68 WINTER 2020 / POPSCI.COM
PICTOGRAMS
Painting
a pictureThe human brain processes images
faster than letters, likely because alpha-
bets and other writing systems have
only been part of our lives for a few mil-
lennia. That’s why the pictogram— a
symbol standing in for a word orphrase—is a common tool for helping
people with intellectual disabilities.
But they can also ease the way for any
sighted traveler. People can recognize
an image in as little as 13 milliseconds,
compared to around 300 millisec-
onds for a word. Now many of us take
for granted that we’ll be able to
quickly identify the nearest emer-
gency exit or bathroom in a mall, or
determine when it’s safe to cross a
busy street, anywhere—even if we
don’t speak the local language.READING
MACHINES
Getting the
messageIn 1976, technologist Ray Kurzweil
released a device for the blind
and visually impaired that con-
verted images into text it then
read aloud—he called it, simply,
“the reading machine.” That gad-
get combined several new tools
his eponymous company devised,
including one of the first text-to-
speech synthesizers, which evolved
into an essential part of virtual as-
sistants like Amazon Alexa and
Google Assistant; smart speak-
ers with those voices are now in
roughly one-quarter of US homes.
The machine also featured an im-
portant component of computer
vision called optical character rec-
ognition, which, by detecting street
signs and house numbers, is help-
ing build the maps that self-driving
cars use to navigate the world.CLOSED
CAPTIONS
Following the
conversationSears launched the first TV with a
built-in decoder that allowed deaf
and hard-of-hearing viewers to read
along with their favorite programs
in 1980. Previously, only open
captions— which producers burn
directly onto video and appear no
matter what—were available. In theIN
the 1940s, hundreds of
thousands of World War
II veterans returned home
with disabilities. Frus-
trated by the difficulties
they faced, Jack Fisher of
Kalamazoo, Michigan, peti-
tioned his city commission
to install an experimental
curb cut—a gentle slope
that brings the end of a
sidewalk down to meet
the level of the street—at the corners of several blocks down-
town. A few months into the pilot project, Fisher reported
that even residents without wheelchairs were enjoying the
impact of the little ramps: Older adults leaning on canes,
parents pushing strollers, and kids pulling wagons benefited
from the human-made hills, too.
Today, these shallow slants are an essential feature of
the pedestrian landscape across the United States. They’ve
also spurred a titular design concept: the “curb-cut effect,”
which refers to the fact that supporting marginalized groups
of people often ends up helping much larger swaths of soci-
ety. Whether it’s applied to accessible design, investments
in social welfare, or pioneering legislation, study after study
shows the effect has the power to uplift us all.(CONTINUED ON PAGE 71)