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Pigeonholes Are for Pigeons: Premier Assistive Technology and Access for All

Tags:Case Studies, Collaboration, Innovators, Marketing

“When you want to draw a straight line, you use a ruler; when you don’t feel like climbing ten flights of stairs, you use an elevator; when you have trouble spelling, you use a spell checker; and when you have trouble seeing, you wear eyeglasses. . . . We use assistive technology in every part of our lives day in and day out. Why aren’t reading tools available to everyone who needs them? — Steve Timmer, www.readingmadeeasy.com

From the Beginning: Refusing to Accept Limits

When Steve Timmer was a twenty year-old Marine, he was diagnosed with macular degeneration, forcing him to shift his vocational focus into electronic and electrical engineering. In graduate school, he needed accessibility support. The problem was that he wasn’t impaired enough to qualify for assistance.

Timmer didn’t think this was right, and he decided to do something about it. So he designed his own tools—and he made up his mind that, no matter how long it took, he was going to make it possible for anyone who needed AT to get it.

Today, Steve Timmer’s refusal to accept limits, his technical ability, and his determination to make AT accessible beyond what “the rules” allow, continue to drive everything that Premier Accessibility does.

Timmer became an AT architect and trainer. Kenneth Grisham, Vice President for e-learning development at Thomson Learning, hired him as a consultant to ensure that products were Section 504/508 compliant. “From the beginning, Steve had a new perspective,” Grisham recalls. “Too often, people in government, business, and education just ‘follow the rules’, right or wrong. Steve wanted to make the world a better place. And I was one of the few who could see where he was going.” Grisham also saw practical business opportunities in Timmer’s work. “Steve knew what he was talking about. His work had real world application.”

Both men liked challenges, they shared not only a vision, but a tireless desire to make that vision real in practical terms. Nine months after their first meeting, Timmer and Grisham decided to join forces to form Premier Assistive Technology.

Today, Premier designs, markets, and retools more than 18 products and technologies designed to help people who have a wide range of troubles in reading: www.readingmadeeasy.com. What drives the company is still what moved it at the start: a passionately-held belief that AT should be available to everyone, not just those labeled with a disability. “We are creating a different paradigm,” says Grisham, “about who AT should be used for and how it should be used.”

Grisham handles the financial and legal side of Premier Assistive, Timmer covers product development and research as well as business system development, and together they work on products’ functional design, marketing strategy and execution, sales, technical support, and overall business development. In addition, a contract executive (who himself is hearing impaired) works on expanding marketing and customer outreach, and a network of as many as thirty professionals, often people with disabilities, assist with product testing, customer assistance, and other tasks.

“We Want It Everywhere.”

In the name of access, Grisham and Timmer have made Premier software available, free, to as many as 14 million students nationwide through a grant program. They’ve donated the Accessibility Suite to several thousand schools, allowed it to be downloaded from servers and installed on every one of the school’s PCs. Students also can arrange to take the software home. By installing the entire Accessibility Suite throughout an organization, every computer is accessible to anyone who sits down at it, and literacy assistance is not confined to isolated groups or departments. There is no upfront charge for the software, the license, or the support. At the end of the initial one-year grant period, schools are given the option of a nominal Upgrade / Technical Support fee.

“We want it everywhere,” says Timmer. “What does it say to a student if there’s only one computer with the software? It means you can only read in this room. Life cannot be confined to one room. They need to read in different places. So it’s on all of the computers in the school and they can take it home. If you’re in the school band, they let you take home your tuba, so why not let them take home the software that enables them to read?”

Premier has entered the post-secondary world, as well. Dr. Christopher Lee, director of the Alternative Media Access Center for the University of Georgia system, is currently running a Premier pilot with twenty students at three campuses.

The next step they plan will be to put Premier’s Accessibility Suite on the University server—so that it is available to students throughout the University’s thirty-four educational institutions. Training videos are built into the software, minimizing the need for technical assistance.

“They want it to be there for everyone,” says Dr. Lee. “They are not about making money.”

What Makes Premier Assistive’s Internal Collaboration Work?

