Tag Archives: blindness

The UBC Back to School Edition: Accessibility Services

05 Wednesday Apr 2023

Posted by in Ultimate Blog Challenge, Part 3

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As a student with a disability, it is almost inevitable that I would need to contact accessibility services sooner or later. You can understand my hesitance in doing so, given my prior experience with disability services.

First, I had to fill out a form, about my disability, how it impacts my learning, any accommodations I would need.

Then my doctor had to fill out a form to confirm that, in fact, my eyes don’t work.

So I had finally decided on my area of study, and I was ready to take my first course in October. I decided to take a detour before jumping headlong into my certificate program (more on that tomorrow) but my first course was paid for, and I was ready to hit the books on October 1.

Except… my textbook was in hardcopy print.

I bit the bullet and decided to purchase an electronic copy of my textbook. I’d heard terrible things about the etext books – that they weren’t accessible with a screen reader, and they were frustrating, and I would 1000% need to get my books in alternative formats – but I figured I could make a small investment to find out just how bad it was. Thankfully… I had no problems with the etext book. Sure, I got a paper book in the mail, which is acting as a big paperweight on my bookshelf… but I got my textbook on my terms and I had to wait for no one.

Did I mention it took nearly two months to get my letter of accommodation? It was three weeks after my class start date before I had any kind of acknowledgement from accessibility services. Thankfully, I had purchased my etext book, and was able to start my first course with little difficulty.

My second course was…. a bit more challenging. I went to take my first unit quiz, only to find that some portions of some of the questions were not read by my screen reader. After some back and forth, discussions with accessibility services, the faculty of business, and my course coordinator, I came to find out that the portions of any questions that contained fractions were pasted as images into the quiz. The only options available to me were to (1) withdraw from this course, (2) skip the questions with fractions and hope I got high enough grades to keep on going, or (3) get the information another way. Unfortunately, there was no way for course production to make the fractions compute into plain text that a screen reader could read. Accessibility services was not able to provide the quizzes in braille in a timely manner (which would effectively press a further pause on my studies, and is an inefficient use of resources to boot). Thankfully, a solution was found, and I’ve been able to complete these quizzes as time and energy permits.

I know accessibility services in many post-secondary schools is understaffed and overworked. but I can’t help feeling a certain sense of deja vu – that I am supposed to be extra responsible for making sure I can access course materials that aren’t made as accessible as they could be. Would someone in a million years have caught the issues with my quizzes if I had not just sarted taking them? Are students supposed to check with accessible services ahead of time to make sure that each little thing is readable with a screen reader, or that all course videos have captions, or that slide presentations don’t auto-scroll? Is that even possible? And at what point is it the school’s duty to make their materials as user-friendly to the widest student body possible? Athabasca University uses ProctorU, an online invigilator, but you cannot use ProctorU with a screen reader; this means I need to pay at least twice the price, and take time off work, to book an in-person exam. Am I missing something, or does that seem unfair?

I don’t have all the answers, but as my “detour” courses wrap up, and I start my certificate in earnest in May, I can’t help feeling a mix of complicated emotions. Do I request alternate format materials that I may not need, further burdening stretched-thin resources, or do I do the best I can with what I have, hope for the best, and try and advocate in the middle of the trenches? Do I push for equivalent exams in both cost and flexibility, or pick my battles and bite the bullet on this one?

I don’t have those answers… I just hope I don’t have to find them while cramming for my first final exam.

My Sorta Kinda Maybe (in)Accessible Life: A Lot to Unpack…

10 Friday Jun 2022

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It’s been a while… I know. There’s been a lot to unpack, both literally and figuratively (more on that in another blog post). But I had some pretty interesting experiences in the month of April, culminating in racing my most recent half marathon. And, in an emotionally complicated twist… I received something for free because of an inaccessible system.

Work: Nothing New to Report

I spent the second half of April back in the office. It felt both exciting and surreal, and with the benefit of hindsight it still does. I did, however, have to outsource use of GWS #2 ($50); to be honest it’s getting really old. Apart from that, I’m getting annoyed with the changes they made to GWS #3 – finding anything on there is like a technological maze! (you need THIS information? click on this button and then that link and then maybe you can have it). But, as much as I can shout about intuitiveness being part of accessibility, I can honestly say I could do everything I needed to.

1 outsource: $50

Let’s go Shopping!

I was super excited to attend a local rock and gem show at the end of April. It wasn’t far from my house, and wouldn’t be hard to get to…

Except…

The address for the venue could easily lead one to thinking it was on the street. But there was a big sandwich-board sign directing traffic through a parking lot, behind another building, and facing the street half a block east. There was nothing on the event web site or web page indicating this, and there would be absolutely no way to get your friend who uses a wheelchair into the building…

At the show, I found some amazing stones. I bought a stone I planned to use for a project I’ve been unable to complete for the past several months, was able to touch carved stone statues (I almost brought home a carved jaguar that was AMAZING but would’ve been really heavy to carry home!), and bought a strand of beads that I still maintain will work perfectly with some of the new awesome presents that came in a care package my Mom sent me when we were stuck inside. People engaged me in respectful conversation, pointed out all kinds of neat tactile things, and seemed happy to be out at the show.

