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Better Tools For Disabled Geeks?
layabout writes "We've seen tremendous advances in user interfaces over the past few years. Unfortunately, those UIs and supporting infrastructure exclude the disabled. In the same timeframe there has been virtually no advance in accessibility capabilities. It's the same old sticky keys, unicorn stick, speech recognition, text-to-speech that kind-of, sort-of, works except when you need to work with with real applications. Depending on whose numbers you use, anywhere from 60,000 to 100,000 keyboard users are injured every year — some temporarily, some permanently. In time, almost 100% of keyboard users will have trouble typing and using many if not all mobile computing devices. My question to Slashdot: Given that some form of disability is almost inevitable, what's keeping you from volunteering and working with geeks who are already disabled? By spending time now building the interfaces and tools that will enable them to use computers more easily, you will also be ensuring your own ability to use them in the future." Follow the link for more background on this reader's query.
This question is aimed mostly at the kind of disability we are susceptible to and I have been living with for the past 15 years. Even though we have speech recognition, it doesn't solve any problem except writing text. There have been a couple of attempts at making speech recognition more useful to programmers [0], but they have failed. The needs are clear:
[1] A working full-vocabulary, continuous recognition system on Linux.
[2] Tools that don't expect you to "speak the keyboard."
[3] Tools that let you edit as well as create code.
So why don't more geeks work on securing their own future, or at the very least, work to help their fellow geeks to stay on the economic ladder?
[0] VoiceCode and VR-Mode: VoiceCode or is an amazing piece of work. It makes it possible for a disabled programmer to generate Python code very quickly. Unfortunately, it does not solve the editing problem. Even more unfortunately, it's hand-wearingly complicated to set up and get working. VR-Mode makes it possible to use Naturally Speaking's "Select and Say" mode in Emacs — that is, if you can get it to work. It seems to have drifted into non-functionality as Emacs has moved forward.
[1] Naturally Speaking works well, is reasonably cheap, and works somewhat under Wine today. If we can make it work reliably under Wine, it solves the problem in months rather than decades. Other tools such as Sphinx 1-4 are great IVR systems if you have a vocabulary and grammar under 15,000 words. In contrast, Naturally Speaking's working vocabulary is in the 100,000-word range. Any disabled user will choose Naturally Speaking because it works so much better than the nearest alternative. We have people who are injured now and need these tools. They can't afford to wait 10 years or more for an OSS solution.
[2] "Speaking the keyboard" refers to speech user interfaces developed by people who don't use speech recognition. They expect you to say too much, which creates a vocal form of RSI — see [3]. Listen to what disabled users do, not to what you think they should speak.
[3] See VoiceCode in [0]. Unfortunately, today's tools are only for writing code, not correcting code. Code correction is a very different process and must be spoken in a different way: "change index" instead of "search forward left bracket leave mark search forward right bracket copy region." This is also an example of "speaking the keyboard."
This question is aimed mostly at the kind of disability we are susceptible to and I have been living with for the past 15 years. Even though we have speech recognition, it doesn't solve any problem except writing text. There have been a couple of attempts at making speech recognition more useful to programmers [0], but they have failed. The needs are clear:
[1] A working full-vocabulary, continuous recognition system on Linux.
[2] Tools that don't expect you to "speak the keyboard."
[3] Tools that let you edit as well as create code.
So why don't more geeks work on securing their own future, or at the very least, work to help their fellow geeks to stay on the economic ladder?
[0] VoiceCode and VR-Mode: VoiceCode or is an amazing piece of work. It makes it possible for a disabled programmer to generate Python code very quickly. Unfortunately, it does not solve the editing problem. Even more unfortunately, it's hand-wearingly complicated to set up and get working. VR-Mode makes it possible to use Naturally Speaking's "Select and Say" mode in Emacs — that is, if you can get it to work. It seems to have drifted into non-functionality as Emacs has moved forward.
[1] Naturally Speaking works well, is reasonably cheap, and works somewhat under Wine today. If we can make it work reliably under Wine, it solves the problem in months rather than decades. Other tools such as Sphinx 1-4 are great IVR systems if you have a vocabulary and grammar under 15,000 words. In contrast, Naturally Speaking's working vocabulary is in the 100,000-word range. Any disabled user will choose Naturally Speaking because it works so much better than the nearest alternative. We have people who are injured now and need these tools. They can't afford to wait 10 years or more for an OSS solution.
[2] "Speaking the keyboard" refers to speech user interfaces developed by people who don't use speech recognition. They expect you to say too much, which creates a vocal form of RSI — see [3]. Listen to what disabled users do, not to what you think they should speak.
