Category: Uncategorized

Yesterday, my wife Susan drove me to a dentist appointment.  On the way, she described a bumper sticker affixed to the car in front of us that read, “Lee Surrendered – I Didn’t,” and displayed a rebel flag.  As an individual who supports the US Constitution and the union of our states, I asked if it would, therefore, be acceptable for me to shoot this person in the name of patriotism.

Much of the United States feels pretty ugly these days.  People who choose to express themselves by wearing t-shirts with Arabic text on them get stopped and prevented from flying on airplanes; Senator and Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton introduced legislation banning burning the US flag, – a silly and somewhat tasteless act that is, nonetheless, according to rulings by the Supreme Court, protected speech; Senator and Presidential Candidate Obama has been accused of not being “black” enough making me wonder if some of my friends who support Republicans are not being blind enough; journalists fear being labeled as unpatriotic if they criticize the president or the war in Iraq but, for no reason apparent to me, people can display Confederate flags and rebel slogans – symbols of the single most seditious action in our nation’s history – with impunity and pride.

What does such a bumper sticker say to our African American friends?  Would it be proper to display a swastika and a slogan that reads, “Hitler Was Defeated, Not Me!” if one didn’t expect to find his car vandalized?  At what point is free expression of ideas actually sedition?

Of course, I live in Florida, which, during the bad old days of the KKK actually led the nation in per capita lynchings.  So, I am not surprised to find a nitwit displaying such a treasonous bumper sticker in this state but I ask why this motorist is treated with tolerance while patriotic gay people, patriotic individuals opposed to the war, patriotic Arab Americans, patriotic left-wing Americans and all sorts of other people who actually love this nation get labeled as Un-American.  What’s wrong with these people?

Speaking of Florida

If you hear just three words on the local news, “Astronaut, diapers, murder,” you can feel certain you are in Florida.  If Karl Hiaasen had made this recent scandal up in one of his Florida weird stories, he would be accused of taking his absurdist view of this state too far.  Florida reality makes writing fiction about our state very difficult.

ATIA Report

Ad Lib Technology, my little start-up, held some private meetings at ATIA showing off some of the things we will be releasing in the coming year.  I guess I had forgotten just how important marketing people and slick demonstrations are for a new set of products and, quite frankly, I’m pretty embarrassed at the poor performance we showed at the conference.  Fortunately, most of the people we met with were friends so I doubt we did much damage to ourselves but running a community based, organically grown company is a lot harder than I had thought.

The Ad Lib products continue to move forward but, I assure everyone, next time we ask you for some of your expensive conference time, we won’t be so wasteful.

Otherwise, I found ATIA 2007 pretty boring.  The highlight of the week for me was not any of the fairly dull announcements but, rather, the Friday night party at Mike Calvo’s house which had great people, great food, 40 limes, lots of rum, 4 dogs (3 guide, 1 pet), beautiful women, a hot tub, lots of mint sprigs and I’ll leave the rest to your imagination.

Where Have I Been?

Blind Confidential has been very quiet for a few weeks.  I got sick when I got home from ATIA and then my wife Susan’s father received a very serious head injury in a freak accident and he remains in a coma in U. Massachusetts Medical Center in Worcester.  Susan has been very sad and I’ve been doing my best to try to be supportive.  Finally, I’ve been pretty busy with a number of other tasks and, with all of this stuff going on, I’ve felt little motivation to write anything for BC.  I thank our loyal readers for writing to me asking about me and for the support Sue and I have received regarding her dad.

In Memoriam

Last week, I received an email from a friend telling me of the death of Jill Carson.  Blind people may know her husband, John Carson, who works in the escalations end of technical support at Freedom Scientific.  John is a terrific guy who has solved more hard problems for JAWS users than most anyone else over the past decade and the love he and Jill shared was obvious to anyone who saw them together.

When I first came to Florida, my wife Susan had to stay behind in Massachusetts working on a legal case for most of the first year I spent here.  I hadn’t lived alone in many years and the constant hospitality and friendship offered by John and Jill was terrific and I will forever appreciate their kindness.

I don’t know any of the details involving Jill’s death but, if you know John or have received help from him, please keep he and Jill in mind during what is obviously a tough time for him and their family.

