Abstract
My presentation will be made via a voice synthesiser and any overhead projection will be projected directly from a computer onto a screen.
In my dreams, whilst this was going on I could instruct a robotic arm, via voice recognition, to feed me a glass of whiskey! I suggest that the outcome would be a clearer one for the audience to understand and far less stressful for me to present.
Perhaps my argument on how technology can empower people with disabilities, of which there are 6.8 million in the UK, would be made stronger if I were to show you a short video of three example where this has been achieved.
You will have noticed the technology is not very sophisticated but that takes money and awareness by the IT industry, i.e. yourselves. I am not suggesting there is a tremendous market for feeding robots right now but with the percentage of the population of people with disabilities increasing by virtue of being kept alive and a general trend for people to live much longer such equipment will represent a large market. Even more, the technology required to turn that robot into an intelligent and efficient aid is already around and has been for years but has not been applied to this particular application.
I would therefore suggest to you that the financial rewards required by your companies are them for the taking and the liberating effect for people with disabilities could have a tremendous impression upon their quality of life and the people who care for them.
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© 1996 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Busby, G. (1996). Technology for the disabled and why it matters to you. In: Terashima, N., Altman, E. (eds) Advanced IT Tools. IFIP — The International Federation for Information Processing. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-34979-4_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-34979-4_9
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
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