Assistive Technology (Technical Alternatives) and its Importance for People with Special Needs
A research paper submitted by Eng. Mamoun Al-Hattab / Jordan
The Introduction:
- What is a disability.
Assistive technology fact:
Assistive technology is now no longer in need of someone explaining its importance to people with special needs or who justifies caring for it. It passed this stage globally fifty years ago or more. This technology has received more attention and study in all parts of the world than other branches of technology.
Here we do not want to highlight the importance of assistive technology and its role in the lives of the blind, but we like to shed light on the reality of assistive technology and its main theme, which is empowering people by providing them with new tools for communication with the world, learning, education and work.
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And if the issue of technologies for the blind has been dealt with in recent years by specialists from various fields, and even socialists, psychologists, economists and others around the world have participated in discussing it, then those who care most about this technology are information technology specialists. This is because this technology is now seeking to simulate human operations that can be automated.
I have decided to focus in this paper on clarifying the basic concepts of assistive technology and how it is evaluated by blind Arabs. And I thought that this approach is better than just enumerating what is on the market now, because explaining the concept in my opinion is more important than talking about specific products, as products are constantly changing and the concepts that help us judge them remain valid for a longer period and this is what benefits people. However, at the end of this paper, I will give quick examples of some of these products, just to shed light on them.
The blind:
In the beginning, we must present axioms in order to base our common understanding on them, and this will require a return to the roots of some issues related to the blind person in terms of formation, including the question: How does the blind differ from the sighted person?
The most important difference that we are interested in talking about here between the blind and the sighted is firstly how each of them receives knowledge from the world around them, and then secondly how to communicate knowledge from within each of them to this world and how to transform knowledge and represent it in their reality.
The entrances to human knowledge are the five senses, then the mind processes and builds this knowledge through the processes of linking, comparison, analysis and synthesis. As for the outputs of knowledge from the human being, they are divided into natural outputs such as speech and the movement of the limbs, and industrial ones such as writing and printing, and others that are constantly renewed by man in devising and developing means to express himself.
And since the jobs require the employee to acquire specific knowledge and then transform this knowledge into an act that serves an interest and adds value, it appears here that the role of technology in the lives of the blind starts from the stage of acquiring knowledge, whether in schools, institutes and universities or in institutions that qualify their employees through training courses.
So when we evaluate a technique of assistive technologies for the blind, one of the most important bases for this evaluation is the extent of success of this technology in enabling us to introduce knowledge to ourselves, and whether it enables us to increase knowledge.
Regardless of the mechanism by which it operates, whether this technology is for the blind or used by the sighted as well, such as learning by listening to recorded tapes, the real value here is the introduction of knowledge, and if this value is achieved, this technology becomes an assistive technology. Then comes other important considerations as well, such as quantity, ease, time, price, etc. But these are secondary considerations that are complementary if measured in the main.
The ability of the blind
What types of work can a blind person do: Teaching? Administration? Programming??? What are the specifications of the professions that a blind person can perform? All professions?
A job is an act in which an employee adds value to a beneficiary of that job. This is a general definition that we will analyze its elements to reach what we want.
Man develops with knowledge, and the more he is filled with knowledge, the more his ability to add to his reality through his knowledge is supposed to increase. Knowledge is the basic qualification for a job as long as a person is able to add value to a beneficiary. Yes, qualification in addition to knowledge may require manual or physical training, but if this training is needed in some jobs, then it is dependent on the cognitive side.
And if we divided the action required of the employee to perform it by the human devices, we would find that he has to use all or some parts of his body, namely: mind, sight, hands, hearing, legs, muscular effort, tongue, etc. It can always be shortened by the mind, as it is indispensable, and some limbs, depending on the nature of the work, sometimes or always.
Do we want to use technology to bypass the need for vision through technology? Or should we use technology to help with what the rest of the parts need to compensate for the loss of vision?
There are technologies that currently exist that help the blind to receive knowledge, such as Braille printing technology, recorded tapes, and other technologies. But as far as we know, technology has not reached the point where it compensates for vision in performing all the functions required by vision.
In our view, there must be a selection process for the job by the blind according to the technical means available to him and the degree of development of these means doing what they were found for. This is not specifically caused by technology in the first place, but rather its weakness so far in terms of capacity and availability, which makes this selection necessary and more specific.
To derive the basis for evaluating the appropriate technique for the job, we must study the job in terms of the parts of our bodies that will perform it. Are there technologies that help us perform that function, regardless of the need for vision? Then, if the job needs sight, is there a technology that fulfills this need and to what degree? And again, the issues that we considered secondary come in the sense that they are second in order and not in the sense that they are not important, such as can we train and master that technology, what is its availability, price, maintenance, security, etc.
The future
Will you be able to use technologies that completely replace vision in the future? Presumably, yes, but at the present time, technology solutions are neither complete nor general. Rather, they serve specific functions within specific tools. This applies to the Arabs and the West, with the difference in the technical precedence of the West.
