Excellent post!  I also love the link you've provided since it helps show the importance of discussing the problems rather than tossing out ideas for solving them.

I've often thought about the issue of new environments and of visual information in general.  When navigating with vision, I don't have to specifically WANT to pay attention to the table in the middle of the room, the book shelf protruding from the wall, or the cat toys on the floor in order to avoid them as I move through the room.  Some of the most useful parts of vision are the huge amounts of automatic information that flood in which don't require any effort on my part.  With a range of almost 180 degrees, obstacle avoidance is even possible while turning the head side to side while doing other tasks.  Mimicking this functionality in someone who cannot see would be a life changing thing.

The problem is that even if we suddenly had some magic camera and software that could accurately give environmental data using sound, it would almost certainly require you to focus on the sounds to make sense of them.  The automatic aspect would be gone, and I think that would just about destroy the true usefulness of it.

There is a situation referred to as "tunnel vision" that can sometimes happen to sighted people, where their brain becomes overwhelmed by the objects in the environment.  In essence, the automatic processes stop being so automatic and we temporarily have to use conscious thought to examine the world around us.  It is unnerving, that's for sure, and it can easily lead to us bumping into something we just didn't notice even though the object was clearly within our field of vision.  It is very likely that you've even heard a sighted friend or family member use that phrase at some point.  I'm sure there are equivalent experiences for hearing, but it is probably less noticeable to me since I don't rely on my ears.  It doesn't seem like "tunnel vision" could go unnoticed, but there are plenty of times when it has slowly snuck up on me until it was finally at a noticeable level, and other times when I walked into some crowded store and it hit me instantly.  Forgive the tangent about tunnel vision, LOL, it was meant to give evidence that a truly useful tool for providing environmental data needs to work automatically in your brain.

No one said the solution had to be a gadget.
And, well, I can understand someone without the experience underestimating the value of nonverbal communication, but signs? Including signs like "DANGER" or "Construction" or "Emergency exit only" or "Now hiring!" or "No trespassing" or "Exit 142, city A, in X miles"? If signs like those weren't where sighted people could see them, someone would be sued into the stone ages.

Actually, I think the robot analogy is great--in the opposite direction. Robots are built to perform specific tasks--we simply don't have general-purpose androids or artificial intelligence yet. In much the same way, people with low or no vision are limited in what they can do. The difference is that we have the same general intelligence as the rest of humanity. Plenty of us use it; I'm suggesting we use it more, until it runs out, then go get coffee and keep going.

As it turns out, what got me to make the list was thinking about the economic problem. I imagine that the majority of these (except maybe the subtitles one) would actually have some economic benefits if solved.
But employment is definitely a big one, since I'm pretty sure that if every other problem there was solved completely, there'd still be a higher unemployment rate and lower average income among blind people compared to everyone else. A lot of those would help on that front, but would count as improvements rather than solutions.

Well, if assistive technology ever delivers a robot making blinds truly independent, why should an employer hire a blind human who must be paid rather than investing in the robot who doesn't eat, sleep and doesn't need pay or health care?

I also think that a lot of blinds are obsessively occupied with having their lack of abilities normalized by pretending to do things sighted persons take for granted.

Sexual relations, employment and the ability to do cooking are some of the tasks in which blind persons often lack behind.
A lot of 'normal' people don't want blinds as sexual partners and don't want to be inconvenienced by the special needs of disabled.

Saying that you can 'cure' the problem by giving every blind a robot and pretending that the blind person suddently is capable of more than before is sophistry.  The blind individual is not physically capable of doing more just because the task can be delegated to a robot who lacks the human need for Wrecognition.

Why should society pretend that blinds can do things they can't just because it make them feel better?

A negative consequence is that many fake 'problems' suffered by visually impaired individuals are elevated beyond justification while real and debilitating problems are not addressed.

I don't care about employment, but I do much care about technology driven independence. If I have to choose between a society in which every blind can have a robot, which makes one's food and drives one  around, but also makes my employment uneconomical, I choose technology independence over the dubious recognition brought by employment in a corporation in which you as a blind user can't do the same things as a sighted employer.

And as to the counterargument that employment brings social inclusion and acceptance, it's completely 
fake if the employment status is inherently unequal.

As I argued in another thread, it's not meaningful to talk about any equality or say  informational equality given that visually impaired persons often can't even install their own computers or do standard admin work.

- Disable secureboot
- Restore an operating system from scratch

- Perform an inventory of a pc's BIOS setup.

We can't, and there is really no solution to these problems. If the sighted society really were interested, we would already have the solutions.

I'll say something for which I am not going to be very popular. Sighted persons for the most part don't care about our 'problems'.

