POLITICAL TUSSLING IN TECHNOLOGY FOR THE BLIND: THE 1990 UPDATE by Barbara Pierce In the March, 1989, edition of the Braille Monitor we published a story entitled "Wheeling and Dealing in Technology for the Blind." The intervening months have witnessed no decrease in the maneuvering for market share and power in this corner of the technology field. Lee Brown (one year ago the most visible and apparently powerful man at both Enabling Technologies and TBS, the former Triformation Braille Service) is now altogether out of the leadership and serves only as a TBS stockholder and signatory on promissory notes. Hans Thiel, inventor and manufacturer of the Thiel Braille Embosser, came very close to filing for bankruptcy and was rescued only when O.N.C.E., the wealthy organization of the blind in Spain, bought the German concern. And having swallowed up VTEK, TSI has not remained altogether quiet on the West Coast. According to Lee Brown, it toyed briefly with the idea of buying Enabling Technologies in the early summer of 1989 but quickly lost interest, according to sources close to Enabling, who presume that the price was too high. Stuart, Florida, is the home of two closely identified, but legally separate corporations--Enabling Technologies and TBS. Enabling, a for-profit company, is composed of two divisions (in December, 1989, the third component was sold outright to the Chairman of Enabling's board of directors). The parent corporation, however, produces Braille embossers of various kinds and some other sophisticated devices to assist blind people. For almost exactly four years, according to Lee Brown, he served as president and chairman of the board first for Triformation Systems, as the Braille division was known originally, and then for all of Enabling Technologies after the merger. In addition, Brown and two partners, Dan Eastwood and Bill Thomas, jointly purchased TBS, a Braille publishing house which had recently become a not-for-profit corporation but was originally part of Triformation--which, in turn, has undergone acquisitions, divestments, and convolutions. Brown also served as president of TBS, one third of which he owned. Everyone agrees that on May 10, 1989, Lee Brown left both the presidency of Enabling Technologies and the chairmanship of its board of directors to move to TBS exclusively. He remained, however, a member of the Enabling board for several more weeks. Dan Eastwood explained to the Braille Monitor in an interview in June of 1989 that the May 10 shifts had been only a normal rotation in leadership--nothing at all was amiss. He had assumed the chairmanship of the Enabling Board, and Tony Schenk had become president. Lee Brown had merely moved over to TBS to give his full attention to the Braille publishing company, which had been experiencing difficulties in meeting time deadlines in producing Braille and otherwise showing signs of management slippage. Interviewed recently for this article, Tony Schenk admitted that Enabling had suffered substantial losses during the first quarter of 1989 and that the actions taken to remove Lee Brown were actually stockholder and board responses to the poor financial situation. Bill Thomas agrees. He attributes Brown's ouster to "strictly non-performance--he just didn't do the job." Lee Brown's account differs markedly in both tone and substance. He says that on the morning of May 10, 1989, he was told that Enabling was being divided into its three divisions and that he would have control over the Braille division only. In this labyrinthine maze, one must be careful not to confuse the Braille division of Enabling Technologies, which makes Braille-producing machinery but not Braille, with TBS, which makes Braille but not Braille-producing machinery. One must further keep in mind that TBS (just next door to Enabling and allegedly nonprofit) has as its stockholders that same trio of Brown, Eastwood, and Thomas, who are so prominently involved in the affairs of Enabling--which, before the splitting and maneuvering began, was (along with TBS) part of Triformation. That was before Enabling acquired Quadratec (a defense contracting firm) and a hearing aid division, which has now been spun off to Eastwood. Does it make your head spin? Who says the blindness field can't wheel and deal? Brown says that on that fateful May 10 of 1989 he was told that he could not touch the other two parts of Enabling, and he could have nothing to do with TBS. Eastwood, he was told, would be assuming the chairmanship of the Enabling board. (Brown does not say whether he was offered an aspirin.) Brown says he responded that he would prefer to get out of Enabling Technologies altogether (except for his service on the board) and work exclusively with TBS. He was allowed to make that change, and by 10 a.m. Tony Schenk had been installed as president of Enabling Technologies. Brown reports that in