Assisting Disabled Workers

echnological advances have the power to help transform the careers of the 122,000 federal workers with disabilities. Agencies as diverse as the Coast Guard, the Internal Revenue Service and the Social Security Administration are using assistive technology to help empower these employees.

But what exactly is assistive technology?

Its purpose is the same as any civil servant's desktop computer-to increase productivity and access to information. But for those with disabilities, a desktop computer is often not enough. Assistive technologies are those devices that can render standard computers useful.

Most workers can go and look something up in a book if they need to, but a person with disabilities may not be able to, says Doug Wakefield, an accessibility and information specialist with the Access Board, the federal agency responsible for creating the Section 508 standards. These standards seek to ensure that computer hardware and software developers create their products in ways that keep them compatible with the plethora of assistive technology devices on the market.

"If a blind person does not have access to a computer [equipped with adaptive devices], they are dead in the water," Wakefield says. "There isn't an alternative."

People with disabilities can have trouble entering or retrieving electronic information. "As a result, you have to create a mechanical alternative" to conventional options, says Wakefield.

And the alternatives are numerous. In a recent demonstration on Capitol Hill, Unisys Corp. showcased the products it provides for federal workers with hearing, mobility and visual impairments at the Coast Guard, the IRS and SSA.

Joy Relton, a systems analyst for Unisys, demonstrated a portable Braille reader that functions as a note-taking device as well as a calculator, a phone book and even a calendar. "The Braille'N'Speak has seven keys on it and is a very popular item. People use it in meetings. You can carry it easily. It takes standardized shorthand," she says.

Moving to a desktop computer equipped with screen-reading software and a Braille keyboard, Relton navigates through the Windows operating system and composes documents, her fingers alternating between the shifting white pegs that she uses to read information on the screen and typing on a standard keyboard for data entry.

Many workers with disabilities consider access to computers more important than travel aids-like guide dogs and canes-and even Braille, says Wakefield.

Unisys also displayed oversized keyboards-with letter pads large enough for a person to type with toes or a straw-and a computer equipped with voice-recognition technology.

Digital Leather

Minds@Work LLC, an Irvine, Calif., data-storage company, recently introduced the Digital Wallet, a portable 6-gigabyte hard drive that enables executives to take their data with them.

Minds@Work has included software that encrypts all data stored in the Digital Wallet. Only a user with the appropriate passwords would be able to extract data from the unit's hard drive.

The Digital Wallet also would be useful to those who take digital photographs, says Steve Recek, executive vice president at Minds@Work, by allowing photographers to take more shots when the camera's flash media storage is full. The unit comes with a PCMCIA slot for transferring data from the camera's memory card to the Digital Wallet.

"The Digital Wallet has full functionality without being hooked up to a PC," Recek says. "It's a microcomputer with limited function." It is compatible with computers running operating systems from Apple Computer Inc. and Microsoft Corp., but the Digital Wallet is not designed for use with handheld computers.

"The unit is very durable and has been drop tested at 48 inches," Recek says. But if the wallet is damaged, Minds@Work offers data-recovery services for the unit.

Pilots Helping Pilots

When Navy pilots land on an aircraft carrier, a landing signal officer (LSO) grades their performance by evaluating four elements of the approach and landing.

But the process of recording the grades and entering them into a database was tedious and prone to errors, and it required multiple steps. "Previously there was the caller and a note taker with pad and paper," says John Inkley, manager of federal sales at Palm Inc. "Then there was the data entry step at the end."

But two Navy lieutenants decided their Palms could do the job faster and easier. Lt. Ken Schneider and Lt. Mike LaPaglia wrote a basic form-based program that they installed on Palm devices. The program synchronizes their information with the original Microsoft Access database in which the grading data was stored.

Now, LSOs on the USS Constellation and the USS Abraham Lincoln log their grades on the Palm and use the device's infrared port to transmit the data directly to the Access database. The database's fields are now automatically updated, eliminating the need for a note taker and further data entry.