Computers Are a Link to Lost Skills : Simi Valley Program Puts Disabled in Touch With Software to Meet Special Needs

With a few careful strokes of the mouse, a face emerged on the screen before Peter Madsen.

The Simi Valley resident dragged the mouse slowly across a clear plastic makeshift desk fixed to the arms of his wheelchair, creating colored lines on a computer terminal.

Madsen’s hands have always been the tools of his creativity. Years ago, they sculpted clay models of frontiersmen and Native Americans, models Madsen would then cast in bronze and sell. But after a riding accident in 1993 left him first in a coma, then in a wheelchair, Madsen’s hands could barely move at all.

Now Madsen spends at least one day a week at the SACC Assistive Technology Center, a tiny room tucked inside Simi Valley Hospital and crammed with computers. He uses mouse-driven programs to make artistic greeting cards that he hopes to sell in local shops.

“I want to make my own way in life,” Madsen said, his voice still slurred by the accident’s effects.

Across the room, which is cluttered with the guts of old computers, the center’s chief executive officer, Debi Schultze, watched Madsen’s progress. The center’s donated programs, hand-me-down computers and mismatched mice may not be cutting edge, she said, but they can help stroke victims relearn lost skills or give people like Madsen a new creative outlet after fate has taken others away.

“For someone like Peter, who has so much inside of him, if he didn’t have the technology he wouldn’t be able to do this,” Schultze said. “He can’t do it with a pencil.”

The nonprofit center was founded seven years ago and has since become part of a nationwide network of organizations using technology to help people overcome injuries or disabilities.

*

Like most of its sister centers, SACC (Serving Assistive technology Computer Communities) is a low-budget effort, dependent on volunteer labor and community donations. Even the space, within the hospital’s north campus, is donated along with utilities.

And yet the small center is part of a slowly expanding field, Schultze said. Although the idea of designing computer programs for people with disabilities is not new, it used to be the province of just a few software designers, Schultze said.

As the number of centers such as SACC has grown, so too has awareness among software and computer companies that their products, with modifications, can help the disabled. The results range from simple changes in ordinary computer programs--such as including an option to use very large type for people with poor vision--to systems that allow people to operate a computer solely through a headset.

The equipment and programs at SACC span that entire range. Demonstration copies of new computer programs, many educational programs designed for children but useful for stroke victims, appear in the mail each week. A table in the center of the room is littered with switches--large yellow or red buttons--that allow people with limited muscle control to operate a computer or other electronic devices.

*

A search for the proper mouse to use with a certain computer sends volunteers rifling through boxes stacked above file cabinets stuffed with floppy discs of old programs.

With so much technology at their disposal, center volunteers helping a new client must first figure out which programs or equipment will help. For $65, new clients receive an evaluation of their disabilities and an assessment of the technology that may meet their needs.

For some clients, the process stops there, with center volunteers merely recommending computer programs to consider trying. Other clients borrow the center’s programs, at no cost, or take a few practice sessions by renting the center’s computers for $5 an hour.

“People don’t have to go to a computer store, walk out with $4,000 of equipment, get it home and find out they can’t use it,” Schultze said.

Still others, such as Maureen Hemings of Somis, come back each week. Hemings works with the center’s math programs, trying to regain the skills she lost to a stroke more than two years ago.

“It’s like someone took an eraser and just wiped it away,” said the housewife about her memory of math.

Now Hemings sits before a terminal, with an abacus perched on the keyboard to help her visualize numbers. The program on screen walks her through a series of simple story problems, forcing her to picture how multiplication works.

She studies methodically and cautiously, sometimes counting on her fingers. Although she is still trying to master multiplication tables, Hemings said the computer programs have helped her recover much of her ability to count. The progress comes as a relief.

“You don’t know how it feels when you realize that this thing you’ve been working on has sunk in somewhere in your mind,” she said.

On another computer, Cheryl Lenhart of Simi Valley is learning to type with one hand, tapping keys in a confident and steady hunt-and-peck. She had been right-handed before a stroke robbed her of control of her right arm and impaired her vision.

“Now I’m left-handed, like it or not,” she said.

*

Lenhart began typing as a way to improve her eyesight and use of her left hand. At first she worked slowly and had to set the computer to display words in large letters.

Now the former shipping department employee types between 30 and 40 words per minute, using letters about the size of those in a book.

“In all of the things she’s typed, I’d be surprised if you could find two errors,” said Norma Foster, a former client who now volunteers at the center.

Like many of her clients, Foster suffered a stroke that seriously damaged her ability to organize or express her thoughts. On her first trip to the center, volunteers asked Foster to type a letter to her sister. After two hours of trying, she had written just two sentences, she said.

Foster, who had been a nurse, credits the center--its volunteers and its technology--with helping her “knit my mind back together.” On a typical day, she will move from one client to the next, offering tips on how to master the computer programs. She used many of the programs during her own recovery.

*

“I’ve done all of this, except the drawing part,” she said, pointing at Madsen. “Even today, if I don’t keep up with it, I’ll lose it.”

The center serves about 58 people each month, Schultze said, and the number of clients is increasing. With such limited space in the hospital, Schultze hopes to reach more people by establishing workshops in schools and the local senior center.

“Even if there were centers like ours in every other town, we still might not be able to reach all the people who need this technology,” she said.