This post visits topics heavy on web technology, with troubles well beyond vision loss. The previous blog post describes my current reading regime with print disability and technology adaptations. I find common ground with an article in the summer 2008 Atlantic Monthly and assorted blog commentaries bemoaning information overload and discomfort induced by chronic web use. I draw on some related resources from my audio channels of interviews and reviews. The central question is how our plastic brains are reprogrammed by our reading technologies, emphasizing the stresses and joys we find operating in a tug-of-war over what controls our reading lives.

The July-august Atlantic Monthly features an article that asks "Does Google Make Us stupid?" . This title suggests an excursion into declining abilities of critical analysis. Rather, the discussion is the gnawing sense that the structure of interactive media combined with pressures to assimilate lots of online information is actually changing not only reading habits but also brain structure. I found this thesis fascinating from my own experience of deliberately rebuilding my reading life and knowing my brain was re-wiring itself for auditory rather than visual input of words and written thoughts. This is pretty profound stuff.

Ugh, the article’s title itself is kind of stupid, a touch by an editor rather than the article’s author. Indeed, Google is described as a monument to measurement technology in attempting to achieve the best all-around responsiveness to user queries, up to trying to read minds as represented by query histories. That’s a worthy game and has changed the world but is not the crux of the article. The key idea is that a hyperlink from a web page you are reading is not only a reference but a propellant toward action, as Carr describes its effect. In the context of technology that encourages multitasking, impulsiveness, and need to be interlocked with others on myriad networks, hyperlinks could be considered harmful. Note: my hyperlink references are at the bottom of this post.

The phrase ‘XX considered harmful’ is a tradition in computer science, canonized by the late E. W. Dijkstra in a 1968 article where XX was ‘goto’, a programming construct. He argued that the goto statement in languages like the then dominant FORTRAN caused unnecessary errors and difficulties in reasoning about programs. Somebody tracing through the flow of code would encounter a goto then need to branch their thinking into the continuation of line-by-line code flow as well as taking up where the goto said to go. The problem was also at the other end, when reading code, you had little way of knowing what other code might jump there under unknown conditions. This generated a decade of articles and result that showed both theoretically and practically, very few occasions required a literal goto, that more attention to the algorithm led to code better organized using loops, cases, and exceptions. For example, a well designed loop could be replaced by a logic description of the changes made, no matter how the iteration was accomplished. After the ruckus died down, there were improvements in languages, practices, and pedagogy called the age of Structured Programming.

My question here is whether the complaints against the goto and the hyperlink are a useful analogy. Suppose I put a link here to the Atlantic Monthly online website. You might be tempted to stop reading my article right here in order to get to the original context. That’s perfectly legitimate, but will you return to my thought stream or continue branching from the magazine article? or start a whole new thread of interest? Can you hold all the branching structure of your day’s reading in your brain and browser history? This is a cognitive dilemma for both reader and writer, stemming from a simple html element. Our scholastic training to cite sources and to help the reader use hypertext technology to reach the source in an instant causes some grief for all of us.

Carr and others are saying that hyperlink-driven reading is making it more difficult for them to read longer articles in printed or online form and even reducing their ability to read books. Is this a genuine loss of some cognitive ability? or is it just a change in reading habits? In either case, is the effect reversible? As some blog comments suggest, maybe there are other reasons for the expressed discomfort, like burn-out, aging, or natural shifts of interest.

This discussion hit home for me for several reasons. I was a student of hypertext theory in previous career incarnations in the 1980s. Questions then were about types of links, e.g. clarifying, refining, challenging,… To cite one major example, Robert E. Horn elaborated numerous models of hyperlink for different kinds of documentation and uses. Design theorist Horst Rittel evolved the concept of issue-based information systems to address ‘wicked problems’, characterizing difficult social problems requiring intense collaborative analysis. This truly was the golden age of structured Hypertext before the WWW came along and offered goto style hyperlinks to everybody.

For my new reading style using a screen reader, hyperlinks are more often annoyances, as advertising, navigation’s, privacy notices, and 100s of links I never plan to click but must traverse or avoid in order to get to the content of a web page. This means hyperlinks consume personal energy, which may be a partial cause of current reading discomfort. Every inline hyperlink is a decision point - go there? do that now? or later? abandon this article? If we made all these decisions consciously, we would feel even more the personal energy drain. I have learned how loss of visual acuity forces more attention toward energy management to accomplish most reading tasks and to overcome inevitable errors.

Since I went through a period of several months of painful reading, I have a tremendous appreciation for the reading technology I can now use effectively, as discussed in my article on ‘tools, Materials, and strategies for Non-visual reading’. I really did almost lose it, not from attention but from sensory change. I still marvel that my brain can interpret the sounds coming from a synthetic voice and absorb the content as fully as I used to visually, or at least I think so. Wow, a synthetic voice is just a data file and algorithm, but what a difference these make to the print-disabled world!

As I rebuilt my reading skills, I have come to visualize my reading content as mostly a tree of subjects and articles, retrieved primarily by RSS, and represented in text and mp3 files. If I count in a half dozen daily newspapers retrieved by a pipeline of blind services, every day yields easily over 1000 articles, cached or retrieved by wireless. Reading this way, maybe 50 articles a day, is a very well controlled process because the temptation to take a hyperlink is very rare. In other words, my RSS client and News stand control me while I control my web browser. Although my ICON PDA supports hyperlink activation, my decisions are simpler without a browser. Do I read this article or not, based on title and context in the tree? do I read politics blogs now, later, or skip for a while? Which topics are sufficiently intriguing to switch into browsing mode for searching and exploration? When the tree gets disorganized or its retrieval profile changes, how do I reorganize the branches? all this helps reduce context switching and clicking through regions of inactivity. My non-visual reading regime seems to be much more structured than formerly, more focused on textual content than on links and relationships.

Yet, when my Icon Mobile Manager required a 2 week trip for repairs, I rather welcomed the respite from those 1000s of articles. I had to get my news the old-fashioned way, by airwaves on TV or radio, or by visiting websites. I was amazed at how much work I had to put in to set up the feeds and patterns I had evolved over a year with my Icon assistive technology. Upon return home of the Icon, I trimmed out a few feeds that seemed redundant or left over from previous interests, but mainly I place more time limits on my article reading. It also helps to have the Democratic party race out of the way.

Rregarding books, I do tend to skip around much more than in the past. Because I have a rich library of book files to choose from, I am evolving new interests and Reading patterns. I don’t need to feel bad about not finishing a book as it can still reside on my memory card in an out of the way folder. As to concentration, most of my reading is insomniac style or on the road or for book clubs. Hey, maybe that’s what carr and others need is a social book club with a list of questions for reading and discussion — Do guys do that?

Ok, I am starting to ramble here. I have suggested the analogy between ‘goto considered harmful’ and ‘hyperlink considered harmful’. My reading program with controlled separation of RSS delivered material from freestyle web browsing could be dubbed ‘Partially Structured Reading’.I share, indeed I just know, that my brain has adapted to the forced changes of print-disabled reading styles by evolving its own techniques for decision-making, context-switching, and stack management. In my view hyperlinks cause two forms of harm. First, they encourage divergence without the convergence and summarizing techniques that enabled overcoming the analogous ill effects of the goto statement. Second, the current hyperlink HTML element that simultaneously expands and binds the web is a primitive instrument that cannot be used for serious thought without imposing some of the rigor of early hypertext theories, e.g. the purpose of the link.

I’d like to bring up a few more references on this topic from my audio channels and personal experience:.

• Former Microsoft executive Linda Stone has laid out our syndrome of ‘continuous, partial attention’ in a fascinating podcast. She asks the fundamental question: do you really want to live that way?

• A book on ‘distraction’, as interviewed by the wise Diane Rehm on WAMU, details a reform program for teaching attention skills in k-12 to enable a transition from pure information greed to appreciation of facts and policies, e.g. those faced in health care and basic civics.

• Another book on my wish list, mentioned in the Atlantic Monthly article, is ‘Proust and the squid’ by Maryanne wolf. As interviewed on Brain science, points out that reading is not natural but rather highly contextual in culture and the current technology, whether stone tablets or networks. Scientifically, a lot is going on to show how the brain is truly plastic, evolved to rewire for different styles of processing information.

