High-Tech Firms Offer Products for Visually Impaired
Rick Plescia readily concedes his is an industry that most would gladly avoid.
About three dozen firms make equipment for a relatively small group of consumers who, for the most part, cannot afford to buy the products. Plescia is in the business of making computers and high-technology aids for the blind.
“It’s not a big market, and it’s not like there are a lot of people out there with money to buy,” said Plescia, vice president of sales and marketing for Sensory Aids Corp., a Sacramento-area firm. “For many other businesses, the market could be unacceptable.”
Despite many limitations, a small group of high tech companies offer the nation’s 500,000 legally blind individuals everything from talking personal computers to laser-guided walking canes.
A Small Market
It is a relatively small market: industry sales total no more than $40 million annually, executives estimate. But as the nation’s population grows older, the number of blind or visually impaired individuals--those who need more than corrective lenses to read clearly--will also grow as will the need for electronic visual aids.
Putting technology to work for the blind is not a new phenomenon. When Thomas A. Edison applied for a patent on his tin-foil phonograph in 1877, he listed “books for blind people” as one of its potential uses.
The first generation of high technology aids for the blind began appearing in the early 1970s. But the spread of personal computers and computer-generated human speech in recent years has allowed a greater number of the blind to enter the computer age--albeit, at a very a high cost--than ever before.
The personal computer “has meant a bigger change for the blind than for the sighted population,” said James Bliss, founder and president of Telesensory Systems, a maker of equipment that allows the blind to read the printed word. “It has opened up the development of new products.”
Dominating the Market
Telesensory Systems, based in Mountain View, Calif., and Santa Monica-based VTEK dominate the industry with sales of about $15 million each. Corporate behemoths, such as IBM and Xerox also sell products for the blind, but the small size of the market has limited the large company’s participation.
“We probably sell 2,500 units a year,” said Larry Israel, president of VTEK. “Well, that’s peanuts stuff. That’s about five minutes worth of production of IBM PCs.”
Their sales and production volume may be small, but firms in the industry have made great strides in developing and adapting existing technology to help the blind tap information that flows across the computer screen or the printed page.
The Optacon II, for example, a device made under a joint venture between Telesensory Systems and Cannon, features a hand held camera the size of a pocketknife. The camera is run across the lines of a book or across the computer screen. The images recorded by the camera are then transferred to a small pad where the blind can feel the outline of letters with their fingertips.
A personal computer made by Enabling Technologies of Stuart, Fla., sounds out the words on the computer screen or the letters being typed on the keyboard. The computer technology that simulates human speech can also be found in a variety of talking watches and calculators popular with the blind.
One of the most anticipated products in the field is the Xerox/Kurzweil Personal Reader. A hand-held scanner reads printed text and then the device repeats the text aloud in computer generated speech.
And more firms are courting individuals who are not yet blind but who can no longer read with just eyeglasses. Under a system sold by VTEK, a book or other printed material is passed under a camera lens, which magnifies and transmits the image to a small television monitor for viewing.
“The low vision market from a commercial point of view, is far and way the most attractive segment,” said Israel of VTEK.
Many pieces of computer equipment use Braille, the pattern of raised dots that symbolize letters and words to the blind. Mitchell Pomerantz, a personnel executive with the city of Los Angeles who is blind, purchased a Telesensory Braille word processor and a Braille printer for $10,000 last March.
By pressing the right combination of six key pads, Pomerantz can write--and later read--a memo on the word processor in Braille. Pomerantz can now write and edit memos and reports much more quickly and efficiently than he ever could on his manual Braille typewriter.
“This is the kind of equipment that will help blind people be competitive and get jobs,” said Pomerantz, who said he would be interested in buying other high tech products.
Pomerantz has found his equipment easier to use and trouble free for the most part. But some high-tech aids have been criticized for their design. Many of the popular talking watches, for example, are very difficult for the blind to set.
W. Harold Bleakley, president of Aids Unlimited, a Baltimore catalogue house owned primarily by the blind, said such problems could be avoided if the blind were consulted in advance. “We are not coming in as a seeing person who does not know a damn thing about blindness,” he said.
The hefty price tags on the high-tech aids--$2,700 for a talking laptop computer and up to $12,000 for a Xerox/Kurzweil Personal Reader--for the blind have also been a sore point for the industry.
These high prices are out of reach for most of the blind, whose unemployment rate runs as high as 75%, according to some estimates. Blind professionals also tend to earn less than their sighted peers and are underemployed, according to the American Foundation for the Blind.
“Economically Deprived”
As a result, nearly two-thirds of these products are purchased for the blind by government agencies, such as school districts and departments of rehabilitation. Many organizations for the blind, such as the Braille Institute, subsidize the purchase of equipment that will aid a blind person at work. Some manufacturers also offer low-interest loans to buyers as well.
“You’re dealing with an economically deprived population,” said Vito Proscia, president of Innovative Rehabilitation Technology, which distributes a catalogue specializing in electronic aids for the blind. “They might have been trained as an attorney but they are working as a clerk, “ said Proscia.
Some industry executives argue that companies shy away from the industry for fear of appearing to be profiting at the expense of the blind.
“If they do go in to the market their interest is more out of sympathy or motherhood than to make a strong corporate commitment,” said Lee Brown, president of Enabling Technologies.
“Morally, I don’t have a problem with making a profit,” said Brown, who is blind. “This does not mean you have to rip them off.”
More Products
To remain profitable, firms in the industry are introducing more products for the visually impaired, who tend to be more numerous and have higher incomes than the blind. A federal regulation requiring government agencies to purchase office equipment that can be operated by the disabled may also boost sales. The industry also expects to sell more equipment to corporations that buy visual aids for employees.
Executives also expect sales to grow as the price of equipment continues decline, a result of new cost-saving technologies, and more blind individuals enter the work force.
“It’s a much more independent society,” said Bliss at Telesensory Systems. “We are expecting that the percentage of individuals that buy our products will be much greater than ever before.”
