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Enhancing Your Wellbeing
by Aaron Smith on Wednesday, January 7 2009The adaptive technology market is a very small, concentrated group of people. There are those dedicated to furthering accessible solutions and enabling customers, those concerned most with profit margins and the bottom line, and those who fall somewhere in beteween. While that kind of broad, vague, generic statement pretty much sums up any collection of businesses, we in the AT field are very defensive and protective about our respective business missions. When those missions are questioned, we take it personally, as if our own personal ethics were under attack.
GW Micro's mission statement (found on our About Us page) states:
"We believe in equal opportunity for everyone, regardless of disability, and strive to provide products that enhance a person's overall wellbeing by creating tools that aid in obtaining employment, furthering education, and opening doors to a world of infinite possibilities through access to the latest computer technologies."
Some might complain about that kind of fluffiness, claiming that mission statements are nothing more than sales and marketing drivel devised to tell you exactly what you want to hear in an effort to gain your hard earned cash. And it's hard to argue with those complaints. But we did spend time thinking about what our ultimate (and honest) goal as a business was, and that's what we came up with. That's all we came up with, too. There aren't pages and pages of this crap. That's it. Simple, to the point, no BS.
So what does all this have to do with the price of beans? I experience the stress and frustration, the joy and excitement, the heart and soul of the development of all GW Micro products every five out of seven days (sometimes more). And as biased as I am, I can say with a clear conscience that we continue to stay true to our mission. And I believe Window-Eyes 7.0 is proof of that idea.
I'm not visually impaired. I don't know what it's like to depend on a product like Window-Eyes. Not just use it, but depend on it. But I know those who do. I talk to them all the time. I work with them. I know the accessibility struggles that can exist when things just don't speak right (or at all). And I understand the barriers that make living with a disability a substantial, yet surmountable, challenge.
I think I say this after every release, but I continue to feel exceptionally proud to be part of a team that can produce a product like Window-Eyes as a tool to make people's lives easier -- to "enhance a person's overall wellbeing." I think that philosophy rings true in the way GW Micro does business for the entire product line.
Well, enough self congratulations. Happy Window-Eyes 7.0, everyone!