• The ultimate brain deconstruction exercise is that of neuroscientist Jill B. Taylor who witnessed the dissolution of her cognitive and physical abilities during a left brain stroke. She then used her right brain sensitivity to guide her rehabilitation, taking this further to remolding her personality. A wild-ass theory I conceived from her description of the limbic system, the so-called reptilian brain, is that perhaps hyperlinks trigger a fight or flight response that might underlie the discomfort of web surfing - every hyperlink suggests a danger or defensive curiosity, lurking at the end of link. The good news she suggests is that these autonomic responses only lack 90 seconds, after which the more rational or familiar emotional thinking is in control. She reminds us that humans might consider themselves as thinking beins with feelings but rather we are primarily feeling processors which think some times.

• My monthly book club chose ‘The Uncommon Reader’ by British playwright Alan Bennett. This novella traces the Queen’s life style changes from a chance encounter with a mobile reading van, through selections and borrowings of an increased number and variety of reading materials under the tutelage of a Human resource (servant) Norman and the interventions of MBA style queen handler sir Kevin. As the Queen becomes more intrigued with common lives, her relationships with her Duties and supporters changes, discomfiting many whom she interrogates about their reading preferences. Eventually her reading turns into extended reflection expressed in writing and, upsetting everything, a full blown urge to compose a book. While humorous, the novella asks many more serious questions. How does anybody gain or lose in total life experiences from their reading patterns? what does it mean to one’s colleagues to have an active reading program, and also be open about it? To oneself, what are my selection criteria for books, characters, plots? Is reading books an optional life activity or an ingrained part of one’s personality and character? would this royal opsimath enjoy wikipedia and Google?

what these studies lack, I suggest, is investigation into the non-visual ways of working, based in visual memories, alternative styles of work, and so-called assistive tools.

References with Hyperlinks

Here come the hyperlinks!

1. ‘Does Google Make Us stupid?’ by Nicholas carr in July-August 2008 Atlantic Monthly online
2. Nicholas carr’s blog ‘rough type’
3. As Your world changes blog posting on ‘tools, Materials, and strategies for non-visual reading’, posted June 15 2008>
4. Robert E. Horn’s work on Hypertext theory
5. Wicked Problems and Issue-based Information Systems from Wikipedia
6. ‘considered harmful’ background in Wikipedia
7. Interview on ‘distraction and democracy’ by Diane Rehm on June 8 2008 for book ‘Distracted: The Erosion of Attention’ by Maggie Jackson.
8. ‘Proust and the Squid’ book by Maryanne Wolf as reviewed by Ginger Campbell on Brain science Podcast #24 and #29
9. Podcast speech by Linda stone on ‘continuous partial attention’
10. ‘My Stroke of Insight’ by neuroscientist Jill B. Taylor
11. Novella ‘The ncommon Reader’ by Alan Bennett, available on bookshare.org
12. Shrink Rap Radio Live #10 psychologists’ reflection
13. opsimath definition - one who learns late in life

    Synthetic speech reading of this post

This post describes how this vision Loser reads on a daily basis. sighted readers of this blog should gain some insight into alternative ways technology delivers what you read visually on printed pages or screens. Those now in transition with vision loss can get a snapshot of a specific combination of reading technology, web delivery systems, and kinds of reading materials.

I consider myself an effective reader at this point in my vision loss. Three years ago I would have had no way of describing how I would be reading now. Partially, this was from the inability to know how my sensory apparatus would be working. For the record, I see pages where the text is mostly smudges. Computer screens have reasonably clear outlines with text that can be enlarged on a monitor or text size setting but remains often more like those irritating CAPTCHA boxes, all wobbly and sliced up. Partial sight can be minimally used by magnification, contrast, and eccentric viewing but for any reasonable way of consuming information, one must step over into the audio world. That means a screen reader or self-voiced reading devices, all using synthetic speech. After 2 years of hard work, a lot of technology evaluation, and countless hours of practice, the audio world now seems natural. I have no problem reconciling myself with this way of reading for the rest of my life, trusting that my hearing and hands will not give out on me.

Another reason I would not have been able to predict how I read now, in 2008, is that several products I use constantly had yet to be invented in 2005. Processing power, miniaturization, wireless, and blind-driven inventiveness have produced a stable of devices that complement the PC (or MAC, whatever).

• The Levels tar Icon is a screen-less Linux hand-held that reads all its menus and text as I cycle through email, news, and web content. The Mobile Manager hand-held fits into a docking station with keyboard and augmented speakers, power, and ports. I use the Icon for email by pop3 from gmail, occasional recordings,RSS feeds of news and podcasts, web browser, and special access to books and newspapers.
• The American Printing House for the blind book port is another hand-held box with its only user interface a keypad, requiring ear buds or external speakers. Its memory card is loaded from a PC with books, mp3 files, and text. The book port is designed for easy navigation through books and its file systems. Like the Icon, it can also record memos. The APH book port is currently available only used, as the upgrade is having manufacturing problems. I use the book port primarily for books and lengthy synthetic spoken versions of files. A competitor Humanware victor reader stream offers similar reading capabilities, but I have never become comfortable with its navigation techniques, primarily just not my way of working.
• The latest marvel of reading technology is the > Kurzweil NFB reader that has shrunk the scanner-OCR-reader architecture onto the Nokia N82 platform. well, it could be used also to make phone calls if attached to a phone service. This little guy is great for on-the-fly reading like room service menus, TSA notices stuffed in your luggage, mail, and printed pages lying around. one of the greatest frustrations of print disability is the difficulty of performing normal inter-human transactions where a sighted person hands you a business card or information sheet or agenda and you need that information to take the next step toward your goal. Another frustration is the profusion of junk materials surrounding the little piece of critical action, like amount to pay on a bill, but that’s where family members can be called upon. The KNFB Reader illustrates Kurzweil’s mantra that exponentiality dominates lineariy , urging us to think about potentially using far more computing power to overcome our neural deficiencies.
• The NVDA screen reader , discussed in earlier posting on selection of NVDA , is my PC work horse. It shows amazingly high quality and functionality for a young product, deriving from its free, open source origins driven by a generation of blind tech savvy developers and users seeking an alternative to the proprietary screen readers forged into the rehab-industrial complex. Note: I donate to NVAccess. Unless you need specialized scripts for complex or barely accessible products, such as many enterprise data management systems, NVDA will do well, especially in conjunction with Mozilla products.
• Another supporting tool necessary for full reading is the Kurzweil 1000 for simplifying and managing scanners, which may have inaccessible and photo-oriented interface managers. Scanned material for submission to a service like Bookshare.org requires considerable editing that is well supported in K1000. I used the K1000 for general editing and spell checking as well as scanner management. Note that the K1000 has its own nice self-voicing practice to assist its operations and editing.

So, that’s all new technology I’ve learned in the past 2 years, ranging from my Identity cane to a suite of talking devices.

What about the representation of the reading materials and where to they come from?

Of course, we are all familiar with humanly recorded audio books, basically a long stream of bits, possibly with some embedded strings that reader technology can identify as section or information markers. The blindnd-serving organizations like NLS (National Library service) has long provided human narrators, recording media, reading tools, and a library coordinated distribution system. I personally have not tapped into this because the NLS format has only recently become available on the Icon, and, besides, I have a little problem with its paperwork to get myself certified. audible.com is the commercial system integrated with book port and soon the Icon, but I have yet to find the book that compels me to subscribe.

The core technology for representing reading materials is XML, for extended markup Language, in the family of HTML for web pages. Text files have human or automatically added tags, like <title>,which the reader tool interprets for the user, which could be another computer or a human. A special version, DAISY (Digital Accessible Information System) is the interchange format for books. I get most of my books from bookshare.org which uses a copyright exemption to allows volunteers and publishers to contribute texts for distribution to members certified with a print disability who agree not to distribute further, but with free choice of reading tools and locations of materials. For me, this meant I could rebuild my personal library faster than I could donate or throw away my printed books.

