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Albritton Disability Consulting Services, LLC: Your guide to Section 508 compliance

Evolution of Assistive Technology

Timeline

What follows is a listing of IT innovations, originally developed by, or in support of, people with disabilities that wound up benefiting everyone. Do any of them strike a familiar note? 

1808

The first typewriter is built by Pellegrino Turri. He built it for his blind friend Countess Carolina Fantoni da Fivizzono. He wanted to help her write legibly.  
See: http://xavier.xu.edu:8000/~polt/tw-history.html 

1872

Alexander Graham Bell takes up permanent residence in the United States at 35 Newton Street, Boston where he conducts normal classes for teachers of the deaf.  
See: http://www.webbconsult.com/1800.html 

1873

Herman Hollerith, a young student who experts now recognize as having had a cognitive processing disabilities, begins making a habit out of jumping from his second-story schoolroom window to avoid having to take his spelling lessons.  
See: http://www.webpixie.com/secret/Our-past.htm 

1876

A patent for the telephone (No. 174,465) is issued to Alexander Graham Bell. The telephone was one of the many devices Bell developed in support of his work with the deaf.  
See: http://www.webbconsult.com/1800.html 

1886

Herman Hollerith thought of the idea to use punched cards to keep and transport information, a technology used up to the late 1970s. Those punched cards were read electronically: the cards were transported between brass rods, and when there were holes in the cards, the rods made contact and a electric current could flow.

This device was constructed to allow the 1890 census to be tabulated. This construction meant a great improvement as hand tabulation was projected to take more than a decade. They called this little invention the computer.  
See: http://www-stall.rz.fht-esslingen.de/studentisches/Computer_Geschichte/grp2/holler.html 

1896

The Tabulating Machine Company was founded by Hollerith.  
See: http://www-stall.rz.fht-esslingen.de/studentisches/Computer_Geschichte/grp2/holler.html 

1916

Harvey Fletcher joined the Research Division of Bell Labs to work with Irving Crandall on hearing and speech, Fletcher built the Western Electric Model 2A hearing aid and a binaural headset in the 1920's and published the widely-read book Speech and Hearing in 1929 that analyzed the characteristics of sound. 
See: http://ac.acusd.edu/History/recording/bell-labs.html 

1917

E.C. Wente [Bell Labs] developed the condenser microphone to translate sound waves into electrical waves that could be transmitted by the vacuum tube amplifier.  
See: http://ac.acusd.edu/History/recording/bell-labs.html 

1918

Henry Egerton patents the first balanced-armature loudspeaker driver, based on the 1882 balanced armature telephone patent of Thomas Watson, and used in the Bell Labs No. 540AW speakers developed by N. H. Ricker Oct. 6, 1922.  
See: http://ac.acusd.edu/History/recording/bell-labs.html 

1921

The amplifier, microphone, loudspeaker innovations were combined to create the first public address systems. The largest public demonstration of such as system took place on Armistice Day for the national broadcast of the burial of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington Cemetery, heard over 80 loudspeakers linked by telephone lines in New York, San Francisco, and Arlington. By the next year, standardized p.a. systems were introduced.  
See: http://ac.acusd.edu/History/recording/bell-labs.html 

1922

When he turned 70, Bell stated that "recognition for my work with the deaf has always been more pleasing than the recognition of my work with the telephone." But it was the telephone that had transformed America. As a final tribute to Bell, upon his death in 1922 at age 75, the nation's telephones all stopped ringing for one full minute. 

1924

Twenty-eight years after Hollerith [1896] founded the Tabulating Machine Company it becomes known as International Business Machines (IBM), a company, which is well known nowadays. Everybody links the name of this company with the use of computers.  
See: http://www-stall.rz.fht-esslingen.de/studentisches/Computer_Geschichte/grp2/holler.html 

1929

Harvey Fletcher [see 1916] published the widely read book Speech and Hearing that analyzed the characteristics of sound. Fletcher led much of the research on binaural "stereophonic" (stereo) sound recording, at Bell Labs.  
See: http://ac.acusd.edu/History/recording/bell-labs.html 

1934

The Readphone, an invention which reproduced literature and music on long-playing discs was invented. This "Readophone Talking Book", was demonstrated to Dr. Herbert Putnam, librarian, and to Dr. H.H. B. Meyer, director, Project, Books for the Blind, Library of Congress, The Readophone disc had two hours and twenty minutes of recording time, the equivalent of twenty-eight thousand words. Did you ever play a 33-1/3 RPM record?  
See: http://www.wcblind.org/fyi/trivia.html

1935

The American Foundation for the Blind publishes first issue of Talking Book Bulletin. Listened to a book-on-tape lately?  
See: http://www.wcblind.org/fyi/trivia.html

1936

Since its earliest days, Bell Labs had been concerned with the properties and analysis of human speech, originally developed to help people who were deaf learn to speak intelligibly. Because of this work it was inevitable that a Bell Labs scientist would invent an artificial talking machine and, in 1936, H.W. Dudley did. It was the world's first electronic speech synthesizer, and it required an operator with a keyboard and foot pedals to supply "prosody" - the pitch, timing, and intensity of speech. Dudley called his device the "voice coder" though it quickly became known as, simply, "Voder." It was a hit at the New York and San Francisco World's Fairs of 1939.  
See: http://www.research.att.com/history/36speech.html

1948

National Bureau of Standards develops specifications for a low-cost reliable talking-book machine for the blind. Tape recorder anyone?  
See: http://www.wcblind.org/fyi/trivia.html

1948

In support of the quest to develop more reliable, powerful, flexible, smaller, cheaper, cooler-running and less power-consuming hearing aids, John Bardeen along with his fellow associates William B. Shockley and Walter H. Brattain, all Bell Labs scientists invented the transistor. This famous invention earned Bardeen and his associates the 1956 Nobel Prize for physics. Sony was not convinced that this was the best use for the transistor and acquired a license for the technology, for $25,000, and invented the transistor radio. Needless to say, this marvelous invention became the primary technology responsible for fueling a revolution in the telecommunications industry that continues today.  
See: http://www.teleport.com/~richards/japanno/part05.html  
See: http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~dyue/wiihist/japsayno/japsayno.7.html

1952

For Bell, whose invention of the telephone created the telecommunications revolution, the original goal of easing the isolation of the deaf remained elusive. His insights into separating the speech signal into different frequency components and rendering those components as visible traces were not successfully implemented until Potter, Kopp, and Green designed the spectrogram and Dreyfus-Graf developed the steno-sonograph in the late 1940s. These devices generated interest in the possibility of automatically recognizing speech [speech recognition] because they made the invariant features of speech visible for all to see.  
See: http://mitpress.mit.edu/e-books/Hal/chap7.java/seven8.html

1952

As an off-shoot of Bell's work in the deaf community, the first speech recognizer was developed in 1952 by Davis, Biddulph, and Balashek of Bell Labs. With training, it was reported, the machine achieved 97 percent accuracy on the spoken forms of ten digits.  
See: http://mitpress.mit.edu/e-books/Hal/chap7.java/seven8.html

1960

Pilgrim Imaging started open captioning for the deaf in 1960, for the Captioned Films for the Deaf Program, under the Dept. of Health, Education & Welfare.  
See: http://www.robson.org/gary/writing/jcr-fcc.html

1964

This year was the turning point when Deaf orthodontist Dr. James C. Marsters of Pasadena, California shipped a teletype machine to Deaf scientist Robert Weitchrecht in Redwood City, California and requested a way to attach it to the telephone system so that phone communication could take place. Who would have guessed that in 1998 over 100 million people, in all parts of the world, would be communicating with each other, over the Internet, using basically the same technology. Instead of calling our devices Telecommunications Device for the Deaf (TDDs) or TTYs, we call them Internet chat rooms!  
See: http://www.deafexpo.org/tty_museum-history.htm

1972

The first nationally broadcast open-captioned program was WGBH's The French Chef, with Julia Child, which aired on PBS on August 5, 1972.  
See: http://www.robson.org/gary/writing/jcr-fcc.html

1972

Vinton Cerf developed the host level protocols for the ARPANET. ARPANET was the first large-scale packet network. Cerf, hard-of-hearing since birth, married a lady who was deaf. Cerf communicated with his wife via text messaging. According to Cerf, "I have spent, as you can imagine, a fair chunk of my time trying to persuade people with hearing impairments to make use of electronic mail because I found it so powerful myself." Had it not been for this experience Cerf may not have used text-messaging to the extent that he did and may not have integrated e-mail as part of the functionality of ARPANET, the precursor to Internet.  
See: http://www.charweb.org/webinfo/cerf.html

1975

CCD, "Charge Coupled Device" flatbed scanners, which are ubiquitous today, did not exist back the early 1970s when Ray Kurzweil and his team at Kurzweil Computer Products created the Kurzweil Reading Machine and the first omni-font OCR (Optical Character Recognition) technology. The Kurzweil team created its own scanner using the first CCD integrated chip, a 500 sensor linear array from Fairchild. They did this work in support of the blind.  
See: http://www.kurzweiltech.com/techfirsts/techfirsts.htm

1976

Radio Reading Services begins at Minnesota State Services for the Blind.  
See: http://www.wcblind.org/fyi/trivia.html

