Matilda Ziegler Magazine for the Blind the source for blindness news and information since 1907

Progress is occurring at the speed of light with regard to accessibility for applications and services that were previously difficult at best or frustratingly unusable by those using screen readers or screen magnification.  During this month, there has been a veritable explosion of applications for listening to music and reading that might just entice the Matilda Ziegler Readers into new worlds of entertainment and discovery.

I adored the Rhapsody Music service when I could noodle my way around using screen magnification.  I discovered, played, and burned gigabytes of music to CD and built up quite a collection.  If I’m being brutally honest, it was an arduous process but if I choose to see the glass half full, I’ll say it was a learning adventure.  Happily, I announce that JAWS scripts have been developed that enable the user to perform a myriad of tasks, including play, rewind, fast-forward, and create playlists.  Find an audio overview provided by the developer of the scripts on http://www.blindcooltech.com. The official website is http://wwww.rhapsodyblind.com.

Readers will recall that I described the Pandora Music streaming service in an article entitled “Padding Through the iPad.”  I am pleased to announce that I am writing this article while listening to the Pandora music service on my new HP laptop.  Yes, folks, an accessible Pandora application has been created for those who want to let the music play on their Windows PC’s.  The application cost $10.00 U.S. and with the most recent upgrade, you are able to purchase that very special song through iTunes or Amazon MP3. You create radio stations of your favorite songs, composers, and artists. As your station plays, you are encouraged to give each tune a thumbs up or thumbs down rating. In this way, Pandora begins learning your musical tastes.  The application is available at http://www.q-continuum.net.

As Alena mentioned in her article, Amazon’s accessible plug-in for its Kindle for the PC application took the blind and visually impaired community by storm this week.  Enabling access to at least 750,000 titles, it is a compelling reason to at least try the application and buy a book.  Free titles are available, which makes it even more appealing.  Plunging right into the Kindle Store, I purchased Whoopi Goldberg’s latest observational offering.  Once I unloaded and restarted my JAWS screen reader enabling Kindle’s shortcut commands to work, I was pleasantly surprised.  Those who have the Victor Reader stream or any iDevice will recognize the female reading voice. Find information and a link to the download at http://tinyurl.com/4g64hwy. 

Devoted to books read by the human voice, I would only use the service in order to read books that are not available through my favorite entities:  the National Library Service (NLS) or Audible.com. Accessibility now and forever!

Verizon Wireless has long offered the LG series of phones because they are accessible to blind and visually impaired people. The latest phone to be offered is the LG Accolade, which replaces the LG 8360.

These phones do not have all the bells and whistles of a smart phone but do have features which make the phones accessible to the blind. Some of the features of these phones include speech output and voice recognition, as well as tactile keypads, talking caller ID, and status information such as time, date, battery level, and signal strength. The phone also has limited access to menus and texting. The LG Accolade costs $39 for a two year plan and $99 without a plan.

If you’re really lusting after a smart phone, though, Verizon Wireless is also going to be carrying the iPhone on February 10th. However, one of the disadvantages of getting the iPhone from Verizon is that you won’t be able to talk and surf the web on the iPhone at the same time because of Verizon’s network restrictions. In addition, not many users will be able to get their iPhones from Verizon because they are already on a two year plan with AT&T.

That said, one of the distinct advantages of the iPhone for the blind & visually impaired is that it uses Apple’s Voiceover speech program. The speech is very clear and understandable and it makes using the iPhone very easy. The phone will be priced between $200 and $300.

It’s great to see that popular carriers like Verizon are constantly trying to expand the types of phones they have that are accessible to the visually impaired.  It allows us to choose a phone based on a number of different features instead of simply saying, “This one is accessible and that one isn’t.”

Sources:  http://www.afb.org/afbpress/pub.asp?DocID=aw120107

and

http://topnews360.tmcnet.com/topics/associated-press/articles/2011/01/11/133714-verizon-start-selling-200300-iphone.htm

It seems like just when we all become comfortable with Windows, Microsoft releases a new version with changes and new features added to the operating system.  It also seems as though there are plenty of books out there about Windows, but one never knows which one to pick.  Recently, I obtained a copy of “Windows 7 and Vista Explained” by Dr. Sarah Morley Wilkins and Steve Griffiths.  The reason I chose this book was because it is designed specifically for users with low vision or blindness.  The book is available in several formats including, but not limited to, large print, Braille and audio CD.  It has a companion book, which contains the figures discussed in the text book, which is also available in large print or Braille with tactile diagrams.

The book is divided into several parts including, “The Basics, Getting started with Windows, File management – Windows Explorer Working More Effectively, The Internet and the Web, Keyboard shortcuts, Resources and Table of Figures”.  Each part is divided into several sections and it is easy to locate a section and refer to that section if you need a review for yourself.

Since I spend the majority of my career teaching people with low vision or blindness how to use computers, I find these books most helpful and valuable.  Of particular interest and use to me is the companion book filled with the figures discussed in the textbook.  If I am teaching a lesson about the Windows 7 Desktop, I can direct my student to either a photo of the Desktop, or the tactile diagram of the Desktop, depending on the student’s needs.  The tactile diagram contains an exact replica of the Desktop with raised symbols to represent the Icons, Start Button, Taskbar, Notification area and Windows Gadgets.  The student is able to feel these parts on the page as we discuss them in class.  When I am discussing the concept of a Radio Button, I can reference the figure which tactually shows a group of Radio Buttons to the student.

It should be noted that these books are not written to teach students how to use Windows with any particular adaptive software.  They are written specifically about Windows.  If you need assistance with specific adaptive software, you should contact the software manufacturer and they can direct you to resources in your geographic region.

If you would like more information about the textbook and companion book, you can visit http://www.nbp.org/ic/nbp/WINDOWS7.html

It seems that Amazon has heard the blind community loud and clear that we want access to their large library of books, and we want full access, not just the ability to read the book cover to cover. Last week, Amazon released a plug-in for their Kindle App for the PC. It is the first release, so it’s not perfect, but the reviews so far seem promising. It is important that you have a screen reader already running before using the plug-in since you will need it for registration. With that in mind, here are some of the things you can do with the app.

Read the book continuously

Read sentence by sentence

Toggle the voice between male and female (the TTS voices are built into the app)

Speed up or slow down the rate of speech

Get an announcement of the current location in the book

At this point, books have to be purchased from Amazon’s website because the Kindle store in the app is not accessible. The app was tested with JAWS and NVDA, and WindowEyes has a script available. At this time it is only available in the US, but hopefully that will change. As a Mac user, I also hope that these accessibility changes will be coming to the Mac and IOS devices soon.

To download this exciting new app, visit www.amazon.com/kindle/accessibility.

To send them feedback about the app, send an email to: kindle-PC-accessibility-feedback@amazon.com.

And here is the link to the keyboard shortcuts: http://tinyurl.com/4dz428f

Happy reading to all!

Hello Everyone!

Well, it seems that last week’s announcement about the Reader’s Forum lit a fire underneath my audience.  I was inundated with emails from people wanting to submit things and I love it.  Keep them coming.

As with the previous few magazines, this week’s recipe is held in an article written by Susan Roe.  She’s done a great job of blending foods with football now that we’re nearing the Superbowl, so be sure to check it out.

In other news, it is positively freezing right now.  My car read zero degrees this morning–it was literally nothing outside.  For those of you dealing with these extreme temperatures, please be careful, as frostbite can set in very quickly.

That said, I wish you all a pleasant (and warm) week.  Take care, and thanks for reading.

Sincerely,

Ross Hammond, Editor

With Connecticut residents finding themselves buried under nearly two feet of snow, everyone had to endure the agonizing task of digging out driveways and cars so that life could continue normally once again.  But one man didn’t have the luxury of shoveling his own driveway, and it meant he was in a lot of trouble.

Alfred Allesandrine, a resident of New Haven who happens to be blind, absolutely had to get out of his house following the Wednesday storm.  Not to get groceries, but to get to his dialysis treatment.  He tried calling the city to get him out of his home, but they were flooded with other calls and weren’t able to come to his aide.  So, as a last resort, he called the local news station, WTNH News 8.

When the news team arrived, they found that every other driveway except for his was cleared.  Without a clear sidewalk and driveway, there would be no way for Alfred to make it to the medical van that picks him up to take him to his treatment.

Alfred was well aware of the dangers of his situation, saying, “If you don’t go to dialysis, obviously, I’m dead, I’m dead.  And I’ll be off three days if I don’t get there […] which would mean, it’s all over, curtains.”

His story was all the news team had to hear.  They quickly found a neighbor, Drummond Sykes, who knew Mr. Allesandrine and had shovels and a willingness to help out.  Together, the reporter, a photographer, and the neighbor dug out his driveway in about half an hour.  Looking for no praise, Sykes, who had remarked that Alfred was such a nice guy and had helped him refinance his home, quietly walked back down the street.

With the driveway clear, Alfred would be able to get to his life-saving treatment and live to see another (snowy) day.

It’s one thing to report the news, but it’s a totally different story when you step back, forget about getting a good report, and help the people who need it most.  In this case, the WTNH reporters were able to both get a great story and perform a much needed service.  I say well done.

Source:  http://www.wtnh.com/dpp/news/new_haven_cty/snow-kept-new-haven-man-from-dyalisis

Our parents gave and we took.

They spent a ton of money on us, provided food, clothes and a safe haven. They provided love and support, steering us from infancy like a boat’s rudder in the sea of being.

They didn’t ask us to sign a contract to pay them back. They just did it. Shelter and three square meals, if you can call liver sandwiches for lunch every day a meal. They didn’t expect anything in return. Maybe just take out the garbage, or hang up our clothes.

It cost them. It cost them money, time, energy, and deprivation. They let us know this. Guilt. Guilt. Guilt.

Sometimes they planned to go out but had to cancel because we were sick.

“Let’s not go to the movies. Marty’s sick. It’s a terrible movie anyway,” they’d say.

I remember the birthday parties.

“You can’t miss Shirley’s (my sister) 4^th birthday party,” my mom likely told my dad. “She is looking forward to you seeing her blow out her three candles.”  Shirley couldn’t count.

“Must I? They are all the same and so boring. I’d rather climb a telephone pole,” my father said, or something like that.

Mother missed out on lots of things–like Bingo, Mahjong and so much more–so she could cook and clean and help us with our homework, and do whatever else was needed.

And what did we do for them? We gave them dirty diapers.

Thinking of all they did for us, we felt guilty. We tried to remedy this guilt but didn’t know how.

Now that I am a patriarch, I finally realize that we repaid them by giving them joy as they watched us grow, get married, have children, get a job, buy a house.  We succeeded and our successes were theirs–our happiness theirs. This was our payback, even though we didn’t think of it that way. Far from being a burden, we were a benefit. It feels good to know. It’s too late to tell them this, but it’s nice to know that as kids we were givers as well as takers.

As the cycle of life continues, we give and our children take. But my children do not feel any guilt. I guess they don’t know about the cycle.

How I suffered for them, giving up the last piece of cherry pie–the one I had my eye on all night–while I watched my child gulp it down with a flourish, with no thought about depriving me of that morsel of joy. I didn’t watch the Masters, so my kid’s play-date would have a good time watching cartoons. I showed up at five little league games a week, eating hot-dogs for dinner in the cold, wind, and rain while cheering for five year olds. I paid for everything they needed, and they needed everything. But they did learn about charity and their favorite charity was themselves.

I hoped, like me, they would feel guilty, but they didn’t. Something is wrong. When do we get our turn?

Instead, they made me feel guilty. They wanted a red Corvette with spoilers; they got my old Ford Fairlane. They wanted to go to Harvard or Yale; instead they went to CSUN. They wanted Zither lessons; we taught them Scrabble.

Our parents made us feel guilty and now our kids make us feel guilty. It’s not fair.

Fortunately, their gift to me is that they turned out to be wonderful people. Now they have children and the cycle of giving and taking continues.

It is so important to be safe in the kitchen, especially when you have a visual imparity.  I wasn’t born blind, but in 1993 blindness began to creep up on me.  After having surgeries, and countless rounds of medications to which I had significant intolerances, I realized that blindness just might be something that I would experience.

I was enrolled in the Center for the Visually Impaired, and it was the best thing that ever happened to me.  There I learned, before I actually lost my sight, how to manage and live cautiously in a world without sight (If you even think that a diagnosis will leave you sightless or vision impaired, ask your physician to refer you to this wonderful knowledgeable institution).

I received my certificate from the center, and it has been a Godsend in my life.  While going through the gradual loss of my sight, I began to pull back from cooking, thinking that I would get my sight back and then take up cooking, which I loved, again.  Life doesn’t work like that.  One day I realized that I was hungry, and my diet was lacking, and I prayed.  My prayer was not only for my own belly’s contentment; but that I could continue to fix nutritious meals for my family.  After the prayer, I took on small projects with success.  Today, the only thing that I do not cook is open fried food (it is better for you to bake it anyway).

Here are a few tips:

1. Choose an electric stove, if you have a choice.  Electric stoves have no open flame, and the burners are strategically placed.  My suggestions will assume that you are using an electric stove. 
2. Use the back burners, first.  Do not turn on the front burners, and reach across the hot elements to place something on the back burners. 
3. Keep your stove as clean as a plate.  After every use, clean the stove.  Raise the top, when it is cool, and wipe all food from the bottom of the stove.  This will ensure you that there is no grease, or food particles that can catch fire when you are in the midst of a grand cooking spree (vinegar and water cuts grease, and leaves the surface squeaky clean). 
4. Get yourself a collection of long handled wooden spoons.  They are excellent for stirring your pots, and they guarantee your hands are above the hot contents of the pot.  Last year, I even found some wooden spoons that had nice handles. 
5. Turn all pot handles the same way all of the time, and then when you go to reach for it, you won’t burn yourself. 
6. Listen to your food.  Listen for the boiling of water.  Be familiar with the very sound of food that is getting ready to stick and or scorch. 
7. Use as many small electric utensils as you can safely handle.  For instance: waffle iron, toaster oven, stand mixer, bread machine, toaster, etc.  Make sure that you have a working knowledge of how to use the utensil according to manufacturer’s instructions. 
8. Never start with your burners on.  Whenever you start a project on top of the stove, make sure that the burner is clean, and off.  Center your pot on the cool burner, and then turn it on.  If it is a recipe that calls for boiling water, fill the pot first, and then center it and place it on the cool burner. Make sure that the pot is centered on the burner.  It has been a bad day when a hot boiling pot tips off and sends its scalding contents scattering onto the floor (Avoid this accident by securing your pot while it is cool). 
9. If you happen to be sharing your kitchen with a sighted person, agree on which side of the top burners is yours, and respectively theirs.  If possible, don’t use the stove while another is cooking.  This is not to place enmity between you and the other.  It is to keep you safe because you can’t see where the sighted person lays hot equipment, or when the burners are left on, etc. 

    10.  Always keep an electric kettle with hot water with which to add to your boiling pots.  When boiling food, and the contents begin to stick, it is better to use hot water to keep up the temperature than to use cold water, and start the process over.

These are only a few tips that will help you to have a safer experience in the kitchen.  In fact, it would be fun to use these tips as soon as possible in the cooking of your next recipe.

After I graduated from Perkins School in 1977, I had the opportunity to learn how to travel independently in and around my city.  I was fortunate to have one of the best mobility instructors, because he not only showed me how to get from point A to point B, but he made me understand the techniques involved in making travel a lot easier for a blind person.  For example, he taught me that I could not cross a busy street with traffic lights unless the parallel traffic started.  In other words, the traffic on the street alongside my left or my right would need to start up before I crossed.

On one occasion, my instructor saw that I was using my limited vision in order to spot traffic.  It was an old habit, and I did it because I had some vision to use.  My instructor wasn’t too thrilled about this, because he thought that there wasn’t enough there for me to rely on.  I would be better off using my hearing to detect when traffic started or stopped.

A week after the blizzard of 1978, I had a mobility lesson on which I had to cross a busy intersection.  In front of me was a snow bank about 18 inches high.  Before I crossed the street, I fell over the snow bank.  As I was getting up, my instructor said, “It’s the real world,” and I knew exactly why he said that.  If I was going about my business on an average day when there was snow on the ground, I would need to climb over snow banks and be aware of them.  Once you are taught mobility techniques, you do not always apply them in a perfect world, and my instructor reminded me of that fact.

Today, I have little or no vision, so I look back upon my instructor’s comment about how I shouldn’t have used what limited vision I had.  Now I am grateful for what he taught me by using my hearing and touch, because they certainly come in handy today when I travel.

Do you have any anecdotes from your mobility training?  Let us know in the reader’s forum.

One night I rented the movie, “The Bucket List” starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman. The first thing I noted was that these two guys had chemistry. They just clicked and that element made the movie more than the sum of its parts. The second thing I thought about was the fact that I called my bucket list a wish list. It was called that because, unless a one hundred pound box of fifty dollar bills fell at my feet, all I could do was wish for what was listed. I couldn’t act upon my wishes–well, not most of them anyway, due to obvious financial constraints.   In the movie, Nicholson didn’t have financial limitations and he shared his wealth with Freeman.

Not so for me, however.  Retrospectively speaking, I’ve completed tasks with which I could still fill the bucket sans the cash. Things like aspirations, goals, regrets, and proudest moments. Life experiences don’t always come with a physical price and the film’s theme clarified this point quite well.

Getting back to me, I’m most proud of my children, my husband and marriage. As for aspirations, they would include: publishing a poetry collection, moving to a house with enough property to rescue and rehabilitate dogs, travel three times a year to visit family and/or an exotic location, and never again be dependent upon government benefits.

As for regrets, we wouldn’t be human if we didn’t have at least a few, but I can say that I don’t regret being blind. I’m sure listing my top places to go would just bore you, so I’ll just say that a trip to as many continents as possible would satisfy me.

As I researched the meaning and context of a bucket list, two questions from this type of personal inventory impressed me as significant. The two questions are: Have you known joy in your life?  If so, how? Have you given joy to another?  If so, in what way?

These questions, while reflective, also give the person answering a chance to look forward as well. How would I continue to put joy in another’s life? How would I continue to receive it?  The answer lies within the self, for one thing, but also in how we choose to interact with others.

For instance, in the movie, Nicholson’s character found joy by sharing his wealth and Freeman’s character, in turn found joy in accepting it. Perhaps it isn’t about tangible riches we hoard along the way, but more importantly, the way in which we obtain and share it.

Do you have a bucket list?  If you’d like to share, let us hear about it in the reader’s forum.