Here we come to three issues that must be addressed when talking about assistive technology and its role in employing the blind, namely:
• Types of technology for the blind
• General situation of assistive technology
• Arab technical status
Types of technology for the blind
Assistive technology for the blind is divided into two parts: computer-related technology and information technology, and non-computer-related technology. As for the technology associated with the computer, it aims to enable use, as an example of which computers are originally designed for the blind, and computers for the sighted with accompanying programs and tools for the use of the blind. In addition to it, an infinite number of technologies that rely on computers as a basis, such as Braille teaching laboratories.
Technologies that do not rely on information technology include functional training methods and mechanisms, especially manual ones.
The truth is that it is not necessary for the technology chosen by the blind person to be originally intended for the blind if he sees something useful in it. This observation is useful in broadening the blind’s horizon when he searches for technology or when he wants to learn about its developments. It is known that most of the techniques of the blind are a modification of the techniques of the sighted, and that the idea of modifying and adapting them came mostly from the blind who knew about them and their potential.
General situation of assistive technology
These technologies are accelerating their development in the West at a pace close to the acceleration of the technology available to the sighted, albeit somewhat slower. This is natural by virtue of the proportion of the number of consumers in societies driven primarily by economic numbers. However, the support of states and community institutions for research and development initiatives and interest in blind issues accelerates the development of this sector and compensates to some extent for the lack of consumers.
Technology is the result of the accumulation and integration of knowledge, and this fact is clearly evident in what we see of products that combine creativity with different sciences, including the humanistic and the applied scientific ones. This is in addition to a healthy climate that encourages and supports science, progress and scientific research.
It is natural that the production of assistive technologies continues globally with an accelerating momentum, and with a quality that is constantly improving in the performance of its functions. On the other hand, it is expected, and this is what we are currently seeing, that functional work methods will be modified to be more compatible with the available technology so that all effort to adapt does not remain on the shoulders of the blind. We can clearly see here the future of education using the computer, in which the blind and sighted students will be equal, as well as the blind and sighted teachers. In this way, the situation will reach most jobs in the societies of the near future.
Arab technical status
Perhaps the best title is the development of technology in the Arab world, as technology is a human knowledge heritage available to all, but the issue after that is who adopts technology, applies it, and develops it through research? For the Arabs, there is the issue of who owns the price of technology.
It is not required of the Arabs to invent new technologies in this section or other sections of technical applications, but what is required is to benefit from the technical human heritage, and to carry out a process called Arabization of these technologies to suit the Arab user. There is a lot of technology available, but little is expressed.
The truth is that this project may not be commercially feasible at first, so it must be adopted by non-profit institutions to ensure its continuity until it reaches a stage where it can stand independently.
The Arabic Language
In order to complete the picture, there is a technical aspect related to the computerization of the Arabic language that must be addressed in this paper. It is an important aspect of this subject, but the most important. As this language problem extends to everyone, not just the blind. It relates to the future use of technology by the Arabs.
Computer science and information technology tend to develop generations of computers that are communicated with through direct speech in addition to the known methods, as well as receiving their outputs in the same way. This will lead to a natural language dialogue between man and machine. This development will be reflected in everything we know of information technology applications from education to commerce and business and other aspects of life.
To achieve this, studies began in the West since the middle of the last century to computerize languages in what later became called Computational Linguistics or Natural Language Processing. These studies aim to find a degree of automatic understanding of the language that can be programmed.
The components required to provide the appropriate language element in software for the blind are programs required to achieve the same end as sighted people such as text-to-speech, speech-to-text conversion, voice recognition, as well as machine translation of text and other machine understanding applications.
And since there are no Arab research centers specialized in this field, the development of this technology remained dependent on the attempts of some companies to find solutions that have not so far been more than commercial adventures that present partial attempts to confront these challenges. Until the writing of this paper, no real scientific effort has been announced that can be built upon in the field of the basic components required for the computerization of the Arabic language.
Examples of assistive technology currently available:
• Techniques that the blind man deals directly with:
- Talking computer (Visual system, JUZ system, HAL system (talking))
- Braille (screen reader)
- Recording Machine (Daisy)
- Note taking machine
- Reading and writing tools
• Available technologies used by the sighted to provide services for the blind: - Braille publishing systems
- Writing boards/handwriting machines
Conclusion:
The intent of this paper and this presentation of the basic concepts is that dealing with technology requires a way of thinking that accommodates technology issues in general by the blind, and provides scientific bases for judging different products. Thus, the blind person is not a victim of exploitation for commercial purposes or a victim of an illusion that leads to poor planning for his and his family’s future. And the God of the intent behind.
The Reviewer:-
- A working paper on technology and the employment of the blind, written by Eng. Mamoun Al-Hattab, Director of the Arabic Textware House, Amman, 2008.