From the start, Premier Assistive benefited from:

• Mutual respect between two deeply self-confident professionals;
• Real-world application, keeping the vision grounded;
• Both recognizing the same barriers—including cultural and attitudinal—and working together to surmount them;
• Willingness to take risks in the name of a determined vision, keeping the business exciting; and
• A mutual and tireless work ethic necessary to execute and deliver the vision.

When Business Goals Line Up with the Mission, All Partners Win

Ken Grisham, however, comes from the corporate world. He believes that Premier can do the right thing and make money.

Low–cost and widespread distribution gives Premier Assistive:

• A foothold in new markets. “Some of what we do, with the grant program and letting people download, supports marketing. For example, in our project with Dr. Lee, we hope that once we establish a precedent in higher education, other higher ed players will come.”
• A presence in large organizational systems. Giving away so much software enables Premier to have a presence in large organizational systems, which provides momentum for dissemination. In addition to its U.S. distribution, the software will be in most school districts in Canada by the end of the year.
• Millions of free test-drives guiding product improvement. Steve Timmer says, “We’re in the schools for three reasons. One, to help kids. Second, to do research with the kids, which helps us to make better products, which will ultimately drive product sales.”
• Making users along the entire spectrum of needs comfortable with AT. “Third,” adds Timmer, “we’re there to get the kids fluent with the technology, comfortable with it, hooked on it.” And, in some cases, disposed towards Premier AT in particular.

The business goals line up with the mission. The product is inexpensive, but Timmer and Grisham believe that everyone should have this software, and, using their logic model and belief system, therefore, eventually many people will—and that’s how Premier will succeed.

“If it’s not affordable, it’s not accessible,” says Grisham. “Sure, we could price the software high and attempt to profit from fewer, but most costly sales –but our philosophy is based on universal access. This attitude is built out of Steve’s challenges, which I respect.

“These products should be like cellphones or VCRs. Once they were scarce and expensive. Now every other teenager on the globe has a cellphone. If you make a utility for everyone, which we think we do, it should be at the end of everyone’s arm.”

What Makes Premier’s External Collaborations Work?

• Business goals line up with the mission. Low costs deliver vast opportunities for test-drives and product improvement. Tailoring for individual users results in new applications and new clients.
• Pragmatic flexibility moves the vision ahead in the real world.
• People with disabilities are in leadership roles, and key support roles. This inspires, convinces, and raises product quality.
• The leadership knows who they can and can’t work with—and they only focus their energies and resources on partnerships that are committed to progress and success.

By Tailoring the Product for Individual Needs, Premier Learns and the Client Benefits

Premier also tailors the product, creating new applications by being responsive to individual needs. They do this because they genuinely want to help every person—but again, the mission dovetails into a business plan since the designs result in new tools, easier-to-use tools, and new potential clients.

“Steve retools a product if it doesn’t work,” says Dr. Christopher Lee. “Or if it doesn’t meet the need. He doesn’t want it to be hard. He sees a person struggling and he just says, ‘Hey, it’s easier for me to fix it than it is for you to work through it. Let’s make it easy.’”

A local employer contacted Dr. Judith Burton at the Arnold Center in Midland, Michigan, which supports Michigan Works! staff to enable them to help clients use accessible software to support their employment. Home Depot had an employee who had trouble reading, but who they valued highly for his mechanical skills, his job knowledge, and his skill with customers.

Timmer had worked with the staff of the Arnold Center and Dr. Burton knew that he was glad to tailor products to individuals. She says, “He always wants to find out if they really can use it, if it works for them. And he can change the design of the software just like I change the words in a sentence.” So Timmer worked with the store and with the employee. Eventually they will have a computer with the software in the store, to give him access to catalogues, instructions, labels - a world of necessary information.

Is this an individual act of helpfulness or a savvy trial run with a gigantic chain of home improvement warehouses? If the result helps to increase access either way, does it matter which it is?

“We’re not sure where this is going to go,” says Timmer. “It would be great if we could get accessible software on a computer in every Home Depot nationwide. If we don’t solve this type of challenge, organizations like that will lose the potential to benefit from good personnel. In the old days, you didn’t have to be able to read in order to work at a hardware store or be an auto mechanic. Now, if you can’t read, effectively it means you can’t work.”

