Acceptance Remarks For American Foundation for the Blind Migel Award
The American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) presented its Migel 2004 Lay/Volunteer Award on March 6, 2004 to Ray Kurzweil for his extensive work in the field of blindness, optical character recognition, and the Reading Machine for the blind.
Published on KurzweilAI.net March 7, 2004.
I’m honored to receive this prestigious award, and I thank
you for recognizing me in this way.
Sue Spungin, who just spoke, mentioned having been impressed by
the exhibits on Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison at the National
Inventor Hall of Fame. It’s interesting to note that both men
were motivated by the idea of creating disabilities technology.
Bell was trying to develop a sensory aid for the deaf, and ended
up inventing the telephone. Edison’s invention of the phonograph
player was intended as a “talking book” for the blind.
It is often the case that what starts as an accessibility technology
for the disabled ends up having paradigm-shifting mainstream applications.
I’d like to share an observation that has motivated my career
in disabilities technology. It is simply this: there is an essential
difference between the concepts of “disability” and “handicap.”
The word disability is straightforward: it refers to the lack of
an ability. All of us lack abilities. None of us is good at everything.
A handicap, on the other hand, refers to a fundamental barrier in
gaining equal access to opportunities in key facets of life such
as education and employment. A disability such as blindness does
not necessarily need to result in a handicap. This, I believe, sums
up the vital goal of work in the disabilities field.
What is required to achieve this? Technology has an important
role to play. Technology such as reading machines can provide needed
information in a compensatory format using another sense. I’m
proud to have played a role in this arena, and my 30 years of work
in reading machines for the blind has been the most gratifying endeavor
in my career.
When I was developing the Kurzweil Reading Machine in the 1970s,
I worked closely with a talented group of blind scientists and engineers
from the National Federation of the Blind, and the project benefited
enormously from this unique collaboration. Other talented people
have contributed their skills over the years to bring this technology
to where it is today. In particular, I would like to recognize Stephen
Baum, who heads up the development team at Kurzweil Educational
Systems for his decades of devoted and brilliant contributions.
Today, I’m working again with the NFB to develop a pocket-size
reading machine, which will enable a blind person to snap a picture
of a wall sign, the back of a cereal box, an LCD display, a handout
at a meeting, and other examples of real-world print, and instantly
convert it to synthetic speech.
To achieve full equality in society, we also need training, not
all of which is technology-oriented. The fiberglass cane is low
tech, but with modern mobility skills effectively eliminates a travel
handicap. Perhaps the most important requirement is attitude. First,
on the part of society, the understanding that blind persons can
compete on terms of equality is critical. Perhaps a blind person
can’t drive a taxi today, but there are no significant areas
of employment that a blind person is unable to excel at. Even driving
a vehicle is going to be feasible in a number of years. Of course,
we’ll need some new technology for that, something I may want
to get involved in myself in future years. Finally, the attitude
of the blind person herself towards her own abilities is also crucial
to overcome society’s ancient prejudices regarding the abilities
of the blind.
We’ve come a long way in all of these dimensions, and I’m
proud to have played a role in disabilities technology, along with
many other dedicated people.
In a couple of decades, we will have new ways of communicating
directly into our brains noninvasively using blood cell-sized robots
in our bloodstream. These new methods will ultimately provide new
human communication paradigms that go far beyond the visual and
auditory sense. These extensions of the human nervous system will
provide new opportunities for overcoming the communication disabilities
associated with vision and hearing impairment.
However, we need to keep in mind that that new technologies that
provide new opportunities can also present new barriers. Consider
the graphic user interface, which was completely inaccessible when
first introduced. Or the panoply of new mobile electronic devices
that are not sufficiently accessible today. This is a salient challenge
for those of us who create new technology: enable people with disabilities
to share in the promise of new technology while avoiding the creation
of new obstacles.
Thank you once again for this special honor.
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