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 -- JFW related links: JFW homepage: http://www.freedomscientific.com/ Scripting mailing list: http://lists.the-jdh.com/listinfo.cgi/scriptography-the-jdh.com JFW List instructions: To post a message to the list, send it to jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send a message to jfw-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word unsubscribe in the subject line. Archives located at: //www.freelists.org/archives/jfw Alternative archives located at: http://n2.nabble.com/JAWS-for-Windows-f2145279.html If you have any concerns about the list, post received from the list, or the way the list is being run, do not post them to the list. Rather contact the list owner at jfw-admins@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
-- JFW related links: JFW homepage: http://www.freedomscientific.com/ Scripting mailing list: http://lists.the-jdh.com/listinfo.cgi/scriptography-the-jdh.com JFW List instructions: To post a message to the list, send it to jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send a message to jfw-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word unsubscribe in the subject line. Archives located at: //www.freelists.org/archives/jfw Alternative archives located at: http://n2.nabble.com/JAWS-for-Windows-f2145279.html If you have any concerns about the list, post received from the list, or the way the list is being run, do not post them to the list. Rather contact the list owner at jfw-admins@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx