Tag Archives: Technology

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The Budcast: Chromebook Accessibility

I haven’t done one of these in a while, so I figured it was about time.

In this episode of the Budcast, which is un-numbered because I can’t count that high, we look at the initial setup of the Chromebook and the state of its accessibility. Google has asked several people in the blind/VI community to assist with accessibility testing, and I was lucky enough to be one of those.

While there are a couple rough edges, and a show stopper or two (which we don’t get to in this episode), Google has a great start on making the Chromebook accessible. We do see a couple of those “rough edges” in this podcast, and I’m sure we’ll find more. Hopefully though, as time goes on and more of us have our hands on this stuff, things will improve.

As ever, you can contact me via Email or Twitter with any comments or questions.

Enjoy!

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Thoughts On Technology and Artificial Sight

Today, in reading through one of the far too many Email lists I’m on, I saw this article posted. I read it with some interest. I mean, it’s technology. It’s electronic. The future is now. Right? We’re living science fiction today. OK, you get the idea. Then, I read this one-line response to the article. It said, and this is a direct quote, “No thanks.”

No thanks?

No elaboration?

OK, we’re all entitled to an opinion, and, like myself, I’m sure the poster of this particular opinion is an expert on her opinion. But the inevitable question, in my mind anyway, is “Why not?” To flesh that out a bit more, I’d ask, and in fact, did ask, this way:

Why not? I think it’s possible that such sensory substitution could be useful some day. I also feel fairly confident that such sensory substitution won’t replace sight or turn blind people into sighted people. If such technology could be developed and implemented such that adjustment to it would be fairly straightforward and take relatively little time from our otherwise productive and busy lives, what objection do you have?

Hearing none, apart from “Everything else works fine”, this time paraphrasing, plus another pointing out that such a lot of noise or music for everything we “saw” would be distracting and bothersome, I asked:

By way of playing devil’s advocate, no one says that it has to be sound substitution that’s used in some eventually useful device, as opposed to something that’s merely a proof of concept. For instance, there’s the thing that projects images onto the tongue. This would not be my preferred medium, as I flap my gums too much to want anything to interfere with that. Still, nothing says that the sensory substitution has to be sound, or for that matter, has to be in any way connected to the ears. It could be sound via bone conduction like the Aftershokz headphones, for instance. Maybe someone will do something useful with the Flanagan Neurophone. What do I know? I’m just saying I think it’s a mistake to dismiss any such developments out of hand. Besides, nothing says one would have to use something like this all the time, nor that alternative techniques of blindness will overnight become obsolete or lose their effectiveness. But if at some later date such a technology could be implemented such that it is useful in whatever circumstance, and could be trained with a minimum of interruption to our already busy lives, what’s the objection? Especially f it could be turned off when it is either not useful or distracting in some situation?

People ask me occasionally, as I’m sure someone asks most blind people at least occasionally, if I wouldn’t like to be able to see. When I was a kid, I never gave it much thought, but adults seemed to want this thing for me, so I guess I thought it would be all right, but it was never something I just yearned to have. As I grew up (or grew older, anyway), I had more occasion to think about this and understand what it means. C’mon, let’s face it, when you’re a kid, someone asks you something like that, do you really know what it means? I don’t think I did. The conclusion I came to was, no, I didn’t really have this burning desire or need to be able to see. I now lead a full and productive life. I have a family, a job, fulfilling hobbies, more fulfilling relationships and friendships, in short, all the best things that life has to offer, all the things that really matter. How would sight change these things for me, or make them better? Besides, I’d have all sorts of adjustments to make; no one knows how to see, it’s something you learn as a baby, as a toddler, and as you grow up and integrate this thing into your life. I’d have to learn, not only what things look like, but how to do pretty much everything, from reading to cooking to walking around and not being scared that something is going to hit me. Sure, sometimes being blind is a pain in the ass, but in reality, the only thing that I really wish were different is that it’s a pain not to be able to drive a car. And that’s mostly because driving is so necessary to society. Don’t get me started on what people seem to feel is their God-given right to be out on the road, or on how horribly inadequate public transportation is, or any number of things. But I digress. Anyway, if I were to suddenly get eyesight, this wouldn’t change for me.

