DisABILITY, Computing and the Law: What You Should Know - Introduction - The Research Center on Computing & Society

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Tzipporah Benavraham

Introduction

Accessibility has many faces, facets and aspects. And access for a person with a major life impairment (disability) is a matter of legal definition and resolve. The miracle of access to the printed word has been revolutionized for disabled people through the use of the computer. Miracles never thought possible are occurring daily in elementary and secondary schools, as well as in colleges and businesses. To watch a quadriplegic input computer data by use of an eyeblink switch inspires and brings an enigmatic smile to us. To see a blind person read Braille just output from a computer also poises our mind in wonderment. To see a deaf person use a telephone with a TDD (Telecommunications Device for the Deaf) brings dignity of self-determination to a population we would never have thought could communicate so freely before. All this would have been science fiction a few short years ago. Yet today the wonders of technology are enabling many to achieve positions of independence.

However, as in all tangible things, law and regulation have indeed found their niche in this amazing world of computer miracles. And with the rule of law come the parameters of access, affordability and use. Many laws and responsibilities have come forth from this remarkable technological development called the adaptive computer. I wish to guide you around the key points of this human interface between technology and the disabled.

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