Matilda Ziegler Magazine for the Blind

Brian Charlson is a big Red Sox fan. He loves going to the games and listening to the play by play when he can’t make them. Accessing the stats, however, proved to be very difficult for him due to his blindness. Now, having been urged by Brian and blindness advocates, this week the MLB has added accessibility options to all of its websites in order to make the information entirely available to the blind community.

Brian always felt that baseball, perhaps more than other sports, appeals to blind people because of the relative simplicity of the events involved in the game. “It’s a sport where the play by play can make sense to a blind person. You’ve only got the pitcher, batter and fielder. With only three people to keep track of at any one time, it is a lot easier to keep track of than say, football,” he said.

Brian and another visually impaired friend of his had gone on a trip to see eight baseball games in six cities. They had made all of the plans over the internet, like buying tickets and reserving hotel rooms, and if they were stuck, resorted to making phone calls to clear up any last minute loose ends. What bothered them, though, was that they really couldn’t access any of the material on the MLB sites so they could study the stats of the different teams they were going to visit.

As many of you know, screen readers dictate everything on the page, even the underlying code of pictures and advertisements, which can make the internet a confusing mess. With the MLB, their site was filled with sponsors’ advertisements, videos, and game pictures that created a labyrinth for them to work through. The site was unfortunately quite useless to them.

With the help of other blindness advocacy organizations, Brian approached the MLB and, to his surprise, they were not only eager to help him, but made it a priority and worked very quickly to find a solution. ‘‘We’ve never experienced that, where we didn’t have to hold someone’s toes to the fire,” he said.

Now, the MLB site has what is called a zero pixel gif that is virtually invisible to sighted people using the site, but that is detected by screen readers instantly upon access. The feature is inaccessible to point and click users, but his screen reader recognizes it as a link and allows him access to content specifically formatted for screen readers. This feature offers full navigation of all the material on the site to blind fans without the need to significantly alter the site that sighted users visit. Its simplicity is a thing of beauty, really. Brian now feels that the MLB has made a huge leap, not just in making their own site accessible to blind users, but by showing other companies and organizations that the same can be done without costly modification to their existing setups.

Because of the MLB’s willingness to help out Brian, he was successfully able to vote for the All-Star game for the first time. Next year, he’s going to approach the NFL in hopes they’ll be equally willing to help out.

Good luck, Brian. We wish you the best.

To read the original article, please go to

http://www.boston.com/yourtown/news/newton/2010/02/blind_sox_fan_gets_mlb_to_even.html

A man born blind and diagnosed with autism at age 5 is proving to the world that his disabilities will never limit him from achieving greatness. 

Tony DeBlois has an amazing story.  At only two years old, Tony played “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” on a small organ that his mother had bought at a yard sale.  It shocked his mother, who knew that her son’s mental abilities were affected in some way.  It was later determined that Tony possessed a rare mind and is considered to be a musical savant.  

Tony attended the Perkins School for the Blind in Massachusetts where he took lessons and learned to play many of the instruments in his incredible repertoire.  Tony’s mother noticed that he was having difficulty with motor skills when doing simple tasks.  So she taught him how to brush his teeth by asking him to pretend that he was playing the violin.  He learned to brush his hair by playing the drums.  Eventually, he was awarded a scholarship to the Berklee School of Music and later graduated summa cum laude.  While he is very humble about his education and his talents, he is referred to as a prodigious savant, essentially an autistic genius.  Considering the circumstances, it would be difficult to disagree. 

DeBlois, now 36 years old, can play a total of 22 instruments, leads a jazz band, and has recorded 6 CDs of his work. 

To access the original article, please go to http://www.enterprisenews.com/lifestyle/x1672004061/Musician-proves-blindness-autism-are-no-barriers-to-success

By Francesca Bardsley © Oxford Mail, England — A blind actor hopes his role in a spoof reality TV show will dispel stereotypes about disabled people. Tim Gebbels, of Kenilworth Avenue, East Oxford, stars in new Channel 4 series Cast Offs, which follows six people with different disabilities who are left on a remote British island. Mr Gebbels has had parts in shows including The Bill, William and Mary and Torchwood, but has never taken a leading TV role before. The 41-year-old plays Tom in Cast Offs, which will be screened for the first time at 11pm tomorrow night. He said: “I think the intention is to show that, okay, you have got six disabled people here, but once they are on this island, they squabble, and get on with each other, and get off with each other just as any other six people would…. READ ARTICLE

By Mark Abramson © Stars and Stripes European edition — The phrase “the blind leading the blind” takes on a whole new meaning at one site in Frankfurt, Germany. The place is the DialogMuseum, an interactive museum whose main attraction is Dialogue in the Dark, offering a labyrinth of rooms in total darkness in which visitors are guided by a blind person whom they never even see. The experience is an eye-opener into what it is like to live in a pitch-black world where you must rely on your senses of touch and hearing to get by. People going through the maze get the same canes that blind people use to navigate everyday life and they are given a quick lesson in how to use them…. READ ARTICLE

By Kinga Dema © Kuensel Newspaper, Bhutan — In an attempt to standardise braille application and make the writing system for visually impaired people systematic, braille users across the country came together for the first time and discussed various applications of braille. The four-day workshop that ended on November 21 at Kanglung focused on the introduction to braille, application of rules in transcribing printed text into braille, learning readiness activities, learning of braille science and math code were discussed at length, said the focal person, Pema Chogay, a visually impaired teacher with the national institute for the disabled…. READ ARTICLE

Business Wire/News Blaze, Sydney, Australia — Amidst complaints of Amazon’s Kindle inaccessibility for blind readers, ReadHowYouWant, a new technology publishing company from Australia, is leading the way in accessible publishing by using proprietary XML conversion software to repurpose books into a number of formats to meet the varying needs of readers who are blind, visually impaired, or have print or learning disabilities. Now readers can choose between as many as ten different formats before they buy a book at www.readhowyouwant.com, including electronic braille, synthesized audio MP3; optimized, large print, 24 point bold EasyRead print-on-demand books, and DAISY-a talking book format that produces audio along with the written text. DAISY books play on DAISY players, which are either standalone units or computer applications…. READ PRESS RELEASE

© KETV-TV, OMAHA, Nebraska — Mandy Somer guided black fabric through her sewing machine like she’s an old pro. It’s with that same ease that she’s lived every aspect of her life: going to college, taking on new interests and trying to earn a living. “I feel like a rule breaker sometimes. I’ve never done what was expected of me, ever,” the young woman said, laughing. Somer recently created a broomstick skirt at her sewing machine, and showed off a closet full of her sewing handiwork, including laced trimmed dresses she sewed for her other hobby, Civil War re-enacting. Her passion for trying new projects and pushing herself outweighs her disability. “I went blind when I was 12,” Somer explained. The 30-year-old was born with congenital glaucoma. Her retinas detached on Christmas Day, 18 years ago. She has no vision at all. “I get hooked on something. If I get a hold of something that I feel passionate about. I don’t let it go. I don’t let it go,” she said. Her current passion is massage therapy. She’s a student at Omaha’s Universal College of Healing Arts where she’ll graduate next spring as the first blind student of the school…. READ ARTICLE

By Jennifer Upshaw Swartz © Marin Independent Journal, California — San Rafael-based Guide Dogs for the Blind has embarked on an ambitious effort to update its Terra Linda campus. The national organization headquartered in Marin has begun working with city planners and the San Rafael Design Review Board on a project to demolish, relocate and reconstruct the administration building and residence hall. The buildings are out of date and struggle to meet building and fire code regulations, officials said…. READ ARTICLE

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