Category: accessible Devices
As I used my iPhone this morning to read the Bible, update my Facebook, send a text message, scan some barcodes on food boxes, and browse the Internet for some information. My mind started thinking back on how I got here, and the technological breakthroughs that have changed my life. I never will forget the first time I sat down at an Apple 2E computer, and typed out a composition for school, sending a copy to a Brailler, and another to a printer. For the first time, I could hand my work in at the same time as my sighted friends, while having a copy that was accessible for me. In my 10-year-old mind, that was magical! Flash forward about 12 years to Windows95, dialup networking, Internet Explorer 3.01, and Prodigy.net. For the first time, I could go out on the Internet, and pull down virtually anything I wanted, making the computer more than just a tool for composition, but a virtual library on a desk in front of me, a library I could access!
Since then, we have had a ring-side seat as the Blind accessibility market has made technological breakthroughs in web surfing, professional recording, OCR, and many other things. Now, in 2011, I have a device that fits in my pocket that has replaced the computer, and enhanced my experience with interacting with the sighted world. If I'm out to dinner, and need to look at the menu, I can snap a picture of it, do OCR, and read what everyone else is reading. If the menu can't be recognized that way, I can just go out to the website of the restaurant, and pull the menu in that way.
No longer do I have to ask people the colors of clothes. This same device lets me identify colors, scan product labels, read books, listen to music, make phone calls, send text messages, and so much more. It's just one little device, insignificant to most, but it has worked its way into the very fabric of my life in so many ways. The real cool thing about it is, accessibility is out of the box, not bolted on. I didn't have to pay extra for the privilege of accessing a device.
This post isn't necessarily to brag up the iPhone, although it may seem so, but I know many of you have technology that has changed your life. What tech have you used that has changed the way you live for the better? It can be simple, or very high tech, blindness specific, or not. I'm curous.
The vOICe.
Hmm. I've tried using that product, and just can't get the hang of its sounds.
Site logged me out before I could post, and, like a fool I hadn't done a Select All then copy first.
Anyway many people on here already know especially in light of some other threads where people write about returning to older technology.
Jesse, I wonder if it's our mutual age range that makes us appreciate this. People who are idealizing often weren't there.
I missed the whole Apple II business, whether it was just my family was too poor to get one - there were a whole load of us kids, or whether I just wasn't young enough to get the education money for it or what. So I just used a typewriter for everything, except what I personally needed to look at for which I used a Braille writer first, then moved to transcribe it into print.
You're write, everything took many many steps to accomplish.
I got my own first computer in 1993 using JAWS for DOS 2.3 and Word Perfect 5.1. I had heard of JAWS because there was a JAWS manual in Braille laying around in the library, and you remember: Braille material was as hard to come by then as it is now, so I got it and read straight through it in a single afternoon.
The amazingly skimpy access to print is what so many overlook now.
When I got Windows in 1996, with JAWS 1.21, I had more time on my hands than I wanted: I'd just lost a business, and all the network server companies were gone to Windows by then, so I was trying to refit myself and start making money again, with a 15-month-old daughter. Again, the tapes were there, just like the iPhone and iPod podcasts are now, so I knuckled down and learned everything as quickly as possible, got employed as a junior tech weenie.
And for you young kids, you can get by without needing to know as much as we had to know. This is a good thing, don't get me wrong, you can concentrate on doing more and different things, but then I needed to learn everything. Nobody was gonna show us: why would they? Most thought it ridiculous a blind person was trying to use Windows anyway.
And, when I first got on the net, Jesse your words said it best.Instant access to the same material that everyone else used.
You had to use the mouse cursor to read, and when filling out forms you often just heard 'button, button, button,' there was no developer community like iOS has now, devoted to trying to make apps work for us. People either resented the idea outright, or thought it laughable we were trying. At least that was my experience, and certainly I can't have been the only one.
