Today, thanks to a joint effort by consumers and professionals, assistive listening devices are sometimes available in places of worship, in the cinema and other public places. Television is captioned and telephones have amplification. Everyone in this audience knows how hard this work is. But the work must occur. We cannot view technology in its various forms as divorced from human values-the obscure widgits of technical people.
Technology means health, nutrition, education and employment.
Women's Work Katherine D. Seelman, Ph.D., is the Director of the U.S. National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research , a federal agency. Introduction The National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research, which I direct, is a modest, but unique research institute in the United States government, and perhaps in the world. On the one hand, a user may need faster speech from an augmentation communication board. On the other hand, the new knowledge required for faster speech may be located in a basic research laboratory remote to the user. An engineering center can take on the problem of faster speech, locate some of the basic science solutions and adapt them to the needs of the disabled consumer.