              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 
relationship with Hans Thiel has always been close, says that Thiel 
was unhappy with the service VTEK and then TSI was providing. Delahante 
refused 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. 
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