AFB Blog

Good news on the cell phone front. This week, AT&T Inc. announced their new partnership with Code Factory and their initiative to increase usability for wireless customers who are blind or have low vision. AT&T will now offer the screen reader and magnification software, Mobile Speak and Mobile Magnifier, on select Windows Mobile and Symbian Series 60 phones. Consumers with vision loss are advised to contact AT&T's National Center for Customers with Disabilities at 866-241-6568 with…

Ah, campus life. Dormitories, dining halls, and...GPS? The newest school staple for co-eds with vision loss is a talking Global Positioning System (GPS). Some of you readers might not be familiar with GPS, how it works, or its level of effectiveness so you should read AccessWorld®'s—AFB's online technology magazine—review< of Sendero GPS 3.5 for BrailleNote. Now, back to school. Florida State University recently completed mapping its campus so that various important spots can be picked up by…

Late last week Glenn Beck made some offensive comments on his CNN Headline News program about braille signs on walls. Media Matters has a clip on their site. The reality is that braille signage is extremely important for information and orientation purposes just like signage for anyone. And though we wish Mr. Beck would have thought twice before making such stupid remarks on national television, it has given us the opportunity to address some of the questions people have about braille in…

We're home! Ralph drove Paige and me home this week and worked with us in my home neighborhood for several hours. I guess most people fly home, so the trainers take them to the airport and go through security with them to the gate. This is great, since the dogs have not flown before and often the people don't have much experience with it, either. And, getting a dog through an airport is different from getting a cane through. I'll have that experience sometime in the near future. Being so…

Before I came to the Seeing Eye to get my dog, all my friends and coworkers wanted to know what I would do when I wasn't in class. I wondered the same thing. Would I be able to work? Could I train for a marathon? How about a triathlon? Could I catch up on my reading? I imagine other people planning to get a dog might be wondering the same thing. To what extent is my life on hold? The first-timer's program is 26 days long. People getting a second dog are here for a shorter time. Training time…

Tomorrow Paige and I will have been working together for three weeks (I'm at the Seeing Eye getting my first guide dog, if you're just tuning in). We're really starting to work together as a team. We're a little rough around the edges in a few places, but we do mostly look like we know what we're doing. On Friday we did a solo, where we walked in partly unfamiliar territory without a trainer on hand. I had a walkie-talkie and Pete, the trainer, walked far enough away that Paige couldn't really…

A lot of people have asked me how dogs and people are matched up. I'll try to describe what I've observed about the process at one school, the Seeing Eye, and maybe other people will fill in or contradict me. I'm sure every school has its own way of doing it. Before I arrived on July 22, many of my friends asked me what kind of dog I would get. Lots of people assumed I would pick out my own breed or even my own specific dog. Apparently if you feel you must have particular traits in a dog you…

I'm at the Seeing Eye, getting my first dog guide. I arrived July 22 and it's been the experience of a lifetime. This is the seventh post on the subject, so if you'd like to start at the beginning, go to the July 23rd post, Getting a Dog, Day 1. The past few days have been spent working on specific things we're likely to encounter while going from place to place. One of my favorites was the escalators. New York is loaded with them, and often it's hard or impossible to get where you're going…

It was a week ago yesterday afternoon that Paige's leash was handed to me. I can't believe how much I've learned. I can't believe how much I have yet to learn. A friend of mine who is a cane user came to visit last Sunday. He asked me the same question I've been asked a hundred times: "Does it make much difference walking with a dog instead of a cane?" In the past, all I could say was, "I hope so. That's the plan." This time, I gave my friend the one-week dog-guide-user answer. I hope some…