THE BRAILLE MONITOR Vol. 43, No. 1 January, 2000 Barbara Pierce, Editor Published in inkprint, in Braille, and on cassette by THE NATIONAL FEDERATION OF THE BLIND MARC MAURER, PRESIDENT National Office 1800 Johnson Street Baltimore, Maryland 21230 NFB Net BBS: http://www.nfbnet.org Web Page address: http://www.nfb.org Letters to the President, address changes, subscription requests, orders for NFB literature, articles for the Monitor, and letters to the Editor should be sent to the National Office. Monitor subscriptions cost the Federation about twenty-five dollars per year. Members are invited, and non-members are requested, to cover the subscription cost. Donations should be made payable to National Federation of the Blind and sent to: National Federation of the Blind 1800 Johnson Street Baltimore, Maryland 21230 THE NATIONAL FEDERATION OF THE BLIND IS NOT AN ORGANIZATION SPEAKING FOR THE BLIND--IT IS THE BLIND SPEAKING FOR THEMSELVES ISSN 0006-8829 Vol. 43, No.1 January, 2000 Contents Introduction by Marc Maurer Remarks by Euclid J. Herie Brave New World: Technology for the Blind in the 21st Century by Raymond Kurzweil NonVisual Access to Information The Current State of Technology for the Blind And the Challenge of the 21st Century by Curtis Chong The State of the Law on Technology for the Blind: What It Is and What It Ought to Be by James Gashel Rehabilitation Requirements and the Need for Universal Access to Information: The Accelerating Pace Of Technology, A Challenge for Vocational Rehabilitation by Fredric K. Schroeder America Online: Stonewalling Responsibility and Ignoring Access for the Blind by Richard Ring Accessible Automated Teller Machines by Len Fowler Access to Electronic and Information Technology: Evolving Federal Standards for Nonvisual Use by Pat Cannon Refreshable Braille Now and in the Years Ahead by Deane Blazie Frontiers in Tactile Perception by T. V. Cranmer Braille Translation in the Era of the Digitized Book by Joe Sullivan Web-Braille: A New Distribution System for Braille Books by Judy Dixon Opportunities and Challenges In the Era of Digital Information Implications of the Digital Talking Book and Beyond by George Kerscher Publishing Tools: Converting Obstacles to Opportunities by Michael Gosse A View from the Publishers by Carol Risher Access to Information: The Next Step Forward by Gilles P`epin New Regulations Under the Telecommunications Act: New Opportunities for the Blind by Dale Hatfield Accessibility for the Blind: The Necessity for Coordination and Joint Action by Marc Maurer Consumers and Vendors of Technology for the Blind: An Underserved Multi-Million-Dollar Market by David Andrews Nonvisual Access to Electronic Print Displays by Paul Mitten Final Discussion Summary Copyright c 2000 National Federation of the Blind October 27 and 28, 1999,the National Federation of the Blind and the Canadian National Institute for the Blind hosted the Fourth U.S./Canada Conference on Technology for the Blind at the National Center for the Blind in Baltimore. [PHOTO DESCRIPTION: Four photographs appear on this page. They show different sections of the large conference room at the National Center for the Blind. The U-shaped set of tables that usually fills the center of the room was augmented by three more sets, making a total of five lines of tables perpendicular to the head table. The podium from which all presenters spoke was located directly opposite the center of the head table. The pictures demonstrate just how many people attended the Fourth U.S./Canada Conference on Technology for the Blind. The bottom right picture shows participants all laughing delightedly at something said.] [PHOTO CAPTION: The center and east end of the north side of the Conference meeting room] [PHOTO CAPTION: The east end of the meeting room's south side] [PHOTO CAPTION: The center of the room and the west end of the south side] [PHOTO CAPTION: The laughter of Conference participants proves that not every moment of the meeting was serious.] [PHOTO DESCRIPTION: This picture shows much of the conference head table. Against the back wall three flags are grouped toward the left side. They are the flags of the United States, Canada, and Spain--the countries of conference participants. Standing alone on the right side is the NFB flag.] [PHOTO CAPTION: Seated at the head table (left to right) are Deane Blazie, Euclid Herie, Marc Maurer, and Raymond Kurzweil.] Introduction by Marc Maurer Perhaps one of the most perpetually compelling issues in the field of blindness is technology and its power to enhance or frustrate the lives of blind people. When technology for the blind becomes the topic of conversation, there are many experts-- often self-proclaimed--and an almost unlimited number of opinions. Technology for the blind is a field of endeavor which is relatively young and fairly diverse. Problems for the blind user of technology abound, and there is no lack of emotion--hope, despair, eagerness, frustration, annoyance, outrage, anger, delight. The range of emotion exists because the promises made in the name of technology are sometimes astonishingly great, and the disappointments felt by the blind user when it doesn't work are of equal proportion. All too often, just when one vexing problem seems to be on the brink of solution, the technology changes and the target shifts. A completely new set of daunting technological conundrums is presented to the unsuspecting blind public. During the time it takes to solve the new riddles, the blind have diminished access to the information easily used by the sighted. This is the set of circumstances that serves as the backdrop for the Fourth U.S./Canada Conference on Technology for the Blind, which took place on October 27 and 28, 1999. The fourth conference followed the pattern set by the first three. All major organizations of and for the blind in the United States and Canada were invited to participate along with the major manufacturers of technology for the blind and the governmental entities that are likely to have an impact on the development or distribution of access devices or systems. Because of the historic significance of this conference, we are devoting an entire issue of the Braille Monitor to reprinting the proceedings. The concepts discussed at the meeting are far-reaching, but the Fourth U.S./Canada Conference could not have achieved the significance it did without the first three. The first of these conferences took place at the National Center for the Blind in 1991. It was unique in the field of blindness because no such gathering had ever before occurred, and some wondered whether relations and political differences among entities dealing with blindness would permit any collaboration. However, the conference, hosted by the National Federation of the Blind and the Canadian National Institute for the Blind, brought a measure of harmony and cooperation to organizations of and for the blind that had never before existed. The second of these conferences was convened in 1993, and it was even more harmonious than the first. Many of the producers of technology for the blind welcomed suggestions from the users of that technology. A widespread recognition emerged that joint effort among manufacturers, public and private agencies for the blind, and blind consumers would assist the producers of technology to provide products that would best serve the market and give increased prosperity to all. In 1996 the Third U.S./Canada Conference on Technology for the Blind was convened. For the third time Dr. Kenneth Jernigan, the long-time leader of the National Federation of the Blind and its President Emeritus, planned the gathering with the advice and assistance of Dr. Euclid Herie, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Canadian National Institute for the Blind and the President of the World Blind Union. Although efforts were still directed toward increasing cooperation at this conference, the desirability of joint action had already become readily apparent from the experiences of the first two conferences. The third conference concentrated on the topics of most immediate concern to blind users of technology. In each of the first three conferences several people speculated about the shape of the future. These futurists were concerned about technology for the blind, but they also discussed technology for everybody. Some of this speculative dreaming suggested that the gap between technology for the blind and technology for the sighted would narrow. However, immediate frustrations made other participants doubt. In some cases the advances in technology for the blind would, some participants speculated, give a new perspective to the development of technology designed for the sighted. The Third U.S./Canada Conference focused sharply on technology itself. The Fourth U.S./Canada Conference on Technology for the Blind gathered with the spirit, energy, and enthusiasm that had been developed during the first three. Advances in technology for the blind have continued to be made; however, technology in general has also proceeded, and with it new problems in gaining access to information have been created. Consequently, even with advances in technology for the blind, problems for blind users continue to exist. For example, at one time many stated with confidence that no system could ever be manufactured that would permit blind people to gain access to information presented through the graphical user interface. However, determined effort has, to a substantial extent, made this information available in voice and tactile forms. The fourth conference discussed more than technology. It explored the rights and responsibilities of manufacturers of technology--both producers working exclusively with the blind and those in the broader market. What laws should be adopted to assure access to information for the blind? How can entities dealing with blindness take joint action to bring maximum advantage to blind people? How can governmental agencies be persuaded to assist with access solutions before products are released so that the long and painful process of retrofitting is unnecessary? What role should publishers play in providing fundamental information to the blind as well as to others? These and other similar questions were considered by the conference. The harmony and perceived need for joint action continued to be as great as they have ever been. In 1991, when Dr. Jernigan and Dr. Herie planned the first of these conferences, they undoubtedly anticipated that the gatherings themselves would assist the participants to comprehend the community of interest that all organizations dealing with blindness have. The consolidation of action within the blindness field may be the greatest accomplishment of the series of conferences on technology for the blind. They have, of course, had other salutary effects. The need for the blind to have access to information stimulated the development of the NEWSLINEr for the Blind Network and the America's Jobliner system that bring job listings and newspapers to blind people throughout North America by touch-tone telephone. These two systems, pioneered by the National Federation of the Blind and conceived by the imagination of Dr. Jernigan, have resulted at least in part from the stimulus of these conferences on technology. And other developments, too, have been inspired by the cooperative efforts of these conferences. Some of them are laid out in the presentations made to the Fourth Conference. Here, beginning with an alphabetical list of conference attendees, are the proceedings as they occurred: David Andrews, Minnesota State Services for the Blind Susan Benbow, Rehabilitation Services Administration David Best, Canadian National Institute for the Blind Deane Blazie, Blazie Engineering John Brabyn, Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Foundation Michelle Brul`e, Canadian National Institute for the Blind Brian Buhrow, University of California Geoffrey Bull, Braille International, Inc. Pat Cannon, United States Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board Chris Chamberlain, Frontier Computing Curtis Chong, National Federation of the Blind Charles Cook, Roudley Associates John Cookson, National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped T. V. Cranmer, International Braille Research Center Frank Kurt Cylke, National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped Judy Dixon, National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped Oscar Fern`andez, O.N.C.E. Len Fowler, T-Base Communications James R. Fruchterman, Arkenstone, Inc. James Gashel, National Federation of the Blind Michael Gosse, National Federation of the Blind Jim Halliday, Humanware, Inc. Dale Hatfield, Federal Communications Commission Euclid Herie, Canadian National Institute for the Blind Janice Hertz, Microsoft Corporation Mary Ellen Jernigan, National Federation of the Blind George Kerscher, DAISY Consortium Chuck King, IBM Special Needs Systems Raymond Kurzweil, Kurzweil Applied Intelligence, Inc. Luanne LaLonde, Microsoft Corporation Mary Frances Laughton, Industry Canada Jos`e Luis Lorente, O.N.C.E. Marc Maurer, National Federation of the Blind Peter Merrill, Betacom Paul Mitten, Compusult Limited Betty Nobel, Canadian National Institute for the Blind Gilles P`epin, VisuAide 2000, Inc. David Pillischer, Sighted Electronics, Inc. William M. Raeder, National Braille Press Lloyd Rasmussen, National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped Richard Ring, National Federation of the Blind Carol Risher, Association of American Publishers, Inc. Mohymen Saddeek, TFI Engineering and Myna Corporation James Sanders, Canadian National Institute for the Blind Tony Schenk, Enabling Technologies Company Fredric Schroeder, Rehabilitation Services Administration Paul Schroeder, American Foundation for the Blind Dick Scribner, Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic Dave Skrivanek, Repro-Tronics Larry Skutchan, American Printing House for the Blind Susan Spungin, American Foundation for the Blind Graham Stoodley, Canadian National Institute for the Blind Linda Studholme, Canadian National Institute for the Blind Joseph Sullivan, Duxbury Systems, Inc. Tuck Tinsley, American Printing House for the Blind Dennis Tottenham, Project Online, Canada Jutta Treviranus, University of Toronto Robert Wynn, Hadley School for the Blind [PHOTO/CAPTION: Euclid Herie] Remarks by Euclid J. Herie From the Editor: Euclid Herie is President and Chief Executive Officer of the Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB) and President of the World Blind Union (WBU). The advantage of wearing two hats at once is that one can cover a little more ground. I will indulge your patience for a moment with a few comments. First of all, as President of the World Blind Union, I bring you greetings from the blind of the world and from the officers, including Dr. Maurer, who, as you know, is the President of this region. Also, as President of the CNIB, I bring you greetings from our National Chairman and our Canadian delegation including Mr. Graham Stoodley, who is a member of the CNIB National Board of Directors and Chair of the National Client Services Committee, and Mr. James W. Sanders, Vice President, Client Services and Technology. I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge Dr. Maurer and the National Federation of the Blind for hosting this event. Hosting such an event takes a great deal of planning and organizing. The NFB are gracious