How Tech for the Disabled Is Going Mainstream

Designs conceived for the handicapped, such as voice commands for PCs, often lead to products for the masses

By Reena Jana

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Apple (AAPL) is widely celebrated for making devices as easy to use as they are elegantly designed. What customers probably don't know is that some of these features aren't exactly new—they evolved from software Apple created to help disabled people use PCs. Among them: the new iPhone's voice control option, which allows users to speak to their handsets to prompt an action, such as calling Mom, or to get a spoken answer to such questions as "What song is playing?"

And "mainstreaming" tools for the disabled is spreading. Software developer Nuance Communications (NUAN), for instance, invented voice command technology to help people who are unable to type on a computer. Today, the company's algorithms are used in products ranging from Amazon.com's (AMZN) latest Kindle e-reader to cars from Ford Motor (F). Meantime, Mattel (MAT) is incorporating technology, initially intended to help paraplegics, into a soon-to-be-released game controlled by players' brainwaves.

Other companies should consider following these trailblazers, say innovation consultants. "Companies could look at designing for accessibility as a sales opportunity. Most features that are accessible for the disabled have great value to everybody," says Donald A. Norman, a former Apple vice-president for advanced technology who heads a joint business and engineering program at Northwestern University.

Benefits for the Blind

Mainstreaming has a long history. Thomas Edison saw his invention of the phonograph as a way to open the printed world to the blind by recording book readings. More recently, predictive-text software, the algorithms that finish words people type in search engines or e-mail, had its roots in technology geared to the disabled, according to patents filed for related programs.

Apple's VoiceOver feature can be traced back to the late 1980s, says Norman, when the computer maker decided to try to embed "universal access" in its Macintosh PC line. The term is used in engineering and design circles to describe goods, from scissors to cell phones, made in such a way that people of any age or physical ability can use them. VoiceOver became a standard feature of Apple computers in 2006. When it's activated, the Mac reads everything highlighted by the cursor, from text on a Web page to numbers in a database, in a natural-sounding voice.

While VoiceOver helped broaden Apple's reach to the blind, it also became a mini-engine for innovation within the company. "When we created the VoiceOver idea and concept for the Mac, we also realized we could take advantage of it by mainstreaming it," says Greg Joswiak, Apple's vice-president for iPod and iPhone marketing.

Now the technology has made its way into the iPod Shuffle. Unlike its larger brethren, the Shuffle is too small to have a screen to display information about its music content. The latest model, introduced last March, gets around this shortcoming with software that can say what song is playing. Sales were 51% higher in the new Shuffle's first week than they were for the previous model's debut, says Barclays Capital (BCS) analyst Benjamin Reitzes. The low $79�price undoubtedly was part of the reason. But many users raved online about the voice interface, indicating that the feature helped popularize the music player, too.

Apple added a reverse version of Voice�Over to its third-generation iPhone, released in June, that enables users to tell the phone to perform functions rather than type commands.

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