“It will take time,” Grisham concedes. “Not because of technical issues, but because people take time to change the way they think.”

Changing the Way People Think

Steve Timmer’s book, Pigeonholes are for Pigeons, is about two kinds of pigeonholes:

• those that classify people (learning disabled, blind, special education) and
• those that define problems so that they can’t be solved (outside my job description, not the way we do things, can’t afford it).

Timmer and Grisham demolish both.

“There are so many barriers in this kind of work, barriers we all face if we are really serious about helping people,” says Dr. Judith Burton. “Steve and Ken just keep pushing through them. There’s no equipment—they find it—there’s no software—they supply it. The major barrier, however, isn’t lack of equipment and software, it’s lack of an attitude.”

“Organizational culture is a barrier,” says Ken Grisham, “political issues are a barrier. The budget’s a barrier, so we do the grant program, we take that barrier away. The point is, this is how it should be. Labeling people is a barrier—yes, we can give this one the software, because he’s got a label, but this other one doesn’t have label, so we can’t give it to him. Look at all of the people who have some degree of reading or writing disability. They’re not being served.”

Pragmatic Flexibility

In addition to keeping costs low and accommodating individual needs, Timmer and Grisham also keep collaborations flourishing through their pragmatic flexibility. “Originally Steve wrote our Closing the Gap proposal to provide accessibility tools for every student,” explains Dr. Lee. “Now, eventually, that’s where we want to be with this—but just then, to get the funds, we needed to focus. When I had to tell him to pull back, frankly, I was concerned about how he was going to respond, because Steve is passionate about universal access. Well, not only did he understand, he instantly changed gears. To him, this was a hurdle, and so we needed to get past it. Sometimes passion can get in the way of going forward, but not with Steve. He just said, ‘Right. Okay. Let’s quickly solve that problem and move on to the next challenge.’

“There is no question in my mind that both Steve and Ken believe that jumping these barriers is just a part of achieving the longer mission, which is to ensure that accessibility is there for everyone,” adds Dr. Lee. “That’s their focus.”

When People with Disabilities are in Leadership Roles, They Inspire, Convince, and Raise Product Quality

People with disabilities are in key roles at Premier: Timmer as President, partners that include people like Dr. Lee, who has severe dyslexia, and Dr. Burton, who lives with Multiple Sclerosis, and other business / technical assistance providers, many of who have vision or hearing challenges. The benefits are many:

• Buyers have much higher confidence that products will work when they are designed and delivered by people with disabilities. “The number of vendors with disabilities isn’t high,” says Dr. Christopher Lee. “For instance, Steve has a dual perspective, as a consumer and as a professional. That’s very convincing for high-level administrators as well as consumers who won’t use it if they don’t believe in it.”
• A designer/vendor with disabilities embodies the message of self-sufficiency and self-determination. “When Steve stands up, that’s different,” says Dr. Lee. “A person with disabilities sells it, and shows it, and develops it, and advocates for it, that’s a model of someone with disabilities who is in charge.”
• Users with disabilities trust designers and vendors with disabilities. “I use the products myself,” Dr. Lee continues, “I’m dyslexic, and I understand Steve’s deep passion for independence. You want other people to succeed. It’s about helping others, because it’s helped us.”
• Technical assistance providers with disabilities know the product more intimately and demonstrate that the company is committed in all ways to full inclusion. Premier’s phone and on-line technical assistance is handled by specialists, many vision-impaired, who work out of their homes. “They know exactly how the products operate,” says Steve Timmer. “When someone calls for technical support, and can’t find something in one of the applications, support personnel can explain how to find it, because they had to find it for themselves when they learned to use the products. In addition,” Timmer adds, again blending the practical with the progressive, “there are lots of talented, house-bound people with disabilities. We provide employment opportunities for some of them.”
• Quality Improvement. Product and service quality improve because they rely on people with disabilities to design the product, to test the product, and to troubleshoot the product. As Ken Grisham says, “We have yet to have one user who says our philosophies don’t work. Every week, almost every day, we get unsolicited testimonials saying that our technologies are really good.”

Know Who You Can and Can’t Work With

“Ken and Steve balance each other well,” says Dr. Christopher Lee. “Steve’s ‘in your face,’ very energetic, and Ken, who believes completely in Steve, has the business background to ensure that they’re still here, and they’re going to be here next year.”

Despite their immense outreach, Grisham and Timmer don’t partner with everyone.

“There’s something I call the Seven Percent Pool,” says Ken Grisham. “I tell this to Steve. Seven percent of people are just not going to like you. They don’t like how you look, how you think, they like nothing about you. Just walk away. Don’t burn energy on them. Early on, I think we were too forgiving. Some people applied to the grant program who had no commitment. They thought in limited ways. They couldn’t get senior management to support the technology—there were a few who couldn’t even tell senior management they had the technology—and if senior management doesn’t approve, you’re never going to get anywhere.”

“People who are regimental, by the book, and glued to their comfort zone,” says Grisham. “We know them when we see them, and we just move on.”

“Other people, progressive people, people with common sense, who cut through the procedural fog, people who can reach into the air and grab opportunities, those are the ones we work with.”

The Future

Ken Grisham describes “growing concentric circles of opportunities” for the extended application of assistive technology. Indeed, Premier’s networks grow weekly, customer by customer, network by network, thanks to Grisham and Timmer’s ability to collaborate with people with a wide range of needs—and thanks to their formidable work ethic, people skills, drive to meet the needs of their customers, and most of all, vision that equal access for all is the right thing to do, the smart thing to do, and the necessary thing to do.

At Premier Assistive, Grisham and Timmer see themselves as true pioneers and catalysts for change, and they include every customer, client, co-worker, and collaborator as full partners in that journey.

Cameos of Our Featured Collaborators

Kenneth L. Grisham is co-founder and CEO of Premier Assistive Technology, and a business technology leader with more than 31 years of experience in executive, management and technical roles at all levels of the field of information technology and various related business operations. Before founding Premier, he held positions at Thomson-NETG (National Education Training Group) including Vice President for Development and Quality Management and Senior Director of Management Information Systems and Operations. He has extensive experience in systems development and implementation, staff development, business application of emerging technologies, interaction with business leaders and cost control / reduction.

Steven Timmer, Ph.D., co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Premier Assistive Technology, speaks and lectures extensively in the areas of assistive technology, disability awareness and the development of barrier-free education. He has spent the last five years developing methods and technologiesto assist people with print-related disabilities. In this process, he helped establish Premier Assistive Technology, which has granted over 30 million dollars worth of software to schools and learning institutions in an effort to provide an equal learning opportunity for everyone. Dr. Timmer is the author of Pigeonholes are for Pigeons: Assistive Technology Solutions for the At-Risk Student, holds 3 patents and nearly 30 copyrighted assistive technology applications.

Christopher M. Lee, Ph.D., completed doctoral work in Cognitive Physiology and is a recognized advocate, author, speaker and leader in the field of learning disabilities and adaptive technology. His books, Faking It: A Look into the Mind of a Creative Learner (1992), and What About Me? Strategies for Teaching Misunderstood Learners (2001), draw on his developmental experiences and his challenges attending the University of Georgia to help teachers and parents optimize learning disabled students’ performance. Christopher has also published an on-line guide, Learning Disabilities and Technology, an Emerging Way to Touch the Future. He has published articles, chapters and several journals, and has been selected to chair many collaborative projects that relate to disability issues. Currently he services as Director of the Alternative Media Access Center housed at the University of Georgia, Department of Psychology.

Judith Burton, Ph.D., who lives with Multiple Sclerosis, describes herself as “driven by the desire to assist individuals develop their potential.” Her professional endeavors include serving as Access Specialist for the Arnold Center in Midland, Michigan. Additionally, she is a trainer who designs and facilitates workshops for business and educational organizations, a coach for career and life planning, a consultant, and a cheerleader for encouraging others to stretch and grow. Dr. Burton is president of Burton & Associates, a consulting and professional development firm, she has earned degrees in Psychology, Adult Education, and Business.