Everyone who follows the AT field knows that apdative technology for the blind is extremely overpriced. The only ones who will tell you differently are those who gain the profits from this field. I will gratn that some products are important to the blind, speech output programs being chief among these, and Braille displays being a helpful (if all to unfortunately underused and overpriced) another. I submit however that apart from Serotek these and all other products are far overpriced.
I have always held that as much mainstreaming as possible, in education as well as technology, is best for everyone involved. This is due in part to the social intergration, it adds to acceptance of blind people as normal people who can't see when one uses an iPod or standard mobile phone or laptop as opposed to an odd looking device that looks like it comes fresh from 1970s science fiction.
The other factor is that of the market place. If inovation comes more regularly in the mainstream market (as the article above argues) then everyone, blind and sighted, benefit from such novations. Unfortunately novation is a lost word in the AT field. Apart from the novation of Serotek and the Stream from Humanware, there has been limited or non exsistant. The time is long past for us as blind people to put our money, and that which is used on our behalf by Voc Rehab and others, where our best interests lie, in the mainstream market. As the article notes some adaptive technology is very much needed to make mainstream technology work, but just because it is needed does not mean it needs to be overpriced rubbish. I commend Serotek for its inovation and ask all others in the AT field to think long and hard about how to best meet your client's needs. Will putting them on a device that may fall far behind the mainstream and be overpriced really the best answer? For some it may be yes, but I think for the majority it will be a solid no.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Thoughts on Facebook
I have been useing Facebook for about four months now, and I am amazed anew at its usefulness. In addition to keeping up with friends, I can read daily devotionals, fellowship with other believers, send e mail, keep others updated on what I'm up to, and post itneresting articles that I find merit posting. Like anything it can be misused, but I am grateful for an accessible aplication that allows me as a blind person to do so much for FREE. What a blessing.
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Serotek Does it Again
"It isn’t just about bridging the gap to employment, which is certainly important. It’s about providing a way for blind people to have fun, to be entertained, and to communicate with the rest of the world without any geographical, social or economic barriers. [...] The blind ghetto discourages mainstream technology companies from making their products accessible. A select group controls the sales to the ghetto and like it that way. The ghetto barriers protect their market share even though those walls can deny their customers access to the riches available to everyone outside the walls. It takes gutsy companies to build and market products that tear down the walls and it is these "disruptive" technologies that excite me."--Full Article
Once again Serotek shows through the above post its dedication to outstanding service, quality product, and most importantly amazing business philosophy. Dealing with the standard AT companies attatude of "good enough for you," it is extremely refreshing to see this company buck the trend and tare down a chunck of the ghetto wall. This attatude is why I plan to switch to System Access screen reader as quickly as possible. Realizing that life for the blind consists of more then 9-5 (while still regonizing that 9-5 is important) is one of the best and rarest qualities of Serotek. I will continue to support them personally and intend to train future students on Serotek's products. Such market oriented quality service needs and deserves to be supported.
Once again Serotek shows through the above post its dedication to outstanding service, quality product, and most importantly amazing business philosophy. Dealing with the standard AT companies attatude of "good enough for you," it is extremely refreshing to see this company buck the trend and tare down a chunck of the ghetto wall. This attatude is why I plan to switch to System Access screen reader as quickly as possible. Realizing that life for the blind consists of more then 9-5 (while still regonizing that 9-5 is important) is one of the best and rarest qualities of Serotek. I will continue to support them personally and intend to train future students on Serotek's products. Such market oriented quality service needs and deserves to be supported.
Apostle of Light
This clip gives a dramatic depiction of Louis Braille going blind and inventing Braille. Thought considering the celebrations it was a good thing to post.
More bail outs and some plees for common sense
I found this bail out beg from U.S. Steel to be absurd, and expect it to be approved in a nanosecond by the government. On the opposite side I found these plees from the Club for Growth for economic common sense to be refreshing.
Forget superheros who fight greed, we need superheros to fight redistributionists, environmentalists, and social do-gooders who want to take away from the individuals freedom in the name of the "greater good."