hosts; their generosity of spirit and effort I know will make this event a huge success. The history that Dr. Maurer referred to is important because there are always new players and stakeholders at the table. Kenneth Jernigan and I talked about the importance of this kind of conference some ten years ago. I have no idea whether he suggested it or we both did. However, I think it is a tribute to his vision that technology would play a major role in creating the opportunity, economic security, and freedom needed by blind people. So I am particularly mindful that Dr. Jernigan would be pleased to know that for the fourth time in this decade we have brought together truly the best and the brightest in North America and around the world. When we met last April, Dr. Maurer suggested that we have a fourth conference, so again, Sir, I appreciate that in your role as President of the NFB you have assumed the mantle of moving this very important agenda forward. The World Blind Union through its Committee on Technology raises the specter of problems ahead in obtaining accessible and affordable technology because 80 percent of blind people do live in parts of the world where access to technology, electricity, or telephone lines is still a dream of the future. So either our talk of accessibility and affordability can remain as an oxymoron, or we can forge a blueprint that will make it a reality. I urge all of you to take on this challenge at this conference. Research is critical. I am proud to say that we in Canada, through the CNIB Winston Gordon Award, have recognized excellence in technology. Three winners are present in body or spirit today: Deane Blazie, the first winner; Raymond Kurzweil, the second; and two years ago Kenneth Jernigan was honored at the Canadian Embassy in Washington. We also sponsor a $10,000 research grant, the Ben E. and Mary Hochhausen Award available to anyone in the world. When Kenneth and I talked ten years ago, Web sites and cell phones were really not a part of our daily lives as they are today. It is amazing how much progress we have made in this decade. Also this past decade we have seen a time of deregulating only to regulate. We will be speaking a lot about that in the next two days because, as we have freed up the airwaves and other public supports such as transportation and other things,it has forced in the disability field, and certainly in the blindness field, pressures to create regulations that put a stop to the kind of systemic discrimination that all of us face so often in our daily activities. We must be mindful of what these so-called freedoms are going to mean in our world in the next millennium with terms such as e-com and digital economy. However, either blind people in the world are going to be within the digital economy, or we are going to fall outside the realm. I would suggest to you that in some parts of the world--even in developed countries--as the digital economy speeds up, gains momentum, and is hugely funded, blind people are victimized and continue to fall between the cracks. I know that you will be astounded in the course of these next few days at what you will hear in that regard. We must understand the implications for blind persons of globalization as a phenomenon and a reality of our life in the future. . . . The NAFTA agreements in our countries, the European Bloc, the now G 20 that has been established, the UN agencies and that whole entire system affect blind people directly. In Canada we have established partnerships within the blindness field, for example, with the Library of Congress through Mr. Cylke's programs and with many other countries around the world. I truly believe, whether in accessible technology or the range of services and programs, that this sector will not escape globalization any more than the other things that touch your life. We are seeing these trends move ever more rapidly. It is therefore incumbent on the leadership in this room during these two days to exploit this opportunity. Let us take the long-term view, create that vision, build on it, and secure it. As the conference agenda indicates, we are here to set in motion action plans for the technology services that blind people will require in the third millennium. [PHOTO/CAPTION: Raymond Kurzweil] Brave New World: Technology for the Blind in the 21st Century by Raymond Kurzweil, Ph.D. From the Editor: Ray Kurzweil has demonstrated his commitment to improving the lives of blind people through technology since the mid-seventies. He is a talented inventor and thinker, and he has keynoted all four of the U.S./Canada technology seminars. We found it necessary to summarize parts of his remarks as the keynote speaker on October 27 since a written transcription of his demonstration of his new language- translation program would have made very little sense. It's a great pleasure to be here at the headquarters of the National Federation of the Blind, which I would honestly say is my favorite organization, and I see many of my favorite people here, whom I have kept running into over the past quarter century. This is a very rewarding field of work, and I think people who discover it never leave. So it's always the same group of people. It started about a quarter century ago when I met Jim Gashel--who hasn't changed a bit--and he introduced me to Dr. Jernigan. We had this little project of a reading machine for the blind, which we were trying to interest people in, and a lot of people were interested in it and wished us well. But Dr. Jernigan, being the visionary and entrepreneurial person that he was, wanted to get involved and help us--help us in ways we hadn't expected, including helping us design the reading machine. We didn't realize we needed that help, but we did. Dr. Jernigan and Mr. Gashel organized a whole team of blind engineers and helped insure that the reading machine would be really useful to blind people. In my first session with Dr. Jernigan I didn't know a lot about blindness--I'm still learning, though I know more than I did a quarter of a century ago. He said that blindness could be just a characteristic, just a minor inconvenience, and that blind people could accomplish anything they wanted to, just like sighted people. At the time I wondered to myself to what extent that was really true--was this a goal or a political statement, or was it a reality? I want to come back to that as I talk about the role of technology because I think technology has one small part to play in realizing Dr. Jernigan's vision. I very quickly came to recognize that Dr. Jernigan's statement was a plain, realistic assessment, provided that you had an organization like the National Federation of the Blind to make some prerequisites of the vision a reality. Those prerequisites include training in the skills and knowledge to accomplish the things desired. The right attitudes about what blind people can accomplish are important for blind and sighted people alike. And information accessibility in all forms must be encouraged at every level. Technology has one role to play, but the technology needs to be useful to blind people. It needs to have the right features. Blind people must be involved in its development. The technology and the skills needed to use it effectively must be available. I want to come back to those issues, and I want to talk about how, in my view, technology will develop in general over the next century. I think we will be hearing a good bit about technology issues in the very near term at this conference. So I think it's appropriate to start out with a little more expansive view about where technology will go over the next several decades and how that will affect technology for the disabled, with particular regard to the visually impaired. I would like to start with some contemporary technology. This is technology circa 1999--actually I should probably say circa 2001. I had to decide whether to show you some bullet-proof technology that would be reliable or share with you some really cutting-edge technology that's not so bullet-proof. I opted for the latter, so I hope you'll bear with me. This is a rather complicated assemblage of software components, which usually work well together, but this is only the second time I have given this demonstration. I gave it in a private meeting with Bill Gates about ten days ago because he likes to stay on the cutting edge. It actually worked pretty well. It did make one mistake, which I will share with you after I give you this demo. [Dr. Kurzweil began by calibrating the system for the acoustical environment in which it would be working. He then said three times in a clear voice, "It is very good to be here comma." After a pause a female voice repeated the words in extremely understandable German. Speaking in short, clear phrases, he went on to say that this was a demonstration of a prototype of a translating telephone and that in several years anyone would be able to speak to anyone else regardless of the languages spoken by the parties. Each phrase was faithfully translated into excellently accented German. After making a small alteration in his equipment, Dr. Kurzweil spoke again, and after one patch of gobbledy-gook, French replaced the German. The same female voice spoke just as acceptable French as it had German. Then Dr. Kurzweil spoke in French, and the system produced unaccented English. In fairness one should point out that the machine's French pronunciation was considerably better than the human being's; yet the machine understood it and did its job.] This was a combination of three technologies running on a notebook computer: speech recognition (Version 4 of Voice Express, the Kurzweil voice-to-text technology I sold to Lernout & Hauspie two years ago), language translation, which can go back and forth in sixteen languages, and RealSpeak, which is a new speech synthesizer. This system uses a new version of Voice Express. I have another one which I used to dictate my book, but this is a fresh one that has only heard me for about ten minutes, so you can see that it is quite accurate. As for RealSpeak, I've been watching speech synthesis for twenty-five years, since we developed the first full text-to- speech twenty-five years ago in the Kurzweil Reading Machine. The early text-to-speech required some getting used to. Over time speech synthesis has gotten more understandable, but it has still sounded synthetic. RealSpeak is new technology. It's not quite out as a product, but it is coming out. That was not recorded speech; it was text-to-speech. [He then typed a sentence into the computer for the system to read back, proving that it really was producing high-quality synthetic speech.] The speed can be varied. This full text-to-speech system will be in our reading machine anyway, along with the language translation, so that you can read something in French and hear it translated in a human- sounding voice. A lot of the technology is actually devoted to the prosodics, understanding at least the grammar of the speech, so the inflection is fairly reasonable--not as intelligent as a human reading it, but pretty good. There will be other voices, and next year you will be able to record a sample of your own voice and have the machine speak in your voice or maybe someone else's voice that you like to listen to. Let me now talk about where technology is going. We will be hearing a lot about the next few years, so I'll concentrate on the more distant future, as is, perhaps, fitting for a keynote. Then I will come back and address what the implications are for technology for blindness, which is something that has been important to me for twenty-five years, and I'm sure to all of you. How many people here are familiar with Moore's law? Virtually every hand went up. I always ask that question, but now it is sometimes almost insulting to do so. It's like asking if you have heard of computers. But only two or three years ago relatively few hands went up in most audiences, even among people in the computer industry. So Moore's law has become more and more noticeable. What is Moore's law? It says that transistors on an integrated circuit get smaller--take up about half as much space- -every two years. This means that you can put twice as many transistors on an integrated circuit. And, because they are smaller and the electrons don't have to travel as far, they run twice as fast. That's actually a quadrupling of computer power for the same unit cost every two years. That's been going on for quite some time. Gordon Moore first noticed it in the 1960's. At first he said it was every twelve months; then he revised it to every twenty-four months in the 1970's. Where does Moore's Law come from? Why is this happening? Randy Isaacs from IBM Research says it's just a basic set of industry expectations, that it's been going on, so we know where we need to be at particular times in the future, and we target our research to be there. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy. But in examining where technology will go in the twenty- first century, it's important to understand this phenomenon in greater depth because that paradigm of the shrinking transistors is going to come to an end. There is some controversy as to whether it is in ten years or twenty years, but sometime during the teen years, 2010 to 2019, the key features of transistors will be so small that they will be only a few atoms in width, and we won't be able to shrink them anymore. So is that the end of Moore's Law? Well yes, but is it the end of the acceleration of computer power, the exponential growth of computing that we have seen in recent decades? That is a very important question to answer because, depending on the outcome, either computer technology will continue to become more and more profound, or it will level off. So I have spent a lot of time examining that issue. Relatively little has been written about it. The first thing I did was to consider all of the computers over the past hundred years--forty- nine machines going back to 1900. I started with the computer that did the 1890 U.S. census and ran up to the Turing Robinson machine built out of telephone relays that cracked the German Enigma code. That's actually an interesting story. A Polish spy had stolen the German Enigma machine, which had three coding wheels, and they figured out how it coded. But they needed a computer to figure out every combination of the coding wheels in order to decode messages. The only problem was that they didn't have a computer, So Turing invented the computer and built the first functioning computer in 1942. It succeeded in breaking the German code, and Churchill had a complete transcription of all the German military messages. He knew when the Nazis were going to bomb various English cities. He was under great pressure to warn city officials so that they could take necessary precautions, and he refused to do that because he figured that, if the Germans saw these precautions, they would realize that their code had been broken. He didn't really use this information until the Battle of Britain when suddenly the English planes just seemed to know at every moment where the German planes would be. Despite the fact that they were outnumbered, they won the Battle of Britain. And if it hadn't been for that, we wouldn't have had a place from which to launch our D-Day invasion. Anyway, I have that machine on the chart in the early '40's. Then there was the vacuum-tube computer that CBS used to predict the election of Eisenhower