I got my first mobile device - the PAC Mate in 2004. I know some call them notetakers or whatever, but I was looking at a mobile device: had I been sighted I would've got me an iPAQ for what I was needing, maybe a Dell but something with Windows Mobile and the mini Office Suite.
again, a business failure in 2005, and I was working as a blind vendor for a year. Pocket Excel was everything to me: not only my books, but I had my whole store in Excel, treating the row and columns as shelves / compartments, and did some formulas to indicate when we needed to restock.
I worked that PAC Mate like a slave for six years till I recently got an iPod Touch. I've used it to identify boxes of food like Jesse was saying, I do everything for the Coast Guard on it, shop on it, even identify colors and bills with it. Still working on the OCR part: using an LED keychain light to try and act like a flash bulb which seems to help but still working out the OCR aspects.
Anyway, we blind people actually know what it must have been like for people who lived around the time of the Printing Press, I'm sure of it. At least those of us old enough to know. I remember the extremely scant access to any material at all growing up. I never got instructions in any semblance of what they now call accessible formats. You only got the Braille books they deigned to Braille, unlike now where I can go to the iBookstore and just get it like the taxpaying citizen I am, rather than queuing up with my bowl at the workhouse like some sort of Information-based Oliver Twist where you get a smattering of whatever can be ladled out.
On the simpler side, I did recently get a keychain light probe on the recommendation of some on here, and with that I've been able to do even simple things for myself like check the lights on the cable modem or other electronic devices when something's wrong, check to see if the kids left their lights on when they left, etc.
Frankly, I cannot imagine going back: going back to restricted access, where you were grateful to even get a book in the mail, even if it was one you'd rather not read. I turned down almost nothing, though my saving grace for not appearing too desperate was my ability to turn down Guide Post or whatever that thing was with no plots someone tried shelling out to me as a teenager. But honestly, now being able to do things in real time, taking a scanned image everyone got from Command in the Coast guard by email, running it through Smart Scanner, getting the text. I'm participating, not asking for any special accomodations because the technologies are rendering those accomodations obsolete. And it makes me function as a better member of the team. less energy spent trying to explain things, or having to ask for things, and far more spent *doing* things and being constructive.
Is the vOICe - what I have now found via Google to be SeeingWithSound - anywhere in the Apple App Store? I can't find it. They do sell for Android ... but would love to try and use this.
No, sorry. There is no Apple version. I have the Android version but mostly use the PC version on my netbook hooked to a pair of camera glasses which I got just a few weeks ago. I'm still getting used to live views. Before that I just used it on my PC for analysing graphs for school.
I bet it's amazing. Would love to walk around with it.
Yes, simply amazing. Last week, I was wearing it looking out the window on the way to school. Since I can't touch anything that way, most of what I see makes little to no sense. However as we approached the drop off point, I noticed the familiar pattern of the railings along the ramp. I'd walked by this area on other days with the glasses. Normally I don't trust the driver to remember where I drop off point is, so I ask him/her. This time I saw the landmark out my window, knew where I was, and just got out. To make sure this wasn't a fluke, I did it again on a different day. It's something so simple, but I've never been able to do it before, and if I can do that after three weeks, who knows what will happen in a year.
I failed to mention the Xerox/Kurzweil Reading Edge which I got as a senior in high school. It was my first adventure with OCR, and the first "reading machine", as they were called, cheap enough for the state services for the Blind to consider buying. My senior year was, for the most part, braille-less. We got rid of the transcriber that the schoold district paid to put my assignments in Braille, and for the first time, I was completely on par with the other students. It didn't change the entire game, but it did make me feel like I was accomplishing normalcy in the world. That setup got me through college, after which time, the wonderful world of Windows was opened up to me.
Again, Jesse, thank you for bringing this up.
This anti-technology business isn't just in the blind but there are a lot of anti-science, anti-technology zealots out there. To a limited extent, some of my family members fall into this category even though they are benefitting from my access to technology every day of their lives.
I'm not a flower child, pro-technology like some Utopia, but it is just a tool, and up to us to use it. In particular, us blind people, where we can use it to accomodate lack of sight.
