[Nfbf-l] Preserving Our History by Chris Hofstader - the history of assistive technology

[Alan Dicey]

Dear Friends,
I wanted to share this message a long time ago, but I filed it in one of my 
Things to do later folders, and just came across it while working on 
cleaning up that folder.
I think what the message says is very important!
If you can assist, it will be greatly appreciated, not only to Blind People 
today, but to Blind People in the future.
With Best Regards,
God Bless,
Alan
Plantation, Florida

Sent: Saturday, August 02, 2014 6:28 AM
Preserving Our History by Chris Hofstader
From: David Goldfield
Sent: Wednesday, July 30, 2014 9:19 AM
Subject: Preserving Our History by Chris Hofstader
Chris Hofstader is an excellent writer who used to work for Henter-Joyce, 
which is now Freedom Scientific.  He worked on key features of JAWS until 
2004 but has since left to pursue other things, including a new career at a 
brand new assistive tech firm.  Chris recently posted an article where he 
talked about the importance of blind people doing more to preserve the 
history of assistive technology.  I think this is an excellent idea.  Please 
feel free to pass this on to anyone who would like to write their memories 
of early devices such as the Optacon, VersaBraille and other early products 
that came on the scene.  Here is Chris's post, along with my comment which I 
posted publicly to his blog during my lunch hour.

Preserving Our History
Introduction
Recently, I wrote an article called "Job Access With Bugs?," in which I 
explore some of the generally accepted notions around access technology for 
PWVI. That article came as part of my ongoing attempt to record the history 
of the screen reader in the years following 1998, when I joined Henter-Joyce 
as Director of Software Engineering. These articles have been popular with 
our readers and I'm happy that some of our history is preserved in them even 
if my work tends to be loaded with opinion, conjecture and is based largely 
in anecdote rather than serious historical inquiry.
In these articles, I try to include a link to every proper noun when it 
first appears in the pieces and I try to include links to concepts that may 
be unfamiliar to our readers. when doing so, as I wrote in the conclusion of 
"Job Access," I try to find links to objective materials, mostly Wikipedia, 
rather than personal blogs or marketing oriented company web sites. While 
writing "Job Access," however, I realized that little of our history, the 
history of technology for PWVI, has been recorded in the public record.
This piece intends to encourage people to write and edit Wikipedia pages 
about the technology we use and have been using for a few decades now, it 
proposes an idea for gathering an oral history describing our use cases and 
how such technology has effected our lives over the years and, lastly, about 
a computer museum interested in curating a collection of AT hardware.
The Blazie Engineering Braille 'N Speak
Arguably, the Braille 'N Speak (BNS) from Blazie Engineering may be the 
single most important bit of access technology for PWVI in history. I know 
literally hundreds of blind people for whom the BNS was their first piece of 
access technology who, using this once remarkable device, were able to 
attend school, go to university and perform a lot of professional functions 
using their BNS. I also know dozens of blind software professionals who got 
their start programming by first learning BNS Basic. This device is 
certainly an important part of our history but it has no Wikipedia entry nor 
is there an entry for Dean Blazie, the inventor of the BNS or for Blazie 
Engineering, the very important AT company that built the product.
In my mind, this should be the first item corrected on Wikipedia. Someone 
who knows a lot more about the BNS than I do (I never owned or used one 
myself) should write up an article about it. It would also be important to 
add entries for Dean the man (again, he's someone I've met a few times so 
someone with a greater level of familiarity with Dean should write such) and 
for Blazie Engineering, a very important manufacturer of braille devices as 
well.
Henter-Joyce, GW Micro and Window-Eyes
While JAWS and Ted Henter have token Wikipedia articles about them 
(something that we really must improve and something I might edit myself), 
companies important to our history, Henter-Joyce and GW Micro do not. 
Window-Eyes, for many years the second most popular screen reader and the 
first to embrace an API based strategy for gathering data, regrettably also 
have no Wikipedia entries. Doug Geoffray, the most visible member of the GW 
Micro team, is also without a Wikipedia entry.
I can probably write an article about Henter-Joyce as I can call Ted to get 
the story right, but someone other than me would need to write up articles 
about GW Micro, Window-Eyes, Doug Geoffray and the others there who helped 
invent our future.
Less Prominent Technology
I know a real lot about a few things but virtually nothing about many of the 
other technologies that PWVI have used over the years. My own braille skills 
are horrible so I've never actually used a braille display nor have I done 
much with a braille keyboard. While I had managed MAGic and WYNN (a product 
for users with learning disabilities), I've never used them myself and, 
beyond the theoretical side of this sort of technology, I can't really speak 
to such.
It's important that our history is preserved so, please, if you're so 
inclined, make yourself a Wikipedia account and start documenting our 
history.
An AT Oral History
If our readers think it's a good idea, I will set up a wiki on this site 
where PWVI can write up their stories about how they use access technology 
and how it has effected their lives. Here, in an informal way, individuals 
can tell the stories that I hear daily from people orally. That an 
individual got themselves a copy of JAWS, spent time learning it and was 
able to use these skills to advance their career, further their education or 
do something else productive with such is a major part of our history that 
remains unrecorded. An "accessibility stories" collection would provide a 
single place on the Internet where these stories could be collected and made 
available to others.
Personal stories are a major aspect of history and, if we launch such a 
wiki, we'd have a place where such stories could be found, studied and 
organized in a manner that doesn't exist today. Of course, such a wiki would 
be useless if no one is willing to write stories for it. So, if you think 
this is a good idea and are willing to post at least one story about how you've 
used AT, please tell me so and, if I hear from enough people, I'll add the 
functionality to this web site.
What About the Hardware?
While the BNS may be the most important piece of hardware this community has 
ever enjoyed using, it is certainly not the only one with great importance. 
At the same time, as far as my research could tell, the only museum on Earth 
that has a BNS in its collection is the Smithsonian where, along with JAWS 
for Windows 3.20, it is the only piece of access technology in the 
collection.
Recently, I attended the HopeX conference in New York City. There, I had the 
opportunity to have a meeting with a bunch of guys involved with a vintage 
computer museum. I'm currently in negotiations with them about their 
launching an access technology area in their collection. To this end, if you 
have old access technology hardware around that you would like to donate to 
the museum, please connect with me through the contact form on this site and 
we can make arrangements to have your old hardware shipped to their museum. 
I will be writing up stories about each device and will, of course, require 
your input to ensure the accuracy of them so people visiting the museum will 
have something that they can understand about why the device was important 
to our community when it was current.
Conclusions
I personally feel that it is a tragedy that our history has not been 
properly preserved. Our heroes, people like Ted Henter, Dean Blazie, Glenn 
Gordon and others are simply not remembered online the way that those who 
had made far less important mainstream technology are. The devices that our 
community used to get our education, to work in industry and elsewhere are 
not remembered either. Adding and improving Wikipedia entries is easy and, 
if you have old hardware, I seem to have found a home for it as well. I'd 
like having the oral history wiki as well but I'm uncertain that we'll get 
enough volunteers writing up their stories to make it worthwhile.
So, please help our community preserve its history. We're at an interesting 
time when we can write our own history and, in my opinion, we really should 
be doing so.
This entry was posted in Personal Essay, Technology Review and tagged a11y, 
Accessibility, Blazie Engineering, BNS, Dean Blazie, GW Micro, Henter-Joyce, 
History, JAWS, Ted Henter, Window-Eyes on July 29, 2014 by Chris Hofstader.