July of 1989 he was forced off the Enabling board and told that he could not set foot inside the building. Schenk says that he is not aware of such a prohibition and that he certainly has not limited Brown's access to the premises. When asked why he was forced out of Enabling, Brown sighs and says that several charges were made--charges which he understands that an outside auditor dismissed out of hand after a couple of hours examination of the Enabling books. Brown says that Eastwood, with whom he had been friends for many years, clearly wanted him out and simply set out to cobble together excuses to drive him away. Brown explains that both he and Eastwood believe in borrowing money to do business, but their methods are different. He considers that Eastwood began tampering with some bank arrangements, an action within his rights but counterproductive, and managed to turn the bank personnel against Brown and cause problems where they had not previously existed. According to Brown, Tom Storey, the head of Quadratec (Enabling's defense-contracting subsidiary), told Brown that he had been pushed out because he was "an iron-fisted manager." Schenk agrees with this description of Brown, saying that Brown does not delegate responsibility well and keeps control tightly in his own hands. But Schenk does not attribute Brown's ouster to anything beyond the poor balance sheets at Enabling. Brown maintains that, while he is a demanding manager, requiring hard work from his subordinates, he does not keep watch over everyone's shoulder or insist on making all crucial decisions. Meanwhile the sailing was far from smooth at TBS. According to Brown, several people have told him that Bill Thomas (the third partner in the purchase of TBS, the nonprofit Braille-production company and a man whom Brown characterizes as "a good guy") had come to hate Brown and wanted him out of TBS. In the summer and fall of 1989 Braille production deadlines were only irregularly met (something not new), and there was clearly unrest within the staff (also something not new). Brown points to Judy McQuae (the person in charge of Braille production at TBS) as one cause of problems, but she was conferring regularly with Thomas, and Brown apparently did not feel he had the authority to deal with her decisively. Brown says that rumors began to surface that he was having an affair with a member of the staff--an allegation which seems to amuse Brown, who points out that as a married man and the father of eight he would seem to be a less than attractive candidate for such stories. One small indication of a decline in employee morale and professionalism surfaced during the summer of 1989 and involved the National Federation of the Blind. A packer or proofreader or someone else at TBS with access to the finished copies of the Braille Monitor slipped a nasty little bit of doggerel about an article in the June issue into at least one magazine before it was mailed. No one seemed to know how it could have happened or who was responsible, but it was a straw in the wind, indicating how far standards had crumbled. Difficulties were mounting at every level of TBS, and, as president, Brown was the obvious one to take the responsibility. In mid-October, 1989, he was forced out of TBS. He says that word was passed that no one was to have anything to do with him. If one can judge by production schedules, TBS has not noticeably benefited from Brown's departure. The Braille edition of the Braille Monitor now seems to be consistently rather than periodically late. But Bill Thomas says optimistically that the production problems are now about licked. He assured the Braille Monitor that TBS has now been turned around, and Brown's mistakes reversed. At a board meeting in December of 1989 Brown reports that he indicated his interest in having the other two stockholders buy his shares in TBS so that he could cut his ties with the organization. Thomas said, according to Brown, that he would sell his interest in TBS "at any time for any price." Brown says he pursued that comment with a letter offering to put up some more money and eventually get Thomas's name off the TBS promissory notes, but Thomas told the Braille Monitor that Brown's offer was "totally unsatisfactory." When asked whether he would have difficulty stepping back into TBS after all the unpleasantness, Brown said that he could win back the trust and goodwill of the employees almost immediately. He said that it would be easy to produce hard evidence disproving most of the allegations made against him, and that with the removal of two or three problem employees, he could have TBS working efficiently again very quickly. But for the moment negotiations appear to be at a standstill or, more accurately, appear not yet seriously to have begun. Tony Schenk speaks optimistically of Enabling Technologies' future, and Bill Thomas, at least