I absolutely mean every word I've posted. There was never any discussion of a blind doctor. Regarding that other person, he didn't say he was a doctor, he said he was some therapist. Let's say you owned a business, there's a C student approaching you for the job and there's an A student applying for the same position. Since you are going to pay the same, why not opt for the A student? Likewise, I know the limitations of the blind student when it comes to the natural sciences, and therefore I'm not taking any feel good chances by hiring the blind person just because its going to make me feel good. I am going to hire and use the most qualified person out there, and in my experience its usually a sighted person. As a business owner you learn to spot the slackers and the serious employees. You also need to foresee any possible problems you will have with the prospective employee. I started my own business and don't need to worry about someone treating me unfairly as I'm the guy making all the money decisions in my line of work. Besides, I too would know my limitations and not pretend I could exceed them in order to obtain employment under false pretences. I'm not the public sector such as government employers and so on who routinely hire some of the dumbest people I've ever come into contact with, I'm a private sector businessman looking after my profits and not to make others feel good about themselves.
Matthew----- Original Message ----- From: "Rick Harmon" <rickharmon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Thursday, November 29, 2007 4:04 PM Subject: Re: Team Excellence Award Winner
Matthew,It seems as if you aren't willing to give someone qualified to do their joba chance if they are blind? I hope this isn't so since you are blindyourself. I'd hate to see someone discriminate against you soely because ofyour being blind. I know I don't want to be discriminated against soley because of my being blind. I'm not sure if your just trying to prove a point or your really meaning what you've said in your posts. You said youwouldn't have a blind lawyer and now a blind doctor either. Please explain.If someone is qualified to do their job then it's simply not fair to say youwouldn't allow them to do their job for you based on the fact they are blind. Thanks, Rick -- Visit my webpage and podcast feed at: http://www.blind-geek-zone.net and my web Blog at: http://blind-geek-zone.blogspot.com/ Join the BGZ mailing list by sending a blank email message to: blind_geek_zone-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx and put subscribe in the subject line. Contact info: Email - rickharmon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx & rharmon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Skype - rharmon928 MSN - rharmon928@xxxxxxxxxxx----- Original Message ----- From: "Matthew2007" <matthew2007@xxxxxxxxxxx>To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Thursday, November 29, 2007 6:52 PM Subject: Re: Team Excellence Award WinnerIn your own opinion you're good. What objective measures or assessments canyou show for your claims? My point is that you are making the same mistakeas those who claim blind people can make websites as good as sighted people. They are basing their arguments on personal anecdotal experience. I'm sorry but if I walked into a medical center and discovered that the person helping my elderly parent learn to control her Parkinson's related movement disorder is a blind person, I'm going somewhere else. I want someone who will be ableto make an educated comprehensive assessment based on their own assessment of the situation and not have to go through someone else to convey to them the patient's physical movements. Matthew----- Original Message ----- From: "Dale Leavens" <dleavens@xxxxxxx>To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Thursday, November 29, 2007 1:09 PM Subject: Re: Team Excellence Award Winner This entire thread is ridiculous. Loads of sighted people can't design adecent Web site. Just when did it become necessary for each and every blindperson to perform above the standard of the best sighted designer oranything else for that matter. That is a pretty high standard and just belowGod.Loads of blind programmers and Web authors can out design and out code manythousands maybe millions of Web pages out there. Why isn't that enough? If one excels for any reason at any level let us celebrate that. I am a Physiotherapist. I am darn good at rehabilitating acquired brain injuries, I suck at respiratory conditions and don't much care. This does not negate my value. Admittedly I haven't won any awards either.Congratulations and thank you to the extent I, as a blind person can benefitfrom any reflected glory. Now can we possibly return to the regularly scheduled programme? Dale Leavens, Cochrane Ontario Canada DLeavens@xxxxxxx Skype DaleLeavens Come and meet Aurora, Nakita and Nanook at our polar bear habitat.