The Serotek Ultimatum

Serotek declares war on the traditional adaptive technology industry and their blind ghetto products. With this announcement we are sending out a call to arms to every blind person and every advocate for the blind to rise up and throw off the tyranny that has shaped our lives for the past two decades. It is a tyranny of good intentions – or at least what began as good intentions. But as the proverb says, “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.” And for the past two decades the technologies originally conceived to give us freedom have been our shackles. They have kept us tied down to underperforming, obscenely expensive approaches that only a small percentage of blind people can afford or master. They have shackled us to government largess and the charity of strangers to pay for what few among us could afford on our own. And we have been sheep, lead down the path, bleating from time to time, but without the vision or the resources to stand up and demand our due.
That time is past.
We stand today on the very edge of universal accessibility. Mainstream products like the iPod, iPhone, and newly announced iPad are fully accessible out of the box. And they bring with them a wealth of highly desirable accessibility applications. The cost to blind people is exactly the same as the cost to sighted people. It’s the same equipment, the same software, the same functionality, and fully accessible.
What Apple has done, others are doing as well. The adaptive technology vendor who creates hardware and software that is intended only for blind folks, and then only if they are subsidized by the government, is a dinosaur. The asteroid has hit the earth, the dust cloud is ubiquitous, the dinosaur’s days are numbered.
But dinosaurs are huge, and their extinction does not happen overnight.. Even as they die, they spawn others like them (take the Intel Reader for example). Thank you, no. Any blind person can have full accessibility to any type of information without the high-cost, blind-ghetto gear. They can get it in the same products their sighted friends are buying. But let’s face it; if we keep buying that crap and keep besieging our visual resource center to buy that crap for us, the dinosaurs of the industry are going to keep making it. Their profit margins are very good indeed. And many have invested exactly none of that profit in creating the next generation of access technology, choosing instead to perpetuate the status quo. For instance, refreshable braille technology, arguably the most expensive blindness-specific(and to many very necessary) product has not changed significantly in 30 years. Yet, the cost remains out of reach for most blind people. Where's the innovation there? Why have companies not invested in cheaper, faster, smaller, and more efficient ways to make refreshable braille? Surely the piezoelectric braille cell is not the only way? And what about PC-based OCR software? It's still around a thousand dollars per license, yet core functionality hasn't changed much; sure, we get all sorts of features not at all related to reading, along with incremental accuracy improvements, but why are these prices not dropping either, especially when you consider that comparable off-the-shelf solutions like Abby Finereader can be had for as low as $79? ? And let's not forget the screen reader itself, the core technology that all of us need to access our computers in the first place. Do we see improvements, or just an attempt to mimic innovation with the addition of features which have nothing to do with the actual reading of the screen, while maintaining the same ridiculous price point.

This maintaining of the status quo will, inevitably, face an enormous crash, worse than the transition from DOS to Windows based accessibility. You can expect a technology crash that will put users of the most expensive accessibility gear out of business.
Why? I won’t bore you with all the technical details, but the basic story is that some of these products have been kept current with patches and fixes and partial rewrites and other tricks we IT types use when we haven’t got the budget to do it right, but we need to make the product work with the latest operating system. That process of patching and fixing creates an enormous legacy barrier that makes it impossible to rewrite without abandoning all who came before. But you can only keep a kluge working for so long before it will crumble under its own weight. That, my friends, is exactly where some of the leading adaptive technology vendors find themselves today.
There are exceptions. Serotek is an exception because we have completely recreated our product base every three years. GW Micro is an exception because they built their product in a highly modular fashion and can update modules without destroying the whole. KNFB is an exception because they take advantage of off-the-shelf technologies, which translate ultimately into price drops and increased functionality.