1980

Voice indexing used for the first time in talking book Access to National Parks: A Guide for Handicapped Visitors by the Library of Congress. This technology enables the listener of an audiotape to access book section using an index to navigate!  
See: http://www.wcblind.org/fyi/trivia.html 

1984

The first music keyboard, with accoustic sound, was developed by Ray Kurzweil. The inspiration for having done this came, in part from a conversation he had with Stevie Wonder, who had been a user of the Kurzweil Reading Machine for the blind!  
See: http://www.kurzweiltech.com/techfirsts/techfirsts.htm

1988

Retail Point-Of-Sale (POS) devices began to use picture-based keyboards (mostly fast food restaurants). This technology was originally developed in the mid-60's to enable people who were unable to speak to use a keyboard, computer and speech synthesizer to speak. Today, picture-based keyboards are enabling retail establishments to employ individuals who, for one reason or another, were unemployable 10 years ago.

1990

The Americans with Disabilities Act mandated that all telephones, required to be accessible, shall be equipped with a volume control and/or a shelf and outlets to accommodate Telecommunication Devices for the Deaf. This includes a phone jack and a power plug. Cranking up the volume on an "accessible" phone makes it usable for everyone in a noisy environment.

Have you ever used, or seen someone use, an "accessible" public telephone to connect up their laptop and retrieve their e-mail messages? Another benefit of the ADA is the lowering of pay telephones so that wheelchair users can access them. Because of this mandate children are now able to access these same phones. They can even reach and read the phone books! Wouldn't it be great if all public telephones were accessible?  
See: http://www.trace.wisc.edu/docs/adaag_only/adaag.htm#4.1.3(17)(c)

1994

National Federation of the Blind establishes dial-up synthetic-speech talking newspaper, making a daily newspaper available to blind people by 6:30 a.m. on day of issue for the first time. Anyone interested in listening to your favorite newspaper?  
See: http://www.wcblind.org/fyi/trivia.html

Mid-1990's

Many new products come on the scene:  
For people who are paralyzed there were voice-activated phones, lamps and switches. For people who are blind there were talking caller IDs, pagers, alarm clocks, calculators, watches and variable-speed/pitch tape recorders. For people with mobility disabilities there were phones with keypads that have large buttons. For people who are hard-of-hearing there were phones with volume control. 

1996

Productivity Works develops, pwWebSpeak, a browser which translates information content from Web pages into speech.This great new technology can provide web access to anyone in eyes busy-environments [like driving a car though I don't recommend this particular use!].  
See: http://www.prodworks.com/

1997

NCR Corporation develops the world's first Audio ATM designed to provide access to banking for blind and partially sighted people. According to Rick Makos, Vice President of NCR Canada's Financial Solutions Group.. "Technology is the great equalizer. The Audio ABM has the potential to allow more than 50 million people around the world who are visually-impaired, as well as 1.4 billion people who can neither read nor write, have comfortable access to self services - when and where they need it.  
See: http://www3.ncr.com/press_release/pr111297b.html  
See: http://www3.ncr.com/press_release/pr082698.html

1998

Nokia releases LPS-1 Loopset. Hearing aid users have new found mobile freedom with this new device. Based on induction technology, the Loopset allows hearing aid users to talk on digital mobile phones. It has a built-in microphone for hands-free operation, and is compatible with Nokia 5100 series and Nokia 6100 series mobile phones, which have an automatic answer function that works with the Nokia Loopset. By the way, people who are not hard-of-hearing or deaf can use this loopset for hands-free ooperation of their cellular telephone. One extra hand on the wheel means added safety for both the driver and those around them!  
See: http://www.shopnokia.com/ Click on "Buy Accessories."

1998

Productivity Works launches another voice-based browsing product, which utilize the telephone. The firm's pwTelephone is geared not only to the visually impaired, but also to people without access to Internet-ready PCs. The software may also prove useful to firms that want to provide information, such as schedules or price lists, both by phone and over the Web and from a single source.  
See: http://www.prodworks.com/

1999

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) releases their Web Content Accessibility Guidelines specification. Using this specification web content developers can develop web pages that not only meet their sales, marketing and information objectives but web pages which:

  • Can be accessed by a standard telephone [no computer]. Anyone could use a pay phone to access, navigate, and retrieve information from web pages.
  • Are less costly to translate into foreign languages. Developing for access by people with cognitive disabilities stresses the simplification of words, and the elimination of extraneous words, from web pages. This can benefit all web users.
  • Can be accessed by lower-power PCs and from within narrower bandwidth information infrastructures. These specifications demonstrate how to develop graphical web pages that have the ability to present their full message with the browser's graphics display turned off. This programming technique enables a company to free up bandwidth at critical times without impacting their Intranet sites.  
    See: http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/WAI-WEBCONTENT-19990505