Tag Archives: blindness

Sponsor A Guide Dog Puppy

A video from the Guide Dogs For The Blind Association about sponsoring a guide dog puppy helping to provide independence to blind people, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCTcvbV1CHI&feature=youtu.be&Ref=email&dm_i=LDK,2A5ET,5B5CNX,89P3S,1. As a blind guide dog owner I have every reason to be grateful to Guide Dogs and those who sponsor them. I am currently on my fourth guide dog, Trigger who can be seen by clicking on my author page here, http://www.amazon.co.uk/K.-Morris/e/B00CEECWHY/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0.

How The Blind Dream

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My friend John sent me the following link to an article in National Geographic regarding how the blind dream, http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2014/02/26/how-the-blind-dream/. Having lost most of my vision at approximately 18-months-old as a consequence of a blood clot on the brain I was interested to read the results of the research which included both sighted and non-sighted participants.

One of the most fascinating aspects of the study for me was the finding that blind people appear to experience more nightmares than sighted people. Such nightmares included being hit by a car and losing their guide dog which are, as the author of the article states very real threats if you happen to be blind. Next time I meet up with my friends all of whom are sighted I’ll be sure to ask them about their dreams although certain types of dream are, no doubt better glossed over …

Dogs Are Not Allowed

My Encounter

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As someone who is registered blind I am ultra independent. I live alone and navigate the streets with the assistance of my trusty guide dog, Trigger. There are, however instances where I require help and yesterday evening was one such.

On my way home from work, about 5 minutes from the flat, Trigger stopped dead in his tracks. It being dark the limited vision I do possess was rendered next to useless. I stood stock still waiting for the sound of approaching footsteps. Fortunately I didn’t have long to wait. A man approached and in broken English indicated that I should take his arm. In fact he tried to take mine but it being far easier (and the approved procedure) for guides to allow visually impaired people to hold their arm I gently disengage my hand and, taking his arm allowed my companion to guide me round the obstacle.

During our brief encounter I asked my new found friend what was causing the obstruction. He responded

“Sorry I am from Russia, I don’t speak English”. I smiled, shook his hand, thanked him and continued on my way home.

The whole incident reminded me powerfully of our common humanity. One man, (not my fellow countryman) saw another soul in need of help and rather than continuing on his merry way he stopped and offered assistance. The fact that he was Russian, that we couldn’t understand one another barely figured in our interaction. It was an act of spontaneous kindness for which I feel extremely grateful. People are just that, people. Nationality and ethnic origin don’t matter, it is the person within, (the soul for want of a better word) which counts and this individual possessed a good soul.

The Captcha Monster

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I like to follow other people’s blogs. Interacting with others is, after all part of the fun of blogging as sooner or later you get bored talking to yourself! Likewise I love receiving comments and commenting on other people’s blogs. To me a blog which does not accept comments is a dead entity. It may well contain interesting content but without the ability to interact with the blogger his/her site does, in my view lack a certain vibrancy.

One of the difficulties with allowing comments is separating the wheat from the chaff. My site receives a fair number of wheaty (have I just invented that word)?! Comments, however the blog also gets bombarded by chaff (spam)! Akismet (the spam filter used by WordPress) captures the overwhelming majority of junk mail consigning it to a dedicated folder where it can be reviewed by the blog owner. The beauty of Akismet is that it does not entail the person commenting attempting (often unsuccessfully) to solve a visual Captcha. Captchas are visual puzzles which must be solved prior to those wishing to comment or contact the site owner being able to do so. For a brief period I maintained a site on Blogger. Blogger employs Captcha and low and behold not a single comment did I receive on my site hosted there. Given that I receive a fair number of comments on my WordPress hosted site (which does not utilise Captcha) and I had none while using Blogger, I attribute my success in attracting comments (on WordPress) to the lack of Captcha. Unless a person feels extremely strongly on a given issue they are, when faced by a tricky Captcha likely to give up and move onto a blog where the Captcha monster is not lurking ready to pounce on the unlucky would be commenter!

As a blind computer user I have a particular detestation of Captcha. Screen reading software such as Jaws (the package I use to convert text into speech and Braille enabling me to use a standard Windows computer) only recognises text (it is not able to recognise images). Many sites have no alternative to a visual Captcha. Others do have audio alternatives, however most of these are, in my experience more or less unintelligible so, if you employ Captcha on your site you are, albeit unintentionally locking out many visually impaired people from the possibility of participating fully on your site.

As a blogger I do understand the problem posed by spam. Spammers are selfish individuals who ought to earn an honest living rather than spending their time bombarding site owners and e-mail users with solicitations for fake products. However spam is not going to disappear any time soon and we will continue to be faced with the issue of how best to minimise it’s pernicious effects. Given the existence of Akismet I can not see a valid reason for anyone relying on clunky old Captcha. If you must use Captcha then please choose a non-visual version. For example “prior to posting please add four and 3 and type your answer”. Such a Captcha can be read by screen reading software and is intelligible to the overwhelming majority of the human population. It also has the benefit of preventing automated spam bots from wreaking havoc by spraying your site with spam. Better still use a programme like Akismet which dispenses with the need for Captcha altogether!

Trapped

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Boxed in, unable to escape. Dark. I feel wardrobe and door but, no exit. Trapped, I am caught, no way out. Don’t panic of course there is an exit.

Feel, this is the hall, the shape of the storage cupboard. I turn, blessed light, dim but perceptible reaches me from the living room windows. Free!

(I am blind with a small amount of residual vision which means that I can see light and dark. I am also able to distinguish shapes so, for example I can see the outline of a person but I am unable to recognise them. This morning I was in my spare room, the one in which most of my writing takes place. I know the room, as with every other part of my flat like the back of my hand, however, this morning I became disorientated. I have no idea why but perhaps it stems from the fact that I was carrying my iPad and, not wishing to drop it all of my thoughts where concentrated on preventing an accident, consequently the part of my mind which deals with orientation went into slumber mode hence the above. My spare room opens out into the hall. The door is usually open and this morning was no exception. The logical part of my brain told me that the door was open yet, for a moment I was unable to locate the exit).

The Silence Is Deafening Revisited

Reading Blind

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Growing up as a blind person in the 1970s and 1980s there existed extremely limited opportunities for a visually impaired book lover like me to slake my thirst for books. Then (as now) only a fraction of the books available in print could be found in braille so if you wished to read Wuthering Heights then all fine and dandy, however if you wished to enjoy the latest thriller there was virtually no possibility of obtaining it in braille.

I supplemented my reading of braille books by listening to spoken word cassette versions of the classics together with books of more recent vintage such as Where Eagles Dare. However many of these recordings, although often professionally read where, for all that abridgements of much lengthier books. While some books no doubt might benefit from being abridged many others did not but, as a blind reader I had, by and large to make do with what was available.

The Royal National Institute of the Blind (RNIB) offered (and still provides) a talking book library of full length works ranging from the classics to the latest detective stories. Again, however only a relatively small proportion of the books available in print found their way onto the shelves of the Talking Book Library. All this changed with the coming of the e-book and, in particular the invention of the Amazon Kindle.

I received my first Kindle, as a Christmas present in 2011 and it opened up a world of print literature which had, hitherto been barred to me. My Kindle possesses a text to speech facility which enables me to have most of the books in the Kindle store read aloud. A few authors/publishers do not enable the text to speech facility but most do.

For a long time the Kindle app for the Ipad was inaccessible but this has now changed and my poor Amazon Kindle languishes in a cupboard feeling most unloved while the Kindle app on my Ipad is used on an almost daily basis. With Voiceover (Apple’s screen reading software) it is extremely easy to navigate around my Kindle library, to select and listen to books. The disadvantage to the Kindle iPad app is that it is not possible to purchase books although one can send an e-mail to yourself or add the title to your wish list as a reminder that you wish to purchase a title.

Amazon has recently released two further Kindles both of which the RNIB have reported as being even more accessible than my ancient Kindle, http://www.rnib.org.uk/livingwithsightloss/reading/how/ebooks/accessibility/amazon/Pages/kindle_devices.aspx#H2Heading1.

The world has certainly come a long way since I sat, in the school library lost in Palgrave’s Golden Treasury. I can still recollect the feel of the cloth bound volumes the braille worn down by countless fingers. I still read braille and enjoy doing so, however vast vistas of literature have been opened up by the Kindle and other similar devices which would, until recently have been beyond the dreams of visually impaired people.

For my Amazon author’s page please visit http://www.amazon.co.uk/K.-Morris/e/B00CEECWHY/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0

Distractions

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As a writer I hate distractions. Off goes my mobile together with my e-mail. I make a cup of tea or coffee and get stuck into my writing. Not so this morning. Bump, a wet nose was pushed against my elbow. I stopped writing and caressed the head of Trigger my brindle lab/retriever guide dog. OK now I’ll return to my writing I thought. Hardly had I typed a single word when, bump, bump a cold wet nose was, once more frust against my arm. Once again I ceased my scribbling and paid attention to my four-legged friend.

Owning a dog is incredibly therapeutic. When I stroke Trigger I feel myself relaxing. There is something almost hypnotic about the feeling of contentment induced by the back and forth of my hand across Trigger’s coat. I can feel my stress levels reduce as Trigger relishes the attention. Yes Trigger can be a distraction but he is a very welcome one.

For a photograph of Trigger please visit my Amazon author’s page which can be found here, http://www.amazon.co.uk/K.-Morris/e/B00CEECWHY/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0

Problems posting

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I am experiencing problems in creating new posts. The problem appears to stem from some incompatibility between the screen reading software which I use (Jaws which converts text into speech and Braille enabling me to read my computer’s screen) and the WordPress interface. Everything appeared to be fine until yesterday then, suddenly I can not create new posts. I have raised this issue on the WordPress Forums (http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/problems-accessing-dashboard-with-screen-reading-software-jaws?replies=1#post-1509979) and, with a bit of luck the problem should be resolved soon.

The above is being posted with the help of a sighted friend.