----- Original Message ----- From: "Léonie Watson" <tink@xxxxxxxxxx>To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Thursday, November 29, 2007 3:14 PM Subject: RE: Team Excellence Award Winner Matthew, You seem to be suggesting that a VI person can't succeed, or rise to eminence in their field, in a sighted world. I sincerely hope that you'resuggesting nothing of the kind, but perhaps you'd be good enough to clarifyyour scepticism? Regards, Léonie. -----Original Message----- From: programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Matthew2007 Sent: 29 November 2007 16:30 To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Re: Team Excellence Award Winner In an effort to take your anecdotal post and bring it to life, name these people. I want to try to find them and research the particulars of their situations. After all, there is a nice big picture from 2003 of that moron in the white house standing on a freight carrier next to a sign stating"victory." We all know what this picture leads us to believe, but the truthis very different. Matthew ---- Original Message ----- From: "inthaneelf" <inthaneelf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Thursday, November 29, 2007 12:45 AM Subject: Re: Team Excellence Award Winner*taking a deep breath*, *counting to ten*, *reciting mantra's to calm my spirit* teddy, one doesn't become a professional foot ball player in the NFL by being better than the worst foot ball player, or by being even with the average players despite his having only half of his right foot... one does not become a respected and well paid attorney by being just better than someone who knows nothing about the intricacies of the law, nor a professional class skier by being equal to sighted average skiers, despite the fact that the gentleman is both blind and a double amputee... one does not earn the title of fencing master, even sighted, by only fencing with those who are average with a foil, or by fencing only with those who are blind, even if one is blind themselves... these are the types of people I am talking about, they are masters of there fields, despite there disadvantages, not over those who don't or haven't learned how, I'm talking about people with distinct disadvantages that makes there choice of work seem ridiculous to many, and force the world to recognize that if one wishes to, and is willing to do what is required to accomplish it, that they can be a top gun in there field, no matter what... quit with the f... reeking you can't, because if one of us wishes to put forth the effort, and the time, we can, period end of quote! inthane . For Blind Programming assistance, Information, Useful Programs, and Links to Jamal Mazrui's Text tutorial packages and Applications, visit me at: http://grabbag.alacorncomputer.com . to be able to view a simple programming project in several programming languages, visit the Fruit basket demo site at: http://fruitbasketdemo.alacorncomputer.com----- Original Message ----- From: "Octavian Rasnita" <orasnita@xxxxxxxxx>To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2007 11:06 PM Subject: Re: Team Excellence Award WinnerOh yes that could be true. There are sighted persons that don't even knowhow to use a computer. So we can say that we as web designers are better at web design than them. But who cares that we can be better than those sighted that don't know too many things? We should be better comparing us with the medium-skilled sighted web designer.... at least. But unfortunately a medium-skilled web designer might know to create images, maybe a little Flash, some Javascript, and nobody will care that he doesn't put a document type declaration at the top of his web pages, or that his pages won't be W3C compliant.If you will check the Google's web page with the W3C's html validator, itwill tell you: Failed validation, 30 ErrorsSo... of course W3C's validator is not important at all, because Google'spage is very accessible, very simple, and with a design.... better said almost without any design. Octavian----- Original Message ----- From: "inthaneelf" <inthaneelf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Thursday, November 29, 2007 8:40 AM Subject: Re: Team Excellence Award Winnerteddy that is far from what I meant, my computer locked up on my previous reply, so I'll take my time since I seem to have a habit of overloading my machine, and I'll get back on this later, if I don't decide it doesn't warrant a reply when I cool down...I can tell you about a number of "handicapped" people that have masteredareas that are thought of as "sighted and fit" only areas as well or better than most of there "whole and healthy" fellow humans laters, inthane . For Blind Programming assistance, Information, Useful Programs, and Links to Jamal Mazrui's Text tutorial packages and Applications, visit me at: http://grabbag.alacorncomputer.com. to be able to view a simple programming project in several programminglanguages, visit the Fruit basket demo site at: http://fruitbasketdemo.alacorncomputer.com----- Original Message ----- From: "Octavian Rasnita" <orasnita@xxxxxxxxx>To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2007 1:32 PM Subject: Re: Team Excellence Award WinnerOh yes, that's true, and sometimes the screen reader doesn't even show us the correct colors, and even if it show us that 2 words come oneafter another in the same line, it doesn't tell us that maybe the firstis a static word in a iframe element and the other one is a text written dynamicly by a javascript code, and it might scroll slowly up or down becoming very confusing for us at a page refresh. I think we shouldn't fight for beeing what we can't be. Oh yes, there are handicapped people without a leg that participate in different sports, showing that they can do more, but we all know that they will never be equal to a healthy person, no matter how good or