You probably work in a building that complies with the Americans with Disabilities Act. That is, your building probably has automatic doors so folks who are in wheelchairs or who have difficulty walking have easy ingress into your shop. Likewise, the bathrooms in your building are probably designed with the needs of handicapped people in mind. All of this is great. We need to ensure that everyone has the same opportunity to gain access to any work area, regardless of where it is located.

But what about providing access to other areas of your business? Specifically, what about providing the technology required to perform jobs that require data input or those that require a person to retrieve information from the Internet, even if those people are visually impaired? Or, what if the person you are considering for a job is unable to speak or has limited mobility? Does this mean you and the applicant are automatically out of luck in filling certain types of positions? If you haven’t given any thought to filling positions with nontraditional workers yet, your business may be missing out on the opportunity of working with some highly qualified individuals. But does the technology exist to allow someone to reliably enter, retrieve, or evaluate data in a nontraditional method? The answer is...sort of.

Currently, speech-to-text voice recognition software exists that translates a person’s speech into text. Text-to-speech voice synthesizer products are also out there. Beyond that, many other new technologies, either currently working in the IBM labs or under study, offer much promise for folks with disabilities. Some of these technologies work pretty well, at least in the lab. Others, that do in fact work, are not quite ready for prime time. Still others currently only offer hope for the future.

Speech-to-text Software

Recently, I downloaded and installed Microsoft’s Speech Software Development Kit 4.0 and fired it up. After going through the training session, which consisted of about half an hour of reading prepared text to train the computer to recognize my speech patterns, I was all set to try some dictation. The results were somewhat less than successful. For example, when I spoke the phrase “Log on to AS/400,” the computer typed “Bloedel into AA sore hundred.” Not a bad guess, but I don’t think I could start a 5250 session that way. I wanted to be fair, however, so I tried again with the phrase, “Order one dozen green

pencils,” which came out in text as “Waldo one dozen green pencils.” Aha! This is getting better, I thought, so I tried again. “Try that command again!” I stated confidently! This was interpreted as, “20 commanding in.” Well...OK...maybe it needs more training. Still, speech-to-text is only as good as the amount of training you give it. That is, the more you use it, the larger the vocabulary your computer will have, and, over time, it should work well enough to allow anyone to use this technology for repetitive tasks such as recording form letters or performing other traditional heads-down data entry.

Text-to-speech Software

Text-to-speech products have been around for a long time. Remember the movie War Games and the computer that asked, “Want to play a game?” Text-to-speech technology was invented decades ago and has reached a point where it is pretty accurate and rather simple to integrate. In fact, IBM’s Via Voice text-to-speech voice synthesizer technology has been available for years. What’s new in this area for today’s Internet-connected world is IBM’s 3.0 version of its Home Page Reader product. Home Page Reader is basically a talking Web browser. This tool, designed for Windows, gives visually impaired people complete access to Web pages including the ability to “read” tables, image maps, and data input fields. This technology, which uses an Internet Explorer-like browser, allows you to open Web-based applications, such as data input and forms evaluation to workers with visual impairments. To download a trial version of Home Page Reader, point your browser to www-3.ibm.com/ able/hprtrial25.htm.

Out-there Technology

IBM’s Almaden Research Center is always working with new, cutting-edge technologies. In the area of accessibility, IBM is currently testing and investigating a variety of innovative technologies. Affect is a technology that detects your emotional state based on facial movement. The Emotion Mouse technology senses such things as your body temperature, muscular twitches, pulse rate, and other physiological changes and then performs actions based on the interpreted data. Magic Pointing is an acronym for manual acquisition with gaze-initiated cursor. Magic Pointing technology combines eye movement with finger pointing to precisely position a cursor on a computer screen. Pupil Finder uses the reflective properties of the eye’s pupil to locate the direction the pupil is pointing to enable people with even the most minimal body movement to interact with a computer.

Much More

You may want to look into other technologies currently under study, as well as other tools and products that are ready to use right now. These include IBM’s Screen Magnifier, Screen Reader, and even an audio interface for a Java Development Kit. With this Self Voicing Kit, you can voice-enable your own user-written Java applications. For more information on these and other accessibility technologies, point your browser to www.3- ibm.com/able and www.almaden.ibm.com. Don’t let the opportunity to work with some really fine people pass you by simply because you don’t think you have a way to allow them to access your data.

Shannon O'Donnell has held a variety of positions, most of them as a consultant, in dozens of industries. This breadth of experience gives him insight into multiple aspects of how the AS/400 is used in the real world. Shannon continues to work as a consultant. He is an IBM Certified Professional--AS/400 RPG Programmer and the author of an industry-leading certification test for RPG IV programmers available from ReviewNet.net.