Innovations for People with Disabilities in the Workplace
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by Allan Hoffman
Gayle Yarnall doesn't consider herself a gadget freak, but you won't find her at a business meeting without her Voice Mate.
Unless you're blind, like Yarnall, you probably don't use a Voice Mate, a voice-operated personal digital assistant that lets users record and retrieve names, addresses and memos with voice commands. "Everybody's using them," says Yarnall. Yarnall recalls attending a meeting with others who are visually impaired. "The one thing we all had in our pockets was a Voice Mate," she says.
As many consumers buy the latest gadgets, like slick MP3 players and digital cameras, workers with disabilities are finding new and innovative "assistive technology" to accomplish tasks others take for granted, whether answering phone calls from coworkers or reading office memos.
There are online stores, such as EnableMart, that specialise in software and hardware for workers with disabilities, providing a growing list of items. "There's everything from touch screens to modified keyboards," notes Dennis Moulton, company president.
Products come from both start-ups and established players. IBM, for instance, offers Home Page Reader, special software to read and navigate Web pages for those who are blind or visually impaired. Motorola's pager products, such as the Timeport P935 and the Talkabout T900 -- mainstream gadgets for business and consumer use -- allow individuals with hearing impairments to communicate with colleagues when they're on the road. A small Pittsburgh firm, Consultants for Communication Technology, offers a product called KeyWi2, enabling a PC to operate as a voice synthesizer. The product lets users communicate by employing preprogrammed sentences or "speaking" via keyboard input.
Here is a sampling of technologies being used today to assist workers with disabilities:
