In 1991, Norman Coombs wrote of his experiences as a blind professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology in Liberation Technology, which was reprinted in the Winter, 1992 edition of the IT Times. Since then, major strides have been made in technology benefiting the visually, hearing, developmentally and learning impaired. Among the improvements are screen readers, text magnifiers and voice recognition software.

History of Adaptive Technology
According to Russ Zochowski, a Disability Specialist with the UC Davis Student Disability Center, the field of adaptive technology has been around for at least 20 years. The campus Student Disability Center, located at the South Silo, opened its doors in 1972, but, adaptive technology issues came to the forefront nationally in 1990 with the passing of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). In addition to providing the building accessibility guidelines and protection from employment discrimination with which we are most familiar, the ADA outlined standards that apply to information technology practices. Specifically, Web design guidelines include rules governing color, text readability, and a structure that allows screen readers to speak fluidly and interpret tables accurately.

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Over the past 10 years, significant improvements have been made to adaptive technologies. Russ Zochowski reports, "Today, adaptive software and hardware is far more efficient and advanced than what we had to use 10 years ago. Programs like DragonSpeak (Dragon Naturally Speaking) have a 95% accuracy rate when taking dictation. And, the program offers different versions such as a medical version for doctors and a legal version for lawers."

Challenges of Existing Adaptive Technologies
For all the improvements, adaptive technologies remain far from perfect. ADA standards are not yet strictly enforced on the Web, and few sites and online resources are as accessible as they could be, Russ Zochowski observes. He points out "messaging can be difficult when chatting with screen readers since readers can read in a limited number of tones. If you're chatting with several people, or more people than the reader has tones, it can be impossible to distinguish who says what."

Despite the challenges that remain, adaptive technologies have begun to effect quality of life improvements for many disabled people.

Adaptive Technology Resources at UC Davis
UC Davis offers a number of resources to the campus' disabled population. The Student Disability Center has maintained the Disabled Students Resource Room (DSRR) in the Shields Library North Reading Room since 1988. The DSRR offers adaptive equipment such as screen readers as well as voice recognition software like Dragon Naturally Speaking. For more information on the SDC, DSSR or available equipment and resources, visit the Student Disability Center Web site at http://sdc.ucdavis.edu/.

The Learning Resource Center offers academic assistance to the disabled by providing stenocaptioners. These assistants accompany hearing impaired students to their lectures and caption lectures for the students. At the end of the lecture, students receive printed transcripts.

Students can also take advantage of assistive listening systems that have been installed in classrooms across campus. Assistive listening systems use FM signals or infrared light waves to transmit sounds to receivers that students borrow from the SDC. For more information on the SDC, DSSR or available equipment and resources, visit the Student Disability Center Web site at http://sdc.ucdavis.edu/.

Disabled Student Union president Tesia Poponyak finds the services UC Davis offers beneficial to the campus' disabled student population, but states that they could be better. Poponyak observes that the "noise level in the North Reading Room hinders the effectiveness of voice recognition programs. Devices such as the Braille typewriter can also impede on other students in the room." Poponyak also notes that seemingly few students take advantage of the resources available to them, and believes that more students would utilize the resources if they were more aware of them.

Adaptive Technologies and the Future
Dennis Shimek, Senior Associate Vice Chancellor for Human Resources is currently overseeing campus ADA compliance, which includes the thousands of UC Davis Web sites. Rick Hill, Webmaster for the College of Engineering, often teaches classes for campus Webmasters who need to learn how to make their sites ADA compliant. He notes that many campus Web sites fully comply with ADA standards at this time, and that doing so is a high priority. Among the challenges Web designers face for the future and meeting ADA standards is the dilemma between the way designers want their sites to look and what will make the site most accessible for disabled users. In order to meet this challenge, designers will need to learn a new set of skills, including learning accessibility standards and meeting the most current HTML coding standards. To accomplish this, designers must make the transition to a user-centric approach to the Web from the design-centric approach, observes Hill.

Rick Hill further suggests, "One of the largest obstacles involved in providing accessible Web sites is the current, but outdated, browser technology. With better technology, five years from now I believe Web sites will be much more compliant. Web design programs will take into account ADA standards, so implementing the necessary coding should be more automatic and, therefore, easier."

Russ Zochowski points out that in the not-so-distant future the disabled may also be able to take advantage of one of today's new technologies: Global Position Satellite programs (GPS). GPS devices, developed by the Sendero Group (http://www.senderogroup.com/) in Davis, are already used in vehicles. The device could conceivably allow the visually impaired to use a laptop computer in conjunction with a handheld device to navigate the UC Davis campus and city streets.

Rather than adapting new technologies to meet their needs, as Norman Coombs did in 1991, new technologies are adapting to meet the needs of the disabled population.

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