Better Tools For Disabled Geeks? 228
layabout writes "We've seen tremendous advances in user interfaces over the past few years. Unfortunately, those UIs and supporting infrastructure exclude the disabled. In the same timeframe there has been virtually no advance in accessibility capabilities. It's the same old sticky keys, unicorn stick, speech recognition, text-to-speech that kind-of, sort-of, works except when you need to work with with real applications. Depending on whose numbers you use, anywhere from 60,000 to 100,000 keyboard users are injured every year — some temporarily, some permanently. In time, almost 100% of keyboard users will have trouble typing and using many if not all mobile computing devices. My question to Slashdot: Given that some form of disability is almost inevitable, what's keeping you from volunteering and working with geeks who are already disabled? By spending time now building the interfaces and tools that will enable them to use computers more easily, you will also be ensuring your own ability to use them in the future." Follow the link for more background on this reader's query.
This question is aimed mostly at the kind of disability we are susceptible to and I have been living with for the past 15 years. Even though we have speech recognition, it doesn't solve any problem except writing text. There have been a couple of attempts at making speech recognition more useful to programmers [0], but they have failed. The needs are clear:
[1] A working full-vocabulary, continuous recognition system on Linux.
[2] Tools that don't expect you to "speak the keyboard."
[3] Tools that let you edit as well as create code.
So why don't more geeks work on securing their own future, or at the very least, work to help their fellow geeks to stay on the economic ladder?
[0] VoiceCode and VR-Mode: VoiceCode or is an amazing piece of work. It makes it possible for a disabled programmer to generate Python code very quickly. Unfortunately, it does not solve the editing problem. Even more unfortunately, it's hand-wearingly complicated to set up and get working. VR-Mode makes it possible to use Naturally Speaking's "Select and Say" mode in Emacs — that is, if you can get it to work. It seems to have drifted into non-functionality as Emacs has moved forward.
[1] Naturally Speaking works well, is reasonably cheap, and works somewhat under Wine today. If we can make it work reliably under Wine, it solves the problem in months rather than decades. Other tools such as Sphinx 1-4 are great IVR systems if you have a vocabulary and grammar under 15,000 words. In contrast, Naturally Speaking's working vocabulary is in the 100,000-word range. Any disabled user will choose Naturally Speaking because it works so much better than the nearest alternative. We have people who are injured now and need these tools. They can't afford to wait 10 years or more for an OSS solution.
[2] "Speaking the keyboard" refers to speech user interfaces developed by people who don't use speech recognition. They expect you to say too much, which creates a vocal form of RSI — see [3]. Listen to what disabled users do, not to what you think they should speak.
[3] See VoiceCode in [0]. Unfortunately, today's tools are only for writing code, not correcting code. Code correction is a very different process and must be spoken in a different way: "change index" instead of "search forward left bracket leave mark search forward right bracket copy region." This is also an example of "speaking the keyboard."
Cite please (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason that nobody really works on this... (Score:5, Insightful)
> By spending time now building the interfaces and
> tools that will enable them to use computers more
> easily, you will also be ensuring your own ability
> to use them in the future.
Nobody thinks they are going to be disabled.
It's as simple as that I'm afraid.
In the Perl world I know one major hacker that has done a ton of accessibility work. In his case, it's his daughter that has the the disability, so he has a direct and immediate interest in helping her.
My work has similiar concerns... (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh yeah... (Score:3, Insightful)
My question to Slashdot: Given that some form of disability is almost inevitable, what's keeping you from volunteering and working with geeks who are already disabled?
Nice -- throw out the guilt card right there at the end, when I'm just about to decide whether or not following the link is worth my time. That really makes me want to read more of what you have to say, yessir.
If I was going to work on hardware or software for disabled people, I'd be more inclined to work on stuff for people with little or no voluntary muscle control. What fraction of disabled geeks also can't speak?
Re:Get ready (Score:1, Insightful)
Seriously though, there's money to be made in the disabled. While I believe the OSS community needs to make a push towards better accessibility software, the fact remains that the paid software will almost always be higher quality. Why would they release a Linux version when they can count on the fact that 99.9% of your users will be using Windows or OS X? I don't know of one person who would stick with Linux when switching OS means the difference between getting stuff done (with the accessibility software) and having half broken functionality.
Time, money, expertiese (Score:5, Insightful)
I own two programming companies. We work on things that are a) profitable, in the short or medium term; and b) have the expertiese and understanding to accomplish.
I am not presently disabled. None of my employees / contractors are disabled. So it won't help us any time soon, and we have no experience in the field.
Here's the ironic part. I've built three development platforms (one for each type of device that we create). Each of the three "languages" (mark-up, script, whatever) have such stringent conventions that it wolud be pretty easy to develop a "vocabulary" to reference areas of the platform code such that while worknig with the platform code (as opposed to developing and enhancing the core elements) would be quite doable. That would cover about 90% of our workload too.
