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White Plains Journal News, NY Making computers more accessible By JULIE MORAN ALTERIO THE JOURNAL NEWS (Original publication: June 1, 2003) Nicole Freedman and Jim Levine have never met. She lives in Colorado Springs, Colo. He lives in Yorktown Heights. She's a registered nurse. He's a research scientist for IBM Corp. She suffers from tremors in her hands. He's built an adapter that helps people with shaking hands control a computer mouse. They both want the same thing: to see Levine's device on the market. "I want one. Give it to me now. I'll take two of them. I'll take a dozen," Freedman says with a laugh, but she's serious, too. The 42-year-old mother of two has seen her life transformed since her hands began shaking five years ago. Once a flight nurse who rode helicopters to accident scenes, Freedman is grounded. Now back in college, she's planning to teach and nurse in a slower-paced community health center where stress won't aggravate her hand tremor. The shaking makes it difficult for her to button a shirt, brush her 3-year-old daughter's hair or use a computer. Freedman uses voice-recognition software to type her college papers, but managing the mouse is a challenge. She tried Levine's invention during a test of the technology led by a University of Colorado professor. Freedman says it felt wonderful to again control a computer with ease. "Taking a break from a disability is kind of like a magic trick," she says. People with shaking hands find it hard to use a computer mouse because they can't make the smooth motions necessary to accurately move a pointer around the screen. And clicking? Forget it. Levine's device acts like a shock absorber, filtering out the jerky motions and twitches. A standard PC mouse plugs into the palm-sized adapter box, which intercepts data from the mouse and massages it before sending it along to the computer's operating system. A knob controls the degree of tremor tuned out. "The nice thing about a knob is everybody knows how to use it: You turn it. It's intuitive and you don't need very fine motor control to use it," Levine says. He started developing the mouse adapter after IBM was the host of a forum at its Armonk headquarters in 1999 on helping seniors use computers. There were many ideas presented that involved vision and hearing, but no one addressed the hand tremors that often afflict older people. Levine has witnessed the problem himself. "My uncle had a pretty bad tremor in his early 80s. One time he tried to use the computer in my house and he simply couldn't do it. He simply couldn't use the mouse," he says. Levine also suspects that a few of his colleagues at the Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights struggle with tremors. "There's some people around the lab here that don't like to admit it who also have that problem," he says. When he started to research tremors, Levine realized that the condition affects more than senior citizens. There are more than 20 kinds of tremors, including those associated with Parkinson's disease, a serious ailment. The most common, though, is called "essential tremor" because shaking is the only symptom. The cause of essential tremor is unknown, and it can strike at any age, though it's most common in people older than 40. There are as many as 10 million people with essential tremor in the United States, according to the International Essential Tremor Foundation, which recently doubled its estimate. Catherine Rice, the foundation's executive director, says the numbers are rising as the population bubble of baby boomers ages. There is no cure for essential tremor and no drugs have been developed specifically to treat it, though high-blood pressure and anti-epilepsy medications can help calm the shaking. "People don't die from it, but their quality of life suffers greatly," Rice says. Not being able to use a computer these days when so much news, information and e-mail travels across the Internet is a handicap in itself, Rice says. "You have no idea how many phone calls we get every week from people saying, 'Do you know of anything we can use (to use the computer)?' They're desperate," Rice says. "If this guy at IBM hadn't done something, I was going to write to Microsoft to Bill Gates and ask him to do something." Whether essential tremor sufferers will ever be able to buy Levine's mouse adapter depends on the IBM researcher finding a manufacturer willing to build and sell the invention. The potential market — optimistically estimated at 3 million people — is too niche-oriented to tempt IBM. The $81.2 billion computer giant has emphasized its consulting business in recent years. The 66-year-old Levine is spending a lot of his time these days politicking for his invention. So far, he's come up empty. "The business climate is not good now. That has not helped," Levine says. He's not giving up, and neither is Cathy Bodine, the University of Colorado professor who watched people with hand tremors use the computer successfully with Levine's device. "When people tried it, they really saw the difference," Bodine says. "In all cases, it did significantly smooth out the mouse movement." Testers with essential tremor were asked to trace lines on the computer, both with and without the help of the mouse adapter. Freedman, the Colorado Springs nurse, recalls the frustration of watching the pointer bounce around the screen as she tried to follow the lines and squares. "I couldn't do any of it. It looked like a seismograph recording an earthquake," she says. "Then they progressively