The beauty of the bookshare distribution system was immeasurably enhanced by the Icon’s integration of a book search and download capability. If I hear about a New York Times best seller , a classic or a Reader’s choice, I can pull up the Icon book search by title or author, automatically log on to bookshare, download the book, if available, and start reading — in about a minute! Of course, if the book is not available, I can look for an audio at the public library or a commercial service or get a printed copy to scan. Indeed, I am now contributing books selected by my monthly AAUW book club, which takes several hours of work as I learn to expedite scanning and editing with the Kurzweil 1000 system. But it’s gratifying to know this process offers good readings to thousands more people like me. I carry my entire library on my easy reading Book Port categorized as Fiction, Biography, etc. and can also search these books in full text format. This pipeline of easily retrieved and stored books has truly broadened my reading choices with more than enough entertainment, enlightenment, and information.

What about all those mass scanned book collections by Google, amazon, Microsoft, etc.? And those PDF e-books? too bad, most of these are not available to me, or very hard to use. The popular Gutenberg and Google book search do provide out-of-copyright materials, but I personally rarely need these. And, as I commented in post on “seeing through Google book search” , I am limited in my research by the image-only presentation of pages from a book search. While PDF is a nearly universal viewable distribution format, the adobe Acrobat reader is always changing its read out loud capabilities, insists on updating itself every use, and generally makes me feel out of sorts, like “when good technologies go bad”, with apologies to the adobe co-founder who was my grad school office mate. PDF accessibility is such a mixed bag, I just convert all PDF files to TXT and live with what I can get out of the results using the Icon, book port, or screen reader. My pet peeve is the need to convert PDF newsletters into TXT when the content could just as well been delivered as the more easily readable HTML. Like many other people, I thought I could buy an ebook and apply a synthetic voice reader but this mode of distribution is verboten by DRM (Digital Rights Management).

Whew, this is getting long, as I inventory my reading experience, but here some the happier parts.

As my vision faded so I could no longer read newsprint comfortably, I kept my NY Times subscription to retain access to the website. I learned to find the sections of interest, like Editorials and business, and navigate a link path while reading the articles I wanted by the Text Aloud browser toolbar. Ouch, was this cumbersome! Now, I use the NFB Newswire newspaper delivery service offered in the bookshare membership and facilitated by the Icon News Stand application. With one “get new issues” click, I have not only the NY times, but also wall street Journal, Washington Post, San Francisco chronicle, economist, New Yorker, and more. All are structured for reading by publication, issue, section, title, and text. this means I can scan and selectively reads 100s of pages of newsprint in a half hour, an unpredictable benefit of print disability. Of course, there’s a down side to news reading in that my local newspaper uses a convoluted content management system that seems to split every article into paragraphs that intertwine with advertisements and obituaries. Luckily, there is an RSS that delivers titles and a city feed that offers more official news, but I have yet to find a way to keep up on local events, even using the radio. This is one of the gaping holes in the information infrastructure for print disabled readers. I avidly track Jon Udell’s blog on strategies for Internet citizens for improving community networked information.

Along the lines of the DAISY representation for books is the RSS (real simple syndication) format for feeds that deliver articles and podcasts. This is the key technology for the rest of most of my reading, with over 80 feeds in my Icon RSS client. These bring CNN, Inside Higher Ed, science daily, slate, and many more magazine and news headline style materials. These are complemented by my evolved collection of news, recreational, and technical podcasts. While I really do not know what I am missing, I am thoroughly comfortable that I am keeping up with technology trends through itconversations.com with its interviews with innovators, technation, IEEE spectrum, etc. Rarely is a podcasts a time-waster and I feel myself obligated to listen to keep up. Similarly, a judicious selection of blogs help me track what’s going on in my areas of interest, including accessibility, podcasting media, and, especially this year,politics.

Two cool things about RSS are the ability to hierarchically structure feeds and to exchange feeds among readers. If you want mine, here’s susan’s reading sources , a file that can be imported into your choice of RSS reader or cribbed from in a text editor. Since all navigation in the Icon RSS reader is within a tree, I have a hierarchy of News into general, technology, Politics, and science categories, then further in places into trees of blog or other special content. Since feed updating is time consuming, maybe half an hour, the tree structure allows updating only a single feed or group of feeds, e.g. if I need a politics fix late on a Tuesday primary day. Of course, I also have several mailing lists with associated folders in the Icon email client, keeping up on mdsupport.org,book port, bookshare, NVDA, and icon user discussion lists.

How progressive are these reading tools? I have been an Internet user since around 1970s. Indeed I found myself on the mailing list of the very first spam message 30 years ago. I subscribed to and made some embarrassing posts in Usenet groups and mailing lists in the 1980s and 1990s and had my first web page around 1993. To me, this surfeit of information is a natural progression. However, when my beloved Icon had to go to the shop for repair, I realized how important were the advances of the past year. I found the web-based RSS readers clumsy and never did get any setup comparable to my Icon trees, menus, and quick read articles.

To be provocative, I estimate my reading productivity now, compared to a few years ago, as about 10:1 in retrieving content available via Internet, wireless, RSS and other clients. Once retrieved, I feel about a 10:1 gain in ability to scan, filter, selectively read or listen to the content. Of course, I cannot get everything I need and occasionally rev up the Icon or PC firefox web browser for searching and surfing. I’ll discuss my feelings about information overload and reading habits and brain plasticity in the companion post on “Hyperlinks considered Harmful”.

One of the greatest benefits of exploiting vision loss and using these reading tools is that advertising fades into the noise. Given the current economic model for most information services, this makes me a lousy consumer. Well, too bad, I really would like to kick in for a low-cost subscription, say $10, but do not have that opportunity. I’d like to pay $3 for each book I read with funds to the author and publisher, like is occurring for music. But my guilt is assuaged by taking every opportunity to tell in person and virtually about resources I like in hopes that enough people will click the ad links and buy the resources directly. And, much as I love my reading tools, losing vision is costly, nearly $10k for the above tools.

so, you still fully sighted readers should now have a sense of how one vision Loser has replenished her reading vessels with forms of content, like DAISY, and tools that you never heard of and would consider primitive compared to iPhones and quicktime. But, if my claim of 10:1 increased retrieval and 10:1 improved reading hold true, this step over into the audio world is hardly a loss of reading capability. Limited access to certain kinds of material are offset by opportunities to access special content not available to the sighted world, like the bookshare library and the NFB NewsLine.

For those losing vision, as I have for three years, I urge you to begin tapping into this audio world sooner than your denial and hopes might lead you. Try using a free screen reader and audio conversion tools and get used to gaining more information by audio whenever you feel discomfort with your eyeballs glued to your screens. I hope this article assures you there are many ways to adapt your reading styles to meet your needs, and even to find gains you never dreamed of. You might visit a disability services department at a local university or an assistive technology demo exhibit hall. But beware, that the rehab and disability services personnel are themselves grappling with technology learning curves and are locked into vendor distribution practices that lag behind some of the tools I advocate in this blog. A good starting point, whatever your level of sightedness, are the user stories in nextup.com text to speech blog

For More Information on Assistive Technology

• collection of podcasts on non-visual reading tools featuring the Levelstar Icon training materials plus a variety of demos ranging from the KNFBReader at a restaurant to talking alarm clocks.
• Additional assistive technology reports appear regularly on ACB Radio Main Menu
• AFB Access World magazine reviews a variety of tools in text format
• our recordings of screen reading and synthetic voices illustrate the Icon and NVDA readers, plus demonstrations of browsing and writing
• ‘Singing DECTalk’ mash-ups of synthetic voices

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This post offers a way of searching for more diverse and analytic results using a simple web form interface to Google. This approach is especially useful when you are looking for a second opinion, evidence, or authorities on topics like we sometimes face with vision loss. It can also make querying and searching more efficient for our weary fingers by slicing off less useful results from searches. Please give it a try and let me know if it improves your searching.

First, some background. My recent Retinal Specialist appointment provoked my curiosity as my Myopic Macular Degeneration (MMD) seems to have stabilized. I have been wondering about origins and distributions of this condition, as I have only met other MMD people on the more comprehensive Macular Degeneration mdsupport.org earlier post. There’s always a sliver of hope for improvement, possibly from research driven out of the U.S. by stem cell policies. And, always, looms the now effective intervention of repair surgery or injections for retinal detachments or so-called “wet” conditions.

Time to update myself, so I go to Google and find the usual results for the query "myopic macular degeneration". Top results are mostly generic overviews "MMD is related to AMD", but I also find a lengthy Myopic Manual.

