The course of Neil Scott's career changed more than two decades ago when he met a 9-year-old girl named Jackie. The child had cerebral palsy and could not talk or use her arms. She could, however, control her knees, so Scott, the dean of an engineering school in New Zealand, helped jimmy together a computer and a device that allowed her to produce Morse code messages by knocking her knees against a sensor. When he returned to visit a few weeks later, Jackie slowly typed out a message: “SCOTT IS OK.”
The experience inspired Scott to make such endeavors his life’s work. At Stanford, he is the leader and chief engineer of the Archimedes Project, named for the ancient Greek mathematician and scientist and based at the Center for the Study of Language and Information. A central goal of the project is to provide “total access” to computers and computer-controlled appliances for people with disabilities and the elderly—and perhaps someday for anyone.
To do this, Archimedes Project researchers design two types of devices: one that helps the individual communicate, and one that helps the computer communicate. For individuals, they develop “personal accessors,” tailor-made and often portable personal computers that vary according to the needs of the user. For example, a quadriplegic might wear a headset and issue instructions by speaking, moving his head or blinking—or all of the above.
In the Archimedes Project lab, where several computers are set up to power household appliances, Scott demonstrates how a personal accessor is more flexible than currently available mass-market technology. Rather than issue a memorized command to a voice recognition system, he can look over at an appliance and deliver plain-English instructions such as, “Turn off that damn fan.” And the whirring stops.
Personal accessors link to total access ports (TAPs), which in turn connect to standard computers or computer-controlled appliances. A TAP sends input to a computer in much the same manner as an ordinary keyboard or mouse. To date, Scott’s team has developed TAPs for PCs, Macintoshes, Sun workstations and SGI machines.
Using a system of personal accessors and TAPs, Scott says, is simpler and cheaper than modifying computers themselves. And because personal accessors can theoretically be developed for anyone and TAPs for any computer-controlled thing, the system carries the promise of universal access. Scott envisions people using it to operate everything from microwaves and TVs to lights and gas pumps.
J.B. Galan, ’95, a quadriplegic who worked on the project as an undergraduate and for three years after graduation, says, “There are other systems for doing similar things, but this is really the most elegant. Having one system that would be able to access all of those things seamlessly would be really a good deal.”
For more: The Archimedes Project
