Access & Technology:

The DOSVOX Project - Changing the Lives of Thousands of Blind Brazilians

by Prof. Jose' Antonio Borges, DOSVOX Project, NCE/UFRJ - Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

How DOSVOX Began
In August 1993, I entered the Computer Graphics class of the Informatics course at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. Suddenly I noticed a student in the first seat, with "strange eyes". I realised immediately that the boy had some vision problem.

I walked to him and we had the following conversation:
- "Hi, what is your name?"
- "Hi, I'm Marcelo Pimentel."
- "Excuse me for this question, are you blind or have some serious problem with your vision?"
- "I'm blind".

I became a bit confused. How to teach computer graphics, a subject that is almost totally visual to a blind person? Computer Graphics is also a mandatory discipline in the Informatics course. A complicated situation.
- "Marcelo, you know that this discipline deals with visual subjects. Let's talk about this after this class, OK?"

I taught in the class, normally, but thinking about how to solve the blind student problem. Obviously, I could ask the Department to excuse the student from the course, but I felt that it would be important for his academic formation to study some important mathematical subjects that are taught. There should exist some way, like substituting the visual part by something more useful for the student.

At the end of the class, I didn't have any conclusion. I decided to know more about the student and his problems.
- "Do you know programming? "
- "Of course, teacher, if not, how could I be here? " - "And how do you create programs?"
- "Well, when I entered the University, my father gave me a microcomputer, an IBM-PC XT. I know where the keys are, and I type in. When I finish, I call my father, he reads the screen to me, and this is how I program".
- "Is there in your computer any equipment that could help you in reading the screen or in your interaction, making your use easier?"
- "No, teacher. These things are very expensive. My family couldn't pay for this."
- "Well, Marcelo, I will think more in your case, and I'll tell you later what to do in relation to the course."
- "Ok, teacher".

I went home, thinking how to solve this case. I knew that, since the 70's, many computer interfaces for blind people have been developed. Even in Brazil, there were dozens of blind people that have been working as programmers or system analysts, aided by this equipment. Those interfaces, however were very expensive (the cost of a very simple system is above US$3000,00), and so not adequate for broad use. At this time (1993) even the University didn't have a system like this!

I decided then to adapt the course for the blind student, maintaining all the mathematical subjects, and substituting the visual part for an oriented work that could lead to the creation of facilities for other blind students. The academic commission of the University has approved my idea. The key to our work would be the construction of a system that could be used for students from medium/low income families, using inexpensive equipment that they could buy.

It seemed more or less obvious that the building of a system based on voice synthesis would be the correct choice, because it would not involve complicated and expensive mechanical aspects. And with a digital-to-analogue converter, built with resistors and a small amplifier, it should be possible to create a hardware-software interface for a PC to produce Portuguese speech. The hardware cost (not including the microcomputer, obviously) would be less than 10 dollars. (Currently, sound boards are common and cheap, but at that time, they where very difficult to obtain in Brazil!).

And then DOSVOX was built (1). Now, 5 years later, Marcelo has total independence in use of the computer, using not only DOSVOX but also many other tools that are now available in the university. He has concluded the Informatics Course, and currently works with me and another student in the development of new facilities in the scope of the DOSVOX project.

How to build a system so all Brazilian blind persons could use it
If our intention was that everybody should use the system, it should speak our native language. This may seems odd, but imagine a system built for Americans that speaks only French! In Brazil, less than 0.1 % of the blind people speak another language, which explains the complete failure of very good foreign computer systems for the blind when applied in Brazil.

I discovered then that (in 1993) there was lots of research for English speech synthesis, very little for other languages, nothing for Portuguese. Then I had to begin from the beginning, recording every sound of Portuguese, and building a Portuguese speech compiler, a very hard task, specially because Portuguese has very different phonetics compared to English. The result was the first complete set of Portuguese speech synthesis that was built. The system must also have a very friendly interface, so the learning time should be the minimum possible. So, Marcelo and I have been building in his course the first pieces of what is our DOSVOX system. A complete operating environment, based on menus has been built, extremely easy to use by people with low education levels.

What is inside DOSVOX
DOSVOX is now in its version 2.1, and runs on 2 platforms DOS and Windows. The Windows version has 36 programs including text editor, text reader, a small screen reader, file utilities, text formatter, automated Braille printing, many utilities (agenda, telephone book, calculator, etc), games and educational programs, all prepared for blind users. It gives support for the use of external programs, reading menus and fields, and possibly automating the mouse clicks, needed by some of them.

DOSVOX works both with pre-recorded messages and synthesised speech. This way, the use of utilities and games have a "personality", and do not sound like a robot speaking. DOSVOX produces and reads data that can be processed by other programs of common use by non-blind people. For example, using DOSVOX a person can have access to programs using OCR (optical character recognition) or translation from other languages. There are also many specialised programs that can be adapted to put blind people to work in some specialised tasks, like computer-based telemarketing and education. The DOSVOX Project on demand normally produces these programs, when a firm wants to open working places to the blind community. For example, there are more than 200 blind people working in telemarketing using a DOSVOX derived program (Termivox).