Fourteen years of searching has taught me I might need to go quite fa r down the Google results list to get into more in-depth discussions. I really wanted to know about the controversies, debates, arguments, and even spats in the related field of ophthalmology, genetics, nutrition etc. So, why not just add the word "controversy" to the query. Indeed, I see different results, but why stop there? Speaking linguistically, and assuming Google is fairly literal, I might want to use variations such as "controversial" or "controversies". Then the thesaurus adds synonyms such as "debate", "argument", "disagreement", and many more, each with variants. Now, I also want supporting material so I might ask for "evidence”, “proof”, “hypotheses”, “opinion” and all these variants. This is a lot of decision making on synonyms and support and variant, typing each and saving for reading those interesting results.

Primarily, I am getting deeper and faster into the subject matter. Is there a better way to query Google to achieve these goals? Well, yes, as I tried 5 years ago and dubbed the Controversy Discovery Engine. Go ahead and try it. Type your query into the search box, choose a controversy synonym, optionally select a kind of support, and hit the button. Your embellished query will be sent to Google, asking for 50 results. That’s all there is to it. You might or might not get better results than your hand-crafted queries but at least you now have a lot of packaged queries with just a few extra clicks.

Why do I claim this approach often works better? Well, driven by curiosity, I performed an empirical study on "Do Search Engines Suppress Controversy?" that was published in First Monday January 2004 online. Now, it’s not that search engines or search engineers have political agendas, but rather just an effect of the link popularity strategy that makes Google search work so well. The web splits into an Organizational web which links the promoters, explainers, and associations for a topic apart from the Analytic Web that includes scholarly papers, blogs, white papers, individuals, etc. The Organizations link among each other and people link to organizations more than the Analytic Web pages are linked to from the Organizational Web or within the Analytic Web. This pushes controversies down the list of search results. Usually controversies are hard to name in queries and you need to know the controversy exists by some name to query for it.

For example, one controversial aspect of Albert Einstein was whether the first wife he dumped had contributed rather more to his research career than was acknowledged. Query for "Albert Einstein AND Mileva Maric" and, voila, the controversy is revealed in various levels of details and with arguments on both sides of the story. Bet you didn’t know that! Using a synonym for controversy raises pages that discuss his personal life and produce the names, like Serbian physicist Mileva Maric, for additional searches. This particular revelation ebbs and flows with the tide of publications on his work and life. So, our approach is to use the language of human endeavors that involve research and the give-and-take of the intellectual marketplace to morph our searches more into the Analytic Web.

More seriously, for medical conditions, people facing surgical decisions want all and the most authoritative information they can get as fast as it can be found. So we offer the Controversy Discovery Engine as a kind of “second opinion” information seeker. Please provide feedback and suggestions to slger123@gmail.com. This web page may also be modified for similar uses with appropriate link and acknowledgement. If you’re intrigued with this topic, which won me the proverbial 15 minutes of fame in the blogosphere, read the paper and its five examples: St. John’s Wort, female astronauts, Albert Einstein, Belize, and distance learning. For the real search gurus, the software instrument used in this experiment, dubbed twURL, is available for licensing.

For visually impaired readers, here is a bit more advice. The web page has four form elements with the search query edit box at the top and submit button at the bottom and two list boxes with multi-selection in between for synonyms and support. You can multi-select from the list or select NONE as the last list item. Remember to turn on the virtual buffer in a screen reader to type in the query and select from the lists. Using sight, you might want to pump up the text size using your browser, e.g. Control + in Firefox. If you use this page a lot and know how to edit HTML, save the page and customize its style to your taste.

So, nothing to lose and possibly lots to gain, check out the Controversy Discovery Engine at http://apodder.org/ControversyDiscoveryEngine.html and let me know how it works for you.

One reason for starting this blog was to regain my writing skills. This post describes my personal techniques for writing while using a screen reader and other assistive tools. A suite of recorded mp3 files illustrate some steps in rewriting and expanding the previous post on Identity Cane.

Most of this post assumes a state of experience comparable to mine three years ago before I became print-disabled. It was hard then to know what questions to ask to prepare myself. I bumbled through using the TextAloud reading application which enabled me to write well enough while I could control the lighting around my PC and begin to experiment with alternative screen reader packages. Unfortunately, I had some truly humbling experiences trying to edit rapidly at review panel meetings with overhead lights bearing down, voices all around, and a formidable web-based panel review system. Following the edict "Do no harm" I recognized a challenge of physical, cognitive, and technological dimensions. I had to admit I was professionally incompetent when it came to writing, ouch!

The basic questions?

• What are my accuracy versus speed trade-offs? And, how do I manage them?
• What tools do I need? And, how do I teach them to myself?
• How must I change my writing style? What are the new rules of ‘writing by ear’

If you are not sure how this writing process is working, listen to me writing some text using the NVDA screen reader.

The Accuracy Versus Speed Tradeoff is intrinsic to writing. How fast do you record your thoughts, accepting some level of typing and expression errors, with separate clean-up edits and rewrites? If I type very fast, I make more errors but am better able to record the thoughts and even establish a "flow" mental state. Writing more slowly allows corrections of wording, punctuation, and spelling but risks loss of thread and discouragement from a feeling of slowed progress.

Writing and editing are very different cognitive tasks complicated by operating primarily in listening mode. The input and output parts of the brain must operate together. A document filled with typos is pure agony to correct, causing a cascade of further errors and often destroying the structure of the whole document. One twitch in a edit can remove more than a letter, even a line, sentence, or paragraph. In "computational thinking" terms, the trade-off is to design the interactions of two concurrent processes that interleave events and actions to produce a document with an optimal amount of errors to be removed by even more processing involving editing tools.
I tried several drafting techniques. Writing in long hand notes, outlines, and snippets had worked for 40 years but I could no longer read my hand-writing. Recording into my Icon PDA helped organize my thoughts and extract some pithy phrases from my brain. As my memory has improved to take over former vision-intensive tasks, I have found it possible to mentally compose a paragraph at a time then hold it together long enough to type into the word processor.

What are tools for writing by ear?

Writing without looking requires several tools, with my choices discussed below:

• Compositional, for typing, formatting as needed, and editing
• Spell checker, possibly a style or grammar checker
• Previewer to present the written results as they will be read by sighted, partially sighted, and blind readers
• Speech tools to read while typing and editing, as well as presentation of the written result
• Voices to capture alternative audio presentations of written results, as well as feedback on style and tone

My personal process is:

• Compose in mostly text with minimal HTML markup using Windows NotePad;
• Use the NVDA screen reader for key and word echo, with punctuation announcement off then on;
• Copy text into the K1000 tool, applying its fabulous spell checker, listen for errors and speaking flaws using its self-voicing reader, and copy back to Notepad;
• Listen in several voices, including both female and male, for flaws and nuance of style;
• Preview in a browser, Mozilla Firefox,to grasp whatever I can see on a large screen and to check links;
• Copy into wordpress blog editor.

The obviously best choice for writing is the word processor most

familiar to the writer. However, criteria may change as vision degrades. The spell checker may not have visible choices and may not announce its fields to a screen reader. Excess interface elements and functionality can get in the way. Upgrades and transition to a new computer may demand new software purchases. After years of Microsoft Word and Netscape HTML Composer, I finally settled on the combination of Windows Notepad and Kurzweil 1000. The trickiest feature of the ubiquitous Notepad is "word wrap" for lines with veray few other ways for a writer to screw up a document. Since I write HTML for my website and blog, using Notepad avoid temptations of fancy pages by not using WYSIWYG. Also Notepad never nags for licenses discount deals, and upgrades,

.
On the upscale side, I needed a scanner manager for books and Other printed stuff. The Kurzweil education Systems 1000 offers not only scanner wrappers but also several word processor features. One is a beautiful spell checker to read context, spell the word,offer alternatives all using its own self-voiced interface. Listen to me and the K1000 spell checker. I also like having a reader with alternative word pronunciation, pausing, and punctuating. However, I occasionally lost text due to lock-up and unpredictable file operations, so I opted for the universal, simple Notepad for composition.

As discussed in NVDA screen reader choice posting, I do not use the conventional expensive screen readers in favor of a free, open source wonder the I expect to rule the future of assistive technology. NVDA allows me to switch among voices, choose key and word echo, and degree of punctuation announced.

