 
> that your > phone could say, ‘Walk straight and within 200 feet you’ll get 
> to the > intersection of X and Y,’ ” Mr. Raman said. “This is entirely 
> doable.”> > ADVOCATES for the blind have long complained that technology 
> companies > have done a generally poor job of making their products 
> accessible. > The Web, while opening many opportunities for blind people, 
> is still > riddled with obstacles. And sophisticated screen-reader 
> software, > which turns documents and Web pages into synthesized speech, 
> can cost > more than $1,000. Even with a screen reader, many sites are 
> hard to > navigate.> > Last year, the National Federation of the Blind 
> reached a settlement > of a landmark class-action lawsuit against one 
> company whose site > advocates found unusable, Target. In the settlement, 
> the retailer > agreed to make its Web site accessible to blind people. The 
> federation > assesses the usability of Web sites and currently certifies 
> only a > handful as being fully accessible.> > One challenge is that 
> technology often evolves much faster than the > guidelines that ensure Web 
> sites work well with screen readers. In > December, the World Wide Web 
> Consortium, an Internet standards group, > released Version 2.0 of its 
> accessibility guidelines for Web sites. > The previous version dated back 
> to 1999, when the Web consisted > largely of static Web pages rather than 
> interactive applications.> > Obstacles on the Web take many forms. A 
> common one is the Captcha, a > security feature consisting of a string of 
> distorted letters and > numbers that users are supposed to read and retype 
> before they > register for a new service or send e-mail. Few Web sites 
> offer audio > Captchas.> > Some pages are just poorly designed, like 
> e-commerce sites where the > “checkout” button is an image that isn’t 
> labeled so screen readers can > find it.> > “The overwhelming percentage 
> of the industry really hasn’t stepped up > to the plate to provide the 
> blindness community with equal access to > their products,” said Eric 
> Bridges, director of advocacy and > governmental affairs at the American 
> Council of the Blind. Mr. Bridges > and other advocates argue that 
> accessibility should be built into new > technologies, not added as an 
> afterthought.> > People with other disabilities face similar challenges on 
> the > Internet. “On the deafness side, the frustration is huge because of 
>  > all of the video out there without captions,” Mr. Goldberg said.> > MR. 
> RAMAN, who before joining Google in 2005 worked at Adobe Systems > and as 
> a researcher at I.B.M., is intimately familiar with > accessibility 
> problems, both personally and professionally. In 2006, > he developed a 
> version of Google’s search engine that gives a slight > preference to Web 
> sites that work well with screen readers. The system > had to test 
> millions of Web pages.> > “You wouldn’t have found a single page that 
> fully complied with the > accessibility guidelines,” Mr. Raman said. 
> Still, the system could > detect which pages worked reasonably well with 
> screen readers.> > The service is not being used as widely as he had 
> hoped. Still, it has > had an impact. Several Web site operators whose 
> sites weren’t showing > up prominently in Google search results asked Mr. 
> Raman how they could > fix their sites so they would rank better.> > The 
> service includes a screen magnifier that enlarges individual > search 
> results. Mr. Raman says the feature is intended to help low- > vision 
> users, but it could also prove useful to a much larger > population, 
> especially on cellphones and other devices with small > screens.> > For 
> his own use, he has built a highly customized system that allows > him 
> efficient access to much of what he needs on his PC and on the > Web, 
> stripping out anything that could slow him down. For instance, > the 
> system goes directly to the article text on the news sites he > reads 
> regularly, bypassing navigational links and other features found > on most 
> Web pages.> > On a recent day, Mr. Raman was working on a research paper 
> about the > future structure of the Web. A monitor hung above the desk. It 
> is > usually turned off, unless he wants to show a colleague or visitor > 
> what he is working on. He typed at his keyboard, his head slightly > 
> tilted to one side, listening to his screen reader through a pair of > 
> wireless headphones.> > The screen reader is calibrated to speak at 
> roughly triple the speed > of a normal voice. To the untrained ear, the 
> output is > incomprehensible, but it allows Mr. Raman to “read” at roughly 
> the > same speed as a sighted person.> > Processing information quickly is 
> a skill he has developed over the > years: a video on YouTube shows him 
> solving his Braille Rubik’s Cube > in 23 seconds. When he is not typing, 
> Mr. Raman, who wears large > sunglasses, is often folding and unfolding 
> pieces of paper into tiny, > origami-like geometrical shapes at prodigious 
> speed.> > He shares a work area at Google with Charles Chen, a 25-year-old 
>  > engineer, and Hubbell, Mr. Raman’s guide dog. (Hubbell has his own Web > 
> site.)> > Mr. Chen, who is sighted, developed a free screen reader for Web 
> pages > that works with the Firefox browser. Working together, the two > 
> recently added keyboard shortcuts that help blind and low-vision users > 
> navigate quickly through Google’s search results. They’ve also > developed 
> tools to make sophisticated Web applications, like e-mail > and blog 
> readers, suitable for screen-reading software.> > Now, much of their 
> effort is focused on touch-screen phones.> > “The thing I am most 
> interested in is all of the stuff moving to the > mobile world, because it 
> is a big life-changer,” Mr. Raman said.> > To show their progress, Mr. 