for now, is actively running TBS despite his being nearly eighty years of age. And Lee Brown is living on his investments, which he characterizes as sufficient to his needs if not princely. He would clearly enjoy becoming a player again, but where and whether is anybody's guess. It is not simply in Florida or the United States that a ferment is occurring in work with the blind. One group that has entered the technology arena so recently that its officials are not yet ready to make statements for attribution is O.N.C.E., the Spanish organization of the blind, which hosted the World Blind Union General Assembly in September, 1988. Late in February, 1990, O.N.C.E. conducted a buyout of Thiel Computer Products GmbH (the company which produces the Thiel Braille embosser). The details of the deal are not yet available, but several things can be said. The Thiel manufacturing plant in County Kildare, Ireland, is now in full production of the Thiel embossers which have become popular in this country. The Irish staff is delighted with the O.N.C.E. takeover, according to Theresa Delahante, Sales Administration Manager. And well the Irish may, for in recent times Hans Thiel has been unwell and strapped for cash, according to American observers, and has not been able to provide Thiel Ireland with the financial backing that the Irish would have preferred. Now O.N.C.E., with its legendary deep pockets, is on the scene; and the folks at Thiel say that this fact can mean nothing but good for their customers and for what they describe as their ongoing commitment "to provide excellent products and excellent service at a competitive and reasonable price." All parties agree that developing the American market is very important to both Thiel and O.N.C.E. Delahante would not comment when asked if there were plans to produce more than the embosser at the Irish plant, but the intention to return to the original plan of producing a full range of Thiel products in Ireland was clearly in the air. The fact seems to be that O.N.C.E. simply has not had time to make the necessary decisions and is withholding comment until it has done so. What can be said is that Deane Blazie, owner of Blazie Engineering and creator and producer of the Braille 'n Speak, is now the distributor for the Thiel Embosser in America. Two units have recently been shipped to him, and through him Sighted Electronics is now receiving a steady stream of replacement parts for the repair of embossers in this country. Blazie is clearly optimistic about the future of the Thiel and reports that he is delighted to have the distributorship back again. Jim Bliss, head of TeleSensory (the name recently settled upon by the company composed of TSI and VTEK), says that he is relieved to have severed his connections with Thiel--from July, 1986, to July, 1989, VTEK was the American distributor. Bliss reports that he traveled to Ireland in July of 1989 to evaluate the situation and concluded that Thiel was not going to improve in its delivery of replacement parts, so he says that he severed the connection. Deane Blazie, whose relationship with Hans Thiel has always been close, says that Thiel was unhappy with the service VTEK and then TSI was providing. Delahante refused to comment on the situation. She did permit herself to sum up matters with a statement that the TSI chapter was closed and "Anything I say will only add to the speculation and controversy.... The road that TSI had mapped out for themselves was quite different from the way Thiel would wish to go." The participants in the July, 1989, negotiations in Ireland between Thiel and Bliss did not wish to comment about the details of the discussions, but those close to the situation suggest that the American price of the Thiel embosser was the crux of the problem. TSI was not prepared to continue to sell the Thiel without including more profit for itself than Thiel believed was appropriate. Additionally, VTEK had never stocked many replacement parts for repairs. As these were needed, VTEK had them shipped from Ireland--a process that took three months. Then when the production plant in Ireland started operations, there was a further delay, a delay that observers believed would not have become a problem if TSI/VTEK had been carrying the inventory they should have been. So there it is--not the end of the story, but merely the latest episode. And in true soap opera fashion we end with the action in full swing. Tune in tomorrow, or at least to an up-coming issue of the Braille Monitor, to find out: Will Lee Brown find himself a new niche in the world of technology for the blind? Can TBS succeed in getting its Braille publications out on schedule? Can O.N.C.E. gold open the New World to Thiel? And what about the marriage between VTEK and TSI? All these questions are of more than passing interest to blind Americans. We will be watching and waiting.