Interviewer: We're seeing our work evolve into the context of therapeutic recovery, or therapeutic work. Having just helped to initiate a project in the Bay Area with disabled students, I found that directly addressing these issues with disabled youth is quite complex. I wondered if you and your colleagues had talked about ways that this ability to compose imagery an text and voice and meaning plays a role in the therapeutic work that these kids go through. How can the projects or processes be shaped in regards to the therapeutic value of the work?

Susan Abdulezer: It's a very crucial part of the work. The fact that one of the things that you need to do most when you're in school or really anywhere, is you have a need to communicate. It is one of the biggest problems with kids who have difficulty communicating because they either can't speak or they can't see or they can't form their words. There is no easy means to deliver their ideas. And that always leads to a tremendous amount of frustration. And whenever there is tremendous amounts of frustrations, there's always some need for therapy. But sometimes, you can kind of avoid all of that by giving people the means to communicate their ideas and sort of slip past or slip over the barrier.

The neat part of this whole digital age is that you can kind of choose your weapon. If you're better at communicating in sign language, you can digitize your video and you can express yourself that way. Or if you're better at learning that way then teachers can develop a whole hyper Sign environment and embed signs left and right. And give sign lists and sign browsers and all of that good stuff. And if you are better at learning in more focused repetitive mode, information can be presented to you that way.

Because things are digital, the new kinds of interfaces that allow you to input and draw out information from the computer are changing all the time and becoming much more flexible. So just because you can't move anything except your eyes, doesn't mean you can't communicate anymore. In terms of that kind of therapy, it's tremendous.

In terms of remote therapies, it has hardly been exploited in terms of therapies of the Web. But now, there's going to be an explosion in that. I haven't tried this out, but there's a force feedback mouse that has recently come out that is actually affordable. I saw the beginnings of this ability to get a physical feedback from a computer several years ago when I was up at MIT at the media lab and there was some experiments there.

Interviewer: Force feedback is the idea of the tracking aspect of the mouse suddenly gives you a physical sensation as you cross a hot spot.

Susan Abdulezer: Right. If you created a pattern on the computer, for example. This is what I saw a few years ago. As I moved the joystick the cursor moved across that pattern. I actually got feedback that let me know what that pattern was like by feeling it. And it's gotten much more sophisticated. The implications of this technology has not been developed because it has not been around long enough. But certainly for doing remote therapy, people can over the Web deliver media solutions that create certain feedback that can help others. Totally uncharted, but a possible area for experimentation and development. In terms of what I had done with the virtual alphabet book, I would love to include the force feedback addition to it.

With a project like the virtual alphabet on the Web, and a portion of it is on the Web already, you can help kids across the country who might need to manipulate a VR object that was like an alphabet block, that kind of thing. The classroom is no longer just your four walls anymore by any means. The variety of the media, it's just tantalizing in how many ways you can get learners involved.

Interviewer: That's so exciting. I think all of us can imagine a universally accessible classroom which does away with many of the ghettoizing aspects of special education.

Susan Abdulezer: Oh, yeah. I just had an experience. This was a limited one. But when I was in Hawaii, I was asked to do a presentation at the University, a couple of presentations, but one was an actual teleconference with remote locations. So, I was on Oahu, and there were five students were physically there. And there were a whole bunch of students who were on the island of Lanakai and Molokai, all these different places. And I was interactively talking to people who were not physically in the room. It could have just as easily had been a group of deaf students who I could have signed to remotely. And that was only using the video capabilities. And they would just do the video feed onto the computer monitor so they could see what I was demonstrating. But it was really slightly disorienting. But it was very exciting to see that. I could see the problems of orientation disappear once we replace video feeds with computer feeds once the modem speeds are fast enough.

Interviewer: Part of this process is that as we give voice to more of these people, we are unlocking a wealth of stories that can feed the larger culture. We need to learn more from the extraordinary strength that comes from people who are overcoming tremendous communicative barriers or physical barriers.

Susan Abdulezer: Yes. The digital age has created storytellers whose stories would never have been heard before and that's the most exciting thing to me about digital storytelling.

Interviewer: That's the reason to subscribe to the whole notion.
Susan Abdulezer: You can communicate through all these layers of sensory channels. And it's making the sights and the sounds and the rhythm of ideas all portable. And it doesn’t matter what they look like or who you are. The whole idea that you could make them both personal and portable; and therefore, distributable is just amazing to me. And that you can choose your tools no matter who you are. You have a choice. It's not just the literary tradition. It's not writing it down. It's just not telling the story in a theatrical way. But you can choose it. So, everyone a can really make some kind of an impact .