messaging. By the early 2000s, they could talk at a distance to their friends in sign language using a Sorenson video phone, a set-top box for a television that was connected to a camera and the Internet. By the early 1990s, virtually all broadcast television shows had closed captions, text on the screen that matched what was being spoken in real time. These are probably the most important technologies that have helped transform the lives of deaf people, but there are many more. None of these could have happened without the innovations and community action by deaf people. The inventor of the acoustic modem was a deaf man, Robert Weitbrecht, and the promotion of the T T Y was by two other deaf men, James Marsters and Andrew Saks [ 1]. Deaf organizations lobbied vigorously to mandate that captioning technology be part of every television set, which happened in 1990 along with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

It is interesting to note that the three technologies mentioned above— personal texting, captioned video, and personal video phones—are all now ubiquitous technologies used by everyone, not just deaf people. This is not an uncommon occurrence. Other examples of technologies inspired by their use by people with disabilities include optical character recognition (OCR) and speech synthesis to enable blind people to read books, speech recognition for all people who cannot use their hands to interact with a computer, and the electric toothbrush, which was originally designed for people who had limited motor skills.

There are also the serendipitous cases
where a technology intended to solve
a problem for people with disabilities
instead gets used to create an entire
new industry. Such an example is the
telephone, invented by Alexander
Graham Bell. As a speech teacher
of deaf children, Bell tried to invent
a system whereby children could
see their speech instead of hear it
in order to help them speak better
[ 2]. This required inventing a device
that could transform speech sounds
into electronic signals. It was already
known how to transmit electronic
signals on wires with the telegraph,
so with Bell’s invention the electronic
signals representing speech sounds
could be transmitted as well. Ironically,
Bell’s invention was not usable by deaf
people until the invention of the T TY
generations later.

DESIGN FOR ACCESSIBILITY

In a sense, the TT Y made the telephone accessible and closed captions made television accessible to deaf people.

Let me give another concrete example: the screen reader, software that enables a blind person to read and navigate a computer screen to access the operating system, applications, and websites. Instead of seeing the screen, a screen-reader user listens to text on the screen being spoken and uses shortcut keys to navigate around the screen. Initially, screen readers were additional third-party software that had to be added to an existing system to provide access. As you might imagine, screen readers’ manufacturers were always playing catch-up with the latest versions of operating systems and applications. This began to change in 2005, when Apple included a screen reader called VoiceOver on Mac OS X 10. 4. VoiceOver was built in to the system, rather than being something to add on to the system. Even more transformational was the introduction of Voice Over to the i Phone 3GS in 2009 and later the iPod Touch. These touchscreen devices were initially considered inaccessible because there were no tactile indicators for a blind person to use. In a seminal paper, Shaun Kane et al. demonstrated that touchscreen devices can be made accessible using a very simple principle: Exploring the screen with one finger allows the screen elements to be read aloud without activating anything, and once an element is read, it can be activated by a gesture that does not occur during exploration, such as a spit tap or a double tap [ 3]. VoiceOver for the iPhone uses this principle to allow access and it is built into the iOS system, available to anyone.

Universal design. The iPhone is an example of universal design, which is a design that allows a great diversity of users, particularly those with disabilities, the ability to use the system. The concept of universal design originated in the field of architecture to emphasize designs that allow for a diversity of users, including those in wheelchairs [ 4]. One misconception about universal design is it requires a one-size-fits-all solution. What it really means is the availability of options. A

Figure 1. Accessibility and VoiceOver screens for iOS. Note the ability to adjust the speaking rate.

COVER STORY