Month: April 2006

Earlier this week, I received an email from an anonymous auto-forwarding program which I could not trace to its originator.  I asked some friends who have much stronger Internet and IT skills than me and they couldn’t tell me anything more than it came via an email forwarding system that sat on a server somewhere in Europe.

The message announced the formation of the Blind Panther Party.  As it came from an anonymous sender, I don’t know if the author intended to make an actual political statement or if he took a few extra measures to hide his identity to make a pretty funny gag look all the more real.  Thus, I don’t know if the Blind Panthers truly exist or if the author is performing an elaborate hoax.

The author signed the message Kropotkin, presumably after the legendary 19th century Russian anarchist Peter Kropotkin.  The author must know me as he (I call the author “he” as he used a male signature; if he chose Emma Goldman or some other famous female radical, I’d use the pronoun “she”) as he included a number of facts about my life which I have never published and have revealed to a very small number of people.  Thus, Kropotkin has created a very clever system, whether real or for fun.

Frankly, I kind of wish I had written this letter to myself as it includes some phrases that really made me laugh.  The slogan, “Blinks of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your canes!” Still makes me chuckle after reading the message a dozen times or so.  

Kropotkin makes references to historical figures similar to ones I might make in any Blind Confidential article or in my more serious writing.  He mentions Michael Collins and Ben Gurion, their tactical collaboration and how they both succeeded in defeating the British (Collins early in the 20th century having won the independence of the Republic of Ireland and Ben Gurion, after the Second World War, getting England to give up a section of Palestine now called Israel).  Like I often do, he did not include a reminder as to who the two revolutionaries were but, rather, assumed the reader (in this case me) would know his history well enough.  Anyone who knows me personally would also know that I would definitely know of these two as they would know that I’ve read a lot about the history of revolution and those who won change through such activities.

So, real or not, Kropotkin described the Blind Panther Party and suggested I write an article about them lest I pay the consequences of having some hardcore hackers, “perform some ultra-nonviolence on your various web presences.”  Unlike the government, I do cave into threats as I haven’t the time nor desire to fix a mess that some hackers can certainly make.  Also, I liked the reference to “A Clockwork Orange” (one of my all time favorite movies) embedded in the threat.

Kropotkin says that, “within three weeks, you will receive our manifesto, currently a work in progress,” but this letter of introduction intended to prepare me for “things to come.”  The author explained that, like the Black Panther Party, the Blind Panther Party (BPP), “does not claim to represent all blinks but, rather, serve as a vanguard based on radical ideals in order to affect change.”  He continues, “Huey Newton and Angela Davis never believed that all blacks would buy into his radical notions of dialectic materialism and the political economic theories of Karl Marx but their party would bring about revolution that would benefit everyone by destroying the hegemony of white European oppressors.”  I could only scratch my head and think, the government successfully crushed the Black Panthers and, now, the remnants of the organization sell a hot sauce called “Burn, Baby Burn” – hardly a revolutionary act.  I also cannot remember if Angela joined the Black Panthers or if she had been more of a soloist in the movement.

Kropotkin said he chose Blind Confidential, “because it seems to be the only regularly issued blindness related rag that isn’t beholden to any business, organization or governmental body.”  I’m happy that our readers see BC as so nicely impartial and trustworthy that they will announce the kick-off to their revolution here.  At the same time, I kind of identify with Jimmy Breslin during the summer of Sam when David Berkowitz, first known as the .44 caliber killer and, later as Son of Sam, chose him as the journalist in whom he would confide.  Breslin has one of the greatest journalistic voices in American history and I’m just a hacker who writes for fun but, today, I can pretend I’m Jimmy, maybe next month I’ll make it all the way up to Studds.

Referring to the song by Steve Earle, “The Revolution Starts Now,” Kropotkin then started into the goals of the BPP and some of the tenets of their manifesto which they will publish soon.  He starts with a somewhat disorganized preamble to the manifesto that claims that the blindness population has neither representation nor a vanguard to represent its true needs.  He claims that the “so-called advocacy organizations” have been “co-opted by the profit mongering technology companies (AT, operating system and application) pay them off with annual tributes to prevent them from doing anything too useful, from stating anything too critical and by making major statements about total non-issues to keep their membership smiling like morons.”

He continues, “The Blind Panther Party will lead legions of blinks to freedom and parity.”  And, “the BPP will use any tactics or strategies necessary to defeat the triumvirate of AT, IT and government that conspire to keep blind people from success.”  The rhetoric sounds like people from the GNU/Linux world with terms like manifesto and vanguard but the zealotry expressed leads me to believe that Kropotkin might actually come from the tremendously religious world of the Macintosh.  Many of the anarchist references also reminds me of the days when Project GNU lived in MIT’s AI lab as we had a subnet of computers all named for famous anarchists.

After the preamble, Kropotkin lists a few of the BPP beliefs and accepted “truths.”  Their first “truth” states that blinks have no true representation and none emerging in the near future.  He quotes a bunch of employment figures from around the world and states the “truth” that this is the result of the lack of representation.  He lists a few other “truths” that seem to mostly repeat the first two but worded differently, leading one to think that the authors wrote this in a committee or was in a real hurry to bang something out.

Then, he moves onto the “demands” of the BPP.  The first, one that I think we can all agree with, is that the government start enforcing ADA, 508, 255 and various other laws around the world.  Then, he starts getting into areas that I doubt will come any time soon.  He “demands” that all AT companies immediately appoint a blind person to serve as a sort of “inspector general” to keep the organization focused on the users rather than just on profits.  

Next, he suggests that, “like Sun and IBM, Microsoft and Apple should provide Narrator and VoiceOver as open source projects.”  He rightly asserts that, “neither Neither Apple nor Microsoft makes any money on the screen readers or magnifiers and maybe if they let them out as open source various segments of the community can band together and hack our way to successful, free, open source screen readers that don’t suck.”  An interesting idea that I’ve heard floating around the blindness world a bit lately but without anyone seemingly working with MS or Apple to negotiate such a deal.

Kropotkin lists a few more demands but all seem too far fetched to warrant copying into this piece and moves onto “tactics and strategies.”  He states that, “The BPP is dedicated to non-violence and will not intentionally bring harm to any person or will we threaten anyone.”  A good idea as blinks with bombs would go far beyond anarchism and way into chaos.  He continues, “The BPP has only one cause, to advance the rights and freedoms and to improve the lives of blind people worldwide.”  I can buy into that but I think it should be in the beliefs and truths section rather than strategy but who am I to judge a manifesto in progress?

After that, Kropotkin starts making statements that sound threatening and potentially very nasty.  He claims, “The BPP will use any act of ‘information anarchism’ [Editor’s Note: Richard Stallman coined the phrase “information anarchy” years ago to define the difference between the definition of free, “as in freedom,” versus “without cost.”] Including publishing propaganda and spreading rumors about businesses, organizations and government agencies under their own name or by falsifying email addresses to disguise the source.”  Anyone who has been around the blindness biz for a while knows it is fraught with nearly random rumors so I doubt this tactic will gain too much success, especially if “official” sources fact check articles before publishing them.

