From electric toothbrushes to the cyber-revolution: Everyday Inventions we owe to disabled innovators
As we celebrate the United Nations International Day of Persons with Disabilities, we all have much to thank the community. Disabled people spend a lot of time finding or contributing to solutions to obstacles we build daily. Yet, we all enjoy and benefit from the results.
I owe a lot to all the disabled people I have encountered in my current career in Digital Accessibility. My job wouldn’t exist without their advocacy to defend their right to access communications. Through their activism, legislation about access to the web has been passed in over 89% of countries. Digital Accessibility is a Human Right.
Laws don’t change because some people want to be nice. They change after a lot of hard work putting a case together through many years of campaigning. This hard work was all done by Disability Advocates.
If it weren’t for disabled people, the Telecoms industry, the cornerstone of modern communication that employs me and another 4 million people worldwide, wouldn’t be what it is today.
It all started when Alexander Graham Bell tried to find a solution to assist both his hard-of-hearing mother and wife. The telephone was born from his deep-seated commitment to improve communication for those who were Deaf or hearing impaired.
Graham Bell’s invention revolutionised the telecommunications landscape that had started with the telegraph. The telephone transcended the limitations of written communication. Day by day, month by month, year by year, everyone could reach to each other at long distances, in real-time and from the comfort of their homes. Bell’s commitment to inclusivity laid the foundation for the Telecoms industry to expand its reach far beyond its original vision.
No much later, text messaging, first invented as an alternative to verbal communication in the 1950s, became a primary mode of communication for everyone worldwide. The emails we all write every day have a similar story. Vint Cert, well known as one of the fathers of the internet and hard of hearing, created the first commercial email system driven by his desire to keep in touch with family members while travelling.
Innovations brought forth by or through the influence of disabled people are not limited to communications. From when we wake up to when we go to bed, we all use gadgets born with Accessibility and Inclusion in mind.
Your electric toothbrush, although developed for disabled people, provides more effective and convenient dental hygiene for all of us with its ergonomic design and automated motions. An 11-year study on the long‐term impact of powered toothbrushes on oral health, by the Oral Health Foundation in 2019, found that using electric toothbrushes helps keep gums healthier and prevent tooth decay.
Oral health is much more than a beautiful smile. It relates directly to our digestive system and impacts the blood supply to our heart and brain. As such, the widespread adoption of electric toothbrushes might also reduce the number of strokes and heart attacks in the population.
As you approach train stations and buildings, you will pass through automated doors with motion sensors, escalators and lifts. They are all inventions that are essential to disabled people, but we all use to get by on our day-to-day.
Let’s look at our touchscreen devices, such as our mobile phones and tablets — their invention date back to the 1960s, and we can’t imagine living without them. Touchscreens are an accessible interface at their core. Though first created for air traffic control, they became crucial for people with limited dexterity.
When you open your laptop at work, search for the letters F and J on your keyboard. You will notice that they both have a raised line. Those raised lines were inherited from the first typewriters. They serve as a guide for blind people. By placing each indicator of their hands over those letters, they can access all the other letters comfortably using their fingers without looking at the keyboard. The touch typing technique developed by blind people allows us to type faster and with less strain on our hand muscles.
When returning home in the evening, think about Voice Assistants such as Alexa from Amazon, Siri from Apple or Google Assistant. Initially designed by IBM and Dragon Software for people with mobility issues, they are now commonplace and allow us all to give commands to select a TV programme, change room temperature, open and close window blinds, turn lights on or off, play music, lock and unlock doors, make a phone call and send text messages by just using our voice without even leaving the couch. These might be small conveniences for most of us, but for people with severe mobility issues, they are essential to their independence.
As you unwind for the night, you might watch a movie with the captions on to avoid turning the volume up so as not to wake up the children or annoy your next-door neighbour. This is another small convenience for most of us, but for those who are deaf or hard of hearing, it opens the doors to cultural participation.
These are just a few examples of the transformative power of inclusive design. Things initially conceived as a solution to Accessibility barriers always become integral to the mainstream. They not only enrich the lives of all of us, but they have also revolutionised our way of living.