Why is DOSVOX so successful in Brazil?
DOSVOX has spread throughout Brazil, and today has more than 3000 users. Thousands of blind people have had their lives improved with the computer. DOSVOX produced a big impact in the integration of the blind in the society, opening new perspectives of study and work. Because the system is so inexpensive, any firm can afford to buy a system like this, so that it can employ a blind person for tasks like telemarketing, for example. Students can read, write, and be understood by teachers and colleagues that do not know Braille. Many other reasons produced the success of DOSVOX:

• a very low cost: The system has been mass produced and is now sold for less than $100 (one hundred) dollars, including cassette tapes showing how to use, installation diskettes, the synthesiser and headphones. Adding to this, the cost of a used IBM PC-386 (that is considered garbage in Brazil), this means that the investment of a family to give a computer to their blind son or daughter is less than 200 dollars! Somebody could say that in a country where the minimum wage is $100 dollars a month this is too much! We agree, and we are working to stimulate firms that are throwing away their old computers to give them to blind poor students. There is also a free version of DOSVOX with fewer facilities, but enough to use by students, distributed via Internet (Portuguese version available and soon also a Spanish version).
  
  
• the system speaks the native language: The system is made for the common Brazilian blind person. The dialog is made in Portuguese, removing "computerese" and English words. (The Spanish version speaks Spanish, naturally).
  
  
• appropriate technology: The technology that is used is very simple. The source code, in Borland Pascal, is distributed with the system to provide a source of study for students that want to create technology for people who are disabled. In fact, using the DOSVOX technology, some successful developments have been done in the aid of rehabilitation of children with impaired speech.

DOSVOX and Internet
Telecommunications are a reality of these days. Information transportation via the telephone, linked to the international communications network (Internet and others) that uses satellite technology, allow the use of information in instant and transparent ways directly by our houses, at reduced costs.

For blind people, the access to information on the network, allows them to read newspapers, send letters with quick answer, access to videotext centrals, to do remote banking, to participate from discussion lists, and so on. This is particularly important: this means culture!

DOSVOX has built-in access to the communications via Internet. The project DOSVOX made an agreement with the National Research Network (RNP) of the National Research Council (CNPq), and it is guaranteed a free access to blind people to the Internet via phone. Special programs has been created to ease the use of electronic mail, fax transmission, newspaper access, bibliographical research, and file transmission for non expert users. It's possible also to have access to the World Wide Web, via the public domain program LYNX that gives access to the text part of the page or using a simplified browser that guides the person using menus.

This could seem to be a very simple thing (and it is!), but very few blind people in Brazil, have read a newspaper in paper. They often read Braille books and always listen to the TV. Somebody could say that there is news in the TV or in the radio. But this is information you can't choose: they come to you in a packet and you must listen to everything, even what you don't want to... The written information is also, often, much more detailed. Via DOSVOX, we are trying to have a significant proportion of the blind community communicating, not only among them, but specially with the "outside" world, the world of the non-blind. The cost for this is low for the user, as the communication service is free (except for the telephone use).

There are now approximately 500 active Internet DOSVOX users, and this number is growing very fast. The means the number of letters they receive is between 10 and 50 (some of them receive nearly 100 communications, especially from interest lists). Many of those letters came from non-blind people, which is in total accord with our socialisation ideas. There is a large number of blind people, however, that while having access to cheap computers, haven't access to the telephone and (extremely expensive) Braille printers. In Brazil, the right to have a telephone is bought, and very expensive ($1000 dollars or more)! For these people, DOSVOX is being installed publicly in libraries and rehabilitation centres, so they can have access to the OCR technology (Scanner with Optical Character Recognition), Braille printing and use of Internet.

Conclusion
DOSVOX has been created using Brazilian technology, with very low investment, low complexity, and adequate for the third world needs and difficulties.

The impact of DOSVOX system over the blind community is very significant, and can be easily evaluated by the reaction in newspapers, radio and TV. It is one of the most well known computer project for disabled people in Latin America. The new Spanish language version of DOSVOX is now in use in Uruguay and other countries (150 users). We expect that with the much wider use of DOSVOX, a big step will be taken to transform the isolated blind community of Brazil into a very active and participant group, productive and integrated to the society.

However, DOSVOX is only a tool. But it is a tool that will allow the broad inclusion of disabled people in the society, as we see in developed countries. We hope that thousand of successful blind people using DOSVOX, can serve as examples to prove to the Brazilian society that blind people can be very productive human beings, and that worth investing in the dissemination of low cost computer technology for blind people.

If you want to know more about the DOSVOX project, you can write to:
Antonio Borges
CP-2324 - NCE-UFRJ - Cid. Universitária
20001-970 - Rio de Janeiro - RJ
E-mail: antonio2@nce.ufrj.br
Home page (in Portuguese; English version soon available) http://www.nce.ufrj.br/aau/dosvox

(1) Foot Note: DOSVOX is the result of the efforts not only of Marcelo and myself, but of many other people, giving their best efforts to the developments for blind people. Among them, it's important to highlight Diogo Fujio Takano, designer of the low cost synthesiser, Orlando Jose' Rodrigues Alves (in memoriam) developer of many DOSVOX complexities, and Luiz Candido Castro (in memoriam), blind, the first teacher of DOSVOX, and many students and volunteer programmers. (Return)