Legends and Pioneers of Blindness Assistive Technology, Part 2
By Candela, Anthony R.; Access World, Vol. 7, No. 5Publication Date: September 2006
Article is the second in a series on the history of assistive technology for people with visual disabilities. A pioneer CCTV system is featured, developed in the 1960s by Apollo Lasers and VisualTek. Blazie Engineering is mentioned as developing the first talking computer terminal, Total Talk; subsequent products included the Braille ‘n Speak and Braille Lite series of portable notetakers, and the Braille Blazer embosser. A Blazie engineer developed what became JAWS (Job Access with Speech) screen-reading software. The inventor of the Arkenstone OpenBook desktop OCR (optical character recognition) system is featured as the developer of Bookshare, which gathers books that have been scanned by people who are blind and makes the available for download to subscribers. Also interviewed is the maker of VERT (verbal emulation in real time), a synthetic speech system for visually-impaired computer users. The Sendero Group is reviewed as developers of accessible and portable GPS (global positioning satellite) wayfinding technology, available to BrailleNote users. Duxbury Systems is featured as makers of software enabling visually impaired users to produce readable hard-copy Braille from desktops. Also featured are the developers of the popular DOS-based screen reader Vocal-Eyes, from which Window-Eyes evolved.
Assistive Products Discussed: APOLLO DUAL IMAGE II
OPENBOOK
BRAILLENOTE
BRAILLE LITE
VOCAL-EYES
BRAILLE 'N SPEAK
WINDOW-EYES PROFESSIONAL
JAWS FOR WINDOWS
BRAILLE BLAZER
JAWS SCREENREADER
PC VERT
BRAILLE 'N SPEAK 640
TOTAL TALK PC
MICROVERT.
BRAILLENOTE MPOWER BT 32
BRAILLENOTE MPOWER BT 18
BRAILLENOTE PK
BRAILLE 'N SPEAK SCHOLAR (MODEL 1-07320-01)
SENDERO GPS STANDARD & DELUXE
Published by: AFB Press (Website:http://www.afb.org/Section.asp?SectionID=46)
American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) (Web Site: http://www.afb.org )
Link to text: http://www.afb.org/afbpress/pub.asp?DocID=aw070509