Forget superheros who fight greed, we need superheros to fight redistributionists, environmentalists, and social do-gooders who want to take away from the individuals freedom in the name of the "greater good."
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Happy Birthday Louis Braille
I wish to add a belated but heart felt happy birthday to Mr. Braille, whose bicentennial occured on 1-4 of this year. Celebrations and educational events have already begun and are scheduled to continue throughout the year. I trust and hope this educational push will encourage both the sighted and blind to understand why Braille is not merely important but absolutely necessary for independence.
Happy Birthday Mr. Braille! — $200 discount on our Braille products
Longueuil, January 6th, 2008 — January 4th 2009 marked the two hundredth anniversary of the birth of Louis Braille. Louis Braille is the inventor of the Braille reading and writing system used internationally by people who are blind and visually impaired. It is the only method by which the blind can be truly literate. Statistics show that 85% of employed blind people use Braille to perform part of their job.
HumanWare has been at the forefront of providing award-winning Braille solutions for both students and professionals. HumanWare's BrailleNote note takers are used by thousands of students and professionals who create and access documents and books to be read in Braille. HumanWare offers other Braille solutions from the pocketsize BrailleConnect for use with mobile devices and laptops, several sizes of the Brailliant Braille displays for the workplace, and personal and institutional Braille embossers.
HumanWare will be celebrating this two hundredth anniversary throughout the year with many future announcements. To begin the year with the true spirit, HumanWare is pleased to offer to all of our customers in the Americas a $200 discount on the purchase on any of our Braille products.
HumanWare realizes that much work remains to be done to insure that all blind individuals have an opportunity to learn and use Braille. HumanWare has worked on many initiatives in the past to make Braille more accessible and will vigorously pursue these activities in 2009 and beyond to make illiteracy among the blind a thing of the past.
Campaign tries to teach the benefits of Braille
SUE McMILLIN
January 5, 2009 - 2:38PM
Since its invention in the 1820s, Braille has been the key to literacy - and employment - for blind people, according to the National Federation of the Blind.
It's appalling that only 10 percent of blind children in the United States are learning Braille, said Kevan Worley, president of the federation's Colorado Springs chapter.
Nationally, about 70 percent of blind people are unemployed, Worley said. But, he said, more than 80 percent of blind people who have learned Braille are employed.
The federation has launched a Braille literacy campaign as it celebrates the 200th anniversary of the birth of Louis Braille, the blind Frenchman who invented the Braille alphabet and published it in 1829. Sunday, Worley and other members of the local chapter demonstrated various mechanical and electronic Braille writers at the Barnes & Noble Booksellers on Briargate Boulevard. Similar events took place at about 60 bookstores across the country.
The small Braille machines easily attracted the attention of children visiting the store.
"Kids love to learn about Braille because it's a code," Worley said. Many myths about Braille - that's it's slow and hard to learn or that it can be replaced by audio material - have kept the Braille literacy rate low, he said. Also, there's a shortage of qualified teachers. But perhaps the biggest obstacle is that most blind children have some visual capabilities and are encouraged to use that rather than learn Braille, Worley and others said.
Rene Harrell, who is teaching Braille to her 7-year-old daughter Clare, said: "The default is to use print because people believe it's easier and it's less intimidating."
That might be OK for children's books when there's only a few large-print words on a page, she said, but by the time blind students get to high school they can't keep up with the reading and can't compete for college and jobs.
Harrell said she adopted Clare when she was 4 and at first believed that she could only perceive light. It turned out that Clare has some visual abilities, but they can vary based on the environment and other factors.
"We decided to let Clare use her vision when it's useful and let her learn techniques for when it's not," Harrell said.
Most children learn Braille at about the same rate that seeing children learn to read, Worley said. And it opens a world to them that listening to audio books alone cannot. When he adopted his son, Nijat, from Azerbaijan at age 11, he'd had no Braille training. He was living in a refugee camp and when his sight was lost at age 9, his schooling had stopped.
Nijat said he quickly picked up Braille (and English), learning to read it with Harry Potter books. He graduated last year from Cheyenne Mountain High School and is now a freshman at the University of Colorado in Boulder. Now he teaches his dad how to download the newspaper on the equivalent of a Braille laptop, as well as scanning and downloading his textbooks so that he can read them in Braille.