At one vendor table (the one with a carved German Shepherd-type dog), I had a lovely conversation with the couple staffing the table. There were stones that I liked, and some that did nothing for me. I had several stones in a bag, and went to pay… And the tap on the credit card reader wasn’t working (apparently it was a thing for most of the weekend). The man behind the counter handed me the machine…

And it was a fully touch screen machine.

Fully touch screens are not accessible for a blind person. Unless the credit or debit card reader interacts with a cell phone, there is no audio feedback telling you what’s on the screen, and no way to enter your pin number without providing it to someone else. I put my would-be purchases back down on the table, apologized, and was about to turn and walk away.

The couple wouldn’t hear of it.

“It’s our machine that’s the problem,” the man said. “The tap feature has been annoying all weekend, and it’s not like you should be telling anyone your pin.” he handed me the stones, and even when I offered to see if my debit card would work with the machine, he refused to take payment for them.

I’ve been on this planet for more than thirty years. I’d like to think that I can tell a “pity present” apart from a small gesture of generosity born of a unique combination of circumstance. I read this situation as the latter. I thanked the couple profusely, put the stones in my bag, and continued enjoying the show.

10 minutes of aimless wandering: $2.50 MINUS gifting of stones = a debit of $22.50

Traveling: I’m Leaving on a Jet Plane…

I was telling my partner recently that I have traveled more in the past six months than I had in the past two years. I visited my family over Christmas, and then, in late April, I flew to Vancouver for my first in-person race since 2019 (Hypo kinda counts… but it’s not a racing race… there is a difference!).

I got a ride to the airport, and was able to find security with no problem. Unfortunately, there was another passenger with a small dog that took a lunge at Jenny while we were waiting in line. I was so startled, and couldn’t breathe. Security was kind, and let me know what had gone on (in short, the small dog came at my dog out of nowhere, and my dog was trying to evade it). They offered me a chair and a glass of water, and once I calmed down I was able to go through security.

I don’t know if anyone else experiences this… but I’ve been asked a lot recently if security can “take my phone” so they can scan my boarding pass. I’m not comfortable with this – I don’t know who they are, and I like knowing exactly where my phone is. unfortunately, one agent tried to argue this point with me – “I’ll take your phone” and “How about you give me directions to where to swipe” to “But it would be easier if…”

Because I travel with a service dog, my hands get swabbed every time I go through the airport. This time, something on my hands triggered the censors, so my bag to put through secondary security screening. The agent was describing everything she was taking out of my bag, and putting it back right where it was. I still don’t know what triggered the censors, but let me tell you I was very glad to get on that plane (though less so when I realized the little dog from the security line was five rows in front of me).

10 minute Security screening delay ($2.50) + 5 minutes arguing why handing over my cell phone to a random person in the security line is a bad idea ($2.08 – that’s it?) = $4.58

Health and Fitness: Back to the Start Line

I’ve written before about running my first half marathon, so I won’t rehash that here (seriously, go read that post!) But it honestly felt like Vancouver was another first half-marathon for me. I had no idea what to expect, since I was putting my body through a whole new stress since recovering from COVID/not COVID. But I was ecstatic!

But before you can get to the start line, you need to get your race package. Depending on the size of the race you register for, you could be picking up your package at a local shop, a community centre, or (in the case of Vancouver) a convention hall. The hall was big, crowded, and was designed to make you go ALL the way around every single exhibit to get the pieces of your kit: Race bib (100% required) at one table, gloves (which I didn’t realize until I got home hadn’t come in the bag with my bib and other odds and ends) at another, race T-shirt (optional, depending on how many races you’ve run) at a tent at the far end, and (because I just like to be difficult) my Run Happy singlet at another table. I’m glad I didn’t go alone, because that was… not easy!

I can only imagine how much effort and organization it takes to put together a race of this size – I felt overwhelmed figuring out how my parents would connect with each other and with me and my guide on race day morning. Since I don’t drive and don’t know Vancouver well, I wanted out of piggy-in-the-middle – I just held my phone while everyone coordinated their wheels. And I am eternally grateful that everything there went off without a hitch.

Once we got to the start line… that was another story. The race was started an hour late due to a suspicious package found on the race course. Because of the delay, my guide and I thought we could make one more trip to the porta potties before we took off running. No sooner had we reached the line than we heard that the race would start in three minutes. The Canadian national anthem was sung, and the elite runners took off, as we wrangled our way into the crowd. We weren’t in our starting corral anymore (where you start the race based on your optimistic finish time), but we just decided to enjoy the journey… what else could we do?

It wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t fast. It wasn’t even particularly consistent. But we met runners on the route – the woman from the Netherlands who asked if she could take our picture and share it with the blind running group there (yes!) and the runner we traded places with five or six times on the route, to the dozen people who called me inspirational as they ran past me (for the record, that feels weird).

And I gutted it out. I think COVID/not COVID affected things. I think the late start affected things. I think – and know – I can do more. But I am proud of that race in a way I don’t know that I would be proud of my fastest Half.