in 1952. The notebook computer you bought your daughter for Christmas last year is on the chart also. I put the computers on an exponential graph, in which a straight line would mean exponential growth. The first thing I noticed was that the exponential growth of computers goes back a hundred years, long before we had any integrated circuits, long before Moore's Law was feasible. So it turns out that Moore's Law is not the first but the fifth paradigm to project exponential growth in computing, starting with the relay-based electro- mechanical calculators, then relay-based computers, then vacuum- based computers, then transistor-based computers, and finally integrated-circuit computers. The other thing I noticed is that it's actually not a straight line. That graph is another exponential; the rate of exponential growth in computing has actually been growing exponentially. We doubled computing power every three years at the beginning of the century, every two years in the middle of the century; and now we are doubling it every year. So that rate continues to accelerate. One of the predictions that this suggests is that, when Moore's Law dies, there'll be another, a sixth paradigm to continue the exponential growth of computing. We don't have to look far to figure out what that is. Despite the fact that they are very dense, integrated circuits are built in two dimensions; they're flat. Our brains, by contrast, are built in three dimensions. We live in a three- dimensional world; why not use the third dimension? That obviously will be the sixth paradigm. There are already chips with dozens of layers of circuitry; they are building some now with hundreds of layers of circuitry. And there is a new technology called nanotubes, which are basically pentagonal tubes of carbon atoms, and researchers have been able to arrange them in such a way that they can do every kind of electrical manipulation--emulate transistors and other types of electrical components. So they can actually build three-dimensional computing circuits at the atomic level using these molecular structures that are extremely strong and impervious to heat, which is the main problem in building two-dimensional circuits. They have built small-scale circuits; they haven't yet built a full nanotube-based computer, but this is technology that we can touch and feel. We know that it works. A one-inch cube of nanotube circuitry would be a million times more powerful than the human brain. There are probably a dozen different three- dimensional types of circuitry being developed. We can't be sure which one will prevail, but I think we can have confidence that a sixth paradigm will be there when this fifth paradigm of Moore's Law runs out of steam just as in the 1950's, when they were building vacuum-tube-based computers. They kept shrinking the vacuum tubes and making them smaller and smaller. They finally came to a fundamental limit where they just couldn't make them any smaller; then transistors came along. Transistors are not small tubes; it's a completely different paradigm. As we look at the history of technology, we see that this exponential growth of a technical process is inherent in all of technology. Moore's Law is not the only example of exponential growth. Take the human genome scans, a completely different issue. We can sequence DNA at a certain speed. Twelve years ago the human genome project was announced, and it was greeted with a lot of skepticism because people pointed out that at the speed with which we could then scan the human genome, it would take 10,000 years to finish the project. Proponents of the project said, "Well, technology accelerates, so we'll figure out how to make this fast." And indeed, if you plot genome sequencing speeds, they have accelerated in the same way that computing speeds have. We are now going to finish that project on time, in a fifteen-year period. In fact, it is going to finish years early. Brain scanning used to be very crude, low-resolution, and slow, but it has also accelerated in the same way. We can make this basic observation about technology in general. Technology is an evolutionary process, and it accelerates. The first steps in technology took tens of thousands of years. It took thousands of years to figure out that, if you sharpened both sides of a stone, you created a sharp edge which made a useful tool. It also took tens of thousands of years to develop the other early steps in technology such as the wheel and using fire. But a key difference between the human species and other species is that we remembered these innovations. There are many examples of other species using tools, but they don't have a species-wide knowledge base that they pass down from generation to generation and to which they add on layers of innovation. Humans, in contrast, have used the tools from one generation to create the tools of the next. So a thousand years ago paradigm shifts took only a few hundred years rather than tens of thousands of years. We accomplished more in the nineteenth century than in the ten centuries before it. We accomplished more in the first twenty years of the twentieth century than we did in all of the nineteenth. Today paradigm shifts take only a few years. The World Wide Web didn't exist in anything like its current form just a few years ago. So technology accelerates. If we take an even broader view, we can say that any evolutionary process accelerates. Technology is just one example of that. Take the evolution of life forms. It took billions of years for the first cells to form. Then in the Cambrian explosion paradigm shifts took only tens of millions of years. Later on humanoids would evolve in only a few million years, then homo sapiens in only a few hundred thousand years. At that point the accelerating pace of the evolution of life forms became too fast for DNA-guided protein synthesis to keep up with it, and the cutting edge of evolution on Earth migrated from the evolution of life forms, changed from evolution of DNA-guided protein synthesis to the evolution of technology. Obviously DNA-guided biological evolution continues, but it is at such a slow pace that it is insignificant compared to the accelerating pace of technology. The key point is that technology in the twenty-first century will become so powerful that it will provide the next step in evolution. If we view Moore's Law in this perspective, it's just one example of an accelerating technological process. It took us ninety years to achieve the first MIPS (million instructions per second) per thousand dollars. Now we add a MIPS per thousand dollars every day. So that process is accelerating. It is one of many accelerating processes in technology. Any particular innovation allows us to grow exponentially for a while, but then the paradigm eventually ends, and it's taken over by some other innovation. It is basically the process of human innovation and creativity that allows the exponential growth of a technology to continue. We can view the exponential growth of computing as an example of the exponential growth of any evolutionary process, and it goes back to the evolution of life on Earth. It's a multi- billion-year process which is now getting faster and faster. There are many technologies waiting in the wings which will continue that process. Where will this take us in the twenty- first century? The human brain is immensely powerful in one way. It's remarkable that such an intricate, complex, rich, and deep- thinking entity could evolve through natural selection. On the other hand its design is limited and crude in certain respects. The tremendous power of the human brain comes from its massively parallel organization. We have a hundred billion neurons. Each of them has a thousand connections to other neurons. That's a hundred trillion connections. The calculations take place in the connections, so that's a hundred-trillion-fold parallelism. This notebook computer I have up here does one thing at a time, and it does it very quickly. The human brain, by contrast, does a hundred trillion things at a time. That's a very different type of organization. On the other hand, the circuitry it uses is an electrochemical form of information-processing. It's both analog and digital. We can do analog processing with electronics- -there's nothing unique there. But it's very slow. The human brain interneural connections calculate at about two hundred calculations per second, which is at least ten million times slower than electronic circuits. Neurons are quite big, clumsy objects compared to electronic circuits. Most of their complexity is devoted to maintaining their life processes and reproduction, not their information-processing capabilities. If we take that hundred trillion connections and multiply it by two hundred calculations per second, we get a capacity of about twenty billion million calculations per second, or about twenty billion MIPS, which is on the order of a million times more powerful than notebook computers today. But, as I mentioned, electronics and computing is growing exponentially; human thinking is not. It is relatively fixed. Our human thinking is constrained to a mere hundred trillion calculations at a time. Nonbiological intelligence has no such constraint. I have developed a mathematical model of this double exponential growth, which matches different technological processes. (Another one, by the way, is miniaturization. You have certainly noticed in your lifetime how technology gets smaller and smaller. That's actually another predictable exponential process. Right now we are shrinking technology at a rate of 5.6 per linear dimension per decade.) So we can project where technology will be, at least in these types of quantitative terms,at different points in time. By 2019 a thousand-dollar computer--and they won't look like this rectangular box I have on the podium--will match that twenty billion million calculations per second. By 2030 a thousand-dollar computer will be a thousand times more powerful than the human brain. By 2050 a thousand dollars of computation will equal the thinking capacity of ten billion brains. I might be off a year or two on that. I did actually predict in a book I wrote in the 1980's that by 1998 a computer would take the world chess championship, based on how many moves ahead I thought the computer would need to look to match the playing of a human grand master or chess champion. That was actually off by a year because it happened in 1997. But by 2019 we will have the basic capacity of human thinking in nonbiological form. That's a necessary but not sufficient condition to recreate human intelligence. We could have a machine that's a million times more powerful than the human brain and have merely a very fast calculator that could calculate your spreadsheet in a billionth of a second. But we wouldn't necessarily have the richness, subtlety, suppleness, and flexibility of human intelligence. We wouldn't have the endearing qualities of human thought. How are we going to achieve that, which I would call the software of human intelligence: the knowledge, the skills of human intelligence? Before I address that question, let me say that, once nonbiological intelligence achieves the richness and capabilities of human intelligence and all the diverse ways that humans excel in thinking, it will necessarily soar past it for several reasons. For one thing machines can share their knowledge. If I spend years learning French, I can't download that knowledge to you. Humans can communicate, something that other species have not been able to do, in the way of building up a species-wide dialogue and cultural knowledge base and technological knowledge base, but we don't have quick downloading ports on our neurotransmitter concentrations. If I learn French, where is that knowledge; what is it; what represents all of my knowledge and skills and personality and capabilities? It's a pattern of information; it's a pattern on interneuronal connections. Our brains do grow new connections between neurons. That's part of our skill and knowledge. It's a vast, intricate pattern of information that's in my brain--in everyone's brain--representing memories, knowledge, and skill. And we don't have a way of taking that pattern and quickly instantiating it into someone else's brain. Machines do have that. Take this system I just demonstrated to you. We spent years teaching several research computers how to recognize human speech. We started with certain methods which were imperfect. We had tens of thousands of hours of recorded human speech, which is annotated with the accurate transcription. We had the speech-recognition system try to recognize it, and when it made mistakes, we corrected it. We've automated that teaching process, and patiently we have taught it to correct its errors. It adjusts its pattern of information to be able to do a better job. But after years we have a system in our laboratory which does a very good job of recognizing human speech. Now, if you want your notebook computer to recognize human speech, you don't have to go through those years of training. You can quickly load the program, which is the pattern of information that we've evolved over a couple of decades of research, and you can load it in a matter of seconds. So computers can share their knowledge; they do have the means of loading these patterns quickly. As we build these nonbiological equivalents of our thinking process, we are not going to leave out quick downloading ports for interneuronal connection patterns and neuro- transmission concentration patterns. Another advantage is that electronics is inherently faster-- ten million times faster right now and continuing to get faster. As we can build structures that are equivalent in three dimensions to the massively parallel processing of the human brain, they will be inherently faster than human thinking. Machines have more accurate memories. We are all hard- pressed to remember a handful of phone numbers. Machines can remember billions of facts accurately and recall them very quickly. So, if we combine the subtlety and richness of human thinking with some of these advantages of knowledge-sharing, speed, and accuracy of memory, it will be a formidable combination. And the nonbiological forms of intelligence will continue to grow exponentially. But how are we going to achieve that software of intelligence? All of this speed is just brute force,crunching of information. It's not the subtlety and richness of human intelligence. In my book [The Age of Spiritual Machines] I talk about a number of different scenarios, but I'll just address one, which I think is the most compelling. We have an example of an entity that has human-level intelligence: the human brain. We have several dozen examples in this room. It's not hidden from us. It's not impossible to access that information. In fact, we are well down that path. We've been scanning the human brain,and, as I mentioned earlier, the speed and resolution of our ability to do that is continuing to accelerate as well. We have the ability today actually to scan the human brain with sufficient resolution and fineness of detail to see every single detail, all the neurotransmitter concentrations, the interneural connections, provided that the scanning tip is in close physical proximity to those neural features. So we take that scanning tip and move it around in the brain so that it's near every single interneural connection, every neurotransmitter concentration, every