Fyi.
Frank M. Hernandez.
Tucson, Arizona.
The Mosen Explosion (Blog)
Thursday, August 31, 2006
Endings and Beginnings
By Jonathan Mosen
In July 2003, I moved on from ACB Radio, which I founded and
directed. At
that time, a lot of people asked if there was any way that they
could find
out how I was getting on. Someone suggested that I start a blog,
which I
duly did in August of 2003. Since then, this site has been a
hybrid of
journal entries, comment, links to news stories I've found of
interest, and
reviews on technology.
As I move into new employment, it's once again time to take
stock. My new
role as Vice-President, Blindness hardware for Freedom Scientific
will be
rewarding, challenging, but also naturally demanding. So I will
be making
this my last post to the Blog. If, however, you purchased my
Speaking OF
Skype Tutorial with updates, I will of course still be honouring
your
purchase and releasing updates as required until April 2007.
I'm very excited about working at Freedom Scientific, a company I
have had
associations with as a consumer since 1995, although of course in
those days
it was with the companies that later merged to become Freedom
Scientific. I
remember trying all of the very early screen readers for Windows,
clear as I
was that Windows was the way of the future, and somehow, blind
people had to
get on board this train or be left in the technological dust. I
struggled
along, until I used a very early version of JAWS. JAWS for
Windows really
made me think that seriously useable access to Windows was
possible. Others
obviously felt the same way, because it's now by far the best
selling screen
reader in the world.
I also used a Braille Lite from 1997, and as an avid Braille
reader,
marveled at all it could do.
Now, I have the privilege of helping to shape the direction of
Freedom
Scientific's hardware products, including PAC Mate, Sara, and the
Focus
Braille displays. Technology is advancing at a frenetic pace
these days. If
blind people want to be competitive, they need access to the
latest
connectivity, productivity and functionality at the same time as
their
sighted peers. No matter how dedicated and brilliant, a small
team working
on a proprietary platform must inevitably be unable to keep up
with the pace
of innovation being advanced by Microsoft and thousands of
dedicated third
party developers. It can be demoralising when you're a part of
that team,
being asked for very legitimate and needed features, only to
realise that
resource constraints mean that only a fraction of those requests
can be
implemented. It's therefore imperative that we as blind people
have the
absolute best access to mainstream applications we can. With the
unrivaled
power of JAWS for Windows behind PAC Mate, I look forward to
continuing to
make the PAC Mate even more robust and useable. And of course,
PAC Mate does
not preclude a blindness specific approach where that achieves
the best
results, so one can in fact have the best of both worlds.
I love stories with happy endings, and this is where the story of
this Blog
ends. Julia and I are happily ensconced in the new abode and
loving life. I
have a great job that I can't wait to begin, and life is good.
What a way to
end the story. So let me thank you for reading over the last
three years
http://jmosen.livejournal.com/385529.html
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