Article from Speech Technology, April/May, 1997, page 12 

Assistive Technology 

Speech Turns People with Disabilities into Technological Leaders 

In this market, speech is a critical, enabling technology 

Speech input for computers is here and promises to revolutionize the way we
use them. Many experts think speech input is the most important development
in computers since the advent of the PC. Speech simply makes the computer
easier and more intuitive to use.  

This technology has been well received by people in many different
occupations, including lawyers, doctors, business people, and students,
usually bringing greater efficiency and cutting costs.  

But if there is one group that benefits more from speech technology than any
other, it would have to be people with disabilities. Developers and dealers
invariably talk about this market segment being the most rewarding group with
which to do business.  

For many people with disabilities, speech input enables them to run their
computer and communication with others and to gain employment. In this
market, speech is a mission critical application. Whether the physical
impediment has been repetitive stress injury, multiple sclerosis, cerebral
palsy, or a host of other diseases, speech input has allowed these
individuals to further their education and to gain an income and open up to
them the world of computers and the Internet.  

Their interest in speech technology in many ways continues a tradition of
people with disabilities being technological leaders. While the need for a
technology may not be immediately evident to mainstream marketers, fulfilling
the needs of people with disabilities often drive the innovations eventually
benefiting us all. 

The most important example of this was no doubt when Alexander Graham Bell's
work with the deaf led to the development of the telephone. And more
recently, people with disabilities were clearly among the first and heaviest
users of the Internet. 

For developers, working to bring speech input to people with physical
disabilities can be very fulfilling. In most cases, if it is possible to make
speech input so easy to use that a person with physical disabilities can use
a computer effectively, that same technology would transfer directly to users
of computers that do not have physical limitations. 

Some examples of how speech technology is helping people with disabilities: A
quadriplegic with no movement from the neck down, who prior to his accident
was a writer for a ski magazine. Using a speech technology system that was
primitive by today's standards, he was able to write, send faxes, and
generally operate his system in a hands free mode. 

A legal secretary with a neurological disease is able to resume working at
her old job after being out for two years. 

Several students with cerebral palsy who are continuing and excelling in
their high school and college. 

An entrepreneur with multiple sclerosis has been able to open his own
business and manage it through the use of his computer. 

A house bound quadriplegic who is able to control his environment by voice
from any place within his home. From turning on the television to answering
and placing telephone calls, to opening doors, he is able to function without
assistance. 

An international lawyer with dyslexia, who at the age of 60, is using his
computer for e-mail, writing letters, and generating contracts. He reports
now that he does not know how he had been able to do his work before getting
a Chatterbox system. 

Speech therapy 

Speech therapists report that speech input to computers is one of the best
therapy devices they have ever used. With speaker-dependent, discrete
recognition systems, the patient must say each word separately and distinctly
for the system to have maximum recognition. Often after several months (if
using the system, a marked improvement is seen with speech impediments caused
by strokes or cerebral palsy. If users are able to keep their utterances
consistent, the system "learns" and adapts to the user's pronunciation of
words. 

We are on the threshold of being able to provide opportunities for education,
employment and recreation no matter what the user's physical capabilities
are. Now more than ever, people can be ,judged on the quality of their minds
and their work effort rather than on their physical capabilities. 

Both the keyboard and the mouse have been blamed as major causes of
repetitive stress injuries to users of computers. Speech input may be the
only long term solution for the problem. Most users are faster and more
accurate using speech input than they ever were with the keyboard or mouse. 

One of the greatest problems with the present user interface to computers for
both the physically disabled and the physically able users, is the use of
menus for command and control of programs. Very often the user must go down
several layers of menus to execute a command for the program they are running. 

For example, in Microsoft Word, if you wish to change the margins on a
document, you must know the change margins commands is not under the format
menu or the edit menu, but rather under the file menu. Under file menu, you
must access page setup which then allows you to change the margins. With
speech input, the user can say "change margins" without having to know where
the command fits into the menu structure. 

We recently speech enabled one of the most popular contact management
software packages. The program had approximately 200 functions. By the time
the program was speech-enabled, we had over 1,000 voice commands. By having
logical, multiple voice commands to do the same functions, the program became
much easier and simpler to use. 

With the integration of speech input with other emerging technologies, the
way we use computers is changing fast. Computers are first and foremost tools
to allow us to do our work. They should be as intuitive and easy to use as a
wrench. Soon, computers will be able to recognize continuous speech and
handwritten text and both verbal and graphical output. 

To make this become a reality, more development must be done to take these
exciting technologies and adapt them to the real world of the physically
disabled. It offers great rewards for those willing to invest their time and
money in adapting this technology to the needs of the physically disabled.
Development is directly transferable to the general computing market. 

Investing in product development in this market offers the dual reward of
making this a better world with the opportunity to make profits. 

Harry Nielson
President
Talk to Computers, Inc,
3241 Southside Rd.,
Frankfort, NY  13340
800/350-5042