Happy UN Day of Disabled Persons. I’m a bit sceptical about UN days in general, but December 3rd was always part of my fist-pumpin’, street fightin’ younger days. The UN might have made it official but for activists, we were able to mould it to our own purpose. Cabarets, marches, protests. You name it, we did it. Ah the memories...
Anyway, it is a day worth celebrating.
The day always gets me thinking about how disabled people are seen in the media. Are they one hit wonders after they have completed an amazing feat, like complete a state exam? Or do they become a fixed star in the media solar system?
One man who straddles both poles is Stephen Hawking. Since making us all believe we could hold reasonable conversations on space-time theory, his computer-generated voice has been seen on The Simpsons. He even starred in the 2012 Paralympics’ opening ceremony, but all good things have to come to an end.
It turns out that Prof Hawking has been using the same voice technology since the late 1990s. Children, read that last sentence carefully. It’s about technology lasting a man for more than 20 years.
That all changed yesterday. Prof Hawking and his backers in INTEL have updated all the strange techy bits. It means that his device can ‘type’ more words per minutes. It is all about the number of eye movements he takes.
You want to know about the voice. Will it change?
Speaking to the BBC, Hawking was adamant that his voice was part of ‘brand’ Hawking and so it was never going to change. The man is a legend. Not only is he a great scientist, but he is using the most severe speech impairment as a marketing tool.
He is not allowing technology define him. This is something I have a passing knowledge of. As I reached my teens, technology was beginning to try to ‘help’ disabled people. The thing was this was the 1980s. Technology was like shoulder pads.... Big and brash.
And it cost an arm and a leg, too.
The reality is that the technology often was larger than the child it was supposed to help. As for mobility… well, in-built batteries had a long way to come. I had one device that typed out messages on a ticker tape dot-matrix type of thing. The thing was the battery was just as big as the machine itself - and heavier. Where were you supposed to have carried it?
And then it needed charging by a transformer that would qualify you as a super-heavyweight power-lifter if you carried it about.
I soon became known as ‘the guy with that typing thing’. It dehumanised me to a certain extent.
Hawking has transcended this by making technology work for him.
I am just not sure that disabled people, already marginalised, won’t find themselves bombarded by tech. They will become walking cyborgs surrounded by tech. And perhaps invisible as people
A sobering thought for the day that’s in it.