> Raman pulled his T-Mobile G1, a touch- > screen phone with Google’s 
> Android software, from a pocket of his > jeans. He and Mr. Chen have 
> already outfitted it with software that > speaks much like a screen reader 
> on a PC. Now they are working on ways > to allow blind people, or anyone 
> who is not looking at the screen, to > enter text, numbers and commands.> 
>  > That development would complement voice-recognition systems, which are > 
> not always reliable and don’t work well in noisy environments.> > Since he 
> cannot precisely hit a button on a touch screen, Mr. Raman > created a 
> dialer that works based on relative positions. It interprets > any place 
> where he first touches the screen as a 5, the center of a > regular 
> telephone dial pad. To dial any other number, he simply slides > his 
> finger in its direction — up and to the left for 1, down and to > the 
> right for 9, and so on. If he makes a mistake, he can erase a > digit 
> simply by shaking the phone, which can detect motion.> > He and Mr. Chen 
> are testing several other input methods. None of these > technologies have 
> been rolled out, but Mr. Raman, who is already using > the G1 as his 
> primary cellphone, hopes to make them freely available > soon.> > (Few 
> screen readers are available for smartphones today, and they can > often 
> cost as much as a phone itself.)> > What may become the most life-changing 
> mobile technology — a phone > that can recognize and read signs through 
> its camera — may still be a > few years away, Mr. Raman said. Already, 
> some devices can read text > this way. But because blind users don’t know 
> where signs are, they > can’t point the camera at them or align it 
> properly, Mr. Raman said. > Once chips become powerful enough, they will 
> be able to detect a > sign’s location and read skewed type, he said.> > 
> “Those things will happen,” he said. When they do, sighted users will > 
> benefit, too.> > “If you have the technology that can recognize a street 
> sign as you > drive by it, that is helpful for everyone,” he said. “In a 
> foreign > country, it will translate it.”> > Mr. Raman’s innovations have 
> already made their way onto millions of > PCs. At Adobe in the 1990s, he 
> helped to adapt the PDF format so it > could be read by screen readers. 
> That was required for PDF to be used > by the federal government, and it 
> eventually led to the technology’s > being embraced as a global standard 
> for electronic documents.> > “It was incredibly important to us as a 
> business, and to the blind,” > said John Warnock, the chairman and founder 
> of Adobe.> > Mr. Raman says he thinks he has the largest impact when he 
> can > persuade other engineers to make their products accessible — or, > 
> better yet, when he can convince them that there are interesting > 
> problems to be solved in this area. “If I can get another 10 engineers > 
> motivated to work on accessibility,” he said, “it is a huge win.”> > 
> Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company> > > > 
> _______________________________________________> Nfb-announce mailing 
> list> Nfb-announce at nfbnet.org> 
> http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/nfb-announce_nfbnet.org> To 
> unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for 
> Nfb-announce:> 
> http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/options/nfb-announce_nfbnet.org/syedy2003%40hotmail.com
_________________________________________________________________
Send e-mail anywhere. No map, no compass.
http://windowslive.com/oneline/hotmail?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_hotmail_acq_anywhere_122008
_______________________________________________
il-talk mailing list
il-talk at nfbnet.org
http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/il-talk_nfbnet.org
To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for 
il-talk:
http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/options/il-talk_nfbnet.org/dianefilipe%40peoplepc.com