This morning I felt happy to see a note from Earle Harrison saying that he and Humanware have reached an amicable way to permit him to continue selling MSP from Code Factory – my favorite portable solution.

I would like to take this time to apologize to my friends at Humanware for jumping to extreme conclusions about the dust-up with Earle and thank those who sent reminders that there are two sides to each story.  Blind Confidential doesn’t claim to be impartial and has often taken the position of a personal friend over that of a more well researched publication.  As I said in earlier posts, this year, BC is heading in a more creative direction and will be less about the details of the AT industry as impartiality is becoming increasingly difficult for me as I reenter the biz a bit.

I apologize for fanning the flames and hope I didn’t do much long term damage.

–End

What do you get when the “invisible hand” of the free market gets disrupted by monopolistic practices and unfair trade restrictions?  The answer is: the blindness/AT industry today.

Most recently old friend but, more important for this story, the top Mobile Speak Pocket (MSP) dealer in the US, Earle Harrison has had his contract to sell MSP taken from him as a punishment for also selling HandiTech Braille displays.  This happened because Humanware, the company with exclusive master distribution rights to MSP in North America decided they felt unhappy that, although Earle represented MSP very well and had hundreds of happy customers for the innovative software from Code Factory, that his decision to also sell HandiTech displays instead of those from Humanware could not be accepted and they killed his contract.

It seems as though selling AT products these days requires a one way loyalty from the dealer toward the supplier which is not reciprocated at all.  Years ago, Microsoft lost a law suit when they told resellers that to carry popular MS titles like Word; they could not also carry products from WordPerfect.  This system of exclusivity was referred to as a secondary boycott and deemed illegal by the courts and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

Humanware, an upstanding company, surely knows that such linkage of products and a secondary boycott is not legal in the US but must have forgotten to include an exclusivity clause in Harrison’s contract so they had to resort to behavior of questionable legality in order to keep one of their top dealers from also selling a product from an organization they perceive as a competitor.  While this doesn’t make much sense, it is what it is.

Who benefits by the weird economic theory that leads a distributor to act this way?  The consumers? Surely not, Earle was one of the most popular MSP dealers among the peeps; the innovators?  This can’t possibly be good for Code Factory; Who then?

Afterward

I’ve been insanely busy since ATIA so the blog has gone a bit quiet lately.  I’ll be back to “normal” soon and posts will return to their regular rate.

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

On January 15, BC, without fanfare, celebrated its first full year online.  Based purely on statistical analysis of page hits, it seems that our greatest hits for the first year were articles in which I have criticized Apple.  The worshipers of the Jobs of Steve post comments slamming me and the hit count jumps through the roof.

Thus, the first article of our second year will be critical of Apple, I like showing the hit counter go up and I like to remind the world of just how badly Apple sucks.

In response to the comments made in support of Apple to my last post:

• Virtually 100% of all other mobile phone manufacturers have an accessibility group and are working on or have already delivered handsets that are at least partially accessible to members of our community.

• Yes, I am responsible for the purchase of a handful of Macintosh computers in the past year.  Three were gifts for sighted children who like the devices.  One was a Macintosh Mini for my lab that sits idle virtually 100% of the time as VoiceOver just ain’t enough screen reader for me to use it for anything productive.

Now a question:

• Of those of you who posted defending Apple, other than Gabe, are any of you blind?  Have any of you sighties had to deal with the indignity of hearing that a company who just set record profits can’t make its most popular ones usable – even though the law requires it?

• Why don’t I bring a complaint to the FCC?  Apple had to pass something on the order of 600 separate tests to get FCC approval for their device.  The FCC has tested this device and has passed it.  Obviously, the agency that should be enforcing Section 255 already ignored the regulation so why should I expect them to listen to a petition from a piss ant blind blogger?

With that said, I paste in the following item I received in my email this morning talking about the religious followers of the Apple logo so you can read just how high a level of contempt in which they hold us:

17 Jan 07, 12:53 PM – Apple blind to iPhone accessibility?
Posted by Vaughan

I’m a bit of an Apple geek on the quiet, so when their sleek and shiny new iPhone
Was announced last week to whoops of delight, I’m afraid that I rather joined in the chorus of “I want one! Gimme one!” I’m ashamed to say that almost the
last thing on my mind was how accessible it might be to blind and visually impaired users, considering that its operation relies almost entirely on touch-screen technology.
Fortunately, there are people out there in webland who are rather more clued-up about
Such things, as weblog currybetdotnet discussed yesterday. He points to a post on
The Unofficial Apple Weblog which certainly doesn’t mince its words as it asks:
Does the iPhone shaft the blind?

But it’s the comments after the entry that proves really shocking. Apple fans
Are known for their almost religious dedication to the brand, and some of
They simply can’t see the point in ‘needlessly worrying’ about blind and visually
Impaired phone users. Responses include:

. “I don’t know if there is a tactful way to say this, but, is it really Apple’s
Responsibility to make sure of this? I mean c’mon. Starving children in Africa won’t
Be able to use it either.”

. “Why would the blind want this phone as 90% of its function is
visual?”

. “I don’t mean to be an ass, but who cares?”

. “I can’t imagine how people with significant visual impairment could use
The iPhone.  I also am very glad Apple didn’t let that stop them from making the best
phone interface
they could for the rest of us.”

. “Dang! You’re right! And people without fingers won’t be able to use it
either! Apple should just cancel the whole project … If there’s such a huge
and desperate need for cutting edge phones for the blind, then someone can fill it and
make a living doing so.”

. “Is Apple expected to make a touch screen that somehow implements
Braille?  Why stop at blind people? What about deaf people? Surely Apple was
Insensitive and forgot about them when deciding to make a PHONE or a device that has sound?”

. “What about Stephen Hawking?! Did those insensitive swine at Apple
Ever consider Stephen Hawking? How on Earth will he ever use an iPhone? Never, that’s
how!”

Beware, before you check out the entire thread of comments, that some of
The opinions get a bit heated and that, consequently, some of the language gets a
little, erm, colourful to say the least.

So, BC continues to call for an Apple boycott and recommends that people take non-violent action against Apple and its properties.  They know the FCC regs and said, “Fuck 255, so I say fuck Apple!”

–End

In the access technology industry, even the biggest conferences are relatively small when compared with Comdex, MacWorld and the huge Consumer Electronics Show (CES). These mainstream shows are truly monstrous and bring between tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of people into the cities where they are hosted. Two of the big ones, Consumer Electronics and MacWorld are going on right now and although I attended neither, I have been following the news from both and, of course, thinking of how these new technologies will affect those of us with vision impairments.

Also, for the first time that I know of, and access Technology Company is making a big splash at one of the consumer shows. I’m not surprised, however, that it was Mike Calvo who chose to bring the assistive technology bandwagon to Las Vegas to show the mainstream what we’re all about.

Today, at the consumer electronic show Mike Calvo will announce the official release of Freedom Box System Access (FBSA) for Microsoft’s new Vista operating environment. FBSA, today, becomes the first and, to date, only credible screen reader released that supports Vista without modifications or any requirements to drop back into a legacy user interface mode.

“I don’t see it as a real big deal,” said Mike to me on a telephone call, “every mainstream software company has a Vista version coming out and none of them require their users to downgrade the UI. I don’t quite understand why the assistive technology industry is making such a big deal out of what everyone else is doing without much fanfare.”

Setting Mike’s humility aside, Blind Confidential sends him a huge congratulations for being first to market with a screen access tool that we blinks can enjoy in Microsoft’s latest release. I’m looking forward to seeing him at ATIA and, when I get a PC with Vista loaded on it, I’ll put the new System Access through its paces.

As regular Blind Confidential readers know, I spend a lot of time thinking about how consumer products can be made accessible. My research at University of Florida (go gators!) Involves a lot of smart technology and, philosophically, I feel strongly that smart homes and other user agents useful to people with disabilities should be based primarily on mainstream technology. Many of the announcements at the Consumer Electronics Show, including Microsoft’s new Home Server, the Xbox set-top unit and all of the new media PCs look like they will be great platforms for systems built using the principles of universal design.

At MacWorld, however, Apple demonstrated that it is entirely ignorant of the accessibility portions in the Telecommunications Act, specifically section 255. As is their norm, Apple released a new product this time the phone — pod or whatever the hell they chose to call it, and entirely inaccessible cell phone. There are screen readers for the Microsoft phones, they’re screen readers for the Symbian phones but, alas, Apple tells our community to screw off once again by releasing another cute yuppie toy of no value to a person with vision impairment.

As I stated in a previous post, I have a strong bias against Apple Computer that goes back for over 20 years to the days when they first got involved in the absurd lawsuits over user interface copyright. Back then, I reminded them and the rest of the world that “only a whore charges for a look and feel,” and I’m proud that, at least in part do to the efforts by people like Richard Stallman and me, we won the battles over user interface copyright in the United States Supreme Court and no longer need to deal with Apple’s litigation attacking the rest of the industry’s innovation.

Today, however, I feel like I’m shouting at a brick wall when I criticize Apple Computer. Friends of mine like Gabe Vega for instance, will write to me asking why I continued to pick on Apple. I will ask them why they have such a religious attachment to a company that brashly and blatantly ignores the needs of our community.

So, starting today, Blind Confidential recommends that all people with vision impairment and their friends boycott all Apple products and make as much noise about Apple Computer’s refusal to acknowledge Section 255 of the Telecommunications Act. Please do your best to publicize this boycott and, if you are inclined toward direct action, go visit one of those pretty Apple Computer salon shops with a copy of the text to Section 255 and ask the manager to demonstrate how the new phone-pod complies with the federal law. If you do choose to take such action, please do so as politely as possible as the poor bastards who work in the retail arm of Apple Computer are not responsible for the idiotic decisions made by Apple management. Also, if you happen to have a fax number that goes to a machine inside Apple, I recommend that you send them as many copies of the text to Section 255 as you can find the time to. You might also consider e-mailing the text to as many people at Apple as you can. Finally, everyone should visit the marginally accessible Apple Computer website and post a message of outrage to their consumer affairs division.

I do so enjoy making trouble…

— End

Last night an interview with me ran on Main Menu.  Although I’m doing some work in radio I really do prefer the written form.  In the interview that aired last night, Jeff Bishop, the host of Main Menu, asked me who, in the assistive technology field, I admired.  I did the interview without notes and mentioned Ted Henter, Eric Damery, Glenn Gordon, Ben Weiss and a few others.  Unfortunately, I left out a few people who I admire greatly because, at the time of the recording, they just didn’t enter my mind.  So, today I present you with a few other people for whom I have great admiration but neglected to mention in the Main Menu interview.

As I admire all of these people, including those mentioned in the interview, I’m going to mention them in no particular order in this article.  Thus, you can consider the admiration to be equal and the order in which they are presented to be random.

Recent MacArthur Genius Fellow, Jim Fruchterman is one whom I hold in extremely high esteem.  Jim’s work in the blindness field has been tremendous and it is always been done under the auspices of a nonprofit because Jim felt it was the right thing to do.  Today, in addition to bookshare.org, Jim is involved in everything from human rights to handheld minesweepers and brings a set of ethics, genius and tremendous energy to everything he does.  Jim is also one of the most interesting, exciting and just plain fun people to be around.

I also greatly admire my friend Mike Calvo.  Against all odds he took on the David role against the Goliaths of the access technology industry and, especially recently, has started making tremendous inroads into markets previously thought to be blocked by the Freedom Scientific and Humanware juggernaut.  Mike, along with super hacker Matt Campbell, have managed to produce a credible screen reader without multimillion dollar budgets and sell it more affordably than any of their competition.  Mike also brings a passion and the values of the community to his products and I recommend to everyone that they check out  Freedom Box System Access if they haven’t done so already.

I admire John Gardner greatly.  His Tiger Braille embossor’s have set a new mark for quality and durability in that market segment.  John is also one of the smartest leaders of any access technology company and he brings a tremendously creative mind and a willingness to innovate to his business.  Unlike most access technology leaders, John is willing to do high risk experimental projects motivated by his own blindness, curiosity and desire to have such products for himself to use.  Along with Mike Calvo, John is one of only two blind people at the top of an assistive technology company and, as a result, his company shows the signs that the products are made for themselves to use with a lot of extra attention paid to quality and usability.

Last but not least, my admiration for a nearly unknown blind fellow in Oklahoma named Donnie Donne is nearly boundless.  Donnie came back from Vietnam blind and missing the better portion of both of his legs.  In the period since then he earned a degree in automotive engineering, not a typical field for a blind person, started a cattle ranch in Oklahoma which he still runs today with something on the order of 500 head of cattle and he participates in outdoor sports, a passion he and I share.  Visit the Paddle Odyssey website at the link above and surf over to the stories page to read a long piece I wrote explicitly about Donnie a couple of years back.  In brief, though, I must say I think that Donnie is one of the most inspirational people I’ve ever met and as a true American hero.

I also admire a tremendous number of people outside the blindness industry and, perhaps, one of these days I’ll do an article about them.

— End

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.

As it is Christmas, I want it to write something to thank all of my readers for our first year of successful blogging here at Blind Confidential.  Every day the increasing number of readers, those who make comments and the private e-mails I receive from others have, in many ways, been the best gift I received in all of 2006.

As this holiday reminds us to celebrate the birth of Jesus, I suggest that all BC readers spend some time today outside of the crass commercialism of the consumer vision of this holiday and reflect on the message Jesus gave us and the positive ways his words have affected our lives.  I suggest this to all readers no matter of belief system if you are a believer, an agnostic, an atheist, Christian, Jew, Buddhist, Moslem, Zorro asked, Hindu, Protestant, Catholic, Druid or whatever Jesus’ message contains something for you.

Today, I contemplate the beautiful Beatitudes, The Sermon on the Mount and other wonderful parts of the Christian Bible.  I’m certain that if this old cynic can find great piece in these words that the messages truly universal and I recommend to everyone that they spend some time in reflection.

I wish all our readers, a very Merry Christmas and a happy and healthy new year.

About a week ago I started feeling the symptoms of an influenza virus.  Since then, my wife has come down with a similar affliction.  In fact, a number of our friends have been struck down with this virus and we’re walking around with that vapid, NyQuil look on our faces.  My mind is blurry and everything around me seems to be moving very slowly.

I haven’t been able to spend much time paying attention to the news, in fact, paying attention to anything for too long seems far out of my reach and isn’t a skill I possess today.

I did learn, though, that Attorney General Al “Torture Memo” Gonzalez, head of our Injustice Department had ordered his minions to appeal the decision made by the courts that would have forced the U.S. Treasury to make our currency accessible.

So, for the second time in six months, the United States federal government stands apart from the rest of the world on issues involving disability.  First, the nation to which I pay taxes elected to opt out of the International Convention on Human Writes and People with Disabilities as John Bolton, presumably ordered by President Bush, refuse to sign the international treaty on people with disabilities.  Our government doesn’t believe that we deserve the same civil rights as afforded to us in the rest of the “free” world.

So, to add insult to injury, AG Gonzales elects to appeal the one good thing that’s happened for blind people this year.  The NFB case against Target was an excellent accomplishment this year but that battle was between blind people and the private sector — the Injustice Department is responsible for upholding the Constitution and in this case has chosen to ignore the equal protection under the laws section of the Bill of Rights as it applies to us blinks.

Nearly every other democracy in the world has accessible money.  To my knowledge, no nation outside of the US that claims to be a free and open society discriminates in this way but, then again, I don’t believe that any other democracy celebrates a genocidal maniac like Andrew Jackson on their currency either.
At least for not being rounded up and forced onto reservations.

I think it’s time for this country to wake up and recognize that people with disabilities have the right to be independent.  I admit that I rarely encounter a time when there isn’t somebody I trust around to identify my money for me.  What is missed, however, are the large number of jobs that require an employee to handle and sort currency.  Given an accessible terminal and accessible money a blink could work as a bank teller, in the counting rooms in Las Vegas and in lots of other cash-based jobs.

I recommend that BC readers write to the Justice Department expressing disgust with their decision to appeal this ruling.  On this matter, I respectfully disagree with my friends at the NFB and I strongly support my friends at ACB, I just wish we could all work together toward the common goals of achieving greater independence for us blinks and other people with disabilities

— End