Introducing the Baruch Computer Research Center for the Visually Impaired.

 

In the discussion so far today, we have concentrated on the capability of the Center to attend to the needs of persons in the learning environment. We have concentrated on the ways in which we can make information transparent to persons with impaired or no visual input. But the Center's tasks include an even larger purview, and I should like to touch upon these in my remarks. First, we are undertaking a national sample survey of the braille and large print reading public, in collaboration with the American Foundation for the Blind. The results will document the areas in which the current system of provision of braille and large print product is ill served, in quantity, variety, and depth of material. In fact, some of the operating goals and priorities of the Center will be informed, in part, by our findings. Naturally, we also intend the scholarly publication of what we discover. Second, there are at least three areas in which appli cation of computer techniques can be made which we can pur sue immediately - so great are the obvious needs. The first is the provision of tactual graphics: maps and other pictorial representations of the environment. Within a very few months, the Center will have in place a computerassisted design and production system for tactual graphics capable of providing extremely high quality at very low cost. It will be the first facility of its kind in the United States. I have some examples of this kind of product generated at an experimental facility in the United Kingdom (Warwick Research Unit for the Blind). The symbols used on these examples are the result of over 25,000 experi mental observations made by Graham James of the University of Nottingham and John Gill of the University of Warwick, observations designed to yield a reasonably small set of symbols that are maximally discriminable one from another. The tactual maps can be produced for pennies each; and the epoxy master has been shown capable of making over 15,000 copies at very low cost. We intend to pursue the creation also of other pictorial representation - other than maps, that is. Although there has been some controversy over whether pictorial diagrams can be presented tactually, there has been no suitable means of producing them in high quality so that their usefulness can really be assessed. We will explore the definition of useful information in such a tactual form, and evaluate the product in conjunction with actual users. But it is important to point out that we will have the capability of producing maps of school, university, travel, and work environments easily and cheaply. Furthermore, since reading maps is a learned skill, we will develop instructional modules that will enable naive map readers to use these products. 

The second area of immediate application of computer technology is that of providing direct access to informa tion that is normally considered private or privileged, but which is not normally so accessed by blind persons. I mean, of course, information contained in bank state ments, charge accounts, and the like. There is now in operation in England with most of the major banks a service which gives blind persons the option of receiving bank statements in braille. We thought originally that it would be possible to import that system and install it in the American banking system. Nothing is ever quite that easy in so elaborated a society as our own: the com plexities of automatic deposit and withdrawal, electronic funds transfer, and the multitude of other banking services in the American system require a rather more complicated solution. We have been intensively involved in discussions with major banks in the New York, and midwest area, and we are currently negotiating contractual arrangement to develop program modules for computer processing that take account of these complexities of American banking service practice. These modules will be operated experimentally at the Center until thoroughly debugged. They can then be transferred out into the working environments of the banks themselves. This development will preserve the advantages of privacy that informed our effort from the start. 

The third area of immediate application of computer techniques is the provision in braille of information which is profiled to the specific interests of pro fessionals. In our beginning effort we look again to our British colleagues at Warwick University. There, a service has been operating for some time that provides a selection from the American Psychological Association's Psychological Abstracts to about a dozen blind psychologists, Each month, subscribers to this service receive a listing, with abstracts, of up to 75 references matched to a specific set of interest terms drawn from the Psychological Abstracts Thesaurus. What has been faintly scandalous about the enterprise is that American data tapes have been sent to England, processed on an American computer, using an American translation program from ink print analogue to braille analogue, embossing the translated output on a high-speed American embosser, and sending the bulk of the output to American psychologists! Except for experimental purposes, this arrangement is patently absurd, and we are working to redress the situation. We intend to do even better - namely, to extend our capability to provision of abstract services of this kind to other blind professional groups, such as engineers, computer specialists, biologists, physicists, and others. 

So much for some of our immediate projects. What of future research undertakings? Here there are two classes of activities: those for which we can see that there is almost enough information available to us to allow the creation of new products from the Center; and those for which we know sufficient information will not be immediately to allow us to act but which we monitor carefully for their potential applicability.

In parallel way we shall be investigating the design and conduct of workplace for that mix of system and social technology that will open new jobs to the visually impaired. This is more and effort to find new applications for computer; Rather, it is a comprehensive undertaking requiring task analysis, job integration, microprogramming of information flow in the workplace, an enrichment of tactual and audiotary interfaces with the workers. There is an increasing number of jobs, particularly in the technical occupations, that because they depend on machine read-out of various kinds lend themselves conceptually very readily to adaptation to visually impaired persons. Consider the modern atuomated office: there are few machines, if any, that cannot be used by the visually impaired with appropriate adaptation, perhaps a simple aid of two, and minor alterations in the organisation of work flow. This area has received some attention - not much - in the USA, particularly by the Sensory Aids Foundation in California. We intend to carry this out further with the help of the rehabilitation counsellor community, and to design machine-assisted information inventories on our experience so that they may have the widest possible applicability. In this we are collaborators with the American Foundation for the Blind and with the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers in Paris. The specification of new kinds of sensory aids may well be one important product of this work. Another activity will be the examination of the implications in the new generation of compact, if not in every case portable, devices from France, West Germany, and the United States that encode and display braille information. Such devices use digitally coded braille; they are thus transparent to computer input and output (or can be made so with interface equipment that is equally compact). Such devices may have a revolutionary impact on the local and remote input and output of information - including computation and programming tasks - in braille displays. Systems of this sort may alter radically the conduct of work and study for braille readers, and we will remain sensitive to the implications. Finally, in this set of proximate research goals, we shall be reporting out fairly soon on the routinisation of the use of photocomposition tapes to produce braille, large print, and synthetic ink print books and journals. Although the feasibility of using photocomposition tapes to produce braille has been demonstrated on an experi mental basis, we shall be reducing to a practice art the

Second, the possibility of providing a full page of braille in a transient, transitory, or "refreshable" display, is under active prototype development in a few places in the world. At least one of these designs, and perhaps two, give evidence of the possibility of eventual serial production at a cost of $1000 or less. Here, the advantages of tabular display and simultaneous voice read-out for relevant information - in look-up of reference' information such as timetables, tax tables, and the like - are quite obvious. 

Third, the eventual deployment of relatively sophisticated microprocessor-based small voice-and-digitalbraille data entry and output systems allows us to think in terms of a networking operation, in which some functions not supplied by the small local user unit can be supplied by a central computer processing unit over telelinks, i.e., by telephone line or radio. Not only would this supplement small digital braille equipment with capabilities for voice synthesis, greater computational ability, and larger storage of information; such a system could also be adapted relatively easily to the deaf-blind, whose communication needs are difficult to satisfy. 

Finally, we remain alert to the possibilities that will ensue from a forthcoming National Science Foundation meeting focussing on the interrelations among the com municative senses. Sensory research and advanced technologies allow us to consider for the first time, in any serious way, the possibilities of creating enriched sensory environments by cross-transfer of information from one sense to another. In this way, it may be possible to match and coordinate the capabilities of the tactual sense for spatial resolution, for example, and the capabilities of the auditory sense for temporal resolution. For the blind, that would mean the creation of the "hearing-feeling" transformation or imitation of the visual environment - that is, a bi-modal display. For the hearing impaired, one might opt for the creation of a "seeing-feeling" transformation of the auditory environment. 

Finally, we remain alert to the possibilities that will ensue from a forthcoming National Science Foundation meeting focussing on the interrelations among the com municative senses. Sensory research and advanced technologies allow us to consider for the first time, in any serious way, the possibilities of creating enriched sensory environments by cross-transfer of information from one sense to another. In this way, it may be possible to match and coordinate the capabilities of the tactual sense for spatial resolution, for example, and the capabilities of the auditory sense for temporal resolution. For the blind, that would mean the creation of the "hearing-feeling" transformation or imitation of the visual environment - that is, a bi-modal display. For the hearing impaired, one might opt for the creation of a "seeing-feeling" transformation of the auditory environment. I have already referred to a crude approximation of this approach in discussing the simultaneous presentation of braille and auditory information; the pro posed scheme simply carries this approach to its logical conclusion. The implications for rehabilitation are enormous, and we shall try to interpret these advances for the counsellor and the impact they will make on him and on his client. In summary, I would say that the Baruch Computer Research Center for the Visually Impaired will con centrate ab initio on one application area all of those technologies, both system and social, that enhance the ability of the visually impaired to function optimally in study, work, and leisure. As we gain experinece in transferring this knowledge to the everyday practice domain, we shall extend our purview in logical steps, building upon the expertise we gain in fulfilling our purposes. Our overall aim is no less that the creation of, or restoration of, a life style and a competence among the visually impaired that will allow such persons to function indistinguishably from their sighted neighbours. I do not regard this as a noble goal, but rather merely our obligation in human terms to the population we intend to help.

 (This article is a transcript of remarks made at the formal opening of the Baruch Computer Center for the Visually Impaired, 29 March 1978, at Baruch College, City University of New York).