Alan meets rehabilitation computing : the true story !

Well, perhaps it wasn't quite as exciting as that, but I've been thinking about it for a long time. Here's a summary of dates which I found ( 1997 ) that I'd recorded in a log book. I found them quite interesting; perhaps that makes me unique.

Prehistory :

At some unrecorded date, I become interested in rehabilitation computing. It is by no means obvious that I can do anything useful in the area officially ( they pay me to do computing, and perhaps there isn't enough rehabilitation computing to be done, particularly in the way of research - I'd read a newspaper article to the effect that it had all been done, which wasn't encouraging ), and I don't have much spare time to do anything by myself, but I'm interested enough to keep looking.

28 September 1985 :

There's an entry in my notebook : "Decision to devote significant resources to this project". That mildly dramatic pronouncement marks a decision to keep looking for a while.

At some time I formulate the idea of IDEA ( Interface for the Disabled Enabling Access - a poor acronym even by my standards ). ( I don't call it that any more, but it's the base from which several other things have grown. It was the beginnings of the trainable interface which I still want to do some time. )

5 October 1985 :

I make some notes on some articles in a Sigart Newsletter. ( Ah, happy days ! - that went all respectable and became the Sigart Bulletin, and has now succumbed to delusions of grandeur and become Intelligence. It was a special issue on machine learning, and I was obviously thinking about IDEA. Reading the notes, I was also obviously thrashing about. )

25 November 1985 :

I'm still reading. The point of interest is this note which I make : "PERHAPS THE FIRST STEP IS TO EXPLORE THE AVAILABLE SIGNALS AND CLASSIFY THEM : ....". ( That will lead on to Lex Miller's thesis work. )

23 January 1986 :

I visit Neil Scott in Palmerston North.

( I'd found out about him from an article in the NZ Listener, where he was presented ( not too unrealistically ) as a lone battler for rehabilitation in a sea of indifference. He was using computers, too, so I thought it would be worth getting in touch.

It was. It turned out that he wasn't doing anything startlingly original, but he was doing something. He gave me some literature that showed me some other things to think about. Then he left for the USA, convinced that he would get no support for his work in New Zealand. )

3 February 1986 :

I write : "If I do Neil Scott's thing, it's not anything the Computer Science department can be made to pay for - but if I do new, though related, things, that's fair enough as research."

25 February 1986 :

I visit the Wilson Home with Jean, and see what they are doing. "But there's no obvious single thing to work on."

27 April 1986 :

I note that I've started a Working Note series for disability topics. ( The first was a sequel to the Wilson Home visit. The series never got anywhere much after 1986; it helped me to write down a few ideas, but there just wasn't enough traffic to keep it going. I've recently revived it, an act of hope which I would like to be justified by events. ) I also decide to buy a BBC computer, because they're widely used in rehabilitation systems.

13 June 1986 :

We visit the CCS ( Crippled Children's Society ). We find out about CHAT and some people. We register interest, and declare ourselves, and the Computer Science department ( subject to certain obvious qualifications ), available for useful work if any should turn up.

We find that they want a speech synthesiser project completed. It's for a disabled man to use with a telephone; someone has started it, but isn't able to carry on. We say we'll do it.

18 September 1986 :

We deliver the speech synthesiser stuff. It is essentially all Jean's work; my version looked quite like Jean's on the surface, but included some attempt to overlap operations so that it would be quicker. It did just about work, but having got it to that state I deleted it.

Fame at last ! - "I use the speech synthesiser with a communication programme, which was designed for me" ( E. Evans. C.H.A.T. News ( Auckland Crippled Children Society, March, 1987 ), page 8 ).

20 September 1986 :

I receive a telephone call from Marie Hood of the CCS : she is interested in getting a robot which could be used by someone with some degree of paralysis to feed himself. I suggest that this would be a good topic for an M.Sc. thesis, and offer it to anyone concerned. ( That will lead on to Shane Clerk's thesis topic. )

?? 1986 :

Marie Hood puts me in touch with Fiona Budge from the Auckland Hospital Spinal Unit. She knows of a patient with a spinal injury who needs a communicator of some sort to talk to his deaf mother. Before the injury, they communicated in a private manual sign language, but now he can't use his hands. I draw up a sketch of a proposal. ( That will lead on to Robert Sheehan's project work. )

1987 :

Shane Clerk starts work on the robotic feeder project for his M.Sc. thesis - but an expected robot didn't materialise, so Shane had to do something else. That was unfortunate, because he'd done quite a bit of work on the topic, but never recorded it. I made some notes about it, but that's all that survives.

Robert Sheehan works on his project, and designs and produces a fully functioning communicator. ( This is my major success story; that being so, it's a pity that Robert did it all by himself. )

- and Lex Miller works on a master's thesis topic about analysing data received through parallel channels, but it was all about boats, not rehabilitation.

1988 :

I go on leave to England. I'm not yet brave enough to assert that I'm going to study rehabilitation computing, but that is nevertheless my intention. ( I do get as far as saying in my leave application that I hope to spend some time investigating rehabilitation computing while I'm away, but that's all. ) Though to some extent reassured by reading and experience since I started, I am still concerned that there isn't sufficient computing meat in it to justify my officially adopting it as a research topic, and I want to spend some time looking at rehabilitation activities so that I can make a better judgment. I do; I am convinced.

And I suppose that's as good a place as any to declare the end of the beginning. The rest, as they say, is history, but it isn't recorded history.

Alan Creak,
2000 December.

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