On the 15th of this month Blind Confidential will celebrate its first full year of publication. I think we did a pretty good job of raising some issues that others seemed unwilling to discuss, but entertaining with some of our fictional stories and of creating a small community of small community ofBC irregulars.
Looking back on the year, I first wanted to thank everyone who has visited the site and left behind a comment or sent me an e-mail privately with their own take on the matter is that I write about. Without such criticism I don’t think we would have gotten as good as some of our better pieces and without such encouragement I probably would have stopped this project a long time ago.
After a full year of doing this, I’m happy to report that I only received one communication on legal letterhead and a handful of threatening phone calls about the contents of some of the articles. I don’t like to pull punches but as I said in a fairly recent post, I have perpetuated some of the myths held about the assistive technology industry that are plain and simply not true and in 2007, I will do my best to be more forthright.
I’ve also started a new company, ad-lib technology and kicked off the development of the hofstader.com website. As a result, readers should be somewhat skeptical about my impartiality on some matters as although adlib technology makes products based on the principles of universal design and does not, therefore, compete directly with any of the assistive technology companies there will certainly be an intersection of our customers and those of the more established AT companies and, therefore, a conflict of interest between my duty as an author and my fiduciary responsibility to my business partners. I have therefore decided to avoid writing about products similar to the ones we make in order to minimize any perceived conflict.
In general, though, I’ve had a terrific time writing Blind Confidential this past year and I hope you’ve enjoyed reading these articles as well.
I want to put together a “best of” collection that people can download in a single zip file. I will revisit these articles and do a more professional job of editing before reposting them. They will probably turn out to be the “extended dance mix” versions of the originals. Please send me the names or subjects of the articles that you liked the best and I’ll try to include them in the “best of” anthology.
Thanks for all your support and please have a happy, healthy and prosperous new year.
