Do women find technology intimidating? Do they find the learning curve too daunting?
It’s a widely held perception that women are not as exposed to technology as men. This is far from the truth. At an Internet Training Workshop held 10 years ago in Melbourne, Australia, women with disabilities discussed their need to be included in the information technology evolution. They recognized that the Internet is an important tool to access mainstream information and services, as well as information to meet their own specific needs as women with disabilities.
In fact, there are many women for whom technology has become a livelihood. For these women, the ever-expanding field of assistive technology is a gateway to enter the workforce. A few of them have opened widely that door.
Take Silvana Rainey, for example. Rainey is a Brazilian-born woman who immigrated to the United States after graduating from college. Her road toward adaptive technology began at 8 years old, when she developed macular degeneration. Instead of stopping her, visual impairment became the catalyst to achieving her dreams. It drove her to devote her life to finding solutions to the challenges that face people with a wide range of disabilities.
Her work began at the Lighthouse for the Blind. After several years she moved on, becoming the training manager at a company that provided assistive equipment and services to people with disabilities. In 2002, with the help of two of her former employers and $1,000 in seed money from the Small Business Administration, she began Adaptive Technology Services (www.adaptivetec.com). The company provides its customers with installation, set-up, training, and on-site repair of adaptive technology equipment.
Today, Rainey is a nationally recognized authority in the field of adaptive technology for the blind and visually impaired. Recently, the American Foundation for the Blind funded and distributed her company’s comprehensive "train the trainers" course on adaptive technology.
Then there’s Debra Ruh, an able- bodied woman from Virginia. Her daughter Sarah has Down syndrome. As a mother, Ruh worried how her daughter would fit into the world. How would she support herself when she grew up? What kind of job could she get? She wanted her little girl to have more options than were available. But doing more would take training and access to adaptive technologies that suited her particular life challenges.
Early in her pursuit to provide a different avenue for her daughter—and for others with disabilities—Ruh realized that if technology become accessible to people with disabilities, it would also be easier to use by the able-bodied community (i.e., closed-captioned TVs in airports). With this in mind, she formed TecAccess (www.tecaccess.net) in 2001. Her goal for the company was to make all technology, both hardware and software, universal and accessible. The company not only creates accessible technology, but also employs people with disabilities to test existing products.
Ruh’s efforts, though, don’t end at the door of her own company. In 2006 she created a program for disabled Veterans: the Disabled Veteran Training and Employment Program (DVET). She has received worldwide acclaim for her efforts. In 2007, she won the Trailblazer award from the National Association of Women Business Owners (www.nawbo.org). Additionally, she was appointed to the Olmstead Board and Veteran Employment Board by Virginia Governor Tim Kaine.
So, do women find technology intimidating? By the example of these two women and so many others like them, it would seem not. If you’d like to see what others are doing to help women with disabilities lead more successful lives, take a look at an organization called Women Pushing Forward (www.womenpushingforward.net).
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