Technology, Abilities and disabilities - Arun Mehta

From What The Wiki?!

There are as many disabilities as there are abilities.

"I speak Punjabi, cannot read it. Effectively i am like a blind person, vis-a-vis Punjabi language. But with software for the blind, i can read punjabi." Arun Mehta, from Delhi, creates software for disabled people, but in his definitions this all sounds quite different from common approaches: "Abilities are the qualities of being able to do something. One great ability is worth more than a 1000 abilities, as for Olympic sportspeople. Disability is the absence of an ability. The entire process of education is about learning new abilities. Technology gives us new abilities, and once on the Internet, a person who is deaf, blind, is just like anybody else."

Mehta wrote the software used by Stephen Hawking, the man who writes bestsellers about astrophysics. Mehta: "How many Stephen Hawkings has the world lost because local school didn't have facilities?"

Mehta showed pictures of him and Stephen Hawking, who sits in his super technological wheelchair, communicating through the 'one-push-on-the-button'. Mehta: "Hawking can only press one button, and even that is a very sensible thing. He doesn't have the power to press very hard, so that had to be measured very precise. Stephen Hawking cannot speak either. He uses 'Equalizer' which allows his magnificent brain an output of 1Hz."

Equalizer is a menu-driven software program which tries to predict which word comes next, and so never displays more commands than fit on the one screen, to eliminate scrolling.

Mehta: "Stephen Hawking uses this computer that in its capabilities is remarkably like a mobile phone's facilities. It is all there, in a device that people who are short on money could simply use."

Mehta's IT's view of disability: 'Information is like water.' (He didn't say this because of the rainstorms over What the Hack, and the Dutch device: 'Pompen of verzuipen' ('Pump or drown'). In Mehta's "water is information"-view it means: "Disability is like faulty pumbing"

- Hardware fault (deafness) - Software fault -> speaking strange languages, which can be addressed through education.

The solution exists of a combination of software and hardware technology, with education. Which means: teaching people how to design the hardware.

The Spastics Mehta: "Take spastics. Can we make communication software that is user-friendly enough for a two year old? If they could use a computer to type and speak, they could attend a normal school."

The Blind They are 'print-disabled', near to illiterate. Access software exists, but is expensive. Windows has this software called 'Jaws' but it is expensive: $900,- so for many people this is not available. Which is why Open Software should be developed continuously, and an open standard is at [www.Daisy.org]. It synchronises text with audio/speech, and these are interlinked, so you can search and scroll. The main problem the blind have is that they cannot search or scroll. It is not developed as far as Jaws, but with some effort it can soon be realized. This has to be done, because the Windoze platform is not designed with disabilities in mind, so the starting point is already wrong for this kind of software.

Many Linux people use the command line, which is perfect for the blind. And Linux has more possibilities to make a platform for the disabled. "But" says Mehta "I think the Linux community is not concentrating enough on these subjects."

The Autistic The autistic mind works like a computer. Temple Grandin: "I have spent some time surfing the internet and found that when I surf, the internet works exactly like my mind."

Robots and motor disability Mehta: "A little 'mobile tray' robot could help them share things, with a 'light' system."

And here the subject of Mehta's lecture comes to an integrated idea: "Where the blind person could take a picture with a phone-camera. Or: how people with different disabbilities might help each other." The saying 'The blind leading the blind' grows into a new paradigm here. The deaf could be of help in back-up support, telling the blind person what his or her phone-camera has seen, through a new kind of call-center where these things come together. A mobile phone is a great computer for the blind, who don't need the screen.

Mehta: "The best computer to do this is the human being." To which can be added that there are jobless people everywhere. Through the mobile phone, to a call center where the info gets translated and sent back to the disabled sender.

"Disabled people are the best to develop such software." There was a software writing workshop at the faculty of the National Association for the Blind, to develop an open software Daisy reader, writer and editor, great for audio/video-editing and podcasting.

Then there is a Linux version of 'eLocutor' designed for small children, so that motor, speech and vision impaired kids can get an education. The software was shown running on a Symbian platform. eLocutor was developed on windoze because that is what Stephen Hawking uses.

Proposal: Start/found a training institute, run by students under supervision, so that they can replicate such institutes themselves.

"The disabled need to take empowerment to a new level, where they can take charge of technical development for their needs. It wouldn't be hard to move the entire blind population to software created by and for them."

Arun Mehta, closing his session: "The Japanese say: Fix the process, and the product will fix itself."