Re: How many sighted people think the blinds use computers )was jaws speech recognition software)
- From: Yardbird <yardbird@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 24 May 2009 15:02:40 -0700
Dear Bruce,
Oh, my gosh! I guess I'll have to flog myself. Sorry I didn't include the
word Jaws in that post, as anyone does when they want to share something
thoughtful but fear they're not as on topic as a higher authority might
otherwise judge the post to be. but I'm almost sure I included the word Jaws
in there,didn't I? yes, I remember that. Well, no matter. It upset you
anyway. and I'm so, so sorry to have distressed you, Bruce. Please accept my
apologies. I wish to make amends. Is there anything I can do that would be
of service to you or your community? organize a benefit car wash, for
instance. Just say the word. Of course I'll be reading your response using
Jaws, I should certainly say. not Window eyes or NKVD (sorry, little
Soviet-era joke)
Yours in friendship and sobriety,
Joel
----- Original Message -----
From: "Bruce Toews" <bruce@xxxxxxxx>
To: <jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, May 24, 2009 2:10 PM
Subject: Re: How many sighted people think the blinds use computers )was
jaws speech recognition software)
I don't see this having anything to do with JAWS. Who died and made me
list moderator? No one. Do I know how to use my delete key? Yes. Next
question?
Bruce
On Sun, 24 May 2009, Yardbird wrote:
> This may strike you as sad, or amusing, or both, depending on your mood at
> the moment. My overall impression from all the fully sighted people to
> whom
> I mention, say, that I Googled something, or read an article in the New
> York
> Times Online, or hand them a sheet of printed material needed for a
> particular situation like the medical visit to which, being a good
> patient,
> I bring a list of my daily medications rather than lug along each time,
> to
> each doctor, a bag containing five pharmacy bottles distinguished from
> each
> other by means of rubber bands, scotch tape, masking tape, electrical
> tape
> and combinations thereof, is a sort of mystified relief. I may be disabled
> officially, according to the long white cane, but I'm not entirely blind,
> which means to them able to see nothing at all. the truth about my visual
> impairment is that it's from a retinal degeneration that's a kind of
> cone-rod dystrophy, meaning the central vision that once allowed me to
> read,
> or see peoples' faces, etc. is extinguish, but I still have a constantly
> diminishing bit of far peripheral vision which, as sightlings know well,
> might enable you to catch a basketball pass coming at you from the side
> but
> wouldn't allow you to read the ball manufacturer's name and logo, say
> Spalding,even if the ball were to stop spinning and coming at you and just
> hang, mid-air, a few feet short . The natural inclination of a fully
> sighted
> person at a hypothetical moment like that would be, of course, just to
> turn
> their head a few degrees so they could see the ball sharp and clear using
> their central retinal vision. Of course, if I were to do that, the ball
> would completely disappear.
>
> Such folks, usually having no idea of how the retina works, always guess
> that however little remaining vision I might have, it must serve for
> reading
> a computer screen and manipulating the computer with my hands, including
> depending on the mouse for everything it's capable of doing. Sort of like
> a
> case of Retinitis Pigmentosa that's down to narrow tunnel vision, but
> those
> 5 or 10 degrees of remaining central function have normal acuity that's
> needed for what we mostly mean we're using when we say we're looking at
> something.
>
> I explain, as briefly as I can, that no, all I see in front of me is a
> bray-blue blur with stuf moving around on it as the display changes in
> this
> way or that, that I can tell is my computer monitor, and a black
> rectangle
> in front of it on the desk that I know is my keyboard. Like most severely
> low vision and totally blind people, I explain, I use a program known
> generically as a screen reader. Mine is called Jaws. This sometimes
> elicits
> a laugh moment during which we both chant the mysterious the shark is
> coming
> music from the movie, establishing common ground that I've seen at least
> something of the world as they themselves know it, breaking down some of
> that barrier sighted people seem to feel that a blind person is completely
> out of reach simply because they can't see you smile or frown or even see
> you've come into the room, which often causes them a kind of paralyzing
> panic. Which they quickly replace, in a venue like a restaurant, with what
> they think will be the practical work-around of addressing all their
> questions to your companion, should you be lucky or unlucky enough to have
> one. What would he prefer to drink with that? Does he like broccoli?Would
> he
> prefer the baked potato or the French Fries? To which a good friend will
> always say "I don't know. Why don't you ask him yourself?""
>
> But I digress, as is my wont. The minute I mention a screen reading
> program,
> they see the U.S.S. Enterprise starship captain, say Captain Picard of the
> second series, sitting back, in his big comfy captain's chair, ordering
> the
> computer to make and send him up a cup of Earl Grey tea, hot, and
> incidentally increase ship velocity to warp speed. If you've never seen
> this,infer something else more easy to imagine other than visually. But
> it's
> the sort of thing those people often refer to. "Oh," they say. "So you
> talk
> to your computer and it does what you tell it to . Isn't it wonderful, all
> this technology they've come up with these days?"
>
>
> if I'm really put off by the way they say all this, sometimes ;; I lose my
> cool and start wagging my head from side to side and singing Stevie
> Wonder's "Isn't She Lovely."
>
> Of course, politely boiling down how a screen reader works is about as
> challenging, for me anyway, as explaining retinal degeneration, but there
> you go. The very idea of a screen reader, for anyone who hasn't happened
> to
> have seen one in use, is just not something that comes easily to mind
> without a little education.
>
> Just trying to get my fingers working with my first mug of coffee. Sort of
> a
> pre-game warm-up.
>
> Joel
>
> --
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