A parking lot and the capacity to help. | Scott Bulbrook | TEDxKanata
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_v4ig8od8I Video ID: X_v4ig8od8I ============================================================ a couple of years ago in June it was a beautiful summer day with a clear blue sky and a nice cool breeze perfect day I found myself standing alone in a parking lot completely unable to move the parking lot is behind an old school in downtown Ottawa that had been modified to hold a place called computer wise and I had just been there to drop off a software tool I had written the tool works pretty well and the person it was for seemed to like it so I should be feeling pretty good but I'm not the feeling I was feeling was so profound that I found myself standing there in the parking lot just trying to figure out exactly what it was could it really just be as simple as immense feeling of satisfaction what was different about this tool what was different about this experience so we'll come back to the parking lot a little later let me tell you the story of how I got there my name is scalpel brick I'm from Canada and I'm a tech guy a chip guy to be more exact deep down I'm sort of a an inventor a designer and a builder I've made things like the electric banjo and the retractable Lake steps the musical teleprompter and some silly ones like the happy foot soak or the Raptor system and my all-time favorite shorts over pants my friends and family joke around and tease me a little bit about that and and I always just smile and say well look I'm I'm just trying to make the world a better place it usually gets them to stop teasing but it does make you think make the world a better place better how better for who someone who sort of gets me suggested that I look into joining the Tetra Society tetra is an organization that matches people like me with people in need of highly specialized assistive devices usually because of some unique combination of abilities and desired activity a avid canoeist loses a limb in an accident so tetra would make a special paddle I know a woman who's an avid traveler and she bought some special wheelchair luggage but the the latch was was too hard to work so so we modify it to work for properly I've got to work on some really cool projects and meet some awesome people it was tetra that hooked me up with another place called computer wise the the place with the with the parking lot now it's hard to put into words how awesome computer wise is it's in this modified school it's the most accessible place you can imagine everything is level there's automatic opening doors inside it's it's set up like a regular office there's there's cubes and computers and the job coaches there help people work with their computers things like I gaze detectors or foot controlled Mouse's special keyboards it's just it's wonderful a typical day people show up on para Transpo get going on their job coffee breaks lunch there is is great a little more work home on para Transpo fantastic place so tetra sent me there to meet a client named Steve and a job coach named William now the first time I went to computer wise I was terrified I was at great risk of saying or doing something terribly inappropriate I had no idea what Steve would be like or what his challenge it's worth we met Steve and William and did the usual awkward chitchat and Williams started to explain to me what was going on Steve has a hard time using his muscles he gets around in a power wheelchair he can type slowly but surely using a special keyboard William had hooked up the joystick on Steve's wheelchair to act as a computer mouse and so pointing and clicking is a really effective way for for Steve to use as his computer Steve doesn't speak he communicates using a thing called a bliss board which is basically a big piece of cardboard with a bunch of words and the alphabet on it and during those first few minutes Steve used the bliss board to ask had we met before at a Tetra computer wise meeting William had to act as translator because it's a bit tricky to figure out what what Steve's staying on his bliss board I said no I'd been away in in Vancouver on a business trip William continued on with his idea Steve had tried some rather expensive speech synthesis tools and when I say speech synthesis - I'll think Stephen Hawking and when I say expensive think óbuda got car he hated them they were useless they made it a little bit easier for people to understand Steve but the words were in different places the it was too hard for him to work it and so Williams idea was could Scott build an electronic version of Steve's bliss board while we were sort of looking at the board and I was taking these pictures you see and I was thinking about the project suddenly Steve grabbed my arm and he pointed at two words on his board why jet so I managed not to panic I thought hmm are you asking me about my business trip to to Vancouver to banks that means yes now in a way this was Steve's first input on this tool and how it should work Steve typically points at two words or more often one word in one letter to get his point across and as the person trying to talk to Steve that's that's pretty tricky and he's upside down and you have to keep track of the conversation and what he might be asking you about why jat a bit of a lucky guess well what was I doing in Vancouver and as I as I told Steve about visiting a chip company in Vancouver and they needed some help doing a chip that goes in a