Stevie Wonder: Touch-screens Alienate Blind (MSNBC)

Motown icon, advocates encourage CES vendors to consider blind needs

January 14, 2009

Stevie Wonder, right, speaks during a press conference headed by the National Federation of the Blind and Sendero Group at the International Consumer Electronics Show.

NEW YORK - The craze for touch-screen gadgets, sparked by Apple Inc's popular iPhone, is raising worries that a whole generation of consumer electronics will be out of the reach of the blind.

Motown icon Stevie Wonder and other advocates came to the world's biggest gadget fest, the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week, to convince vendors to consider the needs of the blind.

Wonder told a CES event that his wishlist included a car he could drive - which he acknowledged was probably "a ways away" - and a Sirius XM satellite radio he could operate.

"If you can take those few steps further, you can give us the excitement, the pleasure and the freedom of being a part of it," said the famed musician.

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