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MARCH 16, 2004
By Alex Salkever Finally, Apple Speaks to the Blind It's building innovative screen-reading technology into OS X. That's essential for the visually impaired -- and a smart business move With its brash marketing campaigns and big brand image, few would accuse Apple Computer (AAPL ) of being a silent company. But to the millions of Americans who are legally blind or seriously visually impaired Apple has seemed silent and uncaring because it has no screen-reader program of its own. And software maker ALVA Access Group decided in summer, 2003, to stop making the last such Mac-compatible program on the market. This leaves visually impaired Mac users without software that allows them to navigate a computer desktop and Web pages by vocalizing complex menu trees, cursor locations, and other key visual cues taken for granted by sighted users. Apple recognized that ALVA's decision elevated the situation to crisis proportions and scrambled to tackle the problem. This week at the 19th annual Technology & Persons with Disabilities Conference in Los Angeles -- the biggest assistive-technology confab in the country -- Jobs & Co. introduced a nifty tool to help the blind use Macs again. Apple calls this new technology "Spoken Interface." The basic concept is to vocalize and make audible everything that visually happens on a desktop, just like screen-reading software. UNEQUAL ACCESS. That's big news for a couple of reasons. With no screen reader available on Macs, any schools wishing to deploy them faced a potential lawsuit on grounds that the blind would be denied equal access. Even if no one sues, the prospect of advocacy groups for the visually impaired blaming Apple for shunting blind kids onto Windows machines and further isolating them from their sighted classroom peers presented a looming PR nightmare. Lack of a screen reader could also preclude Apple from winning government contracts. Government info-tech departments by law must ensure that all their technology is accessible to the maximum degree possible. If Apple lacked a screen reader, Windows would be the winner by default. I suggested in a November, 2003, column that Apple create a screen reader for Macs and offer it to the open-source community (see BW Online, 11/12/03, "A Failing for Apple in the Classroom"). After all, that's just what Apple did with its Safari Web browser, and the result filled a gaping hole in software offerings for the Mac. Apple Senior Product Manager Chris Bourden told me the company was aware of the potential problems and was going to work on something to address them. BARGAIN BUY. Apparently he meant it. And even better, unlike traditional screen readers, Apple's technology will be built right into the next version of the OS X operating system. That will be a big help. For starters, the price is sweet. Spoken Interface won't cost anything extra because it'll be part of the core OS. Screen readers for Windows can run up to $1,000, on top of the cost of the computer itself. The majority of visually impaired Americans are unemployed (businesses haven't a great job of adapting the workplace to their needs). So the cost of a computer alone can be a heavy burden. Add on screen-reader software, and the price soars out of reach. Worse, state and federal disabilities benefits don't cover the purchase of these programs. That makes owning a Mac a bargain for the visually disabled. True, most Apple computers remain more expensive than comparable Windows boxes on a pure price basis. But subtract the cost of typical Windows screen-reader software, and Apple has effectively slashed the cost of computing for blind and visually impaired by $500 or more. That's not chump change.
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