Writing and reading by listening has surprising consequences. First, it strongly differentiates sighted readers from those listening who will probably not hear the colon you use to start a list of clauses separated by semi-colons. Second documents must be read multiple times, with and also without punctuation announcements. It is difficult to concentrate on the sentences when every comma, quotation, and dash is read. And it is necessary to hear every apostrophe and other punctuation to locate extraneous as well as missing items.

Another suite of editing tools are synthetic voices, which may come as a surprise to many sighted as well as newly unsighted writers and readers. Synthetic voices have dictionaries of pronunciations but inevitably screw up in certain contexts. Is that "Dr." a street or an educational degree title? Is "St. Louis" the city with a saint or a street? is 2 the numeral like two spelled out or too as in also? No matter your screen reader settings and data, your readers may differ. Well, some of this can be tweaked but generally my attitude has been to just live with quirks.

Synthetic voices offer an even more powerful editing feature unknown to most sighted writers. The excellent researcher Clifford Nass" "Wired for Speech" tell how our brains react differently to gender, ethnic, age, personality, and other features of synthetic voices. Even if we know the voice is only a data file, we still confer more authority to male voices and react negatively to perceived aggressive female voices. This allows editors with synthetic voices to identify phrases with a tone that might be perceived as weak, over-bearing, age-related, or introverted. Don’t believe me? Listen to examples of male and female voices.

Note to sighted writers: you might also find these techniques assistive for finding typos, checking style, and evaluating the forcefulness of your writing. Nothing says you have to be visually impaired to try writing by listening.

Changes in Style with vision loss

When I write my blog, I must address both sighted and unsighted readers. Sighted people see a dull page of text, while people listening to the page or using magnifiers or contrast themes may react differently to a posting on a myriad of textual, graphical, and audible facets. Much of this out of my control as I cannot see the appearance of my pages in your browser, nor do I know if you are listening in a browser or an RSS client. Also, your speech settings, if any, may differ from mine in speed, dictionary, gender and more. .

A very insightful article on writing for accessibility points out the ill effects of complex sentence structures, reliance on punctuation, expectations of emphasis, and unawareness of the span of settings possible on the end users side.
Now, in my technical and business writing days, I was the "queen of convoluted sentences". I just never understood what was wrong with sub-sentences (as long as the sentence parsed ok); rather, I thought it a mark of quality. Whoops, there I did it again. I used a parenthetical phrase that might not be read with parentheses around it. And I relied on a semi-colon to separate sentences. Sorry about that, I’m working hard on this. But, there I made another mistake. I used a contraction which synthetic voices have trouble pronouncing “I’m” when I could say "I am". Abbreviations are also problematic. Should I say ER or E.R. or "Emergency Room’? This is giving me a headache.

The strongest lesson about compensating for vision loss is that ‘Complexity really hurts’. Overly complex things, whether physical or informational, cause accidents and invoke recovery methods. All this wastes precious physical energy. It is easy to be discourage when tasks that could be performed before vision loss are now too expensive in energy or time. But, conversely, I can now see complexity for what is, usually bad design. And, on the brighter side, once the source of complexity is identified, there may be a work-around, a simplification, or a suggestion for a better design. All this conscious adjustment of expression practices may actually be good training for aging more gracefully. Sigh.

Recordings to Illustrate Writing by Listening

The following recordings accompany this posting. Mp3 files may download or launch a player, depending on your browser and computer settings.

1. 
   Listen to me writing shows the screen reader speaking text in Notepad as written and revised.

2. 
   Spell checking and listening in K1000

3. 
   Listening in several synthetic voices for gender and other differences

4. Audio version of this and other posts

I am just coming off 2 months of travel to events in differing capacities as professional reviewer, accessibility spokesperson, disability consumer, and general traveler. After two years of legal blindness, I am still feeling like an immigrant in a new culture. I retain strong memories of my past ways of work and interpersonal interaction, but I am now beginning to understand the culture of disability. This transition has been marked by my adoption of the Identity Cane as a frequent companion as I navigate my hazy world.

The Identity Cane is a slim white cane intended not for robust walking assistance but rather to let others know its carriers are visually impaired. There are a few issues here.

First, consider robustness of the instrument. Mine, costing about $20, folds nicely and is quite light. It is good for poking at curbs and sidewalk spots that look like holes or ridges. But it is not for tapping or waving, as would be learned in a mobility training regime. One tangle with a fire hydrant or bicycle and this pole will be a pile of sticks. However, compared to other physical gadgets that seem to break for no reason, this fold-up item is holding up well.

The Identity Cane is meant to be a signal to passersby, service people, and new acquaintances that you have vision difficulties where they might help you. The other day, at an intersection, another street crosser seeing my cane just stated loudly "ok, time to cross", not knowing whether I could see him or how much help I needed. Airport personnel are alert to the cane to offer assistance to find elevators or check-in counters. A white cane can also gain more polite and helpful responses when you ask a stranger "where is the Saint Michael Hotel?" while standing directly in front of its sign.

However, this little pole is no badge of invincibility. Drivers on cell phones are just as likely to run over you whatever you are carrying, although the cane can be waved to possibly attract attention. Airport T.S.A. check-ins are variable, with some monitors wanting to stuff your cane onto the conveyor or into a box or frisk for objects planted on the blind lady. To my surprise, nobody ever asked when I went through security with my soon-to-expire Drivers License in one hand and a white cane in the other. A cane can help remind flight attendants you might need extra help but it might also enlist an unwanted wheel chair rather than a walking escort, if needed at all.

For me, the Identity Cane is an important reminder that I am partially sighted. I do not use it on my exercise walks along a regular route, but elsewhere it tells me "slow down, watch out for decorative stones that might send me to the Emergency Room, look for exit doors that might set off sirens, remember I can ask for help, never take a short-cut, generally behave like a person who cannot see everything".

Yes, it was really hard to get used to carrying the cane as an Identity. What if people think I am blind? Well, duh, Susan, remember your priorities - safety is paramount, energy is consumed by covering up, and relationships are hard enough without the ambiguity of a disability.

But it is not really that simple to clarify the cane’s meaning if you are partially sighted. Having covered up my condition for 5 years with an uncomfortable employment situation, I became very good at navigating and acting normal. Except when I tripped or ran into something. Then I looked clumsy. Or when I skipped an event that was hard to handle for transportation or dining reasons,, I appeared unsociable or shirking. This is getting into more aspects of the culture of disability, where adopting the cane is an admission of vocational difference, a more than symbolic transformation of identity that demands organizational change in work or community groups.

Since low vision is a relatively rare occurrence condition the Identity Cane is a strong signal in the noise of everyday life. Never in my career had I seen a blind woman at a professional event, so my cane carrying at recent working gigs has probably been most unusual for other attendees. That is especially good for computing professionals to remind them that low vision is not just for their grandparents but also is part of the working conditions for someone performing the same tasks as them. If only it could also raise their curiosity to learn more about assistive technology, the afflictions of their students, the A.D.A. regulations they wish away, and the prevalence of accessibility issues.

For me, the Identity Cane is a badge of education, not only within my profession but also in the community that suffers from lack of low vision services. Visually impaired people may appear less often in public leading to a circle of ignorance. City fathers think "we do not need to pay for accessible street crossing when nobody blind wants to cross" — but no sane blind person would risk their life at the intersection. This makes the Identity Cane a symbol of activism as well as a protective measure.

In summary, the cane used only for Identity is a strong force for overcoming vision adjustment resistance, personally, professionally, and for the wider public.

Here is an example product description of an Identity Cane from Lighthouse San Francisco

Note: in the U.K. the general term is “Symbol Cane” . See also Podcasts discussing and illustrating functional white cane use for mobility

Well, we were moving right along with my 2007 taxes, ready to download the state form, and ran into a TurboTax gotcha.

I set my PCs in High Contrast theme with a dark background, cuts down the brightness for when I can see the screen. “High contrast” is one of the standard changes made by the very helpful Windows Accessibility Wizard and is probably used by 10000s of low vision ppeople, as well as many sighted looking for a more restful background. Apparently, TurboTax download for state forms was not tested in this configuration as a nasty error message came up at the start of the transition to state form mode, usually a piece of cake compared to the federal form.

