[bcab] Re: Fw: assistive technology - blind and no arms

Ottawa Canada

Dear Terry:

A friend of mine who is now deceased ran into a brick wall when
she needed voice input and speech output here in Ottawa.

The voice input people were the Augmentative Communications folks
at the rehab centre, but they knew nothing about Speech output.

And the CNIB, who know their way around Speech Output and screen
readers, knew nothing of speech input!

Everyone said she needed Jawbone, but she wanted a live demo of
it before she spent rehab's money to buy it and no dealer  or
manufacturer was prepared to either come to Ottawa to demonstrate
how the product would magically make Dragon Naturally Speaking
and Jaws for Windows work together.

Without Jaw Bone or J-Say, she found she could dictate about half
a dozen words into a word pad document, then the whole computer
froze and nothing but a reboot would start it running again.

From my perspective, it seems that the multiply-handicapped end
user has to be their own Chief Engineer and Project Director when
it comes to marrying different technologies for them.

My friend was blind, had severe Diabetic Neuropathy and was Motor
Impaired so she could not reliably use a keyboard.

I had a phone call to the makers of Jaw Bone returned by their
president while he was driving his car somewhere and I think him
having to concentrate on his driving detracted from the phone
call.

Brian

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