But even we who have done it right are on a path to obsolescence. The fundamental need for accessibility software is rapidly beginning to vanish. The universal accessibility principles we see Apple, Microsoft, Olympus, and others putting in place are going to eliminate the need for these specialty products in a matter of just a very few years.
Stop and think. Why do you need accessibility tools? To read text? E-book devices are eliminating that need. None of them are perfect yet, but we are really only in the first generation. By Gen2 they will all be fully accessible. To find your way? GPS on your iPhone or your Android based phone will do that for you. To take notes? Easy on any laptop, netbook, or iPad. Heck, you can record it live and play it back at your convenience. Just what isn’t accessible? You can play your music, catch a described video, scan a spreadsheet, take in a PowerPoint presentation – all using conventional, off-the-shelf systems and/or software that is free of charge.
There are still some legacy situations where you need to create an accessibility path. Some corporations still have internal applications that do not lend themselves to modern devices. There will certainly be situations where a specialized product will better solve an accessibility problem than a mainstream one, especially in the short term. We don't advocate throwing the baby out with the bathwater, but we do advocate that we begin to hasten the inevitable change by using accessible mainstream solutions wherever possible. Even now, the leading edge companies are reinventing their internal systems with accessibility as a design criteria, so the situations that require specialized products will certainly become fewer as time goes on.
If our current Assistive technology guard's reign is coming to an end, why the war? Why not just let it die its own, natural, inevitable death? Because nothing dies more slowly than an obsolete technology. Punch cards hung on for twenty or thirty years after they were completely obsolete. The same is true for magnetic tape. Old stuff represents a comparatively large investment, and people hate to throw away something they paid a lot of money for even if it’s currently worthless. But that legacy stuff obscures the capabilities of the present. It gets used in situations where other solutions are cheaper and more practical. The legacy stuff clogs the vocational rehab channel, eating up the lion’s share of the resources but serving a tiny portion of the need. It gets grandfathered into contracts. It gets specified when there is no earthly reason why the application requires it. The legacy stuff slows down the dawning of a fully accessible world.
It hurts you and it hurts me.
To be sure, I make my living creating and selling products that make our world accessible. But first and foremost, I am a blind person. I am one of you. And every day I face the same accessibility challenges you face. I have dedicated my life and my company to making the world more accessible for all of us, but I can’t do it alone. This is a challenge that every blind person needs to take up. We need to shout from the rooftops: “Enough!”
We need to commit ourselves in each and every situation to finding and using the most accessible off the shelf tool and/or the least-cost, highest function accessibility tool available. With our dollars and our commitment to making known that our needs and the needs of sighted people are 99% the same, we can reshape this marketplace. We can drive the dinosaurs into the tar pits and nurture those cute fuzzy little varmints that are ancestors to the next generation. We can be part of the solution rather than part of the problem.
And all it takes is getting the best possible solution for your specific need. Once you have found the solution to fill that need, let the company know you appreciate their work towards better accessibility. Let your friends (sighted and blind) know about these accessibility features; they probably don't know that such features exist.
Make your needs known to the vocational rehab people you are working with, and don’t allow them to make recommendations for a specific technology for no other reason than that it’s been in the contract for years. Make sure your schools and your workplace understand the need to push technology in to the accessible space. Show them the low-cost alternatives. In this economy some, the intelligent ones, will get it and the tide will begin to turn.
And then in short order the tsunami of good sense will wash away the old, and give us the space to build a more accessible world for all of us. Let the demand ring out loud and clear and the market will follow.
If this message rings true to you, don’t just shake your fist in agreement and leave it at that. let your voice be heard! Arm yourself with the vision of a future where there are no social, conceptual, or economic barriers to accessibility, and let your words and your actions demonstrate that you will not rest until that vision is realized. Take out your wallet and let your consumer power shine! You do mater as a market people! You have kept this company alive with your money for 8 years this month! I believe that if we all get together and do our part, we will finally say “NO more!” same old same old! Join the revolution! Together we can change the world!

A History Making Day For The Blind

This week, Serotek’s iBlink Radio app for the iPhone and iPod Touch is in the “Featured apps” section of the iTunes Store. On the surface, this may appear to be a nice feather in Serotek’s cap, but the implications go far beyond company recognition. This listing recognizes the blind community as a worthy market as well as putting Serotek on display as a contributor of high quality software and content. This is a first. The first time ever an application for blind people has been offered to the world at large, by a major marketing organization, without qualification or apology. It’s just there as part of the best of the best applications Apple has highlighted for its iPhone and iPod users.

We created this application and placed it on the iTunes store, free of charge, for a number of reasons. First and foremost it is great content – a complete array of entertainment and information, all created by and for the blind and low vision community. This is everything a blind person needs to know in one place, quick and easy, accessible anywhere. This is my personal app of choice.

Second, this is a valuable resource for sighted people if they or someone in their family is losing their sight. It’s a time when it feels as if the whole world is ending. But this one application can be salvation. With it the person can have access to everything they need to know. It used to be considered a tragedy to lose your sight. But today, it is just an inconvenience. With the power of full accessibility any one can live a rich and rewarding independent life even as their eyesight fades to black. iBlink leads a newly blind person to all the information he or she needs and puts them in touch with what they need to know to survive and thrive.