detail. How are we going to do that without making a mess of things? We are going to do it in the following way. This is a scenario that we can touch and feel today. Everything I am going to describe is feasible today, except for cost and size. But those are aspects that we can readily predict because of the ongoing trends of the accelerating price performance of computing and diminishing size or miniaturization. We simply develop what I call little nanobots, nano-robots, the size of blood cells, which are little computers with some robotic and scanning capability, and send them through the bloodstream. By the way, we already have early prototypes of nanobots, something called smart dust, which is extremely tiny specks that actually have computers in them, scanning devices, communication devices. They can actually fly; they have little wings. So we are already building little tiny devices. By 2030 we will be able to send billions of these little nanobots through the bloodstream. They will travel through every capillary in the brain and get into close physical proximity to every neural feature and build up a big database of exactly how that human brain is organized.The results will at least be a data dump of the organization of a human brain. What are we going to do with that information? One thing is that we are going to learn how the human brain works and understand how those massively parallel analog algorithms work. That's already underway. We actually already have maps of the early auditory and visual cortex. This speech-recognition, for example, has built into it the transformations that the human brain does on sound information. Without that speech recognition wouldn't work very well. So we are already applying our insights into the human brain from these scanning projects to the design of intelligent software. Another application of this kind of intelligent software is that we could reinstantiate the whole database into a neural computer of sufficient capacity. That wouldn't necessarily require us to understand all the methods. We would need to understand local brain processes, but not necessarily global brain processes. So if you scan my brain and reinstantiate it into a computer, you'd have a new Ray Kurzweil, and he would claim to have grown up in Queens, New York, and have gone to Massachusetts to go to MIT, and then he met Dr. Jernigan and developed a relationship with the National Federation of the Blind and was involved with reading machines for a few decades. He would say, "I walked into the scanner over there and woke up in the machine here. This technology really works." He will have a memory of having been Ray Kurzweil and will believe that he is Ray Kurzweil. Of course I'll still be here in my old carbon-cell-based body and brain, and I'll probably end up jealous of the new Ray Kurzweil because he'll be capable of things I could only dream of. Sometimes this scenario is presented as a road to immortality, but there are some philosophical issues that one has to contend with. For example, you could scan my brain while I am sleeping and reinstantiate. I wouldn't even necessarily know about it. If you came to me in the morning and said, "Hey Ray, good news--we've successfully scanned and reinstantiated your brain; we don't need your old carbon-cell-based body and brain anymore," I might discover a flaw in that philosophical perspective. We could talk for a long time about the philosophical conundrums of what consciousness is and whether these entities are conscious at all. I will say that these entities will certainly seem conscious; they will claim to be human even though they are based on nonbiological thinking processes. They will seem very human, and they will be very intelligent, so they will succeed in convincing us that they are intelligent. We will come to believe them; they will get mad if we don't believe them. Some philosophers will say, no, you cannot be conscious unless you squirt neurotransmitters, or you can't be conscious unless you are based on DNA-guided protein synthesis. Yes, they seem very conscious and they're compelling and they are funny and they get the joke and are emotional and they are very clever, but they don't squirt neurotransmitters, so they aren't conscious. At that point the nonbiological intelligence will crack a joke and will complain about being misunderstood, so we will come to accept that these are conscious entities. But the more practical scenario we will see is that we will expand our own human intelligence through combining with this nonbiological intelligence. One way we will do this is with these nanobots. Today we have something called neuron transistors. These are little electrical devices, which, if they are in close physical proximity to a neuron, can communicate in both directions with that neuron. They can detect the firing of a neuron and can also cause that neuron to fire or suppress it from firing. That is two-way communication noninvasively--it doesn't have to stick a wire into the neuron; it just has to be next to it. This technology is being used today. The whole era of neuroimplants has already started. I have a deaf friend who, before he got his cochlear implant, was profoundly deaf. I can now talk to him on the telephone because of his neural implant. There are neural implants for people with Parkinson's Disease-- Parkinson's scrambles a certain locus of cells--and this neural implant replaces that neural module with an electronic equivalent and communicates through this type of noninvasive, electronic interface. This was first developed about three years ago. In a dramatic demonstration of the technology, patients with advanced Parkinson's so that they were completely rigid were wheeled in to the room. The doctor, who was controlling them noninvasively through wireless radio control--which is a little scary--flipped the switch, and suddenly they came alive. Their Parkinson's symptoms were eliminated as he activated their neural implants. In my book I talk about an era of neural implants in which we will all use them to expand our thinking capability, not just to reverse diseases such as Parkinson's. People have challenged that, asking how many people are going to want to get a neural implant? Brain surgery is a pretty big step, a pretty formidable obstacle. The response is that we will be able to do this noninvasively. I just wrote a paper called "The Noninvasive, Surgery-Free, Reversible, Programmable, Distributed Neural Implant." It again uses these nanobots. Remember that already today we have the means for electronic devices to communicate in both directions in the brain, to detect what is going on in the neural biological circuits and also to control them. So these nanobots go through the blood stream and take up positions in millions or billions of different locations; they can basically expand the brain. They can create new interneural connections because they will all be on a wireless area network. They will also all be plugged into the World Wide Web wirelessly, so they can expand all of our biological networks, or memory, learning capability. We will be able to download knowledge and skills. This will really happen. It will be gradually introduced in different ways. But as we go through the twenty-first century, we will be expanding our thinking capability through this intimate connection with nonbiological intelligence. So let me come back to technology for the blind and just mention what we'll see as a few milestones. The very early part of the twenty-first century, the next several years, will see a rapid evolution of reading machines. They will take on new capabilities. They will sound human. They will translate languages. This is technology that will be introduced very soon. They will also get smaller. I have talked about my vision of hand-held reading machines for many years. We are really very close to having the technical means to have a digital camera that you can hold in the palm of your hand and instantly snap pages with sufficient resolution. We are also close to providing a pocket-sized reading machine that you can hold up to printed information in the real world, not necessarily on paper, like road signs, LTD displays, or other examples of real-world text. If we look out ten to twenty years from now, computers as we know them are essentially going to disappear. They are not going to be in little boxes and palmtops that you can put into your pocket. They are going to become very small and discrete and be built into our clothing and into other little devices that we can carry around on our bodies. This again is all technology that we can touch and feel today. There are already tiny visual sensors the size of pins that provide very high-resolution imaging. In fact, the smart dust that I talked about has visual sensors. Part of the application for that is spying. One version of this is being developed by the U.S. military so that they can just drop millions of these in enemy territory. These tiny little visual sensors will be flying around and sending back reports on what they see. But we can also apply this type of technology to the visually impaired. We will have the means constantly to interpret that visual information and present it through other modalities such as whispering in your ear or providing tactile information or combinations thereof. There will be plenty of opportunity to develop the most appropriate means of doing that. It's probably something we can't fully describe today. But information can be presented in many different forms. The reading machine is one example of that. These visual sensors, which will be looking around in all directions, will be interpreting that information and providing a constant stream of information for a visually impaired person. This would include reading. Any kind of printed information could be spoken or translated by using reading machines, but they will also provide other interpretations of the visual world, That's the scenario for 2010 to 2020. These devices will also be plugged into the World Wide Web through wireless communication. Everyone is going to walk around plugged into the World Wide Web at all times. Going to a Web site will mean entering a virtual-reality environment. We'll have the means of communicating with other people through that type of wireless communication at all times. These computing devices will be in and around our bodies and clothing within ten years. That's the scenario for between 2010 and 2020. As we go out to 2030 and beyond, the type of technology I described, which can be introduced inside our bodies and brains, will become a reality. Like every other type of technology, they won't provide every capability that one could imagine initially, but the technology will continue to evolve. The power of the computing substrate will continue to grow exponentially, so we will have the means of introducing knowledge and information into our brains in a more intimate way. This is a vision for everyone. Ultimately that will mean that we will have many different ways of experiencing the world and expanding our knowledge. Of course it will be important to develop and design this technology in ways that provide equal access for people with disabilities to overcome the disabilities and overcome the handicaps associated with disabilities. One lesson I have learned is the difference between the words "disability" and "handicap." Visual impairment, blindness, is a disability, and it may or may not be a handicap, depending on whether that person has the right set of skills and access to the right kind of technology. That's why organizations like the National Federation of the Blind and the Canadian National Institute for the Blind are vital, so that the power of this technology is applied to overcoming those handicaps. One handicap is the inability to access ordinary print for material that isn't readily available in Braille or Talking Book form. Reading machines have the potential of overcoming that, provided that they are designed in the right way and that people have access to them and that they are affordable and distributed and that people learn how to use them. That's true for all technology. Overcoming handicaps is not necessarily an issue of technology. Sometimes simple technical solutions such as the fiber glass cane can overcome limitations in travel. But that's a matter of having the right set of skills, and again we need organizations like the NFB to make sure that they are available. We will have many new tools in the future. These will provide opportunity, but there will also be challenges as we saw with the graphical user interface, which was a new technology that suddenly made visual information from the computer harder to access. With concerted efforts over the past five to ten years we've made great progress in making GUI information available. But we are going to continue to have those kinds of challenges when new technologies that create new sources of information are introduced. It's important that we keep in mind accessibility and make sure that blind people have access to the information. But I think the technical tools will be there, provided that we develop them in the right way. That's really the purpose of this conference, to deal with some of the near-term issues of new technology. That will continue to be the case as we go forward. But I think we will have the tools, provided that we develop them in the right ways to continue the vision that Dr. Jernigan articulated, which I quickly decided back twenty-five years ago was true for all the people I met coming out of the Iowa Commission and from the National Federation of the Blind, but wasn't true for every blind person. Some didn't have the access, the training, and really the attitude that information is available in many different forms and that there is nothing that a blind person is unable to accomplish if there is access to the information and skills. That is the purpose of this conference. Technology has one role to play. I look forward to continuing to work on this. I've been involved with this field for twenty-five years, and I look forward to working with Dr. Maurer and Dr. Herie and other leaders of this field to continue that progress. [PHOTO/CAPTION: Curtis Chong] The Current State of Technology for the Blind And the Challenge for the Twenty-first Century by Curtis Chong From the Editor: Curtis Chong is the Director of the National Federation of the Blind's Technology Department. I am very pleased to be able to talk with you today and to tell you where I think we are with respect to technology for the blind. I also hope to share some of my thoughts about what I think we should do in the next century to ensure that the blind get a piece of the action in the area of technology. It is fair to say that we, the blind, have entered the age of technology with a vengeance. Technology has profoundly affected our lives. We see this in the classroom, where the blind child learns to use an electronic note-taker, Braille embosser, or computer. We see this in the colleges and universities, where blind students routinely write and spell-check their college papers with word-processing software and communicate using e- mail. We see this in the vocational rehabilitation system, where clients ask their counselors for computers, screen-reading programs, print-reading systems, and electronic note-takers to help them compete with the sighted. We see this in the office, where blind employees use the same computer programs as their sighted peers. We see this in the home, where blind people struggle to learn enough so that they can use computers to manage personal finances, send e-mail to friends and relatives, and shop on the Web. Much of the technology we use today was designed specifically for the blind. Other technology, developed for the general commercial market, is used by the blind with the help of so-called assistive technology. And to a growing extent there is commercial off-the-shelf technology which has in it enough nonvisual access that a blind person can use it out of the box. We have speech output and refreshable Braille note-takers which, while pretending not to be computers, allow us to take notes, organize information, execute ordinary and scientific calculations, and keep track of time and appointments. You might think of these devices as personal digital assistants (PDA's) for the blind. However, unlike PDA's for the sighted, our PDA's still can't send and receive faxes or e-mail, they don't fit very well into fanny packs, and they cost a lot more. We have Braille embossers of all types that receive text from computers and produce anything from personal letters to magazine-style publications. Because of these embossers and the Grade II translation programs which are necessary accompaniments, we can get more literary Braille than has ever been produced before. Because of improvements in Grade II translation software, the level of skill required to produce readable, properly- formatted literary Braille depends less upon an understanding of the Braille code than on an understanding of the differences between print and Braille formatting. The Brailling of mathematics and highly technical material still requires more sophistication, however; the electronic source format for these materials cannot yet be converted automatically into properly- formatted Nemeth Code or Computer Braille. We have refreshable Braille displays with which we can read a single line of rapidly-changing text. However, these devices are still beyond the financial reach of most blind individuals, and the cost of manufacturing a refreshable Braille display with multiple lines is still prohibitive. We have stand-alone reading machines and computer software that can convert pages of printed text into speech. For those blind users who don't mind working with a system that is not necessarily blind-friendly, this technology can also be found in the commercial market--for a lot less money. But the technology still misses on average about one in every hundred letters, does not handle cursive writing or pictures, requires at least thirty seconds to process each printed page, and is not portable by any stretch of the imagination. We have NEWSLINEr for the Blind and America's Jobliner. These technologies were developed by the National Federation of the Blind to close the gap in access to information technology for the blind. With NEWSLINE the texts of seven national and more than twenty local newspapers are made available to blind people around the country who need only a conventional touch-tone telephone to access the system. With America's Jobline blind people and many others now have access to job announcements on America's Job Bank, and they don't need a computer to get this information. While these technologies provide the blind with unprecedented access to important information, there are still not enough local service centers to blanket the country. Moving away from blindness-specific technology, we have the personal computer, made nonvisually accessible with the help of screen-access software and hardware. The combination of blindness-specific technology with off-the-shelf commercial technology has given us unprecedented access to information in a way that we have never had before. It has also given rise to challenges whose solution requires the blending of technical expertise from the commercial sector and from the blindness sector. Today, no matter what professional job you have, the personal computer is an important and highly visible part of getting your work done. If you can't use a personal computer or if you can't find a way to get somebody else to do your computer- related tasks, you will be operating at a severe disadvantage, and your ability to produce quality work will be diminished. This is the reality today, and I predict that the ability to use a computer will become even more important for the professional jobs of tomorrow. This will be as true for the blind as for the sighted. The difference for us, the blind, is that unless the technology moves in a radically different direction, we will still have to rely upon so-called third-party or assistive technology to use the computer--technology which introduces added complexity, requires additional training, and demands its own unique brand of technical expertise. While we are on the subject of the personal computer, we cannot avoid talking about access to the Windows operating system and Windows applications. Today we have fairly good access to the Windows 95, 98, and NT operating systems. Most operating system functions are accessible through the keyboard, and the screen- access vendors have enough information about how these operating systems work to keep track of what most operating-system functions send to the screen. Windows 98, released by Microsoft last year, tries to make things on the screen appear as if you are browsing the Web. This confuses many of the screen-reading programs. Fortunately, with a bit of customization, the Web-like appearance can be turned off. (This is, by the way, one example of some good work that has been accomplished by Microsoft to aid the accessibility effort.) On a less positive note, with Windows NT, it is still not possible today for a blind computer user to run a screen-reading program while identifying him- or herself to the operating system. Logging in is still more a matter of faith and good keyboarding skills. Nonvisual access to Windows-based word processors, data base programs, accounting packages, Web browsers, and e-mail clients is still not what it should be. Yes, to a greater or lesser extent we can use Microsoft Word, Internet Explorer, the Access data base program, various e-mail programs, and other Windows applications, but our ability to use these programs with 100% efficiency leaves a lot to be desired. It is also far too easy for any access that might have been gained on a current version to be lost when a new version is released. There are also too many programs, developed internally by employers for their employees, which work either poorly or not at all with screen- access technology for the blind. This is a significant barrier to employment. All of this is to say that our access to Windows and its applications is far from perfect. I still cringe whenever I hear about a new Windows program or a proposed upgrade to Windows itself. Why? Because the first thing I ask myself is, "Will the upgrade or program work with screen-access technology for the blind?" In the case of a Windows upgrade, it is almost certain that the screen-access technology will have to be updated to deal with internal changes that have been made to the operating system. In the case of a new program--such as a new customer service application used by XYZ employer, it is more likely that the program will not work well or at all with screen-access technology for the blind. We can't go out and hunt up a new financial management program, a new data base program, or a new word processor and just buy it because we like its features. We have to pay for the program, test it with our screen-access technology, and if it doesn't work, return it and hope to get our money back. The World Wide Web is likely to become a critical element of the solution to our nonvisual access problem. Although most of us think of the Web in the context of Windows, Netscape, and Internet Explorer, the fact is that Web-based information is not dependent on a specific operating system or computer platform. The technology of the Web is very quickly becoming central to all manner of inter- and intranet applications. E-commerce, electronic forms, online encyclopedias, and chat rooms: these are but a few of the applications which either are or soon will be based on Web technology. In order for the blind to have nonvisual access to the Web, we must have nonvisual access to the Web pages themselves, the Web browsing and other software which brings the Web pages to the user, and the tools which help us to design and publish our own Web pages. All of these access issues are currently under consideration by the Web Access Initiative (WAI) of the World Wide Web Consortium. What this means for the blind is that the entire range of nonvisual and other access issues is being considered internationally. So far as I can tell, a good deal has already been accomplished. The WAI has already released a recommendation on Web content accessibility and is hard at work on accessibility guidelines for user agents and authoring tools. If the recommendations emerging from the work of WAI are followed, we stand a very good chance of having the kind of access we need in order to take full advantage of this burgeoning technology. I want to talk briefly about access to electronic copies of published works. At one time there were those who thought that, if you wanted an electronic copy of a printed book, it was sufficient to get a plain ASCII text version from the publisher. Anyone who has done any transcription with today's Braille translation software will tell you that converting straight ASCII text to properly formatted Braille is a labor-intensive process. The reasons for this are too complex to discuss here, but suffice it to say that what is needed is material from the publishers with more information about how the material is structured. Is a line of text a sidebar, a heading, a line item in a table of contents, an index item, or simply a normal paragraph? Which text is supposed to go into a footnote? What should be done with the repetitive information that often appears at the top or bottom of each page? If electronic copies of published books contained this information from the beginning, the process of converting the material into Braille would be much easier. Unfortunately, publishing tools in use today are designed to provide visual--not logical--structural information. As long as the source material is prepared only for visual presentation, we will always have this problem of conversion from a visual format to a nonvisual one. This increases the amount of work required to get a good Braille textbook from an electronic copy supplied by the publishers. No discussion of the current state of technology would be complete without mentioning digitally controlled appliances and the problems they pose for the blind. As far as I know, very little work is going on to attack the problem of on-screen menus, buttons that we cannot feel, rotary knobs whose settings can be ascertained only by looking at a visual display, and "smart" appliances which refuse to forget your last mistake and take you right back to your disaster even after you pull the plug. The other day I went to look at some electronic appliances. Do you know that there are now stoves and ovens with controls on smooth glass surfaces that are completely undetectable by touch? Admittedly these digital controls appear today only on some high- end appliances. But if nothing is done, it is only a matter of time before they begin creeping into the lower-end appliances. At the very least the blind consumer shopping for appliances today must give careful attention in the store to how the controls operate or risk finding out after it has been delivered that the appliance cannot be operated without sight. I want to turn now to considerations for the twenty-first century. I think everyone would agree that in the next century our use of technology will increase in ways we haven't even begun to imagine. We, the blind, must be able to take advantage of the new technologies that are sure to be developed or risk being relegated to the technological backwaters of society. We must find ways to obtain nonvisual access to operating systems and application software without having to use software- and hardware-dependent strategies. We are fortunate indeed that Windows and the Intel-based processor on which it runs have achieved widespread use in the world today. This has permitted the development of a variety of screen-access programs, stimulating competition, and reducing costs to the consumer. But what will happen if we have to contend with ten or more different operating systems and dozens of different processor types? Where will screen-access technology be able to take us then? One possibility is a smart screen reader capable of looking at and interpreting the contents of any video display. Another is the development of a cross-platform protocol which allows information to be transmitted between any computer-controlled system and a portable access device. I am sure there are other possible solutions. We just have to get busy and create them. Developers and designers of commercial technology must be encouraged--if not required--to include nonvisual access during the design stage of their products and to provide the information we need directly--for example, a self-voicing application. This will allow nonvisual access to be added at a point where its cost is relatively trivial, and it will help to move nonvisual access into the commercial market, where its cost can be spread over billions of consumers. Inevitably there will be times when we will be able to use specific devices only with a combination of sighted assistance and old-fashioned basic blindness skills. This underscores the continuing need for training programs which teach the alternative techniques of blindness while promoting a positive, can-do attitude which encourages innovation, creativity, and self- reliance. Remember, the human brain continues to be the most flexible computer in the world. Oftentimes the simplest methods provide the most effective solutions. We must find ways to make complex technologies easier to use. For too long we have forced the blind user to accommodate his or her tasks and skills to conform to the requirements of the technology--not the other way around. Why can't technology be smart enough to accommodate itself to the blind user? If I can't see the screen of a computer, shouldn't it be smart enough to talk to me? A picture may be worth a thousand words, but what if I need to hear the thousand words? If I don't know how to type, why can't the computer listen to what I have to say and do what I want? Yes, computers aren't smart enough to do these things today, but they surely will be tomorrow. Our challenge is to ensure that the development of more sophisticated technologies works to our benefit instead of putting roadblocks in our path. We must find a way to bring together the concepts of visual and logical structure in electronic publications. At the very least, publishers of commercial books intended for the sighted must be willing to put some effort into the task of converting materials intended for visual presentation into a format which facilitates production of material in nonvisual formats such as Braille or speech. Perhaps the biggest challenge facing us in the next century is the unpredictability of technological change. We know that the one constant we can count on with respect to technology is change. We also know that even our best predictions are often proven wrong. In 1981 Bill Gates said, "640K ought to be enough for anybody." The desktop computers of today, with anywhere from 32 to 128 to 256 megabytes of memory, are vivid reminders of the fallacy of that statement. So, while we know that big changes are ahead, we must also bear in mind that the nature of those changes is hard to predict. If we exercise our human talents of flexibility, adaptability, and creativity and if we always keep in mind the competence and normality of the blind, the next century will indeed be a time of progress and accomplishment. [PHOTO/CAPTION: James Gashel] The State of the Law on Technology and the Blind: What It Is, and What It Ought to Be by James Gashel From the Editor: Jim Gashel is the Director of Governmental Affairs for the National Federation of the Blind. There ought to be a law! This is what we're taught to say in my line of work. I am the Director of Governmental Affairs for the National Federation of the Blind. Having laws made, rather than having machines made, is our way of fixing things and solving problems. This is what many people say is wrong with our country. Perhaps that is so, but I still say, "There ought to be a law!" For those of us who are blind, the advent of modern and evolving communications technology virtually forces this response--"There ought to be a law." I can remember only a few years ago when a single computer workstation was nothing more than that--a stand-alone computer with a monitor and a printer connected to it. You could use it to process words, keep lists, or perform computations, but that was just about it. If you wanted to find information that did not reside within that system, you would have to go somewhere else to look it up. If you wanted to communicate with another person about the information, you could use the computer to write that person a letter, then print the letter out, drop it in the mail, and hope. That's the way it was, even in the early part of the decade now ending. I realize that many--perhaps most of you in this group--may not have the same perspective on technology that I do because working in this field is your life. For most people in the world, however, contact with sophisticated computer and communications technology has not been a common, daily experience. Besides, someone else with the ability and skill required could usually be called upon to operate the equipment when needed. If you were blind, unless computers were directly within your line of work-- such as programming them--you could avoid interacting with them pretty much altogether. At least that's what I did. Now the world is changing. That is obvious. And the way we communicate with one another is changing every day. On Monday of this week, for example, I received my first spoken-word e-mail message. I have no idea why the person sent the message as a wave file, using a service called "shout-mail," but, if the message itself was not interesting (which, like most of my e-mail, it was not) the technology used to deliver the message certainly was. More than being just interesting, of course, the technology which is now at our fingertips has become a regular part of daily life. Access to electronic information technology is absolutely essential. The communications infrastructure now being built will make skilled use of this technology even more essential for anyone, blind or sighted, in the years ahead. Simply put, we are all being forced to become technology-literate, or watch from the sidelines while those who are technology-literate pass us by. The pace of implementing new ways to communicate and acquire information is frightening to some, but the failure to include a means of nonvisual access is most frightening for blind people. I say that this is most frightening because barriers to communication are intolerable roadblocks to success in the knowledge-based economy of today and beyond. Barriers to the acquisition of information are not the kind of nuisance-level annoyance that the blind can overcome with good training. The barriers in the cyber-world are real. Unless we respond effectively, these barriers now being built will impose a competitive disadvantage upon blind people as a class. This is obviously a serious matter. Therefore I submit that, among the things which must be done, we need more laws. I know there are laws on the books already to deal with technology access, but we really do need more of them. The Americans with Disabilities Act declares that discrimination on the basis of disability is illegal in public services and in public accommodations provided by private entities. This prohibition is echoed and applied to governmental entities--federal, state, and local--by Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, as amended. Isn't this enough law? I don't think so. Laws against discrimination are fine as a general proposition, and we usually support them. However, using the law of nondiscrimination to address technology access has not worked, or at least not worked very well. I think this is so because enforcement of laws against discrimination occurs more or less as a case-by-case event. Also enforcement usually occurs to correct wrongdoing after the fact. With nonvisual access to information technology, we need to correct wrongdoing before the fact--before the technology is built and particularly before it is installed. If that does not occur, the claim of hardship, which will be presented as a defense against a charge of discrimination, may be overpowering. After all, most judges can see, and they generally don't believe that a failure to make a device one way, as opposed to another, would constitute discrimination. This is why our approach to access has focused on the law of procurement and not solely on nondiscrimination law. I think that most of you are aware of Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, as amended, which was completely revised as a part of the latest series of amendments to the Rehabilitation Act, enacted in 1998. Section 508 speaks forcefully for access requirements in the development, purchasing, and use of electronic and information technology by agencies of the federal government. Later in this conference Pat Cannon, who serves as one of the public members on the Access Board, will discuss the new standards being developed under this law. These standards are expected to be in effect for all of the federal government next August. This is certainly part of what is needed, but it is still not enough. About two and a half years ago the National Federation of the Blind published a model bill for states to use in promoting nonvisual access to information technology. To date, five states--Arkansas, Maryland, Minnesota, Texas, and Virginia-- have enacted laws patterned on this model. The provisions of these laws differ somewhat from one state to another, but the general thrust is the same--to require all procurement contracts for information technology to include a nonvisual access clause. In Maryland and most of the other states as well, the content of this clause is specified in the law, requiring (1) that the technology must provide equivalent access for effective use by both visual and nonvisual means; (2) that the technology will present information, including prompts used for interactive communications, in formats intended for both visual and nonvisual use; (3) that the technology can be integrated into networks for obtaining, retrieving, and disseminating information used by individuals who are not blind or visually impaired; and (4) that technology which is designed to be compatible with nonvisual access devices and software will be obtained whenever such technology, not requiring modification, is available. The bottom-line, fundamental point of this legislation is that systems and technology which are purchased and used by the state must be designed with compatibility for nonvisual use built in from the very beginning. In case you hadn't noticed, the federal government is not the only entity involved in the procurement of information technology. When we placed this bill before the Maryland General Assembly two years ago, the state was expecting to spend close to half a billion dollars on information technology in that year alone. The same is happening everywhere. Cities and counties too are purchasing information technology in order to be part of the new infrastructure being used to communicate and disseminate information. In the view of the National Federation of the Blind, and I suspect that this is a generally held view within this group as well, any public entity must include criteria for nonvisual access in contracts for the purchase of information technology. The same is true of private entities that provide services to the public. We must see to it that they do it. Therefore consistent enactment of the model access legislation in as many political jurisdictions as possible, and applying to as many entities as possible--states, counties, cities, school districts, the private sector, etc.--must be placed at the top of our priority list. The technology of the future will certainly have a new look. Our responsibility is to insist upon a new sound and a new feel to the technology as well. The times require it, and the law must demand it. [PHOTO/CAPTION: Fredric Schroeder] Rehabilitation Requirements and the Need for Universal Access to Information: The Accelerated Pace of Technology, a Challenge for Vocational Rehabilitation by Fredric K. Schroeder, Ph.D. From the Editor: Dr. Schroeder is the Commissioner of the Rehabilitation Services Administration, U.S. Department of Education. I was very pleased in an earlier presentation to hear Mr. Chong talk about some of the access issues surrounding the ubiquitous appliances filling our lives. Last May I had the honor of being at the ceremony when Dr. Maurer was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Louisville. I was talking about this issue with Dr. and Mrs. Maurer and Dr. Cranmer. In particular I was complaining about remote controls for televisions in hotels. I said that it seemed to me there should be some simple, commonly agreed-upon symbols to signify frequent activities, such as up-and-down channel, up-and-down volume, and on-off buttons. It wouldn't solve all the problems; it certainly wouldn't solve the problem of menu-driven features now on televisions. (I was astonished one time, when I was trying to run a hotel television, suddenly to have Spanish coming over my TV. I do not speak Spanish fluently, so it was some disadvantage to me to have this happen.) Anyway, I was saying that, just as the dot on the five of telephone and other keypads has become widespread, there ought to be a standardized set of symbols for television remote controls. Mrs. Maurer commented that perhaps we could call it the Uniform Button Code, which I thought had some merit. My purpose this morning is to talk to you about technology as it relates to rehabilitation. Successive Harris polls commissioned by the National Organization on Disability have shown that two-thirds of people with disabilities in the United States are unemployed. The Social Security Administration reports that over seven million people now receive Social Security Supplemental Income or Social Security Disability Insurance at a cost of more than eighty billion dollars annually. The high unemployment of blind people and others with disabilities is a national tragedy. Accordingly, two years ago President Clinton noted, "If America is to continue to grow and prosper, if we are to lead the challenging global economy of the twenty-first century, we cannot afford to ignore the talents, energy, and creativity of the fifty-four million Americans with disabilities." But how do we solve the unemployment and underemployment of the blind and others? All of you are aware of recent changes to Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act that strengthen the requirement for federal agencies to purchase accessible technology. Later you will hear a detailed discussion of the Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board's work on developing accessibility standards. It is critical that the federal government put its buying power to work as an economic incentive for industry to consider accessibility at the development stage. I have distributed copies of a document giving updated information on the status of Section 508 implementation and a letter from Assistant Secretary Judith Heumann and the Director of the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research, Katherine Seelman, concerning the applicability of Section 508 requirements to states receiving funds under the Assistive Technology Act. But what other resources can help address the unemployment and underemployment of blind people and others? In America the vocational rehabilitation program commits two-and-a-half billion dollars each year to support job training efforts for blind people and others with disabilities. The services available through the VR program are many and varied, according to the unique needs of the individual. The VR system provides assessment services, planning services, adjustment training, specific job skills training, placement services, assistive technology services, and much more. Yet to conceptualize the VR program as nothing more than a dispenser of discrete services is to miss the most important aspect of rehabilitation. While these services are important, it must be understood that services support a set of expectations. Services do not drive expectations; expectations drive and define our services. If we assume that blind people can work in only a narrowly defined number of jobs and occupations, then our services, and for that matter, our creativity will be employed in support of this minimal expectation. I believe that there are essentially two paradigms of blindness which have an impact on the future development of access technology. One (and it is the one most commonly held by society) is that the blind, by virtue of their disability, are inherently less capable and less productive than others. If our expectation is that the blind will always be less capable than the sighted, any degree of progress which appears to ameliorate any amount of incapacity will be regarded as improvement. Simply put, this paradigm starts with the presumption that the way the sighted perform work is the best and most efficient method, and hence the challenge to our technology is to seek methods by which the blind can perform work in the same manner as the sighted. Alternatively, there are those (unfortunately a minority, but at least a growing minority) who hold the view that blind people can compete alongside the sighted and achieve a status of real equality. The view is that what is important is what an individual accomplishes and not how the individual performs a given task. If expectations drive technology, then a shared vision premised on the fundamental equality of the blind is essential to the development of future technology. In other words, if we believe that blind people can perform work as well as others, we will not be satisfied with our technology until it enables blind people to work competitively. Under this paradigm we set aside the methods by which the sighted function and concentrate on the product or outcome we desire. I recognize that there is an immediate need to give blind people access to the technology readily available in