When I express such a view to people, I get one of two reactions. Shock that I wouldn’t want such a monumentally wonderful thing as eyesight, or else understanding. Maybe it’s pretend understanding but shock in reality, that might be the third reaction.

So, in a way, I see what the “no thanks” people are saying. But in another way? A couple dozen hours isn’t that much time. So, if some method for some sensory substitution were developed that would minimally impact my life, requiring a minimum of training, and would be actually useful, would I do it? Maybe, I’d have to weigh the benefits versus the cost in time and so on, and also the potential gain in opportunity, knowledge, freedom, and so forth. I certainly wouldn’t dismiss it out of hand, though, because every step leads to other things. Maybe some day we’ll have Geordie’s Star Trek visor, which wouldn’t be a bad thing.

If some such technology became widely available, and useful, and if I could turn it off when it got annoying, I’d probably do it. Heck, I’d probably participate in a research study for such a technology, if only because it would be interesting, and again, if I could turn it off.

Two things that would provide some food for thought if you haven’t read them. One is a factual account, the other is science fiction, and i bring it up only because its portrayal of what adjustment to sight might be like seems unrealistic on several levels. First, the speed at which the adjustment occurs, second, the fixation on Helen Keller and the things the blind character couldn’t do blind but then was expected to pick up sighted. But besides that, they’re really good books.

I’m not going to link to all three books in the trilogy, but if you like the first one, you have to finish the other two also.

Would love your thoughts on this, so keep those cards and letters coming.

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Braille, Relevance of Literacy, And Double Standards

I just Emailed the following to Perkins in response to their question: “Is braille still relevant in a high tech world”? I think it speaks for itself. Would love your comments, so keep those cards and letters coming.

Hi,

First, do I love my Perkins brailler? Of course I do.

I don’t really want to talk about that, though. Rather, I want to address the question you ask: is braille still relevant in a technological world? Of course you got the answer, and, in my view, the correct one, but what disturbs me is that the question was even asked in thee first place. It is, I think, the wrong question. In short, what happens if you replace the word “Braille” with the word “Print”? Does the question change? Does the relevance of the medium change? Does the answer change? What about the perceptions of the question–do those change?

A couple weeks ago, I was a fill-in host on the Serotalk podcast, where we discussed an article about the decline in spelling skills among today’s youth. However, I didn’t take away what was probably the intended message of the article. I took away a double standard. Now that it’s sighted children who use print and are losing the ability to spell, form proper sentences, and so on, we have a tragedy, and our electronics-centric lifestyle is to blame. Think of texting as the most often blamed culprit. Yet, where was this outcry for our blind kids 20 years ago, when, as now, we are told that talking computers and recorded textbooks are good enough? Double standard much? Why is it, do you suppose, that learning to read print and having access to print is essential to teach sighted children the fundamentals of grammar, spelling, and punctuation, but such skills are adequately taught to our blind kids with talking computers and recorded textbooks? Or, is it that our blind kids and their skills and abilities in these areas just aren’t important enough to give the same amount of attention or priority? Why is, pulling a number out of the air here, a 10% illiteracy rate among the sighted a national tragedy, yet a 10% literacy rate among the blind acceptable?

If you get that I’m angry, you’re right. I am absolutely livid. This is only one example of this double standard where blind and sighted people are concerned. The thing is, it’s a huge example, and it doesn’t even seem as though we ourselves always recognize it for what it is, because we ask things like, “Is braille still relevant”. So long as literacy is relevant to gainful employment, career advancement, educational opportunities, and all the other things life has to offer, the answer should be obvious.