But in the end, it will never happen. Here's the thing. Right now, it's more profitable for me to work as-is, than to work on accessibility. The day I become disabled, even if it were to be tomorrowb morning, it would still be cheaper for me to hire a co-op student to type for me, or to read to me, or both.
Now, if hundreds of thousands of dollars of disabled clients were knocking on my door, it would take me fewer than six months to build the tools needed for a skilled programmer to navigate through my platform code with simple commands that could be mapped to .V.R., or a joystick, or a head-bob, or whatever. Right now, there are no such clients at my door-step.
Light operated Mouse and Keyboard? (Score:3, Insightful)
What about the LOMAK?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOMAK [wikipedia.org]
GrpA
Cold Truth (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Cold Truth (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Light operated Mouse and Keyboard? (Score:3, Insightful)
When did you stop beating your wife? (Score:2, Insightful)
That's the equivalent of when did you stop beating your wife. Everyone has their own lives & interests - do not expect us to drop them to suddenly start developing accessible apps.
The answer is simple: people with serious forms of disability are in fact the minority. Temporary disability is just that - temporary. Time resolves that issue on its own. Accessibility, as you seem to recognize given your unhappiness with speech recognition, is a difficult topic with actual expertise required. Few OSS developers will have that or have picked it up. The OSS community in general has issues trying to attract (& keep) talented UI people to create usable interfaces for normal users, let alone those that are disabled, which I imagine would be even more difficult.
I'm not saying it's not a worthy goal - it is. But there needs to be some direction & an idea of what exactly makes something accessible. Not to mention that disabilities are unique, meaning what is accessible for 1 person isn't necessarily for another. Accessibility needs to come in at the toolkit layer & make it easy for developers to provide the semantic information so that the toolkit can do what it needs to automatically. Otherwise, you're essentially recreating the wheel every time you want to create an accessible app.
I have a seriously hard time believing this. There are a lot of keyboard users out there - I think we'd hear if there was a sudden disability that was affecting everyone. If you mean age-related issues, we may have to eventually face that. However, the elderly do make up a tiny portion of the electronics-using population. Then you also have to come to terms with that perhaps if you can't use the mobile device you have, maybe you should get one that better suits your needs. My mom wants a Pre for instance - obviously it doesn't suit her for all sorts of reasons, top of which is that the text on the screen would be too small for her too use & the keyboard keys too small as well.
Furthermore, whatever effort is put into accessibility will be for the average user surfing the web, accessing email, etc. A disabled coder is too small a minority to target. As you see, the only ones that appear to be putting in effort are for-pay products because it's a niche that requires non-programmer collaboration with programmers & they can charge enough money to be profitable since the product becomes pretty necessary day-to-day for this niche.
Re:Denial (Score:4, Insightful)
Every time someone says "Dvorak is better for your hands" or "QWERTY was designed to be slow" really needs to do some basic research and stop spouting out everything they hear. Dvorak has never been objectively proven to be faster or more comfortable. The only studies to support this claim were of questionable integrity. I will gladly accept this claim if it can be objectively demonstrated, but until then, stop saying it please.
Re:When did you stop beating your wife? (Score:4, Insightful)
It was intended as a serious, albeit in your face, question. what I was hoping for was a serious answer. I don't expect you to drop anything
Let me introduce you to a term "TAB" Temporarily Able Bodied. It was created in recognition that physical ability is temporary, disability is the norm. I'm disabled because my hands don't work right. I'm also disabled because I need glasses. Minority or majority doesn't matter. My question was trying to provoke thought about what's going to happen to you when you become disabled. age-related ailments will steal your ability from you. But also do you want to leave the future to be a radical shift in career because your hands don't work or a shift in how you work?
As to the direction on what makes something accessible, there is a good 30 years worth of research on the subject in the library if people would only look. Is honestly simple concept of separation of functionality from presentation. If I need a word processor with a speech user interface, then I should be able to purchase a word processor and then purchase a user interface that does what I need. If a blind person needs a text-to-speech interface, then they should be able to purchase their own user interface. None of us should have to rely on adaptations or, as I like to call them, "brutal hacks" on the application.
Every two or three years we do hear about and disabilities. There was Nintendo thumb and now Blackberry thumb and other hand disorders from playing too many first-person shooter games. It's all right in front of us. we also have the issue of elderly, as you point out. I'm not worried as much about the elderly of today but, what happens when you hit 60 and you gradually discover you can't do anything. No texting, no video messages, no anything. Think about that future.
Also think about the implications of what our mobile devices are doing today. I've seen people advocate getting rid of voicemail because you can just send someone a text message. Or the only telephone you can use if you are blind is something that just makes calls and receives calls. These choices exclude people from the mainstream culture. If you are blind and cannot send a text message, you lose social connection. If you can't send a text message, you lose the ability to give someone a time delayed message the way of voicemail works. I do admit that it may be cheaper to warehouse disabled people but, it would be nice if we made a conscious decision.
And as a side note, I was not able to interleave my comments with your text because HTML is not friendly to the disabled.