Who Will Write The History of Accessible Technology?

I’d like to see an extension of the Poynter Timeline documenting the parallel development of computer-based information accessibility. Here are several of my milestones:

1976: The first time I heard about CCTV reading systems for visually impaired people. It wasn’t a doctor, an educator, or a rehab counselor who told me about it, but a friend’s landlord, a bureaucrat who purchased them on behalf of the state government.

1977: A rehab doctor at OSU told me the state might buy a CCTV for a writer like Ernest Hemingway if he were going blind, but it would never buy one for the likes of me.

1979: The first time I saw (and heard) a Kurzweil reading machine in action. It was as big as a refrigerator, and it had its own priestess who wouldn’t allow blind students to touch it.

1984: I used a talking computer for the first time. I finally acquired a CCTV, and it still works 25 years later!

2009: After working for 30 years with generations of speech synthesizers that cost thousands of dollars, I installed the Odiogo “Listen” plugin on this blog for free.

Poynter Online – New Media Timeline (1969-2008):

Our timeline looks at the history of new media and online journalism from 1969 to 2008.

We are presenting it in two parts, with parallel sections on “Technology/Services/Social” and “The Media.”

David Shedden, Library Director of the Poynter Institute’s Eugene Patterson Library, began compiling this timeline and bibliography in 1995.

We hope the timeline serves as a useful reference tool for journalists, students, and researchers.

We also hope it helps preserve the history of new media and online journalism, a history that isn’t very new after all.