Contrary to popular belief, adults who lose their sight later in life can learn Braille, too, Worley said.
Rob Lewark, 45, awoke one day in May 2005 and could barely see. His vision was about 80 percent gone, and by January 2006, he was blind because of glaucoma. He'd done a variety of things but in midlife had gone back to school and became an architect. That career was gone, too.
But he learned Braille at the Colorado Center for the Blind in Littleton, and soon was running his own cafe on Peterson Air Force Base.
"There are a lot of things blind people can do," he said. As for the saying "Life's a bitch," Lewark had his comeback tattooed in Braille on his arm: "Let's get this bitch started."
I also have to mention the continuous and tireless work of the National Braille Press. Their quest to provide Braille at prices our sighted counterparts would pay is a praise worthy one.
Happy Birthday Mr. Braille! — $200 discount on our Braille products
Longueuil, January 6th, 2008 — January 4th 2009 marked the two hundredth anniversary of the birth of Louis Braille. Louis Braille is the inventor of the Braille reading and writing system used internationally by people who are blind and visually impaired. It is the only method by which the blind can be truly literate. Statistics show that 85% of employed blind people use Braille to perform part of their job.
HumanWare has been at the forefront of providing award-winning Braille solutions for both students and professionals. HumanWare's BrailleNote note takers are used by thousands of students and professionals who create and access documents and books to be read in Braille. HumanWare offers other Braille solutions from the pocketsize BrailleConnect for use with mobile devices and laptops, several sizes of the Brailliant Braille displays for the workplace, and personal and institutional Braille embossers.
HumanWare will be celebrating this two hundredth anniversary throughout the year with many future announcements. To begin the year with the true spirit, HumanWare is pleased to offer to all of our customers in the Americas a $200 discount on the purchase on any of our Braille products.
HumanWare realizes that much work remains to be done to insure that all blind individuals have an opportunity to learn and use Braille. HumanWare has worked on many initiatives in the past to make Braille more accessible and will vigorously pursue these activities in 2009 and beyond to make illiteracy among the blind a thing of the past.
Campaign tries to teach the benefits of Braille
SUE McMILLIN
January 5, 2009 - 2:38PM
Since its invention in the 1820s, Braille has been the key to literacy - and employment - for blind people, according to the National Federation of the Blind.
It's appalling that only 10 percent of blind children in the United States are learning Braille, said Kevan Worley, president of the federation's Colorado Springs chapter.
Nationally, about 70 percent of blind people are unemployed, Worley said. But, he said, more than 80 percent of blind people who have learned Braille are employed.
The federation has launched a Braille literacy campaign as it celebrates the 200th anniversary of the birth of Louis Braille, the blind Frenchman who invented the Braille alphabet and published it in 1829. Sunday, Worley and other members of the local chapter demonstrated various mechanical and electronic Braille writers at the Barnes & Noble Booksellers on Briargate Boulevard. Similar events took place at about 60 bookstores across the country.
The small Braille machines easily attracted the attention of children visiting the store.
"Kids love to learn about Braille because it's a code," Worley said. Many myths about Braille - that's it's slow and hard to learn or that it can be replaced by audio material - have kept the Braille literacy rate low, he said. Also, there's a shortage of qualified teachers. But perhaps the biggest obstacle is that most blind children have some visual capabilities and are encouraged to use that rather than learn Braille, Worley and others said.
Rene Harrell, who is teaching Braille to her 7-year-old daughter Clare, said: "The default is to use print because people believe it's easier and it's less intimidating."
That might be OK for children's books when there's only a few large-print words on a page, she said, but by the time blind students get to high school they can't keep up with the reading and can't compete for college and jobs.
Harrell said she adopted Clare when she was 4 and at first believed that she could only perceive light. It turned out that Clare has some visual abilities, but they can vary based on the environment and other factors.
"We decided to let Clare use her vision when it's useful and let her learn techniques for when it's not," Harrell said.
