News
Breaking the visual barrier: CUbiC lab boosts technology to help the blind and visually impaired
Febuary 27, 2008
As many as 11 million people in the United States are visually impaired, including 1.3 million who are blind. For these individuals, it's becoming increasingly necessary to be able to use a personal computer to remain competitive in the workforce.
"If you're using a computer at work, and you're blind, there are many sophisticated systems that you need to access, for example applications written in Microsoft Access," says Terri Hedgpeth, an academic research professional at Arizona State University's Center for Cognitive Ubiquitous Computing (CUbiC).
"If you work in a call center answering telephone calls, then you need a screen reader that is fairly sophisticated, that can be configured to work with an internal, proprietary system," she explains.
CUbiC is part of ASU's Institute for Computing and Information Science and Engineering in the Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering.
The research center recently hosted a training program for Window-Eyes, a "screen reader" software program developed by GW Micro Inc. The company is the leading competitor of the most widely used screen reader, JAWS by Freedom Scientific.
Screen reader programs read on-screen text aloud, so that the blind can access and process visual information, and carry out computer-assisted tasks in the same way as someone with sight. There are several screen readers on the market, but blind consumers in Arizona have only been recommended to use one company's product, Hedgpeth says.
Being blind herself and having worked for the disability community since 1994 as a disability specialist at ASU for nine years before joining CUbiC in 2003 Hedgpeth is in touch with the evolving needs of the blind community.
"Arizona has been primarily JAWS-centric," she says. "Throughout the state the majority of consumers and professionals have either used or trained people solely on the Freedom Scientific product. I wanted to help provide consumers with more choices."
The 10 participants in the CUbiC-sponsored training program, organized by Hedgpeth and conducted by a GW Micro sales manager, were local assistive technology (AT) specialists who train others to use assistive technologies such as the screen reader. The specialists are themselves blind or visually impaired.
The trainees paid $500 for the two-day workshop, which took place in the Brickyard Building, home to CubiC lab, near ASU's Tempe campus. At the end of the workshop, trainees received a certificate of completion and credit for Continuing Education Units.
Beatriz Shapiro, an AT specialist at Arizona's Rehabilitation Services Administration, took part in the training.
"I've been thinking about changing my screen reader," she says. "So part of why I decided to do this was to see the benefits of this product and begin using it, and to give my clients another choice of screen reader."
CUbiC has engaged in several research and development projects to aid the blind and visually impaired community. The center’s iCARE projects include a portable, text-reading device to read printed materials on demand, ad devices that can recognize the face and gait of individuals to help the blind and visually impaired identify people.
Hosting the Window-Eyes training program was a way for the research center to provide a learning opportunity and serve those who aid its research endeavors, Hedgpeth says.
"We are very committed to the community of people who are blind and we want to be able to give back to that community in some way that is beneficial and useful, and expresses our appreciation for their support of our research," she says. "We feel this kind of community outreach is as important as any of the research that goes on."
For more information about CUbiC's iCARE projects, visit the center's website at http://cubic.asu.edu/
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