(note: there is no comma between the words research and design in the professor’s job title)

For health monitor/with photo

Special Needs Software Helps Persons With Disabilities

By Andrew Gorosko

“We’re trying to bring down the barriers to make computing easier,” said Bernie Hoecker, an IBM operations executive for the health care, education and government sectors.

 Just a year or two ago, in order to have speech-based software function, the user had to speak very deliberately. However, Mr Hoecker said, “You can pretty much do continuous speech today.”

Improved software “learns” a person’s voice and vocal style as he or she speaks, adapting its interpretation of the speech to the specific person speaking. Based on the context of that which is spoken, the software is now even able to differentiate among homonyms, divining the distinctions among phrases such as “Which witch is which,” Mr Hoecker said.

To improve its general development of voice recognition software, IBM has designated the Ancell School of Business at Western Connecticut State University in Danbury as its National Center of Competence for Speech Technology.  The center helps develop speech technology applications for education. IBM collects data on the performance of its education-based speech technology software from the center.  

At Western, Marla J. Fischer, PhD, professor of research design and statistics, is conducting a special project called “Voice Technology and the Internet: Analyzing Business Case Studies with Partners Abroad.”

Using Western’s advanced technology classroom, which is equipped with IBM’s voice recognition system, students use voice commands to send e-mail to student partners at McGill University in Montreal. The course requires extensive dialogue between Western students and their Montreal counterparts to address the issues raised by a business case study.

IBM’s speech technology software allows Western students to interact more naturally with computer equipment, providing a more human-centered basis for communication, according to Prof. Fischer.

“It allayed the fears of some ‘technophobic’ students who were uneasy with computers and inclined to make numerous errors,” said Ms Fischer. 

Special Needs

Besides working to facilitate computer-augmented education in a business school setting, IBM’s software engineers have designed other specialized programs, including some speech-based programs, intended to simplify computing for handicapped people with special needs, according to Mr Hoecker.

 “It’s all a matter of adapting, and people do it very, very well,” he said.

Such special needs software is intended for the blind or people with low vision, for the deaf or the hard of hearing, and for those with physical limitations which make conventional computing difficult.

IBM produces a talking Web browser known as Home Page Reader for the blind and visually impaired which provides a spoken voice to users describing the information contained on Web pages, including tables, forms, graphics and text. IBM describes the software as “a spoken on-ramp to the information highway.” The system combines IBM’s Via Voice Outloud text-to-speech synthesizer with the Netscape Navigator browser. A numeric keypad is used to navigate the Web. The software has e-mail and multi-language capabilities.

The company’s Screen Magnifier program enlarges text and images up to 32 times in programs, which run on the OS/2, DOS and Windows operating systems.

Screen Reader is a program that converts information on a computer screen into the spoken word. The program allows blind and visually impaired people to work with greater ease and efficiency with software including word processors and financial spreadsheets, according to IBM. Besides aiding those with vision problems, the system may be used by people with reading dysfunctions or by people who prefer to hear the content of a computer screen rather than read it, according to IBM.

  Open Book: Ruby Edition allows people who are blind or have vision problems to place printed matter such as books, magazines, memos and bills onto a scanner, after which the text is converted in spoken words. The text is editable. Also, the system allows the scanned text to be displayed in large print on a computer screen.

 In adapting computer software for the blind, some basic changes were made such as the exclusion of a mouse, the pointing device that is used to control computing actions in graphical operating systems such as Windows and OS/2.

Blind people don’t use a mouse because it involves the use of hand-eye coordination, so software must be designed to centralize all computer control functions in the keyboard.

In the case of deaf computer users, closed-captioning devices and blinking error messages are used to inform them of computer functioning.

For people with mobility problems, keyboard enhancements are made.

In September, IBM released new versions of its ViaVoice speech recognition software known as Via Voice Millennium for a general audience.

The software allows users to create and edit documents with voice commands; have a computer read the text on the computer screen out loud; surf the Internet; send and receive e-mail; “talk” to others during online chat sessions; dictate to the computer; navigate the computer desktop and software applications such as Microsoft Outlook, Excel and Word; plus create macro commands to automate repetitive tasks.