Most children learn Braille at about the same rate that seeing children learn to read, Worley said. And it opens a world to them that listening to audio books alone cannot. When he adopted his son, Nijat, from Azerbaijan at age 11, he'd had no Braille training. He was living in a refugee camp and when his sight was lost at age 9, his schooling had stopped.
Nijat said he quickly picked up Braille (and English), learning to read it with Harry Potter books. He graduated last year from Cheyenne Mountain High School and is now a freshman at the University of Colorado in Boulder. Now he teaches his dad how to download the newspaper on the equivalent of a Braille laptop, as well as scanning and downloading his textbooks so that he can read them in Braille.
Contrary to popular belief, adults who lose their sight later in life can learn Braille, too, Worley said.
Rob Lewark, 45, awoke one day in May 2005 and could barely see. His vision was about 80 percent gone, and by January 2006, he was blind because of glaucoma. He'd done a variety of things but in midlife had gone back to school and became an architect. That career was gone, too.
But he learned Braille at the Colorado Center for the Blind in Littleton, and soon was running his own cafe on Peterson Air Force Base.
"There are a lot of things blind people can do," he said. As for the saying "Life's a bitch," Lewark had his comeback tattooed in Braille on his arm: "Let's get this bitch started."
I also have to mention the continuous and tireless work of the National Braille Press. Their quest to provide Braille at prices our sighted counterparts would pay is a praise worthy one.
Monday, January 5, 2009
First Post of the New Year
I found this on National Review and it is a riot! Good to laugh a bit during this time. For those unaware my wife has taken a short full time job in Littleton that entails her being away from home pretty much all the time between now and early April. I miss her already (she left this afternoon) and am eager for the three months to be past. This is why I am reading the National Review at 4:47am- hard to sleep without my beloved here.
Also this describes well why I view with disgust those who will not look at both sides of an issue or take into account small things like facts.
Sueanne and I spent New Year’s Eve quietly at home, a very enjoyable way of bringing in the New Year (as loud drunken parties aren’t much on the agenda these days). We celebrated our second wedding anniversary early on the second and third at Cripple Creek where we enjoyed gambling, food, and the room. This week I have my first AT client, and am attempting to enjoy a better year this year then last.
My first post of the new year would not be complete without this gem from Dave Barry reviewing 2008. I found out he is a Libertarian, which I found most cool. His colum feed can be found here.
I also have to include this about wrapping paper from around Christmas time. Made me laugh so hard I thought it deserved inclusion despite the late date. As did the below.
What happened was, I slid off the chairlift and went back down the mountain very fast.
Q. What do you mean by ``very fast''?
A. I mean that, because of the Theory of Relativity, after a few seconds I had traveled in time back to 1963, and was still picking up speed when I penetrated deep into the woods.
Q. How deep did you penetrate?
A. One of the trees later bore my child.
Eventually I learned that the best tactic for skiing is: Never go DOWN the mountain. Always go SIDEWAYS, which involves less gravity. --Full Article
I pray for the persecuted.
Also this describes well why I view with disgust those who will not look at both sides of an issue or take into account small things like facts.
Sueanne and I spent New Year’s Eve quietly at home, a very enjoyable way of bringing in the New Year (as loud drunken parties aren’t much on the agenda these days). We celebrated our second wedding anniversary early on the second and third at Cripple Creek where we enjoyed gambling, food, and the room. This week I have my first AT client, and am attempting to enjoy a better year this year then last.
My first post of the new year would not be complete without this gem from Dave Barry reviewing 2008. I found out he is a Libertarian, which I found most cool. His colum feed can be found here.
I also have to include this about wrapping paper from around Christmas time. Made me laugh so hard I thought it deserved inclusion despite the late date. As did the below.
What happened was, I slid off the chairlift and went back down the mountain very fast.
Q. What do you mean by ``very fast''?
A. I mean that, because of the Theory of Relativity, after a few seconds I had traveled in time back to 1963, and was still picking up speed when I penetrated deep into the woods.
Q. How deep did you penetrate?
A. One of the trees later bore my child.
Eventually I learned that the best tactic for skiing is: Never go DOWN the mountain. Always go SIDEWAYS, which involves less gravity. --Full Article
I pray for the persecuted.
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