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Being blind has not stopped Hesham Kamel
from participating in the cyberworld. He
has also made it possible for other blind
people to draw images. Blinded seventeen
years ago by the errant hand of a surgeon,
Hesham Kamel has nonetheless excelled
in a field that relies heavily on the ability
to produce complex charts and graphs. A
PhD student at UC Berkeley's Department
of Electrical Engineering and Computer
Sciences, Hesham found his research efforts
were often hindered by his reliance on a
sighted person who could assist with the
production of graphical elements. About four years ago, after being forced
to miss a deadline when his sighted
assistant was on vacation, he decided to
take matters into his own hands. Hesham
designed a unique computer-drawing
program called Integrated Communication
2 Draw, or IC2D, that allows visually-impaired users to create and `see' images on
the computer screen.
Although the computing industry
has made some big strides in developing
software to assist the sight-impaired, there
is still a lack of products on the market,
particularly when it comes to computer-assisted drawing. There is also a common
misconception that blind people simply
cannot handle visual tasks. Such erroneous
beliefs provided another major motivation
for Hesham's efforts. He found that people
would ask him why blind people would
even need to draw something that they
could not see. "There are many people out
there who can't understand that blind
people have imagination, just as sighted
people do," he asserts.
In addition, Hesham was frustrated by
the short-sightedness of the computer
industry. Although the trend in technology
is generally towards smaller, faster and
cheaper products, Hesham found quite the
reverse to be true when it came to products
for the sightless. "The devices we need to use
with computers - such as a 50-pound Braille
printer - are large, expensive or both," he
notes. Thus, one of his primary goals in
devising the IC2D software was that it be
both portable and compatible with any
computer screen reader for the blind. "More
than anything, I want to change the way
people think when they develop technology
for the visually-impaired," he explains.
IC2D uses a familiar schematic - the
common telephone keypad - in order to
create a system that is user-friendly. The
computer screen is divided into a three-by-three grid numbered like a telephone
keypad. As the user moves the cursor
between each square, audio feedback alerts
them to the location point. Each of the nine
cells on the grid can be repeatedly divided
to form a total of 729 cells, meaning that
the user can create images that are as
complex, or as basic, as they like.
Since pull-down menus are obviously
impractical for blind users, the commands,
shapes, colors and lines are all controlled
by way of the keypad arrangement.
According to Hesham, the use of the
keypad as a basis for the interface speeds
navigation and thus creates a superior
experience for the user. "To help users see
what I draw, I developed a technique to give
the components of the picture a meaningful
label." For example, an audio marker for a
rear car wheel may also include subsequent
sound signifiers for the wheels hubcap and
black rubber threads.
Obviously, vision-impaired people
have no way to `find' their way back to a
previously selected point on a computer
screen. By establishing locators that can be
referenced by sound feedback, users can
bypass this fundamental obstacle. Moreover,
hearing the labels referenced by the grid
helps them to conceptualize the entire image.
Recently, Hesham has been busy taking
his invention round the conference circuit
in both America and Europe. With IC2D,
users would be able to create elaborate
drawings for work and pleasure. |