bad he is. And let's not forget that the productivity of the work is also important. What we can do would have a very low value if we would be able to do it in a much longer period than a sighted designer. Octavian----- Original Message ----- From: "inthaneelf" <inthaneelf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2007 10:35 PM Subject: Re: Team Excellence Award Winnerwhich except for rare occasions is not practical Marlon, since we livein a sighted world, and the majority of folks that we are going to need to deal with are sighted, I'm sorry that you have no experience in the visual view of things, this is one area where I have an advantage. but... you can't avoid the visual world, it's out there, it's the majority, and so you might as well learn the tricks for dealing with it, use the standards and templates when and where you can, and do your best to adapt. the best description for trying to convey sight to a person that has never had it, was spoken by a blind dude that never had sight in his life, its the description I use now a days, since I have found myself often trying to describe visual aspects to those who have never had site. one thing you should do if you haven't, go to a web site, keep yourself at the top of the page, and turn on the invisible cursor and go up and down the page to see what it actually looks like, such as, the that that instead of the vertical column that jaws presents us with, that its actually more like a message written in Braille,including the navigation links which run from left to right across thepage, not in the vertical column that is presented to us. take care, and good luck, inthane . For Blind Programming assistance, Information, Useful Programs, andLinks to Jamal Mazrui's Text tutorial packages and Applications, visitme at: http://grabbag.alacorncomputer.com . to be able to view a simple programming project in several programming languages, visit the Fruit basket demo site at: http://fruitbasketdemo.alacorncomputer.com----- Original Message ----- From: "Marlon Brandão de Sousa" <splyt.lists@xxxxxxxxx>To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2007 9:01 AM Subject: Re: Team Excellence Award WinnerHello folks, Well I have never seen ... so I have no a ... let's call it ... visual standards so, although I can technically do it very well ... I can not plan, like imagine, build ... a nice visual interface, because I don't know what it is expected. A quick example is I beleaved gfirmly that the windows explorer put the folder treeview in the top and the listview below it, and I couldn't beleave when a guy tould me naturally that the treeview was in the left and the listview was in the right!!!! Similarly, because of the top down aproach most part of screen readers use to present web content, I have dificulties to imagine hwat exactly sighted people expect to see in a webpage or something like this. I can plan the components of the interface, but deciding * and putting * them in the more "apropriate" place or planning what would happen if one changes their screen resolution or diicovering by teory how browsers would react to it without testing is something very different. If I had been sighted (and lost my sight after the modern look and feel's I perhaps would be totally able to build interfaces based onthe standards of what should be common to folks, but the only thing Ican do for now is build an interface based on someone's specifications. And even then I will spend eforts trying to buildsomething which belongs to a group of situations that I can't imaginevery well ... and, again, I wouldn't be able to test my own work, which seen something pretty nasty to any [programmer I know of ... now the point is: For sure many blind folks can do gui's, but they will feel more confortable and be more productive if they're doing something which has not a visual result as its goal ... which should be perfectly logical. Thanks Marlon 2007/11/28, jaffar <jaffar@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>:Hi Jim. Excellent news. Congrats Jeff. Just shows what, if you all will forgive the pun, application will do for one, not to mention hard work and determination, and the willingness to try. Cheers! ----- Original Message ----- From: <james.homme@xxxxxxxxxxxx> To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2007 9:42 PM Subject: Team Excellence Award Winner > > Hi All,> Where I consult, one of our fellow listers was on a team who won > a> very > prestigious award. The team developed a highly visible web > application. > Jeff Fidler designed and coded the GUI interface for the site > using HTML,> CSS and Javascript. He used Section 508 and W3C techniques and > the> sighted > people in the company rave about it. > > I write this to urge anyone who thinks that someone who is blind > cannot > design Web interfaces well to keep on trying. You can do it. > > Jim > > James D Homme, , Usability Engineering, Highmark Inc., > james.homme@xxxxxxxxxxxx, 412-544-1810 > > "Never doubt that a thoughtful group of committed citizens can > change the > world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." -- Margaret > Mead > > __________ > 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-- When you say "I wrote a program that crashed Windows," people just stare at you blankly and say "Hey, I got those with the system, for free." 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