Vint Cerf Quotes

I like the iPhone, the iPad, all the various members of that family. But I like all the various technologies that are becoming available to make the world more accessible to people who are blind and with low vision. I also like that more and more people are committing themselves to close captioning so the deaf can really know what's going on. I like the position of making buildings more accessible by having ramps and various ways people who are paraplegic to be able to get around.

Also note that invariably when we design something that can be used by those with disabilities, we often make it better for everyone.

We want to galvanize people's imaginations. With enough political will and investment, we could make wheelchairs obsolete.

They told me that the hotels had maybe two rooms set up for people with disabilities, but if they got there too late, and didn't get one of these rooms, they couldn't take a shower. The room wasn't hooked up for them, or maybe the sink was too high.

I tell people that if I'm ignoring them, chances are I may not have heard them. I depend on hearing aids, but I've not found it a problem. I'm visually very aware!

Our old site did not have very good support for the disabled, but our new site should soon have much better support. With all of our content in divs now, we can hide all but the relevant chunks of content and navigation with a simple alternate CSS file.

Touch a man who can't walk up right, and that lame man, he's gonna fly.

I know that there'll be a continuation of making the world more accessible for people with disabilities.

To the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost blind you draw large and startling figures.

Accessible design is good design - it benefits people who don't have disabilities as well as people who do. Accessibility is all about removing barriers and providing the benefits of technology for everyone.

I want my work to be accessible to people.

The issue in Web accessibility is the fact that blind and visually-impaired people need the single biggest boost to achieve equivalence, since the real-world Web is a visual medium.

Design should not dominate things, should not dominate people. It should help people. That's its role.

In my own home, where I've been able to create an environment that works for me, I'm hardly disabled at all. I still have an impairment, and there are obviously some very restrictive things about that, but the impact of disability is less.

'Mosaic' is about what we see and what we don't see. I learned how people can develop other senses to compensate for a missing one when I was a child. My best friend, Carol, who is profoundly deaf, saved me from an approaching car that she 'heard' when I didn't.

I am all for anything that is going to better equip a person who is physically challenged in any way, to have an opportunity to be able to do what they are able to do.

Of course I read Braille, yes.

I remember the beginnings of the Kurzweil reading machine. I was one of the first to meet Ray Kurzweil and purchase the reading machine in Boston. To think that the machine was at least two and a half large suitcases at the time, and now you have a camera and it takes a picture and you have sound.

… a blind man talking to a group of deaf people

It's not well appreciated, but over half of the world's population suffers from some form of cognitive, emotional, sensory or motor condition, and because of poor technology, too often, conditions result in disability and a poorer quality of life. Basic levels of physiological function should be a part of our human rights. Every person should have the right to live life without disability if they so choose -- the right to live life without severe depression; the right to see a loved one, in the case of seeing-impaired; or the right to walk or to dance, in the case of limb paralysis or limb amputation. As a society, we can achieve these human rights, if we accept the proposition that humans are not disabled. A person can never be broken. Our built environment, our technologies, are broken and disabled. We the people need not accept our limitations, but can transcend disability through technological innovation. Indeed, through fundamental advances in bionics in this century, we will set the technological foundation for an enhanced human experience, and we will end disability.

Everything in my house has had to be specially adapted, from the height of the bed to the positioning of doorknobs. Even my Rolls Royce had special stacked pedals and an extra-low steering wheel.

The problems of the disabled are unpopular.

When people have hearing loss, I think they often take that burden and pass it on to their friends and family, and we make them scream and yell at us so we can hear! But I think it's better to take responsibility and wear hearing aids!

A lot of society tries to put people with disabilities into one cube, and when you think about it, many, many people have different types of disabilities, and you cannot put a code that applies to towards everyone - generally, they can be guidelines, but in the long run, interior designers and architects need more education on the subject.

Hearing aids didn't cause any problem with my social life, my career, no problem at all, and I've been wearing them for a long time. As a matter of fact, once I became an entertainer and started working on television, I was probably the first performer to talk about hearing problems on the air.