If every other challenge on your list was solved, the need for employment would be moot.

If an  android robot is sufficiently developed to provide complete independence to blind and disabled individuals in all aspects of life, I see no reason why a corporation or public institution wouldn't still  forego the employment of a half effective disabled employer who still needs pay, health care and still can't do the same as a normally sighted person.

On a side note, employment is only necessary in order to earn enough to eat and entertain oneself.

If we get a android robot, a lot of human workers can be discarded.

And this is actually great for us. The more automation the better.

Then the question is why the lack of employment opportunities is a 'problem' at all to be 'solved'..

Employment is not a good in itself. Yes, a lot of normal people work because they like it, or they claim it as motivation for having chosen a particular occupation.  But if ttechnology made their occupation supurfluous, but said technology also benefitted them in other ways making it unnecessary to work for pay, most would not consider it unfortunate.

I am completely on this Cae, and I am totally one hundred supportive on your ideas and suggestions. My project is going to find ways to address mass problems like this.
Personally, I think blind people should learn how to become self-employed, or work with other blind people. You know how there is a saying, the blind leading the blind? What if blind people work with other blind people? Employment would have its own set of workers, and in turn it would solve problems.
As for the robots and gagets, yes, that is certainly a possibility, but my project does not focus on using machines for interpreting vision, although some work is being done on finding relevent ways to transmit visual input into the brain using alternaitve sensory substitution devices.
My project I guess you could say, is trying to turn the impossible into the possible. And a lot of things are, but we need more people who are willing to put aside their skeptics and realize that for everything there is always a solution. But we spend too much time to ourselves and not to one another, that we hardly think outside the box, either that, but no one really turns into abstract thinkers. Negative results are just as good as positive ones, because it only makes us stronger. We know what fails, and we can find other solutions other workarounds. And of course, each solution has its own set of consequences, whether they might appear suddenly, or might occur later in the long-run.
Jeremy, I thought tunnel vision was referring when the field of view was so narrow that you practically have to turn your head to kfollow the flash light. In a test I was to point out which way the light was moving. I could only tell when the light was there, then gone, then there again, and gone. When I saw it, ti was right at the centre. I am not sure if that is more defined as central vision, but anyhow that light had a tone of yellow in it. I knew it was yellow, because I associated the scientific tone of yellow, which is roughly around 450-465 cycles per second in mechanical waves.
Here is a link to my project: http://www.sensationexperience.com/

Blinds 'helping' the blinds sounds good, but how many blinds speak out against overpriced half working accessibility solutions when they themselves get employment in the corrupt monopolistic corporation.

The notion that nonproductivity is leeching off society is wrong.

In which employment area are blinds equally  competent to do the job without the employer getting a state subsidy as incentive to employ a blind?

Here in my country, the national union of the blinds speaks out against the practice of only employing visually impaired in subsidized jobs, but remarkably does the same. The union fired all its visually impaired consultants and only took them on when the state paid the subsidy.

However, an  outgoing chairman got more than 100000 US$ plus as retirement for good service.

The blind union also begs for charity at Christmas, and neglects to inform the donors that none of the money goes to
suffering blinds but rather to the organization.

It's moral corruption at the highest order.

Blinds can't help each other, unless they can agree on a common goal.

@aprone, I'm afraid saying that employment solves independence because of perchicing power is not addressing the issue. If a blind person and someone with a car receive the same amount of pay for the same job, but the blind person must spend all their money on public transport, access tech etc to do the basic independence things that the sighted person can do without, in effect the blind person is recieving less wage.

Plus there is the effort component. One blind person I know was doing a five day a week job, but had absolutely no energy to do anything else since the difficulties with travel and with the work basically meant he came in and went to sleep. Combine this with the need to for instance  do mobility training and he was pretty much stuck.

Myself I would prefer a government subsedy whereby bennifits would be paid not just to unemployed people but also to allow people with disabilities to work part time, since at the moment that option just isn't open.

Jellman, it sounds like the union for the blind in your country has been taking lessons from the rnib .

As to employment, status and usefullness, I disagree that employment automatically equals some sort of bennifit. i've seen far too many people (especially in Britain where everyone has a degree), with considderable amounts of brains doing completely pointless and stupid jobs, indeed their are people with doctorates working in supermarkits, and of course combine this with the fact that a blind person cannot use an mp3 player while their engaged in manual work, and that relations with co workers will be strained, and again, while this is a solvable problem it will take more effect and social skills on the part of the blind individual.

There are people who value being employed at anything for the sake of being employed just because they value getting paid and the social status, however I'm not sure this is universal, indeed for myself this is exactly why I have chosen to devote myself to doing things that are worthwhile, namely singing and academic work rather than trying to get some sort of job.