[3] See VoiceCode in [0]. Unfortunately, today's tools are only for writing code, not correcting code. Code correction is a very different process and must be spoken in a different way: "change index" instead of "search forward left bracket leave mark search forward right bracket copy region." This is also an example of "speaking the keyboard."
I have a friend who was born with one arm and is about as geeky as they get. She uses voice recognition software for most online things (although apparently voice recognition software isn't so great for programming). I know someone else who developed hand injuries much later in life and has had a lot of trouble adjusting. It is much easier for people to adjust to being disabled at a young age than at an old age.
That's also assuming a fixed computer operator base, and not including in new additions (high school interns and recent graduates) and attrition to management (I don't send emails, my secretary does that for me) and retirement.
Being that computers have been heavily in the workplace for say over 20 years, and typewriters for even longer, I'd say the warning should be taken just as seriously as the OSHA training that you get (don't stand on top of a tippy ladder, on one foot, holding live wires, over a puddle while drinking hard liquor and smoking a joint) and the frequently included warning of repetitive stress disorder on keyboards and mice. I particularly enjoyed one training where it was clear that we should go outside once an our and look at things far in the distance, to avoid eye strain. Good luck with taking that many breaks in a day without getting fired. :)
I will admit, I have suffered pain from keyboards. I couldn't grasp anything with my right hand for about 2 days because of typing too much. (don't read anything dirty into that, please). It was on a Friday, so I did almost everything left handed. It was difficult to start my car, and shift gears (ya, I'm in America). Oddly enough, most doorknobs are ambidextrous, and most toilets flush from the left side. :) By Monday, the pain was gone.
I've suffered worse pain from working power tools and hammers. Oddly enough, enough hammering will send some pretty good stress through your hands. It hurts worse if you misjudge your finger to hammer head distance difference. :) I haven't made that mistake in years.
Keyboard stress? Bah. There are a lot of worse pains you can suffer. Unless you drop a server on your head (or have an unbolted rack fall on you), you haven't seen it. I knew one guy who seriously hurt himself because they were moving an enclosed sever cabinet. It started to fall. The guy on one side couldn't do anything (it was falling away from him). The guy on the other side tried to catch it by himself. He lived. He was hurt. He was very much not happy. He did say if it ever happened again, he'd jump out of the damned way. :)
I've learned over the years, lots of people don't know how to judge levels of pain, because they haven't experienced high levels of pain. "Oh my god, this is the worst pain I've ever had" only means you haven't felt worse yet. I've seen grown men cry over stuff that my little daughter (2 years old) shakes off like nothing happened. She hurts herself and I tell her "that doesn't hurt", and she stops crying. Really, it didn't. She was walking barefooted in the house today, and accidentally closed an outside door on her toe. I heard a little noise from her, but that was it. She opened the door, removed her foot, and closed it again without the obstruction. :) It scraped the skin on her toe enough so I know it hurt a little (probably 2 on a scale of 1 to 10). We washed it, doctored her up, and she ran off to play. Later she pointed it out to me and said "owie." She just wanted the attention of it, she wasn't really complaining.
She takes after me though. I've cut myself pretty bad in various ways over the years (I wasn't a gentle child), and doctored myself up without the need to whine about it. No infection, no lost parts, no problem.
I think my finger hurts from flipping people off. Can I get workers comp and a voice operated home theater system? I don't think I can work the remote control without re-injuring myself? :)
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
I have been using Dasher for the vast majority of my typing needs for the past year. I was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease (ALS) about two years ago and have slowly lost the use of my left hand and arm during those two years. Dasher is commonly recommended to paraplegic and quadriplegic patients. I know several ALS patients who use it with eyegaze or headmouse setups and love it. It should be usable on any *NIX system that supports GNOME. There are also Windows binaries available.
Another possibility that can be used is an onscreen keyboard with dwell clicking for the mouse and word prediction capability in the keyboard software. I know that both xvkbd and the GNOME onscreen keyboard (GOK) both support word prediction. There are also a couple of projects that have adapted the Dasher word prediction engine into an interface like a telephone keypad that could also be used with dwell-clicking to provide a decent interface. Seems to me one of those projects was called Tapir and the other one was called dKeys.
If anybody becomes interested in this kind of stuff and decides to take on a role in contributing to some of these accessible software projects, you will have the appreciation of hundreds of thousands of disabled users worldwide. Not a bad reward for a little bit of work.