2005 NCTI Conference General Sessions Long Writeup

Innovation in Practice: The Stories of Entrepreneurs and Researchers Developing New Products

The NCTI case studies and profiles come alive through an interactive discussion with innovators and collaborators previously featured in these two popular web series. Real-time surveys of the audience will further reveal trends in the field of technology innovation.

Eric Morrison (Moderator), Faculty, Pima Community College and author of NCTI Innovator Profiles

Sara Basson, Director, Accessibility Services Program Manager of IBM Research and Executive Advisor, Liberated Learning Consortium

Steven Landau, Research Director, Touch Graphics

Tom Large, President and Chief Executive Officer, Designer Appliances, Inc.

Annuska Perkins, Accessible Technology Group Product Planner and User Interface Designer, Microsoft

Eric Morrison (Moderator), Faculty, Pima Community College and author of NCTI Innovator Profiles
A story: Laura is blind and wants to dance. She came to Pima Community College and there became a dancer and choreographer. She uses AT and her physical body and a portable closed-circuit television (CCTV) to see if her dancers are doing what they should. She does all of her mapping in her head and on CCTV. This is a situation where technology becomes interlaced with cognition and expression. Stories like this provide examples of why we want to get technology out to users.

The people on this panel work through vagaries in the market and users to get the materials to market.

Sara Basson, Director, Accessibility Services Program Manager of IBM Research and Executive Advisor, Liberated Learning Consortium
Her passion is accessibility and so it is very appropriate that she works at IBM, which has a long history of creating AT, at first primarily to accommodate in-house employees and maximize productivity. Later, they sold AT—and, more recently, thanks to the legislation, what they’ve been doing all these years has substantial business impacts, positioning them favorably in, for example, the federal markets (508 compliant), and the state and local markets (not 508 compliant).

Liberated Learning is an automated captioning system that enables teachers’ lectures to appear on a screen as they speak. This product was created and is continuously modified thanks to a collaboration between IBM and St. Mary’s University—which now extends around the world. This partnership works because it brings together like-minded, mission-driven participants with fresh perspectives driven by different needs, because there are long-term and short-term benefits for all participants. The project also has champions on all sides that are determined to surmount obstacles at all costs. They believe this technology has the capacity to change society.

Steven Landau, Research Director, Touch Graphics
Collaboration is the key to small business. Each form of collaboration has its purpose. Very clear boundaries need to be established early. Universities are becoming more receptive to the idea of partnering with business. One reason is that SBIR grants (which are useful for high risk, small market projects) are only successful when products are commercialized. (A pitfall is that SBIR becomes a convenient way to generate revenue, and so there is the problem of the “SBIR mill”—and letting the field use SBIR this way instead of towards really applicable and useful product is a serious error because eventually without marketable product you won’t survive.)

TouchGraphics markets the Talking Tactile Tablet (TTT). The company is interested in assessment—and NCLB wants tests to include people with disability in assessment, so TouchGraphics is collaborating with Educational Testing Service and Boston College to see if they can use the TTT to deliver standardized assessment. They are also interested in developing games, and tools for geography and statistics—where access to pictures is important.

For a small company trying to penetrate markets and get involved in areas where we have no credentials and expertise, collaboration is a live or die proposition. TouchGraphics identifies experts and sometimes calls strangers—usually nonprofit organizations and universities—out of the blue. When they collaborate with for-profits the issue of who owns the IP arises. Get the IP agreement signed, sealed, and delivered up front, or get a good lawyer—or get both.

Universal design means you build one product that reaches all users—blind, deaf, mainstream, etcetera—and in this way, the tiny blind market shares product costs with other markets which are larger. For example, products for blind people in museums that provide access to tactile understanding enable anyone to touch objects, which most visitors want to do.

Tom Large, President and Chief Executive Officer, Designer Appliances, Inc.
Good ideas do not always get funded.

Good technology means you don’t know it’s there. For every good idea you see there’s a thousand you don’t see as well.

Entrepreneur—a word we use too much—should be defined as: people who do things you think are exceptional, people who take something that isn’t very much and make it into something more. Like all of our teachers.

Computers are not natural products, so how you make the product designates disability. We look at how to develop systems for people who don’t have control of muscles and nerves and want to use technology. We look at participation technologies.

“Accommodation” means you’re doing someone a favor—and that’s not what we’re doing.

AT is still not integrated into the offerings of mainstream retailers—we’re on the backwater of their website.

Annuska Perkins, Accessible Technology Group Product Planner and User Interface Designer, Microsoft

She tests products for usability, which gives her insight into other people’s perspectives and experiences. She believes that we all should supplement our strengths with those of others to reach common goals—and give people a voice in decisions before the rubber meets the road.

We all need to raise awareness, consensus, and commitment levels, to spur innovation and, ultimately, make products better.

Discussion

Eric Morrison: What are the challenges and barriers to collaboration?

Tom Large: The ultimate destination for cost-effective AT is the general market. When you’re a small company, you still need to behave as though you are working with a large market. You also need to look at the market created by the legislation, although that’s not necessarily going to happen in reality—some of 508 isn’t implemented and isn’t likely to be.

Steve Landau: IP can be a barrier to collaboration. TouchGraphics had a major misunderstanding over IP with a university; TouchGraphics brought them in as a contractor doing a work for hire, but the university thought this was their institutional IP, that anything a faculty member created was university IP. Situations like these interfere with a company’s ability to successfully commercialize a product and keep the price down so that the consumer can afford to buy it.

EM: What are the solutions for broadening the AT market?

Sara Basson: When they started Liberated Learning, they thought it was for a niche market—and if that had continued to be true, IBM would have provided limited support. But when ViaScribe evolved out of the project, including opportunities to post on the intranet, including text, slides, audio in synchronized webcast, because of these wider applications, IBM was able to give Liberated Learning more widespread support.

Annuska Perkins: What are the users going through? What is their environment? Even ethnographic—what are challenges they have in daily life with their AT? Microsoft’s Vendor Program partners with vendors who have to work on top of Windows to see what their needs are, which helps Microsoft to make necessary changes in their products. Some needs for change are consumer-based and some are vendor-based.

TL: Microsoft does work hard with their vendor partners. CTR and Scroll on the current software allows you to zoom to make the text bigger or smaller. It’s a hidden feature in Microsoft. Clickless web is one of their functions and it’s free for them; it works on Internet Explorer.

Comment from the floor: Think about our wounded veterans, think of them not as disabled but as warriors. Lots of head injuries as well as amputees. More private vendors need to think about the National Guardsmen and veterans coming home.

AP:Microsoft looks at disability very broadly—looking barriers in ordinary lives. 57 percent of all Americans have at least a mild impairment.