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Dog Guide Diary: A Firsthand Account
In this new series, guest blogger and Center on Vision Loss volunteer Holly will chronicle her experience in attaining a new dog guide. Day 1 I was in a hurry, as usual, when I left the house with my parents to go to the airport en route to the Guide Dogs for the Blind (GDB) Oregon Campus. I left Pollyann, my retiring guide dog, at home because, I thought if she saw me walking away with my cane, she would get upset. I flew with a man from my area who will be training with his first dog.…
Helen Keller Continues to Inspire
Over the past couple of months, we at AFB have received a number of correspondences regarding the announcement and promotion of various Helen Keller-related projects. While we can't always honor every request, we have been impressed with what has crossed our desks. Crazy as it sounds, there are many out there who don't know who Helen Keller was. So to see so many creative projects taking place with Helen as inspiration makes us proud—and, we think, would have made Helen herself…
As CES wraps up…
There are just a couple of other items I want to share from CES. I did get a chance to play with the Fleksy keypad from Syntellia. As many know, this is an app for Android and iOS that allows text input using a touchscreen keyboard using the relative position of your finger touches to mimic the qwerty keyboard. In other words, you start typing where you think the letters are, and Fleksy fills in what it thinks you're typing. It works quite well and I found the learning curve to be very…
More updates from CES
Day 2 at CES featured some TV, some audio, some speech and a nice little company making nifty headphones. OK, so I sort of surrender to the TV juggernaut that is CES with a visit to Panasonic. But, this is a blindness access story and not a (super high-def, screen as large as my garage story). Some of you have probably heard about television sets from Panasonic that are available in England with great speech output for on-screen menus, channels and the like. And, we've been asking,…
Updates from CES
After taking in a couple of sessions focusing on tech and seniors, William Reuschel and I tackled the exhibit floor (the lifeblood of CES). We got a chance to check out the Sensus from Canopy (a maker of game controllers for the iPhone), which has developed a nifty prototype for doing braille input on the iPhone using a touch-sensitive case. The input controls are on the top and back side of the case, with the fingers curled around the two ends of the phone). I was able to get the hang of…
Off to Vegas for CES 2013
I am heading out to the big Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas for my first visit. CES is a huge event, with just about every tech company (and a whole lot of non-traditional tech companies) showing off their new products. I'll try to let you know what I find regarding accessibility for people with vision loss. But first, a big shoutout of thanks to the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) who is assisting AFB and the Hearing Loss Association of America to be able to get the…
Braille Roundup: Celebrating the Life and Work of Louis Braille
Today marks the 204th birthday of Louis Braille, the inventor of his eponymous code for people with vision loss. In celebration of his birthday and National Braille Literacy Month, we’ve assembled a roundup of braille-centric content throughout AFB's family of sites. Read up, reflect on, and appreciate what braille has meant to so many. Braille continues to be a driving force for people with vision loss. Throughout January, we will be sharing information relevant to braille—history,…
One Major Step Closer to Ending an International Book Famine
Convenient and affordable access to books in formats that can be read by individuals who are blind or visually impaired has long been a major struggle. With high-quality audio and braille production, and more recently, digital production, books are now far more available for those of us with vision loss, at least in the wealthier nations. Although copyright laws in many nations allow production of accessible books for people who cannot read print, it is quite difficult and often illegal…
Getting Prepared for Careers, Jump Onboard the Employment Train!
Recently, I had the opportunity to conduct the first of six teen employment workshops for students who are blind or visually impaired. These workshops are being held in multiple states, the first of which was with the Overbrook School for the Blind (www.obs.org) in Philadelphia. The workshops allow me to work with teens and associated professionals on self-awareness, career exploration, pre-interview skills, and the job interview. They are really focused on the needs and present levels of…
Advocacy Request: Tell the FCC No Waivers For TV Industry Groups
Hurricane Sandy sent us a potent reminder of the need to ensure that information about emergencies is available to people with vision loss. Television has become the most common way to distribute information about weather or other emergencies, including notices regarding evacuation. Unfortunately, people who are blind or visually impaired are unable to read the scrolling information that often appears on television screens during an emergency, so they do not have efficient access to…