History of the Development of Screen Director
Computer Display Modification For People With Special Needs:

This Pasadero program designed and developed a specialized user interface technology for persons with visual, cognitive, developmental, and learning disabilities. With expertise in both basic research and product design, Pasadero closed the gap between academic research and the commercial world. The initial focus was on computer display modification prompted by the pressing needs of people with visual disabilities for access to contemporary computer technologies and the advent of electronic text. The principle that we applied was that once the content of documents are in digital format they could be “served up” in any form. Screen Director was finished and widely distributed by Arkenstone, Inc. (Now Benetech) and by Freedom Scientific under the name “Wynn.” We are continuing the free distribution of some of the display modifications not incorporated in the Screen Director product or its successors. These mostly involve software for color matching and scientifically identifying color preferences.

The objective of the seven-year development project behind Screen Director (1991-1997) was to design and develop a generic and comprehensive computer display modification technology and software utility for people with disabilities. This development was done in the context of several experimental studies on the effects of display modification on people with disabilities and was partially funded under a number of National Institutes of Health Small Business Innovation Research Grants. A substantial part of the work was done under a two-year U.S. Department of Education demonstration grant entitled “Display Modification for Low Vision & Visual/Perceptual Disabilities.” The inspiration behind this line of development was the recognition that once text and graphics were converted into digital form, advances in computer technologies made it possible to create “virtual” computer displays containing all of the information necessary to “serve up” that information in an infinite variety of ways to fit the needs of special populations – speech augmentation and moving highlights being only two of the many possibilities.

Concepts and requirements for a dynamic display modification software utility were developed by Pasadero, Inc. beginning in 1991 with the formation of Pasadero, Inc., which was explicitly created to focus on specialized interface technology for persons with physical, cognitive, and learning disabilities. Development was pursued in the context of a collaborative research and development arrangement between Pasadero, Inc. and the School of Optometry of the University of California, Berkeley that began in 1991 and continues today. Cooperative research and development was subsequently expanded in an informal consortium to include Berkeley Systems and Eagle Creek Systems and a number of other companies and research departments.

In 1992 -1993, a comprehensive list and description of display modifications and user interface was developed and demonstrated in a Toolbook simulation program. Modifying capabilities included modifications in screen attributes (e.g., fonts and color), review options (tracking), such as mode and increment, spotlighting options such as, highlighting, speech augmentation, masking, unmasking, alternative text presentations, teleprompter, streaming, serial, and unfolding.

In 1993-1994, Pasadero developed a redirector technology that creates a “virtual” or parallel screen, makes changes called for by the user, and redirects the modified display to the computer screen. For this reason, the first implementation was called “Redirector” To provide content and location information for the virtual screen, pre-OLE/COM technologies were used to enable our program to communicate with applications like MS Word.

These technologies provided some basic capabilities such as speech output and text highlighting, but they could not provide generic access to applications like MS Word and a full range of modifications. Consequently, we experimented with an interception technology called GUI Access. This technology keeps track of display content and location information in what is called the off-screen model (OSM). Wes Boyd and I developed this technology under a federal grant while I was co-owner of Berkeley System, Inc. and it was implemented in the award winning screen reader product known as “outSpoken.”

It was determined that the OSM approach would be too slow and too difficult to support. Moreover, it would not be supported by the major operating systems. Consequently, we decided to begin concept testing with the early releases of Microsoft’s OLE/COM and to wait for extended OLE/COM development tools called “OLE Accessibility” and Active X.

In August of 1995, we completed a proof of concept involving embedding an object into the client area able to retrieve data upon notification. On October 6, 1995, we extended access to content and location information providing a full functionality proof of concept of the OLE implementation of the product “Screen Director.”

The first prototype of Screen Director was developed largely under a Department of Education grant entitled “Display Modification for Low Vision & Visual/Perceptual Disabilities.” This was followed by a highly featured version of Screen Director that was sold to Arkenstone, Inc. in May of 1996. Additional features were added and implemented in a product called “Browser,” which was later sold to Freedom Scientific, Inc. where it was further developed and sold under the name Wynn. See the Wynn web site.