August 1997 Hearings on Assistive Technology

Testimony of Steven I. Jacobs
Senior Technology Consultant
NCR Corporation
Before the
United States House of Representatives
Committee on Science
Subcommittee on Technology
July 15, 1997
On
Meeting the Needs of People with Disabilities through Federal Technology Transfer.

Thank you Chairwoman Morella, and members of the Subcommittee on Technology, for providing me the opportunity to discuss the business benefits of "Meeting the Needs of People with Disabilities through Federal Technology Transfer."

My name is Steve Jacobs. I am a Senior Technology Consultant with the NCR Corporation. NCR is based in Dayton, Ohio, as is Wright Patterson Air Force Base. Over the past four years, NCR technologists have met, on many occasions, with Wright Lab scientists and Wright State University engineering students to share our knowledge and visions for the future. I mention Wright State for an important reason. Based in Dayton, Ohio, Wright State University has one of the largest number of students with disabilities, as a percentage of total enrollment, of any university in the United States.

Developing products that are accessible, usable and useful by people with disabilities brings more benefits to mainstream business than may be obvious to the casual observer. The business world refers to products such as these as universally designed products. A universally designed product is defined, by the business world, as a product that is accessible, usable and useful by people with a wide range of abilities, in a wide range of situations.

There is not much difference between technologies developed to enable a foot soldier to access computer-based information at night and technologies that enable people who are blind to access and use computers. Worldwide there are 154 million consumers who are blind and low-visioned. Thanks to speech synthesis, originally developed as an assistive technology, people who are blind and low-visioned can now read with their ears as can our foot soldiers.

Text-to-speech technologies have other important business implications. For example, there is little difference between a person who is blind, and a person who is illiterate, from the standpoint of not being able to read. Worldwide there are more than 1.1 billion consumers who are illiterate. This can be a real market-limiter for companies wishing to market public access information systems on a global basis.

Speaking of people who are unable to read, I cannot read. Of course I can read in English but not any other language. Actually, it would not be inappropriate to consider me a person with a disability from the standpoint of not being able to access and use foreign-language based information systems. This is an important point in light of the fact that nearly half-a-billion tourists travel to foreign countries each year.

The number of foreign-born citizens, living in the United States, will grow to more than 29 million by the year 2000. Extrapolating these data to a worldwide level brings the number of people, who may not be fluent in the language native to the information systems they may wish to use, to 300 million consumers. The "assistive technology" of multilingual speech synthesis has the potential to enable these individuals to benefit from the information age in ways that were never before possible.

If one were to total the number of people, represented by each of the consumer groups I just mentioned including overlap, we are talking about more than 2 billion consumers.

There is a technology trend that is beginning to disable people. Electronic consumer products are getting smaller. Among these items are pagers, cell phones, laptop computers, personal digital assistants, palmtop computers and smart phones. From a competitive standpoint, the smaller the better. There is just one problem. The smaller these devices become, the more difficult it is to read their displays and use their controls. The inability to use these products is further compounded by the fact that the average consumer is getting older. The older we get the more likely we are to have sight, mobility, hearing and memory problems.

Speaking about aging, people are living longer; The sixty plus age group will make up 16% of the total world population by the year 2030; There were sixteen workers for every retiree in 1950. This ratio is expected to fall to one worker for every two retirees by the year 2010. Today, worldwide, there are about 360 million consumers 65 years of age and older. This is not a small consumer group. Thanks to advanced technologies like synthesized speech, voice recognition and non-visual web browsers being pioneered by Productivity Works, our senior citizens do not have to be disenfranchised from our information society.

Not only is the average worker getting older, they are becoming more mobile. It is not easy using cellular telephones and laptop computers while driving a car unless, of course, you do not mind getting into accidents. However, help is on the way.

New neural digital signal processing technologies are being developed in disability research labs across the country. These devices, and the types being pioneered by companies such as BioControl, are now being used to develop low cost wireless input devices for mainstream business use. Thanks to products such as these, neural signals generated by the brain, eye, and muscles can now be used in hands busy environments to control cellular telephones, laptop computers and many other types of electronic devices! It is for this purpose that neural signal devices are being developed by Grant McMillan and his colleagues at Wright Laboratories. Dr. McMillan's work is focused on enabling fighter pilots to adjust non-critical controls in their fighter planes, without needing to use of their hands.

Supporting programs which foster technology and knowledge transfer between rehabilitation engineering centers, Federal Laboratories and big business have many potential benefits. In addition to bridging the widening gaps I've just cited from a business perspective, collaboration among scientists from many disciplines also stand to shorten product development life cycles, reduce costs and increased quality. These benefits stand to benefit all of us.

It is my hope, Chairwoman Morella, and members of the Subcommittee on Technology, that you support collaborations such as these to the greatest extent possible.

I would like to close my testimony with a quote written by a young man I worked with four years ago. His name is Randy Gilbert. He is a software programmer who just happens to be paralyzed from the neck down. When asked what he thought about being disabled he said, "Disabilities only appear in the eyes of the beholder; they disappear through the eyes of the innovator."

Thank you, again, for providing me this wonderful opportunity to testify before your subcommittee.

Interesting Note: The sets of barcodes [printed on pages attached to the written testimony] contain the full text of this testimony in Portable Data File (PDF) barcode digital format. PDF barcoding technology can enable the scanning of printed materials into a computer 36 times faster than any other scanning technology in existence. This method also delivers 100% accuracy as compared to the 80-95% accuracy of other scanning technologies. PDF technology has the potential to revolutionize the publishing industry. It could do this by providing publishers with the tools they need to print materials in formats that are accessible, usable and useful by people who are blind, low-visioned, illiterate, learning disabled or learning a new language. PDF is compatible with many languages, including Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Arabic, Greek and Hebrew! Believe it or not, this three page testimony can be scanned into a computer digitally, with a small hand-held device, in less than 10 seconds!

Submitted By:

Steve Jacobs
NCR Corporation
WHQ-5E
Dayton, Ohio 45479
(937) 445-6396

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