OK, so it’s easy to dismiss teaching with an interactive computer program as the same old thing with gee-whiz packaging. But that would be as naive as dismissing the car as the same old transportation as the horse, only faster. Shelves of studies testify to the advantages of learning via interactive software-and The Choices Center has seized on the research to bring the disabled into the employment mainstream. Located in an old industrial building in Port Chester, N.Y., Choices is the only organization in the country training the handicapped to join the multimedia revolution. Founder Jean Campbell, whose brother was born severely disabled, used to produce interactive software like the 1991 program for the Bed-Stuy children. “But I promised myself that if ever something seemed to offer equal opportunities for the disabled, I’d seize it.” She’s convinced interactive software is it: “[Demand] far outstrips the skilled laborpool. That’s what I’m counting on”–filling the pool with talented, trained disabled adults.
In a field whose players are obsessed with doing deals, Campbell is intent on doing good. The center she opened last July develops multimedia and interactive software for government and nonprofit agencies to teach literacy, parenting skills and child abuse prevention, for example. Sales and grants support the training program for the disabled. Business is building, thanks to studies showing that people retain 10 percent of what they see, 20 percent of what they hear, half of what they see and hear (the multimedia advantage) and 80 percent of what they see, hear and do (the interactive edge).
Campbell is convinced that such data will spur demand for interactive multimedia, helping it achieve its more challenging goal of training the disabled to create such programs. Choices’ exhibit A is “Gino’s Story,” produced by the eponymous Gino Piazza. A series of strokes when he was 12 left him mute and without the use of his right arm. Handicapped by his slowness at the keyboard and an inability to speak, Piazza remained unemployed for seven years after earning a degree in data processing in 1983. But he needs neither a right arm nor speech to create multimedia programs like his electronic autobiography, a lively barrage of music, stills, graphics, video and text. Gino, using a MacTalk program that turns his typed words into speech, narrates the interactive disc himself.
“Gino’s Story” is effective advertising. Last month Campbell’s center, with just two other full-time employees, won a New York state grant to train a dozen disabled adults in multimedia computer production. After 1,800 hours of instruction, Choices will help them set up their own businesses or place them with corporations or agencies to create interactive training programs or multimedia productions for trade shows. For years technology has promised to remove obstacles to employment for the disabled. The promise may finally be coming true.
