Assistive tech could aid aging federal workers
From: Federal Computer Week - 10/31/2005 - page 38
By: Florence Olsen

Federal agencies will rely on assistive technologies to accommodate the needs
of an aging federal workforce, according to policy experts who say that more
government employees will soon be working beyond the age of 65. 

Information technology companies developed assistive technologies partly in
response to the passage of Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, which
requires federal agencies to make their IT systems accessible to people with
significant disabilities. 

But faced with an aging workforce, federal agencies will soon rely on those
technologies to keep older employees working longer, said W. Roy Grizzard,
assistant secretary of disability employment policy at the Labor Department. 

"Access technologies that are available today and those that will be invented
in the future will assist a great deal in accommodating older workers as they
continue in the workforce," Grizzard said. 

Most older workers don't develop significant disabilities, he said, "but you
can still have some debilitating conditions."  

IBM is one of several companies whose leaders predict a big market for
assistive technologies. Federal legislation might have created a market for
assistive technologies, but those same tools have a business value that could
help federal agencies meet new workforce challenges, said David McQueeney,
vice president of technology and strategy and chief technology officer for
IBM's US Federal Government unit. 

McQueeney, who is well-versed in federal employment trends, said more than 50
percent of government employees will become eligible for retirement in less
than five years. Among senior executives, the number is even higher: Nearly
70 percent of them will be eligible to retire by 2009. "And there's not a
demographic tail of young people at the right level to replace them,"
McQueeney said. 

But several assistive technologies could help federal employees stay on the
job. For example, IBM is developing mouse-smoother technology to accommodate
people with tremors or more serious muscle spasms in their hands. 

"It's a small box that you plug your mouse in to, and then you plug the box
in to your PC," said John Evans, leader of IBM's business development group
for the Americas. It essentially learns about the tremor or involuntary
movement and responds only to the user's intended motion. 

Besides compensating for minor losses of motor control, other technologies
can help employees who have diminished eyesight. 

IBM programmers use a design tool, aDesigner, to simulate the visual losses
from macular degeneration, for example. With aDesigner, McQueeney said,
20-year-old programmers can check to see whether they are building user
interfaces that a 70-year-old person with macular degeneration would be able
to use. 

IBM's developers say assistive technologies could also help businesses retain
older workers. "Government policies really were out in front," McQueeney said. 

Those policies - and related technologies - have influenced employers who
want a diverse workforce, he added. "If you assume that skills and creativity
and drive are distributed uniformly across a population, you want to make
sure your workplace allows folks with specific disabilities to come in and
contribute fully," he said. 

Read this article online at:
http://www.fcw.com/article91248-10-31-05-Print

Related links:
Accessible doesn't mean usable - Federal Computer Week - 04/19/2004
http://www.fcw.com/article82651-04-19-04-Print

aDesigner
http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/adesigner