My iPod is doing this very well, not just the Digital Eyes folder full of object recognition and OCR apps, but even in my ability to function in the Coast Guard:
As a blind guy I'm not going to be Boat Crew. That isn't a can't do attitude as some zealots may claim: I'm so hopelessly pragmatic I read the regulations and requirements and see I cannot do this without the ability to see.
However, with my iPod in one pocket, a foldable keyboard in a cargo pocket, I can go to an Operations briefing, function as note taker, I mean human being who writes down what's said, forward it to all who were there and those who weren't, leaving the capable on-the-water patrol people to do what they do best.
With a slate and stylus? I don't think so: and I used that since I was ten. Some brag about their speed with it, I'm sure I wouldn't measure up. However even if I did, I'd have to return home and then transcribe it into print on a typewriter and send it out. Now, nearest wi fi hot spot, it goes over the air, and can be appropriately applied without compromising a mission because of my allegedly special situation.So the uncompromised mission works better, runs better, because of new technology and my willingness to use it.
Voyager I would love for that device to come to iOS at some point, or to have the funds to go buy it. It sounds like it would extend our capabilities much further, combined with a bit of good ol' resourcefulness and pulling oneself up by the bootstraps.
Your use of it to analyze graphs is amazing. I have looked at charts on the touch screen in a way I never have before: everybody knows a Braille-transcribed chart is by necessity compromised. But to use your device to look at proportional and context-driven data and structures would sure be an amazing enhancement.
Diverting a little, which foldable keyboard do you use, and how small is it? There are definitely some times when I'd like to take a note faster than typing on the screen allows, the one slight drawback of Apple's devices, but I want something a little more portable than the Apple bluetooth keyboard which I use now.
Also, technology is a tool for our use. I'm not a tool for technology's use.
Love that last statement, otherwise said, we are technology's master: it is not ours. The first button anyone should learn on a device is the off button.
OK I use the Freedom Input Pro foldable keyboard.
It folds in half, and can fit very snugly into a jeans front pocket, or a more comfortable fit in the cargo pocket of my uniform pants which is a longer pocket down the leg.
I think you'll be happy with one, though they are a bit expensive: I paid $80 for mine. They take two tripple A batteries which are supposed to have several months of use.
Jesse, when you wrote Technology is a tool for our use. I'm not a tool for technology's use, I thought about the constant upgrades to Windows, MS Office, etc, then companies like FS. Though your statement should be true, my version of your statement is:
Technology is a tool for our use which is designed according to the benevolent MS and FS sightlings' desired specifications. When these parameters fit my needs, I am not a tool for technology's use.
Since I already had the netbook, and the vOICe software is free, my entire setup cost only about $50 for a pair of camera glasses and wide-angle lens.
Yes, but that is why I like the Apple paradigm so much better. Their software upgrades are quite meaningful, and at $30 for an OS upgrade, which significantly updates the built-in, not bolted on screen reader, who cares if the hardware's a little more expensive? My last Jaws SMA cost $400, and Windows 7 cost me $99, just for an upgrade kit, not the full retail, which is actually the same media, just a different license key. Come on now! Highway robbery? Whose systems cost more to maintain? Oh wait, this post wasn't supposed to be Microsoft and Freedom Science fiction bashing, it was about great technology that helps, or has helped to change our lives for the better!
LOL Freedom Science Fiction! I love it!
Yes. Henter-Joyce was a great company, and Ted Henter really was a pioneer in the Blindness tech field. Unfortunately, when everyone merged, everyone suffered. Now, they make a ton of products, and aren't good at any of them. It's sad, because guys like Ted, and Dean Blazie could've been real innovaters in the field, using today's well-defined access model.
Yeah, same with View Plus technologies. I remember back in 2000 when the first audio graphing calculator came out, and I was one of the first to use it at math camp. It was reasonably priced and useful. Not anymore. The original project belonged to John Gardener, but according to Ms. Osterhaus, some other programmers took it over. Now the AGC costs a lot more, and the math Braille Dr. Gardner invented, dots plus, from what I can tell will benefit hardly anyone because you have to have a viewplus Braille printer to produce it. What good is proprietary?
