Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) 163, for orientation, the main problem with blindness is the lack of sight prevents you from scanning with sight. Consider the following scenario.You drop a blind and a sighted person directly in the center of a desert. The ground is the same in all directions for 3 miles, while there is a way out in one direction. The sighted person could possibly see the way out and go out before dieing from heatstroke. The blind person would likely be dead of heatstroke as there would be nothing to orient to. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/604541/#p604541 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) @160I see. Maybe there is still a good thing in this, though, I mean, working, being able to contribute to society is important for your psike. I saw blind people who have enough money to leave, but they don't seem very happy. I think employment is the greatest way of integration there is. I know you didn't say blind people should not work at all, but retire at 30, but I feel this would have a demoralising effect. I mean, they would retire, of course, but then they won't hav something to do. Of course that is not the reason the blind orgs don't do that, but this secondary effect is not negligibleThen, what did you refer to when you said tools which are hard to learn, and barely get you on par with your sighted colleagues?I am also under 30, never used emacspeak, but I think it is one of the few blind specific tools that really help in coding. Or so it is said. It might be an exaggeration, you are right. I don't know, vs is what I use everyday. The only difference I see between 2005 and 2019 is that designers are more inaccessible. Considering that that accessibility came from a jaws script, this isn't a regression on vs, it did not have that in the first place. It is true that 2019 has latency issues with NVDA after a while, but, since jaws does not have them, I think these are NVDA issues, not vs issues.About other IDE's... android studio become accessible. I know from a friend that support was added in intelliJ idea too, and, I suppose, all their other IDE's. I will have to agree about win10 modern apps. Those completely escaped my mind. IN my view, they are designed for tablets, and inefficient to use on computers.Can't talk about mac. CodeBlocks was never too accessible, as far as I have been told. What other modern IDE's have you found inaccessible? A guy at an US university did a11y work on netbeans, I don't know how well that worked out.Well, lots of what I wrote above seems to be from rumours, so yeah, I guess it could be that I have been fortunate enough not to face many inaccessible software. It's true that I mostly tried to stay in the MS echoSystem, where vs and ssms are quite enough. I also had problems when needing to manage a sqlite db, but found the unconventional solution of using a local lam stack and a php db manager. Talking about web, Most of those electron based aps, although I don't like them, seem to be accessible. VS code is a good example. And, even if they are not accessible, I think it is quite easy to get the behind html and do aria magic. This wasn't possible with native GUI apps. if they were not accessible, that was that. Mail to the dev. So yes, I think I can see where you are coming from. Depends on what tools you need.I was thikning that the full diagram, with llower resolution, of course, would fit on the canute, not nneding frequent refreshes. Never knew exactly how much resolution is needed though, so you are right, it might not work. I saw another project in Germany, Tactonom, with 10591 pixels, but I feel it is one of those never released projects, no price until now.When you say "no good way to comunicate it", are you refering to reading other authors work? IF yes, I agree. acessibility of mainstream math is horrible. MathPlayer has worked good for me, but the real probelm is lack of mathml/latex, in my view. People just put graphics on the web, and infty raeder is a joke. While in faculty, I had the fortune to have transcribing help for courses I couldn't get in latex, I see why this could be a problem. However, like I said, before blind people get to that, they have to pass that lower level math, which needs either way above average memory, logic and imagination, or lots of work. Way more work than other subjects. At list that is how it is here, the curricula may be more relaxed in other countries.and, since I am at this subject, 161, I didn't think I said that the blind can't do math, it'd be strange to forget my own past. What I said, and I stand by it, is that math is harder for the blind, and that's a major factor for the loewr percentage of blind people in STEM. Another factor is the way math is taught, your experience with your father being a very positive example, Not many teachers have that out of the box thinking, not even blind math teachers.I am basing my assertions of what I saw in my blind school, and what I have heard from other blind schools in the country.So, I tried not to generalize. I hope I succeeded. 162, yes, that's a better way of saying it. Sight has a higher bandwidth, and it is easier to transmit complicated things through it. Not to say that it can't be done via touch/hearing, only that it is harder.about O Well, I am the least capable in the group only if we are talking about O, I can help others with things they don't know, i.e. technology. Not like installing a program or something, there are lots of guys capable of doing that, but with writi
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) 159, I don't think math or statistics itself is by its nature visual. But having vision greatly increases your ability to understand them because the concepts can be described easier that way.Camlorn, as for cooking and cleaning services, the situation could be different in developing countries. I read somewhere that VA veterians would move to Vietnam for retirement, because the cost of living was cheap enough with the dollar to aford a housekeeper, cook etc and still have some left over. Take another example. In the US, alot of people do maintenence jobs on their own because of the high cost of maintenence people. But in Turkey, such services aren't very costly, so basicly everyone hires maintenence people or companies for larger projects. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/604293/#p604293 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) I will often let sighted friends guide me if we're hanging out. My cane is there, but they don't mind guiding and I don't mind being guided. We're all just okay with it, because it's understood that they could say no and I could get myself from point A to point B. I just happen to like sighted guide in general; always have, and I'm not sure why.I'm one of those blind folks who does not, in fact, have serious trouble trying to break down fractions or whatever. The only "aha!" moment I had was in trying to calculate the surface area of a cylinder. The top and bottom were fine - area of each circle, and all that - but I didn't realize that for the "barrel" of the cylinder, you're technically dealing with a rectangle or, depending on the height of said cylinder, a square. I beat my head against it for awhile, until my dad, of all people, showed me something. He took a piece of construction paper and made a cylinder out of it, with one circle for its top and one for its bottom. He taped the whole thing together really lightly and told me to take off the circles first, then take off the tape keeping the cylinder held shut. And of course, as soon as I did that, the damn thing just flopped down into a rectangle. "There," he said. "You've got a rectangle or a square or whatever. Its height is the cylinder's height. Its length is the circumference of your circle. So if all the math problem tells you is the height of the cylinder and its diameter, you should be able to get anything you want out of it. Surface area, volume, all sorts of stuff". My dad isn't an especially intelligent dude, but this blew the door off my conceptualization of 3d objects, and I've basically never gone back. I am very obviously not a math whiz or anything - I know next to nothing of trig, and even less of calculus - but for the everyday stuff? No problem. In fact, I have a game I sometimes played with my parents when I was younger. When we went out to dinner and got the cheque, since it comes face-down, we'd take turns trying to calculate how much it would cost, based on how much each item was and the various taxes and all that. Basic math, but it was usually between me and my dad as to who got there first.All this is to say: please don't generalize about basic math when it comes to blind people. That's sort of walking in the same swamp as when claiming that women suck at math and science (which, by the way, they don't). URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/604291/#p604291 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) @159To address your last point first: the number of people who get dogs is pretty low, but basically anyone who wants one can get one, and there's no shortage of money for it. I've not claimed that you could literally retire every blind person off it, my point is merely that it's a horrible waste of resources. But if you did want to retire every blind person off the money they get, you could have a good crack at it. Invest for 50 years first, say. Or build blindness-specific apartment buildings. Or something. We won't, but in terms of if we're allocating money efficiently, we're not. Unfortunately society in general can't look at something like this and use it that efficiently, because that sort of efficiency is seen as cold and uncaring.I'm too young to know for sure if we had better tools in the past, and I've never used Emacspeak. If you haven't, I would say that Raman is actually incredibly horrible at ergonomics in general, so maybe don't think it's as great as it's claimed to be. But the thing about tooling is that when I got started in the early 2000s, VS was perfectly accessible. Most of the basic IDEs (as in the language) were accessible. All the stuff for mindstorm legos was accessible. Even third party C IDEs worked. You never encountered things that didn't use native controls, for the most part. You might have to use the jaws cursor or something, but it worked one way or the other. I am told by people who should know that there was a time when desktop VO was amazing, no latency issues, etc. Fortunately Jaws and NVDA are still around, but the new stuff leaves rather a lot to be desired, and there's a lot of things in Windows 10 that are regressions, kinda--for example no more typing in UWP listboxes to find what you want. Most modern GUI frameworks are inaccessible, so much so that I can find popular programming languages without an accessible GUI framework at all (Rust, for example). It's made up for by having more options, and some things like phones are a massive improvement, but as far as I'm concerned we are in a slow downhill slide.As for the Canute, it's apparently got a slow refresh rate, and I believe (without having seen one) that the braille is bigger than normal braille. You're not going to get what you want out of it. In my opinion, most of the optacon's draw is that you don't have to move your hand all over, you just move the camera. But if you can't get a really high density of pins under a finger, which braille displays can't, I can't see how it works. But sadly I've never seen an optacon, so maybe it doesn't work as well as is claimed or maybe braille is the same resolution or who knows. But the modern "we made braille displays cheap" technology does come with a lot of drawbacks, either larger braille or slower refresh or both, so I wouldn't get too excited.Numeric calculations in math are an issue, but the higher level stuff becomes a major notation problem, to the point that there aren't English translations of some concepts. For example there is this thing called an equivalence relation, it's almost like equals but not. You can say is equivalent to versus equals to distinguish, but no one reliably does that, and some of the stuff around that even the math professor couldn't translate. I do a lot of stuff in DSP for Synthizer, and those authors just pull notation out of their hat all the time. Sure, the lower level math is a problem in the sense of having to work it differently, though I will say that you don't necessarily have to rewrite the exercise repeatedly on every line. But at the higher levels, short of knowing nemeth well and having everything in braille or being able to read/write LaTeX, there is no good way to communicate it. And LaTeX is slowly but surely dying. Audiobooks don't really work, things like Mathplayer literally don't install reliably, and so on.I wouldn't call using cooking and cleaning services and always relying on your friends for O skills to the point of even relying on other blind people living independently. Living independently is optional, but the skills aren't if you decide to do it, and you have a very weird definition of independent. I'm not sure how you're okay with intentionally being the least capable person in the group, and for the most part you can develop O skills even if you have to do it on your own, so it's not like it can't be done. Also, even compared to tech salaries, cooking/cleaning services aren't cheap. Yes, you can afford them with a lot left over on that kind of thing, and I'll admit that I've done so for food since the pandemic started due to lack of energy/depression-type stuff, but it really eats into your retirement in a field where you can retire and/or become fiscally independent incredibly young. I mean, I guess it works for you, but you've chosen a very particular set of trade-offs that doesn't hel
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) @153I am in multiple places. I think I know what list you are referring to, and yes, most people there don't see a point in criticising, but a 3rd party screen reader user group, for example, is much more vocal. So are my friends. Also, I know what you mean with tools which are very hard to learn, and barely get you on par with your colleagues. Do you feel those kind of tools were more frequent in the past? The only one I can remember is emacspeak, which hasn't been replaced because it still works, I think. Never llooked at that properly. Those kind of tools can be developed by the blind only, I think.Agreed about the optacon. I am thinking about the canute braille display and a camera, it is around 2500$ I think. Gotta go to the UK and see one, when the pandemic will allow. It might have too low of a resolution for what we want. Yes, I am not saying everyone can do without O, only trying to bring this new perspective to the table and making people to do the calculations first and decide what are their options before taking a decision. Having O certainly helps, but if that is not an option, there are places you might get by without it, you don't necessarily have to "be dependent for the rest or your life", or so. It is not necessarily that we get a lot of money for being blind, it is that services like cleaning, food etc are very cheap compared to salaries in the tech industry. People doing this kind of work are not living very well currently, this might change in the future, and I'll have to change my strategy.Also, I don't see why one might not be able to go out and such without O I have both sighted and blind friends. When I'm with the sighted, they are not bothered of guiding me. Even if I had O, I think they would prefer guidance, because we would move faster. I think we can agree that the sighted move quicker than well trained blind people, especially in unknown areas. When I am with my blind friends, we either have partially sighted members in the group, or my friends have O, so they can guide me. The only instance I would envision a problem is if I had blind friends without O, which I don't. In general, those people don't go out, like you said, because they can't afford it. I am a rare case, yes.AS for math, you are probably right with the numbers. Still, I think this happens mainly because math is harder for the blind due to its heavily visual nature. Take the rule of three, for example, The sighted simply use the diagonals to understand what to multiply and divide, while the blind have to imagine all that in their heads. Seems simple enough now, but it wasn't wehn I was in 4th grade, or whenever that was taught. the same with exercises with many parentheses, simplifying fractions, geometry etc. The sighted just cut the parts which are no more relevant and write the new results underneath, while the blind have to rewrite the whole exercise from the beginning. Maybe „cut” is not the right word, my english is not that good in this domain. I hope you were able to understand. Those are simple examples, true, but that's were the blind first face math, and get scared for life. I met sighted people with a lower intellectual capacity than me, and, due to the visual nature of math, they were able to solve exercises faster and better than me, even though they did not understand what they were doing. I am not saying that to brag, just to explain a concept. There are, of course, lots of people better than me in this field. If you are going to say maths is not about raw calculations, but higher level logic, I'll agree with you, but, at the same time, I'll tell you that, until you get to that high level logic, you have to do this number crunching which scares most blind pupils, justifiedly, if you ask me. If I hadn't wanted a carrier in programming, I doubt I would have done such an effortAbout guide dogs, if I am getting this right, the money spent for a persons guide dogs would support his own life only, not of other blind persons. DO you know how many blind persons get dogs? Anyway, yes, they should be given the choice. Some might prefer the dog and the chance to interact with the society more by working for extended periodss of time, but I am sure lots of them will prefer your route. Fascinating, gotta save this info somewhere. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/604221/#p604221 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) @153I am in multiple places. I think I know what list you are referring to, and yes, most people there don't see a point in criticising, but a 3rd party screen reader user group, for example, is much more vocal. So are my friends. Also, I know what you mean with tools which are very hard to learn, and barely get you on par with your colleagues. Do you feel those kind of tools were more frequent in the past? The only one I can remember is emacspeak, which hasn't been replaced because it still works, I think. Never llooked at that properly. Those kind of tools can be developed by the blind only, I think.Agreed about the optacon. I am thinking about the canute braille display and a camera, it is around 2500$ I think. Gotta go to the UK and see one, when the pandemic will allow.Yes, I am not saying everyone can do without O, only trying to bring this new perspective to the table and making people to do the calculations first and decide what are their options before taking a decision. Having O certainly helps, but if that is not an option, there are places you might get by without it, you don't necessarily have to "be dependent for the rest or your life", or so. It is not necessarily that we get a lot of money for being blind, it is that services like cleaning, food etc are very cheap compared to salaries in the tech industry. People doing this kind of work are not living very well currently, this might change in the future, and I'll have to change my strategy.Also, I don't see why one might not be able to go out and such without O I have both sighted and blind friends. When I'm with the sighted, they are not bothered of guiding me. Even if I had O, I think they would prefer guidance, because we would move faster. I think we can agree that the sighted move quicker than well trained blind people, especially in unknown areas. When I am with my blind friends, we either have partially sighted members in the group, or my friends have O, so they can guide me. The only instance I would envision a problem is if I had blind friends without O, which I don't. In general, those people don't go out, like you said, because they can't afford it. I am a rare case, yes.AS for math, you are probably right with the numbers. Still, I think this happens mainly because math is harder for the blind due to its heavily visual nature. Take the rule of three, for example, The sighted simply use the diagonals to understand what to multiply and divide, while the blind have to imagine all that in their heads. Seems simple enough now, but it wasn't wehn I was in 4th grade, or whenever that was taught. the same with exercises with many parentheses, simplifying fractions, geometry etc. The sighted just cut the parts which are no more relevant and write the new results underneath, while the blind have to rewrite the whole exercise from the beginning. Maybe „cut” is not the right word, my english is not that good in this domain. I hope you were able to understand. Those are simple examples, true, but that's were the blind first face math, and get scared for life. I met sighted people with a lower intellectual capacity than me, and, due to the visual nature of math, they were able to solve exercises faster and better than me, even though they did not understand what they were doing. I am not saying that to brag, just to explain a concept. There are, of course, lots of people better than me in this field. If you are going to say maths is not about raw calculations, but higher level logic, I'll agree with you, but, at the same time, I'll tell you that, until you get to that high level logic, you have to do this number crunching which scares most blind pupils, justifiedly, if you ask me. If I hadn't wanted a carrier in programming, I doubt I would have done such an effortAbout guide dogs, if I am getting this right, the money spent for a persons guide dogs would support his own life only, not of other blind persons. DO you know how many blind persons get dogs? Anyway, yes, they should be given the choice. Some might prefer the dog and the chance to interact with the society more by working for extended periodss of time, but I am sure lots of them will prefer your route. Fascinating, gotta save this info somewhere. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/604221/#p604221 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) I didn't have to take any math courses in my two-year diploma program to become a social worker, and that's common enough. When I was originally trying to go for software support, they wanted me to take two math courses. The first one handled things like number systems (binary, octal, hex), Boolean, and logic gates. The second one handled stats and probability. I'm very good at the math I know and use, but have no desire to get into anything requiring higher math; I get no joy out of it. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/604176/#p604176 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) In Turkey, and from my research most of europe, it is assumed that you are competent in math from high school classes. Economics and psychology and such aren't considered soft sciences generally, and they do have math requirements, but what OI meant is alot of thwe humanities and social sciences don't have a specific math class. But what happens is you have statistics training inside the academic research class. Math and statistics are considered to be seperate subjects for the most part.And not every field requires the same level of math skills, or any at all beyond statistics. I did my BA in english language teaching, and that requires no math not just in the specific college, but generally speaking beyond the statistics in the research class. The same applies for my masters degree where a statistics class was manditory. But for people doing their projects in a theoretical field and not doing any data analysis, it was a matter of passing the class. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/604085/#p604085 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) In Turkey, and from my research most of europe, it is assumed that you are competent in math from high school classes. Economics and psychology and such aren't considered soft sciences generally, and they do have math requirements, but what OI meant is alot of thwe humanities and social sciences don't have a specific math class. But what happens is you have statistics training inside the academic research class. Math and statistics are considered to be seperate subjects for the most part. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/604085/#p604085 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) In Turkey, and from my research most of europe, it is assumed that you are competent in math from high school classes. Economics and psychology and such aren't considered soft sciences generally, and they do have math requirements, but what OI meant is alot of thwe humanities and social sciences don't have a specific math class. But what happens is you have statistics training inside the academic research class. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/604085/#p604085 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) @154I'm not making any sort of ethical statement on cooking/cleaning services. I'm not sure why you think I am. But they are unachievable for a vast, vast majority of blind people. If you have the kind of money to afford one, you're either in an unusual situation like one of the few countries that just decides that blindness is deserving of the government giving you a salary or something, or you probably already got O skills anyway while you were working toward your amazingly absurd salary at all the points before you got there where you couldn't afford it. You can effectively solve any problem except death itself by throwing sufficient amounts of money at it, yes. But most blind people are already living paycheck to paycheck.Also w.r.t math, many other countries fold what the U.S. calls Algebra II into high school, and I did say that you have to be doing something vaguely related to science before they make you take calculus-related stuff. My 20% isn't coming from me thinking that only 20% go to college, it's accounting for the fact that a lot more than 20% of sighted people go to college. A philosophy or communications major isn't going to see it, no. But even the softer sciences tend to, like economics, because that sort of math is actually very highly applicable to anything dealing with numbers. It's not a "the U.S. is special" thing, because whether or not you need calculus-type stuff or beyond doesn't depend on what the college wants, it depends on the field, and if the college drops it then you won't be effective in the field. It's also worth pointing out that there are also other sorts of higher mathematics that have similar problems, for example all the higher level statistics classes. I don't know what you did, but whatever it is didn't require math. You can't shortcut past the math, even if you shortcut past the classes. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/604082/#p604082 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) As for access, I think third party access of non-microsoft apps is rolling downhill faster and faster. Take security suites for example. 5 years ago, there were several that were quite usable, however now the number of fullly usable suites can be counted with the fingers of one hand. Even fewer in fact. Most blind people use defender now, not for how effective it is, but because it has no access issues. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/604080/#p604080 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) Camlorn, a few points. I agree that throwing money at stuff like cooking, cleaning isn't a solution for most people. But there are valid reasons you might want to use a cleaning or cooking service or hire a driver. If you were someone like a businessman, or worked like 12 hours a day or so and weekends, and had several hundred thousand in income a year, then conceivably you would probably want to hire such services, even if you knew how to do them yourself, if you didn't have time.I have to add though about manditory math classes, or general education courses. This seems to be a US specific thing. If you are not in a stem field, and in a soft subject, like history, languages etc, you aren't required to take math classes or courses not directly related to your major in European or British universities. Graduate degrees are much more specialized. For example, the 9 month masters program I attended at Cambridge had a degree structure option where you could just skip all the courses and presentation and have your course be graded 100% by the thesis and write a 3 word thesis instead of a 2 word thesis if you were already certain on what you wanted to do and had a topic. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/604075/#p604075 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) @152Android is one of the biggest offenders for the "blind people are super enthusiastic for a bad product" points. You just were in the wrong places. The Android mailing lists used to be like 90% people saying it's great, among other things. Maybe that has changed. Also, I wouldn't say that Microsoft and Google responding is incompatible with most blind people not pushing for it. We aren't their primary motivating factor, and even if we are they are responding many times slower than they should be. Google Docs is basically a train wreck for one thing, and has been since accessibility was first done for it.If you're somewhere where you can get cleaning, food, and transportation by just throwing money at the problems then yes, you could hypothetically do this without O But even as a programmer in the U.S., I can't really afford all of that myself, so wherever you are the economy has worked out weirdly for that stuff. I don't think it's a generally applicable solution. It's certainly not a solution in the U.S. on the typical blind person salary. Also, without O skills going out and doing things--even with friends--isn't really so feasible. I know there's a few countries that have basically said "here is free money, you never have to worry about this again" at the governmental level, but it is rare.A lot more sighted people than you think learn math. Saying "well sighted people don't" isn't really applicable. Even really lame colleges in the U.S. make students going into entirely non-mathematical fields take as far as Algebra II, and if what you want to do is even vaguely related to science in some way you're probably going to be doing at least a bit of calculus. Say that it's 20% sighted people who know what an integral is, and maybe 1-5% blind people. I don't have sources for those numbers, but based off what I've seen at the college level, they're probably about right. Even community colleges in the U.S. offer as far as calculus 2. Other countries go further with this and really push math: the U.S. is actually an outlier and our standards are much less than those of many other countries. But many blind people don't even make it through high school math for a variety of reasons, even more than that never try for college, and of the people who try for college I'd guess that at least a fourth fail out or give up if they try to do STEM or run up against those classes for some reason.As for the guide dogs, the numbers work out like this. The guide dog schools are happy enough to quote a number between $5 to $10 to produce a trained dog, depending who you talk to, so take the low end of that range, and we'll use $5. Broadly speaking, you're eligible for a guide dog at 18, and you'll live to be 70. The life span of the average labrador retriever is 14 years. The first 2 years of that go to training the dog. Most dogs will stop working well before they die, and get 2-3 years of retirement at the end. This gives a maximum of 10 years per guide dog. That puts you at 6-7 guide dogs or so at a lower bound. But that doesn't count for accidents or various other problems that can develop: weird phobias, obedience issues, you name it, which effectively gives you 1-2 more.So that's 8-10 dogs for your lifetime. But it's higher than that; when I did guide dogs, my first class had someone in it who had 5 dogs in 10 years. She was super super active, it just worked out that way. My first dog only lasted 5. So call it 1-2 more on top of that. Say the average blind person has 12.That's 12*5=60 dollars before investment. Assume that sum is invested at your birth. The stock market returns 5-7% annually over the long run; we'll be conservative and say 5%. 1.05 to the 18th power is the formula for the gain of your investment over 18 years; that's 2.4. 2.4*60 is 1.4 million, as a lower bound of what I'd expect if we just had the chunk of money you'd be consuming for a lifetime of guide dogs at your birth so we could invest it. Typically, retirees can pull out 2-4% of their portfolio via dividends and other safe investment options; that's a salary of $28000 to $4 depending on year. In the U.S. via various tax exemptions, that's likely as not to be close to tax free and is equivalent to the average person making $5. If you instead opted to just work for 10-15 years more, you could be retired in your 30s with a 6-figure "salary". And this is why I think guide dogs are a terrible, terrible allocation of money. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/604065/#p604065 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) Interesting topic, I'll throw my €0.02. This is going to be pretty long, seriously competing with Musicalman. I don't really feel accessibility has decreased. This thing with people being happy for what they get seems to be apple only, this is valid for the sighted too. They removed the headphone jack, charger and what not, and sales are still increasing. I don't know why this is, I am not a psychologist. Guess they have stellar marketing.Google and Microsoft are heavily criticised for accessibility issues. They respond, slower than we'd like, but they do. Android accessibility is slowly increasing, the lucky thing is that, since the acccessibility API is open, 3rd party screen readers really speed this up. Google docs is decently acccessible, allowing the blind to collaboratively work with the sighted. I heard Chrome os accessibility is much better than android's, some blind people use it as their primary OS. Microsoft has an accessibility person for visual studio on a blind programming list, it already works quite good with jaws, and it seems that, from 2020.4 onwards, the NVDA glitches will be fixed.This doesn't mean we should stop asking for accessibility, On the contrary, demanding is what brought us here, so we have to keep going at it.The appliance touchscreen revolution is truely a problem, but the IoT and voice smart assistance trend is the counterweight. Also, I wonder if an app would be able to tell us what command our finger is pointing to, on the touchscreen. I have to try to experiment with that if I'll have time.One of the most interesting things I've read here was about guide dogs consuming so much money, all the blind persons could easily leave on them. If it weren't Camlorn who said that, I would have thought it was false.I have a radically different take of O than most people here, but I think it's feasable only in a few countries.Basically, if you get a good salary here, considering you also get disability benefits, you can live on your own paying for uber, cleaning, and ordering food. Hell, even some sighted guys do that.SO, yes, I think O is optional for being independent, but I can speak only for my country. Some may say I am not truley independent if I leave like that, but let's think. What does independence mean? Doing everything required to leave on your own, without help? IF we accept this definition, then people stopped being independent when they moved from villages to towns and cities, and everyone specialized in his particular work domain, paying for other services and being paid for his. One does not raise pigs to eat them, he buys themI can't comment on O per se. Here, there is no trainig whatsoever. People learn on their own. There is an NGO trying to do this, but it is not solid or standardized.I agree about braille being essential for spelling and math. Well, I wouldn't have been able to do math without braille, but I do know people who do. My math teacher was dictating me differential equasions, and showing me how to solve them, when walking around the room. I could barely keep pace with him, let alone understand, but this is another topic.I don't think decadence of braille is the reason math is not taught to the blind. Even for the sighted, math is a very difficult subject, very few manage to learn it properly. Teachers have their fault, of course. For the blind, even fewer would be able to learn it, so teachers simply can't work with 1 or 2 pupils while ignoring the others. There is not enough time. Since I was interested in this subject, I took meditations and was able to get to faculty level. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/604062/#p604062 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) I'm capable of reading Braille and use it just about every day.When I am at work, I just find it easier taking advantage of my Braille display rather than listening to my screenreader reading the text out loud to me. I have a slight hearing disability, so it's sometimes a bit harder for me to focus on my colleagues and my screenreader talking to me at the same time.As for Braille grade 2, I started learning the German version from the 3rd grade on and stopped at grade 6 and I learned English grade 2 in the 8th grade which was, in my opinion, a bit too late, given that we already used laptops at school at that time and nobody really seemed to be motivated enough to put a lot of effort in learning it and honestly, neither did I; actually I just put so much effort in it to pass the exam and therefore have to join another course for a retake.English Braille grade 2 is, after all, somewhat easier than the German version which comes with a couple of rules that even teachers (I talked to) themselves couldn't quite explain why it is done that way.In any case, I don't regret learning both of it because, as mentioned in previous posts already, it saves us some space and at least minimizes texts at least by a slight bit. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603974/#p603974 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) @147My understanding of the UEB situation is that the English part of it isn't really that much more inefficient. The primary rationale I've seen for it, though this may not be all of it, is that it's about making it easier for automated translation to be a thing. Normal old grade 2 has a lot of special cases that make it difficult for everyone, honestly including humans, but especially software (for example to, ff, and ! being the same symbol). I don't personally know UEB, but I did look into it in detail and my understanding is that a grade 2 braille reader can pick it up and be going in a day or two at most.The specific problem with higher level math in general is really more the point that you can either be one of the blind people who's actually done higher level math, or one of the blind people working in accessibility who hasn't or if they have they're thinking about how to make it work for the 90%. A lot of the problem with modern accessibility stuff is that if you make it work for the 90% over and over, the 10% that you keep leaving off at the high end starts adding up pretty damn quickly. Unfortunately, Nemeth is actually absurdly complicated in a way because it's not what you think it is. They teach it as "this means square root", but it's actually "this means bar above" and you have to learn sighted math formatting before it makes sense. But at the high levels of mathematics where authors are just like "let notation I invented juste for this paper mean" that's a valuable characteristic.But for English, let's be honest. Becoming 5% less efficient isn't that big a deal for the sake of less weird snowflake special cases and we all end up leaving braille anyway because it's not practical after college. We'd probably leave it for math too if someone could crack the math to speech problem.But we do need to get all the people doing accessibility to stop developing for the people who have trouble learning it first. We can't without changing literally all of society, so it's not going to happen. But in another 10 years when we look back and everyone is like "we've made such strides in accessibility, but blind people haven't been making nearly as much money as they did in the 2010s" or whatever--well, there's why.I'd hesitate to say it's worse though. It's worse than maybe 10 years ago, in my opinion. When I first learned the computer you could pick up most software and it'd at least kind of work. But it's definitely not worse than 30 years ago back in the era of you couldn't do office paperwork at all, and we've only really been able to have a good cellphone experience at all for well under 10 years as well. I see a lot of really discouraging downward trends, where things like academia are eating what used to be a bunch of blind hackers hacking on Jaws or whatever and turning it into "but that's too complicated" and shit, but it's fortunately only just starting. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603923/#p603923 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) as for being blindfolded while playing sports, that makes alot of sense, so you don't represent an unfair advantage to your teammates, as those sports are supposed to be played without sight.And that type of blindfolding is extremely brief, during matches, so it is extremely unlikely to result in a change. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603918/#p603918 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) Ok everyone says how hard nemeth and grade 2 is. Honestly what is hard about grade 2 or nemeth? The number of contractions is childs play compared to Turkish braille. Turkish has a grand total of 832! contractions. And the affix contractions' meaning changes based on what word they are appended to. Turkish braille is so hard it takes at least like grade 2-3 to master all the contractions and start reading fully contracted braille. Only third grade books were written fully contracted. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603916/#p603916 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) This is just my opinion, but I feel like UEB was pushed on us by sighted braille readers because learning grade 2 contracted and nemeth is too difficult to keep straight if they transition from one to the other. I guess, context is becoming a foreign concept. Grade 2 rocks, and while I can read UEB, I can't stand it and, without some compelling reasons why it is better, ever endorse it as something worth teaching as a primary method of braille.As far as being blindfolded, if you play goal ball or beep-baseball, you will also be blindfolded and have to function. I know totals who can't navigate their own houses without getting lost, and I know partials who can function perfectly fine without sight. Even still, one thing I think that is overlooked in the argument about neuroplasticity, is that the more you exercise the brain in making new connections, the longer neuroplasticity remains flexible. No training center is ever going to be long enough to completely irreversibly restructure the brain, and by the nature of learning new skills will increase the adaptability once the blindfold is removed.I have relatively useful light perception, I can see different shades of contrast, but no color, so for instance I can see the difference between sidewalks and grass, or sidewalks and the street, although grass and the street look the same to me. I also function perfectly fine with a blindfold. What I can't do very well is honestly wearing a mask, sunglasses, or a hat. They create both a shadow makes it constantly look like I'm about to run into something, and they change the way I hear things in my surroundings.I do think access has gone down over the last fifteen years or so. With my first guidedog, throughout her working life I got denied twice. With my current guidedog, I get denied about once a month or so. Then with the prevalence of most electronics moving to touch screens, money in the U.s. still is not accessible despite several rulings by the supreme court, Then with jobs being generally harder for us to get and much less be competitive with a sighted counterpart, blindness does suck especially once you have bills and a mortgage. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603908/#p603908 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) Jayde, I am perfectly aware of the meanings of phrases and words, I am a native speaker of English afterall, and have additionally done extra things to improve my understanding in addition to education. The word bash, which I used to have the meaning insult, and demean was correctly and accurately used. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603907/#p603907 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) I guess we could have an argument about who is and isn't qualified to render judgments on a person's arguments (read: not their skills). But instead, let's not. Let's just accept that words have meaning and you misused the word "bashed". URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603894/#p603894 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) Jayde, by all do respect, the defenition of bashing holds. Commenting on someone else's blindness skills, when you have niether the info or training to actually evaluate them is insulting.As for ueb? How does that hold anyway? What was the point of it. I know NLS magazines use UEB, but it did away with several contractions. What point does this have other than to make braille bigger?As for neuroplasticity, if a change happens, and like the visual cortex thing, and you don't want it to happen, it is bad. Because neuroplasticity of that area when blindfolded causes the connections of the eye to weaken, and connections to the touch or hearing centers to strengthen. So suddenly your vision would be even more bad and less useful than it used to be.As for braille, I physically wrote it in the beginning of 2019. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603874/#p603874 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) I wasn't done learning grade 2 Braille until I could spell the contractions in different words. I guess I had a good vision teacher, because to me that basically overrides the issues with contractions people are saying. Braille is much to slow to avoid the contractions entirely. I'm not a fan of Unified English Braille Code either, because of math and space reasons as well. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603864/#p603864 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) I wasn't done learning grade 2 Braille until I could spell the contractions in different words. I guess I had a good vision teacher, because to me that basically overrides the issues with contractions people are saying. Braille is much to slow to avoid the contractions entirely. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603864/#p603864 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) Yeah, and what's going to happen is the next generation is going to grow up without it and there will be yet another barrier to higher mathematics. Yay!I mean seriously, high school trig textbook was 93 volumes in Nemeth, but hey, let's just multiply that by 1.5 or 2! Fantastic idea. Really scintillating. Calc 2 had equations that were over 80 cells in length for *one step* in Nemeth, and that was after my personal contractions (e.g. no exponentiation end marker, single-cell multiplication/division). URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603834/#p603834 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) Nemeth rocks. I used it throughout my schooling and it was fine. New, sure. Difficult to parse when you're young? Sure, a little bit, because it's one more thing to learn. But it works pretty well once it's up and running. UEB is, by all accounts, trying to do everything in code and generally taking up more space because of it. I am not a fan of UEB, personally. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603827/#p603827 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) @127It's been long enough since I've had to use them that I don't remember the specific dot patterns, but essentially what English braille has had forever is prefixes to words that say what the formatting of the word is. There's symbols for all capital, bold, italic, underline, and so on. When there's not, most books will have a page in the front called translator's note that says "we had to introduce these symbols for this material". Things like the SAT, GRE, all those sorts of standardized tests where they're just like "answer this question about the bold passage"--well, it's bolded, one way or another.UEB should have them too, but UEB is new enough that I don't know it and by all accounts an efficiency travesty, so your mileage may vary. I'm not sure how good UEB is at non-English languages, but probably pretty bad unless you're using the roman alphabet.Typically, we don't use 8 dot braille. That'll come up in something called computer braille, which is a translation of the ascii table. But typically the place you see 8 dots the most is on braille displays, which will reserve the bottom two dots for showing you where the cursor/selection/etc. are.@129The primary use of bold formatting or whatever to a braille reader is that you can know that something is special. For us it's not so much about skimming. But if you see them a lot, you get a feel for what is going to need them. For instance, a lot of novels will use bold and/or italic and/or whatever else for indicating the thoughts of the characters or telepathy or whatever, reserving quotes only for things that are actually said vocally.UEB math by all accounts is the worst part of UEB, so consider yourself lucky that you know Nemeth. Nemeth is hard to learn but is actually efficient and can encode all of mathematics at any level of education. UEB does this whole thing about UEB math but America wanted Nemeth becuse the blindness orgs over here went "wait, this new code sucks" so there's some sort of "now this is Nemeth" symbol in there somewhere. But the codes for reading aren't that different--supposedly, if you know one, you can read the other at least to some extent.But the formatting stuff did exist even before UEB, yes. Braille does actually encompass all of sighted writing.@132 and @139You don't wear a blindfold 24/7 at those camps. Source: I've actually been to one. it's only during the training or whatever, on your own time it's optional, or at least it was with what I was at. I wasn't at one of their mobility focused ones, so perhaps those are different, but I highly doubt it. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603794/#p603794 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) No, actually. Bashing usually refers to insulting or putting down your opponent. If I destroy you in an argument, that does not by definition mean I bashed you. Now, if I destroyed you in an argument and implied that you were stupid? That's bashing. In fact, that's personal attack territory. I am thoroughly unconvinced of your arguments, but am not saying or implying that I think you're stupid.I haven't physically written braille for well over a decade, but I have not forgotten a single contraction. Muscle memory is a powerful thing.In my understanding, you only wear sleep shades - because that's what they literally are - during your training. You are not asked to wear them twenty-four hours a day for days or weeks or months straight. Again, someone set me straight if I'm wrong here, but I don't think I am.Even if we can argue that eventual permanent change will occur (re: neuroplasticity), can we be certain that this change is prohibitive or in some other way negative? After all, if all you're really getting from this tweak is a slight boost in your ability to process braille, or process by touch, then it's an upgrade, and your argument falls flat on its face. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603786/#p603786 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) I am not demonizing anyone. I am stating a fact. Bashing is the situation where arguments are fabricated or shown in a way they were clearly not intended as such to demonize someone specificly. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603783/#p603783 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
2021-01-02
Thread
AudioGames . net Forum — Off-topic room : GrannyCheeseWheel via Audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) And you're demonizing the other side by using words like, 'bashing'. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603778/#p603778 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) In that earlier post, I hadn't reviewed this particular article, but it is common knowledge that extended changes lead to irreversable neuroplasticity. Again, you are knitpicking. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603773/#p603773 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
2021-01-02
Thread
AudioGames . net Forum — Off-topic room : GrannyCheeseWheel via Audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) Only after the fact, and now you're playing the Daigonite game where every counterpoint is simply, "You didn't read my post closely enough!" URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603769/#p603769 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) Post edited to clarify that I was talking about your earlier post on neuroplasticity where you conveniently leave out that it is reversible.Sure you're mentioning it now, but only because I brought it up. Otherwise you were quite happy to roll on with what you said originally. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603768/#p603768 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) Article wrote:Now a long-term study from the Berenson-Allen Center for Noninvasive Brain Stimulation at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) demonstrates that sudden and complete loss of vision leads to profound – but rapidly reversible -- changes in the visual cortex.You never mention this anywhere in your original post on neuroplasticity, giving the impression that as soon as that blindfold has been on for a period of time, it's a one-way ticket to Blindsville.Artical wrote:"Half of the study participants remained completely blindfolded, 24 hours a day, for a total of five days under the careful watch of the staff of BIDMC's General Clinical Research Center.Does one have to wear a blindfold every minute of every day at these training camps? Or is it like the second half of the participants where you only have to wear it when you're undergoing teaching? URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603745/#p603745 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) Article wrote:Now a long-term study from the Berenson-Allen Center for Noninvasive Brain Stimulation at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) demonstrates that sudden and complete loss of vision leads to profound – but rapidly reversible -- changes in the visual cortex.You never mention this anywhere in your original post ON neuroplasticity, giving the impression that as soon as that blindfold has been on for a period of time, it's a one-way ticket to Blindsville.Artical wrote:"Half of the study participants remained completely blindfolded, 24 hours a day, for a total of five days under the careful watch of the staff of BIDMC's General Clinical Research Center.Does one have to wear a blindfold every minute of every day at these training camps? Or is it like the second half of the participants where you only have to wear it when you're undergoing teaching? URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603745/#p603745 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) Again, you don't read my post. I did mention it was reversable according to the article, but that the study researcher stated it was likely that perminent changes happen over a longer period of time URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603755/#p603755 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) Article wrote:Now a long-term study from the Berenson-Allen Center for Noninvasive Brain Stimulation at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) demonstrates that sudden and complete loss of vision leads to profound – but rapidly reversible -- changes in the visual cortex.You never mention this anywhere, giving the impression that as soon as that blindfold has been on for a period of time, it's a one-way ticket to Blindsville.Artical wrote:"Half of the study participants remained completely blindfolded, 24 hours a day, for a total of five days under the careful watch of the staff of BIDMC's General Clinical Research Center.Does one have to wear a blindfold every minute of every day at these training camps? Or is it like the second half of the participants where you only have to wear it when you're undergoing teaching? URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603745/#p603745 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) These are used to draw someone's attention to certain parts of a text. For example, alot of test questions will ask to select the meaning or find the probblamatic usage of the underlined word. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603737/#p603737 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) Bold, italics, underlining, etc. are modifiers used for [Emphasis] in literary topography. Each of them can have small differences, some more subtle or overt. Italics for example slants letters to more subtly express a word or letters without standing out from the rest of a sentence, whereas bold sticks out by thickening text. Underlining can be used for highlighting, or for various other purposes, other forms include capitalization, colors, etc. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603729/#p603729 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) @127, being in the US and learning grade 2 literary braille code as a kid, the only symbol I was made aware of was dots 4-6. At first I was told this indicated italics. But later, I was told this was a catch-all symbol for any special type i.e. bold, italics, underline etc.Even with the existence of such a symbol, skimming for bold text and the like isn't one of those things I would consider easy to do, without reading everything linearly and looking for it. When I asked my vision support teacher if sighted people can skim for that text without reading every word, she said yes. It was just another thing I felt I had to come to terms with, given my low self-confidence about my blindness.I won't touch on how much braille helps you with formatting because I don't really know. By the time I started having to care about that, I was transitioning to the computer, where immediate access to braille, especially my own, wasn't an easy option for me as I didn't always have a braille display handy. Besides, speech and typing on a qwerty keyboard felt more natural for me. I admit I could've used my Braille Note more to learn formatting, but since the instructors saw I could follow well enough with just speech, nobody made a big issue of it. And at the time, I didn't think you could even convey formatting with braille anyway, so I didn't see the point of trying.To this day, I still don't quite get bold, italics and underline. I know they exist and that braille might accommodate them, but I never quite understood what they are or how useful they are, other than perhaps drawing your attention briefly to text. I guess that bold makes the text larger, underline has a line under it? Italics I have no idea, and then you get into different fonts, sizes, indents, hanging indents, and while some of them make sense, my brain still doesn't get how I could personally find them useful. To me, they feel like things which mainly benefit the sighted, and can only be approximated in the blind world.I'm good with spelling and basic word usage, though. That is something braille helped me out with, so I will agree that braille should be learned by every blind student. You don't get literacy without it. Ever since I stopped reading braille as much as I used to, my spelling has tanked. I remember old words well but new words are considerably harder for me to remember, and most of the time I have to imagine the word in braille a hundred times or come up with a crazy mnemonic, which I almost never had to do before.And math braille I was pretty good with too. Well at least nemeth code. I haven't needed math braille since UEB became a thing though, so I'd have to catch up. I feel a little bad for some of the kids caught in the transition period, having to juggle two braille codes at the same time while trying to learn algebra and stuff. Maybe it's not that bad, but I was terrible at the advanced math I had to take. That's one reason I wasn't in support of changing the system at first, but I know there are advantages. Hey, maybe UEB has better support for bold/italic/underline? So I'll at least know what that darned special symbol actually means, instead of saying "there's that weird 4-6 again..."I should go look.Edit: fix typos. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603723/#p603723 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) @127, being in the US and learning grade 2 literary braille code as a kid, the only symbol I was made aware of was dots 4-6. At first I was told this indicated italics. But later, I was told this was a catch-all symbol for any special type i.e. bold, italics, underline etc.Even with the existence of such a symbol, skimming for bold text and the like isn't one of those things I would consider easy to do, without reading everything linearly and looking for it. When I asked my vision support teacher if sighted people can skim for that text without reading every word, she said yes. It was just another thing I felt I had to come to terms with, given my low self-confidence about my blindness.I won't touch on how much braille helps you with formatting because I don't really know. By the time I started having to care about that, I was transitioning to the computer, where immediate access to braille, especially my own, wasn't an easy option for me. Besides, speech and typing on a qwerty keyboard felt more natural for me. I admit I could've used my Braille Note more ot learn braille formatting, but since the instructors saw I could follow well enough with just speech, nobody made a big issue of it. And at the time, I didn't think you could even convey formatting with braille anyway, so I didn't see the point of trying.To this day, I don't quite get the usefulness of bold, italics and underline. I know they exist and that braille might make them clear, but I never quite understood what they are or how they are useful, other than perhaps drawing your attentoin briefly to text. I guess that bold makes the text larger, underline has a line under it? Italics I have no idea, and then you get into different fonts, sizes, indents, hanging indents, and while some of them make sense, my brain still doesn't get how I could personally find them useful. It feels like one of those things which mainly benefits the sighted, and can only be approximated in the blind world.I'm good with spelling and basic word usage, though. That is something braille helped me out with, so I will agree that braille should be learned by every blind student. You don't get literacy without it. Every since I stopped reading braille as much as i used to, my spelling has tanked. I remember old words well but new words are considerably harder for me to remember, and most of the time I have to imagine the word in braille a hundred times or come up with a crazy mnemonic, which I almost never had to do before.And math braille I was pretty good with too. Well at least nemeth code. I haven't needed math braille since UEB became a thing though, so I'd have to catch up. I feel a little bad for some of the kids caught in the transition period, where old books were circulating with nemeth, while new books use UEB. That's one reason I wasn't in support of changing the system at first, but I know there are advantages. Hey, maybe UEB has better support for bold/italic/underline? So I'll at least know what that darned special symbol actually means, instead of saying "there's that weird 4-6 again..."I should go look. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603723/#p603723 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) @127I've been curious about the different braille tables and syntax standards myself. You might want to try taking a look at [Unified English Braille], it seems to predominantly support 6 dot braille types and offers a number of prefixes for words and letters for capitalization, underlining, italics, symbolism, etc. There's a few more resources [here], [here], and [here]. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603711/#p603711 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) Camlorn wrote:But the thing is that in addition to spelling, braille teaches you about formatting. Italics, bold, etc. have equivalents in braille, and if you read novels or something in braille as a kid--even if it's forced--you're learning about that sort of thing.I don't want to seem like I'm nitpicking by any means; I agree with pretty much all of your posts, and have been giving you thumbs ups to show for it. This statement just honestly fascinates me, because Slovenian braille does not, in fact, have equivalents to any of those. There is an all-capital-letters sign, sure, as well as indenting. But other than that, 6-point braille has nothing. 8-point has underlining at least (and with the Braille Extender add-on, you could make other things like bold display as underline as well), but even there, there aren't that many options.And it's something I actually ranted to a couple teachers from our blindy school about, exactly because I am only just now learning how many things sighted people emphasize, by turning that on in NVDA. And that is often quite inconvenient, because it breaks the flow of the text, and will continue to be so until someone makes an add-on that plays little clicks or something to denote text formatting instead.Could you please tell me how braille books over there do it? Do you have a symbol at the start and end of text with formatting, like *? Do you use 8-point braille for books as well (god, that really should be a thing here). Clearly this is something I need to do more research on, because then if I ever get brave enough to advocate for change here, to say "Hey no, you can't just decide that just because we're blind, we don't need this stuff!", I'll be able to point to examples of countries that actually do this right. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603700/#p603700 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) Ok so was composing my response, but accidentally closed window, so it is rewritten.So Camlorn it is extremely obvious to me that your entire purpose of posting on this thread is to knitpick my arguments and bash me. I obviously did read your post on how canes have gotten stronger over the years. I even supported that argument with my example of a cane that took severe punishment but could be repaired despite it. If you had taken the trouble to actually read my post this would have been clear to you.As for braille, to be clrear the contractions thing was something an english teacher of mine had put forth to tell motivate the class to write uncontracted, and I honestly never saw it happen since I wasn't around many native English braille readers at an age that I could've recognized this. But I do admit I should've clearly stated this. Unlike some, I have no problem admitting my faults or things I should've done better. And before you go on to bash my teachers as well, keep in mind that I was trained in English braille natively until the age of 7, when I started learning the Turkish code. So it is quite normal not to know italics and other formatting at that age. But there are limitations of braille that anyone with the right amount of education will realize. The fact that it takes up a huge amount of space compared to print of the same length is one. Also, anyone here who has taken an intro college writing course will know that there are three types of reading for sighted people, skimming, where the person looks briefly at a text and extracts the general meaning, scanning where someone looks for specific information, and in-depth reading, where the person actually reads all of a text. As a blind person can only perceive information in a linear way, from left to right, or in a fixed order, all reading we do is in-depth reading. And this eats up more time when in-depth reading isn't really needed. I would also like to know where you knitpicked the idea that I didn't know all of braille. Yet another point you fabricated to bash me. I obviously used reference works to fill the gaps in my knowledge and complete my training.As for the points I made, they are shallow only according to your understanding. You very clearly have a very inflated view of your self, to look down on me and to be errogantly presumtive of my level of personal skills when you clearly no absolutely nothing about me. Not that it is anyone's business but I am not the idiot that you try your best to make me out to be, I have traveled to three countries, and lived in them, and still live on my own, to the point where family or any rellitives are far far away from me, so I don't have a sighted person to help me out, s you might believe. I am also an accomplished person, and possess a graduate degree from one of the top three institutions in the world. While at that institution, I coincidentally had the opertunity to meet one of the most well known blind people in the world, so I am very confident I know what people are capable of and am not a local maximum as you try to make me out to be. Unless some superblind have the ability to fly through the air from the airport to their destination with two 30 kg suitcases strapped to their backs. So drop the I am smarter than you and know better attitude. You are conversing with an intelligent and highly educated person, so structure your responses accordingly. Ccovid and not having any sighted people around wasn't a serious challenge as I would've thought, I bet some blind people figured out some skills they otherwise wouldn't have tried, such as giving oneself a haircut, which believe it or not, is totally possible.And one aditional point, someone had mentioned that I was out of touch with reality because I thought virtual training through a computer would be possible. Again, if my post was studied more closely, I was clearly stating thi was an ideal situation, and that it was something that could be possible in the future.Exodus, the training camps that I was primarily refering to are 6-14 months long, from what I remember. This conceivably is a long enough time to cause vision deprevation to hasten vision loss. Of course, since I am trying to make a point, I will provide references to studies done on people who were blindfolded.https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 … 002719.htmThis describes a study done at HMS, in which sighted people were divided into two groups and blindfolded. The group that was blinded fully for five days had changes in their visual corticies that enhanced their braille reading skills. Though this appeared to reverse when the blindfolds were removed, the researchers state that it is likely that perminent changes happen when the process is over a longer period of time. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603683/#p603683 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) @119 you are correct about low vision. I do have some vision in my right eye, and I tend to see better on cloudy days than sunny days. Another one example where things are different for my vision with displays on devices. I also prefer darker UI interfaces because it does not hurt my eyes as much while trying to read text or navagating around windows. I just now have two displays to allow me to see what I am doing on one program like discord on my secondary display while using chrome on the main display. On an other point I am going to be going to a trainning center in my state to gain better skills with doing things on my own to make things easier to live on my own once i move out eventually. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603684/#p603684 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) Ok so was composing my response, but accidentally closed window, so it is rewritten.So Camlorn it is extremely obvious to me that your entire purpose of posting on this thread is to knitpick my arguments and bash me. I obviously did read your post on how canes have gotten stronger over the years. I even supported that argument with my example of a cane that took severe punishment but could be repaired despite it. If you had taken the trouble to actually read my post this would have been clear to you.As for braille, to be clrear the contractions thing was something an english teacher of mine had put forth to tell motivate the class to write uncontracted, and I honestly never saw it happen since I wasn't around many native English braille readers at an age that I could've recognized this. But I do admit I should've clearly stated this. Unlike some, I have no problem admitting my faults or things I should've done better. And before you go on to bash my teachers as well, keep in mind that I was trained in English braille natively until the age of 7, when I started learning the Turkish code. So it is quite normal not to know italics and other formatting at that age. But there are limitations of braille that anyone with the right amount of education will realize. The fact that it takes up a huge amount of space compared to print of the same length is one. Also, anyone here who has taken an intro college writing course will know that there are three types of reading for sighted people, skimming, where the person looks briefly at a text and extracts the general meaning, scanning where someone looks for specific information, and in-depth reading, where the person actually reads all of a text. As a blind person can only perceive information in a linear way, from left to right, or in a fixed order, all reading we do is in-depth reading. And this eats up more time when in-depth reading isn't really needed. I would also like to know where you knitpicked the idea that I didn't know all of braille. Yet another point you fabricated to bash me. I obviously used reference works to fill the gaps in my knowledge and complete my training.As for the points I made, they are shallow only according to your understanding. You very clearly have a very inflated view of your self, to look down on me and to be errogantly presumtive of my level of personal skills when you clearly no absolutely nothing about me. Not that it is anyone's business but I am not the idiot that you try your best to make me out to be, I have traveled to three countries, and lived in them, and still live on my own, to the point where family or any rellitives are far far away from me, so I don't have a sighted person to help me out, s you might believe. I am also an accomplished person, and possess a graduate degree from one of the top three institutions in the world. While at that institution, I coincidentally had the opertunity to meet one of the most well known blind people in the world, so I am very confident I know what people are capable of and am not a local maximum as you try to make me out to be. Unless some superblind have the ability to fly through the air from the airport to their destination with two 30 kg suitcases strapped to their backs. And because of this, covid and not having any sighted people around wasn't a serious challenge as I would've thought, I bet some blind people figured out some skills they otherwise wouldn't have tried, such as giving oneself a haircut, which believe it or not, is totally possible.And one aditional point, someone had mentioned that I was out of touch with reality because I thought virtual training through a computer would be possible. Again, if my post was studied more closely, I was clearly stating thi was an ideal situation, and that it was something that could be possible in the future.Exodus, the training camps that I was primarily refering to are 6-14 months long, from what I remember. This conceivably is a long enough time to cause vision deprevation to hasten vision loss. Of course, since I am trying to make a point, I will provide references to studies done on people who were blindfolded.https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 … 002719.htmThis describes a study done at HMS, in which sighted people were divided into two groups and blindfolded. The group that was blinded fully for five days had changes in their visual corticies that enhanced their braille reading skills. Though this appeared to reverse when the blindfolds were removed, the researchers state that it is likely that perminent changes happen when the process is over a longer period of time. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603683/#p603683 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) I haven't been able to use braille for a number of years now and every time I go to get a display something happens and I need to stick it on the back burner for a while longer. I can still remember all the contractions so this is a terrible argument, What's your next one? Braille pins poke you in the fingers so there for braille bad/useless? Come on.re: The neuroplasticity thing.Is sticking a blindfold on to train yourself in a task for a few hours each day at some three week training camp really going to cause your brain to suddenly undergo reconstruction to ignore the input from blocked off eyeballs? Is there any evidence of this even happening? URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603671/#p603671 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) No, sorry, GrannyCheeseWheel is right. You're not even reading closely enough to notice that I said that canes have improved a lot in the last 20 years. I literally just said they're durable and good nowadays, but didn't used to be. Then you took it and flipped it around to find another point to argue with.Also, no, you don't forget contractions and stuff over the years and start not being able to spell. I've never heard of that happening. If you want to engage in an argument, actually engage in an argument. Raising the bar by just introducing a bunch of hypotheticals rather than really addressing any of the points or providing reasons isn't arguing, it's fearmongering or something. You can take anything and tag on what-ifs all day long and claim it's an argument. That's how things like "but what if vaccines cause autism" are able to still have traction.yes, you have an opinion. Fine. But you're really never going to change anyone's minds until you become open to the idea that you can be wrong, come to terms with the fact that changing an opinion in some way is a perfectly fine thing to do, and start realizing that other people have good points and have thought things through. You clearly haven't thought this through at all. Angrily saying that you don't like the status quo but here's an impractical solution instead doesn't help your case either. At this point it's hard for me to even believe that you're as capable as you claim to be, because I don't understand how you can have this shallow of an understanding while having the skills you claim to have.For instance, turns out that you're arguing about braille, then by your own words you never actually learned all of it. It's a shame you had an incompetent teacher, but you've now formed arguments around that teacher's incompetence rather than considering that maybe you just had an incompetent teacher and the rest of us know it better. It makes me wonder what else you think you can do well because you don't have a good basis of comparison to what's possible. You'd be far from the first blind person who thinks they're great but then one day they meet someone who's 10 times better and suddenly the reaction is something like "well, shit". That happened to me once upon a time, and to be honest it's not at all a pleasant experience to realize that you're only a local maximum and that while you're living independently or whatever, that other person over there is functioning on a whole other level. Maybe you're as good as you think you are, there's really no way for us to know via a forum. But maybe you should also start considering that you're not.Those nuclear war scenarios, they happen. Covid is one for many of us, who have had to go months at a time without a sighted person around to help. So even if we argue in your framework, the things you're saying aren't really worth learning because nuclear war? Consider all the blind people who are going months at a time without a sighted person around at all right now. The last year has taken the independent living skills bar and said "haha, you thought you were good, hold my beer". To enumerate my personal sighted people who could help list: one of them is old enough that he's at enough risk that he's not leaving his house, one of them lives with a bunch of immunocompromised people, one of them can't risk getting covid because company policy will shut down their entire hotel and put dozens of people out of work if he does, one of them works in healthcare with elderly patients and also lives over 2 hours away, and the fifth (at least last I checked) worked in the labs doing the testing. SO yeah.But to be honest I'm not sure why I'm even bothering at this point. Clearly your mind is made up, your opinion is the only correct one, and we're all wrong and ignorant. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603641/#p603641 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) Not listening, more like I have thought of these issues, and have a solidly rooted opinion. Also we need more low vision contributers for this topic I would say. Would add more prerspective. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603633/#p603633 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
2021-01-01
Thread
AudioGames . net Forum — Off-topic room : GrannyCheeseWheel via Audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) Yes, that's why CCTVs have a multitude of various contrast and color settings. Sometimes, even people with the same condition need different accommodations. Also, on bad vision days, you might need to crank up the zoom, use the lines or windows more, or change entirely. What works for you might slow someone else down or give them a headache.@Enes, you're not even trying to argue properly, you're just taking one thing and bashing it with a hammer, except you're not even doing that properly and so you end up getting trampled. But you're so convinced you're right, that you don't even recognize you're getting trampled. You're not even listening to the others, you're just like nope, and here's a litany of half-baked reasons why not. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603628/#p603628 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) Camlorn, actually you would be surprised how durable the ambutech foldable canes are. That thing has been I was crossing a parking lot with a sighted friend, and we had thought this guy was waiting, but he accelerated when we were half across, and one wheel of the car completely ran over the cane, and then he reversed and ran over it again. But surprisingly this defect was basically fully correctable with a hammer, even though it was bent halfway. I mean some of the joints required alot of pull to pull out, but it was very much usable. As for braille, noone ever taught me underlining or italics or any of the other forms of formating, it was just a teacher telling everyone that a paragraph in braille had to start with two blank spaces. So I ended up learning formatting through my own research and reading guides for academic work. The other problem with braille is that contracted braille people may eventually forget what contractions mean, this might happen in nonorthographic languages like English. This obviously wouldn't be a problem in Turkish for example, where words are spelled the way you say them. I am really curious though how braille's limited code works out for Japanese kanji or Chinese writing which have more than 64 symbols.Jayde again, noone is dancing circles around me at all. The example I gave is rellevent. Arguments can be iether explicitly stated or infered. It could be infered from what Camlorn said that people with some vision would benefit from blindness training, even though they may have some vision. So to point out the flaw in this, I gave an example of another sense that is reduced in most people after a certain age. This was a valid example to challenge this statement with. Also they are blindfolds, not sleepshades. Again more of NFB's political correctness to make things sound different than what they are. I will call a spade a spade always. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603625/#p603625 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) Camlorn, actually you would be surprised how durable the ambutech foldable canes are. That thing has been I was crossing a parking lot with a sighted friend, and we had thought this guy was waiting, but he accelerated when we were half across, and one wheel of the car completely ran over the cane, and then he reversed and ran over it again. But surprisingly this defect was basically fully correctable with a hammer, even though it was bent halfway. I mean some of the joints required alot of pull to pull out, but it was very much usable. As for braille, noone ever taught me underlining or italics or any of the other forms of formating, it was just a teacher telling everyone that a paragraph in braille had to start with two blank spaces. So I ended up learning formatting through my own research and reading guides for academic work. The other problem with braille is that contracted braille people may eventually forget what contractions mean, this might happen in nonorthographic languages like English. This obviously wouldn't be a problem in Turkish for example, where words are spelled the way you say them. I am really curious though how braille's limited code works out for Japanese kanji or Chinese writing which have more than 64 symbols.Jayde again, noone is dancing circles around me at all. The example I gave is rellevent. Arguments can be iether explicitly stated or infered. It could be infered from what Camlorn said that people with some vision would benefit from blindness training, even though they may have some vision. So to point out the flaw in this, I gave an example of another sense that is reduced in most people after a certain age. This was a valid example to challenge this statement with. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603625/#p603625 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) I've travelled with someone using a long cane. Being in the back of a car was awkward, but perfectly doable Just meant you could get bonked by the thing because it wouldn't fold. Again though, this is one of a few reasons why I personally don't want one. Benefits aren't big enough.Enes, at this point I want you to understand why you're getting this sort of blowback. This is not the first time you've stepped in and tried to argue and gotten danced in several dozen circles by people who have clearly thought this through in more detail. I have no problem with you disagreeing with some of this stuff - lively discussion and debate are pretty good things most of the time - but you simply aren't in touch with facts in a lot of cases.For instance, you make a point about how since most people will eventually lose some hearing, this should somehow mean people ought to be trained by an NFB-style organization. Or...something? Because Canlorn never said or even implied that every blind person needs NFB-style training. What he said was that many people can benefit from it, and most of those haven't bothered challenging themselves, or haven't been given the freedom to do so. You really need to keep context and the words of the people you're arguing with more firmly in mind.Your idea about computer programs designing curriculums for students? Yeah, great in theory. Less great in practice at this point. Right now, baseline blindness via sleep shades is just more practical from a functional standpoint. When there are better programs in place, more infrastructure, better tech, then I'll fully agree with you.That said, I have no vision, but I'm about 99.8% sure of what I'm about to say; if someone has low vision and wants to jump in here, go for it. My understanding is that virtually no two people with low vision will present the same way. They'll see and perceive things differently. Some low-vision cases are relatively stable and aren't likely to deteriorate much during most of one's life, but most are fluctuant, and/or heavily dependent on the environment. For instance, low light, shadows, moving objects (leaves, tree branches), colour contrasts...they're all variables which can make things tricky. One client might have no problem parsing them and using their existing vision, while another might misread a cue. The whole point is that if you're low-vision enough to be at an NFB-style center for training, it is in part because your vision isn't doing the job for you. After all, we generally don't have training centers for the sighted; ever stopped and wondered why that is? To suggest that most low-vision people are doing just fine, thank you very much, kind of goes against observable reality; if they're doing just fine, why are they in search of training? As such, this circles back to the point I made earlier about baselines. If it's prohibitive to tailor training programs to a client's exact specifications and capabilities, then it makes sense to use a baseline. After all, being trained to do mobility or cooking or whatever if you're totally blind doesn't actually discount whatever vision you might have; in fact, it's then left up to you to then incorporate your vision on top of a solid bedrock of skill that you already possess.Or perhaps you think that a low-vision person should do the big mobility exam seventeen or eighteen different ways? During clear weather, rainy weather, snowy weather, low wind, high wind and no wind. On routes with trees, streetlights and tall buildings, and on routes with hedges. During the morning, the afternoon, the evening and the dead of night. And then all the various permutations therein. After all, if you want comprehensive skills, you need to account for everything, cover for everything, correct? URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603616/#p603616 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) Yeah, so here's the thing about braille, from a purely practical perspective. Obviously I've already mentioned mathematics at a high level--the speech tools just fall over. But I imagine most people here don't care about that. And I've already brought up the literacy at a young age is important point. Maybe you know print, in which case braille is less necessary, sure.But the thing is that in addition to spelling, braille teaches you about formatting. Italics, bold, etc. have equivalents in braille, and if you read novels or something in braille as a kid--even if it's forced--you're learning about that sort of thing. The reason I can defend indenting code as important for blind people for instance? I've worked with outlines and stuff in braille for school, where the outline was indented. And you know what? It was even helpful to have the indentation in braille. People on here will ask about formatting pretty often, and sure you can do it by rote, but nothing beats having at least somewhat of an understanding.If you don't know print and you don't know braille, you'll have a pretty damn hard time in professional environments that require that you be at least passable at writing, spelling, and formatting without dragging a sighted person in for every little thing. There are jobs for the sighted where even being literate doesn't matter, but that's things like cashier at Mcdonalds or construction worker and other low-wage labor-ish jobs like that that we can't do.And as for canes, if you're under the age of 20 or so you may have missed the period when folding canes were heavy and spontaneously collapsed mid-walking. They're now really rigid to the point where you can reliably put weight on them and stuff and half as heavy as they used to be. Used to be that you'd have to literally keep them oiled if you wanted it to actually come apart to fold, too. Which might seem like a paradox: how can it both collapse mid-walking 8and* get stuck unfolded? Well, they really did. There's nothing like a bit of materials science and modern manufacturing processes to make a seemingly simple stick with elastic in the middle way better, though honestly maybe we can also blame that on the internet, which allowed for companies to sell directly to us without being whatever Light house for the Blind happens to have for you today. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603600/#p603600 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) Ok Camlorn, some points here.You can criticise me for having opinions of multiple subjects, such as braille and people with multiple disabilities etc. Truth is people aren't a computer program, you can criticise multiple points in an argument at the same time, you don't have to only pick one and do it that way.As for rock climbing, you are making up paradoxes where there are none. You may not use a skill because you don't know it, but also you would know skills you would need to use, so therefore since you don't need a skill you don't learn it and don't use it, not the other way around.. Your approach of advocating someone learn every skill is existance is both unreasonable, and quite frankly insane. Hand coordination can very easily be developed with other skills, several types of cooking and several other things I gave examples of in my previous posts. Also socialisation happens when people gather in groups with a common interest. Faking interest just to get into groups also is insane. Also you have your own paradox, it can be infered from what you said that training centers are the only/best way of training most blind people, yet you say european blind people aren't worse off than the ones in the US from your understanding, therefore it can be understood that training centers are unnecesary based on this. As I stated in my previous post, training centers are completely exclusively a US thing. They do exist in different forms around the world, but are reserved for severely sheltered blind people and have a totally different structure of training.As for vision, the dtermination whether someone's vision is stable or not should be made by a medical professional not by some crazy blind person who knows nothing of that person. Everyone will lose vision at some point is kind of an irrelevent point in the argument. If the person is young, and vision appears to be stable, then by they reach that old age where vision is affected, it is likely treatment will be available, given how much funding common vision loss reasons get.With your same logic, since half of people aged 70 and up have some sort of hearing loss, everyone on this planet should do deafness simming and deafness training on the off chance that they might lose their hearing. See how everyone will take that prospect. As for non-folding canes, if you are tall, your cane likely won't fit in the floor of the back seat of a taxy. It will become more of a hinderance than a help. Not to mention that tip they use is round and flat with thin edges, like a chair leg foot, so if you use it on a cobblestone road or a road with cracks, it will stick on the rocks and impale you in the stomach. Even if you try tapping, that will still result in the same. So I believe that a folding cane is better all round. You can use the round ambutech orange like roller tip to enhance tactile feel. As for braille, I never said it wasn't useful. I said it isn't as important as it used to be. People are quick to say not knowing braille makes one illiterate, however, I am proficient in braille in two languages, and know a third, but truth is being blind makes one functionally illiterate Sure we have braille, but it is slow compared to print, and by functionally illiterate I mean that very few things have braille compared to print. Know print makes a sighted person literate in a big way but it isn't quite as big for a blind person. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603599/#p603599 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
2021-01-01
Thread
AudioGames . net Forum — Off-topic room : GrannyCheeseWheel via Audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) Braille is a must in my book. At least at the childhood stage. If, after that, you want to give it up, so be it. But, it would have already imparted its benefits to you by then. Braille is literacy. If you don't know braille and you can't see well enough to read print, you're illiterate. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603569/#p603569 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) enes wrote:Oh also, did we cover folding vs the aluminum nonfolding cane debate? There is absolutely no reason to use a nonfolding cane. Try that if you're tall, and have a tall cane, and climb into a taxy, or an airplane. And the insistance that anyone with vision loss learn braille, and the overemphasis of it? braille is far far less than it used to be, and definately isn't required if someone sees enough to read print even large print at a reasonable speed.Those who know me are going to gasp at this next statement based on how much I read, but ... Braille is not optional. Ok I had usable sight where I could see larger print, until I was 14. Imagine how shit it would have been if I was taught print instead of Braille, and then my vision went anyway. Only if you have a stable eye condition with very little chance of degradation should you not learn Braille, and I still think you should learn it a little bit in case your vision goes. I'd be careful counting out Braille: I can't say I type in Braille as much as I should because I don't own an input device, but don't forget it's our only written language. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603551/#p603551 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) enes wrote:Oh also, did we cover folding vs the aluminum nonfolding cane debate? There is absolutely no reason to use a nonfolding cane. Try that if you're tall, and have a tall cane, and climb into a taxy, or an airplane. And the insistance that anyone with vision loss learn braille, and the overemphasis of it? braille is far far less than it used to be, and definately isn't required if someone sees enough to read print even large print at a reasonable speed.Those who know me are going to gasp at this next statement based on how much I read, but ... Braille is not optional. Ok I had usable sight where I could see larger print, until I was 14. Imagine how shit it would have been if I was taught print instead of Braille, and then my vision went anyway. Only if you have a stable eye condition with very little chance of degradation should you not learn Braille, and I still think you should learn it a little bit in case your vision goes. I'd be careful counting out Braille: Don't forget it's our only written language. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603551/#p603551 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) Want to jump back in and say two quick things here, because Canlorn pretty much gets it.1. Nonfolding vs. folding: I personally use a folding cane, because I don't like carting around a nearly six-foot unfoldable awkward stick everywhere I go. The improved tactile sensation from said stick is not great enough to justify the inconvenience IMO. But this is a personal choice. I don't get it, others do. I can tell a fuckload of info with my folding cane, and it's more than enough to get me by on. If I were ever put into a situation where I needed more info than I could comfortably get, I'd consider a non-folding cane. Otherwise, no. So I sort of get you there, Enes, but there are benefits. It's just a question of whether or not those benefits will improve your own mobility skills.2. Now, as for braille? Absolutely a non-starter with me. Braille is absolutely essential. I made a thread about blind people's spelling a couple of years ago and it turned into a philosophical discussion. I stick by it. If all you ever really learn is to listen to language, then arguably you're missing a very large component of literacy. Now, if you don't want to use braille that often after you learn it? Fine. You don't have to have a brailler and write yourself notes every day. You don't have to have a library full of braille books. But I do think you need the skill, as I do think literacy is important. To hand-wave it as unnecessary kind of misses the point as I see it. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603549/#p603549 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) Ok, so first, it's optional. No one is making you go to an NFB training center.Second, with respect to treating as though you're blind, again, no one is making you go to an NFB training center. But you're simultaneously able to be mad that we aren't discussing multiple disabilities, while also dismissing the fact that 99% of blind people with usable vision are "blind" in some environment. You can't just say "I have some vision, and this means it always works" and then go off and avoid whatever lighting conditions or color contrasts or whatever let you ignore it. At some point you'll be outside at night or something like that, at which point, well, too bad you didn't figure out how to travel when you couldn't see. I hated the sleep shades when I was young, but now I can't see, and you know what--it was a good idea. Also, even sighted people who don't have a vision problem lose vision as they age and most sources of vision loss that I know of are progressive, so "you might be blind one day" is usually a very, very real possibility.You're quick to say that things like rock climbing or whatever are unnecessary. You're quick to say that holding someone to a high standard and them not meeting it causes problems. But most of the blind people going there already have less than zero confidence. As someone who was actually there, they don't play it off as a"you're a failure" at all. "Welcome to blindness camp, we're going to be doing a bunch of activities, everyone else here is in the same boat, and we're going to teach you to succeed" is a very powerful message if your baseline expectation is that you can't even walk out the front door, and if you're at that level then even a tiny bit of success isn't failing because it's way more than you expected.You can say "I don't think I'll ever use these skills", but that's a paradox. If you don't have the skills, you'll not use them because you don't have them, and you'll avoid developing them because developing a skill takes time. You want to develop skills you won't use not because you think you'll use them now, but because after you know them you might very well use them. But again, every example being brought into this thread isn't something where it's just one skill, it's something where it brings together a bunch of skills that are all generally applicable. So if we want to keep complaining about how training centers do this, find an example where it doesn't generalize. Even things that are really stupid like knitting are generally applicable for us because humans aren't naturally able to have really good hand coordination without vision.You must remember: the baseline of a blind person is being unable to walk in a straight line without explicit, repeated practice over years and years. This isn't preparing you for a nuclear war. It's making up for the -100 penalty to literally every single skill you have.They have a point about straight canes too, though modern folding ones have kind of made up for the gaps due to advances in materials science and stuff making it cheaper. The thing about straight canes is that they conduct way more tactile sensation from the surface you're walking on due to the rigidity. I don't agree that they should push it as hard as they do, but it's actually a perfectly valid choice. I used one for a while and it is actually much better. If you get used to it, cars, planes, etc. can all be handled. I went back to the folding cane, but I can see how and why someone would prefer it.Going to a blindness camp or whatever isn't better or worse than being in the home, but it's almost certainly cheaper. If you want to do all in-home training, you have to get way more specialists and stuff to go make all those trips. I'd prefer in-home training, but being in a pre-modified known safe environment with all the AT and stuff in one place and all the instructors don't have to drive an hour between clients probably saves a ton of money. I also currently have no reason to believe that European blind people are any better or worse than U.S. blind people.If your O training isn't making you uncomfortable all the time, it sucks and you should find a different instructor. This stuff isn't about staying in your comfort zone, it's about being pushed as far out of your comfort zone as you can handle, continually but in a safe environment.If you can't read print you should learn braille because it's the only way to get a feel for spelling and formatting. It's also the only way to do high-level math. I've also had a lot of really, really smart people tell me that literacy in general at a young age in the critical development periods is super important when it comes to being able to handle abstract thinking. If you know you're going to be blind one day and you're young at the moment then learning braille is good e
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) @111:I get where you are coming from regarding Braille. But you know what? I do think it is still useful, at least to get a view of reading and writing in your mind, even if you do it in your own language.Take me for the example. I can't read much English braille, was quite good at the Hindi, and now I am probably very rusty in the latter as well. But I don't think I would have very good reading or writing skills, if I didn't learned braille earlier.By all means, I agree that it is not necessary for every time you need to read, or write something. Not to mention, organizing my notes is easier now I don't use braille to take them. All I am saying is, that it has its purpose early in the childhood days. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603507/#p603507 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) Oh also, did we cover folding vs the aluminum nonfolding cane debate? There is absolutely no reason to use a nonfolding cane. Try that if you're tall, and have a tall cane, and climb into a taxy, or an airplane. And the insistance that anyone with vision loss learn braille, and the overemphasis of it? braille is far far less than it used to be, and definately isn't required if someone sees enough to read print even large print at a reasonable speed. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603451/#p603451 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) That is a point though that it is voluntary. But not everyone will be educated on training center policies to be honest. The issue is, you aren't more likely to lose vision than lose hearing or have an amputation. If a person has serviceable and stable usable vision, then they should use that and do training that uses that skillset. Waring blindfolds also would be harmful for the brain. If you deprive the brain of input of any kind for a long period of time or regularly, it will start changing. It is known as a processed called neuroplasticity. This is usually helpful for the brain to adapt to new input, like someone having a stroke. But if you cut off senses, the brain loses the ability to process that sense. This is just science and common knowledge. So like if someone has a hearing loss that is substantial and won't treat it, even if you treat it later, the brain perminently loses the ability to process the sounds as well as it used too, same for vision. I would sure hope anyone with vision that is good enough for daily tasks and stable would avoid such training and do research.The ideal training though, is as you said complex to produce, and tailored to each individual. I would think as AI becomes a thing, computers could train you by looking at all of your data, brain acitivity, sensory levels, and other aptitudes. This would produce far more effective training if an AI model can be trained to process all those variables. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603449/#p603449 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) Okay, so let's talk really briefly about the whole sleep shades thing. I say "really briefly" here because I'm going to knock your argument into a cocked hat pretty swiftly and then move on.Teaching from blindness, vs. teaching from wildly differing levels of vision, is just straight-up easier on staff. That's point number 1...and it's not even the big one, but it does matter. Another and far more important point? Low vision, even if it's stable, is not always or even largely trustworthy. I mean, if it was stable, usable, good vision, you wouldn't be at a training center in the first place; you're there because your vision is to some extent getting in the way of you doing everyday tasks, and one of those tasks is travel. The reason they take your sight away is because it puts you and all other students at virtually the same baseline. Your vision can't always be trusted and isn't always reliable, and teaching you without the use of your eyes means that unless you, say, get your hands cut off or lose your hearing unexpectedly, you can rely on those skills. Once you leave the NFB, you can use your eyes all you wish, and if that helps broaden your skillset, great! Power to you. Use it all you want. They are there to teach you how to do it blind, to give you a baseline. They are not there to do an in-depth vision test, determine exactly how your brain interfaces with your eyes, and then develop training patterns that will work for every single student.I don't like the NFB's philosophy overall, but I really can't argue with this. I used to be vehemently against sleep shades and whatnot, and I know they will still make some people uncomfortable. But your whole point in going there is to improve your skills. You aren't going to do that if you're constantly wrestling with bad vision, and you aren't going to do it if you're constantly fighting the system. The whole thing is voluntary. Have I said this often enough yet? URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603448/#p603448 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) another point I should touch upon. Its stated here what the harms of shooting high if it were, or having extremely high expectations of someone attending a training center are. This approach is indeed harmful and bad. While placing unusual and extreme conditions on a person make them believe that those unreasonable conditions are indeed reasonable. The purpose of any training program, not just the NFB programs should be to train people for the most common things they will encounter in daily life. Not the biggest baddest, most unlikely and unreasonable situations, like preparing extremely large meals, or using a manual tool to cut stone because nuclear war knocked out power type of thing. The problem with shit like this is if we face it, they are unlikely to happen, and second, if someone doesn't achieve that level of performance, that would make that person feel lazy or inadequate because they would believe what they are doing is reasonable. I know because I had people put pressure on me with very unreasonable demands and requests. Basicly while doing stuff like this may have an advantage of confidence if that person were to succeed and perform at that level, I don't think it is worth it and the disadvantages are more than the advantages. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603414/#p603414 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) another point I should touch upon. Its stated here what the harms of shooting high if it were, or having extremely high expectations of someone attending a training center are. This approach is indeed harmful and bad. While placing unusual and extreme conditions on a person make them believe that those unreasonable conditions are indeed reasonable. The purpose of any training program, not just the NFB programs should be to train people for the most common things they will encounter in daily life. Not the biggest baddest, most unlikely and unreasonable situations, like preparing extremely large meals, or using a manual tool to cut stone because nuclear war knocked out power type of thing. The problem with shit like this is if we face it, they are unlikely to happen, and second, if someone doesn't achieve that level of performance, that would make that person feel lazy or inadequate because they would believe what they are doing is reasonable. I know because I had people put pressure on me with very unreasonable demands and requests. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603414/#p603414 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) Jayde, you wanted examples, here is one. The use of blindfolds for training, and the exclusive teaching of nonvisual techniques in all training is something I would say is objectionable. The argument here is what if your vision goes? But thisn't always the case. What if someone has stable vision? Good training should maximize all sensory experience you have available, not teach exclusively blind modalities. Then, I guess you could make the argument that such people shouldn't attend such training in the first place. You don't need woodworking to develop coordination though. You can do so with regular household chores at a young age, taking apart apliences/gadgets, using large hammers, hammering nails, using axes etc. Camlorn, I do understand about the type of people who would go in to a center, and as you said I am one of those people who stepped outside their comfort zone when needed, and figured things out on their own. Such people wouldn't go to a center anyway. As for rock climbing, with all due respect, why would I try it? There two groups of skills. Skills that are essential for independant living, like cooking, cleaning, mobility etc, and interest skills, like for example playing an instrument, etc. Rock climbing isn't an essential skill by any defenition, nor is it something I am particularly interested in at the moment. If I was interested however, I would figure it out like everything else. Mass generalisation like this though is the problem imho. But I guess the good thing is that everyone going to a center knows what they are getting themselves into so.On a note, its important to state that the US is the only country I know of that has blindness centers. Most of the rest of the world blindness skills are taught at a person's home, in their own environment, not indoctrinating them or isolating them from family or friends, which is believe it or not, a perfect environment for indoctrination. And everyone seems to do fine with that model of training. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603389/#p603389 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) Jayde, you wanted examples, here is one. The use of blindfolds for training, and the exclusive teaching of nonvisual techniques in all training is something I would say is objectionable. The argument here is what if your vision goes? But thisn't always the case. What if someone has stable vision? Good training should maximize all sensory experience you have available, not teach exclusively blind modalities. Then, I guess you could make the argument that such people shouldn't attend such training in the first place. You don't need woodworking to develop coordination though. You can do so with regular household chores at a young age, taking apart apliences/gadgets, using large hammers, hammering nails, using axes etc. Camlorn, I do understand about the type of people who would go in to a center, and as you said I am one of those people who stepped outside their comfort zone when needed, and figured things out on their own. Such people wouldn't go to a center anyway. As for rock climbing, with all due respect, why would I try it? There two groups of skills. Skills that are essential for independant living, like cooking, cleaning, mobility etc, and interest skills, like for example playing an instrument, etc. Rock climbing isn't an essential skill by any defenition, nor is it something I am particularly interested in at the moment. If I was interested however, I would figure it out like everything else. Mass generalisation like this though is the problem imho. But I guess the good thing is that everyone going to a center knows what they are getting themselves into so.On a note, its important to state that the US is the only country I know of that has blindness centers. Most of the rest of the world blindness skills are taught at a person's home, in their own environment, not indoctrinating them or isolating them from family or friends, which is believe it or not, a perfect environment for indoctrination. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603389/#p603389 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) I mean, that's not my point exactly. The chances of the average blind person going and cooking a meal for 50 people or what have you are really small. And yeah, being prepared for the worst situations out there makes the rest easier. But I don't support that kind of training for that reason, I support it because absolutely everyone who's blind starts from a place of being well behind the sighted person for the same skills. Plan and cook a meal for 50 people isn't the point to me, and is exactly the kind of training I'd look to offer if I was setting this up. Why? because it's a very good planning exercise. It's a very good multitasking exercise. It's a very good coordination exercise. A lot of skills go into that that are generally applicable that it's a great way to practice, and instead of just being busywork it even combines them into something that is in itself a valuable skill that's more than the sum of the parts.Before saying "I don't need rock climbing", well, have you tried it? Again, not supporting the almost militaristic thing the NFB has going on, but if I was in the typical NFB clientele demographic and someone said "after you leave, you'll be able to do all these things and you got to try rock climbing away from your overprotective carers who would never even let you go outside", that's kind of an amazing deal honestly. But the other thing is, while I don't support the militaristic aspect of it, at the same time a lot of blind people won't step even an inch beyond their comfort zone unless pushed. Those of us who will do that on our own don't usually need "I went to independent living camp" levels of training, because we already went off and figured it all out ourselves. being blatantly pushed/forced into situations is kind of sucky and stressful, but the sort of person who seeks them out probably needs that sort of heavy-handed "you're doing this or going home" behavior, because otherwise they just won't.I've already said I don't like the NFB. But even the people I know who don't like the NFB have never said anything bad about their training. And the funny thing is, older isn't always worse. What everyone here forgets is that there's like 100 years or more of blind people being independent without even cellphones. The modern tools are very useful. But the NFB isn't really wrong about training you to not use them. You're actually capable of not using them. Not using them gives you a bunch of skills that younger blind people--hell, even blind people my age, even me--don't have anymore.And yes, the NFB has a lot of experience with this stuff. It's only the last 15-20 years that they've been putting their heads in the sand or whatever it is that's caused them to go so downhill. It wasn't that long ago that they were one of the huge blindness advocacy juggernauts. If they make a claim about mobility training, I'll at least listen.I attended one of their science things when I was young. It was a meh experience, because camping outside and stuff was just not me. But you know what? The only sighted person I remember being involved in the entire thing that wasn't like a guest lecturer just drove the vans. Everything, everything was blind people. The chefs, you name it. Everyone running the building, everyone responsible for us kids, all of them. And they didn't even really make a point about it.Let me just close with this point. The biggest criticism about them is that they're way too much about never asking for help. But isn't the sort of organization who treats asking for help as some sort of cardinal sin exactly the sort of organization that has all the O expertise? What they want you to do takes a lot of joy out of life, but they're not hypocritical in the sense that the people espousing their beliefs do generally actually live like that. Being cultish is creepy, but that doesn't mean they don't have answers on this specific topic. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603381/#p603381 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) So, can you provide examples of this so-called "rigid training" that are universally bad? Because I can't.Structured discovery and the "no asking for help on your final test" rule might seem silly to you, but clearly they work, and far more often than they don't. Even if you may never use the exact methodologies yourself, going to a school like this, knowing what it teaches, implies that you're interested in following through with what the school is teaching and how it is teaching it, since, as I pointed out before, attendance is strictly noncompulsory.Woodworking and rock-climbing may seem silly to you, but teaching body coordination is extremely important to some people. It may not be important to you, and again, that's cool, but clearly there is data to suggest that a need is there in a general sense, else why fill that need at all? Again, I'm not saying I especially want to be taught carpentry or rock-climbing, but that isn't really the point.Preparing a larger meal may again seem silly to you, but as Canlorn pointed out, it's sometimes better to shoot high and have those skills than to shoot mid-low and then be hamstrung when you're asked to do more. I would personally have trouble rationalizing this one, but I can see the argument, and it's valid, and if other factors were strong enough, I'd stomach this requirement because I know what I'd be getting out of it (vs. what they hope I'd be getting out of it).In fact, the entire overarching point here is that NFB training centers appear to be setting you up for the worst, the biggest, the baddest scenarios you might encounter. That way, since most of what you encounter probably won't be nearly so bad, you'll be better armed. I don't see this as a problem in itself. It rubs me the wrong way a bit, but I get the point.I'm pretty sure the NFB didn't just arbitrarily sit down for an hour, decide a curriculum with no data, and then enforce it. In fact, I'm pretty sure they did their research on this. If their indoctrinations re: "toxic dependence" are repugnant - and they definitely are - their methodologies have solid logical underpinnings. And I think your continued insistence to the contrary is proof that Canlorn is correct about you. You are ascribing to these skills at large the designation of irrelevancy because you yourself are not interested/would not get much out of such training. And look, as someone who has no real interest in making a meal for fifty people, ever, I get it. But the reality is just this simple. It would be nigh on impossible to make individualized curriculums for every student to ensure that they get the best tailor-made skills for their individual situation. Of course, multiple disabilities do enter into how things are done - they have to, for very obvious reasons - but just as you don't get to simply opt out of complex fractions in grade nine math because you think you'll never use them, you don't get to opt out of body-coordination exercises just because you already do well at them, or just because you struggle. If you do well, then spend the time making or doing something interesting, and rock the hell out of it. And if you don't do well, maybe there's a way to improve, in such a manner that it makes you more useful to yourself down the road of life.I'm totally in favour of being exempt from classes that have virtually no value to you. For instance, I didn't have to do art class, because seriously? Totally blind here, and most of what they did was paint and draw. But I am not in favour of having people decide that this somewhat useful skill is overall un-useful, and so it's silly that blindness organizations teach it. Not to put too fine a point on it, but when it comes to this specific thing, I'm going to take an organization's word for it over an individual, pretty much every time. If I decide there's too much arbitrary bullshit in that organization, that's fine; I don't have to go there. But if I do decide to go there, then it behooves me to try hard at everything in front of me because it is likely to ameliorate my skills in a whole host of areas. And trust me on this. That's never, ever, ever a bad thing. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603378/#p603378 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) I am not confused on where I stand. I object to rigid training that doesn't take into account one's personal capabilities or situations. I also do not need any such training, but was commenting on an outsider point of view. Me, and only me, gets to make that decision, not anyone on a public forum, I feel the need to hammer that point home. A problem with this type of really crazy expectatioins from blind people is that, as I said, sighted people aren't expected to achieve them, and nowhere near them for the most part, and when some blind person fails to conform to the unreasonable expectations, that would give a sense of inadequacy.As for blindness sucking, I mentioned on previous posts how it sucks, which in turn is an admission that it sucks for everyone including myself. There is doubt in my mind about that. What I also tried, and apparently failed to point out is that one bad thing about blindness 99% of people here don't get is it is a magnifying glass disability. If you have other disabilities, the disabling effect of them is magnifyed twofold at least. As I said, having a hearing loss makes you notice how much blindness sucks more than I would otherwise. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603356/#p603356 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) @enesI just have to say that even the NFB isn't going to take someone with multiple disabilities and be like "here's your tablesaw". They're not reckless lunatics. They take a philosophy and go way too far with it, but the thing is that the sorts of examples you're specifically raising help develop a lot of low-level skills. Even the meal for 50 people thing. When you don't have those low-level skills in the first place, then being asked to go further than a sighted person at developing them is a very good way to make up for having to work around blindness. You personally may not want them and that's fine, but just because the NFB is incredibly terrible doesn't mean they're entirely wrong. I mean, consider being the blind person who rock climbs and builds furniture and also you can volunteer in your community to run the yearly picnic of 200 people. That's a great way to have things to talk with sighted people about and potentially even to find a husband/wife etc which you might not otherwise get, so it even helps socialization. I don't object to their training camps or anything. Maybe what they do isn't for you, but their training isn't the problem. Everyone else I've seriously heard object to them doesn't object to the training. Their problem is their rigidity and the fact that they indoctrinate everyone they can get their hands on to think that asking for help is the worst thing ever and that independence is some sort of religion and you will go to hell should you violate the one commandment of never needing assistance ever no matter what.I would like to politely suggest that you figure out where your anger is actually coming from though. You're very quick to say things are great and, in this case, to dismiss needing skills because you're already fine. But every time you do, you're doing it with subtext that shouts that you don't really believe it. Maybe it's just me being oversensitive or something, but if this is actually the case you can get to a place of much less anger and much more confidence and personal capacity if you come to terms with whatever it is. It's as if you're able to talk about how blindness sucks in general, but you're not able to accept that it also sucks for you personally, or something. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603343/#p603343 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) Okay, so just for a quick comparison here:My stepmother had to cook two separate meals on two consecutive days. The first meal fed eight people. The second meal seven. And this is because of Covid-19. It is likely that had Covid-19 not been in the picture, those meals would have been squished into one day, and there would have been anywhere from twelve to twenty-six people to feed. Yes, I've seen this multiple times. No, it's not the norm (most people won't do this every day or even every week). But fifteen people might be a reasonable holiday gathering size, while I think we'd agree that fifty, while possible, is definitely on the high side. As such, I don't think it unreasonable to expect you to feed fifteen people.As far as rock-climbing or carpentry, I'd ideally like to see one of five or six different skills like this, asking that you take one or two of them.Because here's the deal. NFB training centers and whatnot? Yeah, they're optional. No one's got a gun to your head. You do not absolutely require this training to live. I didn't get this training, and while I can't cater a fifty-person meal and don't understand so-called structured discovery inside out, I do pretty well most of the time. My point is, if you really don't like what the NFB is doing, then simply don't take the training. That is one very effective way to not show your support. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603329/#p603329 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) It s'funny, I get where Enes is coming from; at least on the learning unnecessary skills part and feeling like certain skills are just not your calling. I can't speak on the multiple disabilities front, but will only say that i'm fortunate enough not to have experience with it, at least not that I know of. I mean, I might have Aspergers or something like that, in fact i'm almost sure I have, but I don't put that high up on my list of challenges to deal with. I know some are not so lucky though, and indeed, this topic wasn't even made with that in mind.I am familiar with the ideas of feeling singled out/unfairly treated because you are made to learn things the rest of the world, so to speak, doesn't seem to need to comfortably live their lives. That's why my girlfriend and I both think what we do about the GPs thing.On the other hand, I do see what jayde and Camlorn are saying. I would've fought it, or at least quietly rebelled against it when I was younger, but my maturity has finally caught up enough with me to allow me to see the other side, and to be grateful for some of the stuff I previously would never have given two shits about.I think the only substantive thing I can add at this point is that both sides of this can be interpreted good or bad. A certain amount of stubbornness, defensiveness etc. is natural and often warranted; it allows us to throw out options we don't even want to consider. A certain amount of acceptance of your differences is necessary, and some people truly embrace those differences for better or for worse. But I think both can easily coexist. Everyone has their own personal balance of beliefs about this sort of thing. I'm a firm believer in the idea that your beliefs are molded and shaped by experience and what you personally take away from it, and that no set of beliefs is right or wrong so long as you can live with the predictable consequences of your actions without intense discomfort. If there is intense discomfort, it's on you to figure out why it happened, and if you can change it. Of course then we get into the issue of some people always thinking their problems are someone else's fault... but I'm not going there.For me, the hardest part of life so far has been trying to find my own self. Growing up, I let instructors dictate, not suggest, ways of thinking about things. I had my own opinions of course, but those were locked up, never to be revealed, because of poor self-confidence. And while doing what I was told when I was told to do it made me feel more secure and gave me a sense of validation in a way, I didn't often feel understood or worthy of much on my own. Now that I'm getting a bit better on that front, I feel a lot better being comfortable with myself and, to an extent, saying "Wow I was stupid,now I can see where these other people Iinitially intensely disagreed with are coming from."Not trying to be passive aggressive and or accuse anyone of doing anything btw. The discussion couldn't be more civil or interesting to read, in fact. I'm just giving one last rant on it I guess, and saying that when these sorts of discussions come up, I can see both sides. My own opinions are probably at least relatively clear by now, but I choose not to publicly defend one or the other side too strongly. In other words I'm a pacifist, and I think that's the only way to really be, when it comes to blindness issues which don't have a perfect solution yet. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603270/#p603270 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) Jayde, I really think even 15 might be quite high. I would say a meal for 5-10 would be reasonable. Most sighted people will only ever cook for their close familly and this is the issues with training centers holding blind people to higher standards than what sighted people are expected to do. With the multiple issues thing, I don't believe I add any complexity at all. What I am attempting to do is criticise blanket statements like all blind people are able to do x y z, and if they can't, they are inadequate. What these do is damage one's sense of self worth and respect. For me for example, I had very good sense of spacial concepts, and had very good navigation skills as a child, I would feel completely fine walking around in totally random places without a cane even, and could find my way back regardless of how complex a path I had walked. But as I got older, this got harder and harder and harder. I am still good with navigation skills, that is, avoiding obstacles and exploring with a cane, but have issues orienting myself in large open spaces without any sort of landmarks. This wasn't an issue previously. Those types of statements when made publically with my friends, and seeing friends who were advanced at their skills that they could go to totally different places they had not been before, and memorize routes in one try injured my sense self-respect and self-worth. Later on, when I spoke to doctor who knew of my condition, she had said it was likely because I had hearing loss not detected on previous tests, and that my balance organs may be affected to a degree as well. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603263/#p603263 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) Enes, I feel like you're kind of introducing complexity where there is none.Obviously some people with multiple disabilities are going to have trouble with things that people with only one of those disabilities can do more easily. For instance, if you had bad sight, hearing, balance and mobility, downhill skiing is going to be pretty freaking difficult, but if your only real issue is blindness or deafness, you'll probably do okay, with some help.The rock-climbing thing, and carpentry, I don't fully agree on, but I see the point. Both are relatively safe endeavours that will teach you how to be more coordinated, which is never, ever a bad thing.However, I agree with you regarding the meal-for-fifty-people requirement. What I would replace that with is a meal for fifteen people. Why? Because you might be asked to cook for your family, even some parts of your extended family, so I think it's reasonable that you learn how to do that. But fifty people is far more niche, and kind of overkill IMO. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603262/#p603262 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) Camlorn, I am in no need of a training center honestly. I don't have issues with hand brain coordination or whatever you would call it since childhood I have been using tools, sharp and dangerous ones at that, like large axes, macheties, hammers, drills etc. Woodworking or rock climbing aren't really things I am passionate about or things I want to spend on my time doing. But this was an example of a double standard. Sighted people aren't expected to know how to climb mountains, or build pieces of furniture, and it is perfectly socially acceptable for a sighted person to not feel comfortable handling power tools or carpentry, or climbing rocks or mountains. The MNFB's philosophy that everyone blind should do these things or be comfortable doing so is fundementally flawed imho. Or thaat whole thing about preparing meals for 50 people is also ovedrboard as well. Most sighted people would hire someone to do that, or book a large order at a restaurant, or for weddings or special ocasions the cake etc would be prepared at a bakery, not in someone's home most likely. Here is another issue with that one size fits all training. What if one of the students had a nerve issue or wasn't dextarous enough to handle a power saw, and sliced off his fingers. It isn't a possibility ithat is out of the question. That student would lose fingers to learning a skill they may have had very little inclination or interest in.As for combination disabilities, I wasn't writing them off entirely. My point there was not everyone can achieve the same level of competence in all daily living skills, and having those combinations would place a hard cieling further on what that person could achieve. But there are a range of levels of combination disabilities. Take balance for example, a blind personv likely could get by with mild to moderate issues, with more assistance from others probably. But a total lack of balance would require a walker, and decrease what that person could do mobility wise.Or hearing loss, across some frequencies, I have hearing loss measured in the moderate range, a blind person could probably still get by with a slight or mild loss, but even a small amount of hearing loss has implications for mobility. Get up to severe to profound losses, where hearing aids for most people are less useful, and if that blind people can't understaned synthesized speech at a fast rate, or communicate with people without alot of strain, that effectly makes that person dependant on others for mobility, in addition it also would make the person unemployable at most high skill jobs, as most jobs require using speech on a pc with a screen reader, or communicating with others. Not to mention the fact blind people don''t have access to visual cues sighted people use to augment hearing. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603209/#p603209 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) If you're telling me that there's somewhere that teaches woodworking and rock climbing, that's somewhere I'd suggest you go to. Unless it's the NFB, which is a shame in this instance. Those skills are a great way to develop, I guess call it hand-mind coordination. And confidence. I mean, what's a road after a tablesaw?I've never met one, but I've heard of independent blind people who are also in wheelchairs, most reputably from someone at Guide Dogs for the Blind about interesting situations they've had to train a dog for. You could do a cane with a walker if you had to, or a crutch. Yeah, blindness plus something else is much worse than just one, but I wouldn't be so quick to write off the combinations as you are. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603207/#p603207 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) One other absolutely critical skill is computer skills. I think I will go far enough and say any blind person should be at least an upper intermediot or user. A blind person who isn't tech savvy has alot more to lose than a sighted person, and a high level of skill etc will be needed to poke around and figure out inaccessible websites and apps that are necesary for daily living. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603201/#p603201 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) Camlorn, balance issues depend on the level of it i'd say. For severe total disfunction, people at that level use a walker not being able to stand.By mobility, I meant the o m part, as in finding directions without a gps. I probably didn't manage this well except in very well known routes because I tried in very large cities etc. As for blindness plus other things, I think its more common than we'd think. Especially for people totally blind, that type of blindness generally is from iether a gene disorder or trauma, or premature birth, which can all come with other problems inside the package.Onto mobility again, I am not saying its optional at all, but all I am saying is not everyone is able to have the same level of spacial awareness or well mobility skills. I hear of those super capable blind that go to a random location or city, and get around somehow with suitcases etc, without asking for help or using gps. I never have been at this level, though I have traveled in several countries.. But one type of skill that definately is optional and argueablly not even required is is woodworking, rock climbing etc that are apparently taught at the NFB centers. Many sighted people know nothing of woodworking and aren't comfortable using power saws etc besides, and even less would do rock climbing recreationally for fun. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603200/#p603200 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) Camlorn, balance issues depend on the level of it i'd say. For severe total disfunction, people at that level use a walker not being able to stand.By mobility, I meant the o m part, as in finding directions without a gps. I probably didn't manage this well except in very well known routes because I tried in very large cities etc. As for blindness plus other things, I think its more common than we'd think. Especially for people totally blind, that type of blindness generally is from iether a gene disorder or trauma, or premature birth, which can all come with other problems inside the package.Onto mobility again, I am not saying its optional at all, but all I am saying is not everyone is able to have the same level of spacial awareness or well mobility skills. I hear of those super capable blind that go to a random location or city, and get around somehow with suitcases etc, without asking for help or using gps. I never have been at this level. But one type of skill that definately is optional and argueablly not even required is is woodworking, rock climbing etc that are apparently taught at the NFB centers. Many sighted people know nothing of woodworking and aren't comfortable using power saws etc besides, and even less would do rock climbing recreationally for fun. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603200/#p603200 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) @93I mean, yes. But this thread isn't about "I'm blind and I have these 3 other problems", so not sure how what I'm saying needs this clarification? If you stack on enough disabilities living independently becomes impossible and obviously blindness plus hearing is one of those combinations, though I can immediately think of a way to handle blindness plus balance issues and I haven't even looked into it.Also, not sure how memorizing spatial information is relevant? That's only one of many strategies for dealing with the O problem, and if you live on a grid you only have to memorize the streets once for the next however long you live there, so say 10+ years if you don't move, it's not like those of us who are good at this know every crack in the sidewalk. SO you have to work harder at this, so what? Even in the worst cases you only do it once a year, and there's workarounds. If you're referring to being able to get around without a GPS, that's still not memorizing more than street intersections and approaching sighted people to ask where you are if you're lost.I'm not really sure what your point is. We've already established it's frustrating a long time ago. Are you trying to say that I should consider O optional for those wanting to live independently? URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603183/#p603183 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) Camlorn, the problem though, with those two types of skills, is that even the most critical ones, not every person would be able to master them. O M for example, if you have a hearing loss, and can't distinguish between lanes of traffic, have balance issues and localizing sound, you will be in danger, and your mobility will suck, not because of you, but because you have impovrished information about your environment. I for example, always have founding memorizing routes hard. I am good in general with cane skills, avoiding obsticles etc, but memorizing spacial concepts just feels extremely hard to me most of the time. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603181/#p603181 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) Camlorn, the problem though, with those two types of skills, is that even the most critical ones, not every person would be able to master them. O M for example, if you have a hearing loss, and can't distinguish between lanes of traffic, have balance issues and localizing sound, you will be in danger, and your mobility will suck, not because of you, but because you have impovrished information about your environment. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603181/#p603181 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) @91In that case no one but you is even noticing that they're uneven in the slightest, for what that's worth. Vision only is really good at judging sizes if you put stuff next to each other. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603178/#p603178 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) I do cut off only a bite at a time. Still end up with less-than-uniform pieces because I just don't care enough.And I agree with you re: normality. This is probably part of the reason why the fair majority of my friends and acquaintances are sighted. I "pass", so to speak. Oh, my eyes are a bit weird if you look at them (they're often two-thirds shut even when I'm wide awake), and sure, I've got a cane, which is a little odd. But I can get places on my own. I live alone. I can cook at least passably. I converse normally and can suppress foot-tapping or rocking without a second thought. I know how to read social situations well enough, for instance, that no, I wouldn't have the restaurant cut up my food at a lunch where I was trying to prove myself to a new employer. I credit my parents, friends and extended family for most of this. They pushed me sometimes, guided me at other times, and generally I was just me. Not blind me, just me. You can't ignore the blindness, but you can end up in a situation where it's only a focus when it has to be, and at least in my personal life, I'm glad to have that balance fairly down. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603164/#p603164 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) Yeah, but unfortunately there is a fine line between "this thing is fine", and "this thing is fine, but you will be judged and that's disadvantageous to you right now". Out alone? Sure, get the restaurant to cut your meat. Out with the boss at your new job you got a week ago where they almost didn't hire you but didn't tell you that because that would be illegal, and you're still proving yourself, and also it's catered and you don't get to just bow out and escape by picking something you don't have to cut? That's...less okay. Even if they don't judge you for it, there's a place and time when you want to be "normal". And yes, out with my new boss and it was catered and everything required cutting did really happen to me, though fortunately not somewhere where proving myself was necessary and I was able to cut it myself anyway.The thing is, yeah, you don't need to be able to cut meat. You don't need to be able to do lots of things. There's two lists though. The first list is things like O: you either know how to do them or you're screwed. But the second list is things like this, where the skill lets you be normal for lack of a better word. Being normal counts for a lot. Being normal counts for so much that I have been complemented by random strangers for being normal. Being normal lets you get that job, or that promotion, or those new friends.@JaydeYou can avoid the uneven pieces thing if you just cut off and eat a bite at a time. Lots of sighted people do that. It doesn't really matter unless you care about appearances to that degree, which isn't really necessary, but it does sidestep the issue. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603163/#p603163 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) I've never actually asked for my meat to be cut at a restaurant, but I had it happen once. I went to the Keg, which for those of you who don't know is a steakhouse. I went alone, because I'm awkward and weird like that (this was seven years ago now, I should add). Anyway, I ordered a rather large steak that was supposed to come bone-in. When it arrived, the server told me that she'd cut the meat off the bone and sliced it into a few large pieces to make it easier to handle. We sort of joked about people who just pick a steak up by the bone and gnaw it that way, and then I made the comment that she didn't have to cut the meat off. "I know," she said, "and this wasn't a comment on your ability to do it yourself. I just felt like helping you out. You look like a guy who wants to eat, not wrestle with meat.". I let it go. I could've argued, but why?Generally though, I figure that if you really think you need help with cutting your meat, it's okay to ask. That said, I'd try and work on it and improve that skill for yourself as much as possible. To this day, my meat-cutting skills are adequate, nothing more. If I paid close attention, I could cut neatly, but as it often happens when I just want to eat my food and be done, the pieces I cut are not uniform in shape or size...like, not at all. Yet when I'm doing something like slice up carrots or cut up potatoes, I'm much better about uniformity. I guess I just don't care if this particularly chunk of meat is a fair bit bigger than the other, as long as neither is enormous and as long as they'll both fit into my mouth without me looking like a barbarian.As far as sauce goes? I don't tend to order especially drippy things at restaurants, but for me, the real killer there is either soup (which drips if you don't hold your spoon level) or pasta (which, if it's something long and twiny like spaghetti, can very easily flop over and make a mess). I learned the pasta-twirling trick when I was very young, and it does help. Still, I don't tend to order pasta all that often when I'm out, for precisely this reason; I don't want to wear a dollop of sauce on my shirt, especially not in company. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603150/#p603150 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) @86Jayde is probably better than me at this. The curse of living in Florida is that there wasn't anything worth doing, and the curse of being an introvert is that I didn't want to anyway. But yes, this level of efficiency is possible, and it is required if you ever want to live alone.I suspect very few of us enjoyed doing mobility training. In general it all sucks. But you have to grin and bear it until it doesn't, or give up and not have any real degree of independence ever.@87The trick to cutting is practice. The second trick to cutting--in a restaurant, etc--is ordering something without a ton of sauce. But usually you can just ask for gravy or whatever on the side and do it that way.I don't ask restaurants to cut it beforehand because at least here, that's kind of something associated with children. But I can do it and obviously a mess is worse. However, as with most of this, you could easily practice at home. My parents made us cut our own food as soon as we were capable, which probably helped a lot. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603079/#p603079 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) @83, the idea of a sort of mobility simulator sounds interesting, and I have been toying with similar ideas in the past as well. The problem though is that I never really got the hang of programming (except for the basics and a little more), and that I didn't know anybody who'd be willing to try coding it. But indeed, it would be an interesting piece of software to help getting the hang of different routes before you go outside and try it in the real world.So far, my mobility teachers brought tactile maps or built something like a map on a magnetic board themselves to help me getting the hang of different routes and the surrounding area which honestly only worked partially. Eventually, I think I learned more when I was actively walking the way myself.About using GPS and asking people or not, I think it really depends on how regularly I walk certain routes.If it is a route I need to take regularly, I usually get used to it either by myself or with some sighted help and/or mobility training after a few days maximum.Still, it is not 100% guaranteed that I might somehow get lost anyway, and in my opinion it is totally okay then to ask for help or consult GPS in order to get back on track without losing too much time I might not have.If it is a route that I only need to take rarely or even just once, I usually try to get as far as I can without help and ask or check my GPS if I got stuck. And hey, it's not that blind people are an exception, because sighted people also try orientating themselves until they don't know where to go next, and therefore also rely on either GPS or other people on the street in order to find their way.Talking about eating, I recently had a discussion with friends about how legit it is asking in a restaurant whether they could cut the meet into slices before the food is been brought to your table.I know a couple of blind friends who do it that way, and I honestly also do it sometimes (depending on the food and how full the plate is), because I sometimes struggle with cutting food, the fuller the plate is. It's not that I am not capable at all of cutting food. If the plate is moderately full, it's a piece of cake; but the fuller the plate, the bigger the chance is that food falls off the plate and sauce starts dripping; something that I mostly don't notice straight away. Another difficulty is that sometimes the knives are kinda blunt which brings up one more problem.Especially during an important meal from work, I would feel pretty embarrassed when that happens, so I'd rather ask in beforehand whether the food could be cut before delivery so there is one thing less to worry about.One of my blind former colleagues is a diplomat, and she said that a question like "Could you possibly cut it for me in beforehand, Sir or Madam?" is a totally legit question and saves you from embarrassment.What do you think about it? Or do you know another trick to cut the food safely and prevent it from falling off the plate, no matter how full the plate is? URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603077/#p603077 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) camlorn wrote:I don't know where you're getting 6 weeks learning the same route from. This probably just comes from practice, but it only takes me and my brother a day or two at most. When I was in college, we'd spend all of 2-3 hours finding all my classes. My point being that if it's taking you 6 weeks you should probably work on that even though it's frustrating, where work on it mostly just means find places to walk to even if it's something stupid like Mcdonalds once a week or even going around the block and coming straight back home.Hmm. I wasn't aware that people could be that efficient.I'm probably biased though. I disliked mobility so much that I had to force myself to even comply and do it. Even the knowledge that I'd need it one day when I'm on my own wasn't enough to really motivate me to make it sink in. I was awkward, immature and I complained incessantly, and my instructor wasn't having any of it. I of course know I needed it and I'm grateful for it, but the word mobility is like an emotional trigger word. I know that's not any reason for me to start making excuses about anything, but yeah.I did find indoor routes easier, especially when learning my college routes. I could learn class routes in a week or less iirc, and if it was in a building I sort of knew, I'd work them out myself on free time. I hardly ever got lost on campus either, at least not in areas I sort of knew. Even outdoor routes weren't bad at that point, since there were landmarks and by that point I did have a firmer grasp of orientation. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603076/#p603076 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) Can confirm. When I learn to get to new places, it takes me hours or a few days if the route is complicated. In fact, when my instructor (when I had one) wanted to drill the same route more than two or three times, I'd get annoyed.Generally I use logic and work things out for myself. There's a karaoke bar I used to like to go to, pre-Covid, and it's about a nine-minute drive from my house. Now, I could just call a cab, pay twelve bucks and do it that way - and if I go there and have a few drinks, that might be how I get home - but I figure there's no reason not to get there by bus and on my own two feet. So what did I do? Looked up bus routes, mapped on the internet, asked my partner at the time one question, and then just bloody well did it. Fucked up the first time, but only because I missed a sidewalk. By "fucked up" I mean that I walked past the bar and had to come back. I've done it a dozen or so times since then.Six weeks per route seems...a touch excessive. But everyone's got different rates of knowledge acquisition.Funny you should mention Shades of Doom and whatnot though. In maps that aren't just grid-based, I often find myself side-stepping precisely because I am good with navigation. When huge areas on a MUD are hard for people to map, I'm the dude who follows walls and remembers my way in and out. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603072/#p603072 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) When it comes to going beyond the sighted instructors, I didn't get where I am by just going for it. It took like 10 years starting somewhere in high school when they were finally just kind of like "we don't have anything left to teach you". You figure out the unsafe efficiencies in two ways: either someone else blind tells you about them and you take the ones you feel comfortable with, or you just sort of slowly change until one day you look back and go "how silly" at the "official" methods.As I've already said the NFB has many stupid ideas, but they aren't wrong about needing to know how to function without the GPS. Unless you live somewhere in fantasyland, a rain shower can make it inaccurate enough to be useless--even if the rain shower isn't directly over you. Going outside and having a GPS that's like "accuracy 100 meters" in an area where the blocks aren't even 100 meters on a side has happened to me before even in Seattle, and it will happen again. Want to be clear that "you will get expelled for it" is definitely very stupid, but they have a really valid point.I don't know where you're getting 6 weeks learning the same route from. This probably just comes from practice, but it only takes me and my brother a day or two at most. When I was in college, we'd spend all of 2-3 hours finding all my classes. My point being that if it's taking you 6 weeks you should probably work on that even though it's frustrating, where work on it mostly just means find places to walk to even if it's something stupid like Mcdonalds once a week or even going around the block and coming straight back home.You're not the first person to discuss VR navigation games, but unfortunately VR isn't going to ever really work out for us due to space constraints. I know that the sighted people are working on tricks for it, but those tricks currently rely on hacking your brain via vision. More info on that here, but we don't have the weird thing where we can't walk in a straight line with our eyes closed, so...well, good luck.For the rest of it: you could probably get funding. You could probably connect it to something like Open Street Map or whatever that's called. You're not actually discussing any particularly new ideas here, and I think it's even been done. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603058/#p603058 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) Another long post ahead, I didn't intend it to be but my brain ran away.I'm not sure about my feelings on how much training one should receive from a sighted or blind instructor. Camlorn mentioned it in post 74.I grew up with mostly sighted instructors, who mostly felt that there was only one way to do things. As a result I still struggle to this day with feelings of "Am I doing this right?' And they're not distant echoes of my past either. My head says "If it works for you and those around you then what does it matter?" but my emotions say otherwise... I get skittish because I'm afraid I look like a klutz, I'm going to get scolded, I'm going to do something stupid because I didn't follow all the steps I was supposed to etc. If I could let go of that and say "I'm going to just try and see what happens," I would be fine. But it's one of those things that's easy to think, and hard to put into practice. It's like jumping into the deep end of a cold swimming pool. No matter how much you know it's going to be cold and unpleasant at least at first, the adrenaline rush still comes when I think about it, and I don't deal well with that. Now if someone pushed me into the pool and I didn't have much control over it, then the adrenaline rush would be focused more on survival and just getting through it, and not on the act of forcing myself to do something I don't know I can handle. Not trying to be overly soppy and dramatic, just trying to think of a way to explain the feelings.I was never at an NFB camp but I've heard stories. My girlfriend was at one of those, and they made her learn a route, then perform it without any external aid, without even a GPS, and she was only allowed to ask for help once. Being the rebel she is, she decided to use the GPS on her phone if she got lost (and she did). She could've gotten expelled for it, according to her, but she wasn't caught.I'm in two minds about it. On one hand I can sort of see why they didn't want her using the GPS or asking for help, since if you rely on doing that, then you'll never be ready to tackle a situation when none of those things are available. On the other hand, it does bother me that they seemed to be so adamant about it. As I said in my first post, I only started coming to terms with my blindness when I started trying to find ways to integrate with the sighted. So training a route for 6 weeks for the purpose of being able to do it without the GPS just doesn't sit well with me, because I don't think sighted people do that. And even if the primary goal was to teach blind people safe street travel, a GPs isn't going to get you exempt from that. It won't magically orient you or help you cross streets. Hell, when I used my first GPS, it confused me because it would tell me I was facing southeast on an east-west street because of how I/it was turned. At the time, I couldn't cope. So yeah, I don't quite get it, not unless I push my own beliefs aside.Then there was the time I was getting some instruction navigating my way around college. The instructor I had was as new as could be. She was sighted, and I was among her first clients. She had book smarts, and knew how to provide instruction. But she didn't know how to relate, or how to help when things went wrong, and things often did go wrong with me. She was nice when we weren't doing mobility, but during mobility I was tense. At one point, when I just wasn't getting it after about half an hour, she became frustrated and exclaimed, "I could've done this in training with a blindfold, and you've been blind most of your life, so this should be no problem for you!"Needless to say I took some offense to this, but I honestly think she didn't mean it to come out that way. I think she was just... puzzled and frustrated. Not at me, but at everything. Like I say, she knew how to train by the book and that was about it. I don't even know if she's still working now.Funny enough, orientation stuff didn't really click with me until I started getting into FPS games like Shades of Doom, Technoshock, GMA Tank Commander etc. Stuff with maps that you have to figure out. Stuff where walking into walls doesn't hurt, or facing halfway between north and east will at worst get you a bit lost, but won't bring on the sinking feeling of being stranded without help. Trying to find my own way to navigate those maps got me more comfortable with orientation. I don't know how much better it made me at navigating in the real world, but I felt I could understand orientation better. To this day, I prefer to play those games walking forward i.e. face east, walk forward and sidestep once to pick up the gun, now turn south and walk forward to the door. I mean, I could easily sidestep 20 times down a hallway or just blindly turn and walk toward objects which make sound and still get it done, and on occasion I will, but it's not a regular thing
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) Another long post ahead, I didn't intend it to be but my brain ran away.I'm not sure about my feelings on how much training one should receive from a sighted or blind instructor. Camlorn mentioned it in post 74.I grew up with mostly sighted instructors, who mostly felt that there was only one way to do things. As a result I still struggle to this day with feelings of "Am I doing this right?' And they're not distant echoes of my past either. My head says "If it works for you and those around you then what does it matter?" but my emotions say otherwise... I get skittish because I'm afraid I look like a klutz, I'm going to get scolded, I'm going to do something stupid because I didn't follow all the steps I was supposed to etc. If I could let go of that and say "I'm going to just try and see what happens," I would be fine. But it's one of those things that's easy to think, and hard to put into practice. It's like jumping into the deep end of a cold swimming pool. No matter how much you know it's going to be cold and unpleasant at least at first, the adrenaline rush still comes when I think about it, and I don't deal well with that. Now if someone pushed me into the pool and I didn't have much control over it, then the adrenaline rush would be focused more on survival and just getting through it, and not on the act of forcing myself to do something I don't know I can handle. Not trying to be overly soppy and dramatic, just trying to think of a way to explain the feelings.I was never at an NFB camp but I've heard stories. My girlfriend was at one of those, and they made her learn a route, then perform it without any external aid, without even a GPS, and she was only allowed to ask for help once. Being the rebel she is, she decided to use the GPS on her phone if she got lost (and she did). She could've gotten expelled for it, according to her, but she wasn't caught.I'm in two minds about it. On one hand I can sort of see why they didn't want her using the GPS or asking for help, since if you rely on doing that, then you'll never be ready to tackle a situation when none of those things are available. On the other hand, it does bother me that they seemed to be so adamant about it. As I said in my first post, I only started coming to terms with my blindness when I started trying to find ways to integrate with the sighted. So training a route for 6 weeks for the purpose of being able to do it without the GPS just doesn't sit well with me, because I don't think sighted people do that. And even if the primary goal was to teach blind people safe street travel, a GPs isn't going to get you exempt from that. It won't magically orient you or help you cross streets. Hell, when I used my first GPS, it confused me because it would tell me I was facing southeast on an east-west street because of how I/it was turned. At the time, I couldn't cope. So yeah, I don't quite get it, not unless I push my own beliefs aside.Then there was the time I was getting some instruction navigating my way around college. The instructor I had was as new as could be. She was sighted, and I was among her first clients. She had book smarts, and knew how to provide instruction. But she didn't know how to relate, or how to help when things went wrong, and things often did go wrong with me. She was nice when we weren't doing mobility, but during mobility I was tense. At one point, when I just wasn't getting it after about half an hour, she became frustrated and exclaimed, "I could've done this in training with a blindfold, and you've been blind most of your life, so this should be no problem for you!"Needless to say I took some offense to this, but I honestly think she didn't mean it to come out that way. I think she was just... puzzled and frustrated. Not at me, but at everything. Like I say, she knew how to train by the book and that was about it. I don't even know if she's still working now.Funny enough, orientation stuff didn't really click with me until I started getting into FPS games like Shades of Doom, Technoshock, GMA Tank Commander etc. Stuff with maps that you have to figure out. Stuff where walking into walls doesn't hurt, or facing halfway between north and east will at worst get you a bit lost, but won't bring on the sinking feeling of being stranded without help. Trying to find my own way to navigate those maps got me more comfortable with orientation. I don't know how much better it made me at navigating in the real world, but I felt I could understand orientation better. To this day, I prefer to play those games walking forward i.e. face east, walk forward and sidestep once to pick up the gun, now turn south and walk forward to the door. I mean, I could easily sidestep 20 times down a hallway or just blindly turn and walk toward objects which make sound and still get it done, and on occasion I will, but it's not a regular thing
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) Another long post ahead, I didn't intend it to be but my brain ran away.I'm not sure about my feelings on how much training one should receive from a sighted or blind instructor. Camlorn mentioned it in post 74.I grew up with mostly sighted instructors, who mostly felt that there was only one way to do things. As a result I still struggle to this day with feelings of "Am I doing this right?' And they're not distant echoes of my past either. My head says "If it works for you and those around you then what does it matter?" but my emotions say otherwise... I get skittish because I'm afraid I look like a klutz, I'm going to get scolded, I'm going to do something stupid because I didn't follow all the steps I was supposed to etc. If I could let go of that and say "I'm going to just try and see what happens," I would be fine. But it's one of those things that's easy to think, and hard to put into practice. It's like jumping into the deep end of a cold swimming pool. No matter how much you know it's going to be cold and unpleasant at least at first, the adrenaline rush still comes when I think about it, and I don't deal well with that. Now if someone pushed me into the pool and I didn't have much control over it, then the adrenaline rush would be focused more on survival and just getting through it, and not on the act of forcing myself to do something I don't know I can handle. Not trying to be overly soppy and dramatic, just trying to think of a way to explain the feelings.I was never at an NFB camp but I've heard stories. My girlfriend was at one of those, and they made her learn a route, then perform it without any external aid, and she was only allowed to ask for help once. Being the rebel she is, she decided to use the GPS on her phone if she got lost (and she did). She could've gotten expelled for it, according to her, but she wasn't caught.I'm in two minds about it. On one hand I can sort of see why they didn't want her using the GPS or asking for help, since if you rely on doing that, then you'll never be ready to tackle a situation when none of those things are available. On the other hand, it does bother me that they seemed to be so adamant about it. As I said in my first post, I only started coming to terms with my blindness when I started trying to find ways to integrate with the sighted. So training a route for 6 weeks for the purpose of being able to do it without the GPS just doesn't sit well with me, because sighted people don't do that. Now, if the primary goal was blind people to learn safe street travel, then maybe I could see the point of limiting how much help you can receive, but still, a GPs isn't going to save you from that either. It won't magically orient you or help you cross streets. Hell, when I used my first GPS, it confused me because it would tell me I was facing southeast on an east-west street because of how I/it was turned. At the time, I couldn't cope. So yeah, I don't quite get it, not unless I push my own beliefs aside.Then there was the time I was getting some instruction navigating my way around college. The instructor I had was as new as could be. She was sighted, and I was among her first clients. She had book smarts, and knew how to provide instruction. But she didn't know how to relate, or how to help when things went wrong, and things often did go wrong with me. She was nice when we weren't doing mobility, but during mobility I was tense. At one point, when I just wasn't getting it after about half an hour, she became frustrated and exclaimed, "I could've done this in training with a blindfold, and you've been blind most of your life, so this should be no problem for you!"Needless to say I took some offense to this, but I honestly think she didn't mean it to come out that way. I think she was just... puzzled and frustrated. Not at me, but at everything. Like I say, she knew how to train by the book and that was about it. I don't even know if she's still working now.Funny enough, I didn't become good at mobility until I started getting into FPS games like Shades of Doom, Technoshock, GMA Tank Commander etc. Stuff with maps that you have to figure out. Stuff where walking into walls doesn't hurt, or facing halfway between north and east will at worst get you a bit lost but not stranded in the middle of nowhere. Trying to find my own way to navigate those maps got me more comfortable with directions and things of that nature. I don't know how much better it made me at navigating in the real world, but I felt I could understand orientation better. To this day, I prefer to play those games walking forward i.e. face east, walk forward and sidestep once to pick up the gun, now turn south and walk forward to the door. I mean, I could easily sidestep 20 times down a hallway or just blindly turn and walk toward objects which make sound and still get it done, and on occa
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) Jayde, I never stated we shouldn't have the skills to be independant etc. My point was the same as yours. OIf I am alone and navigating, I use all tools available to me. However, when given a choice between freezing to death or dying from heatstroke etc, I will go and ask someone and do myself a favor if I am stuck.Interestingly, I was never formally trained for stuff like cooking etc. So I don't know any safe ways of handling the knives etc, I use the regular ways sighted people use. The particularly fun ones are using an ax or machetti to chop wood, and using your hand as a guide, or hammering nails in. What probably helped though, I would help out with household chores from a really early age, and had very little regard to my own safety, I remember as a child I would use large stones or hammers to smash nuts etc, or fuel and stir wood stoves. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603001/#p603001 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Re: frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context) Jayde, I never stated we shouldn't have the skills to be independant etc. My point was the same as yours. OIf I am alone and navigating, I use all tools available to me. However, when given a choice between freezing to death or dying from heatstroke etc, I will go and ask someone and do myself a favor if I am stuck.Interestingly, I was never formally trained for stuff like cooking etc. So I don't know any safe ways of handling the knives etc, I use the regular ways sighted people use. The particularly fun ones are using an ax or machetti to chop wood, and using your hand as a guide, or hammering nails in. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/603001/#p603001 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
