Computers: The Best Part Is I Can Do It All

At 19, David Young was left paralyzed when he ran his 1965 Chevy Impala into a tree and broke his neck. In the hospital he learned to drive an electric wheelchair and to type using a mouth stick. But he was 27 and a graduate student at the University of Colorado before he got his IBM PC. "It had become painfully obvious that I could no longer match my peers simply by being bright," he recalls. "The computer opened all sorts of doors for me." Now Young is earning a Ph.D. in biology, working as a laboratory consultant and writing more than he ever did when he had the use of his arms and legs. "The best part," he says, "is that I can do it all with no outside help."

Computers, which have changed the way America works, are now becoming available to the 13 million handicapped Americans of working age. In the past, efforts to help the handicapped tended to be overambitious and prohibitively expensive. In one much publicized experiment, quadriplegics have "walked" with crutches or walkers using computer-stimulated electrical impulses to move their stricken legs. But even by the most optimistic estimates, it will be many years before such devices are widely available.

Meanwhile, many social workers and veterans groups are advocating a more modest approach. Rather than using technology to change the patient, they are changing the technology so the patient can use it. "The key words are access, independence and achievement," says Alan Brightman, director of Apple Computer's office of special education. "If you can only wrinkle your eyebrow, I've got a switch that will enable you to input data into a computer. And once you've got access to the machine, you've got access to the world."

In the past year, the number of disabled Americans using computers has doubled to nearly 40,000, and for many of them the difference in their lives has been dramatic. Some examples:

-- Deaf from birth, Marc Hagen, 17, had just about given up on school when his mother brought home an Apple IIe with a modem and showed him how to dial into the 200 or so computer bulletin boards in the Minneapolis area. "It just turned Marc around," reports Dolores Hagen. "Now he can talk to Bangkok if he wants, and if you saw my phone bill, you'd think he was."

-- William Garman, 51, contracted Lou Gehrig's disease in 1982 and within two years was paralyzed, unable to speak or write. Then, last summer, a group of Westinghouse engineers outfitted Garman with an infrared sensor that moves a computer screen's cursor in response to his blinking. For the first time since his illness struck, Garman has been able to communicate with family and friends. His first words, painstakingly spelled out one letter at a time: "Oh boy!"

-- Despite her blindness, Georgia Griffith, 54, graduated from college and became a music teacher. Then she lost her hearing. Now, thanks to a computer and a collection of special tools for the blind, she has made a new career as a proofreader of Braille music. Using the VersaBraille, a machine that produces a raised-dot readout of characters as they appear on a computer screen, she has been able to meet and keep in touch with hundreds of acquaintances on the CompuServe computer network. Says she: "I am deaf and blind, sure, but I am not disabled."