His goal: Technology that works when you’re not looking
January 5th, 2009
From the New York Times, a feature about Google’s T.V. Raman, a Silicon Valley software engineer who is called the computer industry’s leading thinker on accessibility issues. He built a version of Google’s search service tailored for blind users, and is now working on an accessible touchscreen phones.
Raman lost his eyesight at the age of 14. He can solve a Braille Rubik’s Cube in 23 seconds.
Instead of asking how something should work if a person cannot see, he says he prefers to ask, “How should something work when the user is not looking at the screen?”
As Raman designs software to make electronic gadgets and Web services more user-friendly for people with visual impairments, he is making improvements that will likely be useful for sighted people as well — like drivers who need eyes-free access to a phone.
(T.V. Raman with guide dog Hubbell and colleage Charles Chen, New York Times photo)
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