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News and Events
Dr. Sara Basson, IBM, receives honorary degree from Saint Mary's University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, May 2004
Dr. Sara Basson's Address:
Good afternoon, and thank you, David, for your very kind introduction earlier. I stand before you today to present a brief address on behalf of the honorary doctorate recipients. I am overwhelmed by the honor and so proud to be receiving this recognition from Saint Mary's University, an institution I have come to know and love over the last five years when our joint projects first began. I am at the same time deeply humbled by this honor. I'm grateful to be able to share this moment with my husband Amnon and my four sons, Jordan, Tom, Jesse, and Adam. I'm only saddened that my parents are no longer alive to savor this moment with us. It would have meant so much to them.
In preparation for this address, I did what I typically do in unfamiliar situations: I conducted research. I browsed the web for other sample honorary doctorate speeches. What have others before me said in similar circumstances? What is the typical tone? I found a plethora of honorary doctorate addresses, but I also found that it would not be easy to plagiarize content or tone. Some honorary doctorate recipients preceding me were Kofi Annan, Nelson Mandela, Henry Kissinger --you get the picture. These are all Nobel Prize recipients and the content of their speeches was already tied to their phenomenal accomplishments.
But on deeper reflection, I realized that I too have some phenomenal accomplishments to impart and important messages that I would like to share with you as you begin your own journeys towards advanced education or professional opportunities. The accomplishments I would like to share are not mine alone. They are very much shared with many others at Saint Mary's University and just as many others at IBM. --But then again, team-based, shared, accomplishments is very much a theme of my talk to you today.
Many years ago, Saint Mary's University, nestled here in Halifax, Nova Scotia, emerged with a world changing vision. Saint Mary's University had already established itself as an inclusive university, embracing students with diverse backgrounds, and accommodating students with a range of disabilities. Accommodation can be straight-forward or complex. Creating ramps for people in wheelchairs is straightforward. The existence of a ramp translates as access and the absence of a ramp is a barrier. --But then there are also the more subtle and complex opportunities to ensure access. If a student with a learning disability has someone assigned to take notes for him or her, is that access? Is it adequate access? What sort of accommodation is needed and reasonable for a hard of hearing student? The Atlantic Centre for Students with Disabilities here at Saint Mary's University struggled with these questions. As Saint Mary's reputation grew as an institution that accommodates all students, more students with disabilities were attracted to these hallowed halls. It is usually possible to provide the bare minimum that students need to survive the academic experience.
But Saint Mary's wanted to do more. Under the guidance of Dr. David Leitch, a vision began to emerge. The vision was one of a university that offered students with disabilities the same experience that was available to students without disabilities. The experience would be as free of intermediaries as possible. That is, additional people assigned to assist students with different needs. Intermediate--intermediary assistance is wonderful and often necessary, but intermediaries are often expensive and otherwise occupied, leaving students that need additional accommodation unable to participate. What if instead, we could automate that process? What if many students in need of external assistance could suddenly get by without external intermediaries? What if we could make an accessible classroom experience simply education as usual? This spawned the notion of the Liberated Learning Initiative, which you've already heard mentioned today, a project pursued jointly by Saint Mary's university and IBM Research that has gradually attracted the attention and participation of some ten other universities worldwide. The Liberated Learning work is led by Saint Mary's University under the skilled project management of Mr. Keith Bain--here in this audience, although I don't quite know where.
The kernel of the project is as follows. Professors participating in the project present their lectures wearing wireless microphones and speaking into IBM's speech recognition technologies. The lecture appears as captions on a screen in the classroom and Deaf or hard of hearing students can read the captions in real time. At the end of the lecture, the transcript is edited to repair any errors and the audio and text of the lecture, along with the slides, are posted to a web site. Voila: multimedia lecture notes, of benefit also to students with learning disabilities or motor impairments, as well as students that need to refresh their recall with complete class notes for any number of reasons. In the community that focuses on people with special needs, this is referred to as Universal Design. The original intent was to assist Deaf and hard of hearing students in the classroom. Instead, a solution was created that meets the needs of many students with many diverse disabilities, as well as students with no disabilities at all.
Many of us may be surprised that technology designed to assist a particular group of students with special needs ends up benefiting all students. We shouldn't be. We are another link in a long chain of similar discoveries. A fascinating list of a number of these innovations is chronicled by Steve Jacobs, of the Center for an Accessible Society. For example, in 1808, Pellegrino Turri built the first typewriter so that his blind friend could write legibly. Alexander Graham Bell was granted a patent for the telephone in 1876, which was one of the devices that he developed in support of his work with Deaf people. Early speech synthesis work at Bell Laboratories, such as the voice coder, were originally envisioned as machines to help Deaf people speak more intelligibly. The list continues, including such mainstream staples as captioned films and email as a basic component of the Internet, originally conceived and designed to assist a particular disabled group and now, clearly, of benefit to all.
Working with the Liberated Learning Initiative has been an inspiring experience for all of us involved. We all share a vision that the success we have experienced must grow further. The technology needs to improve to do the job more accurately and more transparently. The application of this technology needs to spread beyond the college lecture hall to lower education, to corporate meetings, to museum tours, and to houses of worship--wherever people gather and talk. The leadership role of Saint Mary's in this area should be something you carry with you and something that inspires you in all of your life dreams. The vision began here in Halifax, Nova Scotia and is having profound world-wide influence. Carry that thought with you, and the David and Goliath model that comes to mind: never be deterred by the fear that you are too small, too insignificant on the world map to make a profound difference. In the end, I believe that passionate individuals make many of these world changing differences, and in the unforgettable words of Henry Ford, "Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal."
But don't go it alone. The Atlantic Center team at Saint Mary's knew that they needed a strong technical team to pursue their dream and to advance the vision. They approached IBM Research with the same tenacity and enthusiasm that has characterized this project from the beginning. They engaged with a group at IBM Research committed simultaneously to advancing the state of the art in speech technology and advancing accessibility for all. A partnership with deep roots was formed between like-minded individuals within like- minded institutions. How similar is IBM to Saint Mary's University? On the surface perhaps, not at all. --But in fact on deeper exploration, we share many similar values. IBM's Accessibility Center mirrors Saint Mary's Atlantic Centre for students with Disabilities. Both have accessibility as a cornerstone of their philosophies IBM first hired an employee with disabilities in 1914, long before there were mandates requiring corporations to be more active in this arena. Saint Mary's Atlantic Centre helps clients throughout the province of Nova Scotia and has developed an international reputation as a leader in providing support services for students with disabilities. Both Saint Mary's and IBM have assumed key roles in driving services and technologies for people with disabilities --Saint Mary's in the educational sphere, IBM as a corporate entity.
As you leave Saint Mary's University, many of you will be entering the professional world. As they say, go forth and prosper. --But if at all possible, love what you do. My perusal of other graduation addresses led me to the following quotation: "Find a job you love, and you'll never have to work a day in your life." When people greet me at the end of the week with expressions like TGIF, I smile and nod, but in fact, I don't share their sentiment at all. The weekend is just another manifestation of time that I enjoy with more opportunities to spend time with friends and family. --But I could just as easily say TGIS when Sunday rolls around, since I am just as eager to return to my IBM-centric activities to projects like the Liberated Learning Initiative, projects with the research, technology, and influence of IBM coupled with the drive, vision, and mission of Saint Mary's University, can change the course of education for students with disabilities and ultimately change the world.
Today, at your commencement, I want you to imagine yourselves some years from now standing where I am and providing an address to graduating students. What do you want to be able to say about who you are and what you have done? Commencement is the beginning. Start your journeys. Thank you. [applause]
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