The next tactic comes with a bit of a disclaimer, “The BPP takes no position on technological vandalism nor does it have an opinion on liberating software that is copy protected.”  As I suggest in my article about Antigua, suddenly cutting off the revenue to the AT businesses would potentially bring disaster upon the quality of screen reading products as it is the revenue stream that fuels innovation and, without such, none of the commercial screen readers can afford to continue in any kind of consistent manner.  So, this tactic may buy them some support from people who either cannot afford a screen reader or just prefer stealing things no matter the downstream consequences.  I can imagine some very funny defacings of web sites but I do not condone, in any way, shape or form, such vandalism and decry any so-called hacker who would use such tactics.

Kropotkin then mentions a few of his favorite Blind Confidential articles and signs the letter, “Happy Hacking,” another phrase popular among GNU hackers.  So, I don’t know where these guys come from, where they are located, if they are more than one guy pulling a pretty imaginative joke on me and the BC readers, if they should be taken seriously or if we can laugh it off entirely.  I think Kropotkin made some points with which I agree, like taking a strong stance against violence and doing more to publicize the difficulties we blinks have in the employment world.  I think the idea of MS and Apple releasing their screen readers as open source is pretty interesting as I know a lot of people would enjoy hacking their source for fun, for research or to expand their capabilities.  Finally, I disagree with the lack of position on property crime, I don’t believe that defeating copy protection or vandalizing a web site is without harm to our community and, very possibly, such actions can have a tremendous backlash that could damage our cause.

Blind people around the world do seem to be taking some more radical positions and actions though.  A group of blind hackers in India are working on an open source screen reader project of their own which definitely shows initiative, if nothing else, on the part of blind people in leadership roles.  If people in India cannot afford a major screen reader, making their own makes sense.  Last week, in Nepal, a huge crowd of blind people (about which I will write a separate article soon) gathered in the government district in Katmandu to protest for greater rights – a hundred of whom were arrested in what turned into something of a violent blink uprising.  Blinks around the world express discontent but show little action and I’m not sure which tactics would work for such a small minority.

Afterward

The AT community took a step backward last week when Sharon Spenser, the seven year VP of Sales with HJ and Freedom Scientific chose to leave the company for personal reasons.  Since her departure, I’ve heard from competitors who went head-to-head up against Sharon in various bidding processes and all described her as professional, very tough and one who plays to win.  Those of us who have the privilege of knowing her personally, though, also see her as a warm, loving and very honest friend.  As a co-worker, Sharon pushed us engineering types to constantly improve quality and could often be seen in her office well into the night working as hard as anyone else in the industry.

Sharon had also been president of ATIA, an organization which she helped grow and get moving forward better than ever before.  I don’t know if she will continue in her role with ATIA.

Needless to say, one of my very favorite people in the industry has elected to move on so I will miss the hug I always get at conferences and will hopefully be able to see her socially soon.

If you have read these articles in Blind Confidential and haven’t, by now, figured out that my life has taken me to many places and I have had the good fortune of meeting many people in many walks of life.  Perhaps, my greatest blessing comes from the excellent family and amazing set of friends I have enjoyed the company of over many years.  

Although I don’t include much of this on my resume because it’s all just too weird for a prospective employer looking at a vision expert with a long history in software engineering, my journey through life has brought me nearly everywhere (I’ve never visited Antarctica but was invited there once, I’ve never been to sub-Saharan Africa but do hope to go on a listening/ audio recording safari some day) but you can pretty will pick any other spot on your globe and you can bet I’ve either been there or have been very close.

I’ve been the lead singer of a hardcore punk rock band, I’ve worked in a car wash, I’ve hitchhiked across the USA a couple of times (when I could see), I’ve been involved in performance art, blues acts,  worked for project GNU and co-founded the League for Programming Freedom, have my name on software patents, worked on Wall Street, been an active member of the 2400 club, a hacker, a drug addict, involved in radical politics and many protests, have been arrested more times than anyone needs to know about, lived on the wild party scene in NYC from 1977 to 1983 and have pretty well have had the fun of doing nearly everything I wanted to do when I wanted to do it.

Thus, seeing the name of an old friend in the newspaper doesn’t surprise me.  My friends have written books, recorded many albums, appeared in movies, done time in jail, shown up as business spokespeople on CNN and in the Journal, invented all sorts of things, show up on science shows talking about everything from robotics to rocket ships, have an art opening or, in the saddest cases they die from living the decadent life we all enjoyed.

Most of the friends who have a public presence, however, entered my life in 1977 or later.  Thus, seeing the name of a friend of the family mentioned prominently in an article passed on by Blind News actually took me by surprise.  I’m not quite sure; he’s been involved in the blindness biz for as long as I can remember and every blink I’ve met from Vermont knows him so why be surprised that someone who knew me before I was born should appear in the papers?

Mike Richman, secretary and treasurer of The Vermont Council of the Blind, also served as my father’s best man back in 1958, a couple of years before I entered this strange life.  Mike’s wife Carol served as my godmother at my baptism and Mike would likely have held the godfather role had it not been for one of those archaic Catholic rules that don’t permit Jews to be godfathers.  Someone should please remind me to write to the pope about this and see if they can change the rules.

Thus, my memories of Mike stray rather distantly from his public persona.  He, like me lost his vision to RP and, way back when I was a child, Mike became the first person to teach me to shoot a gun.  My family visited their home in Vermont, he set up some things to use as targets and we spent the afternoon shooting up his backyard.

According to Vermont’s, Burlington Free Press, Mike is quoted as saying, “The Capitol Theatre in Montpelier is the first Vermont movie theater to install equipment that allows blind and visually impaired audience members to hear a pre-recorded audio track describing nonverbal action on screen. The service reduced distractions for other audience members and allows blind individuals to watch movies independently,” at the celebration of Vermont’s first DVS enabled public movie theater.

I don’t think Florida has a DVS theater in the state yet but, then again, we are the land evolution forgot.

Mike Richman continues to work on a variety of different blindness issues in Vermont.  He teaches a course at one of the colleges in Burlington about some left-wing political topic, and, if memory serves me correctly, he hosts a television program on Burlington community television.

Mike’s public persona seems so squeaky clean that I sometimes have difficulty reconciling this revered member of Vermont’s blindness community with the Mike Richman I know – a fast talking wisecracking irreverent Jersey guy, just like me.

One time, not that long ago, Mike and I sat on the porch at our family summer home on Lake George, NY.  He and I traded wisecracks, insults and harsh commentary about government and the state of the world.  Others sat on the porch but couldn’t find a place to fit a word between our high speed live satire.  Finally, I could hear my friend Danielle say to my wife, “Oh god, there are two of them…”

People from New Jersey have the wisecrack, the insult and an intense disregard for authority built into our DNA.  Jerseyites answer our doors by yelling, “go away.”  Jersey people, even if we can’t really stand the place ourselves, will defend it endlessly, even though we left the state years earlier and haven’t visited it in recent memory.  We’ll play Springsteen and Sinatra, Twisted Sister and Bon Jovi even if we don’t like their music.  We jersey folks will also tell you exactly where you can stick your confederate flag or other regional icon.  We’re even proud that the longest burning fire in known history was right next to our Pulaski Skyway on the way into Jersey City and, yes, we’re proud of those odors that only exist in Jersey and our beautiful chemical sunsets.

Thus, a guy like Mike had to leave Jersey for his own sanity but, like me and most others who think that all forms of speech that the f-word can be used for should be as, as George Carlin said, it’s the most flexible word in our language.  People in Jersey even include the f-word in our names.  If like Mike, you are of my father’s generation, the f-word is your first name like, F**king Frank Sinatra or F**king Tony Bennet.  If, however, you grew up in my generation, the f-word is typically your middle name as in: Bruce F**king Springsteen and Twisted F**king Sister.  If you happen to fall into the pantheon of truly great Jerseyites, you get the f-word as both your first and middle name as in, F**king Clarence, F**king Clemmens (the saxophone and possibly the most beloved member of the E-Street band).

