2014-09-04 21:49:11

Hi.
First of all, I don't want anyone to take personally what i'm about to say, because this is not targeted towards any individual, nor is it meant offensivly.
I have met my fair share of blind people who think that they deserve anything either free or at a reduced price, because they think they're poor blind people who are different from sighted people and deserve anything free or at a reduced price.
I am really starting to get tired of the attitude that some people have about the prices of accessible products and the companies that make them. Do you realize how much time and effort goes into making this stuff accessible? Do you know where we would be today if none of these companies had never existed? Yes, we deserve equal access to products, but that equal access has to come at a price, because it is in no way easy for equal acess to be built into products. It requires time and effort, time and effort that could be easily spent doing something else. I'm sure there are jobs out there that would pay these companies a lot more than they are getting right now, yet people think that these companies are in it for the money. If they were, they might as well just quit now with the money they have, because i'm sure that most of these companies have more than enough to live off of. But no, they keep developing products for us, products which deserve a lot more credit than they are getting.
I don't know what else to say other than I'm disgusted at the attitude some people are giving these companies that are simply trying to make products for us so that we can succeed in our lives. This isn't to say that I like every company out there, because I don't. I don't really like GW micro, and some of the things they are doing. But why are people so ungrateful for the work and time these companies have put into making products? KNFB reader, for example, is recieving critisism because of its price tag. Whenever a new app or program comes out, the first thing people do is say "make this app free, give me a demo, or lower your price, or i'm not giving you my support.", without taking into consideration the amount of work these companies are doing, probably away from their families and kids, making products that will only later recieve critisism. These things are a privelage, not a right.
Again, I don't want anyone to take this personaly, because it's not meant to be taken personally, but i don't think these companies are getting the credit they deserve. If they were in it for the money, they might as well go find another job.

proud to be a patreon of liam erven. Become a patreon today at patreon.com/liamerven

2014-09-04 22:12:26

I agree, except that it's Greedom Science Fiction I can't stand. LOL. But I generally agree about the so-called blind community in general. The again I use almost no blindness specific products since I got my first IPhone four years ago. Bt I have o real blind friends in my day-to-day life precisely because I have no tolerance at all for the entitlement mentality that a lot of them have. I also have no tolerance for tose who expect every little thing to be done for them or, on the opposite end of the spectrum, tose who feel themselves to be so self-sufficient that they think tey have to right to talk down to those of us, like me, who are more in the middle, who can do a lot of thins for themselves but maybe have trouble with a few things here and there.

But wait, what's that? A transport! Saved am I! Hark, over here! Hey nonny non, please help!

2014-09-04 22:16:38

The problem  bryant is you have outlined a simplistic arguement to a complex situation and are generalizing from a few facts. For example there is a big difference between wanting something for free and declaring that a price is too high.

I also am afraid I categorically disagree with your statement "it is not a right it is a privilidge" To take the knf reader as an example would you say to a sighted person "you do not have the right to use your own physical organs to read text?"

The inherent goal of such software is not to give blind people something they do not have, but something which sighted people get for granted. In an ideal world, yes, these things should be freely provided by the government to provide a true equality between all citizens of a country.

We are manifestly not living in such an ideal world, therefore we are dealing with a matter of compromise. Given that access companies need money to develop products and keep going, they do need to charge for that development. The issue people have with things like knf reader is the price being charged for what is done, that the price is excessive considdering the fact that what is being provided is equal access. Similar arguements have been made about screen readers, living aides and other devices, not that the various manufacturers shouldn't! charge for something, but simply that the amount being charged is unrealistic, and that part of the reasoning behind this unrealistic charging scheme is that they are essentially selling to a captive audience, and furthermore, that they expect the costs to be taken by governmental grants or agencies.

I will take probably the worst example I've ever seen of over chargingto illustrate the arguement, it is an example I've made before, but it is such a good one to illustrate the problem that it is worth  reitterating.

I once, at the Uk tech show sight village saw a device which essentially had a small button control that could be houng on the belt, and a little sensor with a clip. You clipped the sensor to say your keys, or your cane, or the arm of your seat on the train if you left, and if you pressed the button up to a distance of about 30 feet away the sensor would bleep letting you find whatever you'd stuck it on by audio.

Very handy and a nice gadget, ---- however there was a small matter of it costing £350, ---- that's about 600 usd!

heck, I am no expert in electronics by any means yet have a good idea how that device works, however the manufacturer was charging an insane price for something which essentially simply gave blind people part of the function of distantly locating objects sighted people get.

Of course, nnot all access companies do this. I was quite pleased for example when i bought my penfriend labeller to find it cost just £40, that is about 60 dolars, which given how much I use the thing seemed reasonable to me.

I am uncertain whether there is any sort of measure you could make to say whether a given product was or was not too expensive, particularly when considdering individual finances, and the fact that we do not necessarily always know what the cost of development is, but the bottom line is unfortunately that there have been a class of access products which definitely do! go beyond the bounds of reasonable pricing.

Remember, it is implicit to the nature of a company that they generate prophit. If they did not generate prophit they would not be a company. Generation of prophit isn't itself a bad thing, the issue seems to be exactly how much prophet is being made from customers who often don't have too much options where going elsewhere is concerned. If these companies were indeed as you suggest working out of the goodness of their hearts they would not exist as companies but as charitable agencies, which is not so far fetched as you might think (that is how the guide dogs association in the Uk exists).

Of course there is a big difference between a company who generate the prophet they need to keep going and live reasonably, and the company who are in it to gouge their customers as much as possible and be rich, and unfortunately there isn't really an easy way of determining the motives of any access company.

so Bryant, while I understand your frustration, I believe you are rather over simplifying a very complex matter and one which it is likely doesn't have any real concrete solution sinse there are a lot of facts we don't know aobut the costs of development of any given access product, in addition, it will depend heavily upon personal finances, sinse to me £40 for the penfriend was quite reasonable,but to someone in another country with a different currency it might well not be.

@Bryan P, it is the helplessness atittude that gets up my nose most, people who won't try anything for themselves or go out of their little blind comfort zone. that is one reason I have very little to do with blind people in the Uk, indeed this forum is  about the most interacting with other blind people I do not counting my family.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2014-09-04 22:52:51

Dark, the biggest problem I have with that device is the fact that it's essentially the same thing sighted people buy to find missing keys or remote controls. Mainstream versions have been available for a tenth the price, making the specialist blind version utterly superfluous and frankly disingenuous.

BryanT, you mentioned expecting a demo which in some cases is perfectly reasonable. If an app cost something like £80 I'd definitely expect a demo before buying it, I would want to know that it fit my needs and was made well before spending that kind of money in order to protect myself from aforementioned companies who sell products which are pieces of crap with an accessible label slapped on them. If I found the app in question was good quality and did fit my needs I would most definitely buy the full version, demos aren't a matter of expecting something for free so much as just being able to examine the product before you purchase which is a perfectly reasonable position for a consumer and doesn't detract from the full product at all assuming the demo limits are properly chosen. Caviat emptor and all that.

On the whole I do agree specialised products will always cost more, were I sighted I might not even be too bothered about having a smartphone at all so even buying a mainstream product which is accessible can cost more. All that said in some cases such as the commercial screen readers I feel there's too much reliance on government grants to pay for products, this prices individuals out of the market. I'd suggest such software could have an alternative price for personal use but that would also cost them money from educational grants which could only count as personal. In many of these cases they could easily increase sales volumes with such a scheme but companies don't always see it like that.

I do think there's a massively decreasing need for specialised book services however. The RNIB's talking book service never had a particularly stellar selection and now I have access to Audible, iBooks and Kindle through my iPhone it again seems superfluous for those with the technical competence to use the mainstream services.

In fact Cobolt, a company here in the UK who sell very good talking watches and kitchen equipment, have sold a number of products I find questionable in their mere existence. One was a special product that connects to an iPod in order to read the currently playing track information etc, redundant since even standard iPods have a rudimentary form of Voice Over I believe. Just as bad was a games console they sold which only played games like battleship and the like, which cost more than a DS or PS Vita plus you needed to buy an extra cartridge to get all the games available through it. These kinds of product are preying on the lack of knowledge out there and companies which both produce and sell them should be utterly ashamed of themselves.

cx2
-----
To live by honour and to honour life, these are our greatest strengths and our best hopes.

2014-09-04 23:16:43

I agree on the symplistic products (cough azabat!), but again Cx2, for example I once  saw a company (possibly kobold though perhaps not), selling a talking clock which could only be set by a sighted person and marketing it as accessible, then again with the Rnib what do you expect?

As regards the talking book service I have to disagree sinse there are lots of things the Rnib do uniquely that other services don't, and I was quite amazed the other day to find they actually had completed some of their sf series, and sinse they are provided for free by most county counsels in loo of library services they do have a function to fulfill albeit the American library of congress shoot them out of the water for both good service and title availability.

Lastly, i have actually in recent years found myself rethinking my position on entitlement generally. This is not to say i believe that everything for a disabled person should be free and you should never have to pay for anything, or that people should work on accessible products or games and give them away for free, and I certainly don't believe that you should be helpless to do things and inconvenience others with your lack of compitance, but when it is near impossible to get a job or onto a course that requires evaluation (I just got rejected from opera school on a blatant excuse), when people can discriminate out of hand, when most sighted people in society ignore your existance there is something to be said in demanding at least a little by way of compensation.


How this should be quantified and what it should mean I don't know, but I am no longer quite as convinced that maintaining the idea that if your a blind person nobody has any obligation to you doesn't seem quite as attractive as it once did.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2014-09-05 01:11:42

First of all briant, you are blind or vi, are you not? And here you are, talking about how blind people do this and that and how the more self-sufficiant ones tend to talk down to the less self-sufficiant ones. May I ask you... what makes you better than them? You're basically saying all these bad things about blind people, as though you don't act as they do or do anything they do. Listen here, you're no Saint. So, I'm sure, if not posative, that you're guilty to some of the horrible things you condemn the rest of us, and I say "us" because you are also presumably blind or vi, you being an active member of forums such as this.

  And, let me just say I've heard arguments similar to yours. Fact of the matter is, it's not just, blind, people who think they're entitled to everything. Think of some of those folks who just sit at home, collecting food stamps and government money, just for the heck of it! You know what? All, the people, who I've heard, of doing that, were, sighted!
Technically speaking, your post could be classified as stereotypical descrimination. You'd think, as a blind person, you'd be less ignorent to those of thee blind community who actually try to get through life. I know, and even am related to, some fantastically successful blind people. Heck, my sister's got a good future going for her. So for you to talk down to blind people like that, can be taken rather offensive.

If you have issues with Scramble, please contact support at the link below. I check here at least once a day, so this is the best avenue for submitting your issues and bug reports.
https://stevend.net/scramble/support

2014-09-05 01:32:49

Hi.

I have said this and said this over and over and this will not be the last time I'll say this.

If these companies really cared about the blind, they would be developing narrator with Microsoft.
The fact that they are doing nothing to help develop narrator and are instead choosing to sit on their asses and make things that we have to pay for is utterly sickening.
For instance, loook at what Flaws 16 will be.
They said that Flaws will have a keyboard search thing that will let you look up keyboard shortcuts for different things.
Does that ring a bell for anyone?
Look at the narrator main screen where it says press any key on the keyboard for help and press caps lock plus f1 for a list of narrator commands.
Also, look at the VoiceOver help menu in mac.
What a joke!
They are actively copying narrator and VoiceOver, but are doing nothing to improve those products because they want all of us to come rushing to them to pay $god knows how much for a stupid SMA.
It's disgusting.
Oh, and let's not forget that Freeky Science Fiction is also charging $750 for an SD card containing training materials.
Oh, and it gets better!
They will sell you a daisy player with the content for the grand total of, ready?

$995!
Yes, you heard it right, $995!
How disgusting is that?
And the worst part is it will only be available for businesses. I bet they know that schools and government agencies are stupid enough to fall for something like that.

So yeah, rant over.

However, I encourage everyone to pay attention to the beginning of this post, since I think it is very important.
Not just for screen reader products, but for everything that is blind specific.

Grab my Adventure at C: stages Right here.

2014-09-05 01:40:10

Did I refer to myself as a saint? I don't think so. And as a matter of fact I generally try not to do the "horrible things I accuse the rest of you of," precisely because that would be hypocritical. I'm not saying I never slip up, but as far as talking down to those who are less self-sufficient that's one thing I don't do if I can help it precisely because I've had it done to me and know how it feels. So your attack is entirely uncalled for.

But wait, what's that? A transport! Saved am I! Hark, over here! Hey nonny non, please help!

2014-09-05 01:45:43

For one, I was talking to briant, not brianP.
For 2, you don't have to refer to yourself as something to act like it.
And yes, you are, talking down to us. You're pretty much listing all the horrible things us, "other," blind people do, while insisting that you only occasionally slip up. If that doesn't scream "I'm better than the lot of you" I don't know what does.
And lastly, my post wasn't the attack, it was the retaliation. Yours was the attack.

If you have issues with Scramble, please contact support at the link below. I check here at least once a day, so this is the best avenue for submitting your issues and bug reports.
https://stevend.net/scramble/support

2014-09-05 01:48:59

You know, I have noticed something here. Speaking from a developers standpoint, I understand the time and effert that goes into software development. I get that it costs money for sirten libraries, and I get that companies need money. But your post, @bryant, was actualy quite afensive. For your information, I was raised in the sited community. I whent to both a public school and a speshelized school. And keep in mined here I do have vision loss. First of all. Have you actualy considered why these people think a sirten app should be free? Don't respond back with the hole because they think they are poor aditude, because for all you know, they really could use that bit of tech, but they don't have the required money. And sited people do it as well to let you know the facts. I can remember tuns of times when I was growing up asking my mom for a game, and wishing it was at a reduced price or free. Why? Not because i'm blind,. My family happens to be struggling with money currently. If you are really that annoyed with some people, stay away from them or put it simpply deal with it and don't flaim them. Because right now, you are in fact doing the same thing, only on a different argument. I'm done for now, but I just had to get this out of my system as I did find that post quite affensive. To the rest of you sorry for this rant.

Check out the new reality software site. http://realitysoftware.noip.us

2014-09-05 01:54:54

@briant
I can also understand your frustrations based on the knfb reader or whatever it's called. But even that, $99.00 in the iTunes store, is more than any app I've ever heard of. But still, if I needed it, I'd definately invest in it. I don't think it's too much because I'm some pour, low life, blind boy. I think that because I've never seen an app cost so much.

If you have issues with Scramble, please contact support at the link below. I check here at least once a day, so this is the best avenue for submitting your issues and bug reports.
https://stevend.net/scramble/support

2014-09-05 02:09:59

Actually, the humanware communicator is the same price as KNFB.
That is very, very sad.
$100 for an app that connects your iOS device to your Apex and allows you to send and receive messages on the iPhone?
That screams we want money.

On another note, aren't these high prices actually bad for these AT companies? If I remember rightly, Apple takes 30 percent off the price of any app, which would mean that the company would only get $70 or so for these products?
Again, I want to know why they won't develop for Android? I don't think Google takes any money from any sales that you make.

Grab my Adventure at C: stages Right here.

2014-09-05 02:11:07

It doesn't scream I'm better than the lot of you. I'm better than the lot of you screams I'm better than the lot of you. And anyway if I'd really wanted to imply such a lie about myself I wouldn't have admitted to my occasional slips.

But wait, what's that? A transport! Saved am I! Hark, over here! Hey nonny non, please help!

2014-09-05 03:00:56

There are actually a couple of apps that are more than the KNFB reader. I saw one once that was $200, it was some sort of business thing.

proud to be a patreon of liam erven. Become a patreon today at patreon.com/liamerven

2014-09-05 03:05:12

Moderation!

Steve, This is a difficult subject, however you are dangerously close to starting a set of personal attacks here.     First, it was Brian P who stated that he disliked blind people who talked down toothers. He no where stated this was a universal thing, or that he believed "all!" blind people engaged in such behaviour.
This is no different than say a feminist cryticizing those women who perpetuated sterriotypical views of gender, and quite a legitimate angle of arguement so long as it is made clear as Bryan and indeed Briant both did that the attitude  being objected to is one held by certain people in the group under discussion, not a universal one attributed to all! members of the group.

i would also suggest steve that you actually considder what is being said and respond accordingly rather than to some attack you believe to have occurred. Bryan in no way stated that he himself was not visually impared nor did he cryticize people for living on government money, nor for several views you attributed to him. I suggest that if you want to usefully contribute to this debate you answer the points actually being put forward not some attacks you believe to have occurred.

This is a difficult subject, sinse it does involve the discussion of some attitudes held by some members of the blind/vi community, and also the nature of companies creating accessibility products which understandably leads to strong opinions, so I ask everyone to please remain calm and read the other person's perspective carefully before responding.

This is a fascinating topic of discussion and one it is helpful to considder, however if this topic becomes too fraxious it will be closed.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2014-09-05 03:53:27

Hey guys. Well, we are all in the same boat in this topic in one way, we are all blind. So let's try to stay away from personal attacks on one another and talk about how paying 100 dollars for an app is justifyed or not, and how it helps or hurts the community at large. Personally, i think it certainly doesn't help that as of right now, i don't believe there is a usable demo, which would make a person very hesitant purchasing the app if they don't have 100 bucks laying around. So, we know that it appears to be a trend for company's to market products to the blind community at inflated prices. I think this is because many folks who have been using VI spasific products for most of there lives are used to throwing down that kind of money, and have a hard time accepting that something that could perform just as well, or offer certain features could cost quite a bit less, or better, be free. It bothers someone when the money they have been plunking down for years seems rediculous if that cheaper yet still very high quality product comes along and offers the same functionality. People want to feel justified in there purchasing habits, after all, we don't like wasting money! So, it really comes down to developers as of late have been quite generous to offer software like NVDA for free, there is no need to pay 1000 dollars for jaws or window eyes any more. Even microsoft's narrator is shaping up to be a nice alternative as well. Just my thoughts.

2014-09-05 04:03:12

First of all, I in no way stated that Bryan criticised people living off the government and such. I mearly said that as an example to proove that sited people did some of the same way, as that is indeed a form of people wanting stuff for free and thinking they were entitled to such things.
  Also, I got my bryans mixed up, and I sinseerly appolagise for quoting the wrong one, and promise to be more careful as to whom I'm directing my words at in the future.
  But perhaps I misread post 2 or something? Either that or it could've been put in a nicer way. My thing is, if you gotta blabber about certain people, to that certain group of people, word your statements carefully. And I'm also sorry if anything I said sounded a bit too much like a personal attack, but post 2, to me, felt like a personal attack to blind people. And if you read through this topic, I'm not the only one who got offended by that.
And yeah, Dark. You're right; he didn't say all, he said most. That's gotta be pretty close, I'd imagine by most he meant somewhere between 50-75% or more?
  So, look at it however you want, I took offence to that, and so did others. So I don't get a ban or anything similar, I'll keep my mouth shut and stay off this topic from here on, because I think that it's completely screwed up to post things like what was found here.
  And how about this. Did you read post 2 anyway? The full, thing, in its entirety? He even said the reason he doesn't have any real blind friends is because, or rather "precisely because," he can't tolerate the entitlement mentality that "most of them have."
  And perhaps I worded some posts, namely 6, wrong, if I did indeed state that he said he thinks all self-sufficient blind people talk down to others. That may not be true, but I find it reddiculous that the "precise" reason he has no blind friends iss because most of them have an entitlement aditude, something I take offence to because I want to be someone, not someone who sits around thinking he's entitled to everything, just because he's blind.
And these are my last words here.

If you have issues with Scramble, please contact support at the link below. I check here at least once a day, so this is the best avenue for submitting your issues and bug reports.
https://stevend.net/scramble/support

2014-09-05 04:04:32 (edited by The Dwarfer 2014-09-05 04:07:40)

@arqmeister, yeah. let's stick to your idea. That will offend less people, and will make for a more civilised debate. And if we do that, maybe I'll go back to posting here.

If you have issues with Scramble, please contact support at the link below. I check here at least once a day, so this is the best avenue for submitting your issues and bug reports.
https://stevend.net/scramble/support

2014-09-05 08:26:12

Hi.
@Chriss I'm in complete agreement with you on your post about flaws. Why do you think I use and try to get as many people as I can to use, NVDA? Because I know it's better, faster less buggy and just works. Where as Flaws well has many problems.


As for the KNFB I'm going to be bying it because I feel that it would be a great app to invest money in. But I can see why people would want a demo. I'd want a demo too but I don't think we are going to get one.

I took a look at a device today in the RNIB and it was rubbish in my opinion. It was a portable scanning device that has a dazy player. wait what? Why does mostly blind devices like that portable scanner have to come with some kind of mp3 or dazy player? The voice for the device was horrible, although I will say this, the guy who was showing me the device didn't seem to get the fact that if you scan a page with pictures on it the OCR engine is going to get confused. But still I'd not buy it. They wanted to pay £500 so that's about $750 I think. For me I'll be paying for the KNFB reader and if it does not work as they said it would, I'll be emailing them and I'll be getting my money back. And if I can't? will I be annoyed for a little while? yes, but will I get really angry? no.

I'm gone for real :)

2014-09-05 09:26:25

Posts 7 and 12... wow. So much hate... it's actually kind of amusing. that is all.

To the rest, I don't think some of the people who have thi entitlement mentality realize that the fact that these products cost more money to make than typical products.. because there are specialized parts and whatnot that need to be manufactured. Along with that, the size of the market that they sell these products to is tiny compared to the amount they pay to get these products made in the first place. Do I think the prices are a bit inflated? Yes... but at the same time, I sort of understand why. You can't expect to sell a program like JAWS for 50 bucks and keep a business going that makes what are esentially pda computers, magnifiers, and hardware products.

Discord: clemchowder633

2014-09-05 09:38:32

I have in fact read all posts in this topic and I can understand why you might have taken Bryan's use of the phrase "So called blind community" in post two as to be more generalized than it was probably intended to be steve.

Above all I would suggest people back off slightly. When debating any issue in ethics it is far too easy to characature the position of someone with whom you disagree and assume they mean things which they do not. If you are uncertain what they mean ask for clarrification do not assume you know as much.

To get back to the discussion at hand,
Myself, one issue I have noted and the principle reason I don't tend to have much to do with many blind people or organizations in Britain is that there is a very strict adherence to a set of prescribed set of rules and ways of doing things. For example it is expected! that a person will use Jaws rather than Nvda, that a person will always do computer science at university, that a person will only talk to those blind people he/she knows and will always use certain peaces of technology without investigating alternatives.

I know precisely where This mentality comes from, sinse for a lot of special schools and blindd organizations there is a very strict adherence to a set of rules, that if you don't for eample use a liquid level indicator you are a bad person.

To take one example I remember on one occasion speaking to someone from my old special school who had a particular interest in racing games and was a player of top speed, I asked if he'd tried the various other games out there such as Rail racer, he responded "no" not because he thought he'd dislike them, but because "my friend just told me about top speed"

He just didn't have the motivation to go and look for alternatives and simply accepted what he was given. Indeed as an interesting fact, most people I've noted who have this sort of attitude do not! register on this forum precisely because being here requires a degree of self determination.

The point of all this is that to a large extent I believe certain access companies have gotten rich on this attitude. if a person goes to specialist school and is forced to believe that they must! have some specialist bit of technology and discouraged from any sort of looking for alternatives, then in effect you have a captive consumer. I am not sure to what extent companies have actively promoted this attitude, (some I've seen definitely have), but it certainly doesn't help.

I will finally end by clarifying that this cleaque mentality is by no means universal even in this country, although it does seem worryingly common and is the principle reason i tend not to interact with blind people outside the field of audio games sinse I tend to find as I am very much not! part of that cleaque I end up feeling and being treated as far more of an outsider than I would among a similar group of sighted people, which is depressing.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2014-09-05 13:54:55

Brad, I suspect the daisy player was added because it took virtually no effort to do so. Any system capable of running OCR and generating TTS would have no issues at all playing back audio content and in some cases people may wish to use such a system to play back daisy books as well as scanning physical ones, it essentially makes the device a single piece of equipment that solves all the book accessibility needs of for example a college or university library. For those kinds of situations where the people buying the equipment have little knowledge of assistive tech a single device solution is often very attractive, they assume having a single device or piece of software will make it simpler as well as being less mental effort for them to work out how to implement accessibility.

cx2
-----
To live by honour and to honour life, these are our greatest strengths and our best hopes.

2014-09-05 18:20:12

to begin with, I do agree that this so called entitlement atitude does prevail among blind, at least in my place. they want free rides in public transport, reservation in jobs, and all the rest of it, just because they're blind. not just that, some're not even ready to produce the required proof(I've seen blind people arguing with bus conductors because they asked them to show their"blind pass")

but, equal opportunities? I've to agree with the popular sentiment. EG:I don't know if it had been mensioned before(I haven't read the whole discussion yet) you have these TVs that all can see plainly. but if you're blind and need a lil audio feedback, you've to pay at least thrice the "normal" price.(computers and screenreaders are a similar case) how should one go about tolerating this?

friends:
come and join my
facebook group!

2014-09-05 18:26:38

In an ideal world yes we'd get all this for free to level the playing field, in reality someone has to pay for them. Now I'll be the first to say the governments of the world have many places they could stop wasting money on pet projects but that's a perpetual problem that even the mainstream community hasn't been able to persuade them on so the only way governments will be paying for such things is with taxation. Sure spreading the cost around doesn't add much to tax but it's less than ideal.

The next possible route is businesses, by their very nature they exist to make money and many though I'll stress not all are willing to leverage any advantage they can get their greasy mits on in order to both maximise profits and sales volumes. If that means preying on the ignorance of their customers that's fine by them, and so long at least enough sales at the incredibly high prices continue they've little incentive to take the risk of reducing prices in the hopes of greater sales volumes.

This is real life and sadly there aren't any easy answers, we inevitably need to choose between several suboptimal solutions.

cx2
-----
To live by honour and to honour life, these are our greatest strengths and our best hopes.

2014-09-05 18:46:24

Hi Guys.
Hmm interesting discussion. I got to thinking about jaws and windoweyes and really what does it cost companies to make something like that? Other than creating  there spacific voices what does it cost besides paying a team of coders to put a screen-reader together. Obviously making accessible programs is a small market but I believe that doesn't mean they have to stop putting effort in their projects.
@Dark, I know what you mean about sighted teachers and people like that think you should do everything one way. I believe when people go to college to learn how to teach blind or low-vision students that they are taught one way of teaching things and that is all. To give you an example I go to college where they have a disabled student services office. I've noticed that most of the people who work in that office have no idea what there doing. Like once I mentioned nvda to a woman who transcribes braille at the college and she had no idea what I was talking about. She had mentioned to me that the computer lab just got the latest update of jaws and I said, "Why don't you get nvda since that will save the college a whole lot of money" and she had absolutely no idea about nvda. Then there was another time I mentioned how accessible the mac was and she dismissed that right away telling me that apple claims that the mac and iOs devices are accessible but they really aren't which is not true at all. I wish sighted people who are supposed to help the blind would have a more open mind.
I'll never forget when I first started college and I was learning the ways to my classes. I asked for a guide and they told me they didn't do that then I asked if they had some sort of transportation like a tram but they said no that they had one but it was only for disabled veterans. Then I got so frustrated I asked them how do you expect me to be independent if you don't give me at least a little bit of help. And they told me, Well this campus was certified as being accessible." I was so frustrated I finally told them that I was sure that the campus had been certified accessible by a sighted person which I'm still sure is true.
I guess you just learn eventually that you are entitled to some things and not others. I think it's probably better if people learn this lesson at a young age so they aren't let down when they don't get the things that they need or want.

Guitarman.
What has been created in the laws of nature holds true in the laws of magic as well. Where there is light, there is darkness,  and where there is life, there is also death.
Aerodyne: first of the wizard order