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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."
"Depending on whose numbers you use, anywhere from 60,000 to 100,000 keyboard users are injured every year â" some temporarily, some permanently. In time, almost 100% of keyboard users will have trouble typing" Cite please?
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
"Given that some form of disability is almost inevitable, what's keeping you from volunteering and working with geeks "
I'm 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.
Nobody thinks they are going to be disabled.
It's as simple as that I'm afraid.
In the Perl world I know one major hacker that has done a ton of accessibility work. In his case, it's his daughter that has the the disability, so he has a direct and immediate interest in helping her.
I lost a fingertip in an encounter with a circular saw.
Later I bought an iPhone, and the documentation was titled "Fingertips".
I've also used a fingerprint reader to try to log into a friend's computer - it said "too short", so I can't blame SteveJ for everything.
I do hope that multi touch input does consider people who have less than full dexterity/digits, but somehow I suspect there are another class of people waiting to be left behind.
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.
At my work, they're grappling with the same problem. They have a number of blind people working the phones, and their workstations have all sorts of expensive specialised hardware to help them work. The problem is, as more apps move from older green screen technology (yep, there's still lots) to newer wiz-bang web applications, those web-apps have to be created with accessibility in mind. They use JAWS (a commercial product from Freedom Scientific) to make internal applications accessible. As for why there's not much work on the open source front, I guess it's one of those things where a competent developer hasn't had the urge to work on it. But I agree that making computers accessible at a reasonable price (or free) is very important, especially given as a huge chunk of society is getting to the age where this stuff will be needed a lot.
It's not repetitive use of keyboards that is ultimately going to get me into trouble.
Dasher is a great text-input interface: mouse driven, and you don't even have to click (very often). Not as fast as a keyboard, but still respectable.
Heck, I wish it worked for my N800, and I don't even have any disabilities.
What if I do the same thing, and I do get different results?
I own two programming companies. We work on things that are a) profitable, in the short or medium term; and b) have the expertiese and understanding to accomplish.
I am not presently disabled. None of my employees / contractors are disabled. So it won't help us any time soon, and we have no experience in the field.
Here's the ironic part. I've built three development platforms (one for each type of device that we create). Each of the three "languages" (mark-up, script, whatever) have such stringent conventions that it wolud be pretty easy to develop a "vocabulary" to reference areas of the platform code such that while worknig with the platform code (as opposed to developing and enhancing the core elements) would be quite doable. That would cover about 90% of our workload too.
But in the end, it will never happen. Here's the thing. Right now, it's more profitable for me to work as-is, than to work on accessibility. The day I become disabled, even if it were to be tomorrowb morning, it would still be cheaper for me to hire a co-op student to type for me, or to read to me, or both.
Now, if hundreds of thousands of dollars of disabled clients were knocking on my door, it would take me fewer than six months to build the tools needed for a skilled programmer to navigate through my platform code with simple commands that could be mapped to .V.R., or a joystick, or a head-bob, or whatever. Right now, there are no such clients at my door-step.
not 100% though... you see, I'm planning to buy a big box, go inside along with a device that releases / exposes a radioactive material based on a randomly-timed trigger.
It is about the law of diminishing returns. It might sound cold. It might suck. But you really need to consider why Pizza Hut doesn't offer Pickle Chocolate pizza... The effort and cost to patronize the .01% of potential users just isn't worth it.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
Text to speech in Linux actually works pretty well according to the people I've talked to who use it, in some cases better than the windows options. (GTK integration is pretty complete to my understanding). Some complaints of stuttering though. Ubuntu, and probably others, even have text to speech available in the installer.
The big problem is that the kernel likes to randomly drop one the text to speech modules thats needed for geeks who want to hear the start up messages.
Braille readers are a much bigger problem than the text to speech in Linux, the old serial port ones work fine, but expansion serial ports don't work right for it, and those are getting hard to find. Very few USB braille readers have Linux drivers. (Which i don't get, braille readers + a command line interface seem such a good match).
Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite (TM)
And the Segway was designed to revolutionize the way we get around, but that doesn't mean there is any evidence to suggest that happened.
Every time someone says "Dvorak is better for your hands" or "QWERTY was designed to be slow" really needs to do some basic research and stop spouting out everything they hear. Dvorak has never been objectively proven to be faster or more comfortable. The only studies to support this claim were of questionable integrity. I will gladly accept this claim if it can be objectively demonstrated, but until then, stop saying it please.
It was intended as a serious, albeit in your face, question. what I was hoping for was a serious answer. I don't expect you to drop anything
Let me introduce you to a term "TAB" Temporarily Able Bodied. It was created in recognition that physical ability is temporary, disability is the norm. I'm disabled because my hands don't work right. I'm also disabled because I need glasses. Minority or majority doesn't matter. My question was trying to provoke thought about what's going to happen to you when you become disabled. age-related ailments will steal your ability from you. But also do you want to leave the future to be a radical shift in career because your hands don't work or a shift in how you work?
As to the direction on what makes something accessible, there is a good 30 years worth of research on the subject in the library if people would only look. Is honestly simple concept of separation of functionality from presentation. If I need a word processor with a speech user interface, then I should be able to purchase a word processor and then purchase a user interface that does what I need. If a blind person needs a text-to-speech interface, then they should be able to purchase their own user interface. None of us should have to rely on adaptations or, as I like to call them, "brutal hacks" on the application.
Every two or three years we do hear about and disabilities. There was Nintendo thumb and now Blackberry thumb and other hand disorders from playing too many first-person shooter games. It's all right in front of us. we also have the issue of elderly, as you point out. I'm not worried as much about the elderly of today but, what happens when you hit 60 and you gradually discover you can't do anything. No texting, no video messages, no anything. Think about that future.
Also think about the implications of what our mobile devices are doing today. I've seen people advocate getting rid of voicemail because you can just send someone a text message. Or the only telephone you can use if you are blind is something that just makes calls and receives calls. These choices exclude people from the mainstream culture. If you are blind and cannot send a text message, you lose social connection. If you can't send a text message, you lose the ability to give someone a time delayed message the way of voicemail works. I do admit that it may be cheaper to warehouse disabled people but, it would be nice if we made a conscious decision.
And as a side note, I was not able to interleave my comments with your text because HTML is not friendly to the disabled.