Rehabilitation engineer Michael G. Fiore suited up for battle.
The familiar beeps of Pong, the classic computer table-tennis game, started to sound as he moved the paddle up and down, making contact with the ball.
A pretty routine scene, really, if you ignore the fact that Fiore wasn’t using his hands to control the game. His only equipment was a headband equipped with biosensors; his only weapon, the power of his mind.
He was using Cyberlink, a biofeedback device from Cyberlink Mind Systems Inc. that uses brain-wave patterns to control the functions of a Windows-based computer. It also can be configured to react to eye or facial movements.
Although the system was developed as a potential interface for video games, Fiore said, the hope is to combine it with other types of technology to help people with severe disabilities use computers.
Already, the same technology that lets Fiore play Pong with his brain waves can be used to manipulate other kinds of graphic objects on a computer screen.
Such a system could be used instead of a mouse to move a pointer across a screen. “You can go up, down, left, right,” Fiore said. “You can position it anywhere on the screen, and using one of those on-screen keyboards, you now have access to typing.
“Cool, huh?”
The brain-wave device is part of the broad field of assistive technology. For computers, this field encompasses things as mundane as a magnifying screen that fits over a monitor and as futuristic as software that lets people “type” by staring at a word on a list. And people with disabilities are not the only ones taking advantage of some of these advances.
“If I had known about this stuff prior to my injury, I would have used it (anyway), because this is so cool,” said Anthony Williams, a quadriplegic who uses a voice-recognition program and other assistive hardware and software to operate his computer.
The word “cool” seems to come up a lot when people describe assistive technology.
Fiore used it several times when demonstrating the equipment at his King of Prussia, Pa., company, the Sierra Group. The company researches and evaluates assistive technologies, recommends which products would suit clients’ needs, then provides training in how to use them.
Michael Fiore is chief financial officer of the company. His wife, Janet D. Fiore, is president and chief executive.
Voice-recognition programs, which allow people to dictate text into computers, are among the most common forms of assistive technology. Despite some glitches, they have been a boon to people who cannot use a keyboard easily, if at all, and to people who want to minimize keyboard use.
The Sierra Group’s small office is filled with alternative input devices for computers–the Magic Wand, for example, a product from In Touch Systems that lets people with mobility problems type a word into a computer with a slight touch of a stylus onto a circuit board. Other alternative input methods include on-screen keyboards, such as Clicker Plus by Don Johnston Inc., which allows users to pick words from a menu and click on them with a mouse or mouse alternative, such as a voice command or an eye-tracking system.
One of the most interesting input devices on the market is what Michael Fiore calls the “McDonald’s keyboard.” This is the same device used by fast-food workers to ring in orders. Beneath the surface are programmable buttons that can serve a higher purpose than providing fries to a hungry public: They can give a disabled person a new way to function in his or her career.
The Fiores used just such a device to give an architect who has muscular dystrophy access to software for computer-assisted design, or CAD. Because he cannot extend his forearm, the architect is unable to use the mouse, keyboard and large digitizer board as normally required.
`We fit all the AutoCAD commands, of which there are gobs, and the keyboard and mouse controls on this 8 1/2-by-11 area,” Michael Fiore said. “He had access to the entire CAD program and was able to do what everybody else was doing.”
The touchpad, Keyport KBD by Polytel Computer Products Corp., comes with 176 buttons, each of which can be programmed for up to three functions. Some models have 300 buttons. And some have braille surfaces.
The types of assistive technologies available vary as widely as the people who use them. For some people with impaired vision, a larger monitor, or hardware or software that magnifies text may be appropriate. The blind can use speech synthesizers or “refreshable braille displays,” which produce a braille duplicate of whatever line of text is on the screen, said Ryan Kittle, a consultant for the Job Accommodation Network in Morgantown, W.Va.
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For some people, multiple solutions are needed.
In addition to limiting Ashley Cox’s mobility, cerebral palsy has left her with mild dexterity problems. She also has trouble with visual perception. Handwriting has always been difficult.
Throughout her school years, Cox relied on aides to take notes and type papers. High school teachers arranged for her to get a laptop for more independence, but it only made things worse, at least in terms of her morale.
“For 10 months, I tried to type, and with my (perception) problem and with my dexterity problem, it was difficult. I was typing about seven words a minute. I was getting frustrated. People weren’t knowing why I wasn’t learning to type faster,” recalled Cox, 21, now a sophomore at West Chester University in West Chester, Pa.
After years of trying, she got what she needed, voice-recognition software. Now, she’s thrilled to report a dictation speed of 42 words a minute.
Cox uses IBM VoiceType, and usually that’s enough. But when occasional eye spasms prevent her from reading the text on the monitor, she can import the information into a talking word-processing program called Write:OutLoud, by Don Johnston, that reads the text back to her.
Solutions for people with disabilities don’t have to be so involved.
“Assistive technology is any device that assists the person in working more independently, so it can be low-tech or high-tech,” said Janet Fiore.
Take the case of the client who kept slipping out of the ergonomic forearm rest he used while typing. The solution required some “custom engineering,” Janet Fiore said.
“So we go to Hechinger (a local building-supply store),” Michael Fiore continued, “and we buy a plastic gutter.” The gutter was attached to the forearm support and lined with foam packing materials from a mail-order fruit company.
“And I have enough `technology’ left over that I can use it for two more people,” Michael Fiore added.
The Fiores point out that many technologies that have become everyday conveniences were originally designed to aid people with disabilities, including touch screens and automatic door openers in supermarkets.
“Show me a person pushing a stroller down the street who’s not thankful for a curb cut, who doesn’t use the ramp when going up,” said Michael Fiore.
“This is normalization. The trend is not going to be adaptive technology. Five years from now, there will never, ever be an adaptive-technology article written, because there will not be such a field anymore.
“It will just be `technology.’ “