The recommended change to a “classic” or non-contrast theme did not solve the problem, namely a failure of a Continue button to appear. Nor is the intuit recommendation, to “well, just make a slight change in your system” trivial, as it’s easy to screw up Display properties and also can be very hard to change back to High Contrast staring into a painfully bright screen. Sorry, intuit, that’s not fair And it didn’t work, anyway. Now, there is a free state CD on its way to me, responding to an 800 number, but not likely to get here before April 15. We did finish my taxes by moving to another household computer, and would have appreciated knowing of this pitfall to install there first. Thanks, again, intuit, for the advanced warning.

So, this is a pretty egregious screw-up by a major vendor, probably due to some combination of poor specification, lax qA, unfamiliarity with accessibility settings, and not many visually impaired testers in the intuit world.

Of course, I wasn’t trying to do my taxes alone, but rather to avail myself of some in-house teenagers with fast fingers to enter the data I compiled and explained to them. Indeed, I use tax preparation as a way to impart some financial lessons, explaining terminology, re-inforcing “income vs. expenses”, and, unfortunately, occasionally demonstrating confusion from lapses in record-keeping. This extra glitch didn’t help our family morale at all, nearing 90% done, and ready to move on to more fun activities.

I’d be interested in hearing from other visually impaired people:

• Anybody else run into this intuit QA mess?
• Anybody have any recommendations for an accessible tax program for next year?
• Are there other software packages that have a bias against “high contrast” like this one, obscuring a single crucial button or operation?
• Oh, wow, wouldn’t a flat tax be nice?

Reference: google search ‘turbotax “high contrast” state form”

TurboTax Buttons Don’t Show in Firefox Browser - TurboTax Customer care …
TurboTax - Income Taxes, Tax Preparation and Tax s

Turbotax at intuit.com

This posting lists several good and bad examples of web accessibility and usability situations in an instructive sense, including recorded sessions of this intrepid logger guiding her web page readers.

Background Postings and Standards

• WAI-aria proposals for accessible-rich web next generation technologies;
• webaxe accessibility blog for typical accessibility engineering principles;
• SXSW Interactive Media conference presentation’s> on accessibility issues and enterprise approaches
• Previous posting: “are Missing, Muddle Use cases the cause of much web inaccessibility

recurring Problems that are easily fixed

1. Problem: useless links click Here — huh, for what?
   

   
   The unfortunate user must expend extra energy to read surrounding context to find what the click is for. This mistake usually indicates poor communication skills and lack of testing using a screen reader. variations include: Learn More, read more, and the especially illuminating here. similarly, a document may be identified then followed by its type a line like PDF or HTML or size 5 MB. >
   

   
   Recommendation: Page content writers should read out loud the list of links by screen reader or by eye scanning and assure clarity where each link leads. And there is no excuse for not using a screen reader with the nvda, free, open source, easily installed screen reader .

2. Problem: blog postings blocked by links — when good blogs go bad.
   

   
   conventional web layouts contain site navigation, rolls of links to related content, meta data about site and author, news, etc. screen readers follow a left upper corner, top, left, order that forces reading or bypassing links to reach actual page content, which sighted readers look for in the middle of a page. a repeat visitor rarely has interest in these links. blog and other content management systems usually provide a choice of page layout Reading a links-first blog format takes up screen reader time, even with a jump to heading. More disastrously, an RSS client often receives all the links on a text version of a posting, taking a minute or more to read before content, making some blogs effectively unbearable in RSS format.
   

   
   Recommendation: Design pages and choose layouts to favor quick access to recurring content, placing honorific stuff right and below what your main page matter.

   
   

   
   Examples: two of my favorite tech blogs, Good example: Jon Udell blog and Bad example: Phil windley’s technometria.

3. Problem: Learning the structure of a page — it’s the headings, stupid!
   

   
   we all know to sprinkle headings through our documents to break into and describe sections, even applying this to bills and forms. for a screen reader user, headings provide the primary way of moving among sections, often preceded by an exploratory “heading tour” to identify the page sections ahead. without sections, the screen reader’s finer detail units are links, lists, and paragraphs, but this rapidly degenerates into interminable tabs and keystrokes like taking steps into a cave without knowing where the path will lead. conversely, a well-sectioned document also broken into pages can be very rapidly browsed with a screen reader, perhaps even faster than a scrolling sighted reader. can cover graphics and font styles. Chunks of text can be skipped for more detailed reading later. Nothing substitutes for having a sense of the page’s structure in outline form.
   

   
   Recommendation: Make sure all page sections are well described by HTML H1, H2, H3,… headings with informative descriptions. Now, is that so hard?
   

   
   Example’s href=”http://sxsw.com”> Good example: sxsw.com program organized by days and topic’s> and Good Example: browsing wai-aria documentation

4. Problem: switchingfrom browser to an external app — .txt imprisoned in .doc or .pdf
   

   
   Browsers are now integrated with external applications like Microsoft word or adobe PDF. but that meanss a screen reader user must first launch that app, and, of course, MS OFFICE is not free! reading the document involves a different set of keystrokes and conventions with PDF often losing any previous document structure. Ironically, frequently, the document being read is little more than text any way! This vision Loser simply saves DOC or PDF and then strips the document down to TXT for reading in Notepad or on an external reader like APH Bookport or Levelstar Icon. With gratitude, another path is google search “View as HTML” and HTML save As in mobile gmail. This argument also applies to mail attachment — imprisoning text memos in a WORD format attachment requires a lot of extra work by a visually impaired recipient, and “click on attachment” is often a security risk.
   

   
   Recommendation: Web authors should save a version of a document as HTML and Make that a primary link, offering a PDF for portability (that’s the P in PDF). HTML is the document format that literate web writers should be using, e.g. to exploit hyperlinks, and not at all the private domain of web designers and New Media or IT departments. Strictly speaking any PDF should be produced in accessible format for extensive reading.

More complicated web accessibility Problems

1. Problem: Locked out of the chat room — social Media Overkill.
   

   
   recently, one of my favorite podcasters started live chat sessions with call-in. I wanted to ask a question and join in so showed up at the web page at the appointed time, having pre-registered and browsed the site the day before. Uh, oh, I couldn’t find an entry point, didn’t even know what I was looking for. worse yet, an audio had started playing - was that the current session? No, it was prerecorded, drowning out my screen reader with no way of silencing the cacophony. Eeventually I waded through a ton of links to other shows, popular podcasters, special offers and found a PLAY button. Now, all this with a screen reader contending with an audio discussion, and then the text chat was completely inaccessible to the screen reader. well, that podcaster lost a fan’s admiration for choosing BlogTalkRadion as a meeting place uncomfortable for me. The key problem was that the main purpose — to bring people together — was obscured by the now socially acceptable business practice of trying to draw attention to other podcasts and \shows - current, popular, categories, rated, which we term “social media over-kill”.
   The irony is that the blind and visually impaired communities have superior chat facilities, as exemplified by accessible world.org, built on Talking communities supporting happily chatting friends of Bookshare book club meetings.

   
   Recommendation: when choosing a hosting service, check out its accessibility policy, not just how free it might be, if you want to retain your whole audience and its respect. service providers, please write and follow an accessibility policy and stress its use to service users. service providers, content management system designers, and designer assistants all have a great social responsibility - and opportunity - to be inclusive and to educate service users.

2. Problem: Muddled, missing, mixed use cases — accessibility and mobility needs are met together.
   

   
   consider if you know exactly the book you want to buy at amazon or another big web seller. a trip into amazon takes you through myriad departments of other types of products, offers Recommendations, specials, bundles, and even a chance to become a reseller yourself. but all I wanted to do was get that one book into my cart! Well, luckily, limited screen space on phones and PDA’s is leading to overhauls of web sites to alternatives that offer simple and straight paths to the most common goals for impatient, on-the-go users. contrast clutter full scale amazon.com with accessible, mobile amazon.com . Now, not all of Amazon is on the accessible alternative, and they don’t tell you what’s missing, e.g. changing an email address in profile.
   

   
   Recommendation: web designers can take the opportunity to produce an accessible version of a site along with a mobile-friendly or mobile-optimized version. and don’t forget to tell screen reader users with a non-intrusive link at the top of the page to the alternative. and, save the specials and Recommendations until after the sale.

