COMMUNICATING WITH COMPUTERS

The Internet connects people around the world and across disabilities. Nevertheless, new technologies like the Internet can present new barriers to communication.

Audio story

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Bonus Footage

>>John Eulenberg describing the origin of one of the DECtalk voices, a speech synthesizer that provided many of the voices for this piece.

>>Steve Blosser talking what makes texts accessible.

>>Al Puzzuoli describing the best kinds of assistive technology.

Story Script

[[sound: Hello my names is Paul...names spoken by DECtalk synthesized voices]]

Innovations in technology are opening new channels of communication, but can leave people with communication disabilities off-line.

Michigan State University is a pioneer in helping students and the public overcome communication challenges.

Since the 1970s, people in M-S-U’s Artificial Language Lab, custom fit people with impairments with synthesized voices to allow them to communicate with the rest of the world.

[[sound: drawers opening ]]

Communication technology has come a long way in the last 35 years.

Now, the A-L-L uses synthetic speech combined with tiny computer circuits to make portable computers for people who can’t speak, hear or move much of their bodies. Some use only head movement or rely on joysticks to interact with the portable computers. A-L-L Director, John Eulenberg, says the facility aims to open the world for people with all kinds of abilities.

[[Eulenberg: Our mission is to explore and development pathways for people to communicate using appropriate and often electronic and computer-based technology, in other words, the Web and the Web’s world.]]

[[sound: JAWS screen reader opening a Web page]]

MSU’s Resource Center for Persons with Disabilities helps students with reading disorders or blindness read school books, complete exams and trains them to use the latest in assistive technology, including some of the same voices used at the A-L-L.

An information technology specialist at the resource center, who is also blind, Al Puzzuoli, says the Internet has made things easier for him.

[[Puzzuoli: If I go out to eat with friends I go online and look at the menu, assuming there is a menu, and I know what I want before they do. Instead of having someone read it or find a Braille menu. ]]

[[Sound: I am using a special device..read by synthetic voice]]

Throughout history, many advances in communication tech have come out of attempts to solve problems for people with disabilities. For example, Alexander Graham Bell was researching ways to communicate with hearing-impaired family members and ended up patenting the telephone. As a consequence, telephones became a mainstream way of communicating, shutting out deaf users from much long distance communication.

Eulenberg sees the Internet as a way of overcoming a lot of barriers.

[[Eulenberg: Certainly the internet does level people’s communicative abilities, in the sense that if you’re reading the comments on a Web site, on a blog or some newspaper site, you don’t know if the person who is writing that comment is blind, or deaf or can only wink one eye because all of those individuals have pathways to interacting with the Internet.]]

But new problems are constantly popping up.

[[sound: high speed JAWS screen reader]]

Puzzuoli uses a screen reader, at very high speeds, to interact with the computer and the Internet.

One place where screen readers hang up is when encountering CAPTCHAs, usually when the user is attempting to sign up for Web site or commenting on a blog.

CAPTCHAs are little pictures of letters and numbers users are asked to read and type into a text field. They were designed to prevent computer programs used by spammers and other Internet baddies from adding a million comments or getting a million my-space accounts. Because they are impervious to screen readers CAPTCHAs are impossible for people with visual impairments to read.

[[sound: audio CAPTCHA]]

Recently, companies have started using audio versions like what you just heard, to help people that use screen readers but some major Web sites, like myspace.com and digg have yet to get on board. Other barriers on the Web include excessive, unlabelled graphics and flash multimedia displays that don’t offer a way for screen readers to access them.

The key to this push-pull scenario where inventions arise out of helping people with disabilities, but end up shutting others out, is to design with everyone in mind, says Assistive Technology Specialist Steven Blosser.

[[Blosser: we see technology for people with disabilities becoming universal design technology.]]

Al Puzzuoli agrees.

[[Puzzuoli: The truth of the matter is that at one point in time … we’re all disabled in some way or another, because if you’re walking around with an armload of groceries and your cell phone rings what do you do? You can't answer it.. they need to make things more universal so you can talk to them or feel buttons or what ever needs to happen at that particular moment, and they’re not there yet but I think we’re getting there. ]]

Back in the Artificial Language Lab where John Eulenberg and Steve Blosser have worked to give people voices, Eulenberg shows off one final bit of technological wonderment: a program that allows people without voices to sing.

[[sound: feeling groovy song]]

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