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IMAGINE what it would be like to have to ask for help every time you
wanted to open the curtains or answer the phone. But people whose disabilities
affect them in this way can now buy many systems with which to control their
environment. The best systems can open the curtains, turn on the television,
switch on the lamp, change the angle of the bed, answer the phone and send
basic messages to other people. The control systems can be operated by switches
or by sucking or blowing, whichever proves most convenient for a particular
disabled individual. The catch is that the systems often cost as much as
Pounds sterling 2500.

We do not lack for technology that could transform the lives of many
disabled people. The trouble is, as Phil Wardale, who runs the Greenwich
Disability Group, points out, being disabled is horribly expensive. Money
can buy mobility, access and a better life. But money is what most disabled
people are chronically short of.

In Britain, the government set up the Independent Living Fund in 1987,
to help severely disabled people to live at home. It recently ran out of
money and had to be topped up by a one- off special payment of Pounds sterling
8 million. No one knows, of course, how many applications for grants were
rejected during the time the fund was under severe pressure not to ‘go broke’.
Yet some of the facilities the fund provides are basic.

A range of devices, for instance, can now give disabled people access
to information. In its shop in Great Portland Street, London, the Royal
National Institute for the Blind (RNIB) sells a wide variety of goods and
gadgets for the blind and visually handicapped. There is everything from
the traditional white cane to Scrabble for the Blind and Braille computers
in stock.

Brian Sibley is a blind entrepreneur. He used to work as a telephonist
but when he was made redundant he decided to try his hand at designing board
games. His company now sells a number of them, including one based on American
football. Sibley chuckled as he demonstrated how his talking calculator
worked. I watched him discuss a possible order with Hamleys, the large London
toyshop. Sibley explained how fascinated businessmen were by the calculator
barking out its figures. It helped him when he was negotiating. First, it
enabled him to keep track of the discounts they wanted. But perhaps more
importantly, potential buyers of his wares were made very curious by his
talking calculator. ‘And that gives me the edge,’ Sibley grinned.

As a businessman, Sibley can afford the calculator. But many disabled
people are very poor. Worse, because the market for most devices the disabled
need is very small, most remain extremely expensive.

For instance, a computer system that blows up type used on word processors
to truly enormous size costs at least Pounds sterling 6000. The Kurzweil
Reader, an ingenious machine that gives blind people instant access to material
that the rest of us read ‘normally’, costs Pounds sterling 11 700 plus VAT.
It looks like a photocopier, but when you insert a piece of text the machine
scans it and then reads it out loud. There are cheaper makes available but
none is less than Pounds sterling 4500 plus VAT.

Using such technologies, blind people can now have access to newspapers
overnight. Under a scheme recently launched by the RNIB, visually handicapped
people can now have The Guardian loaded into their home computer overnight.
A speech synthesiser announces what stories are in the paper. Stories of
interest can then either be printed out in Braille or read out through the
synthesiser. The blind no longer have to rely on friends reading them the
paper, or catching up a week late through a cassette. But the technology
is not cheap, and were it not for subsidies, each subscriber to the scheme
would have to pay Pounds sterling 1500. Yet the government’s recent review
of disability grants did nothing to offer help with technology. The only
department that is relatively generous is the Department of Employment.
If a firm can prove that a visually handicapped employee can keep a job
with some technological aid such as a big screen, it will usually provide
a grant to firms. But this affects only a tiny proportion of disabled people.
The disability allowance for students is only Pounds sterling 765. Next
year it goes up to Pounds sterling 1000, but this is still ‘quite inadequate
for students’, says Fran Halloran of the RNIB.

To make matters worse, there is a great deal of regional variation in
the provision of technological aids in Britain. In theory, community occupational
therapists employed by local authorities assess the needs of disabled people
in their area. But different local authorities and health boards have different
guidelines and standards.

The Disabled Living Foundation in Harrow Road, London, is a good place
to grasp how complex the situation is. The Foundation is a strange mixture
of a pressure group, an information centre and a show room. I talked to
one of its information officers, Nicola Goodbody, in a landscape of wheelchairs,
high technology beds and hoists to place people on toilets.

Few local authorities make it difficult for disabled people to have
specially adapted baths and hoists for toilets, says Goodbody. But things
are different when it comes to what may not seem such an inessential – a
bed. Many disabled people spend long periods of the day in bed. There are
now all kinds of beds available: beds that tilt, move and can be manoeuvred,
beds that make it easy to be hoisted out onto chairs and into the bathroom.
But some local authorities can be surprisingly mean about what they consider
to be an adequate bed,’ says Goodbody. At Harrow, there are also more esoteric
devices on display. For people who cannot speak there is the Possum, which
enables people to spell out what they mean. There are keyboards with anti-tremor
devices, and a rather Heath Robinsonish gadget for turning pages. There
are all sorts of electric wheelchairs, including ones that can mount pavements.
There are even super-speed wheelchairs: one of the less publicised legislative
advances of the mid-Thatcher era was to double the speed limit for wheelchairs.
It is now 8 miles (12.5 kilometres) per hour.

But there is little point in displays of the Porsches of wheelchairs
if most disabled people cannot buy them. A small motorised wheelchair can
set you back by more than Pounds sterling 5000. Few local authorities will
provide even modest electric wheelchairs even though these can make a tremendous
difference to people’s lives.

But all the technology in the world is useless if people do not feel
confident about using it. The Spastics Society now has a unit at Daresbury
Hall in Cheshire that teaches people how to use communications aids, and
one in Essex devoted to train ing people to use environmental controls.
In both centres, people are assessed individually, to find out which devices
will suit them.

Louise Rogers of the Spastics Society claims that for the 50 or so people
who have gone through the scheme so far, the improvement has been dramatic.
‘They’ve found skills they never knew they could tap,’ she says.

The United Nations has designated 1991 the Year of the Disabled – a
decade after the first one. In some ways, there has been progress – at least
disabled people are now more vocal in demanding their rights. But many opportunities
for using technology in making life better for disabled people continue
to be missed. If technology is ever to fulfil its promise, people must be
able to afford the technology and have the chance to master it.

* * *

Toddlers can tackle technology

ANY disabled children are far too passive when they are very young,
says Jeff Banks of the Spastics Society Microtechnology Unit. The society
wants to see a national scheme to encourage children under three years of
age to take advantage of the whole gamut of gadgets now available.

‘We are encouraging disabled children to be passive,’ says Banks. ‘We
are not providing them with sufficient ways of controlling aspects of their
lives.’ Yet some people are reluctant to teach very young children to handle
technology, perhaps because they feel that to do so is to rob them of their
childhood. But Banks argues that it is crucial for disabled children to
learn how to use technology before they go to school.

It can take months for children with cerebral palsy to get the hang
of wearing a helmet that allows them to communicate and respond quickly.
‘If you train spastic children to use the technology that is available before
they go to school, then when they get there they can actually begin to be
educated,’ Banks says. Without such early training, disabled children often
fall behind in school.

Dr David Cohen is the editor of Psychology News.