Berkeley Systems was a San Francisco Bay Area software company cofounded in 1987 by Wes Boyd and Joan Blades. It made money early on by doing contract work for the National Institutes of Health, specifically in making modifications to the Macintosh so that it could be usable by people with very low vision, or even the blind. Several of these Access programs were licensed by Apple Computer and added to the operating system. Perhaps the most ambiti...
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Berkeley Systems was a San Francisco Bay Area software company cofounded in 1987 by Wes Boyd and Joan Blades. It made money early on by doing contract work for the National Institutes of Health, specifically in making modifications to the Macintosh so that it could be usable by people with very low vision, or even the blind. Several of these Access programs were licensed by Apple Computer and added to the operating system. Perhaps the most ambitious of these technologies was a program that could read the Macintosh screen, called Outspoken, which won a technology award from the Smithsonian in 1990.
The first commercial success for Berkeley Systems was a virtual desktop product for the Macintosh called Stepping Out. Given the small size of the first Macintosh screens, this product had some use and the idea was widely copied. The much bigger success was After Dark, a modular screensaver and the first of its kind to be sold. The idea was brought to Berkeley Systems by Jack Eastman and...
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