Third, the blind community is full of people with an astounding and diverse array of talents and skills. These abilities are worthy of being noticed and appreciated by everyone. There are a lot of cool dudes out there who happen to be blind and who create some amazing information and entertainment. iBlink brings together the best of the best. A sighted person who wants to experience the world from a blind perspective, can do it on iBlink.

For as long as I remember, our community has been viewed as separate, different, and less capable by the businesses that produce high tech products. A few producers and marketers have seen us as perhaps worthy of separate but equal access to the things that everyone else takes for granted. Even fewer have been willing to provide full accessibility, but only if providing that accessibility doesn’t inconvenience anyone else. Unfortunately large parts of society, including many within the blind community, believe the blind population needs to depend on the kindness and generosity of the government and our sighted counterparts to accomplish the most basic of tasks. They just assume that social networking, the Internet and all the latest hi-tech gadgets are and always will be beyond our grasp. But Apple, and a growing number of followers, recognized that blind people are part of the market. They recognized that including us within their market scope is good business and builds their bottom line.

Apple has opened a whole new take on accessibility with products like the Mac, iPhone, iPod, and soon the iPad; each product is completely accessible out of the box and with all the same functionality our sighted counterparts enjoy. We owe it to ourselves to exploit these mainstream platforms and show the world just how smart Apple is. This week, our community, with its diverse array of talents, ideas and skills, is being showcased right alongside the talents, ideas and skills of the world at large. And you know what? It feels right. This is what accessibility is all about. This is what Serotek has been campaigning for since the company was founded. Blind and low vision folks being treated like ordinary people. It doesn’t get better than that.

What I think About the Intel Reader

Yesterday marked the release of a product which, according to Intel, would revolutionize the way the blind and others with reading disabilities accessed printed materials. During those few fleeting moments between hearing of the announcement and reading the actual press release, I had high hopes that a mainstream company would demonstrate its dedication to accessibility and innovation at an affordable price. And with backing from companies and organizations such as Humanware, Lighthouse International and the Council for Exceptional Children, I felt certain that the device I was going to read about would be very impressive indeed.

The Intel Reader, a device about the size of a paperback and weighing approximately 1 pound, is equipped with a camera and text-to-speech allowing print documents such as newspapers, menus, and signs to be converted in to a readable form by the blind and others with print disabilities. With the addition of a capturing station, sold separately, the device can be used to scan and convert more lengthy materials such as textbooks and novels. It can also read existing etexts in Daisy format as well as play standard MP3 and Wav files. This feature set reads quite a bit like other mainstream and custom-built solutions on the market. In fact, the only jaw-dropping aspect of this product is its price. The device itself can be had for a mere $1499, and you’ll pay an extra $399 for the privilege of using the capturing station.

After the initial shock, I and many others in the blind community began looking more closely at the information available about the device, just to ensure that we hadn’t overlooked anything truly awe-inspiring. After all, for its price, there had to be something which set the device apart from existing solutions such as the KNFB Reader for performing OCR on documents on the go, the forthcoming free e-reader from Kurzweil to read existing Daisy documents, off-the-shelf solutions like a PC, scanner, and ABBYY FineReader for more involved projects like scanning textbooks, or even the $259 Amazon Kindle, which isn’t currently accessible but could be made so with a little effort and encouragement from the community.

As we learned more about the Intel Reader, there was plenty to make this device unique. First, while most portable scanning solutions like the KNFB reader for mobile phones or a scanner/Netbook combo are equipped with wi-fi access, the Intel Reader can’t make that claim. In this article from VentureBeat it is stated that wi-fi is absent from the product because web-connected devices aren’t allowed in some classrooms. Far be it from us to suggest including wi-fi and leaving it up to school IT professionals to handle whether or not to grant wi-fi access, as they must do for all other wi-fi-equipped mainstream devices.

In addition to having no wi-fi capabilities, the device is also unable to handle HTML content natively. Rather, a user must first convert the HtML document to plain text before it can be read. This doesn’t bode well for a device whose major goal is purportedly to take the hassle out of reading for the blind and print-disabled.

Given that this device appears to boast no significant features setting it apart in a positive way from existing solutions, we must ask why the device was created in the first place. Ben Foss, the Intel representative spear-heading the project, has a lot to say on this. Foss states in a press conference: “A metaphor for this are the ramps that make buildings wheelchair accessible. This reader is like a ramp.” Unfortunately, this particular metaphor is far from apt. While wheelchair ramps are an example of smart universal design principles in action because they’re just as useful to a walking mother with a stroller as they are to a person in a wheelchair, the Intel reader has been manufactured and marketed exclusively for the blind and print-disabled without a thought for universal design. Foss goes on to acknowledge that the price is not cheap, but guess what, folks? It’s ok. You see, the device contains several custom components. Never mind that the essential components are a 5-megapixel camera, flash memory, and Intel’s own low-cost Atom processor which can all be had for under $250 as parts. Are you questioning the price yet? No, don’t do that. Intel can explain. Braille reading devices can cost upwards of $10000, so $1500 is really easy to swallow in comparison to that, isn’t it? Never mind that comparing Braille displays and text-to-speech readers makes little sense.

