The IET/BCS Manchester Turing Lecture 2006
'Lifestyle access for the disabled - adding positive drift to the random walk with technology'
Speaker: Chris
Mairs founding member and director of Data
Connection plc
Date: 25nd
January 2006
Synopsis
There is a paradoxical relationship between technology improvements and accessibility.
On one hand, technology can and sometimes does help visually disabled people: synthesized access to talking newspapers, easy access to online music with speech synthesized catalogues, email reading/writing with speech synthesis, and a speech interface to hand-held GPS for blind orientation/navigation.
On the other hand, the 'technology heavy' nature of 21C lifestyle often disenfranchises the disabled. Examples include microwave cookers, mobile phones, iPods and 24-bit animated graphical user interfaces.
What should and can be done to improve the outcome resulting from this technological dichotomy?
Turing lecture established by BCS and IET
Sponsored by the University of Manchester and IBM
