All things being equal--in regards to computer knowledge, we're still at a great disadvantage to sighted people when it comes to computing--basic or advanced. I'm a very proficient computer user in respects to my sighted family members and friends, but when I had my technician brother in law over a few weeks ago to install my new sound card, there is absolutely no comparison, none at all, he stunned me at the speed he was installing and configuring the software. In fact, I purchased a small app that allows me to record directly into my computer using a microphone. He had never used this little known application, and he was able to read all the information the application had to offer simply by looking at the start up screen just once. He told me my microphone wasn't being recognized, he told me the balance was off, he said my equalizer was off balance, and he told me that I had 3 files open. I had no idea any of these things were happening or even conveyed on the screen even though I'd been using the application for a couple of months. This is because all this information was conveyed visually at first viewing of the screen. I, needing a screen reader, would have had to tab around or use my mouse cursor to try to determine what was open or closed and what the settings were--if in fact my screen reader could even see the various settings on the application. This of course means that the information might have been accessible, but it would have taken me some 10 minutes to put all the information together and make the same conclusions he determined in a split second viewing of the screen. He was clicking away with the mouse so fast that I told him to stop while I turned jaws off because I didn't want jaws' slow response to crash the computer. Remember, Andreus found in his research that the productivity of blind programmers is only some 6% of sighted programmers. We can argue the facts all we want and come up with feel good excuses as to why we're slower, but the facts are the facts. Take a listen to the first few minutes of the link posted by ken and see for yourself.
Matthew----- Original Message ----- From: "Jared Wright" <wright.jaredm@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Wednesday, May 07, 2008 10:21 PM Subject: Re: Dynamic active content
I think what you're forgetting is that I'd say on a scale of 1 to 10 the entire world is probably at about a 4 when it comes to the ability to quickly and efficiently acquire information from the internet. I have no real statistical numbers, it just seems a little strange the disadvantage you seem to think we are in. I'm not saying there isn't work to be done, but there're lots of things on the internet (buying items on Amazon being one of them, actually) that I know I can do not at the equivalent speed as a sighted user, but faster in many instances. A lot of times people try to transfer techniques for browsing pages from the sighted world to the blind one, I feel. If more blind people were to be taught, or just stopped to think, how powerful a feature it is it is for your screen reader to run a search on a web page and place the cursor where the search hits in its respective browse buffer for example.. I think you'd see more more blind web users be even more successful on a number of sites. Your Amazon experiences are very strange to me, as that is one of the sites that I feel with familiarity I can browse faster than sighted peers. I would agree that first time visits to a website might be more inefficient for us, but I think we can more greatly optimize our experience with a given website with increased familiarity to its content. These are just the pros and cons associated with getting the same information through two distinctly different mediums.Jared Matthew2007 wrote:Ken,Thanks for the information. More confirming information that blind people are truly at a great disadvantage when it comes to interacting with the many different types of WebPages on the internet. Had the presenter not specified many of these interface problems I would have never considered just how slow computing is for blind individuals. So far, it appears that from a scale of 1 to 10, the average blind web user is probably lingering in at about a 3 when it comes to quickly accessing information on the web. Just this past week I asked my wife to help me make a purchase on Amazon.com. I was in a hurry and didn't want to have to read through a mess of information. She found and purchased the item I was looking for within some 10 minutes. It would have easily taken me over an hour due to the size of the pages on the web site as well as the amount of extraneous information the blind user must wade through as we have to read from top to bottom or search around for various keywords to get at desired information. I've been buying from Amazon and other similar sites on the web for years, so its not me as much as how I must interact with a website even using the most current screen reader.Matthew ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ken Perry" <whistler@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Wednesday, May 07, 2008 6:03 PM Subject: Dynamic active contentWe have been talking about menus and other dynamic content so I thought it would be important to post the new Web anywhere screen reader that will work on any device that has a web browser and can play music. This is just onevideo and it should be release this month if it hasn't already been released. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpmB2DLrkTE Ken __________ NOD32 3083 (20080507) Information __________ This message was checked by NOD32 antivirus system. http://www.eset.com__________View the list's information and change your settings at //www.freelists.org/list/programmingblind__________View the list's information and change your settings at //www.freelists.org/list/programmingblind__________ NOD32 3084 (20080508) Information __________ This message was checked by NOD32 antivirus system. http://www.eset.com
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