But once you complete the race… you have to get your stuff. At the start line, you find a table based on your bib number, and your stuff gets put on a bus to the finish line. So while you’re exhausted and hot and wanting to drink a gallon of water and eat a massive bag of chips (just me?), you get to navigate a throng of runners and supporters and find the table with your stuff on it – again, not a thing you can do without sight. Thankfully, the bags are all see-through, so it’s very easy to describe the bag’s contents in the event that your bib number falls off the handles.

I’m coming back to the “you’re so inspirational” comments I received on the race course, because, while they have always sat funny with me, they’ve never sat that heavy and awkward as they did on May 1. It’s not like you can have a long philosophical conversation about how inspiration porn is icky and gross, but my lack of sight doesn’t make me inspirational. It really REALLY doesn’t. It does contribute in some unique ways to how successfully I can run – sometimes finding guides for training runs and races is a challenge, the location of training runs can make transportation an issue – but I had to fight a lot more than blindness to get to that start line. COVID-not COVID was terrible, and took every ounce of energy I had. I’d been dealing with burnout for a very long time (if I am being honest, I think I’d tried to outrun it when I was running flat out in 2019). But we all have our stories of why we run, and what gets us out there; and maybe I’m just frustrated that all people see is woman who can’t see goes running. For the record, that’s boring. And because I couldn’t say that a dozen times on the race… I’m saying it here.

How do you put a dollar value on this? Honestly… you can’t.

The Bottom Line

The end of April (and beginning of May) saw me stronger than I thought I was. but I did experience some hiccups along the way. I’m respectfully submitting an invoice in the amount of…. $32.08.

A comment was left on a previous post that maybe I am undercharging for work I have to “outsource” because I should be able to do it myself but cannot. I think I agree. If anything, this exercise has taught me that we can (and should) put a value on our emotional labour, and the time and loss of dignity we experience based on societal perceptions and inaccessible design. But we can’t really put a dollar value on it… can we?

Oh, and in a happy coincidence? The day this post was published, I got an email from my mortgage provider – the one whose inaccessible web site started this experiment. They have overhauled their web site, fixed the issues with screen reader access, and plan on rolling out a full update next week. As of this publishing, I was able to access all the features of my mortgage.

Sometimes, if you speak up, someone somewhere is listening.

My sorta Kinda Maybe (in)accessible Life: The More Things Change, the More they Stay the Same

22 Friday Apr 2022

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It’s been two weeks since I last checked in here. So much has stayed the same, but things are starting to pick up, especially now that I have the energy to actually do anything more than the absolute bare necessities (thank you very much, covid/not covid!)

Getting out There

Once I was legally permitted to leave my house – in addition to actually having the mental and physical capacity to do so – I couldn’t wait to get out and do things. Exciting things… like going to the pharmacy to fill a prescription, or the bakery the last possible day they were open before closing for Passover. But heading out to pick up a couple things from our local Buy Nothing group proved to be less intuitive and more frustrating than anticipated.

My first “gift” from the Buy Nothing page was a microwave chip maker. It came in its box – practically brand new! – with two trays and a slicer. My Buy Nothing group is in a fairly small area – I can technically walk anywhere to pick things up. However, this area is very easy to get lost in. An avenue suddenly curved slightly and became a street. There was no simple way to tell where along the block the house was located, as the “block” was broken up by multiple avenues (1 Ave, 1A Ave, 1B Avenue). Thankfully, I was able to text the giver, who came out and met me on her sidewalk. I’ll do anything for chips – even get myself lost in a neighborhood that’s supposed to be on a grid pattern!

The second gift was a smart plug – ironically located only a handful of blocks from the chip maker. Knowing the avenue curves and turns into a street, I thought I was prepared for being able to locate the house easily. Not so much… GPS said I was at the house a full two blocks – at the far end of an avenue and a street and around a corner – before I made it there. I loaded Aira to provide visual information since GPS proved useless. After ten minutes of angling, trying to read house numbers ($2.50), a smart plug was in my hand. Unfortunately for me, I still haven’t been able to get my phone to recognize it, and it sits unused, waiting for a time when I have the patience and energy to find some obscure solution I haven’t tried half a dozen times yet.

10 minutes of house locating: $2.50

Work

My second week of working from home felt more like putting one foot in front of the other, and just doing the best I could with what I had. However, what I did learn was that Government Web Site (GWS) #1 – which is mostly accessible, still has that hiccup when certain conditions are met. I was over the moon when I got an email about those conditions that normally means someone else has to click stuff for me, and found I was able to use a touch screen to access information that is not accessible with a keyboard. However, this is definitely not a truly accessible solution – it feels like I have to stand on my head and click my heels three times; without a touch screen, every now and again someone else has to drop everything to help me out.

GWS #2 is still not accessible. Unfortunately, I have twice needed to use it (read: ask someone else to access it for me). I have even spent ten minutes trying to use GWS #2 with the touch screen on my computer (the one that made GWS #1 usable), and even my phone… No dice.

GWS #3 has always been a fully accessible system. It is not overly intuitive – which I honestly believe is part of accessibility – but I have the ability to input and access all the information I need. I used this web site twice over the past two weeks, and ran into zero issues at all.

When my colleague and I set up our accounts on GWS #4 earlier this week, I was told that it had a blue button, and did not look dissimilar to GWS #2 – even the login and setup process was similar. The dread I felt was so powerfully intense… as was the relief I felt when I was able to access all edit fields and buttons completely independently. I guess you can’t really put a price on anxiety, can you?

2 X “outsourcing” = $100; 10 minutes trouble shooting $2.50

Health and Fitness

I am running a half marathon in ten days. Covid/not Covid put a damper on my training, so I have no clue what the race will be like. But my main social outlet is running and runners. Depending on the day, the distance, and the ability and willingness of humans to guide, I can either run independently with Jenny (who is still willing to run!) or I run with a friend guiding me by using a tether. My main running tracker is an app whose android app finally – six years after I started using it – labeled the buttons on its tracking screen. I had previously labeled the buttons myself, but new app updates or resets always reset the labels, too! Being able to just tap a button has taken a load off I hadn’t realize I had been carrying.

Another app I am excited to try is the Revision Fitness app. It’s been developed by a visually impaired Paralympian, and at first glance all of the workouts are fully described – something that’s generally missing from most workout apps on the market. I had planned to use my free trial during the first week of April… and we all know how that went.

Home and Personal Care

Last week, one of my favorite bath and body shops (L’Occitane) had a huge sale on their entire store. I scooped up some old favourite products, and decided to try a few new ones. When my box arrived, I was happy to receive my pampering items, but a part of me was disappointed, too. L’Occitane’s foundation has proclaimed that they are committed to labeling as many of their products as possible in braille. For years, I have purchased products, knowing that I could read the label on the bottles of shower gel or cardboard sleeves around a perfume without even having to use my sense of smell at all. Even their travel bottles had their full product name (“Cherry shower gel”, “Lavender Foaming bath”) on the bottles. My new products just said “shower gel” without any other identifier. I think it might be a blip – I’ll probably treat myself around my birthday this summer – but having something that’s so accessible be changed in such a way felt like something had been taken from me. Imagine going through your pantry, and your boxes of crackers – instead of saying “Ritz” or “Wheat Thins” or “Triscuit” – every box in your pantry just says “crackers”. Could you open your box and smell the crackers? Sure! Could you shake the box to determine your choice by weight? Of course. But the simplest way to tell your items apart is to read the label on the packaging. As it stands, I placed an elastic band around one “shower gel” to tell it apart from the other “Shower gel.” Now I just have to remember which one has the elastic!

I finally got the hang of the Covid test thing. I got to the point where over a 4-day period, I only needed fifteen minutes of Aira (read: working eyeballs!) to read my Covid test results. Still all negative, thankfully!

I’ve also chosen to not do business with a local business because their web sites are not accessible. One web site had a contact form that wouldn’t let me select anything in a drop-down menu – keyboard, touch screen, it didn’t matter. I spent fifteen minutes trying both, in case I missed a mandatory field. But nope… if there was a drop-down menu, I had no access to it. I seriously debated contacting the business/web site provider, but it was in the middle of Covid/not Covid, and I just didn’t have the mental energy to explain that I was really just trying to get in touch with them, and by the way I was having challenges accessing their web site, so would they mind fixing it so I could give them my business? I decided against this approach for two reasons: (1) I have other options out there for that particular service; and (2) the company mentioned a heavy reliance on technology, so I wasn’t confident that accessibility wouldn’t be an issue during our entire business relationship.

15 minutes of test result reading ($3.75) + 15 minutes of inaccessible web site navigation ($3.75) = $7.50

The Bottom Line

If it looks like I am throwing a pity party, I’m not convinced I’m not. I thought this exercise – quantifying the “little things” in my day that make this blind life harder – would be interesting and informative. Instead, while I am grateful for the things that put me on an equal playing field, I’m seeing how very very far we have to go.

I am respectfully submitting an “invoice” in the amount of $112.50 + a box of elastics.

My Sorta Kinda Maybe (in)Accessible Life: The COVID/not COVID Edition

08 Friday Apr 2022

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When I first conceptualized this experiment, the one thing I didn’t expect was life grinding to a screeching hault! I received word over the weekend that I had come into contact with someone who tested positive for COVID-19. And, what do you know! I had symptoms! So… I got to go approximately nowhere, and see approximately no one.

But after a week of fatigue and brain mud… I still had a few hiccups along the way.

A Quick Adjustment to Calculations

In my initial post, I provided a monetary value for certain inaccessible systems/experiences of ableism/etc. The one thing I failed to consider was: What would I do in a situation where I had no choice but to ask someone to do something for me that I cannot do for myself… at all? Especially if it’s a thing I should – in any other instance – be able to do for myself. So, I have implemented a flat rate for those instances of $50. This is because I not only have a history of trying to work through something I should be able to do, but I need to take someone else away from their life because of it. $50 – no matter the complexity or duration of an activity – could “compensate” for my loss of dignity, as well as taking into account someone else’s time.

Social Life

Seriously, what social life? I’ve been stuck at home for nearly a week! I did attend a restaurant last Friday to celebrate my partner’s and my third anniversary. The menus were accessible online, and the staff was great (read: not patronizing or weird). No unpaid emotional stuff here!

Around the House

For someone who has lived for two years during a global pandemic, I’m surprised I haven’t had to take a COVID test before now. A friend dropped off two tests for me on Sunday. I found the instructions for the test confusing and clunky, though I could read the information online or on my phone. However, I was not able to read the test results myself.

Over the past six days, I have taken six COVID tests. For the record, they have all come back negative. Over the past six days, I have spent 80 minutes using a service called Aira (an online service that connects blind people with employees whose eyes work better than ours and who provide visual information that we cannot see). The fact that Aira has a free promotion for COVID-related tasks and information is hardly the point. I can’t access my test results independently and privately (the same is true for pregnancy tests, for the record).

80 minutes at $15/hour: $20

Work

I love being able to work from home, especially feeling like this! This makes me blessed and privileged, and I don’t take that lightly.

Did you know that PDF documents – particularly ones that are scanned – are often not accessible to screen reader users like myself? This is because they are usually scanned as images by default. In order to read any PDF that gets sent to me, that involves a – paid – upgraded license of Adobe. Wait… Someone needs to pay so that I can read standard document formats? Yup! If I wanted that same functionality at home, I would have to pay $20 per month. I’m adding this to my ledger because it’s absurd.

I regularly use government web sites (GWS) in order to do my job. GWS #1 is mostly accessible, except when certain criteria are met. I ran into such a situation with GWS #1, where I could not physically click a link myself and had to get someone else to do it for me ($50). Once that was done, I was ready to run, but still I couldn’t do this thing myself and had to “subcontract” someone else.

GWS #2 presented a whole other problem. A few months ago I had an extremely long conversation (a total of 2 hours – $30) with the developers of GWS #2. It came to light that because I use a screen reader, GWS #2 doesn’t play nice (with any screen reader); the presence alone of a screen reader means that I have no ability to use GWS #2 at all. Even after a minimum of two new releases, GWS #2 is still inaccessible. I was placed in a position this week where someone else had to use GWS #2 for me ($50). I am blessed to work with understanding people… but what if I didn’t? Thankfully, most of the rest of my work-based activities are intuitive and accesible.

2 outsourced tasks from GWS ($100) + 2 hours of troubleshooting with no results ($23) = $130

The Bottom Line

I made it through this week, and I am none the worse for wear. On the (in)accessibility/emotional labour front, I respectfully submit an invoice in the amount of $150.

Guide dog 2.0: ACCEPTED

28 Saturday Aug 2021

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I got the email in the spring: I’ve now been accepted to train for my second guide dog! I’m both excited and nervous, and it feels like things are both moving too fast and too slow. I’m not ready, even as I know that Jenny is nearing the age where she needs to retire. Thankfully, though, she’s not quite there… yet.

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OrCam MyEye: Promising Tech?

24 Tuesday Aug 2021

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It should come as no surprise that technology has greatly enhanced my life as a blind person. Everything from screen reading technology to OCR apps to visual interpreting services has played a role in making my life more enjoyable and more equitable, both personally and professionally. I’ve been fairly reluctant to jump on the most recent tech out there, largely because there’s so much of it; it seems that not a week goes by without some new tech that’s designed for blind people – from shoes to backpacks to smart canes – much of which either never makes it to market or is prohibitively expensive.

I’d heard about the OrCam MyEye over the past little while, and I have always been interested in trying it out. Wearable technology that reads stuff? I could use that! Why not? I was given an opportunity to test one out recently, and I chose to take it for what it was worth.

What is OrCam MyEye?

In short, OrCam MyEye is a talking camera. It attaches to a pair of sunglasses with magnets, and uses hand gestures, voice commands, or finger controls to perform its functions. It can automatically detect text in your surroundings, read newspapers or documents, describe a scene, and even recognize pre-programmed faces.

Initial Impressions

When I first was interested in OrCam, I went to their web site, which offered financing plans for up to twelve months for Canadians. I added the device to my cart, entered my contact information for financing information, and was given the irresistible opportunity to pay nearly $2700, with the balance split over two monthly payments of $900 per month. Hardly twelve convenient and reasonable monthly payments! I exited the web site and went on about my night.

The next day, I received a phone call from OrCam. I told the caller that I wasn’t interested in the device, especially given the lack of reasonable financing options available in addition to the up-front payment. I was asked what my vision was like, if I had trouble recognizing faces, if I could use their smart-read features, and on and on. I repeated myself, that I was not interested at this time, and would be ending the call.

I then got an email. It was clear it was a form letter, because it stated something about it being a pleasure to speak with me and the hope that my questions were answered satisfactorily. I replied, asking OrCam to not contact me again.

Another Option

I was able to borrow the OrCam for two weeks from a Canadian assistive technology company. I received the device in a box, with a whole bunch of extra little things that I still can’t identify. The device charged, I was ready to try it out.

A Day at the Mall

Before taking the OrCam for a true test of its paces, I tried it out on some documents. There’s a lot of head angling and paper angling and lighting considerations that I hadn’t considered, but I soon got the hang of using the OrCam to tell what random pieces of paper were scattered across my table. I wouldn’t want to use it for professional documents, but I could get the job done.

Once I figured out the gestures, I was ready to hit the road. The first thing I tried to do was to read the bus stop sign to get downtown. After some angling and fiddling, I was able to read what buses stopped at my local stop, and where they concluded. While waiting for the bus, I used the automatic text finding feature and located a stop sign about a hundred feet away. The trip to the mall was less eventful. I was unable to read the route numbers on the bus itself (glare? signage? angles?), but I was able to read several signs and messages on the LRT. I was mildly impressed!

The mall was an exercise in complicated frustration. We started at the food court, where I was able to read parts of some vendors’ menu boards, but actually had no idea what restaurant would be serving me my pizza or tacos or sandwich. I couldn’t get the right angles; I was either so close that I was cutting off parts of the menus, or I’d be moving backwards into the flow of foot traffic. Deciding on a lunch spot was simpler without the OrCam – I remembered where the taco spot was, and tacos sounded good, it didn’t matter where they came from, I was just hungry.

Lunch consumed, I tried the mall as a whole. I used the text-find feature, reading basically anything and everything the camera could pick up. I found some stores only by the web sites listed on their signs, and knew some others had sales. But again, the angles were all wrong; I was either too close to get a whole sign, or I’d have to step back into the flow of foot traffic to get any more meaningful information. I was, however, able to catch the mall hours from several different angles.

The Bottom Line

I wanted to love the OrCam. I wanted it to be as helpful for me as their marketing makes it look. But if my initial introduction to their sales tactics didn’t put me off it, my cumbersome experience in the mall cemented it for me. I have other tools at my disposal – like Aira, Be my Eyes, and Lookout – and all of them are considerably more affordable and less cumbersome than the OrCam proved itself to be for me. I hope it can continue to grow and help more people, but this blind user is giving it a hard pass.

Follow your Dog

18 Wednesday Aug 2021

Posted by in Guide Dog 2.0, Ultimate Blog Challenge

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I talk a lot about Jenny on this blog.

Jenny… my sidekick, my partner in crime, my guide dog. I’ve had her harness in my left hand for almost eight years. It is abundantly clear that we have far more years of partnership behind us than we do ahead. I’m not even sure that our partnership has multiples of years left. I’ve found myself talking more about her retirement lately – of course I am, especially in the process of applying for Guide Dog 2.0 – but it still feels both like it will happen tomorrow, and like it’s a million years away.

But while she’s still my steady and reliable guide, she still reminds me that I need to follow her, dammit! And she has the most adorable ways to show me that I am being foolish. I often tell the story of the time I seriously over-corrected her – thinking she was distracted and veering way too far to the right. My “correction” had us crossing a busy downtown street… diagonally. Not realizing my error until later, I got up on the opposite curb and asked my dog “what the hell was that?” She calmly walked me around the corner to the light pole, and stubbornly sat down, cocking her head to the side. The thought bubble above her head couldn’t have been more clear: “Are you quite done?”

That instance was years ago – frankly, I should’ve known better. But Jenny is nothing if not forgiving, and smart, and intuitive. I honestly believe that she took her lack of useful work over the past year and a half personally, because she’s rocked every new thing I’ve thrown at her in the past few months. And even in the mundane and routine , she’s got her way of baffling me, while simultaneously putting me in my place.

Today I decided to go to an unfamiliar restaurant for lunch. I’d been there once before (with my dad, traveling in his car, about seven or eight years ago?) I left work and made my way through the parking lot, redirecting Jenny from the other restaurants in the area that we’ve been to before. I waved her forward, through the parking lot, and asked her to find a door. There’s more than one door – in fact, there’s about ten of them – and she took me to the one door to the one restaurant I wanted. I don’t think her tail stopped wagging the entire time she was showing her stuff.

On my way home, my mind was full of complicated thoughts. It has been a hard day and a long week, and I truthfully wasn’t paying as much attention to my orientation as I should have. I made a turn, and about a hundred feet past the corner, Jenny made a sharp turn to the left. Thinking she was severely distracted by something across the street, I waved Jenny forward. She angled in front of me, as though to block me from the rest of the sidewalk. Was there construction? I waved her forward again, and again she angled in front of me, preventing me from moving forward. I snapped out of my mental funk and realized she hadn’t been distracted at all – she was taking me to the crosswalk that we cross regularly. As soon as I turned around and headed back toward that crosswalk, my faithful, forgiving guide dog wagged her tail frantically, as if to say, “See? You really should listen to me.”

I do listen to Jenny more often than I don’t. She speaks so loudly with her whole body. I wonder how Guide Dog 2.0 will communicate? Will they be gracious, or stubborn? Will they throw up warning messages (“Are you sure you want to go straight/cross this way/take this turn?”) or just let me figure out my own foolishness? Will I be open to learn what they will teach me? I certainly hope so.

Could you Be My Eyes?

17 Tuesday Aug 2021

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I’ve written before about visual interpreting service Aira more than once. In case you missed those brilliant pieces of my wisdom (read: my personal opinion and experience), I pay Aira a monthly fee to provide visual information and assist with inaccessible apps. But Aira is by no means the only spare pair of eyes I can call in a pinch. But when I ask someone to Be my Eyes, I use that service for different tasks than Aira.

Early Be my Eyes Marketing

I’d be remis if I didn’t address the initial marketing strategy of Be My Eyes. When it first became available late in 2015, it had a really icky message. “Help the blind see!” or “Do a good deed!” The exact wording of their slogan at the time isn’t something I can recall, but it made me reluctant to use the service until such a point as they cleaned up their marketing and made blind people feel less like a charity case. Thankfully, they’ve now changed their slogan to “See the World Together”, and their outward marketing is more of collaboration and mutual benefit to both sighted and blind alike.

Universally Accessible

Be my Eyes is a free service. Basically, if you have a smart phone, you can use it. If you speak more than one language, you can use that language to request or provide assistance. I’ve primarily spoken to volunteers from my home country of Canada, but there have been times where my “eyes” are located in England or South Africa. If I just need a quick check of when my yogurt expires, or how many kilometers I’ve ridden on my exercise bike workout, I’m more likely to reach for Be my Eyes, rather than Aira.

Corporate Partnerships

One of the handy things about Be my Eyes is their partnerships with global companies in technology, blindness services, and personal care items. These partnerships use the Be my Eyes video platform to connect a blind person to an employee from (for example) Google, Guide dogs for the Blind, and ClearBlue. So if you need a hand with your Google Doc, or want a trainer to take a look at your guide dog’s behavior, or are concerned about pregnancy or fertility, there’s someone who knows the product specifically and can provide an extra bit of information without a crash course in tech or guide dogs or whatever.

A few Drawbacks

The quality of volunteers – and the information they provide – can definitely be hit or miss. I’ve had amazing volunteers who have spent half an hour with me going through all the swag in a race kit. I’ve also had volunteers who were unable to provide directions so they could better see what I was needing help with (“Bring your phone up. No… not up, but UP!”) Volunteers have been at home watching TV, or out at a club. Volunteers have been in their sixties, and I swear I’ve had more than one who couldn’t have been older than twelve. Overall, however, my experiences with Be my Eyes have been generally positive. Now, if only they could fix their bug that messes up my phone’s speaker after every call…

The Bottom line

I don’t use Be my Eyes for confidential information, or for anything that requires a third party to log into my computer to work through an accessibility glitch (I still use Aira for that). but for another tool in my toolbox – which means I’m not relying on friends and family – it’s a welcome addition. Adding their useful corporate partnerships, and it’s an app that’s sticking around. I can’t wait to see where it goes next.

Can I Borrow Your Eyes Again?

03 Tuesday Aug 2021

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I’d like to think that I’m used to living my life with eyes that don’t work well (or, truth be told, at all). I’ve now lived 37 years on this planet with some degree of visual impairment; even when I could see, my spatial awareness was all wrong, and I could never really tell the difference between blue and green unless it was BLUE and GREEN (substitute “red” and “orange”, and you get the idea). Overall, I’ve made my peace with it. I’m a homeowner. I have two cats and a guide dog that I adore, and a partner who makes sure I don’t get stuck inside my own head. My life also includes a new job that I love, a diverse group of friends, and access to tons of technological advances that have made my life even more convenient.

Because, make no mistake about it, blindness can be, at times, extremely inconvenient.

I don’t spend a ton of time worrying about all the things I can’t see; my life is both too full and – at times – I’m devoting large amounts of time to combatting ableism, raising lowered expectations, and deciphering true compliments from backhanded ones. It’s not the “big things” that make my life more complicated – not seeing the faces of my loved ones, not experiencing travel visually – since I have tons of ways I can enjoy the energy of time with dear friends and family, or the sounds and smells and vibe of visiting a new city. It’s the little things that are frustrating – how can I activate my new credit card? How far up the block is the new bus stop? What restaurants are in which order in this mall food court?

Enter… technology!

Today I am revisiting Aira. I’ve written about them before, and while much has changed, so much has stayed the same. I still have a hard time with their customer service model, but it is still a valuable tool in my toolbox.

What is Aira?

Aira is, in effect, an app that connects you with on-demand visual assistance. Think of it as Uber for eyesight. The agents are hired and paid by Aira, but we subscribers pay for the service to be available on demand. When I first wrote about Aira, they had hands-free connectivity to a pair of glasses, which has since been discontinued. Now, it’s strictly a phone app.

What’s it For?

I can go months where I only use their short (free) tasks, just because I only need a set of eyes to make sure my outfit doesn’t clash badly. Or I’ve run into an inaccessible calendar online and need someone to select a date for my next big trip, or to confirm my identity for a new financial institution. However, for longer tasks I have used Aira to find the location of the new bus stop when the city brought in new bus routes. I’ve used it when traveling in new areas when the directions in my head didn’t match the directions on my phone. Though I did stop using the app for about a year due to technical issues with my old phone, since I upgraded my phone last year, it’s been a big help in those moments where five minutes talking with an agent saved me untold amounts of frustration.

The one thing that Aira has done more successfully than other apps and services (which I will write about later) is train their agents in how to provide verbal directions. many experienced agents are old hats at describing areas virtually – even using google maps while I’m sitting on my couch! – and using landmarks that would be useful when I would be visiting the area myself. Phrases such as “I need you to angle your phone to the left and up about an inch” is more useful information than “I can’t quite see the sign, can you… um… move your phone… up?… No, the other way?” (isn’t “up” just one way?)

Current Verdict

Like all tools in the blindness toolbox (of which I hold many), Aira is a very useful one. Even in areas with limited mobile connectivity, in general I find the agents helpful, empathetic, and competent. Even with some minor hiccups, and their ongoing customer service issues, at this point in my life, paying for a set of working eyes is worth the investment.

Book Review: “The Gunners” by Rebecca Kauffman

30 Saturday Jun 2018

Posted by in Book reviews, Fiction

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I love books about friendship – the nostalgic type that brings back memories to the friends I had when I was young. Don’t get me wrong, I love my new and/or “adult” friends fiercely, but childhood or adolescent friends hold a special place in my heart.

And because I write reviews about representation of blindness in books, my selection for June seemed like a perfect fit.

Was I right?

 

Publisher’s Summary

 

Following her wonderfully received first novel, Another Place You’ve Never Been, called “mesmerizing,” “powerful,” and “gorgeous,” by critics all over the country, Rebecca Kauffman returns with Mikey Callahan, a thirty-year-old who is suffering from the clouded vision of macular degeneration. He struggles to establish human connections – even his emotional life is a blur.
As the novel begins, he is reconnecting with “The Gunners,” his group of childhood friends, after one of their members has committed suicide. Sally had distanced herself from all of them before ending her life, and she died harboring secrets about the group and its individuals. Mikey especially needs to confront dark secrets about his own past and his father. How much of this darkness accounts for the emotional stupor Mikey is suffering from as he reaches his maturity? And can The Gunners, prompted by Sally’s death, find their way to a new day? The core of this adventure, made by Mikey, Alice, Lynn, Jimmy, and Sam, becomes a search for the core of truth, friendship, and forgiveness.
A quietly startling, beautiful book, The Gunners engages us with vividly unforgettable characters, and advances Rebecca Kauffman’s place as one of the most important young writers of her generation.

 

Mikey’s Story – Mostly Loneliness

 

This story opens with an eye test. mikey, aged six or seven, cannot read all the letters on the eye chart. When he is told to cover the other eye to test that vision, he says he can’t, because that’s his “good eye.” When he comes home and talks to his father – who clearly loves him but is emotionally distant – he is told to never ever tell anyone about his failing vision.

And so he doesn’t.

Even as Mikey’s vision worsens – as he holds down a job, inherits a house, adopts a cat, cooks amazing dishes, drives around town – he never tells anyone about his vision loss. He attends doctor’s offices and gets stronger and stronger glasses, and he navigates his home and cooks his meals more and more frequently without vision.

But he does all of this alone.

And he never really makes any friends.

Not after the Gunners fell apart.

 

The Gunners – Bonds that Break…?

 

The strongest part of Kauffman’s writing is her depiction of friendship. In flashbacks to their childhoods, we see how the Gunners meet and become friends, how they grow up together, how they keep secrets from everyone around them, and then secrets from each other. When they return for Sally’s funeral – a sign that there is no reconciliation of the group as a whole – they eat and drink (all but Lynn, a recovering alcoholic, and Sam, a born-again Christian) and open their pasts and discover painful realizations… that the person you thought was keeping secrets may have been – but not the ones you thought they were. Does that make a difference?

 

The Messiness of Disclosure

 

This book unfolds slowly and beautifully. Without spoiling the plot, most of the characters come to a place where they need to open up about the deepest parts of themselves to truly be free. Whether coming out to parents, or disclosing vision loss, or telling the truth about family histories, there are scary points of vulnerability that changes the course of life.

This reader wishes the author had gone deeper with Mikey’s blindness, past the outward denials – I frequently forgot Mikey was going blind – to moments of self-pity (when Mikey says he’ll quit his job and get a dog and then… whatever) to relying on friends for practical needs (there is literally no mention of blindness services, at all). This quibble aside, this book, more than any I have read, shows the power of disclosure and the risks involved, and how those around you can treat you differently once they learn something they didn’t know before.

 

Conclusion

 

This book is well worth your time. It moves along slowly but powerfully, and I loved getting to know the characters – their secrets, their revelations, their futures. Mikey’s story could’ve so easily been written without blindness involved – it didn’t really add to the story, even if it became so integral to the ending – but as written it was handled with general sensitivity. The bonds of the past, reality of the present, and hope for the future are what carry this book above its pitfalls.

3.5/5 stars.