Technology Trends

By Andy Shaw

Bruce Sinclair is President and CEO of WaveRider Communications Inc., a young company specializing in wireless devices that provide corporations and consumers alike with high-speed, low-cost access to the Internet.

Sinclair is a 20-year veteran of the high-tech industry with an admirable business career and a dramatic accident on his record. He’s a former president of computer giant Dell Canada and CEO of Dell Europe. In 1994, on vacation with his family in the Barbados, the athletic Sinclair dropped into shallow water while surfing and broke his back (T11/12 partial). In 1997, he leftDell and rolled into WaveRider’s Toronto headquarters to lead the year-old company with beginnings in Salmon Arm, B.C., onto the world stage. Since then, WaveRider has grown to a staff of over 70 people, with sales offices in seven North American cities and now one in Beijing.

Sinclair, making his first public appearance as a disability spokesperson, discussed technology and its implications for people with disabilities from his office at home, where he is a dedicated telecommuter (and a wireless one, of course).

Q: Bruce, the wireless business you are in is all about access, mobility and convenience. Those are considerations people with disabilities think about and deal with every day. So are there things going on in your industry that are especially important to the disability community?

A: I think so. But first you have to look at employment in general for persons with disabilities, particularly for people with mobility impairments. That’s been my special interest since joining the executive of the Canadian Paraplegic Association (CPA).

I think that the disability community has been slower than I would have hoped for in terms of taking advantage of technology. That’s largely because access to the latest technology is still pretty much limited to the office environment. Half of our business offices in Canada are still inaccessible. So that has been one of the constraints that’s limited the spread of home-based working or telecommuting.

Also, in order to work at home you need high-speed access to the Internet and to other electronic systems. Yet high-speed access like the kind you can get through cable TV companies, for instance, is still quite expensive. And it can reach only about 60 to 70 per cent of Canadian households.

But I think technologies like ours and others mean lower cost access is on the way. That has huge ramifications for employers and employees alike. If they can achieve cheap access to their networks from anywhere, companies will no longer have to employ all their workers within buildings or build huge networks to connect them. That will change the whole working environment and help society in general to accept telecommuting. The biggest beneficiaries of this will be folks for whom mobility is an issue.

Q: So, is there a need for disability groups to take the initiative and help hasten this change?

A: The reason I’m hesitating is because the easy answer is yes. The complicated answer is: How do you do that? I know from my work with the board of directors at the CPA that associations for people with disabilities have such limited resources. And, also the problem is that their focus tends to be short term -- what are we doing with this year’s budget to make an impact this year? So I’m working, for instance, with our fundraising committee at CPA to establish longer-term priorities. One of those is our back-to-work initiative. To get somebody off unemployment and back paying taxes is a huge economic gain, never mind the tremendous emotional and psychological lift it gives the individual.

Q: What about convergence, the blending of computer and broadcasting technologies that’s emerging? We will soon be able to watch TV on our computers and surf the ’Net on our television sets. That’s pretty convenient. Is convergence likely to be of benefit to people with disabilities?

A: My personal opinion on that is that convergence is a much over-hyped concept. We have a couple of favourite TV shows in our household but I never once said, boy, would I like to surf the Internet while we’re watching Friends. And while I’m working at my desk, I have no desire at all to go into my computer and start watching a sporting event. It’s also something I’m sure my shareholders would prefer I didn’t do.

Q: Ah, but I’ve been told you do sneak the occasional peek, while you’re working, at golf scores.

A: There’s no question about that. I am a golf fan and when there’s a major tournament on I will do a couple of clicks at my workstation to get the latest leader board. You might also be interested to know that in my own personal life I’ve put technology to work and play golf out of a specially designed golf cart. It can go onto tees and greens, or into sand traps, and I’ve got my handicap down to 27. Also, in the winter I’ve been doing black-diamond runs for the last three years on a mono-ski. That’s been spectacular. But at age 48, my family is telling me it’s time to slow down.

Q: Clearly you’ve developed some new skill sets since your accident. But what about the skill sets of people in the workplace? For someone wanting to get into the high-tech business, be they someone with a disability or otherwise, what would you suggest?

A: I think the best opportunities are with start-up companies like ours, and there are quite a number of them in Canada. As a group, we don’t have the high-paying jobs or big infrastructures for training and development like the big companies do. But we do provide the opportunity to get some fantastic on-the-ground experience. And we are all desperate for bright, good people who want to come in and help build a company. Start-ups provide a very invigorating entrepreneurial environment. What’s more, in most small organizations, you’ll get to wear a lot of different hats and if you’re successful you’ll have a chance to work in all aspects of the business. That way you’ll really be able to determine what the right career situation is for you.

One other piece of advice: I find that when I travel throughout the world, one of the traits that distinguishes people who are going to be successful is how well prepared they are. And unfortunately, Canadians -- unlike Americans, for example -- are quite often not very well prepared for meetings. I’ve interviewed people for jobs at WaveRider who haven’t bothered to find out anything about the company. But Canadians are capable of being well prepared. (I’m told Jim Carrey the comedian is a fanatic when he is preparing for one of his roles.)

Now that information is so readily available on the Internet, you can do a lot of research and even training at home you couldn’t do before. So I think people with disabilities should make preparedness their competitive advantage.

Q: In your own life, Bruce, has technology taken on any different meaning to you since your accident?

A: Certainly it has. Just showing up anywhere is a whole factor more difficult for me now. But I’ve been able to use technology to control my work without travelling nearly as much as I might, and I’ve found that I can be just as effective.

(Andy Shaw is a freelance journalist living in Toronto and former vice-president of the Canadian Wheelchair Sports Association.)