Hi all,
I realize that some may disagree with me, but perhaps some further
discussion about philosophy is in order here. I have used products
which came of both the blindness and the sighted philosophy. Let me
explain.
A device which is designed for the blind in mind, as Jonathan says, is
one which takes our blindness into consideration and expands upon our
strengths so that we get a product or device that is made for us, not
a device which is made for the sighted and then retrofit to suit the
needs of the blind.
There is, for example, a wonderful voice output system for Linux
called Emacspeak. It makes no bones about the fact that it is
designed with the blind user in mind. It is not graphical. It is
text based. It is command driven. It is usercentric. Its creator
T.V. Raman says that if you take away the Emacspeak desktop, it
renders the user powerless. Here is his exact quote.
"Independent test results have proven that unlike some modern
software, Emacspeak can be safely uninstalled without adversely
affecting the continued performance of the computer. These same
tests also revealed that once uninstalled, the user stopped
functioning altogether."
Seems to me that PDI has that same philosophy. From everything I've
read on the list here, those of you who have been without your BN's
stop functioning.
Now, I have also used and am using Windows, an OS which has been
adapted for blind users. It works well enough, but it is a patch-up
job, a fix, if you will. Screen readers are designed to allow the
user to access everything which the sighted do, but the user must do
so in the same way as do the sighted. There is no provision made for
our strengths. We must bend. We must integrate. We must make the
graphical interface understandable to non-seeing imagination. Yes, it
works. Yes, you can use off-the-shelf software, but you are not as
efficient because you have an entire layer of tasks you must complete
before you can accomplish anything.
Frankly, if I can access the same materials as my sighted peers and in
the same efficient way without worrying about interacting with a
graphical environment, then I'm all for it! Give me something that
works for me as a blind person, not something somebody cobbled
together so that I could access something. It's called universal
design folks, universal design!
If the BN had USB and Wireless connectivity, and if they added FTP and
Telnet, then I'd be a totally happy camper.
Ann P.
--
Ann K. Parsons
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
WEB SITE: http://home.eznet.net/~akp
"All that is gold does not glitter.
Not all those who wander are lost." JRRT