3. Problem: forms take forever to fill out and an error can be costly, causing form-o-phobia.
   

   
   It’s not just me, the usability literature notes something like 5 times longer for visually impaired form-fillers than sighted users. problems include: identifying required versus optional and what actually goes in a field; non-standard formats for dates, social security numbers, phone numbers; unpredictability of length of forms; time-outs and site failures; and difficulty finding the notification of errors or requirements for verifications. Then there are all those registration “opportunities”, without explanation of benefits of registering, without acknowledgment of the pain to be incurred. No thanks, no forms please.
   Is there a better way? Maybe, as suggested by Jon Udell’s article on batch form-filling for civilians suggesting the use of text strings completed by simple editing and input to an API or query processor. geez, this is so brilliant!

   Recommendation: web designers should take every care to label all fields clearly and acknowledge the time and pain of a visually impaired user. If possible, watch one of us use your form until you cannot stand the pain any longer. and recognize the difference in skill levels and experience and tenacity of a broad audience. forms are where you capture or lose a client. and, don’t even think of putting a graphic only CAPTCHA at the end at risk of eternal damnation. On the other side, visually impaired users need to practice form-filling and accept it as a necessary evil that could ruin your day. We all need to look for better ways, like Jon Udell’s text line suggestion.

Personal Observations and Grand Claims

With a year’s experience using a screen reader, I am still a novice and use articles like this to apportion responsibility for failures
to accomplish web tasks. With a 4-decade career in computing paralleling the lifetime of the Internet, I am acutely aware of many sources of failures: selection, training, and skill level with software, like browsers and screen readers; network and workstation architectures that dictate performance; application requirements analysis and design, as in web 2.0 interactions; educational backgrounds and career motivations of web designers; human proclivity toward ascribing beauty to color and graphics I can no longer appreciate; the levels of personal, team, and enterprise processes that influence application usability; the immense costs of maintenance and upgrade of websites; and now, the structure of the assistive technology industry, the many human factors of accessibility, and the social resistance to disability issues. Mainly I am trying to take responsibility for building my skills to remain productive in society, and especially to pass along technology lessons to other Vision Losers.

Rarely am I completely stymied but far too often the energy required is the limiting factor. I use the “minimum of 5 times ” rule to estimate effort required for a task, based on memory of past trials. Often, just the thought of the work involved deters me from trying a web site, like registering and then facing a CAPTCHA, maybe putting off to a future idle day. Flippantly, I wish all young web designers would test their web sites during a bout with the flu, so they might appreciate the effects of reduced energy on every click and key stroke.

A second observation is how much the web is overly populated with extremely complex web sites, exacerbated by the trend to social media linking. Every link bypassed in a blog or information page is a decrement in energy available for reading, navigating, information seeking, and transactions. Web designers often seem to cram too many functions onto pages and fail to identify the primary use cases and prioritize for screen reader users. I am delighted at the trend toward mobile friendly pages as very helpful in countering complexity and offering redesign opportunities.

In recent discussions with web accessibility practitioners I sometimes found myself thinking as the beggarly, or maybe miserly,old lady who could not shell out $1000 for an industry standard screen reader like Jaws or Window Eyes and got stuck with a third world open source software tool. There is some truth in the monetary argument as I fail to fall into the social services classes: veteran, worker, job seeker, student, or poverty level. But I have also made a technical choice in screen reader, nvda, based on confidence in its developers, satisfaction with its early capabilities, ease of use and installation, and belief in the efficacy of the open source model of development. I also am concerned at a shaky industry chain of developers, screen reader vendors, and rehab organizations that will soon be coming under more international pressure as a free screen reader takes hold in other countries, perhaps with easy adaptability for local languages and web conventions. I cheer for the Australian Torvalds of assistive technology.

Finally, I find myself moving away from the PC and browser with increasing use of the Levelstar Icon PDA. News comes from the NFB Newsline to Bookshare to the Icon’s Newstand without a visit to a slow website. Blogs and feeds bring more news from CNN, USAToday, CNET, and many political and professional organizations — again obviating a browser session in favor of RSS. And the Icon’s little browser often suffices for comfortably reading search results, pages, and blogs not embroiled in Javascript/AJAX interfaces.

Ok, hear me stumble! Listen to recorded sessions.

Here are two recorded sessions of screen reader uses at Amazon and Fidelity. The Amazon demo follows me through the process of getting a pre-selected book into the cart, using the newer accessible and the classic websites. The Fidelity example shows an exploration of a website that has its whole enterprise mapped into menus.

Unlike the other essays in this blog, the current post is a link to a resource page about a local community. I have often been frustrated at finding information about events and services, occasionally learning valuable tidbits first from my walking companion, Jack and his dog pack.

My hope is that other Vision Loser’s in the Prescott area will find useful items and that community members will contribute to this resource.

The Vision Loser’s Guide to Prescott Arizona lists local social services, RSS feeds, and pointers to state and national organizations.

Is there a “killer app” for accessibility?

This post speculates about alternative changed futures for accessibility, such as cost-busting open source developments; self-voicing interactions; over riding inaccessibility by proxy web servers; a screenless, voiced, menu-driven PDA; and higher level software design practices.

First, I digress to tell you about a cool utility that invoked the serendipity behind this posting. Blind Cool Tech has a podcast, Jan. 1 2008, on a “You tube to iPod converter”. I haven’t used Youtube.com much since the videos appear to my partial sight as white blobs with some hand waving going on. Last week, I began to rethink my intellectual aversion to mindless drivel I feared populated Youtube and affronted my blindness sensibilities. The NYTimes had a piece on “Big Think”, a Youtube for eggheads that promised a variety of magazine-style videos of the ilk that interested me, namely politics and economics, reminiscent of the university-based video series at research

Wow, this little piece of software Youtube to iPod converter really delivers and opened up a new way for me to get useful web information. The use case is: copy the URL for a video that interests you, the link you would click to invoke the viewer; paste the link into the accessible converter; choose a file name and location; choose the format type mp3; click “download and convert”; wait a while; listen to the mp3 or your PC or send it on to a digital player, in my case my Bookport from aph.org. With a bit of imagination and patience, you can mentally fill in the video and also have a version to replay or bookmark. Moral of this digression: once again podcasts from the blind community open new worlds for us new vision losers needing accessible software to stay in the mainstream. Thank you, blind cool tech podcaster Brandon Heinrich! Check out my page of Youtube converted videos on eyesight-related topics.

By sheer luck, the first You Tube search I chose was the term “screen reader” and it turned up a provocative demo and discussion:

University of Washington Research: Screen Reader in a Browser by Professor Richard Ladner and graduate student Jeffrey P Bigham in the Web Insight project at cs.washingting .edu

Briefly, this experimental work addresses the problems of costly screen readers and the need for on-the-fly retrieval of web information by blind users away from their familiar screen readers. The proposed solution is a browser adaptation adding a script that redirects web pages to a so-called proxy server that converts the structure of the page, known as its document object, to text and descriptions that are returned to the browser as speech. This is pretty much what a desktop screen reader does, only now the reader and speech functions are remote. Of course, there are a gazillion problems and limits to this architecture but it appears to work sufficiently reliably and rapidly to achieve the social goals of its name, “Web Anywhere”. This research project, funded by the National Science Foundation, has also used the above architecture to modify web pages to add ALT tags from link texts, OCR of the image, and social networking tagging of images. Not only is the technology very clever, but also the work is based on observations of how blind users use the web and on a growing appreciation of the complexity and often atrocious design of web pages and use of AJAX technology that frustrate visually impaired web users, no matter the power of their screen readers or magnifiers or their skills.

As a former employee of funding agency NSF, a reviewer of dozens of proposals, a Principal Investigator in my sighted days on Computer Security education using animation, let me tell you this U. Washington project is a great investment of taxpayer funds. The work is innovative, well portrayed for outreach at at webinsight.cs.washington.edu, addressing monumentally important global and social issues, and helping to bring about a better educated and motivated generation of developers and technology advocates on accessibility issues.
Now, is this proxy-based architecture the killer app for web accessibility? Possibly, with widespread support of IT departments and developers, but the project sets it goals more modestly as “Web Everywhere” for transient web uses and possibly more broadly to address the cost of current screen reader solutions. Maybe the proxy-based approach can be expanded to other uses in demonstrations and experiments on a range of accessibility problems.

