From Holland Bloorview to Berkeley Castle: The History of WordQ

Every piece of software has a story to tell. Every video game you play today can be traced back to a life-sized Tic-Tac-Toe machine displayed at Toronto's CNE expo. Every Windows machine you use today exists, in part, because of Xenix. But where does WordQ's story begin, and where is it going next? Find out in today's article!

Our story begins in the early 1980s. Take on Me had taken over the airwaves, Donkey Kong was sustaining himself on a healthy diet of arcade tokens and loose pocket change, Darth Vader outed himself as Luke Skywalker's father, and in the halls of the Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital, a rehabilitation engineer named Fraser Shein was putting together a team.

This team were the very first of its kind in Canada. United in a core belief of utilizing innovative technology to help empower the lives of children with disabilities, this group of researchers quickly got to work. Early on, they achieved a breakthrough with a program that allowed non-speaking kids with cerebral palsy to program and draw shapes on the computer. This was achieved using only one or a few switches.

This breakthrough caught the attention of IBM, who brought on the group to help make their forthcoming computers more accessible. The work they did with IBM had a ripple effect and continues to influence accessible design to this day.

However, the team made a real mark publicly with the creation of WiViK in 1991. The program was simple: bring the keyboard experience onto the screen of a computer. WiViK was the first commercially available program of its type for Microsoft Windows, and while on-screen keyboards are now ubiquitous, at the time it was an unprecedented offering.

However, the researchers were not the type who rest on their laurels. The accounts of what happened next vary from person to person, but the main story is as follows. Building upon the foundation laid by WiViK, they created two other programs: KeyRep text-to-speech and WiVox predictive text. However, while working with the Writing Clinic at Holland Bloorview, it was discovered that combining these programs would open the doors to empowering even more people in education.

The team was committed to pushing the boundaries further. They began their next project in collaboration with a group of university and hospital research labs called the Ontario Research Technology Consortium (ORTC). Together, they went back to the drawing board and created a program that combined text-to-speech and predictive-text naturally. It was designed to be intuitive, accessible, minimalist, and smart. Its name: WordQ.

The original WordQ was finalized in 1999, but finding a commercial partner for the program was proving to be a Herculean task. Misunderstanding of the product, red tape, misaligned audiences. It wasn't going to work out. If WordQ was going to be successful, it needed a determined vision.

So, in late 2001 Fraser Shein (at this point, Dr. Fraser Shein) decided to take matters into his own hands. He founded Quillsoft, a company designed to promote and develop WordQ, in partnership with Holland Bloorview. Many of Fraser's team quickly joined the firm, and new friends joined the family.

Over the years, WordQ found quick success. It helped empower the lives of millions of learners around the globe. New features such as ThoughtQ Dynamic Topics, PDF functionality and speech-to-text helped supercharge WordQ. As WordQ grew, so too did Quillsoft, moving from Dr. Shein’s basement to a storefront in the Toronto Beach, and finally where it currently resides at Berkeley Castle in Toronto's Distillery District.

However, the story of WordQ is far from complete. Today, in partnership with UK-based education firm Nisai, the team at Quillsoft is hard at work on the newest iteration of WordQ. It is designed to be more accurate, accessible, and empowering than ever. Why? Because it's built on the same values that has always guided Quillsoft:

Esteem. Acceptance. Confidence. Achievement. Belonging. Worthiness. Happiness. & Success.

These core values underline the value of WordQ. By making reading, writing and communication accessible for people of diverse backgrounds, including neurodiversity and English language learners, WordQ empowers the learners of today and tomorrow.

A world in which these values are empowered, is the one Quillsoft works effortlessly every day to see built. Because accessibility is not a stationary target, and neither is technology. With every day that technology evolves, Quillsoft’s capability to help grows in lockstep. And at the end of the day, it's all about helping.