Martin Banks, Personal Computer World 06/87 - checked

Banks' Statement

June 1987

Yates is one of the best. He's only young, its true, but he is already experienced. He is also extremely cuddly in a roguish sort of way. Perhaps its something to do with the way in he lies under the lunch table, rubbing his head against my shin.

He's certainly very good natured. After all, he didn't seem to mind a bit when I first sat down at the table. Yates, you see, was already under it and I managed to walk over just about all of him. But did he complain? Not a bit of it: he just poked his head up beside me on the chair and gave my hand a monumental licking.

You guessed: Yates is a dog. To be more specific, he is Julia Scholfield's Guide Dog, and it was she that had invited me to lunch. Julia will already be known to many PCW readers over the years for her work in developing products for the disabled is well known.

It is also a tough business to be in which, indirectly, was the reason I went to see her. There are several idealistic bits of me that feel that the great, euphemistic `we' should be doing much more for the disabled than we are. These bits also suggest to me that the intro to the `6 million Dollar Man' is getting ever more true. We do have the technology, and it does sadden me at times to see the use to which it is, and isn't, being put.

Yet, and it is a biggish `yet', there is actually some danger in thinking this way, for it can lead to problems and pitfalls, especially for the thinker. The greatest danger is that people get involved in `helping' the disabled for the wrong motives. Because, as Julia put it, "all do-gooding must be good".

Wrong.

It is far too easy to let one's initial bouts of slushy sentimentality turn into disillusionment and self-righteousness, just because these disabled people are so ungrateful as to not use the wonderful product, idea or gizmo which we have kindly invented for them.

I wonder just how many bent and bruised egos have wandered off, never again to attempt to make a product for the disabled. Julia, I suspect, knows a goodly number of them.

What is sad is that such people can be put off so easily, for there is much than needs to be done and can be done to help the disabled. It would be arrogant of me to set out here what products or services I feel we could provide for them, there are so many ideas that I certainly don't have the intellect to conceive.

What is important is that these products, whether from industrial operations or from individual inventors, actually get developed. I have whittered on before in these pages about a fundamental view which I hold dear: I don't think we are making the best use of computers and the uses we do have are far too oriented towards the immediate gratification of the Great God Mammon (blessings and peace be upon his [its bound to be a man] tax havens).

I sometimes go weak at the knees with idealism, thinking that all we have to do is apply the technology we have and the lives of our disabled will come right. The short answer is that this is true. The technology does exist, or if it doesn't it damn well soon will. Even one of the toughest problems, creating a speech system that is quick and easy to use, intelligible, and small enough to fit into a pocket, is certainly solvable, even if not this week. It is also desperately needed. Many sober, intelligent speech-impaired people are assumed to be hopeless drunks because of their difficulty.

The long answer, however, is that it is not true, and for a number of reasons. One of the main problems, as already stated, is the attitudes of the abled. Another is a subsidiary effect, through which even the most devout Mammon worshippers forget their fundamental religious training.

It is very easy for the abled to fall into the trap of `knowing best'. But we don't and can't conceive of it. Walking around with your eyes closed for a while is not the same thing as being blind, yet the abled assume it is and make judgements accordingly. Do-gooding social awareness can get very battered if a disabled recipient of a new gizmo says `nice try but no thanks'. "Damn it", we think, "they should be grateful for our efforts, how do they know it is wrong?"

They know, of course, because fate (or whatever you believe in) has made them experts. "If you're training to be an artist," Julia said, "you expect to have to learn, to be told by an expert when you are going wrong." Us abled people just ain't very good at being told that, when it comes to developing ideas for the disabled, our social conscience is miss-guiding us.

And that is where the fundamental teachings of Mammon actually have a part to play, a part that social conscience makes us disregard. Yes, there is much that we can do for the disabled and many products to make. But there is nothing fundamentally immoral in making a bit of money from them, making them a commercially viable proposition.

"It is not a business to be emotional about," Julia said, though it is a hard fact for the abled to readily accept. "It has to be treated in a cold, hard, commercial way." But, given acceptance of that simple and brutal rule, there is then much product development which can be tackled.

However, if you go into it you never expect to end up rich. I suppose it is fortunate for humanity in general that making products for the disabled is not a red-hot commercial marketplace.

Yet some sound, commercially-oriented thinking, coupled to some occasionally brutal advice from the experts, can create new products and services that are both right for the disabled, and economically sensible. It is here that the personal computer has been, and will continue to be, such valuable raw material. It is people like you, who understand the beasts, who are best placed to make that raw material into useful tools. With a bit of sense, and hardly any sentimentality, you can even make money at it.

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