In one sense, a no-cost screen reader provides a way of breaking up the current market hierarchy, which one might unfortunately describe as a cartel of disability vendors and service providers. Yes, the premier screen readers sell for $1000 which seems justifiable by the relatively small market, the few million U.S. and international English-speaking PC users who are blind and on the rehab grid. Some, like Blind Confidential blogger, blink, and industry insider suggest the assistive technology industry is doing fine financially, able to afford more R&D and QA, and attractive to foreign investors. Like any segment of the computer industry, buyers become comfortable with the licensing, personalities, training, upgrade policies, and help lines so therefore resist change. In the case of the $1k products, buyers are more likely not individuals but rather rehabilitation and disability organizations with a mandate to provide user support through a chain of trained technical, health, and pedagogical professionals. A screen reader like the free, open source nvda will shake up the industry segment as more users find it suitable for their needs, as I have written about in“Look ma, no screens! NVDA is my reader” posting . With broader acceptance of open source as a reliable and effective mode of software enterprise, as nvda co-develops with other flexible open source office and browser products, as energetic developers fan out to other accessibility projects, well, nvda might well be the killer app of cost and evolution.

However, in a more radical sense, I argue that the screen reader model itself is badly flawed and that also technical accessibility alone is inadequate to resolve the needs of blind web users.

The value of a universal screen reader is that it can do something useful for most applications by dredging out fundamental information flowing through the operating system about an application’s controls and its users’ actions. But another model of software is so-called “self voicing” where the application maintains a focus system that tracks the user’s actions and provides its own reactions through a “speech channel”, providing at least equivalent information to an external screen reader. Such a model can do even better by providing flexible information about the context of a user event and preferences. A button might respond upon focus with “Delete”, or “Delete the marked podcasts in the table”, or repeat the relevant section of the user manual, or elaborate a description of the use case, such as “first, mark the podcasts to delete, and here’s how to mark, then press this button, and confirm the deletions, after which the podcast files will be off your disk unless you download them by another name”. Self-voicing as speech technology is implemented by many applications that allow choice of voice, setting speed, and even variation of voices matched to uses, e.g. the original message in an email reply. More significantly, self-voicing puts the responsibility for usability of the application directly on a developer to provide consistent, coherent, and useful explanations of each possible user interaction. Further, this information is useful both to the end user and to testing professionals who can check that the operation is doing what it says, only what it should, and in the proper context of the application’s use cases. Ditto, a tech writer working with a developer can make an application far more usable and maintainable in the long run. So, we claim, that a kind of killer app development practice would be the shift of responsibility away from screen readers onto self-voicing applications, including operating systems, where development processes will be improved. We base our claims on personal experience developing a self-voicing podcatcher, @Podder, for partially sighted users using a speech channel of copying text to the clipboard to be read by external text-to-speech applications. Another self-voicing application is Kurzweil 1000 for scanning and document management, and employing the nicest spell checker around.

We have argued in “Are missing, muddled use cases the cause of web inaccessibility?” posting that the main culprit in web usability is not technical accessibility but the way use cases are represented, tangled, and obscured by links as well as graphics and widgets on web pages. A use case describes a sequence of actions performed to meet a spcific goal, such as “register on a website” or “archive email messages”. Use cases not only lay out actions but also provide the rationale, the consequences, constraints, and error recovery procedures for interactions. Our claim is that software developers, both desktop and web application developers, force all users, sighted or blind, to infer the use cases from the page contents and layouts, often embellished with links, such as blog rolls, to enhance social interaction and increase search engine rankings. Reports such as those from the Web Insight project and the Neilsen Norman report “Beyond ALT text” describe in gory detail the frustrations and failures of visually impaired users struggling with their screen readers and magnifiers and braile displays to overcome the practice of poor use case representation as they try to keep up with sighted users in gaining information from and performing consumerism within the constellation of current web sites. While I certainly believe that web accessibility activists are important to removing barriers and biases, the larger improvement will come when websites are designed and clearly presented to achieve their use cases, for the benefit of all those who gain from better website usage. This is already occurring with re-engineering for mobile devices where failure to activate a use case or have available the appropriate use case is especially apparent, and, seemingly, not really that hard to achieve.

Finally, what about the marvelous mobile devices such as the fully voiced, menu-driven LevelStar Icon and APH Braille Plus Mobile Manager? After 8 months of Icon addiction, I firmly believe that, cost aside, this form of computer is far superior to conventionalL Internet usage for the activities it supports, mainly email, RSS management, browsing, and access to Bookshare.org resources. for example, I can consume the news I want in about an hour from NYTimes, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Arizona Republic, CNN, InsiderHigherEd, CNET, and a host of blogs. And that’s BEFORE getting up in the morning. No more waiting for web pages to load on a news website, browsing through categories on information that don’t interest me, and bypassing advertisements. Additionally, I am surprised at how often I use the Icon’s “Mighty Mo” embedded browser by wireless rather than open up the laptap to bring up Firefox and fend off all my update anxious packages and firewall warnings. Yes, life with the Icon is “living big”. the Icon is mainly part of the trend toward phones and wireless devices, but just happens to be developed by people who know what visually impaired users need and want.

Maybe, somewhere out there is a wondrous software package that will dramatically boos the productivity and comfort of visually impaired computer users. With some assurance, we can recognize an upcoming generation of open source oriented developers seasoned by traditional assistive technology and adept at both project organization and current software tools. Funders and support organizations can look ahead to utilization of their innovations and improvements. But maybe the core problem is much harder, as we claim, a disconnect in “computational thinking” between software designers who have found their way through models and user-oriented analysis and those web designers stuck at the token and speechless GUI level of browsers and web pages. Empirical researchers on accessibility are starting to witness and understand the fragility of users caught between artifacts designed for sighted users and clumsy, superhuman emulating tools such as screen readers and magnifiers while the proper responsibility for accessibility falls on developers who have yet to appreciate the power of readily available speech channels along side graphical user interfaces.

What do others think? Is their a “killer app” for accessibility? Comment on this blog at http://asyourworldchanges.wordpress.com, “As Your World Changes” blog or email to slger123@gmail.com.

This posting provides a summary of “As Your World Changes” major subjects and web links in 2007 and a preview of topics in the works for 2008.

Recommended Software experience reports

• an open source screen reader nvda previous post, “Look ma, no screens!”
• FileDir replacement for Windows Explorer from Jamal Mazrui
• TextAloud, reader and mp3 converter from nextup.com. Previous post TextAloud, a simple, low cost reader
• Handy peripherals Previouse Post on “Mouse Hacks” and Being Your own system integrator
• Sample synthetic voices in TextAloud reading earlier posts

Next topics: “What is emacspeak?”; “Any benefits from Microsoft Word DAISY output?”; “Conquering gmail”; “Google your past from your desktop”, “Will speech recognition save my wrists and thumbs?”

People, Organizations and Services

• nvaccess.org, nonprofit developers of assistive technology
• mdsupport.org, information and community for macular degenerates from Previous Post: Resources, Support, and Reality Check for Macular Degenerates
• Bookshare.org, “Technology for Society” with affiliated Friends of Bookshare.org book clubs and chat room discussed in previous post “what’s a vision loser to do? Bookshare!
• Great series of software resources and reviews ACB Radio.org Main Menu , AFB Access World, Accessible World.org , <a and Blind Cool Tech.com ,Accessible Software
• apodder.org, distributor of @Podder, an “easy viewing” podcast collector and Library of podcasts on eyesight-related topics using the Podzinger.com audio search service

Topics in progress: Great vision assistance technologists: Bookport, Literacy, Icon; “Why should I join a blindness organization?” ??”; “Grrrr, becoming a community activist!”

Philosophy and Analysis

• Book Reviews of Vision Losers: “Twilight, a memoir by Henry Grunwald and “Conversations with author Susan Krieger
• Previous Post “Aren’t we Vision Losers Lucky?” on podcasts and modern technology
• Previous post “A Guiding Philosophy for Vision Losers” Safety, Energy, Relationships, Appreciation, and Financial
• My take on accessibility and usability - big design challenges:
  • “Are Missing, muddled use cases the culprit?” posting,
  • “Seeing through Google Book Search” posting,
  • “Help, I’m being updated to death!” posting,
  • “e-voting = Extreme Voting, a Moon Shot for Democracy”

Topics in progress: “My brain on sound - re-wired for speech?”; “Continuing progress in accessibility and usability”; “Computational Thinking — living with more levels of abstraction”; “GTD, getting things done, non-visually”; “What disability teaches you, and others around you”