I guess that's off topic, since this is supposed to be about technology which changed my life, and that hasn't. NVDA, however, though far from perfect, has given me greater independence. After having my PC repaired and all data lost, all I had to ask the tech to do extra was to please open this NVDA installer on my pen drive. I did not have to suffer through FS's 40-minute mode, play around with keys, or call them and ask to have my old key released for use because it was lost on a crashed hard drive. I was free to do some actual work. NVDA is also what my professor uses when we are discussing science in his office.
You weren't off topic: Is not consumer choice anything but a game changer itself for us?
Oooh! Yes, NVDA is a game changer, definitely! I also think System Access To Go is a game changer, because even if you can't install NVDA, you can still pop a website open, and launch a web-based screen reader for free. I support what Serotek is doing!
The braillenote has changed my life. Ok, so I first started using a brailleLight (hate that thing!) in fourth grade for writing english assignments and spelling tests. However, it was still a brailler I used for math, and I used that clear until... high school I think but maybe it was eighth grade... and now I'm using my braillenote Apex for math. The only really tricky part about that is when you have an algebra problem or something that's multiple lines, but it's sooo much easier to take a braillenote to class rather than a brailler or computer. I can still read everything I am writing, it's quiet, small, and best of all I can print off my work or email it to professors instead of having to have it transcribed! That was the case for everything until 4th grade, and math until high school, and I love not having to deal with it!
Slight off-topic, how do you make meaningful math with the Braillenote Apex, do you use LaTeX, or can the Apex translate Nemeth braille back to print in a meaningful way? If so, that's news tome and would be very cool.
Email was the single most game changing technology for me. With email and IRC (Internet Relay Chat) I actually got myself from my home contry of Iclenad into one of the most respected universities in the U.S. and did relatively well there. All, thanks to internet friends, email lists (like Blind Programming) and online books from O'reilly (that company is great for accessible books, at least their books were fairly accessible and often free as long as 10 years ago when I was struggling through my first programming courses, I would not have managed if it weren't for books like "Teach Youself Perl in 21 Days").
Excel is a game changer in itself (with Accessibility). That program has allowed me to be a fairly successful risk analyst in a commercial bank, especially via extensive use of custom scripting, all in a fairly accessible package. FS has many issues, especially very recently, but fair is fair, they have managed to provide pretty good Excel support with a screen reader, something Apple has yet failed to do to a meaningful extent (though I have not played around with Lion, and I am looking forward to it).
I use the iPhone as a technology revolution for my personal live (no one has mentioned the GPS yet, GPS with FourSquare is a pretty decent tool to find friends), but I still relyon Windows and FS for my professional/career prospects, though I am always open to change.
Shout out to NVDA and SAToGo definitely.
Also I am holding out for the hope that epub3 along with Daisy players like the Milestone, will be a huge game changer in the near future, giving me equal access to science and finance eBooks. Epub2 was an already huge step orwards and text books are becomig pretty accessible, but they still fall short when it comes to professional books, such as study books for FRM, CFA or other financial and acconting certifications.
I definitely sufferred from lack of access to these, as a risk analyst, and now that I want back in the game, instant access to relevant material would truly be a game changer.
You use computer braille. just switch to computer braille and play around with it. Like I said, it's not very good with setting up collumns (I've really never tried haha!) but it works for classes. Although I have never tried doing trig and stuff higher up on it, but the calculator can supposedly perform those calculations so I don't see why you couldn't...
the tec changing my life were JAWS, NVDA, my math teacher's posessed calk, and my cel phone, and my vr stream.
Heard vert plus talk in 1985 when I needed to have technology for correcting my work. Got so fascinated I got open book for reading mail at home. That was hooked to a computer with speech. In school, we had no technology. Had to use a braille encyclopedia for researching topics for reports. Used a braille writer and slate only. Took notes in class in braille. Had no cassette recorders then. Am glad to have technology and hope it continues to improve our lives.
me too. in kindergarten we had almost no tec, accept a talking word processor on an old makintosh.
