Dear Jonathan:
I'm deaf-blind and oral. I'm responding to your comments concerning
deaf-blind users.
Even though I'm oral, I'm profoundly deaf. there's no way I could use the
memo recording facility in the BN, and I would say the same for most
deaf-blind users of the BN. while deaf-blindness covers a broad spectrum
of people, many of whom may have some residual hearing, only a minority
would have enough to be able to profit from the memo recording feature of
the BN. Only a few who have enough residual hearing would be able to use
it.
You also said that the Keysoft installations can be done independently by
deaf-blind people. when I sent a message to this list expressing my
concern that the instructions for installing Keysoft 7 were not deaf-blind
user friendly, I was serverly criticized and reprimanded by a few users on
this lsit. My comments were misudnerstood. If people took the time to
review the installation instructions for Keysoft 7, they might h ave
understood my concern. The instructions for the most part didn't state
what one should see on the braille display besides the audio cues. I
wonder how many deaf-blind people that are profoundly deaf were able to
install Keysoft 7 alone.
I also wonder if you have any deaf-blind BN uses who are profoundly deaf
as beta testers?
You also mentioned that features were added to the BN to reduce baggage
for BN users, such as the FM radio, the media player, and memo recording.
We deaf-blind were hoping the BN would have some form of TDD capability.
I understand Humanware is developing a separate TDD device, and while I h
ave no details about this or its portability, it would also be extra
baggage for deaf-blind people to carray around (and much heavier than a
RFM radio, MP3 player, and cassettse recoder). I would have been
delighted if there was a way to access the Internet TDD Relay services
(there are at least three of them) using the BN -- this would be great in
a power outage or when there is no access to a regular phone (it could be
done with a cell phone). Keyweb doesn't allow this at the present time
but perhaps Humanware could work with one of the TDD relay services that
provide on-line relay services to allow keyweb to access their on-line
relay service.
some of us deaf-blind have recognized the ptential of the BN as a
face-to-face communications device using the visual display feature and a
second keyboard. However the details to set up the visual display weren't
readily available and it took several friends and me a while to figure out
how to do it by trial and error. We found a lot of information in the
help file for the Palm Viewer on the visual display but this info wasn't
made available in a separate file, and BN tech support didn't have any
info about how to set up the visual display to work withthe BN (they said
they had never done it). while this set-up is useful, it can be
problematic if the othe sighted person types faster than the deaf-blidn
person can keep up with. It isn't possible at the present time for a deaf
blind person to read at his/her own pace while the sighted person types.
I realize that deaf-blind users constitute a minority and therefore may
not be regarded as big a user community as the group of blind users. I
understand that development is done for the biggest possible market. But
it would be a geginning to make the installation instructions more
deaf-blind uer friendly, provide access to a on-line TDD Relay service,
provide access to online chats like Instant Messenger (AIM) and provide
information for setting up things like a communications setup. A
competitor has already done much work in this area, but I much prefer the
BN and would like to see it include more accessibility for the deaf-blind.
Barbara Wagreich
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