In essence, Intel is unapologetically asking us to accept this device’s hefty price tag for no other reason than that it was designed specifically for the blind. Are we going to accept being blatantly charged a premium because of our blindness, especially by a company who claims to have a philanthropic bent? Remember Intel’s Classmate PC, whose aim was to provide a low-cost and rugged netbook to students, especially those in developing countries? How can we take initiatives like that seriously when with this device Intel clearly shows it isn’t interested in providing low-cost solutions to the blind students in its own back yard?

Still, Intel didn’t create this device in a vacuum. “Intel has done its homework on the device,”, says Dorrie Rush, who serves as the marketing director for Lighthouse International. This signifies that Intel received input from blind and print-disabled individuals as it designed the product. So why is it that no one from these groups questioned Intel’s decision to reinvent the wheel, and in a completely lackluster way at that. Why did no one from these groups encourage Intel to combine existing components to create an innovative and affordable product that could be beneficial to all?

No matter how stunning a product Intel created, it still needed the backing of influential groups within the blind community in order to be taken seriously. For Humanware, who is among the companies distributing the product, partnering with one of the most lucrative and well-known mainstream companies was a huge accomplishment. Did Humanware leverage this relationship to educate Intel so that at least one mainstream company would design its products with accessibility in mind from the ground up? No! It did not! Humanware thanked Intel for producing yet another overpriced, sub par blind ghetto product, and jumped on the chance to convince millions of blind and print-disabled people that they need look no further than this bulky and expensive device to further their independence. When a mainstream company like Intel employs such tactics it is shameful. But from Humanware, a company who should by all rights have the interests of blind consumers at heart, these actions are nothing less than despicable.

Because of Intel’s status and high visibility, its new product rated mentions in mainstream publications as well as those which are more blindness-oriented. In this somewhat flippant article from Engadget, the authors posit that a device like the Intel reader could be created for under $500, and I suspect they’re right. But the interesting reading isn’t so much the article itself, but the comments. One post says in part: “Sure, you could build something that did something similar for less money, but would you then be able to give it to a nearly blind person to use all day, everyday? Completely implausible for $500.” This same poster goes on to say: “besides, the target audience for this device is disabled -- it should be paid for by 3rd parties because it meets the requirements to be classed as an aide for the disabled.”

And there you have it -- everything that we despise about this product’s existence all wrapped up in a smug, condescending little package and tied with a bow. Essentially, this poster believes that nothing which wasn’t created specifically for the blind could possibly work well in a day-to-day situation. Not only that, but there are apparently an abundance of tax dollars to go around for purchasing overpriced devices. And luckily, the blind person need not ever make a decision as a consumer since there’s a benevolent 3rd-party agency to take care of such things, rendering the process of making choices for oneself unnecessary.

So, are we, as a community, going to let this stand? Are we going to throw our support behind Intel, who spent countless hours and research funds to offer us a third-rate product which is priced out of our reach? Are we going to put our hard-earned money in the pockets of Humanware, who squandered their one chance to truly shape the direction of accessibility in mainstream technology in favor of making a quick profit? Do we want to continue accepting the pronouncement that blind ghetto products are not only necessary, but worthy of our everlasting gratitude? Or are we going to tear down those ghetto walls and demand our rightful place as the smart and savvy consumers that we are!

And before you say that you’re only one consumer, that your voice will never be heard, I will tell you that you’re wrong. You can make a choice to be educated about what you buy before you make a decision. And once you embrace the power to choose, you’ll want to share that power., and you won’t want to stop with just one person. You’ll tell every blind person you know to stop and think before choosing a product which has no claim to fame other than being designed for the blind. You’ll tell the blindness agencies and school systems who already struggle with tight budgets to stop and investigate before accepting the party line and purchasing something which does half as much at twice the price. And to those companies who are banking on your willingness to accept anything less than the best just because it’s been given the stamp of accessibility, the sound of your wallet slamming shut an the realization that you are actually “a consumer” with a functional brain and an opinion will convey your point quite eloquently indeed!