take on the challenge of including the requirements of these “extra-ordinary” people in their practices.
IT systems have been developed to support older and disabled people for many years, and this book contains an historic review of research in some areas in the field. One important lesson from this research is that rules and guidelines for including disadvantaged people in designs are sometimes less than adequate.
Orthodoxy is the Grave of Intelligence. (Bertrand Russell)
This book highlights insights and lessons learnt from over 40 years leading a group researching into and developing computer systems for older and disabled people. With the goal of influencing the mind sets of designers, it focuses on ideas on which to ponder, rather than describing an exhaustive research methodology.
1.1 AN INTERDISCIPLINARY EDUCATION
I was very fortunate whilst at University to have been, more or less, forced into what turned out to be an interdisciplinary education. I was too young to be trained as a computer engineer but I did learn to touch type before going up to University—in the vain hope that I would type out my lecture notes each evening. This early decision has been immensely helpful to me as a software engineer, and, in more recent times, for any writing tasks. (All students learning to touch type would, I believe, make a significant improvement to their efficiency—but in the UK this is not happening).
I had been very much focussed on science and engineering at school and read Electrical Engineering at Birmingham University. This was a traditional course, and was at the time (1959-1962) when transistors were gradually being introduced into such courses. So, I was taught about power transmission, valves (vacuum tubes), and transistors, but not computers or integrated circuits. On being awarded a BSc in 1962, I was offered a PhD studentship in that Department. My supervisor (Prof. Jack Allanson) was interested in how sound was reproduced on the cortex. He persuaded me to perform some experiments which involved playing sounds to human subjects and noting their responses. Thus, I had to learn about experimental psychology, both experimental methods and statistical analysis of results.
It had been agreed that, at the half-way point of my PhD, I would return to more traditional electrical engineering. Another staff member, however, had different ideas. He wanted some experiments done on how people recognised sonar images, and it was made clear to me that it would fit in better with a three-year PhD—as I was already up to speed on perceptual experiments. I was disappointed, but agreed to go down that path which resulted in my PhD being entirely in “Subjective Pattern Recognition”, with little or no engineering.
Everything might be for the best in this the best of all possible worlds. (Pangloss revised: Voltaire)
At the end of my student days I was a trained electrical engineer and, by happenstance, a self-taught experimental psychologist. Such an interdisciplinary background was unusual in those days. This combination, however, proved to be very beneficial in my career, and, towards the end of it, the concept of “inter-disciplinary research” had become very popular. So my reluctant decision proved to be a very good one—my first example of an apparent set-back turning out to be for the best in the long run.
1.2 INDUSTRY—SPEECH RECOGNITION RESEARCH
In 1965 my background in people, sound and engineering secured me a job in an industrial research laboratory that was funded to develop a speech recognition system. This was at a time when most researchers saw speech recognition as a relatively simple technical problem which “would be solved in two years, and make much money in five years”. This view of speech recognition continued throughout the rest of the last century but commercial success was very elusive. Interestingly, however, some of the earliest examples of commercial success of speech technology (synthesis and recognition) were as aids for people with disabilities. I was, and remain, very conscious of the complexity of speech and of the advantages of speech recognition—except in limited and carefully controlled situations [Newell, A., 1992a]. I was in a research environment whose aims did not fit with my views of what could be achieved, and the contribution that I, and the group I was part of, were able to make to that very overly-ambitious project was not great.
There were, however, many advantages: the project purchased one of the first laboratory computers—a Digital Equipment PDP8. This had 4,096 12-bit words of storage, a keyboard and a 10-character per second printer, paper tape reader and punch, and led to me obtaining on-the-job training in software engineering. As a laboratory tool, programming in assembly language was essential, and many hours were spent trying to produce very efficient programmes which fitted into the 4K of storage that was available. Thus, I was again fortunate in being an early user of laboratory computers—initially for developing laboratory tools and simulating electronic circuits and latterly as prototype electronic systems in their own right.
The other major advantage of my time in these laboratories was that I was able to read widely in the general area of speech and to be an early investigator of human computer interfaces. Up until that time the majority of work on human factors had been supported by the military with a focus on knobs and dials. As will be seen, the background that this gave me proved to be essential to many of the research issues that I subsequently investigated.
Opportunism—a valid research strategy.
What, in retrospect, was the turning point in my career path occurred by chance. It was becoming increasingly clear that the automatic speech recognition project—like the vast majority of such projects at that time—was not going to achieve its aim. One day, my immediate boss, almost as an aside, suggested that our technology might be beneficial to people with disabilities. As it was not possible at that time to recognise speech, I developed “VOTEM”, a Voice Operated Typewriter employing Morse Code. The idea being that a disabled person could speak Morse Code (dots and dashes), to spell out what they wanted to type.
Technology push is sometimes a useful driver.
VOTEM was licensed to a manufacturer of systems for disabled people but it was never made commercially available. This particular piece of research did not have a commercial outcome, but it did interest me in developing systems for disabled people. There are many and varied reasons why researchers move into this field—some because of a relationship either with disabled people directly, or via discussions with clinicians, but in my case it was because of a potential use for technology. Technologically led research, particularly in this field, can be problematic and, although disabled people were not involved in the development of VOTEM, they should have been. This experience gave me an interest in, and a particular perspective on, this area of research, and much of my subsequent work has promoted the idea of “user-centred design”.
1.3 SOUTHAMPTON UNIVERSITY—A DEVELOPING FOCUS ON “AIDS FOR DISABLED PEOPLE”
I was appointed to a lectureship in Electronics at Southampton University and decided that developing systems for disabled people would be one of my major research interests. In comparison to the organisation of many universities in the 21st Century, the choice of research area was entirely left up to me—there was no institutional pressure for or against such a choice. The research in this, and subsequent sections of this chapter, will be described very briefly, with the details and rationale being expanded upon in later chapters.
Designing VOTEM had opened my eyes to the communication problems of people without speech, and my readings in psychology had made me aware of the many and varied characteristics of speech, including speech being more that just the words spoken, and the importance of body language. I was struck by the fact that all the systems that had been developed for non-speaking people required the non-speaking person and their communication partner to look at a single
