Stricken with polio when she was 12, she now makes use of a variety of devices, starting with her sleek, lightweight Quickie Model P200 motorized wheelchair that turns on a dime. The startup has been on a buying binge. Last month, it bought Arkentone, a Moffett Field company started in 1989 by Silicon Valley software entrepreneur Jim Fruchterman to bring the benefits of optical character recognition technology to blind people. The company's so-called Open Book, which uses a computer's sound card to read aloud any scanned material from books to bills, has more than 25,000 users in 60 countries and is one of the leading products for the visually impaired. . In April, Chandler's San Diego County company bought two other companies that assist blind people in computer jobs.
Many entrepreneurs get into the assistive technology business literally by accident.
For example, Ted Henter, who founded one of the companies just purchased by Freedom Scientific, was one of the world's top 10 motorcycle racers in 1978 when a car accident left him blind. Joyce in 1987 and developed a program that reads the content of a computer screen through specialized software and simulated speech synthesizers. Van Phillips, who lost a foot in a waterskiing accident, started Flex-Foot in Orange County in 1984. The company produces 10 models of superstrong, flexible carbon fiber and titanium lower-limb prosthetic devices that provide surprisingly natural heel motion and gait. Then there is Vernon Cox, quadriplegic as a result of childhood polio, who was searching a decade ago for a speech recognition system to replace the mouth stick he used to tap each computer key.