Session Shows Disabled How Computers Can Set Them Free

In four years, Kirk Kilgour went from being a member of the 1972 Olympic volleyball team to being paralyzed from the neck down after a training accident.

Ten years later, he remains quadriplegic but is far from helpless. The reason: computers.

Kilgour, 38, told an audience this week at California State University, Northridge’s second annual conference on computer technology and the disabled that he employs voice-activated computers to turn on his stereo, type letters or use the telephone in his Van Nuys home.

“You speak to the computer,” he said. “ ‘One, two, three, open door. Open window.’ All of a sudden it lets you become an architect, an accountant, a computer programmer. You can do anything. You become fully employable.”

Frequent use of the typewriter and telephone is essential to Kilgour, who is a volleyball color commentator for three television networks. He also works as a consultant for the disabled.

But most importantly, he said, the computer sets him free.

Importance of Independence

“Independence is extremely important,” he said. “You don’t change your personality overnight because you broke your neck. You can’t have someone hanging over your shoulder, having to do everything for you, something as simple as turning on a TV station.”

Kilgour was one of about 60 speakers at the CSUN conference, which centers on computer aids designed to help the disabled live with their handicaps.

It is part seminar, part trade show, gathering 40 exhibitors and about 1,200 disabled people, family members, educators and therapists in the largest such conference in the nation, according to Dr. Harry Murphy, director of CSUN’s Office of Disabled Student Services.

One speaker, Dr. Jerrold Petrofsky, an Ohio researcher who is doing research at the University of California, Irvine, gave a slide presentation about his well-publicized method of using electricity to allow some paraplegics to simulate walking.

Ear Implant

Another participant, Dr. Jerome Dickman of Humana Hospital West Hills in Canoga Park, showed how doctors can implant electrodes into a deaf person’s ear and transmit sound, through a computer, to the brain.

In an exhibition hall, some booths showed off computerized audio and visual aids, talking computers and computer screens with giant letters. Some displayed specially designed computers, such as SonomaVoice, a rectangular box that, at the touch of a button or two, speaks in sentences for developmentally disabled people who have difficulty communicating.

Another exhibit demonstrated computer programs that simultaneously display an image, its translation in sign language and the correct English words or phrases describing it.

A handful of exhibitors, such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Ames Research Center, distributed job applications.

Variety of Materials

The material ranged in sophistication from a 1972 “dictionary” of sign language to a computer controlled by a headband.

Engineer Ken Yankelevitz looked a bit like a jogger with the blue headband around his head. A wire led from it to a hand-held computer. “See that light flashing from green to red,” he said to an audience, pointing to the computer, which can activate household appliances. “I’m doing that by twitching the muscle in my forehead.”

“If you can move one muscle in your body,” CSUN’s Murphy said, “you can use a computer.”

Computers are becoming the tool of choice for the handicapped because they are operated easily and are “infinitely patient” with those who need time to learn a skill, he said.

The drawback, however, is the cost of much of the equipment. Kilgour said he is lucky that, through his consulting business, he earned the money for the $17,500 voice automation system he bought five years ago. “It’s not going to be affordable,” he said. “You’ve got to find somebody else to pay for it.”

Reason for High Costs

One reason for continuing high costs is the relatively small market, Murphy said. Some disabled people have unique needs.

The conference included several seminars about financing through public and private sources, and Murphy said there is hope that costs will decrease as technology is upgraded and more private money becomes available.

One privately financed program discussed at the conference was an “interactive writing” system begun by Gallaudet College in Washington, D. C. The program, designed to improve literacy skills of the deaf, involves a network of personal computers that students use to write to one another in a classroom setting. The program received a $425,000 start-up grant from IBM Corp.

Yet, among the conference’s plethora of modern methods, some old standbys could be found. Doug Rose, a Burbank resident who tests computer aids for the blind, brought along his Seeing Eye dog, Marvina.

“She’s my computer,” Rose said.