So, as I said, you’re asking the wrong question. There are probably a lot of “right” questions, but the one that comes to my mind, putting aside the “Why is this double standard acceptable” question, is, “How do we get braille into the hands of more kids and get more of our kids learning it, and more of our teachers teaching it”? Let’s start there; there’s much, much more that we should be asking as follow-ups to that.

Parenthetically, I note that the word “brailler” was flagged by my spell checker. Moreover, it was autocorrected to “broiler”. That speaks volumes.

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An Idea For the 2012 FDIM Buildathon

Hi y’all,

I just received the following Email from Wayne, N6KR, at Elecraft. FDIM stands for “Four Days In May”, a sort of convention within the Dayton Hamvention, sponsored by QRP International. The Buildathon is an event where a bunch of people get together and build a kit from a bunch of parts. What Wayne suggests here is very exciting. Speaking as a long-time blind ham, I for one would be very excited to be able to build something and take part in an aspect of the hobby that I have to this point not been able to enjoy.

I can already see some objections by some blind hams to some of the stipulations Wayne has listed. I would be interested, personally, in your thoughts on this. I, for one, am totally in.

Here’s Wayne’s Email, which I was copied on:

Hi Ken,

Hope things are going well for you this year. I’m really busy with the KX3 and other products, as you can imagine.

We have a number of blind customers using K3s, etc. I was discussing with one of them (Buddy, copied on this) the fact that there are no radio or electronic kits (that we know of) that could be constructed entirely by a blind hobbyist. I then mentioned that I’d think about how to do this 🙂

Then I realized this would be a novel theme for the FDIM building contest in 2012, assuming it hasn’t already been tried. It would be a challenge for both the kit designers and target builders. For best results, they’d need to work together.

The most important thing about such a kit is the sense of empowerment it would provide the blind builder. From all my conversations with blind hams, it’s clear they feel left out being unable to participate in some basic hands-on aspect of the hobby. I’m sure that’s true of would-be blind builders in other genres as well. (Buddy may have thoughts on this.)

Even a simple kit would be a challenge. Here are some potential constraints (again, Buddy will know better than I):

– probably no soldering (safety concern)
– suggest twisting component leads, or use spring terminals
– no high voltages
– all components that have the same size/shape must be carefully tagged or bagged
or have a tactile label
– all components with more than two leads (e.g., a transistor) must have
an asymmetrical package so leads can be clearly identified; better yet,
one lead can be extended beyond the others
– no use of color codes (obvious!)
– nothing sharper than a component lead
– hardware should be large (#4 or larger)
– if a PCB or other substrate is provided, it should be asymmetrical or have
tactile guides
– if knobs are used, they should have tactile pointers
– manual either in Braille or in accessible electronic format (use with a PC screen reader)

With care, one could build a simple transceiver that satisfies all of these constraints.

Anyone entering such a kit into the contest should pair up with a blind builder — or try building it blindfolded — to prove that it works.

Any interest in this idea?

Thanks,
Wayne

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Budcast #11: A Walk With Kapten Plus

In Budcast #11, join me and Leno on a walk with the Kapten Plus. I describe the unit (in my usual rambling fashion), and have Kapten Plus plan and follow a route. If you have other questions about the Kapten Plus, please feel free to get in touch by buddy@brannan.name or on Twitter. You can also see the previous entry for my brief initial impressions of the Kapten Plus, and see this review from AFB’s Access World Magazine for more details and another impression. I also discuss things to consider when thinking about a standalone GPS like this versus off-the-shelf apps for a smart phone. (I use both, and I like both for different reasons.)

BTW, all the jingling? That’s Leno. He has a bell on his collar. Some may find such things annoying, but I kind of like it, it sounds cheerful to me, so it stays on. It sounds like a little sleigh bell, which is kind of what it looks like, and it rings with very little movement from Leno, so he’s pretty easy to track. While they might seem a little pricey at $25 per pair (I have an extra one, I only put one on him), these are high quality, sturdy bells, and the two bells you get are of different pitches, so you can pick the one you like better. Or if you have two dogs in the house, put one on each and you’ll be able to tell which of them has just raided the trash can. If you want them, you can find them on Noble Falconry.