About Chris Hofstader
I'm an accessibility advocate working on issues involving technology and 
people with print impairment. I'm a stoner, crackpot, hacker and all around 
decent fellow. I podcast for Pod Delusion, , blog at this site and 
occasionally contribute to Skepchick. I'm a skeptic, atheist, humanist and 
all around left wing sort.
One thought on "Preserving Our History"
David Goldfield
July 29, 2014 at 12:17 pm
Chris,
I am way overdue in contacting you, as I have enjoyed your many blog posts 
regarding not only the access technology field but your contributions to it, 
for which I would like to thank you. I support your idea in setting up an 
a.t. wiki and would be both happy and honored to contribute to it. I was 
particularly pleased to have read your last post, as I had the privilege of 
working for Blazie Engineering for seven years in the 1990's and was a 
Braille 'n Speak user since February of 1989, just around a year and a half 
after its launch. While I can't take credit for its overall development, I 
had a small hand or at least a few tiny fingerprints in its updates over the 
years and it was an exciting time in my life. My time is a bit limited but, 
when I can, I'll see what I can do about those Wikipedia entries. thanks for 
all of your service to this industry.
David Goldfield
Computer Technology Instructor
919 Walnut Street
4th Floor
Philadelphia, PA  19107
215-627-0600 ext 3277
FAX:  215-922-0692
dgoldfie at asb.org
www.asb.org

Serving Philadelphia's and the nation's blind and visually impaired 
population since 1874.