LEO, "Lyons Electronic Office", was the world's first operational business computer. Among recent reminiscences by Tom Brooks, who joined Leo Computers as a programmer in 1963, is a suggestion that the company also led the world in enabling programming by visually impaired people.
In the early 1960s, the Post Office was already a large user of third-generation LEO machines. Tom Brooks writes:
The Post Office was a benevolent employer. It accepted that it had a social duty to engage a variety of people suffering with a disability. [...]
The use of braille in mechanised output was not a new concept. The first commercial typewriters that produced braille were available by 1952. From 1960, the need to produce output in braille, to enable partially sighted and unsighted individuals to read, was addressed by the American Printing House for the Blind in Louisville, Kentucky. Producing readable output in braille instead of as text is known a “braille translation”. In 1965, braille translation software was made available on the IBM 7090 computer in order to produce output in braille.
What was different about the LEO experience was that braille was to be used by visually impaired programmers for the benefit of sighted persons. The programmes were developed entirely in braille by visually impaired people. The whole computer programming cycle of producing and testing programmes, to produce computer applications that would be used by sighted people was conducted by visually impaired people. It is not believed that this had been done before.
The Post Office collaborated with the RNIB to test the aptitude
of two visually impaired persons for engagement as
programmers. These successful applicants were then
engaged by the Post Office [and] programming started in 1965.
Tom Brooks' article also serves to remind us that the UK Post Office was once a leader in information technology. What a contrast with the situation today!
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