Paul Blenkhorn

Paul Blenkhorn is currently Professor of Assistive Technology at Manchester University, England. For around twenty years he has been involved in the development of computer-based systems to support people with disabilities in daily life, education, communication and in access to computer systems.

His career started at the Research Centre for the Education of the Visually Handicapped in the early 1980s where he developed a range of computer based systems for blind and visually impaired children and adults. In the mid 1980s he left the Research Centre and was one of the founders of the assistive technology company Dolphin Systems. In 1991 he left Dolphin and returned to academia at UMIST. His interests have consistently been in three areas: sensory stimulation for profoundly disabled individuals; the use of technology to support visually impaired (including blind) people; and access to computer systems for people with disabilities. Over the past years an area of particular interest has been exploring how computer systems can support fully sighted people who have difficulty reading print.