My own theory is that so long as I am doing something that is usefull to others, work on this site, publish academic papers or the like, I am not actually leaching off anyone. Then again, I have also not had children nor any plans to have them which has a pretty major effect since kids are expensive and would require considderably more money, space and a change in lifestyle.

Thus personally I'm less certain employment is the catalist to everything, not without a massive change in social attitudes which simply will not happen, indeed with the way society is becoming more and more polarized into sterriotypical groups it seems if anything even less likely.

Btw Jellman, my robot example was simply intended to show (as your response showed), that even if you illiminate through what would be the ultimate form of access tech all associated problems of disability, you are still left with a considderable social element. it was not proposed as anything like a possible world or an ideal solution even if it were possible, (which i severely doubt it ever would be).

Well Arq, while I totally agree that the idea of status being exclusively tied to employment is a silly one, and especially in avoiding the creation of desires by capitalist society, at the same time there are! people who either desire employment for the sake of employment, or like my brother have an ambition that could only! be fulfilled by a certain type of employment. this is why my brother (who is partially sighted), struggled fortwelve years to be employed as a solicitor, since that! was the thing he most wanted to do in his life.

I know for a fact my own life style, as something of a loner and an artist, living fairly frugally would not suit many people, especially those who have different values to mine.

For example, I do not own my flat, Durham city counsel do. I can live in it as long as I like, indeed I was lucky to get it and wouldn't if I hadn't had a disability. I pay the water and electric and gas, and if I ever start earning money will need to pay wrent. This all sutes me fine since I do not plan to move out, don't want children, ---- indeed it's pretty unlikely I'd ever even want to move in with a partner.

My brother however was adamant he wished to own! his own house, a house which my dad's godmother left to him and which my brother is slowly buying from my parents, paying a limited morgage wrate each month.

He! felt very strongly that he wanted to own the  house legally, that he had his name on the deeds  etc, however since he has (finally), got a job and one he loves, this is no problem for him.

So, employment is still an issue even if your not actually yourself a person who values it, indeed this is partly why I do voluntary work myself (including the work on this site as well as my academic work), since if I did not do this I'd! feel like a leach, and in fact when I am qualified in voice plan to setup a charity where I  can hier my services out to perform for any charity who needs a tenor to sing for them, free of charge or at the cost of travel only.

Heck,if anyone did! ever offer to pay me to write or  sing (the two things I have some skill in), I'd certainly take it.

Ah fair enough Aprone, I appologise for the missunderstanding there.

Wow, what a rich discussion to jump into.  This is likely to be long.

Re: situational awareness, Aprone, I think you have articulated a good standard, not only must the solution be able to provide a wealth of information, but it must be able to do so in a way that the recipient isn't spending all her time processing that information, rather than using it.  Where I think you may go off the rails a bit is in not realizing that this is exactly the experience and problem every sighted baby confronts as he learns to see, which is as much about the organization of the brain, of the myriad connection in the visual cortex and other processing centers that not only learns how to take a bunch of electrochemical signals from the retina and convert them into an image that we see, but also performs a vast amount of categorizing, filtering and the like below the level of consciousness.  For example, a soldier learns to key on motion, so that because of her training, she is more likely to "see" motion because she has learned to filter for motion which equals threat on the battlefield.  In the same way, once we are familiar with an environment, we tend to filter out the objects in that environment and key on differences.  You don't see the sofa, but if there were a bloodstain upon the sofa, you'd see it.

This works much the same way for other senses, including hearing.  So, while the vOICe (a program for the Android operating system that creates "soundscapes, using the phone's camera") is incomprehensible at first, emitting as it does simply a series of tones that vary in vrequency and stereo panning based on light reflections from objects, I suspect that with sufficient time, you would begin to develop a feel for unconsciously using the soundscapes to buid up a feel for what's around you, especially once Peter Meijer can integrate his software with Google Glasses or a similar visual product.

I mention this not as a specific solution, but to point out that while you are used to visual processing, you may not be thinking that problem through with sufficient depth.  Any solution would require training in order to create the processing center in the brain to take the data processing off line so to speak.

I think that in the current culture, to separate employment and independence is a distinction without a difference.  I'm not going to address the moral or ethical issues raised by Dark, Gellman and to a lesser extent Arkmeister concerning whether employment should be a metric for success.  For the moment at any rate, they are, so to achieve independence, you require employment.  I do think that we're moving further and further away from a point where blind people are going to be able to interact with the sighted employment market on its own terms.  Our solutions thus far, things like the Americans with Disabilities Act, have gone some way to make it a little costlier for employers to discriminate, but they haven't eliminated or even come close to eliminating that basic assumption of our incompetence, an assumption that we all too often completly confirm.  The blind and the sighted share responsibility for this problem, the sighted by assuming, contrary to demonstrable evidence that we  can't do xyz, and the blind by relying on our nanny states to fix our lives.

Full disclosure here, i do receive governmental support for the moment.  I am working my everloving ass off to change that reality by owning my own business, because it's just the best way to be employed.  I do enjoy my career, so at least I'm not working in a dark Satanic mill of capitalist despair.
Most of the independence problems listed in the original post are solvable with technology.  In fact, many of them have prototype solutions already in development.  I look forward to purchasing a Google self-driving car in 2017, or as soon as Michigan agrees to license them.  (google is a proxy for whatever other developers get into that market.)  OCR has come a long way and is now ubiquitously available on smart phones that are for the most part accessible to blind/VI people.  These are still rough, but given where we were ten years ago, I fully expect to be able to read a book on par with my sighted counterparts within the next ten years, not using specialized formats, but simply processing a book with my smart phone or other similar device.  The aforementioned vOICe program already will read signs, if you know where they are  enough to point the camera at them.  In fact a mainstream product, Google Goggles does some of this already, as it is part of Google's augmented reality project.

Finally on the subject of employment again, it may be that the entire world will move away from the job as identity model sooner rather than later.  Certain economists have theorized that we have already reached or surpassed "peak employment", that is that the number of jobs will begin decreasing as technical solutions become more and more efficient.  When that happens, when people realize that it's happening, there will be a social revolution.  It could be a very positive thing as people realize that the old way of doing things tied them into a form of bonded servitude with companies replacing feudal lords as the power broker.  People might indeed do as Dark has chosen to do, follow their passions for art, for doing what gets their juices going.  This could be agood thing.

But my heart tells me that we humans don't do that kind of change very well.  It's scary.  You lose your anchor, you don't know where you fit in.  And frankly, not everyone is a genius, an inventor, a musician.  There is a large swath of humanity that rather needs the structure of family and job to tell them who they are.  Take that away from them, and there is chaos.  There will of course also be forces that will be threatened by this, once they realize that the masses are no longer enthralled as their worker bees and that consumption is no longer the religion of the age.  If you think the powerful will stand by and watch as the sand castle of the illusion they use to control the public is washed away in a tide of change without bending every fiber to stop it, well you haven't been watching the U.S. Congress or other democratic institutions very closely.

Sorry, a bit of a philosophical rant where it may be off topic.  Another thing that occurred to me.  Advocating that the blind concentrate on hiring each other, working with each other ignores a simple fact of business as it is done today.  You need money.  And we don't have the money, the sighted folks do, and that discrimination, it works at the loan desk of your bank just as perniciously as in the personnel office of your local employer.  So you'll have to overturn the funding model as well.  That's happening, slowly, see my post about Evil Hat and their phenomenally successful Kickstarter campaign to publish, of all things, a role playing game.  There is a lot of experimentation in the financial marketplace for finding ways to disintermediate funding and those who need it.  This may provide fertile ground for future developments.

I'm grateful that my government has tried to give me a leg up.  I am becoming convinced thatin its current form, that leg up is ultimately unsuccessful over the entire population of blind people.  I can't speak for other disabilities.  This does not mean that I think government is not capable, just that the current iteration of solutions, which is somewhat better than what we had pre-ADA is still not working.  Alas, politics at least here in the States is so broken that trial and error, iteration, assessment mutation, which is the way to make these things work may not be possible.

Ok, sorry, I'll shut up now, since no one wanted War And Peace.

I must confess violinist I disagree with your point that at present employment and independence are tied together or that reliance upon the state is implicitely a bad thing, since the state does have a duty to it's citizensnot to provide employment, but to provide equality, which is  precisely why I aprove of campeignes such as that guide dogs are running in the Uk at the moment to have auditory announcements on busses made mandetory, and why i have also made governmental recommendations in my thesis.

Then again, I admit I am fairly left wing, I for example am infinitely in favor of the fact that in Britain the state provides health care and education (though the choice to pay for these privately is always open to people who wish).

Of course, this is not to say I approve of people taking as much as possible and giving nothing back to society, but "giving back" and "employment" are not necessarily the same thing, especially when employment does  often mean "dark satanic capitalist mills" as you  so accurately put it. In an ideal world they would be and the government would be involved in insuring that blind people could be employed in jobs they wished to do, and this is the recommendations I've made in my thesis, but withe current combination of prejudice plus capitalism that is not possible unless indeed a person does! start their own business.

however that doesn't say you cannot achieve success in other fields or be usefull in other areas either, it's just a question of difference in value and good budgiting skills.