Like most blind people who use computers I depend on assistive technology or adaptive technology or whatever else you may wish to call it. I tend to think of all technology as “assistive” though not without irony for surely current history and our prior century prove how “unassistive” technology can be. The mass scale bombings of civilians comes to mind: Guernica, Dresden, London, Hiroshima & Nagasaki, Nanking, Hanoi, around and around it goes. But I digress. I use assistive technology. I’m typing at the moment with JAWS version 10 on a Sony VAIO laptop that was customized by my friends at Universal Low Vision in Columbus, Ohio. Hooray for Universal Low Vision–they are, to my mind, one of the best outfits in the U.S. when it comes to customizing systems for people with disabilities.
But I digress. I get around on a hat pin. This is a delicate business. I walk like any of you but then I don’t. I never know when my blog service will change their interface or when the coursemanagement software at my university will leapfrog me right out of accessibility. It remains a common factor that the people who design software do not know that there are basic accessibility needs that ought really to be taken into account so that people like me and the tens of thousands who may become like me can use the internet.
So I’m trying Windows Live Writer to see if it will interact with my blog a bit better than the blog’s own posting page which remains rather opaque for my screen reader. This of course shouldn’t be the case. But that’s a long and boring tale. Getting around on hat pins is more interesting. You put them point end down through the bottoms of your shoes and balance on them like a Rosicrucian and you mumble as you steer ever so vaguely down the street. Come on. Just try it. Just try! You will be able to claim that you’re on the information highway in a form.
SK
Planet of the Blind 