There's No Office Like Home

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Fay does have some limited arm and hand motion. He types with his thumbs and can move his wrists, but he can't grip things with his fingers, so he puts his keyboard squarely on his chest and uses a trackball instead of a mouse. He was a beta tester for an early version of some voice-activated dictation software, but he didn't make much use of it, because It. Made. You. Talk. Like. This. However, in December he bought himself a new dictation package as a Christmas present--NaturallySpeaking, Preferred Edition, from Dragon Systems--excited by reports of its fluidity and its ability to flip from one application to another. He has rigged up a shaving mirror on a universal joint so that he can look visitors in the eye, an arrangement that he laughingly refers to as "my version of OmniVision."

"I was in a hospital bed for a few years in the early 1980s while the cyst progressed," he explains. "And since I was stuck in one place, I wanted to have everything I use throughout the day within five or six feet of me. I started out with a pair of TV tray tables and rapidly ran out of space. Then I remembered that as a kid we had a lazy Susan in the middle of the dining-room table." He designed his own lazy Susan--a two-tiered device with a diameter of four feet that anchors his home office--"pretty much in my head," he says, and then used "some cheap Apple II CAD/CAM software and sketched what I had in mind." Next, he opened the telephone book and sent out requests for construction proposals to local carpenters. "I went with the person who seemed to best understand what I was trying to achieve." The cost? About $300.

Most, if not all, of Fay's adaptations are made of inexpensive components. RadioShack and Sears, for example, sell the simple BSR X-10 technology that allows people to hook their appliances and environmental controls to a computer and a central remote control. For Fay, this technology means that he can open the sunroom curtains or turn on equipment without asking for help.

Perhaps the most valuable thing in terms of his mobility and communication, however, is a two-line portable headset telephone. "It allows me to have both hands free to answer the phone, and I can conference two lines," says Fay. "The only problem is that the battery keeps running down, so I had to buy two. I use them on alternate days, so I can use one while the other is recharging.

"It's always easier to get manufacturers and policymakers to make things appropriate for and accessible to disabled people if what we're advocating has a mainstream application," he continues. "Curb cuts benefit not only people in wheelchairs but a woman pushing a delivery cart, a man pushing a baby carriage, or kids on bicycles or skateboards. There are 54 million Americans who are disabled in some way, and that's a huge potential market for developers." Some high-tech manufacturers have already realized the possibilities--for instance, marketing voice-activated software to people with repetitive-strain injuries or those who have never learned to type. Some of Fay's simplest fixes, like putting his remote-control unit on a C-hook so he can leave it hanging in full view, would be a boon to anyone who has a habit of losing small electronics on a cluttered desk or among the furniture cushions. Fay is enthusiastic about expanding the use of hands-free voice-input systems to, say, surgeons who need to dictate notes while operating or quality inspectors who handle goods on factory assembly lines. He dreams of all patients in hospitals or nursing homes having Internet access from their beds and babies in cribs learning to activate sensors to control their environments before they learn to speak.

"Fred is constantly pioneering technology for the rest of the disability community," says his friend Judy Brewer, who directs the Web Accessibility Initiative at the International Program Office of the World Wide Web Consortium, in Cambridge, Mass. "He's the incomparable tinkerer. He assumes no barriers in how innovative he can be in designing the technology in his environment. Specialized adaptive technology that makes it possible for disabled people to participate in all spheres of life is important, but we have to look at technology as a whole. Mainstream technology design that's based on an idealized norm of an able-bodied person doesn't capture the entire user market. With the technology sector of our economy so competitive, universal design is in everyone's interest."

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