adjusted the mouse. As they adjusted it more and more for me, it was fascinating to watch because I was still shaking, but the arrow pointer was going more and more straight. It was really cool to watch. I thought, 'Why hasn't anybody done this before?' " The answer could be as simple as no one thought of it. Levine has applied for a patent for his device, which both he and Bodine say is unique. When Bodine started in the field in 1985, there were 100 assistive devices. Today, she says there are 29,000. "All of that technology is exploding around us," Bodine says. Assistive technology can be as simple as a grab bar in the shower or as complex as the voice synthesizer used by physicist Stephen Hawking. Many of these assistive technologies were designed by engineers and inventors who wanted to help a friend, relative or neighbor with a disability, Bodine says. As director of Assistive Technology Partners, a unit of the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center that focuses on devices to help disabled people, Bodine has become an advocate for Levine's device. She's working with the Colorado Department of Labor to put prototypes in unemployment centers and is encouraging libraries in Denver to install the device at workstations designed to accommodate people with disabilities. IBM can produce dozens of prototypes in Yorktown Heights, but finding a manufacturer is Bodine's hope. It's been more than half a year since she took the device to the support group meeting where Freedman and 15 other people diagnosed with tremors tested it. "They are still calling me, saying, 'When can I buy it? Where can I get it?' " Bodine says. The assistive technology market is the exact opposite of the consumer electronics business that's given us $99 hand- held computers, says Don Bastian, owner of Attainment Co. in Verona, Wis. His company makes software, videos and speech devices for special education. "This is a market that you know is small by definition," Bastian says. It's a balancing act to determine how to make as few products as possible and still be able to price them attractively and earn a profit on each one. "In our business, assistive technology, 5,000 is a large run. In consumer electronics, it's a prototype run," Bastian says. Levine's mouse adapter sounds promising to him. "Everybody has to use the computer, and a lot of people have trouble with the mouse," Bastian says. "If you put those facts together you might have pretty good potential." The best-selling assistive technologies have crossover appeal, says Dennis Moulton, president of Web shopping site Enablemart, which he calls the "Home Depot for assistive devices." Voice recognition software, touch screens and magnifiers are purchased by people without disabilities as well as those who require them. Niche-oriented products are the most expensive, Moulton says. A modified trackball might sell for $100. A system that controls the mouse with eye movements costs $8,000. Bodine says she thinks Levine's mouse adapter could be priced under $100. While wooing potential manufacturers for the adaptive mouse, Levine is also finishing a software version of the technology. Instead of box with a knob and switches, a software control panel is adjusted to compensate for shaking hand movements. "The hardware was easier than the software by 100 times," Levine says. He's also redesigning the mouse adapter to work with USB instead of the older PS2 connectors, which fewer computers are employing. Levine is eager for his invention to reach the millions of people with essential tremor who, like Freedman, are waiting for an easier way to use the computer mouse. "It's ready to go, and it works." Reach Julie Moran Alterio at [log in to unmask] or 914-694-5228. FYI: James Levine Title: IBM Research staff member Age: 66 Background: Levine joined IBM Research in 1962 after finishing graduate school. Education: Ph.D. and master's degrees in physics, University of Minnesota; bachelor's degree in physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Residence: Yorktown Heights Career highlights: Levine has 27 patents to his credit from his 40-plus years at IBM. The assistive mouse adapter is not the first technology he's developed that helps people with disabilities. He helped invent IBM's touch-input screens and participated in the creation of eyegaze-controlled computers with the University of Virginia. Essential tremor facts What is it? An involuntary contraction of the muscles that causes shaking, most frequently in the hands, but sometimes in the head and neck and rarely the legs and feet. What causes it? Essential tremor is a neurological disorder that results from abnormal communication inside the brain. How common is it? As many as 1 in 20 people older than 40 and 1 in 5 people over 65 may have essential tremor. When does it occur? Many people experience the tremor only when they perform an activity such as writing, brushing their teeth or using the computer. Who gets it? Most tremors seem to be inherited, though not everyone with the gene develops symptoms. Is there a cure? No, but medications for high-blood pressure and epilepsy can help calm the quaking. On the Web: International Essential Tremor Foundation http://www.essentialtremor.org Assistive Technology Partners http://www.uchsc.edu/atp Enablemart http://www.enablemart.com Attainment Co. http://www.attainmentcompany.com IBM Corp. http://www.ibm.com SOURCE: White Plains Journal News, NY http://www.nyjournalnews.com/newsroom/060103/d0101tremor.html * * * ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn