Everyone’s experience navigating the web is different. Yet, the bugs or glitches in accessing some content is the same for many blind or low-vision users. That’s one reason a new survey promoted by Freedom Scientific is important.
Partnering with a group from Utah State, Freedom Scientific is gauging how well people of all experience levels and expertise can navigate the web. Follow this link and take the survey yourself. Anything we can do to assist web developers and assistive tech instructors in making the online environment the most conducive for our use the better.
Can a rubber ball thrown against a stone wall ever make a dent? No, it’s easier for that ball to get punctured and lose its air through the hole gouged into its surface. There’s no secret that many in the blind, let alone the larger disability, community have given up searching for employment after time and again seeing their efforts deflate. Whether it be because the company claiming not to have enough money to make a needed, if not reasonable accommodation or the staff to provide specialized technical assistance or a proposed individualized plan for employment (IPE) being denied, the temptation to slip through the cracks looms large.
Compared to that rubber ball, we who experience these frustrations need to keep bouncing. Often, we may need to help the rehabilitation counselor or job preparedness coach by raising their awareness of training programs that may make us more marketable.
After all, Vocational Rehabilitation and many States’ Departments for the Blind, have two sides-one for job seeking/preparedness and another for job training and education. While keeping your pulse on one, you can never lose sight of the other. If the job search is taking months to years, perhaps you may consider taking some course of study or vocational training to gain those skills in a given area. When you’re training for some desired career goal, gaining awareness of jobs which are out there will help you land that gainful employment when your course is nearing completion.
No doubt the economy has had an effect on the budget that Vocational Rehabilitation can spend on each client. Waiting lists for services expand and constrict given the resources allotted each State’s Department of Family Services under which VR and similar programs are housed. Sometimes, plans for client services, then, will include an amount of time or a deadline for keeping a case open. Sometimes, waiting lists will be based on how many disabilities-hidden or visible-someone has.
One way you who are blind or low-vision can help raise awareness for your VR counselor is to be educated yourself. Know what the approximate amount your county’s or State’s office has budgeted for each person’s services. Let me warn you: It’s not very much based on the type of IPE agreement you’ve established. We’re talking one to four thousand dollars unless a specific dispensation has been granted for purchasing work accommodations like JAWS screen reading software or a refreshable braille display. You will need to martial not only the reasons you want various services from your local VR or Department of the Blind’s offices, but you will need to justify why your counselor should go above the bare minimal cost for equipment or schooling you might need.
Then, if the job search is taking you and your support system back to square one time and again, be prepared to look at alternatives. If you have a knack for being tech savvy, pursuit of a certification to teach assistive technology or technology access consultant makes good sense. Schools like Little Rock’s World Services for the Blind offer courses on and off-line designed to teach you how to teach others the necessary and wide world of computing. The Hadley School for the Blind has many paths for training toward employment including a partnership with the Chicago Lighthouse’s Business Enterprise Program. Through theBEP program, you can learn to run a convenience store, coffee shop, or vending machine on Federal Property-thanks to the Randolph-Sheppard Act).
Finally, if you are among a larger group of friends or acquaintances who are looking for work, keep tabs on which companies seem more amenable to employing people who have blindness or other disabilities. Like it or not, laws like the Americans with Disabilities Act or the Rehabilitation Act (1973) can only prescribe standards. Not every company in your town will have made those accommodations and some simply don’t have the savvy to bring one of us into its workforce in the least intrusive manner possible. So look for those workplaces that have a track record of hiring and retaining people who are blind or otherwise disabled.
Depending on your skill set, you may wish to look at places like the
which has centers spread throughout the country under the auspices of the National Industries for the Blind. Your Center for Independent Living may offer positions open to people who have any number of disabilities and, of course, the Federal government in all its agencies offers positions adapted for us on a noncompetitive hiring basis.
With all this in mind, we don’t have to ricochet off the stony wall like a rubber ball which, if smacked too many times, might deflate and fall. Whether our caseworker/counselor with Vocational Rehabilitation or similar agency knows the many paths to employment, we can raise awareness for them. Then, when we are presented with a new IPE, we can help them plan for those alternatives or opportunities that may lead us to being fully employed.
Assistive Technology Month is here and Braille Institute has a calendar of ways to learn it online. In the calendar linked here, you can be trained virtually in everything from basic JAWS to ways of navigating Voiceover on the iPad. You will not want artificial intelligence to leave you behind. Several classes will help you gain a better grasp of how you can make use of this new world in your gaming, daily life around your home and when you travel.
The advantage of all classes this month is that they are online. Just click the link for any of them and you will be directed to a registration form. Fill out the information requested and your are all set.
When seeing me read in public, some people have asked me about those bumps rising above my manuscript or computer display. Most have heard it’s called braille but aren’t so familiar with how it works.
I often explain that each letter, number, or sign is formed from a combination of six dots (or with computer braille, eight dots). A tiny dot six before a letter notes how that letter is capitalized. A different sign turns that combination of dots in the next cell into a number or a series of numbers.
The system that has been adopted worldwide over the decades since Louis Braille created it in 1824 is truly remarkable. Yes, six dots in many combinations can say a lot. For us who use the system, whether in the current Unified English Braille Code or previous grades or versions, letting our fingers do the walking is second nature. Even traversing a refreshable braille display for work or study becomes a matter of habit.
But if you are a coworker or classmate, family member or friend of someone who is blind-no doubt you will be astounded by this incredible system of dots, combinations, and signs.
Over the years, some have debated whether braille is worth preserving since, apparently, so few people who lose their sight later in life ever learn it. Thankfully, braille remains. And I don’t just say that as a proficient reader of braille. I speak on behalf of many who advocate for its use in schools and especially in the workplace where a screen reader may not tell everything you need to know by itself. Sometimes, with braille rising and collapsing beneath your fingers on a 40 to 80 cell display, you may be able to work faster than you would by hearing an automated voice. In fact, many of us who use braille, with or without the computer, can read just as fast as someone who sees the printed text.
When it comes to navigating braille with a display, clicking an icon or correcting a mistake may be as easy as pushing one of many quick navigation keys located above the line of text. These router keys along with buttons that pan the screen up and down or side to side bring us everything necessary for filling out forms, filing reports, data entry, and studying languages.
As we extend the celebration of World Braille Day (January 4), we walk in the ingenious footsteps of Louis Braille whose contribution shows we can do so much with that six or eight dot cell!
Over the months, Boldly Blind has featured various personalities in the blindness community and their journeys in advocacy. You’ve read posts about goalballers, beep baseball athletes, guide dog users, legislative advocates, and more. It’s time we title said posts Boldly Blind Achievers.
In this post, then, check out this YouTube video brought to us courtesy of Freedom Scientific. You will learn about Kate, who is a senior in high school and multitalented. She’s ambitious, wanting to travel, go to college for degrees in music and therapy. She has a great story to tell about her desires and drive. Hear it for yourselves. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCtaQs9rmoI
After seeing this article on David Goldfield’s blog, I couldn’t help but share it with you. The advocate, Paul Parravano, did much more than simply stand up for better legislation or rights pertinent to the blindness community. His expertise in the skill of structured negotiation led him to advocate on our behalf to get credit report statements and American Express notices in braille.
Have you walked into any of these streetside scenarios:
You want to cross with the parallel traffic but the hand on the sign doesn’t signal it’s time to cross in tandem with the traffic flow?
The color contrast between concrete, pavement, and paint at an intersection looks blurry or indistinguishable?
Polls with audio signal buttons are offset from the curb such that you have to walk several paces to find them?
Some lesser traveled streets in your area have audio signals while heavier traveled areas still don’t?
We’d love to have answers to these accessibility predicaments. Yes, the Americans With Disabilities Act does specify important information about accessible travel. But we need to update our knowledge for the current time.
The webinar from the U.S. Access Board on February 1 will provide guidance and answers to these concerns and more when discussing accessible crosswalks. Click the link below for more about this excellent opportunity for us to learn more about the cityscape around us, especially the streets we must cross. If you are blind or low-vision, you will benefit by learning more about the variety of intersections around you along with the ways your city government should be improving these areas. If you are sighted, check out this webinar so you can learn more about how having accessible crosswalks will give your friend or relative more confidence and desire to travel independently.
For a long time, video games have been inaccessible to us who are blind or low-vision. Of course, some have been created over the years and the geekeier among us have joyfully gravitated to them. However, for the run-of-the-mill blind computer user, blind gaming has been a world that seems a click too far.
Enter Forza Motor Sports who has created a new racing game whose features allow for accessibility for us who are blind orlow-vision. The site along with the interview with a blind gamer are found here. Listen to how Brandon interacts and discusses the experience with those who designed the program.
Yestgerday, we considered New Year’s resolutions. Today, let’s turn these resolutions into goals.
To help us, Ed Henkler from the Blind Guide has written a post on SMART goals. I don’t want to steal his thunder, so go to his blog, linked here, to read what a smart goal might be.
Let’s just say that Boldly Blind is all over this idea as you will see at least one or more posts each day. After all, the world around us and the blindness community in specific is huge enough to write a lot about what’s going on.
With that said, this blog does not stand alone but serves as a partner with others who help you navigate life’s contours boldly blind. So check out Ed’s post and you can perhaps begin looking at those goals for you and or your family from the finances to weight loss to learning some new coping skill for making your work or home life more manageable.
In a previous post last year, I let you know that come January, 2024, Gmail would be abandoning its basic HTML view setting. Now, it’s January and Freedom Scientific has the modules to help us all make this transition.
You can find the presentation and its overview here. Yet, along with this, we know that adjustment can be a challenge for us going from a very familiar platform to something which may take longer to read or scroll down.
After all, while our JAWS commands don’t change, how they will read and interact with the screen might throw us for a loop if we don’t grasp the new layout early. Of course, remember, it’s not an impassible blocakde or unscalable mountain. Instead, we’re dealing with a new contour.
For those who are sighted, the change between screen navigation and reading can appear daunting. Productivity in the workplace may slow a bit. The employee using said software that undergoes changes may ask a few more questions than before and seek a bit more assistance until he or she grasps the new environment. That goes for more software platforms and screen layouts than Gmail’s standard view.
Think about it like walking or driving a downtown street experiencing some construction. Detour signs appear. Arrows point to short-cuts or work-arounds to drive the same route or similar path to get where you are going.
It’s true when navigating computers as well. So take your time with Freedom Scientific’s tutorial for navigating Gmail’s standard view; acquaint yourself with the new ways you will use keys like page-up or down-arrow. In this and any other web environment, the purpose of the screen reader remains the same: reading what anyone else can see with their eyes and inputting data in all the right places.
Boldly Blind 