So, to you Vermonters who thought of Mike as a kindly, aging gentleman who smells of piss and mothballs like so many other retired folks, I’ve come along and outed him.  Next time you see him, just try to engage him in a conversation about the current administration or some other topic that will bring out the Jersey in him.

All of the personal stuff aside, though, Mike Richman has fought for greater access to the blinks in Vermont for over forty years.  Mike has contributed to many of the advances and legislation in the Green Mountain State that make it one of the more desirable places for people with vision impairments to live.  Just remember, he has a human side too and one that has one of the most high speed, rapid fire, razor sharp tongues that Jersey has ever produced.

Afterward

This morning, I was informed of a death in the AT family.  Dean Jackson, a technical support technician at Humanware, passed away in the last week.  Few details about the nature of his death have been made public but he was only 26 years old.  I didn’t know Dean at all so can’t speak to him in life but I’m sure a lot of BC readers probably did know him and may want to contact Humanware or Jonathon or someone who can provide instructions for sharing your condolences.

Every year after the hype from CSUN starts to die down, my esteemed colleague from U. Bristol in the UK, Will Pearson writes an article that goes well beyond any of the existing technologies and dives deeply into the research side of vision and vision related technology.  Recently, Will has focused his efforts on the psychology of attention and the associated neuromechanics.

For quite a while now, I’ve written about multiple data streams and simultaneous information delivery as the next generation interfaces for people with vision impairments.  I’ve used a lot of examples from audio and video games and compared them to existing screen readers and other products designed for blind people.  I look at these advances from a fairly practical usability and engineering point of view.  Will studies the underlying science, cognitive psychology, learning theory and other ways the human brain actually works that make my implementation ideas possible and practical.

Will Pearson and I often collaborate via email and in telephone calls discussing our latest ideas.  I have taken a lot of his psychological concepts and tried to fit them into an engineering model that I can use to build software.  I hope that some of my ideas that we’ve discussed have had value to his work as well.

People who read Blind Confidential with some regularity have probably noticed that Will makes frequent comments here.  His writing style falls into the category of dense academic prose that most often appears in scientific journals.  Thus, those of you who don’t like reading serious scientific articles should probably hang onto your seats as you’re in for a pretty rough ride.  If, however, like me you fall into the category of uber-geek, please enjoy the following article.

An Antidote to CSUN
By: Will Pearson

Now that all the hype of CSUN is behind us, I thought it time to begin to explore the more serious questions, the sort that are rarely touched on at CSUN.  The first question I felt worthy of an attempt at an answer is, whether using a screen reader can ever be as efficient as using sight?   There’s been plenty of speculation on the topic, usually resulting in the answer that if waived their magic wand using a screen reader would be as efficient as sight.  However, after spending several years considering this, and other human computer interaction issues related to screen reader use, I take a different view.  My justification, whilst not exhaustive, is below.
 
The first area where screen readers appear to fall short is in their ability to communicate semantics.  Communication is all about communicating thoughts, concepts, states, etc., and communication between an interface for a piece of software and a user is no different in this respect.  The main problem is that screen readers, through their use of speech and Braille, both of which are serialised forms of communication, use less physical variables to encode semantic  content than sight does.  There’s roughly six variables that can be used to encode semantic content, and these are:* The position of something on the X, Y and Z axes* The position of something in time* The frequency of the physical wave, represented by things like color, pitch, etc.* The amplitude of the physical wave, or how strong it isUsing a computer with sight typically takes advantage of five of these variables, whilst screen readers typically only use two.  So, it will take longer to communicate the same semantic content using a screen reader than it will sight.  To some extent this has supporting evidence from psychological studies in which the listening and reading speeds of the same person were compared.  These studies found that the same individual could read something faster than they could listen to it.  There are differences between individuals, which can account for why some screen reader users can listen to things faster than some people can read things, but within the same individual the evidence seems to indicate that listening to things is slower.
 
This serialisation of semantic content, brought about by the smaller capacity of speech, also has implications for memory utilisation and cognitive workload.  Studies involving Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the cortex have shown greater activity in the cortical regions of the brain when listening to speech than when reading something.  Not only is there activity on the left side of the cortex, in regions such as Brocha’s Area and Wernicke’s Area, which is present for both reading and listening, but listening to speech also produces activity in the right side of the cortex, which is thought to be related to contextual priming.  In addition to the extra neurological activity associated with language processing, there is also a higher demand on short term working memory.  As speech is temporary, one moment it is there, the next it is not, someone listening to speech has to remember more than someone reading something.  It is not so easy to move back to a previously listened to word or sentence than it is to move back to a previously read word or sentence.  Navigating by listening often involves listening to words, deciding whether they are the ones that are saught after, and if not, navigating some more and repeating the process.
 
Another consideration are the distinctions between programatic focus, the mechanism used to shift attention with a screen reader, and visual attention.  Screen readers utilise a mechanism of programatic focus to shift the user’s attention between user interface elements.  This means that a user’s attention is only focused on a single point at once, something further compounded by a screen reader’s use of serialised output.  Whilst visual attention is usually focused on a single object, it can shrink and grow, similar to a zoom lens, to encompass more or less of an object.  This ability to shift attention from a word to a paragraph and then onto the entire document provides a number of benefits for people reading documents.  The most obvious benefit is the ability to not only navigate by word or line, but to navigate around the document based on more granular objects, such as paragraphs, tables, images, etc.  Whilst similar functionality is available in some screen readers for a limited set of scenarios, this functionality is not as flexible as the visual mechanism used to shift attention.  The visual mechanism can group granular objects together, such as a table proceeded by a diagram, and can jump to those with very little requirement for processing.  In addition to granular navigation, attention can also be shifted based on physical features, such as color or location, which requires just the elements with those physical features to be searched, as suggested by Treisman’s Feature Integration Theory.  As far as I am aware, no equivalent functionality to this exists in a screen reader.  One key difference between programatic and visual attention is that programatic attention can only be moved to fixed points, whilst visual attention can be moved to any point or object.  The final difference worth mentioning is that attention is not just limited to a single point in the visual field.  Whilst there are overt, indogenous, mechanisms to control visual attention through moving the point of fixation, attention can also be focused in the periphery of the visual field, through covert, indogenous, mechanisms.  This is a useful point, as it means that sighted people can detect changes in the state of something that occur away from their current point of fixation without the cognitive work involved in moving the point of fixation
 
So, I, for one, am beginning to form the opinion that screen readers are not physically capable of delivering the same levels of efficiency as sight can.  This isn’t to say that blind people cannot gain the same level of efficiency, just that it looks likely that they are unable to do this using a screen reader.  What is more, is that this is not the fault of a particular application or platform vendor, as is often claimed, but more a problem with  the core concept of a screen reader, a concept that requires everything to be serialised.
 

As Blind Confidential’s popularity has grown, so has the number of ideas people send in as enhancements and improvements to help BC move from a blog to something more substantial.  Most of these concepts would require that we move from being just a blog to having some web space to go along with it.  I’m not sure if I am ready to commit to a web site in the short term but, over time, it looks as though it will become necessary to do everything we would like to with BC.

A sort of double announcement we’re proud to make combines the signing of our first recording artist with the kick-off of Blind Confidential Music.  After talking to a number of other publishing companies, Blind Master Crash in his Furious Forties, has signed with our new venture dedicated to publishing original music by blind artists with an attitude and a message.  BMC is the only known blind gangster rapper and, soon, BC will be heading down to his crib for an exclusive interview with BMC and some of his posse.  The record should hit the shelves in time for the Christmas rush.

Others have asked BC if they could write either individual pieces or start a regular column associated with Blind Confidential.  I like this idea but don’t know the mechanics of blogspot well enough to know if we can easily do it here or if this will require a separate web site.  Maybe I can become the Arianna Huffington of the blind community?

In advance of the kick off of the recording business, BC will explore doing a “record of the week” that DJ Cousin Blinky will introduce.  We hope to play novelty songs and songs about blindness from the catalogue of old blues musicians and others who looked at blindness with a bit of comedy in their tone.  Maybe, if it catches on, we’ll do a radio station like Mosen’s but, instead of love songs, we’ll just play comedy songs, entertaining songs about blindness and fill in the rest of the time with classic rock and roll songs about committing suicide from having listened to too many love songs.  I think the entire teen suicide and tragic accident genre goes far too unexplored these days.  When was the last time you heard “Patches,” or “Running Bear” or “dead man’s Curve” to liven up your day?  Let’s not forget to mention “Stan,” the great Eminem rhyme that always brightens my heart.  I might toss in some sickly songs about the depravity of addiction like the great Lou Reed’s “Heroin” or maybe Jim Carroll’s “People Who Died.” Just for laughs.

As I mentioned the other day, you can expect some new characters to start appearing in the Blind Confidential neighborhood (do you people think we fall closer to Mr. Roger’s neighborhood or Pee Wee’s Playhouse?) and some new adventures for those who have already popped in.  I’m also sure that the companies that appeared in the two CSUN pieces will reappear along with others yet to be lampooned.

I’ve got to run, my parents are in town.  One of the real downsides to living in Florida is that your family visits you to escape the nasty weather that happens where they live.  Thus, one must learn to disrupt everything you ordinarily do and cater to guests.  They can send my niece Annaleis anytime as she is a very interesting person.  The adults are such high maintenance though.

While I often criticize our government, I feel both proud and happy to live and be a citizen of the United States.  I find many other countries interesting, enjoy visiting them, taking in the culture and cuisine, meeting lots of people and don’t have any feelings of superiority just due to the national identity on my passport.  I understand why people of many other nations have pride and patriotism in their countries and why most people on the planet like living in their home nation and, in spite of what we often tell ourselves, don’t want to move here.

I have never liked many of the trade treaties like GATT, NAFTA, CAFTA nor the enforcement bodies like the WTO.  I believe in fair trade and grow sad when I hear that even iconic American products like a good old pair of canvas, high top Chuck’s are manufactured outside our borders.  The ecological nightmare that is NAFTA also bothers me, because of decisions made by the governing body, Mexican farmers can use DDT as if “American” birds never fly across the border and Argentine fishing vessels can kill sea turtles and, in spite of US laws protecting the ancient animals, our national sovereignty is overridden and we cannot refuse to buy fish from people who kill animals our laws try to protect.

I do, however, have a strong sense of fair play and, while I may not agree with decisions made by the WTO, I feel strongly that the United States, in spite of our enormous wealth and power, must accept the rule of law and abide by the rules set forth in treaties that our government ratifies.  If the US elects to ignore a specific treaty or portion thereof, it should withdraw from the body entirely.  While America has the power and money, it should at least follow the rules it has promised to obey.

Thus, I bring to the attention of Blind Confidential readers an obscure recent ruling by the WTO that may have enormous consequences on intellectual property owned by Americans and US based companies.  This, like so many true stories, feels more like a comic novel than actual news but you can look it up.

I first heard the story on NPR’s All Things Considered in a piece called, “WTO Ruling on Antigua-Based Web Gambling Sites.”  After hearing the story, I did some more research into the decision and found that many articles turned up in a google search.  One of particular interest came in CNET’s article, “Antigua blasts U.S. Net gambling laws.”

When it comes to laws and regulation regarding moral and personal behavior issues, I fall into the libertarian camp.  I don’t care who you sleep with, what bets you place, what drugs you use, if you pay for sex, read dirty magazines or perform unspeakable acts with barnyard animals.  I believe your right to swing your fists end where my nose begins or, to make a more specific statement, if your actions do not harm others (especially children) I don’t want to know about them nor do I care for anyone else to know about or, even more so, regulate my actions.  I do believe strongly that active drug addicted and alcoholic parents should have their kids taken away, I believe people who perform sexual acts or even try to perform sexual acts with children or with a non-consenting adult, should go to jail for a really long time.  I believe bookmakers who break legs or kill people over unpaid debts should go to jail, the same for violent drug dealers, intoxicated drivers and airline pilots.  I can’t say that I care if an athlete throws a game as sports aren’t really that important and, in my mind, fall into entertainment and, like the WWF, shouldn’t be taken too seriously.  Thus, you’ve now heard my opinion on such laws and regulations and we can return to our regular scheduled story.

“”We believe the time has come for the United States to demonstrate … whether the WTO agreements are to work for us all equally, or whether the WTO is
indeed a one-way street for the large economies to further enrich themselves at the expense of lesser ones,” John Ashe, Antiguan ambassador to the World Trade Organization, told diplomats at a session of the WTO’s Dispute Settlement Body (DSB), according to the CNET story.

MSNBC reported, “In a ruling that could open the United States to offshore Internet gambling, a World Trade Organization panel Wednesday said Washington should
drop prohibitions on Americans placing bets in online casinos.”

The NPR story, which you can listen to at the link above, reported that a small time Long Island bookmaker named Jay  chose to leave the US to start an online gambling business called the World Sports Exchange and base his business in Antigua.  The island nation of 67,000 residents permits online gambling and, along with tourism, the gaming industry forms an important part of its economy.

Jay, not realizing that the US would ignore international law, came home to Long Island to celebrate Thanksgiving dinner, 2002, with his family.  There, the FBI arrested him for violating the Federal ban on interstate internet gambling.  Jay, now a very wealthy, legitimate (everywhere in the world other than the US) bookmaker and vendor of gambling software to other betting web sites, was convicted and sent to the Club Fed, where else, but Las Vegas.  Sitting bored in his cell, Jay received a rambling letter from someone who had heard of his case which suggested he petition the Antiguan government to file a complaint with the WTO against the US for violating international trade law.

Jay called his old college roommate, now a lawyer with absolutely no experience in international trade law and the two of them managed to convince little Antigua to take on the Goliath United States in an official trade dispute.  Against all odds, the WTO, in a 290 page ruling, took the side of Antigua and Jay. Who is now out on parole and has left the country again to return to his business in the Caribbean.

The United States announced it would appeal the decision, certainly its right as a nation and that it would ignore the ruling no matter the outcome – a right it does not have under the trade treaty.

So, one may wonder, what sling poor little Antigua can use to slay the Goliath US?  With only 67,000 people, Antigua could boycott everything the US sells and not a single American business would even notice.  If it tried to lace travel restrictions on its citizens from visiting the US, they would only annoy their own business people.  What, then could they do to really hit the US in its pocketbook?

According to the NPR report, Antigua plans on officially taking the action that, because the US will not abide by the trade laws that effect the little island nation, it will go after the US where they can do some real damage.  Antigua plans on making itself an Internet copyright free zone.  Their plan, according to both NPR and a bunch of other sources one can find in a google search, is to allow web sites based in the country to distribute any bit of intellectual property covered by US copyright without paying royalties to US companies, for free or at a charge to the consumer.

Can they get away with this?  The answer is maybe.  The WTO has been known to ignore trade violations when done in retaliation against countries that have ignored their other rulings.

So, one may think that Britney, Metallica and other pop stars will, like during the Napster boom, lose a few bucks due to slumping record sales as music fans turn to free or very low cost Antiguan downloads.  When it comes to software, Microsoft, Adobe, Intuit and the other big players already withstand open piracy in Asia, South America Africa and elsewhere.  Anyone with good web searching skills and really good virus protection software can almost always find a free copy of nearly any software product on some Eastern European server and the software companies, in spite of rampant piracy, endure.

Of course, software companies who make millions upon millions of dollars selling their products to corporations in the US, Canada, the EU and Australia and New Zealand who typically don’t flaunt copyright laws or, like Microsoft, Corel, AOL and others, get paid for software that comes pre-installed on new computers before the less copyright minded end users even get hold of their products can withstand a firestorm of Antiguan copyright free copies of their products.

What about the AT companies?

Like any market segment that sells relatively high priced products to a small number of consumers, the AT vendors feel the pain of piracy much more than do their consumer product cousins.  Companies who make very high priced vertical market products can get badly hurt by a short term slip in their revenues.  Screen reader vendors who find a lot of people downloading cracked copies of their software can literally go bankrupt if a large enough portion of their would be consumers choose to ignore copyright law, forego official technical support and download the products for free or little cost from a tiny nation retaliating against the US government’s refusal to comply with a treaty it did a lot to create.

Many people with vision impairments lament the high prices of AT products and scream about the unfair notion that screen reader vendors live high on the hog of windfall profits.  The economics of the industry, however, is quite different than the perception.  A company that makes screen readers must pay software engineers, quality assurance engineers, documentation and training specialists, product managers, technical support technicians and all others necessary to build software products at the same rate as their mainstream competitors.  While everyone I know who makes screen readers for a living has a lot of pride in their work and a far greater sense of purpose than people who make quantitative equity analysis programs or accounting packages, they also have families, mortgages, car payments and the same living costs as everyone else.  AT companies cannot ask their people to work for the warm and fuzzy feeling they get by making software whose users find so important.  They can’t ask their employees to try to eat prestige.  They are also not charities and, if they don’t make money for their investors, they won’t last very long.

I can already hear some of you arguing that this proves that the current model of making assistive technology products is broken.  I can hear the cries of the open source people and of those who believe that screen readers should be built into operating systems.  Unfortunately, VoiceOver by Apple isn’t mature enough to support all of the programs blind people need at work.  The GNU/Linux gnome based screen readers are hardly more than demos.  So, for now, the model we got is the only game in town and if a trade war hurts the screen reader vendors dramatically, any kind of innovation, any kind of progress and any kind of future for many blinks will immediately go on hold.

Please, write to the Commerce Department and suggest that they follow the WTO ruling and stop being so damned arrogant.  Just because the US has the money and power does not mean that it can pick and choose the international laws it chooses to follow without suffering consequences.  We, as Americans, need to stop the hypocrisy and accept the rule of law.  Where’s Bob Barr when you need him?

As sometimes happens, I woke up today without a topic for a Blind Confidential article and haven’t the motivation to go through the piles of articles I keep in folders to search for inspiration.  Instead, I’ll do a random musings piece about topics I’ve found interesting of late and see if anything of value comes out of it.  In my “real life” I have an overdue deadline for a chapter for a book about Assistive Technology that I am contributing to (my topic is audio games) and I don’t feel overly motivated to finish it either.  Thus, it’s one of those days that we all experience where we lack the drive to get started and just want to crawl back into bed.

I think I’ll start with the case of Charles Taylor, the former strongman dictator of Liberia currently on trial for crimes against humanity in Africa.  Taylor had lived in exile in Nigeria since 2003 and, recently, when the Nigerian government negotiated a deal to turn him over to the tribunal, he managed to escape and attempted to leave the country.

  Many years ago, you can look this up; Charles Taylor sat in a prison in the United States, charged with various war crimes, crimes against humanity and some other rather nasty things.  Taylor escaped from his captors in the US and managed to find his way out of the country, back to Liberia and resumed leadership of his outlaw army.  He regained control of Liberia, torturing the citizens in a manner that would make Saddam feel sick.  My question is, how much more competent is Nigerian law enforcement than that in the US?  He escaped from both but the Nigerians recaptured him while the US managed to let him slip through our dragnet, cross an ocean and take control of another nation.  

Moving on, I’ve been reading Kevin Phillips latest book, American Theocracy” in which he describes how the religious right has managed to take control of the US government, electing its leader, George W. Bush, to the white house and, although a minority in the country, has managed also to take control of the congress and many state governments.  Phillips, way back during the sixties, worked for that unabashed liberal Richard Nixon and developed his, now famous, “Southern Strategy” which led to the hegemony of the ex-confederate states.  As he designed the program, his recent books, “American Dynasty,” about the Bush family, and “American Theocracy” about the reign of the religious right certainly fall into his area of expertise.  I just wonder if Phillips also feels that he’s unleashed a monster and feels that, indeed, Prometheus has become unbound.

Recently, I taught an occupational therapy class at a local university.  I talked about my area of expertise, assistive technology for people with vision impairments and various hardware and software products.  Much of my lecture felt like a sales pitch for Freedom Scientific products as I know them better than any of the others.  I did get to talk about some futuristic ideas (like the haptics concept I mentioned yesterday and 3D audio which I’ve written about in previous articles).  I had never taught at the college level before so this experience created anxiety but, when it ended, I felt I had enjoyed it.

After the class, I went into the lab with the forty three students, forty young women between the ages of 18 and 22 and three men set out to learn various things by playing with different assistive devices and such.  One of the young women approached and sat in the chair next to me.  She asked, I swear this quote is verbatim, “Can blind men really tell what a girl looks like just by touching her wrist like in the movie Ray?”

“Don’t stand, don’t Stand, don’t stand so close to me…” played loudly in my head.  Thoughts of Lewis Carroll and Cheshire cats played over and over in my increasingly clouding brain.  Nabokov, Lolita, Henry Higgins, Harry and Maude, “Lot’s of chocolate for me to eat…” Rubin, Rubin, my mind flooded with images of wild punk rock parties, chocolate syrup, Oh God!  Better think about baseball!

I couldn’t help myself, wisecracks come built into the DNA of us Jersey guys, I said, “No, we have to touch much more to get a real idea for what a woman looks like.”

She took my hand and asked, “Can you show me?”

At this point, the brain went into overload.  I, a crusty, middle aged, grey haired, middle aged, highly neurotic nerd had received an invitation to grope my way around a young, impressionable coed.  “You can keep your California girls,” I thought, “Florida wins hands down.”  Then, what’s left of the self preservation portion of my cerebral cortex took control, I thought of my career at this institution of higher learning and seemingly low moral standards.  I thought of the harassment suit.  I thought bye-bye PhD and hello, door to door JAWS salesman.  I stuttered out, “No,” my id screamed as loudly as ever before, “but I can describe it to you.”  Thus, I gave my first ever private lesson in the blind guy groping method without actually fondling a sweet young woman.

When I told this story to a female assistant dean at the college, she laughed, suggested that, “as it was in the name of science…” laughed some more and then reminded me that I had a wife of nearly nineteen years.  Poor Susan hadn’t entered my mind during the actual event.  I need to work on this with my therapist.

On the technology front, NPR reported last night that Apple has released “Boot Camp,” a program that will let you run Windows on any of the Intel Macintoshes.  I wonder if I can run JAWS in Windows on A Mac Mini while running VoiceOver on OSX while running outspoken on Carbon while running SpeakUp in the Unix console?  If anyone sees or hears evidence of such an experiment, please tell me about it as this would certainly make the $599 for the Mac Mini (even less with university discount) worth just for the novelty value of having four screen readers running at once.

I got the audible.com new releases and recommendations email yesterday.  Noam Chomsky’s new book, “Failed States” topped the list.  The Phillips book of which I’ve read about half of the 17 hours of audio, although very interesting, can approach a level of density that one can cut with a knife.  Phillips, both a scholar and political scientist, makes providing citations an obsession so the reading gets chopped up by the mention of all of his sources.  Chomsky, listed as the world’s number one intellectual in two recent surveys (one of any participant who found his or her way to the BBC web site and the other of purely academics from around the world) and who came in third (behind Nelson Mandela and Bill Clinton) in a BBC survey that asked, “Who would you choose as president of the world?” [George W. Bush did not make the top 50 on the list.] sits atop the list of my personal living American heroes (expanded to worldwide, Chomsky falls behind Mandela and His Holiness the Dalai Lama) writes with intensity and density as well.  Can I possibly survive reading one directly after the other or should I look for some brain candy like a suspense story by Dan Brown?

I’ve noticed an increasing number of blindness related blogs popping up.  Please, send me a note or post a comment if you would like BC to link to you.

I have a few other ideas for future BC articles for which I hadn’t the motivation to write about today.  I’ll list them here and readers, if you feel so inclined, can suggest which you would find most compelling.  I definitely plan on unleashing Gonz Blinko on a number more adventures around the world, some related to AT stuff and some not.  I’ve sketches in my mind for two short stories featuring Samhara (Blinko’s African lesbian attorney) that don’t involve Gonz but I don’t know whose voice I should use to write them.  Yesterday, I thought of a character called James Blink: Secret Agent JJG, but haven’t come up with a story for him.  I have another Carl Hiaasan inspired Florida weird story in mind called, “Sex, Drugs and Explosives” about Floridian blinks who, like everything else in the Sunshine State, is just a little more bizarre than anywhere else. On the research side of things, I’ve tons of ideas I’d like to toss out that maybe someone can pick up and do some tinkering with as a project of their own; academic freedom has loosened my brain a little and I find myself in a near constant storm of concepts.  On the charity side, I’ll probably write something about the first quarter progress of PPO and its fundraising blitz, Ben Weiss and AI^2 have pulled into first place for 2005 and second place overall for helping PPO raise much needed cash money.  I’ve thought of doing a piece on companies whose stupidity put them into bankruptcy but they blamed Microsoft anyway.  I’ve also thought of doing a piece about AT companies who have failed badly or went out of business due to their own stupidity but blamed Freedom Scientific anyway.  Having recently read Humanware’s end of year financials (they are online) I have thought of offering theories as to why they have they results they do.  And, as always, I’ll write about whatever comes to mind and things that come over Blind News (who, by the way, usually repost Blind Confidential for their readers but missed us yesterday) and ideas that come from emails, phone calls and random items from the radio and television.

Have fun…

If you’ve read my article in the March Access World or some of the previous entries here in Blind Confidential, you undoubtedly know that I find the idea of exploring the use of video and audio game technology in next generation user interfaces for people with vision impairments.  I’ve spent much more time exploring the audio possibilities than things tactile, primarily due to the high prices of refreshable tactile graphics and haptics hardware.  Recently, though, Blind News sent along a press release about a very exciting development in this area from, where else, the video game industry.

Three dimensional haptics devices have always been extremely expensive but Sand Diego based, Novint Technologies, Inc., will, in 2007, release a new version of its Falcon product that may change the world as we know it.  Other desktop haptics products currently deployed primarily for research or very high end computer based training applications, cost approximately $20,000 and more advanced versions can run into six figures.  The new Falcon, which will join the myriad game controllers in your local consumer electronics store, will carry an MSRP under $100.  When we discuss prices and economies of scale, the $35 billion video game market can make this possible.

The Falcon differentiates itself from the current generation of vibration or force feedback game controllers by bringing a profoundly greater level of sensory resolution than anything previously available to the gaming community.  This “toy” updates its controller (the Falcon supports switchable handles and such to meet different applications) 1000 times per second (1 kHz) and has .5 mm resolution in the x (right/left), y  (up/down) and z (forward/backward) axis.  The company’s web site provides a lot of information about the product so look there for additional reading.

What does this mean for a blind user?

Although I didn’t come across any mention of assistive technology in the press release or on the web site, the potential applications for such a device in the world of technology for people with vision impairments can have Earth shattering effects.

Think of everything you, as a blind person, touch and how much information you learn from the tactile sensation.  Now, for starters, lets take a primitive three dimensional object like a sphere and, build a virtual three dimensional solid out of it by making thousands of little squares with each side no more than .5mm.  This won’t create a perfect sphere as we aren’t curving our little squares but, rather, angling them against each other to create a wire frame sphere with .5 mm resolution in every direction.  Recent experiments show that the typical human can feel distinctions at even higher resolutions but, let’s remember folks; this is a $100 device.  Taking hold of the Falcon controller, the user can move their hand in virtual space and feel the shape of the sphere.  If we add some additional attributes to our ball, the user will be able to detect things like texture (the rough surface of a basketball comes to mind in light of the Gators tremendous victory last night), hardness (is this ball made of steel or is it a nerf?), if the sphere is moveable or many kinds of tactile attributes that I can’t think of off the top of my head.

Now, let’s take this idea to a more practical application like observing art.  With any of today’s relatively low cost laser scanning devices, one can capture a wire frame image of virtually any sculpture (any solid object for that matter) and store it in a database of .5 mm squares.  Somebody who has far better integral calculus skills than I can figure out the surface area of Venus De Milo or Rodin’s Thinker in square half millimeters but I’d assume this would be a pretty large amount of data.  Fortunately, the fact that virtually all current computers come with DVD drives means that cheap media can be used to deliver all of these tiny squares.

I would envision a fast, lower resolution, navigation mode so a user doesn’t need to feel every .55 mm from David’s toe to his head and that art experts should be consulted to add the attribute information but, given a device like this Falcon, actually, given two of them so a user can feel their way around Atlas with both hands, and Microsoft’s Direct X API the 3D touch software shouldn’t be too hard to build.

Needless to say, I can’t wait to get my paws on one of these devices so I can start hacking for fun and building my own virtual art gallery out of little squares that I generate myself.  I’m also interested in hearing what audio game uber-hacker David Greenwood can do with a Falcon or two.

Afterward

Everyone who cares about issues regarding inclusion and peace should do whatever their belief system suggests to remember Dr. Martin Luther King today, the anniversary of his assassination.  NPR reported this morning that since Coretta’s death contributions for the MLK memorial statue to go onto the mall in DC have increased.  You might also think about sending them some money too so we can start integrating our national collection of memorials.

Those of interested in inclusion, peace, civil rights and the arts can also celebrate as poet, leader and one of the most beautiful Americans, Maya Angelou turns 78 today.  With a name as pretty and a voice as strong as hers could she have been anything other than a poet?

Finally, my technology gripe du jour: Does anyone know of a “What the hell is this, why do I want it and how can I get rid of it” software product?  I’m using my relatively new Toshiba laptop to do most things these days.  Toshiba, like all other computer manufacturers, now bundle so much crap, some of which loads at start-up that it’s become difficult to determine whether or not I am being hit by some SpyWare or some other pre-installed program is just causing trouble.  We recently installed a new version of the McAfee Wireless Home Network Security program.  Now, its firewall is complaining about all sorts of junk trying to access the Internet.  What the hell is MetaMail and why do I want or not want it?  There are also loads of these pre-installed turds all over my hard disk that don’t seem to appear in the Add/Remove programs list in Control Panel.  

When I select AOL, a service for which I have no need, in Add/Remove, it tells me that I have to install it before I can uninstall it.  If it ain’t installed, why is it in my Start Menu?  Sure, I can go into the folder and delete it manually and edit my start menu entries but what other turds are stinking up my registry from all of this junk?

I’ve owned many a computer that had less hard disk space than is required to hold the programs this Toshiba comes with pre-packaged.  As much of this doo-doo cannot work with a screen reader, I will never use it but I’ve no way of getting rid of some of it.  Please help.

I’ve written a Blind Confidential item almost every day since January 15. Thus, April starts the second quarter of our existence so I thought I would look back at the formative quarter and talk a little about how BC has found its voice and place in our community.

I would like to start by wishing everyone who read Saturday’s post a Happy April Fools Day. Truly observant readers noticed that the first letters of the first sentence, “’He’s a proud president, yelling about products relentlessly in live forums or over large systems discussing anything you care about assistive technologies,’
reads a quote in the ,London Financial Wire Service report about Doug Geoffray, CEO of GW Micro on the successful sale of his company to Microsoft,” spells out “Happy April Fools Day.” I stole this linguistic trick from the late genius, George Plimpton, who started an article in Sports Illustrated about a fictional baseball player using the same idea. If anyone actually reads the story and believes it could actually be true, I recommend they seek psychiatric help as soon as possible. The truly bizarre quotes and the thought of me getting Bill Gates out of bed should have triggered a notice of the date. If you were fooled just because you glanced at the item, please read in greater depth in the future, you can’t always judge a blog entry by its title.

Now for a few “thank yous” to people who really helped Blind Confidential grow from its first day when it only got 9 hits to today where more than 1000 people receive it on a daily basis. First, my friends Roselle and Gordon for all of their help with the HTML stuff, I am qualified to judge the accessibility of HTML and can repair some problems with a lot of hand holding from a product like Ramp but throw me into raw HTML and my ears glaze over. I would also like to thank friends including Will Pearson, Lisa Yayla and Mike Calvo for sending me items to write about as, without some prompting, I run out of ideas sometimes. The guys at Blind News have been an incredibly valuable resource (where have they been the past few days?) who have provoked a pile of my favorite stories. I would also like to thank all of my old friends from the AT world for forwarding BC posts onto their friends who have now become regular readers. I must thank the folks who have posted comments here either supporting, correcting or criticizing my posts, the debate with Peter Korn over accessibility APIs and, most recently, with the Macintosh militants have been fun and we can’t leave out Will Pearson’s terrific scientific explanations of some of the theory I present here.

It might be difficult to notice from the previous three posts but Blind Confidential has been trying to move away from assistive technology issues and do more about general items of interest to me and, hopefully, other blinks and our friends alike. The April Fools gag was premeditated a day in advance but most topics are selected the morning I write the piece so may contain factual errors. The style I use to build BC entries is to pick a topic and then sit down with MS Word, my laptop and a cup of very strong coffee. I then pretty much perform literary improvisation on the subject and see how it comes out. This is sort of like “riffing” in music, when I play blues with a friend, we might set out with a riff or two in mind and then just let the jam flow. At the end of one of these sessions, usually an hour or so from the start, I then run the spell checker and reread the item. The only changes I make upon rereading are to fix truly contorted sentences and statements I know to be absolutely untrue (if it’s not one of the fiction entries). Thus, people find errors in these articles which should be viewed as commentary and not journalism. I write “creative” non-fiction essays which means I don’t let the facts get too much in the way of a good story or else I write short fictional stories which, by nature, aren’t factual. Please, therefore, enjoy these posts for their entertainment value and their general themes which I do truly believe.

Now, onto the factual correction of the day. In the article on the inaccessibility of the iPod, I was absolutely incorrect in the assertion that UIA was not going to make it for the official Vista release. UIA is already in the alpha distributions of Vista and will be included in the commercial release as well. I had misread a piece after CSUN that said that most programs will not support UIA when Vista is released and, therefore, MSAA is still the best game in town. This is of course also true for the Macintosh and gnome accessibility APIs which, if a program is not written specifically for Cocoa or using the gnome API, it is also not ready for prime time with a screen reader. I apologize to my friends at Microsoft and to anyone else who may have been misled by this error.

What to expect from Blind Confidential in the future?

I think you can bet that there will be more fiction, satire and parody. There will be more items about discrimination, transportation and other issues I find compelling. Art will play a big role as will music and, to a lesser extent, technology. I don’t want to write about current AT products anymore as I’m a little tired of fighting the battles. Thus, when I write about technology, it will fall more on the side of theory and conjecture than a discussion of specific products out there. I’ve fought too many religious wars over technology: Windows v. Mac v. GNU, proprietary v. open or free, patent v. discovery, JAWS v. all other blindness products and many others. I’ve also been involved in the document accessibility wars having sent hundreds, if not a thousand or more emails to webmasters with pointers to W3C/WAI and Deque Systems so they can fix their sites or PDF or whatever broken digital format that I need to slog through a pile of crap to find my point of interest. I’m tired of fighting the battles, I just want to have some fun, invent some very cool new stuff and write articles that inform, entertain and incite in my spare time.

Finally, I want to state for the official record that I have no technological religion. I do not pray at the altars of Microsoft, Apple, Sun or any other technology company. All three of these companies as well as Dell, Sony, HP and others, including Apple, have, from time to time, sold me tools with which I can do my job. This morning, I received an email from a very smart guy who said that because a particular task was impossible to perform with Safari and the Macintosh VoiceOver screen reader that he would forego performing that task until the Apple guys got it right. He points to unethical business practices carried out by Microsoft to build their enormous market share. I don’t follow corporate law and don’t understand anti-trust laws very well so I won’t comment on Microsoft’s history. I will point out that anyone looking for “unethical” business practices should, perhaps, start by boycotting Chiquita (formerly United Fruit Corporation), Kimberly-Clark, Coca Cola, Exxon/Mobil and other businesses who have, throughout their history, hired their own mercenaries to kill actual human beings who tried to ask for a living wage but were unfortunate enough to have chosen their parents incorrectly and grew up in some third world backwater where corporations were given free reign by corrupt puppet governments. What about the companies notorious for discrimination, Denny’s and Cracker Barrel come to mind? What about Wal-Mart and its tremendously poor environmental record coupled with being the defendant in the single largest sex discrimination case in history?

Also, why don’t we blinks stand in solidarity against companies who blatantly discriminate against us? This list would take years to write down as it probably includes 99.99% of all of the corporations worldwide. In a recent survey done by the UK’s RNIB, although the EU, US, Canada, Australia and New Zeeland (a ton of the money in the world) have laws requiring web accessibility, more than 98.4% of web sites in the world have some to many accessibility problems. Why don’t we fight about the corporate practices of companies who build barriers to our success with complete disregard whether warned or not? Take a company like Intuit, for instance, they have received thousands of letters, phone calls and emails asking for them to improve their accessibility but they absolutely refuse to lift a finger.

As Ted henter taught me, technology companies provide tools and it is up to the users to put them to good use. Microsoft is not the enemy when it comes to blindness issues. They are a huge corporation who makes the software that most people with jobs need to use daily. I can’t go out and tell the hundreds of thousands of blinks who use Windows based screen readers to stop working until Apple gets around to filling their requirements. As of today, April 3, 2006, Microsoft Windows XP (Second Edition) is the most robust platform on which a blind person can perform their job, do their academic work, perform research, play audio games and perform most any other computing task they require. Maybe, someday, Apple or gnome will surpass the Windows platform and, possibly, there are already some specific instances where VO or ORCA or IBM’s thing may work better than JAWS or Window-Eyes but the overall package still tips heavily on the Microsoft side.

So, if you want to boycott something, how about Union Carbide for the 30,000 or more people they killed and refused to compensate? How about reading Professor Green’s “IBM and the Holocaust” or the grand exposé of Bayer and their collaboration with Hitler?

Now, back off of my soap box. I suppose readers can detect from my tone that these battles generate real passion on all sides and, frankly, I’ve run out of the energy. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading the first quarter of BC as much as I have had writing it.

Happy hacking and go Gators!

“He’s a proud president, yelling about products relentlessly in live forums or over large systems discussing anything you care about assistive technologies,” reads a quote in the ,London Financial Wire Service report about Doug Geoffray, CEO of GW Micro on the successful sale of his company to Microsoft

Amazing as it may seem to Blind Confidential readers, the wire services reported that Microsoft completed its acquisition of GW Micro shortly after the closing bell in the New York markets yesterday. “Now that Apple has included VoiceOver in its operating system,” stated a smiling Rob Sinclair, head of Microsoft’s Access Technology Group, (ATG), “Microsoft had to respond by adding one to Windows.”

Adding that, “Now providing accessible technology built into the operating system is a competitive requirement, we set out to find the ideal companion for the Windows line of products,” said Sinclair in a poorly attended press conference held near the New York Stock Exchange Building. “We felt that Window-Eyes rock solid reputation met the quality standards we at Microsoft have come to represent.”

Geoffray stated from the podium, “GW has always been closer to Microsoft than any of the other AT companies and have been hoping for this transaction for many years now. We were the first true believers in MSAA and, today, our hard work and loyalty has paid off.”

When asked about the poor attendance at the press conference by a CNN reporter, Sinclair responded, “We wanted to make the announcement as quickly as we could. Unfortunately, it came after the bell on a Friday at the end of the quarter so few people are still in the city to cover the announcement. We tried to get Stevie Wonder to come to celebrate this merger between the two companies but he couldn’t act on 19 hours notice.”

Geoffray added, “Sadly, accessibility isn’t sexy and blindness products even less so. If Microsoft came here to announce that they had acquired Oracle, for instance, I’m sure this place would be jammed.”

Blind Confidential, one of the few news sources to pick up the story, was able to get a pair of very high level exclusive interviews. Late last night, I talked to Bill Gates who, asleep when I reached him having finally called in enough favors to get his private home telephone number, said, “GW what? George Washington Bridge? Blind who?” And, then he hung up the phone.

I was also able to get the opportunity to talk to Mike Lollar, a blind long time GW employee who, over the sounds of a very wild party yelled, “We’re rich, we’re rich, we’re rich!” And then hung up.

Back at the press conference, Geoffray smiling answered a Village Voice reporter’s query, “Actually, I don’t know anything about rent control in New York City. It sounds like a good idea though.”

Sinclair took control of the situation and said that soon, if any user holds down the Windows key along with the letter U, they will hear, “Windows will now be your eyes and will tell you what you need to know.” He then demonstrated Window-Eyes using Internet Explorer, Microsoft Word and a few other applications.

After the press conference ended, I caught Doug Geoffray on his cell phone and asked him what he planned to do now? “I’m going to Disneyland!” Well, although the official dollar figures were not announced, rumor has it that Doug can afford many trips to Disney and any other resorts he finds desirable for a long time to come.

Blind Confidential would like to congratulate all involved on successfully completing this complex transaction.

Afterward

Bruce Bailey wrote to me privately yesterday suggesting that my comments about his criticism of Jay Leventhal’s review of Apple’s VoiceOver screen reader was unfair as I did not include pointers to his sources and quoted him out of context. I can see his point and suggest that readers who want to read his rebuttal to Jay’s article go directly to Bruce’s page: http://home.adelphia.net/~bmss/vo/aw060505fix.html.

I still can’t come up with a compelling reason for a blind person to abandon Windows with their favorite screen reader or, if they prefer, a text based GNU/Linux with SpeakUp or one of the other text screen access tools for that platform. Both provide a vastly wider range of programs one can use than does Apple with VoiceOver and, therefore, a vastly greater number of opportunities for their users.

Finally, Jay did publish some corrections to his review of VoiceOver in the November Access World. I haven’t read them so, if you care, go to the AW web site and read them yourself.

[Does it occur to anyone that my criticism of Bruce’s criticism of Jay’s criticism of Apple’s screen reader might just take the concept of criticism a step too far? Especially in the light that, today, I’m responding to Bruce’s criticism of my criticism of Bruce’s criticism of Jay’s criticism of Apple’s screen reader. We definitely have far too much time on our hands.]

Frankly, after thinking about the Apple question for three straight days, I’m pretty burned out on the topic. Yesterday, I did enjoy a great nostalgia rush as I reminisced about the fun I had on the New York City and then Boston/Cambridge hacker scenes. The great times of stealing 2400 baud modems from the phone company as private citizens weren’t permitted anything faster than 300 baud by FCC regulation. All of those amazing Chinese, Indian, Burmese, Sushi, Vietnamese, Italian, Greek, Persian, Nepalese, Tibetan – you name the cuisine – meals with rapid fire, high test intellectual debates over whatever topics came into mind. The parties at the Cambridge Brewing Company, fetish night at the Man Ray, Black Leather events at MacWorld conferences, the rally outside of the Cambridge Lotus headquarters with speakers like Marvin Minsky, John McCarthy, Noam Chomsky, Richard Stallman and other intellectual giants who stood for information freedom.

All of that, however, ended decades ago. Now, I stand for peace, inclusion and use my talents to push the technological envelope forward for people with vision impairments. As Ted henter often reminds me, I don’t actually “help” anyone but, rather, I make tools with which people can help themselves. I hope you enjoy the tools I make and that you’ve enjoyed the first three months of Blind Confidential as much as I have enjoyed writing the stories.

Please feel free to send me emails or post comments about ideas for articles in the future. As I’ve mentioned here before, I want to stick more closely to the gonzo/satirical stuff than to the esoterica of assistive technology. Today, with the important announcement by MS and GW, I had to write a straight ahead piece about AT but I really prefer the fun stuff and hope to focus on it in the future.