Vol. 5, No. 4 July/August 1997	Previous Issues Subscribe to AT Messenger Download PDF Viewer
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Accessibility Champion Recognized for Contributions

by Gwen Carleton

MADISON, Wis.--Gregg Vanderheiden was bemused in April when, upon arriving late for the awards segment of the Sixth International World Wide Web Conference in Santa Clara, California, friends hustled him up to a seat in the front row.

Vanderheiden, an engineering professor at the University of Wisconsin, didn't know what to make of it. As director of the Trace Research and Development Center, he had received awards in the past, but this one, the third annual Yuri Rubinsky Memorial Web Award, was different.

"Never in a million years did I think I would get it," Vanderheiden said this week. "The last two people who got it were Vinton Cerf, who developed the Internet, and Doug Englebart," inventor of the mouse and the modern computer interface.

Even so, Vanderheiden has joined that elite group of computer innovators receiving the Rubinsky award-a statue embedded in a hefty chunk of granite and a $10,000 check-for his work on computer access for people with disabilities. "I was stunned," he said.

Colleagues will tell you that such modesty is typical of the man who, more than any other innovator, has made computers accessible to millions of people with disabilities. Yet, Vanderheiden is no stranger to accolades. Back in the Trace Center's crowded offices at the UW's Waisman Center, a file stuffed with kudos from executives at Microsoft, International Business Machines, Apple Computer, Sun Microsystems, Digital Equipment Corporation and other computer industry giants attests to the influence of his work.

"The Trace Center is among the most important forces in this area," Microsoft's Gregory Lowney wrote. "And this sentiment is echoed by other organizations and vendors in this field."

Apple's Alan Brightman, who has worked with Vanderheiden for more than a decade, attested to both the professor's impact and his refreshing lack of self-importance in an industry rife with hubris. "Gregg has made a difference here that's more enduring than he'll ever know," Brightman said.

Vanderheiden, a cheerful, restless, 46-year-old academic, founded Trace in the early 1970s to help a Madison boy with severe motor impairments caused by cerebral palsy. Then a UW undergraduate, he used his own savings, borrowed space and scavenged parts to create a device called "Auto-Com" (for automonitoring communication board). Using magnetic sensors and a primitive computer, Auto-Com allowed the boy to communicate independently for the first time. The device was patented in 1974, and the first major grants to Trace's student researchers soon followed.

A decade later, the center's influence expanded when Vice President Dan Quayle asked Vanderheiden to address a group of federal officials from the executive and legislative branches, researchers, and industry representatives at a special meeting to discuss accessibility issues. Asked to respond to complaints that the emerging personal computer industry was excluding people with disabilities, Vanderheiden explained that computer companies not only could, but should, do more. Some computer company executives in attendance learned for the first time that people with disabilities were among the users of their products.

Vanderheiden recalled: "The response was-and this was typical: 'People with disabilities use our computers?' Then the next thing was: 'There's something we can really do?'"

Nevertheless, persuading fiercely competitive companies to devote space in their operating systems and applications for Trace's code proved difficult.

Apple led the way. By 1987 the company's Macintosh operating system, hardware and mass-marketed applications were offering features to accommodate users with motor problems, deafness, low vision, missing limbs and other limitations.

Today, access features pioneered by the Trace Center have been incorporated in nearly all the major operating systems, including Apple's MacOS, the UNIX X Window System, IBM's OS/2 and Microsoft's Windows 95 and Windows NT.

Yet, those features continue to surprise the same executives who helped realize them. Vanderheiden recalled a computer company executive who was thrilled to discover a function on his PC that allowed him to keep working after he shattered an elbow. Brightman said he had witnessed similar epiphanies at Apple when employees found themselves limited by repetitive stress injuries or other disabling health problems.

"People don't expect to become disabled," Brightman said. "When it happens, the last thing they expect is their computer will accommodate their needs."

The Trace Center now employs 14 full-time and 20 part-time staff members and students, with backgrounds ranging from computer science to occupational therapy. Their mission is to ensure that new high-tech products and cyberspace itself are accessible to everyone, including the more that 30 million people in the United States alone who suffer disabilities or functional limitations.

Since a major cause of such problems is simple aging, Vanderheiden argues, the number of those in need of the center's products is steadily increasing as Baby Boomers hit middle age. Including Trace features in future technologies not only is a moral imperative, he insists, but makes good economic sense.

As for the non-impaired-whom Vanderheiden classifies as the "temporarily able bodied"-the same technology that benefits disabled users can allow a person with normal hearing to work in a noisy room or someone with good eyesight to access his computer while driving-examples of worker flexibility already in growing demand.

Soon after accepting the Rubinsky award, Vanderheiden made that point to his colleagues at the conference. "The message you think I'm going to deliver is that access is important and it's beginning to be required by law," he said. "That's all true, but it's not what I'm going to talk about."

Instead, he described how closely their own primary research areas were related to developments in disability access. He reminded them that the Jacuzzi, the vibrating pager, the cassette tape and closed-captioned television were all invented for people with disabilities. Then he showed charts illustrating how, in the next few decades, thousands of Baby Boomers like themselves would, in all likelihood, find their vision, hearing and motor skills slipping away.

"I'm currently still among those who don't have a disability," he told his colleagues. "But lately I've noticed my eyes aren't working like they used to, it takes longer to focus, and my hand has been really bothering me.

"How are you feeling?"'