Would that talking word processor happen to have been called Write Out Loud? The voices for that were awesome. I wish there were Sappi voices available for them.
it was called inteli talk. there's a windows version too, wich uses sapi
I can say, my android has really changed my life, no, this is not a plug for the android platform but what it’s done for me. With Google goggles, I can read a food box, look up a bar code and heck even pull down a book from bookshare sit back and read a book with a human like voice. Sorry but this is what I honestly like about android that IOS does not have yet. The fact that I can change my speech engine when ever I want, not based on the app but I digress. For the first time, I can actually get my butt out of computer hot water if my acer goes boom when windows craps out, see what the screen says. For some that might not be much but for me, man!!! its alsome. Like it was said about pulling in menu's, that is cool, the ability to look up a menu on a restronts web sight, figure out what I want and place a order while going to the place. Yes, I could do that with windows mobile but internet explorer was not the fastest thing on that platform, only until the HD2 did it ever get to the point of being quick. So in short, would I ever give up my android phone, heck!!! no!!!, its cool just opening an app, find a radio station with jango, tune in radio and bam!! no need to find a streeming web sight any more. :) :)
what speech engines were supported by android?
And with your Android, you can read a blue screen? This is unbridled awesomeness!
In five years Android's elbow-relation ROS (robotic operating system) will scale that operation way up. Since I'm on T-Mobile this gives me hope about having to use an Android. At least for non-Coast-Guard things.
coast guard? Hay, my dad is a senior chief!
Laquinto, s-vox, e speak, the senth that comes with moble accessibility and I think there is a few more. Go to www.androidaccess.net and look up speach and library to see what android has to off as synths goes. I, do, not, like that peco speach engine but some do because its quite responsive.
the synth included with MA is acapella.
Actually, it is nuance real speak last time I checked, although it might have changed recently. Also, at that time, it could not be used in other speech apps. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Actually, it is nuance real speak last time I checked, although it might have changed recently. Also, at that time, it could not be used in other speech apps. Correct me if I'm wrong.
double posting allert!
I must be getting it confused with mobile speak or the Windows Mobile version of MA.
Sorry about that. I don't know why it happened. Yes, it is true that mobile speak for windows mobile used acapela, loquendo, and some mutation they called dectalk, but was really called, by the developer, garbage code.
The old apple 2e's as I was able to finally type things out in school. Then that moved to Jaws. From there I got to say voice over and the iPhone.
I remember hearing someone at optileck use mobile speak, but it was using the jaws voices.
Oh, I for got to add, the guys over at darwin project who make a money idinifier and a third party app for bookshare, sure have made my world a lot happier, so hats off to them.
darwin project? never heard of them.
there known for darwin reader a third party bookshare app
for what OS? Mac or I phone or WM. Because I think touchscreens are a royal pain in the neck, so I have a WM phone.
Darwin products are on the Android platform, but I don't know if they also work on Chrome OS. I believe there are some desktop products also for some flavors of Linux.
android sorry should have made that known in my last post
I use windows mobile.
The the that has changed my life. is my braille note. i'm able to store adresses in my adress list. and also use the internet and book reader. that i have saved many books on. my braille note isn't the newest tecnolegy but it still works for my personal. use. and i also like my Iphone. i use it to text family and friends. and use it's internet. broser. and listen to music. and also i like my mac book labtop. it's pretty cool. i stay in tuch. with family and chatt with friends all over the wirld. those are my favorite i'll go for now. tecnolegy. i'lltecnolegy inormal
Talking navigation in Google Maps on my Android Phone. Seriously, the future is amazing. I can even use it as a walking feature.
I agree with Miss M, the GPS on the android phone rocks, I have used it to guide cab drivers when we got lost. Also to add to the android front, I love my phone for listening to radeo, reading books, some OCR and doing video's for facebook. HootSweet has saved my hide in FB land, before that app came along, I was just going to leave my FB account dead in the water.
