level concept of "paradise," additional research will focus on making the technol- ogy more accurate, SO that San Diego and Thailand will not appear in the anno- tation of the same picture, Wang says. "This system has the potential to change how we handle images in our daily life by giving us better and more access," says Wang. 9.11 DISABLED ACCESS Disabled individuals are typically forgotten in discussions about input/output technologies. Mobile phones, for instance, are still a work in progress with regard to meeting the needs of individuals with disabilities, who are missing out on wireless communication opportunities because of usability problems. 9.11.1 Mobile Phone Interface Virginia Tech's Tonya Smith-Jackson, assistant professor, and Maury Nussbaum, associate professor, both in the Grado Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, are conducting research to improve the cell phone interface for users with disabilities. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 placed the demand on manufacturers of mobile phones to support accessibil- ity for individuals with physical, visual, or cognitive disabilities. "Users with disabilities have been systematically marginalized in the information age because manufacturers and designers have either ignored their needs alto- gether or designed features in a haphazard manner that were intended to enhance accessibility, yet resulted in unusable products," says Smith-Jackson. While trying to operate a mobile phone, users with disabilities typically encounter problems such as small and flat buttons that are difficult to push with bent fingers, keypads with no Braille or tactile feedback to assist with ori- DISABLED ACCESS entation, or lack of voice activation capabilities. Sometimes, special features are available for disabled customers, but the features do not perform consis- tently, such as voice-activated phones failing to work in a noisy environment. People who have more than one type of disability have even greater difficulty operating mobile phones. The first goal of thi