Technology Helps Disabled Enrich Lives

The last thing David P. Rogers remembers seeing on that awful night nine years ago was a car tire flying toward him as he drove down the Harbor Freeway. It was actually a wheel and brake drum, and in the resulting crash, Rogers--a Harvard Medical School graduate with a brilliant career ahead of him, suffered a spinal injury that left him paralyzed almost completely from the neck down.

It’s been a long road back, but today Rogers, 39, enjoys a rich professional life working with several prenatal diagnostic centers as a clinical geneticist and as medical director for a Scottsdale, Ariz.-based firm called Genetrix. His experience shows how powerful high technology can be in helping people with disabilities--and the importance of an Information Age nonprofit organization called the Computer Access Center.

Rogers uses a Macintosh PowerBook computer and a Macintosh desktop to take notes, write reports and letters, send e-mail and access online medical databases. He can move only his right arm, which he uses to operate his wheelchair, and the computers are controlled with an ultrasound device called a HeadMaster.

A headset detects head movements, which are transmitted by low-frequency sound waves to a box on top of a computer and used to manipulate the cursor. A puff straw in Rogers’ mouth activates the clicker. To type, he uses a screen keyboard with “word prediction” software that can often anticipate what he’s going to say, thus saving movements and puffs.

“It’s amazing what can be done,” says Rogers, who says he overcomes tremendous pain by keeping busy and using his computer. “I feel fortunate that [the accident] happened at a time when the technology is available so that I can still work at my career.”

Such technology isn’t cheap; Rogers estimates he’s spent about $30,000 on computer equipment since the accident. But money is only part of the challenge in using technology to overcome disabilities. Rogers found he needed help in learning what kinds of hardware and software were out there, and that’s where the Computer Access Center came in.

The Culver City-based nonprofit facility, founded in 1986 by a group of parents, teachers and people with disabilities, offers consultations to help people figure out how technology can help them. It is affiliated with a nationwide network of 42 other independent centers that are part of the Alliance for Technology Access, and it works closely with local hospitals, disability groups, equipment vendors and the Westside Center for Independent Living. To fund its activities, it relies on a patchwork of grants, contributions and training contracts.

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According to the 1994 Harris Survey of Americans With Disabilities, sponsored by the National Organization on Disability, only 1% of people with disabilities own computers. Two-thirds of Americans between the ages of 16 and 64 who have disabilities are not working. And many professionals in the field believe those dismal figures are in part the result of people with physical or cognitive disabilities not knowing what’s available.

“Technology has the power to drastically reduce the percentage of people with disabilities who are unemployed in this country,” says Mary Lester, associate director of the San Rafael, Calif.-based Alliance for Technology Access. Though the Alliance says its member organizations have helped about 800,000 people over the years, that’s still a small fraction of the number that might benefit.

At the Culver City center, one day a week is reserved for “open access,” when anyone can come in for a consultation. One recent afternoon, Beth Fleming, 29, who has cerebral palsy, was there to find out whether there was some equipment that would help with her reading and perception problems. Fleming aspires to write a resource manual for people with disabilities and to start her own business. She can type with one finger, but she has problems with spelling and editing.

Melody Ram, a former schoolteacher with a master’s in special education who works at the center, sent e-mail to other access centers all over the country to find out about the latest in screen-voice synthesis, a process by which text is turned into speech. Ram then helped Fleming apply for a grant to fund her system.

“We don’t fund the computer systems, but we do write letters and refer people to places for funding. We find that when the people know what kind of equipment they want, they find the funding,” says Mary Ann Glicksman, founding member and executive director of the Computer Access Center. Sources of funding have included the U.S. Department of Education, the California Department of Rehabilitation, insurance, churches and the Make-a-Wish Foundation.

The center, which doesn’t turn anyone away for financial reasons but does ask people to become members if they can afford it, helps people of all age groups and with all types of disabilities. Toddlers and infants who have learning disabilities play with toys that teach them how to use a switch, so that when they need to operate a computer with as little as one switch, they can. School-age children with attention deficit disorder can benefit from certain kinds of computer programs.

Recently, a 9-year-old girl who couldn’t talk learned to use a TouchTalker, a communications device that uses a system of pictures and a special touch keyboard for speaking and writing. Now she’s winning writing competitions against students without disabilities who write with pens and pencils.

Technology has come a long way since the center opened. Glicksman’s son, John Duganne, who received a diagnosis of cerebral palsy at a young age, could not use his hands or speak. But with a pencil in his mouth and a plastic-covered keyboard, he learned to tap out “yes” and “no.”

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Today, at 24, he is studying animation at the California Institute for the Arts in Valencia. With a head mouse, a device that allows his head to function as a computer pointing device, he is able to operate complicated graphic programs such as Illustrator, Photoshop and Strata 3-D to create paintings, drawings and animation.

Many people with disabilities are not as fortunate as Dr. Rogers or John Duganne--or even actor Christopher Reeve, whose recent paralyzing accident attracted so much media attention.

“Christopher Reeve’s story is tragic,” says Ram. “He, however, has the money to get the best help available. We meet families every day who are dealing with more stress and may not have found the means to get the technology they need. They’re just as much a hero as he is.”