the workplace. However, I believe that the long-term challenge to our technological development is to find the best and most efficient ways for blind people to perform work, rather than continuing to seek to modify the methods used by the sighted. Given that most commercial technology assumes the user to have sight, the use of graphics will unquestionably continue to expand. As the use of graphics increases, the challenge of providing blind people equal access becomes more and more daunting. Recently we have seen efforts to create text descriptions of graphic material. This approach is useful; yet, as more and more visual information is integrated into the high- tech workplace, the awkwardness of representing visual information using text will be compounded. More to the point, the reason that the sighted use graphics is often that it is a concise way of representing complex material or relationships. Simply adapting our technology so that graphical material has a text equivalent fails to address the point that the graphical presentation of material was a better, more concise, and perhaps more comprehensible representation of complex information. What I am promoting is a construct in which blind people are seen as inherently different from the sighted, yet not inferior to them. Some presume that to acknowledge difference is somehow an affirmation of inferiority. On the contrary, I believe it is only through the declaration of difference that we can assert true equality. People from different nations may have striking differences, the most obvious of which may be a difference in language. In some instances a concept that is readily expressed in one language may be quite difficult to express in another. Surely this does not imply that one language is, therefore, superior to another. If we accept that blind people function differently from the sighted, then the task is not simply to give blind people access to what the sighted see but to create methods by which both the blind and the sighted have optimum access to needed information and, thus, the same opportunity to work competitively. Presently we are preoccupied, perhaps out of necessity, with giving the blind access to what the sighted see without recognizing that what the sighted see is simply a representation of information designed with vision in mind. True access for the blind, therefore, starts not with what the sighted see but with the information which needs to be conveyed to the user. If we presume that the blind can receive, comprehend, analyze, and express ideas and information as readily as the sighted, then the limitation of today's technology becomes just that--the limitation of our technology--not the limitation of the blind. I believe that we need such a goal for access technology, a goal that transcends our current technology and charts a course for future development, a goal that is rooted in the promise of real equality for the blind rather than in the lesser promise of decreased dependency. You may think that what I am suggesting is entirely unrealistic. While it is desirable to develop technologies that allow blind people access to information in ways that are designed specifically for blind people, the odds of such development happening are quite low, given the complexity of the task and the small number of blind people. But I think there is a larger market than simply blind people who could benefit from other approaches to accessing information. Computer technology is still a relatively new phenomenon. Accordingly, the people who are involved in designing the hardware and software in current use for the most part are people for whom computers make sense. For this reason they tend to share a common learning style, an orientation that leads them to view information in similar ways. I believe that current computer technology, such as word processing, is rooted in the assumption that all people are spatial learners. This is true because the people who develop the programs--that is the people for whom computers make sense--are most likely spatial in their orientation. Accordingly, when people are not spatial, when they cannot make sense of the graphical world, they are generally met with frustration since they cannot understand why the spatial graphical display of information is easy and efficient. These people hate upgrades. They do not regard them as improvements but rather as introducing new and entirely incomprehensible icons, any one of which is likely to initiate all manner of trouble. Assurances that the new system is easier and more powerful than the old one do not impress them. Yesterday I was working in my office, only to be confronted by a message indicating that I had performed "an illegal operation." This message may mean something to all of you, but to me it meant that the computer would not do what I wanted it to do, and, beyond that, it was blaming me for the problem. Some of these problems are due to our technology, and some are due to the fact that our technology mostly assumes a given learning style or orientation. What I am suggesting is that blind people are not the only people who need alternative ways of viewing information. There will always be a need for blind people to interact using the technology devised for the sighted, as there will doubtless always be a need for language interpreters. And as with interpreters, the process of communication from one language or medium to another will undoubtedly bring with it some measure of inefficiency. Yet I believe this is the context in which computer access for the blind should be viewed, not simply access to the computer screen, but access to the information contained in the computer. It may well be that some information will need to be tactually represented, either through some type of refreshable device or by means of a device which is conceptually refreshable and which allows the creation of solid, three-dimensional objects. We may need systems that employ sound, not simply for the purpose of synthesizing speech, but perhaps to lend color, depth, and intensity to concepts or information being expressed. We must view the screen as simply a vehicle for conveying information visually and recognize that the material on the screen is not the information itself but a representation of information, thought, and ideas. The measure of our success therefore is the degree of access blind people have to the information available to the sighted in ways that are as efficient as the access the sighted have to the information by means of graphics, not some less tangible incremental progress toward eliminating new and emerging technological hurdles. We have made much progress, and we will continue to make more. I believe there is a genuine possibility for full and meaningful integration of the blind into society. To accomplish this end, we must be willing to challenge ourselves to believe in a vision of the future that surpasses our current technology and experience. We must be willing to become partners in a movement toward accelerated change that brings with it risk and promise. Blind people want to be productive. Blind people want to live normal lives as normal people with the opportunity for education, employment, and social integration. To accomplish this goal, we must first believe that it is possible. When we believe that it is possible, then we will drive our technology to develop in support of our beliefs. [PHOTO/CAPTION: Richard Ring] America Online: Stonewalling Responsibility and Ignoring Access for the Blind by Richard Ring From the Editor: Richard Ring is the Supervisor of the NFB's International Braille and Technology Center in Baltimore. The first time I had the opportunity to speak to the U.S./ Canada Conference on Technology, I had the dubious honor of following Dr. Kurzweil. Now I have the honor of being the first speaker after a good lunch. Access to the world of personal computers is one of the most important issues facing blind consumers and professionals alike. When we look back on the state of accessibility that existed at the time of the Third U.S/Canada Conference on Technology for the Blind, which was held at the National Center for the Blind in November of 1996, we can see that we have come quite a distance. Many of the breakthroughs in accessibility can be attributed to the work of those of you attending this conference. Screen-access programs that allow blind people access to the Windows operating system have improved dramatically during the past three years. Many of these programs provide support not only for speech synthesizers (both hardware and software) but for refreshable Braille displays as well. Many Windows applications now function reasonably well with the latest versions of screen- access programs. Though there are many barriers still to be overcome, access to most off-the-shelf software appears to be achievable in the foreseeable future. Two of the most frequently asked questions at the International Braille and Technology Center for the Blind are "How do I get on line?" and "How do I use the Internet?" The Internet dominates our world today as few things ever have. One cannot open a newspaper or magazine, listen to the radio, or watch television without being inundated with references to some aspect of the Internet. Any organization or individual of consequence has a Web site: corporations, universities, governmental agencies, and even private citizens. The list of things we can do online is growing, it seems, faster each day. One can purchase nearly anything, apply for loans and credit cards, and obtain access to governmental services. There is no end in sight to how much commerce, entertainment, and access to information of all kinds is going to be available to those who can successfully use the Internet. It is not surprising, therefore, that more and more people are getting online every day, and while it might be argued that a relatively small percentage of the population is currently using the Internet, that percentage is growing at a remarkable rate. Blind people are no exception. We want access to the Internet as much as anyone else. Because of improvements made to screen reading programs and a little cooperation from commercial software developers, this access is becoming easier to accomplish. These improvements have made the World Wide Web a far more rewarding and productive venture for the blind than it once was. The majority of Internet service providers--those companies who provide our connection to the Internet--can be used by blind persons, chiefly because they do not force us to use a specific piece of software to obtain that access. Rather they provide a gateway to the Internet, allowing the user to choose the e-mail client, Web browser, and news reader that function best with his or her screen-access software. However, one major player on the Internet, America Online (AOL), has steadfastly refused to adopt this convention. Because of its insistence that users run proprietary AOL software, the blind have been effectively shut out of AOL and any access to the Internet they might have hoped to obtain through the AOL service. America Online is the largest provider of Internet access in the world. It has nearly nineteen million subscribers world wide. It saturates our mailboxes with CD's offering us hours of free access. The AOL software is available in supermarkets and on the Web. AOL says that it can support as many as four million simultaneous logons. Add to this the fact that AOL has already gobbled up Compuserve and Netscape, and you begin to understand why we are discussing AOL today. The bottom line is that the blind are barred from effective access to AOL's proprietary software; it simply doesn't work at all well with our screen reading software. It is that simple. What makes the AOL software so difficult for the blind computer user? To answer this question, let us first examine how software that is nonvisually accessible works. First, it provides keyboard equivalents for the many commands normally executed by sighted users with the mouse. While screen-access programs for the blind contain features to move the mouse pointer from the keyboard, it is far easier and more efficient when a blind person can use keyboard shortcuts to execute various commands. Second, nonvisually accessible software uses standard Windows controls--controls which can be detected by screen reading programs. These controls include, but are not limited to the following: pull-down menus, list boxes, edit boxes, combo boxes, radio and other push buttons, and check boxes. It is also important for text labels to be associated with these controls. For example, when you tab over a button which says "cancel," the screen reading software detects the label and says "cancel button." When you tab into an edit box where you are to enter your first name, the screen reading software sees the label "first name," and says "first name." Another aspect of nonvisually accessible software is the use of focus to let the screen reading program know where the user's attention should be directed. When a blind user invokes functions from the keyboard, it is extremely important for the focus to move as keyboard commands are executed. For example, if you use the up and down arrow keys to move through the items in a list box, it is important for the focus to move to each item on the list as it is highlighted. Nonvisually accessible applications do not require screen- access software to be customized to deal with unknown control types or window classes. Although it is possible to configure screen reading programs to function with unfriendly or incompatible software, such tasks are usually beyond the capabilities of the average computer user. Let us now turn our attention to the AOL software itself. We looked at two versions: AOL 4.0 and, most recently, AOL 5.0. We noticed no significant differences between these two versions. Both were equally inaccessible to the blind. The first problem we encountered with the AOL software occurred during the sign-up and installation process. Without sighted assistance, you cannot press the button which tells AOL whether you are a new or existing user. The forms used to select a local access number and enter personal information (i.e., your name, address, and credit card number) are not compatible with screen-access software. The blind person has no way to know what information needs to be entered at any given time. After the AOL software has dialed and established a connection with the main AOL system, the blind computer user is presented with a complex and busy screen layout. Most of the information which can be discerned easily by sight eludes detection by the screen-access program. In many cases, after you complete the logon procedure, you are presented with the welcome screen. Visually this screen resembles a complex dialogue box containing multiple pages in a window with the traditional title bar, menu bar, and toolbar. This may be the visual appearance of the screen, but internally, where it is captured by the screen- access program, it is anything but standard. This makes it difficult if not impossible for the blind user to learn anything about the choices that can be selected. After logon AOL will play a wave file which says, "Welcome," and, if unread electronic mail is pending, another wave file which says, "You've got mail!" These wave files are more gimmicky than anything else, and they certainly don't help the blind user to understand what to do next. The