[CEUD-ICT] Accidental Accessible solutions - text messaging

[Eoin Campbell]

My favourite example of an accidentally accessible technology
is text messaging on mobile phones.

The original intention of the GSM organisation was to combine
the features of a phone and a pager into a single portable device,
so that people didn't have to carry 2 devices.

But it turned out that text messaging is a boon for people with
hearing impairments.

Even further, phone manufacturers added vibration alerts so that
busy executives sitting in meetings could still get a notification
when calls or texts came in, even with the phone set to silent.
The vibration alert is also fantastic for people with a hearing impairment.

As someone who developed one of the first application servers for sending
and delivering SMS messages in 1991, before GSM phones were even available,
I remember all the conversations we had, trying to figure out why anyone would
ever want to send or receive a text message. Certainly none of us thought of its
accessibility implications.

(My personal favourite texting application was playing chess against a Grandmaster
like Gary Kasporov via SMS, e.g. Ka4, Bb2; if Gary got 10p for every move, he could
easily play 50 people simultaneously, and make a mint.)

-- 
Eoin Campbell
ecampbell.xmlw at gmail.com