Computers: The Best Part Is I Can Do It All

Ingenious modifications help the handicapped help themselves

At 19, David Young was left paralyzed when he ran his 1965 Chevy Impala into a tree and broke his neck. In the hospital he learned to drive an electric wheelchair and to type using a mouth stick. But he was 27 and a graduate student at the University of Colorado before he got his IBM PC. "It had become painfully obvious that I could no longer match my peers simply by being bright," he recalls. "The computer opened all sorts of doors for me." Now Young is earning a Ph.D. in biology, working as a laboratory consultant and writing more...

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