majority of the controls displayed on the welcome screen are unlabeled icons. The text on the screen can be seen visually, but because a lot of it consists of bitmapped images of text, it is unavailable to the screen reading program. Accordingly, though there are many services available to a sighted user of AOL, these services are nearly impossible for a blind user to discover, let alone activate. One problem with the AOL software that we discovered right away is that you cannot predict what screen will appear when you connect to the system. You might get the welcome screen just discussed, a screen of advertisements, or a screen which asks you to enter a search term. The point is that you cannot predict with certainty what screen will appear when you establish a connection with AOL. On the screen of advertisements which sometimes appears, a group of buttons is displayed. You will see buttons labeled "No thanks" and "Tell me more." While it is possible to hear the names of these buttons and while you can move between them with the tab key, the behavior of the buttons is inconsistent. Sometimes you can activate a button by pressing the spacebar. At other times pressing the spacebar doesn't work. Also you cannot read the text of the advertisement without using your screen reading program's mouse movement keys to examine the screen. Many of the available AOL services are invoked from the welcome screen. However, because of the nature of this screen, a blind user can never be certain what service he or she is selecting. There are many services: an online encyclopedia, chat rooms, headline news, shopping, sending and receiving e-mail, etc. One service is called Channels. It appears to provide the AOL user with a convenient way to browse through numerous areas of information and then to focus upon a desired information category or service. Channels is quite inaccessible to blind users. Both opening the Channels screen and selecting a desired channel require sighted assistance. One service which would certainly be of interest to AOL users is Headline News. This service is not accessible to the blind for two reasons. First, the "Headline News" selection is very difficult to find on the screen, and, second, the news is presented using an animated news-ticker-like display, which screen-access technology cannot track. While the majority of AOL services are largely inaccessible to the blind person using speech or Braille screen-access software, it would appear that AOL's electronic mail service is minimally usable. We discovered by accident that a few keyboard commands can be used to invoke various e-mail functions. Let me walk you through the steps necessary to send e-mail with the AOL software. First you press CTRL-M to activate the "Write Mail" function. At this point, although your screen reading program doesn't tell you this, you are in the "to:" field, where you would enter the recipient's e-mail address. You type the address and then press the Tab key to go to the next field. Again, the screen reading program doesn't tell you what the field name is, but you can infer after some exploration that you should continue pressing Tab until you hear the word "subject" spoken. You then type the subject of your note and press Tab again, at which point you guess that you are in the body of your message, where you can begin writing. If you want to send a carbon copy or a blind carbon copy, you have to hunt around the screen with your simulated mouse pointer until you find the appropriate buttons. Believe it or not, this is the most accessible of all the AOL services. The World Wide Web can be explored using the AOL software. AOL displays what appears to be an ordinary Web page, but the screen reading program has no clue that a Web page is being displayed. The user is therefore unable to navigate the page using the Tab and Enter keys as is customary when using more accessible Web-browsing software. We learned that, once a connection has been established with AOL, you can use an ordinary more accessible Web-browsing program to surf the Web. We would like to think that this feature was deliberately included in the AOL system, but we can't be sure. We could continue to catalog the many aspects of AOL's software which make it a difficult and frustrating experience for the blind computer user, but it is clear from what we have said thus far that AOL is not a place where the blind are currently made to feel welcome. It is also clear from some of the correspondence we have had with individuals from AOL that the company simply doesn't get it. On October 26, 1998, almost exactly one year ago, Curtis Chong, the Director of Technology for the National Federation of the Blind, wrote a letter to Rob Jennings, who was at that time serving as AOL's Vice President of Programming and Development. In this letter Mr. Chong outlined many of the problems blind people were experiencing with the AOL software and suggested steps that AOL might take to solve the problem. The letter was cordial and informative. Although Mr. Jennings did respond to Mr. Chong's letter with a telephone call, he did not keep his promise to visit the International Braille and Technology Center for the Blind shortly after the 1999 new year. In fact, we never heard from Mr. Jennings after that one phone call. In the spring of this year we came across another letter from AOL, written in response to an inquiry about AOL's accessibility to the blind. The letter made much of the fact that AOL was testing software which could convert speech to text and vice versa. It would seem that all of the information Mr. Chong supplied to Rob Jennings was somehow lost in the AOL bureaucracy. Anyone who has been involved in technology for the blind during the past few years would know that text-to-speech and speech-to- text software already exist and that our problems with the AOL program are caused by its inconsistent and nonstandard behavior in the Windows environment--not by any lack of text-to-speech or speech-to-text technology. In early October we heard from a highly placed AOL official who told us, "We have plenty of good news on our side, since we have been doing serious work to make AOL fully useful to the blind." This is the sum and substance of the information we have received in written form from AOL. We have no idea what the "good news" is, and we certainly have no evidence of any "serious work" being conducted by AOL. It definitely has nothing to do with the recently-released AOL Version 5 software, which is just as inaccessible to the blind as its predecessor. How long must we wait to achieve full nonvisual access to AOL software and services? Will we see any improvements in AOL Version 6? Version 7? Will we have access in a year? Two years? Three years? The largest Internet service provider in the world should surely be able to demonstrate a better understanding of the issue and a stronger commitment to solving the problem. [PHOTO/CAPTION: Len Fowler] Talking Bank Machines by Len Fowler From the Editor: Len Fowler is co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of T-Base Communications of Ottawa, Canada. Let me begin by stating that I believe everyone in a democratic society is entitled to be provided with opportunities to participate and contribute. I believe that acknowledgement of cultural and physical diversity is an essential element in a strong and healthy society. I also believe that the conceptualists, designers, and technologists responsible for developing products, programs, and services on behalf of government and industry have a duty to ensure accessibility to the broadest possible range of people. For us this means considering accessibility in the concept design and keeping it simple throughout the development process. For most people talking bank machines are a new and important step forward in the quest for independence in an ever- changing social and economic system. For others talking bank machines represent a significant advancement toward a future in which all technologies and services are designed to be universally accessible, enabling the full participation of all citizens in the democratic process. And for some people talking bank machines are just another example of rampant liberalism, which will surely be the downfall of the entire economic system by driving the cost of doing business to unimaginably high levels. Whatever your thoughts about talking bank machines, they are becoming a functional reality in the United States of America. On October 1, 1999, a group of companies with local government support and involvement launched the first American talking bank machine. At a press conference on that day, Susan Leal, Treasurer of the City and County of San Francisco, William Wolverton (President and CEO of the San Francisco Federal Credit Union), Diebold Inc., the Credit Union Cooperative, and I announced the event to the world. The core technology which led to our involvement in creating talking bank machines was initially developed in 1993 when T-Base was approached by Digital Equipment to provide technical expertise in a joint bid to develop an interactive smart card system for deploying federal employment insurance benefits to Canadians via an electronic network capable of interacting with the existing banking system. The proof of concept for this project required the development of three software programs: host system software to manage the service delivery, ATM software to manage the human- machine interface, and software to manage smart card interaction with the system. The smart card software was easy. The host and ATM software development proved to be more difficult due to the very limited band width available at that time. Our lead technical authority, Dan L'Ecuyer, and I developed the plan, and work commenced. Three months later a functioning proof-of-concept host system and ATM were displayed at GTECH (the Government Technology Show in Ottawa, Canada). Unfortunately, the project was shelved due to pending amendments to Canadian Legislation to permit electronic payment of benefits. However, we used the core of this software with subsequent enhancements to create several other accessible service-delivery systems, namely: * InfoTouch--the first publicly accessible automated information-access and delivery system capable of producing information products on demand in multiple formats: Braille, large print, audio cassettes, and computer diskettes; * Universally accessible smart-card system--a cost-effective access module capable of securely interacting with smart cards for service delivery over the Internet; and * AccessAbill--a system which receives monthly billing and statement data from clients, parses it, translates it on the fly into appropriate formats (Braille, large print, and ASCII text), and prepares for publishing. In the fall of 1996 T-Base was asked by the Royal Bank of Canada to work as subcontractors to NCR Canada (the ATM equipment supplier) in making the bank's automated bank machines accessible to people with disabilities. We designed the human-machine interface, created bilingual voice files required for audio enhancement, and managed the consumer- and service-provider consultation process. In October 1997 the world's first talking bank machine was launched at the Royal Bank of Canada in Ottawa. In mid-June 1999 Ms. Laura Arriola, Special Assistant to the Treasurer of the City and County of San Francisco, asked if T- Base could assist the City with the creation of a Talking ATM. An oral agreement with the City of San Francisco Federal Credit Union got us started, and in September, 1999, work began. Because the base platform is a Diebold ATM running on the Deluxe Network, we requested and received generous assistance from both Deluxe Network and Diebold, Inc., in our development activities. The first step in the development process was to make the ATM talk by upgrading the existing Diebold ATM with the voice- guidance option as well as scripting and creating the required WAV files, the results being the Talking ATM currently serving the public in San Francisco's City Hall. In the next phase of our development activities we want to use our core technologies to create an intelligent software module that will be capable of receiving data from the host system in its existing form, parse the data, determine voice file requirements, manage the system key mapping to accept function key or keypad input to provide the user with audio instructions, and return the appropriate data to the host to fulfill transaction requests. This intelligent software module will enhance rather than replace the existing terminal software. The goal is to avoid the necessity of altering the software currently running on the host system while overcoming local terminal limitations for the provision of accessible services. Our long-term goal is to provide enough intelligence in the ATM to off-load application code from the host to the terminal. The short-term approach addresses only the issues involving user interaction with the software application. It fails to address a number of issues involving user interaction with the peripheral hardware (for example, cash dispenser or envelope depositor). Context-sensitive voice assistance and smarter handling of error conditions, such as timeouts, are needed. For the ATM to become truly accessible, it is necessary to offer the user much more control over the interactive experience than is currently available. This goal cannot be achieved within the existing host- centric design since it is not practical to maintain remotely a sophisticated human-machine interface. An additional, and as yet unstated, benefit of addressing accessibility issues in this way is the improved and expanded services which can be made available to all. More intelligence in the ATM will permit a much richer environment to be presented and enable many more services to be developed faster and more cost- effectively than is currently possible, with less lead time to market. We have outlined our vision for this technology in our paper: "Reversing the Trend: Designing for Accessibility in the Twenty-first Century." It outlines some of the reasons for the failure to consider accessibility issues in the deployment of today's technology-based systems and explains what can be done about it. I invite you to contact me for a copy. I also invite you, as consumers and providers of services, to give us your comments on the technologies we create and the services we deliver. Note: Mr. Fowler's e-mail address is . [PHOTO/CAPTION: Pat Cannon] Access to Electronic and Information Technology: Evolving Federal Standards for Nonvisual Use by Pat Cannon From the Editor: Pat Cannon is a member of the U.S. Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board and Director of the Michigan Commission for the Blind. I am pleased to be here. Dr. Maurer introduced me as a member of the Access Board and also as the Director of Michigan's Blind Rehabilitation Agency. Both are accurate, but I'd also like to be wearing a consumer hat today as well, and along with that would be the advocate's hat. Richard was talking about the challenge of being the first speaker after lunch. I can relate to that a little differently. I think I am the eighth or ninth speaker today. I sort of feel like Zsa Zsa Gabor's eighth or ninth husband. My challenge will be to do something interesting or different. I'd like to start with a confession that I too have committed illegal operations. My computer talks to me and