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Cricksoftware2
We had children using switches as well, so we were getting kids connected up to switches
and getting them scanning. And we wanted to get them progressing with their literacy and
their language development but the problem really was that any software that was around
at the time for accessing the computer, it all seemed to have been designed with adults
in mind. There wasn’t really anything around that was…that was really giving kids access
to…to writing and…and I realized that what we really wanted to be able to do was
to…to get some of these children that we had using switches who would be capable of…of
putting a few words together into a sentence but couldn’t possibly cope with a single
letter at a time. I mean it would…it would take them way too long to do that and they
wouldn’t be able to sustain the strength to use the switches for that long. And there
really wasn’t anything around that…that wasn’t very, very complicated to set up.
And so I…I started sort of formulating this idea – wouldn’t it be great if you could
have this program where you’d have a grid with words that would go into another…that
would go into a word processor when you selected them and they would scan and…but wouldn’t
it be great if it wasn’t complicated to set up that grid and what’s more, that if
you could just change the words whenever you wanted, so the teacher would be able to change
them instantly without having to go into some complicated editor.
I started to think about this idea…I thought this…you know, this has to be possible to
do this and then I got the opportunity then ‘cause at the time, we had…we had three
young children and Ann, my wife, was at home. She had a few years off looking after the…looking
after the children when they were young and she was ready to go back to her teaching job.
And so we…we agreed that we would…we would kind of swap over so Ann got a job teaching.
I finished my job and I did…did a lot of work taking the children, ferrying the children
to school and…and cooking the meals and stuff which was great. And then…but the
majority of my day was…was then spent programming. I really got stuck into that and I say the
majority of my day—I also went…went back to it at sort of 8 o’clock in the evening
when the children went to bed and then I’d…I’d carry on there until about two in the morning.
And so I worked incredibly…at all hours because I loved it and it’s…it’s very
addictive. Programming is very addictive and all…and so that’s how it all got started.