Software That Opens Worlds to the Disabled

ONE computer program would allow vision-impaired shoppers to point their cellphones at supermarket shelves and hear descriptions of products and prices. Another would allow a physically disabled person to guide a computer mouse using brain waves and eye movements.

The two programs were among those created by eight groups of volunteers at a two-day software-writing competition this fall. The goal of the competition, sponsored by a nonprofit corporation, is to encourage new computer programs that help disabled people expand their capabilities.

The corporation, set up by computer science students and graduates at the University of Southern California, is named Project:Possibility. It grew out of an idea two years ago by Christopher Leung, then a master’s degree candidate in computer science and engineering at the university, who was working on a project at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.

As Mr. Leung explained in a recent interview, “The project manager came to me and said: ‘Chris, we have several blind students coming to work with us this summer. If you can think of anything we can do for them, let me know.’ ”

At the time, Mr. Leung said, he was working on a solar system visualization program. “I came up with a project called ‘touch the sky’ where a blind person would use a forced feedback device to feel three-dimensional reconstructions of terrain on other planets,” he said.
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