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Kapten Plus: Preliminary Thoughts

Hi y’all,

I’m sure that some of y’all can probably correct some initial misconceptions if they exist, but here are my preliminary impressions of Kapten Plus.

1) Size: Wow, this thing really is tiny! And, for its size, the speaker really isn’t bad. I want to try it in noisy traffic situations, but I don’t anticipate it being a problem. It clips nicely to the GPS’ lanyard as someone here suggests, lose to your ears, or close enough anyway, to be clearly audible.

2) Wow, yes, that song is…interesting. I did a reset on it to see if I could, but it played for some reason some other times. Right after disconnecting from the computer once. I got the firmware update, but otherwise, the PC software doesn’t seem very accessible, more on software in a minute.

3) I’d really like to see ways to get more of the voice commands from the keypad, say, with a menu button. Sometimes, I would think a noisy environment would make voice recognition difficult. Say, a long press of the play button to bring up a status menu, for instance, or a long press of the FM or MP3 buttons. Maybe those would be a better choice.

4) It seems to me that the power of having points of interest in the device (those not associated with a K-tag, I mean) is under utilized. I’d like to see more verbose free navigation mode that tells you about POI’s as you pass them, or with a long button press, bring up a list of the several nearest POI’s. Even better if a route to one could be set up on the fly. While having upcoming intersections spoken is great, I think more could be done here with POI’s.

5) Satellite acqisition sometimes takes a while. On walking Alena to school, from turning it on in the house, I think it was a good five minutes before i got a signal. Which of course meant I was at Alena’s school. It also had me on the wrong sidewalk (right instead of left), and in one case tole me I was going down the wrong street, but after a couple minutes of that, it got itself straightened out and all was well the rest of the way home.

6) As I said, it’s tiny, and very light. No problem wearing it with the speaker. The voice commands seem to work nicely, but I’ve not been in noisy environs yet. And I can’t always remember the keywords.

7) Documentation: The Leader tutorial says it’s basic, but that they reckon it will take three days to go through the whole audio CD worth of tutorial and get the hang of everything. Three days? Really? A few hours, maybe, but not three days. The documentation, in either form, isn’t *that* exhaustive. Since they made an audio CD, I think read by a human would have been nice, but this version of Samantha isn’t half bad. She doesn’t sound nearly as grumpy as she usually does.

8) Software: the Windows software didn’t seem very accessible, just at first blush, but I didn’t take much time with it. The Mac software is a little weird. It seems very accessible, but some controls aren’t visible unless you tab to them, and in those cases, you can’t use Voiceover keys to read what surrounds them or anything like that. Also, I still only see maps for sale for European countries; I can’t seem to buy Canadian maps. Which reminds me. I’d probably better back up the US maps in case there’s a problem, because they aren’t available for download, far as I can tell, and the box didn’t come with them on any sort of backup media, i.e. DVD or CD.

9) OK, this is a dumb criticism, but… “Rise and shine”, and “I’m so tired”? I guess it’s supposed to be cute, but it just sounds kind of cutesy and, well, dorky to me. What’s the matter with “Ready” and “Shuting down” or something?

It may sound like I have nothing but complaints, but really, for $300, this is quite the buy. I really do like it over all, even though I see room for improvement. I do believe that at this price point, the Kapten Plus can do a lot for a lot of blind people, and I’m all for that.

I plan to take it for a real walk soon, as well as recording a review podcast about it. Watch this space.

