Microsoft researching ways to help illiterate people use computers

The goal is to help the women see how technology can make finding work more efficient, as the first step toward creating broader tools to help illiterate people benefit from technological advances.

Researchers on the Indian project say they have had to overcome their preconceptions about how the technology should work, and why people would want to use it. Kentaro Toyama, a researcher overseeing the project, said the first big hurdle was to understand what kind of computer images actually made sense to the domestic workers.