[nfbmi-talk] FW: and we don't even get old tech or alternate formats here

[Terry D. Eagle]

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From: joe harcz Comcast [mailto:joeharcz at comcast.net] 
Stevie Wonder Speaks at CES

by

Rachael Rettner,

Senior Writer   |   January 07, 2015 06:55am ET

 

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This picture of musician Stevie Wonder was taken in April 2013 at an event
in California. Wonder spoke this week at the Consumer Electronics Show in
Las

Vegas.

Credit: s_bukley/Shutterstock.com

View full size image

 

LAS VEGAS - Musician Stevie Wonder spoke here at the 2015 Consumer
Electronics Show (CES) about the need to make technology more accessible to
people with

disabilities.

 

"We want to see a time where the issue of technology being accessible to
people with disabilities is not an issue that we have to discuss... but it's
just

a natural, given fact" that everyone has equal access to technology, Wonder
said at a panel event Tuesday (Jan. 6).

 

One technology that Wonder, who is blind, would like to use someday is a
car, he added.

 

Mike May, president and CEO of Sendero Group, a company that makes
navigation systems for blind people, discussed some of the difficulties he
faces in using

technology as a blind person. For example, the smartphone app that holds all
of the information for the events of CES this year includes a navigation
system

to help attendees get from place to place. But the system is entirely visual
- showing a person's current location as a blue dot, and their destination

as a red dot, which they can navigate toward. A blind person would not be
able to use this system.

 

In some cases, only small fixes are needed to make a technology more
accessible to people with disabilities - such as testing an app to make sure
it works

with voice screen-reading systems for the blind, May said. [

And often times, the technology already exists to make something accessible
to people with disabilities, said Mick Ebeling, Founder and CEO of Not
Impossible

Labs, a company that utilizes crowd sourcing to find low-cost solutions for
health care issues. "We can use the technology that exists, I think it's a

question of looking at things from a different perspective," Ebeling said.

 

For example, when scientists recently updated the computer-based speaking
system that scientist Stephen Hawking uses to communicate, "we didn't want
to

invent new things when we didn't have to," said Lama Nachman, director of
the Anticipatory Computing Lab at Intel, who worked on the update. Hawking
has

amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

(ALS), a progressive neurological disease that eventually leads to loss of
function of the muscles used in voluntary movements, such as talking.

 

One thing that limited Hawking's ability to communicate was that he was
typing one letter at a time to spell out words. But simply incorporating
word predication

software, which already exists on most smartphones, doubled his speed,
Nachman said.

 

It's also a misperception that

technologies for people with disabilities

will only help a specific group of people - such technologies could also
benefit people without disabilities, experts agreed.

 

Howard Rosenblum, CEO of the National Association of the Deaf, said that
adding captions to every video on YouTube would not only help people who are
deaf,

it would also help the general public search for specific videos within the
site.

 

This is an "example of technology that is thought to be used for a specific
disability but makes it more accessible for everyone," Rosenblum said
through

an interpreter.

 

Still, experts acknowledged that there are limits to how useful such a "dual
approach" that aims to help people with disabilities as well as other
populations

can be. "A sighted person doesn't want their phone to chat to them as much
as I do," May said. But it may be possible to apply certain filters, he
said,

so people can choose how much or how little of a certain function they want.

 

Follow Rachael Rettner

@RachaelRettner.

Follow Live Science

@livescience,

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&

Google+.

Original article on

Live Science.

 

 

Source:

http://www.livescience.com/49352-stevie-wonder-ces-technology-disabilities.h
tml