by Arun Mehta

Empowering the blind
Technology can empower the blind to compete shoulder to shoulder with the rest of the world. Software developed for the blind can also potentially revolutionisethe use of technology across all sections of society
By Arun Mehta
The highlight of the December 2005 workshop on “ICT and Special Needs” organised by Pakistan Software Houses Association (PASHA) in Karachi, was a keynotepresentation by Shazia Hasan, a teacher at the Ida Rieu School for the deaf and blind, Karachi who showed how easily the blind can operate computers andwhat a difference it makes in their lives.
Before the invention of the digital computer, the written word was almost entirely inaccessible to the blind. Very little text has been available in theform of Braille and for everything else, they had to depend on someone reading out the text to them. Once it became possible to record and replay humanvoice, audio books provided some relief. But referring to these audio cassettes as books is over-ambitious as one cannot turn the pages, nor use the indexto locate any specific information.
The personal computer has dramatically narrowed the gap between the blind and the sighted. Text to speech software provided audio access to electronictext, but suffered from the same limitations as the audio book. It needed special software and a screen reader to make the computer genuinely accessibleto the blind.
To understand how a screen reader works, imagine sitting next to a blind person who is operating a computer keyboard. As windows open on the screen, youkeep telling them what is happening and what decisions they need to take. As they type or move the cursor, you keep prompting them. Your task, effectively,is automated by a screen reader.
Why is all this important for the sighted, beyond whatever social obligations they might feel for those less fortunate? There are several relevant applicationsof this technology. When you drive, for instance, you are effectively blind from the point of view of the on-board screen in the car, as one cannot belooking at it at all times. That is why, for instance, navigation software relies on voice replays. Therefore, in theory, the sighted could only use thecomputer when the car is stationary. Speech enabled software, which has been used in car navigation systems for quite sometime now, provides them withthe freedom to make calls, change music tracks or activate navigation without looking at or touching the screen.
Furthermore, roughly half the developing world is illiterate and lacks access to the written word. Software developed for the blind allows this sectionof society to use the computer and access the internet as well, which is an act of profound political importance.
So far, as illiteracy and poverty run rampant across most of the under-developed countries of the world, governments that constantly ignore the demandsof the people are less fearful of the consequences, as the people are unable to prevail upon them with considerable impact. Problems such as terrorism,retaliation based on ignorance and economic disparity that afflict the world today have taught us the importance of bringing the disempowered into themainstream. But how do we achieve that in a short period of time? In South Asia, where nearly a billion people are illiterate, we simply lack the resources,such as trained educators and established schools. The only way we can address this gigantic issue, is via distance learning, for which the illiteratemust be able to access computers. This can be made possible by incorporating software developed for the blind. The term “print disabled” aptly combinesthe blind and the illiterate into a common category – people who cannot read the printed word, but can understand the spoken.
The blind have been at the forefront of developing standards for making access to information easier. Since so-called audio books are inadequate, the blindhave consequently evolved the Daisy standard (Digitally Accessible Information System). In this system, text is synchronised with speech. If the user wishesto scroll or search, the computer uses the text to find the appropriate position and then plays the corresponding audio. The advantages of this systemclearly extend well beyond the needs of the blind.
Podcasting, for instance, is becoming increasingly popular, as the rest of us are discovering the need for scrolling and searching audio content. It wouldtherefore be extremely useful if the Daisy standard were to be used for features such as podcasting.
However, an even bigger advantage of Daisy could well be found in audio and video editing. In a typical situation, when someone conducts an interviews,they may end up with for instance, half an hour of recorded material, which needs to be edited down to approximately five minutes. It takes hours for aprofessional editor to do this, but by utilising Daisy, this could be done far more efficiently. The software could automatically detect pauses in thespeech, slice the audio at those places and play back the audio one slice at a time. A typist, who could even be blind, might hear the audio slice andtype in the corresponding text. The software would then synchronise the audio slice with the corresponding text and produce a Daisy book. For any of thetext that was thrown out or rearranged in the file, the computer would discard or rearrange the corresponding audio as well.
There would also be significant advantages if the blind were to adopt open-source software. The screen readers on proprietary software platforms use OpticalCharacter Recognition (OCR) techniques to decipher what other programs write on the screen, in order to be able to communicate this to a blind user. Thisfails when the software uses a very small font size. In the case of open source software, it would be much easier to simply make appropriate additionsto the code, so that when it communicates with the user via the screen, it does so using audio as well. When application software is written for the blindon a proprietary platform, one practically has to start from scratch. Alternatively, in the world of open source, there are plenty of existing startingpoints.
There are intriguing synergies possible between technology and persons of different kinds of disabilities. Imagine a blind person at a street corner, whowants to know where she is. She might click a snapshot in the direction she imagines the road signs to be and the phone automatically transmits the pictureto someone at a call center, possibly wheelchair bound, who then communicates with the blind person via the same phone telling her what the picture shows.This task can be automated as well.
Robotics offer another interesting possibility. A small robot could easily be built and instructed to follow a sighted person once for example, to thebathroom or dining hall and could then be used as a guide for blind people who could tell it where they wanted to go, with the robot producing a beep asit walked in the specified direction.
As we study the problem, we quickly realise that we have hardly scratched the surface with regard to providing the disabled with information technologyrelated products and services. Ideally, the best people to experiment with this technology would, of course, be the disabled themselves. They could betterconceptualise the required software and equipment as well as perform feasibility tests. The need, therefore, is for an IT training institute with a focuson persons with disabilities. The disabled need to take empowerment to a new level, one in which they take charge of technological development for theirown needs. And the products and services produced as a result will undoubtedly be of tremendous benefit to them as well as other sections of society acrossthe world.
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