Jaws. Hearing aids. LG 5300 flip phone. Braile Display. The internet.
jaws, voice over, braille note, mac OSX.
for me, it was jaws, first one i used was jaws 4. before that i had to squint to read the text on comp even if it was at 36 font. the internet, not sure where i'd be without it, oh and the iphone. not so much the phone itself, but voice over. first ipod, 2 gig 500 songs, and i couldn't use it that well. when that died, i won a 16 gig nano, and the cool thing, that one talked. i was in heaven. then comes iphone and apps and voice over. much much betterrer. yai. no more waiting an age for stuff to download on itunes on comp. can do it straight on phone.
If you had asked this question just a few years ago, I'd have said Jaws and Kurzweil 1000.
Now? it is without any doubt my iPad! :)
most kids get on the computer at five or six, and by 11 or 12 they are pros at it right. hahaha! well, I ain't. got on it at like 13 or 14 and really got on it at like 14. nearing 15. yeah..... late, I know. so, I am pretty simple in technology, as needed basically.
I would probably say the braillenote I started using one in 4th grade when I was like nine or something. I remember being able to write down stuff at my leasure as many ridiculous amount of pages as I liked. before I used the perkins, not that it's not such a wonderful thing too, anything to write with eh? but still, it's like a computer,, I didn't get on the internet until 7th or 8th grade, but I had a platfform to write on right, and stuff, I didn't have to waste fifty pieces of paper anymore, run out of it, having to lug more home to waste it again by writing short short stories on it. I had no limit, I could do what I want, with no pain, faster, and I didn't have to erase, or block it out, and then type again, I could just erase it and write it all over again. I remember it didn't have internet even it was like version 4.01 or something. and it didn't make that bang bang bang bang loud noise either. so I didn't have to use it so loudly in class anymore.
And, then, well I don't even want to say jaws, it was the computer and the internet, I mean you need something to be able to install that stuff, right, so I think the computer was a great blessing in itself. I enjoyed forums and forums rpg, and being able to talk to friends on it by the forums and stuff and messaage boards like proboards. and, I could also upload fanfictions on it on this site, called fanfiction.net. it was amazing. I didn't have a spot to share my stories before, it was just kind of like, okay, I wrote this story here, well I have no one to share it with. I guess I'll just write it for my own amusement. I didn't have fanfiction fans back then, but still I could put it online and people could appreciate my work if they liked and stuff. it was wonderful. and, I didn't have to use big stereo systems to play my cds anymore, I can just slip it easily in to my cd drive on the thing called a computer. my first device really used was a old 98 of dad's but still wonderful, and when it stoppped working dad bought me an xp the coolest thing back then kind of like your iphone right now I guess.
I also had one of those really cool things they're called a language master, talking dictionary, I think it was called franklin dictionary. I thought that was the coolest thing too! haha! you could just look up a word at your leisure, and play some games it was just ten, but to a 11 years old that was amazing! I still look back in fondness, yes, I would probably get tired of it, but well, hangman was fun on it, I'd lose most times but. eh..... the challenge made it more fun. I really liked it that I didn't have to ask someone to look it up for me, or there was this huge braille dictionary, but looking for the correct volume and then looking up the word was a real pain. so the language master was really really cool. oh and how about like audio books? I think the cds made my day. haha! I didn't have to read so much or back then listen to keynote gold on my braillenote drone on and on for eons, and, stuff, and unlike cassettes which was more popular until like a bit later, you didn't have to carry around so many or so heavy of a load. and, more and more libraries started to carry them as time progressed. so, yeah, loved cds.
Started out with Jaws, went to Window Eyes, and now I have an iPhone. I use it for almost everything. I still use a computer with Window Eyes, but I would honestly prefer a Mac over a Windows computer. I have a PAC Mate on hand, but I don't use it anymore. My iPhone does what the PAC Mate does and so much more, so I honestly don't see any use for my PAC Mate anymore.
I just got my samsung galaxy sIII, let me tell you, it is a game changer for me. I can now use a lot more apps then I could with a gingerbred device thanks to explore by touch.
my very first computer was an old macintosh from 1997 I think, had Inteli talk I on it, pretty cool how I could make the mac sound like a robot.