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Programming the Wouxun Dual Band Handheld Transceiver

I seem to have become the go-to guy for the Wouxun dual band radios. Not only have blind people found my “eyes-free” guide useful, but apparently, and surprisingly, so have sighted people. I’ve had a few people ask for a podcast walk through on this radio, setting it up, and programming procedures, and I’ve promised one for a while. Finally, in Budcast #9, because you asked for it, I get up off my lazy duff and walk you through unpacking, setting up, and programming one of these fantastic little radios. Follow along by downloading my Wouxun Eyes-Free document here As always, you can Email me at buddy (at) brannan (daught) name or by following me on Twitter.

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Budcast #8: Introducing The Pogoplug

There are three kinds of people in the world: those who can count, and those who can’t.

I accidentally called this #7 originally. Oops. It’s really #8.

In Budcast #8, we introduce you to the Pogoplug from Cloud Engines. One correction: apparently the default settings for MP3 on the Zoom H1 are 128KBps, not 48 KBps. Sorry. Find out more about the Pogoplug at http://www.pogoplug.com

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A Call For Accessibility Commitment

I just sent the below as a follow-up to the previous correspondence with Amazon. I’ll be interested in their response.

 

For background, see correspondence with this address, below.

First, congratulations on your commendation from the National Federation Of the Blind for adding talking menus to the Kindle 3. While this is a great first step, I’d submit commendation was, perhaps, a bit premature.
This is a great first step, and there’s no denying that. However, more needs to be done, and much of it, I believe, should be able to be accomplished by firmware updates to the Kindle 3 hardware. At a minimum, all core functionality should be accessible using spoken feedback. This means the ability to browse and purchase from the Kindle ebook store, the ability to browse and select a book, and to begin reading that book. This all begins, of course, with the ability to turn on the voice guide without assistance. A reasonable stop gap measure (and I emphasize that this should not be a permanent solution) would be the ability to ask that voice guide be turned on before the unit is shipped.
Naturally, I completely understand that experimental functions such as the Web browser are less likely to receive attention, and I’m not as concerned about those. Core reading functionality being accessible is the important thing here. While it’s great to have a book read aloud, the ability to have unfamiliar words or terms spelled is essential, as is the ability to find, select, and review sections using spoken output. A straight read simply won’t be adequate for something like a college textbook.
As you are undoubtedly aware, the ability for publishers to disable text to speech is of great concern to the print disabled community. Ideally,we would like to see all books without the ability to have this important functionality disabled. If this cannot be done per individual unit, and if Amazon will not change its policy, so that all books allow text to speech to work, please at least ensure that all books with TTS disabled are designated on their purchase and information pages. I, for one, would be very upset if I bought a book and was then unable to read it. While “The publisher has asked that text to speech be disabled on this book, we apologize to our print disabled readers for their utter stupidity” would be super, I understand it is probably not practical. Still, a notice that “Text to speech is not available for this title”, noted prominently, would be sufficient, I think.
Let me stress here that I am at this time willing, able, and ready to purchase a Kindle 3, if I have some commitment from Amazon that I will be able to use its core functionality independently at some point, and that accessibility concerns are being addressed for this unit. I will add that I am willing, able, and ready to assist you in testing such accessibility improvements on the Kindle 3, should you need such a thing. As a blind computer user and technical support specialist for an assistive technology company, with over 25 years of computer use under my belt, I am happy to help you make the Kindle 3 even more useful to the print disabled community. If these concerns cannot or will not be addressed on this hardware platform and we must wait for the Kindle 4, sadly, I will not purchase a Kindle 3.
I eagerly await your response. Know that our previous correspondence, along with this letter, have been posted to my personal blog for the print disabled community to see. I’m sure we are all eager to hear that Amazon is committed to future accessibility enhancements as soon as is practical.

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BudCast #1: Intro and IBill Review

In this,my first podcast (that I’m posting,not that I’ve been on),I introduce myself and my family,talk a little about what we might be doing here,and review the IBill from Orbit Research. Podcasts will be posted somewhat irregularly, and I’ll do pretty much anything from technology reviews to sound seeing things with my family and friends. Feel free to Email me with any suggestions, ideas, or whatever. Thanks for stopping by!

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