ATIA 2007 Day 1 (Fiction)

By Gonz Blinko

“It’s a small world, it’s a world of laughter, it’s a world of tears this place exploits all of my fears,” I sang through clenched teeth.  My asshole editor Blind Christian sent me to cover the 2007 ATIA conference and I’m trapped in a Disney property until Saturday, maybe Sunday.  All of the demented smiling heavily sedated lobotomized tourists wander around as if this bullshit magic was true.

Everything about this place scares the shit out of me.  The deranged tourists from the Midwest, the Disney crew people cruising around in golf carts everywhere, the inordinate large number of white people, the fake food, the fake presidents and the Mickey Mouse shaped soap they put in my shower.  Frankly, I don’t associate rubbing myself with a rat to be especially hygienic.

Nonetheless, we’re trapped in a suite and we’ve got a cover yet another conference celebrating the overpriced products sold to people with disabilities.  Thus, a preview of what to expect:

Overpriced access technology solutions (OATS) Corporation, led by Sidney Greenbacks has decided to take a page from the playbook used by the guys who announced all those religious products at CSUN last year and, instead of doing normal press adjacencies and demos of new products, will instead be making all future announcements and demonstrating all of their new technologies via infotainmercial.  They have actively started interviewing former journalists whom they can hire full-time to make pretend interviews in which they talk to their own people but act like they’re dealing with the real reporter but without any of the hard questions to answer.  I wonder if Sy would be interested in hiring me, I’m not just a journalist I’m a total whore and, for the right price, will play pretend reporter using the most sincere voice I can.

Rumor has it that Michael bald will be announcing that the Florida division of blind services And SerenityTech will be kicking off a pilot project together and if successful the most serene software in the biz will be deployed to all DBS and Lighthouse locations in the state.  If the hairless Cuban pulls this off it will be a coup from right beneath Greenback’s nose right on Sy T’s home court.

I’ll have my new digital recorder in hand and will be looking to pick up interesting audio tidbits for my radio show.  Mostly though, I will probably be cowering in my suite as the Disney faction scares the crap out of me.  I’ll have my Desert Eagle 50 fully loaded and ready at all times.  I’ll be making additional posts as I tease out the weirdness from this conference.

A      — End

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chris.admin

I'm an accessibility advocate working on issues involving technology and people with print impairment. I'm a stoner, crackpot, hacker and all around decent fellow. I blog at this site and occasionally contribute to Skepchick. I'm a skeptic, atheist, humanist and all around left wing sort. You can follow this blog in your favorite RSS reader, and you can also view my Twitter profile (@gonz_blinko) and follow me there.

2 thoughts on “ATIA 2007 Day 1 (Fiction)”

  1. As you’re in the wierd world of Mickey, which AT vendor is playing Goofy?

    Don’t forget, say hi to those nice folk from that religeous products company on my behalf… and then prepare to run fast!

    Got to go. Undergrad admissions open day is upon us once more and that can only mean one thing… let’s go grab free coffee!

  2. Happy Aniversery!

    (Sorry for not saying so sooner.) I am looking forward to more ATIA oriented posts. After that, are you up for requests? I would like to know more about Hofstader.com and open source. For example: Why are there three free screen readers (LSR, Orca, Gnopernicus) for Gnome, but none for KDE? (And why do you tend to omit the last one?) Also, what is the AT prospects for OLPC?

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