The internet was made for deafblind people
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- Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2007 08:14:49 -0400
BBC Ouch! (UK)
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
The internet was made for deafblind people
By Liz Ball
Equipped with a screen reader and a braille display, the online revolution has
been life-changing for many deafblind people.
If I didn't know better, I would think that the internet was made for deafblind
people. It wasn't. It was made for the military. But I can't think of anything
else that, by itself, has had such a phenomenal impact upon our lives.
Those of us with no useful vision or hearing access the internet using a
regular PC equipped with 'screen reader' software and a Braille display. Ten to
fifteen years ago, before so much of day-to-day life was available online,
deafblind people lived in a very different world.
Before internet
We could not access television or radio, or go to the cinema of an evening.
Correspondence was sent to us in print, which we couldn't read. The same went
for newspapers, magazines and books. Unless, that was, charities got involved
and transcribed information into a format we could read. Imagine finding out
via a weekly Braille news summary, produced by a charity, that for the past
seven days you had been drinking contaminated water because you'd not seen or
heard the reports that it was unfit for human consumption. This really happened.
We could not shop for ourselves, see products, read labels or communicate with
the store's assistants. We had to struggle with this, or wait until somebody
conversant in Deafblind Manual could accompany us to do our shopping. Imagine
something as essential as buying food being so frustrating that one in four
deafblind people went without food or medicine, according to a survey carried
out by Sense and Deafblind UK in May 2000. That's what life was like for
deafblind people before Tesco.com or Sainsbury's Online came to our rescue.
Our only way of communicating at distance was via text phone, and we needed
expensive Braille equipment to use it. Even then we were only able to phone the
small number of people who had the same equipment at the other end.
Radio, television, written information, distance communication, shopping - all
were inaccessible to us. Now, in 2007, we can do all sorts of things and carry
out a huge variety of daily tasks using the internet. I, for one, don't know
how I could survive without it.
Post internet
I'm not addicted to the net, but I do go online even before I set off for work.
I quickly read the news headlines and my personal emails, leaving a more
thorough look at both for when I get home in the evening. Before catching the
train, I check for reported problems affecting my route. So, thanks to the joys
of the internet, breaking news is right there at my fingertips from the moment
I wake up.
The hour and a half it takes me to commute to the office is more than enough
time offline. The first thing I do when reaching my desk is to go through my
work-related emails. Plus, I often need to send my local authority's highways
department a message to report the latest broken pedestrian crossing that I
discovered on my way into work - they must be sick of me by now.
I work as the Campaigns Involvement Officer for Sense, the organisation for
deafblind children and adults. My role involves training, supporting and
advising deafblind people and their families on campaigning, so email is my
main way of communicating with service users and colleagues, Even so, people
are sometimes surprised when they have exchanged emails with me only to later
discover that I am deafblind myself. They're taken aback that somebody with my
impairment can read and write fluently and do the job I do. It's thanks to
email rather than face-to-face interaction that we can work together on an
equal footing.
That's not to say face-to-face discussion is out of the question. I communicate
with some colleagues using Deafblind Manual, a form of tactile finger-spelling.
Each letter of the alphabet has a unique sign which is made against my hand.
But with many colleagues, even those sitting in the same room, I use email
rather than Deafblind Manual to communicate with them because it's faster, less
time consuming, and they don't have to get up to come over and take my hand to
finger-spell what they want to say.
When asked for advice on an issue I know little about, I search the World Wide
Web to piece together the answers. It gives me access to a wealth of
information, the likes of which I could only have dreamt of before, and lets me
hide my ignorance and stupidity into the bargain!
I probably couldn't do my job if I wasn't online. So maybe it was the DWP that
originally masterminded the internet just to get deafblind people into work?
Without the net, I would have found my PhD extremely difficult, if not
impossible. My research was exploring how blind and partially sighted people
become independent travellers; which meant that I had to find out their views.
I struggled for months with the problem that I am deafblind and communicate
using Deafblind Manual, while my research participants are hearing and do not.
Email interviews and online forums gave me a way to talk to them, and the vast
majority of my data came from those sources. Plus, more and more academic
journals are available online. How would I have accessed good quality research
literature without them?
Another thing I get sick of all too easily is going to the shops. But I love
online shopping. Groceries, clothing, presents, household bits and bobs,
gadgets - you name it, I get it online. I can browse products and, often, read
information such as cooking instructions that I could not otherwise access.
It's a month since I last had a communicator-guide - somebody trained in
guiding and communicating with deafblind people and whose role is to support us
to carry out everyday tasks.- and I don't know when I'll next see one. If it
wasn't for online shopping, I would starve.
The net has also saved me from losing contact with my family and many friends.
I would only have been able to communicate with them through Braille letters
sent by post or if they were in the same room as me and using Deafblind Manual.
Email enables us to stay in touch.
I have also made many new friends online, especially deafblind ones. There
aren't many deafblind people - only around 23,000 in the UK - and we're very
spread out geographically so it's hard to get together. Going online, however,
we can meet up from the comfort of our own homes. I'm in regular email contact
with several deafblind individuals, and participate in online discussion forums
such as the Public Deafblind Discussion Mailing List (part of this list
provided by The Teaching Research Institute of Western Oregon University, on
which you can find on a number of deafblindness groups). UsherLife, a site for
people who have Usher Syndrome, also have an email discussion group.
Online groups do more than just enabling deafblind people to share experiences,
ideas, information and to have fun. Offline, tactile communication only really
works for one-to-one conversations. For deafblind people who rely on tactile
communication, the only way we can effectively join in with group discussions
is by doing so on the web.
My life is centred around the internet. My work, studies, socialising and
wellbeing depend upon it. All I need now is easy-to-use mobile web access and
affordable Braille equipment for it. Then I could be connected from the moment
I get up to the moment I go to bed. How sad is that ...?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ouch/features/lizball_internet.shtml
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