CT scanner I could see that getting to know Steve and visiting computer wise what's gonna be as much or more important than any tool I might be able to hack together much later William told me that when he and Steve are talking about me and I'm not around Steve points to man s so I made myself a a t-shirt okay we're at the point of the speech where it sort of makes sense to show you show you a close-up of Steve's board as he calls it originally I thought I would just show the source code it's well commented and I thought this is Kannada my story should be self-evident from from the code but they talked me out of doing that so here's here's the board and you can see it's been used to type the first thing Steve ever said to me that I understood why jet the day in the parking lot was the day I first dropped off this tool for Steve to look at and he started using it right away practicing with it Williams idea that replicating the Bliss board exactly was it was perfect it was it was exactly right Steve would email me every couple of weeks with with ideas to change the colors to match the Bliss board better change the labels on the page button could I have the words speak out loud immediately rather than waiting for the read button up in the corner and that the tool is really just a website so I could make those changes right away and then I'd wait to see how he liked it one thing you might have noticed that's a little different from his actual Bliss board is there's no pictures on the software - all I was having a real struggle trying to download enough pictures to match the words and get them on the buttons in a way that that they didn't obscure that the text and so I I finally wrote Steve an email apologizing for the delay and he he wrote me back and said oh I don't need those pictures now everybody involved with the project thought this the pictures were critical so you know we all learned something about Steve and that was a nice surprise one day I got an email and I could see from the use of lowercase and uppercase in the words that were in Steve's email he'd used the tool to write the email I got ahold of William right away and sure enough yeah Steve had figured out that it was way easier for him to write an email using the tool so we immediately added a copy and paste button to make it easier still a completely new and unexpected use for the tool that's really become more important than than the original purpose the email feedback started coming more quickly - and the development expect accelerated plus Steve and I started adding a little more chitchat so here's me telling Steve I'd been away on another business trip this time to Quebec City and he's asking me how was it he'd like to go there and what's the wheelchair accessibility like and in old Quebec another thing I noticed about about Steve's bliss board was that to a certain extent the the words on the board were oriented towards getting through the day I need such-and-such and maybe not so much to having a conversation so I thought I'm gonna add some buttons where Steve can actually program the word himself source code for that is really good but I can't show here's Steve using the tool it's a close up and he's plugging a radio station so me and William and Steve the guy who can't talk on radio together the DJ Jeff lorac at ckcu sent us the the script and the questions he was going to ask Steve way ahead of time and Steve took his time programming the button so that when the day came all he had to do was press the one button to say the whole sentence it was an awesome adventure and yet another completely unexpected use for the tool I emailed Steve to say boy that was fun he mailed me back and said it was do you know anybody on TV now unbeknownst to us someone actually heard that radio show and sent our name into the 6 o'clock news and Joel Haslem came and we actually got on TV as well so that was super fun I think the three of us are probably gonna work on this tool forever we are currently trying to get a version going on a tablet so that Steve can have it on his wheelchair as a portable version we're improving the assigned function and making emails easier we're fooling around with predictive text so right now when when he types one word in one letter the tool pops up a bunch of words that start with that letter just in case the person can't can't figure it out we'll see where we'll see where that goes Williams doing most of the coding now and we're gonna start using the tool with other clients at that computer wise so let's go back to the parking lot it was a cool project and the tools really neat but the message that I'm really trying to convey is this I was so lucky to find a way to take my passion the thing I would have been doing anyway and just do that thing in a way that helped someone else and and and in a small way made their world a better place and the result was so moving and so uplifting it was the most amazing experience and I come back to this parking lot often either literally I go visit Steve and William and work on other tatra projects or metaphorically where I'm anxious or stressed and I think about that wonderful feeling and and how I can just do this and feel this way and it doesn't have to be a fancy tool it doesn't have to be anything more than having lunch with someone or reading a book or going for a walk I think you know I invite you all to to do it and join me here in this parking lot and make the world a better place thank you [Applause] [Music]