We are back in the midwest for the holiday weekend. This time it is Minneapolis to visit a long time friend.
Even though it has been 11 years since I’ve called the midwest home, a summer thunderstorm reminds me just how much a part of me this weather and climate are.
In 11 years of living in California, Oregon and Washington, I don’t think I’ve experienced a true thunderstorm once. My definition isn’t the few claps of thunder that seems to qualify in Seattle. It is the hour-plus sort of storm where the thunder rattles the windows and rolls from one side of the sky to the other. It is the sort of storm where a clap of thunder can set off a car alarm. It is the sort of storm where the rain falls at a rate to justify the expression “raining buckets” and where you sense the awesome power of nature with every gust of the wind.
As a very small child I remember how much these sorts of storms used to frighten me. The “beep beep beep” of the television weather alert to be followed by the forecaster of the day reading a national weather service alert used to send me to the center of the house Mickey Mouse radio in hand to listen for every detail, just hoping the storm would go away.
Today a summer trip back to the midwest is a disappointment for me if I don’t get at least one good thunderstorm. This morning’s was at least two hours long. Windows rattled, rain pounded the windows and the wind was a constant. Strange how much all that just feels like home to me.
The Idea Place Posts
Richard Nixon’s presidency is one I know largely through history. I was seven when Nixon resigned and the only memory I have of his presidency is watching his announcement that he would resign on television at summer camp.
The story related in The Assassination of Richard Nixon is one I hadn’t heard until renting the DVD. The movie features Sean Penn as Samuel Bicke, a man that finds life slipping away. A failed marriage, job problems and his general problems with the world lead Bicke to hatch a plot to fly a plane into the White House.
Much of the story and Bicke’s perception on the world is related through tapes Bicke narrates to Leonard Bernstein. The mix of Penn sounding perfectly calm and rational in these narrations while Bicke slips further and further away from reality in the film’s action is powerful. Audio production on this movie is excellent and clips of Nixon are mixed throughout plus news from the period to help convey things with which Bicke expresses greater and greater outrage.
This is a film I recommend.
I moderate two e-mail lists related to different aspects of disability. WebWatch, which has been around in one form or another for 10 years, deals with web use for people with disabilities. Disability-news is a place to share news coverage about disability. Both lists can now be found on the AccessPlace home page.
Comments closedGrowing up I had the occasional newspaper written about this or that school function I was in. Back then the parents would buy a few extra copies of the paper to clip and send the article to relatives.
Funny to see how times have changed when today it is an e-mail with a link telling me that my niece made the newspaper.
The Washington Post ran an article on Madison, Wisconsin in a recent travel section. I wasn’t born in Madison but in many ways consider it my home town, or at least my home town from adulthood.
The article, brief as it is, captures much of the essence of Madison. Afternoons on the Memorial Union Terrace are some of the fondest memories I have of my nine years of living in Madison.
Then too there’s the Babcock ice cream which is a must have for any trip to Wisconsin.
On Friday Apple released their latest operating system Tiger with a screen reader named VoiceOver included as part of the operating system. I dropped by a local Apple store today to take Tiger and VoiceOver for a spin.
First off I think it is great to see a screen reader for the Macintosh again. Since development of outSPOKEN was stopped a couple years ago, the newer Mac operating systems haven’t been accessible to people that are blind.
My initial impression, based on about 60 minutes of exploration, is that VoiceOver has potential. I wasn’t thrilled by the speech synthesis (there are much smoother options out there) but I was able to interact with the machine and get around.
The real test of course is how productive one can be. Zipping around an OS is one thing but the end goal is to accomplish the tasks you bought the computer for. My explorations today didn’t get far enough to launch any applications beyond the VoiceOver help and OS navigation so now I’ll need to decide if I want to invest the time and money to relearning the Mac environment.
In playing with VoiceOver today the thing I was reminded of again is how much longer it takes to learn technology if you are blind. Back when I was actively teaching technology this was a point I emphasized to my students. There’s a strong temptation for instant gratification when it comes to technology but I believe spending a bit of time in learning how to fully use something pays off.
On one hand this is a bit frustrating. I know that folks that are sighted can often grab a mouse and point and click their way to productivity with a new application in a few minutes. By contrast it can take hours to learn a new application with a screen reader.
Since working at Microsoft though I’ve also gained an inside knowledge into just how much research goes into making that point-and-click environment seem obvious. I don’t think the mainstream technology industry is at the point where it is really understood what it takes to move beyond basic accessibility to an application. In general the focus is still on ensuring that basic access is available.
If you think of accessibility as a journey, then Apple’s release of VoiceOver means that a few more destinations are again available to people who are blind. Hopefully over time we can move to more discussions of how to enhance the journey and not just ensuring that people who are blind can take the trip.
I’m looking to move the Webwatch and Disability-News e-mail lists I moderate to my own hosting service. Finding a good domain name to attach to the lists has proven frustrating.
I’d like to avoid using a hyphenated name but most of the two word combinations that interest me do not sound good when read with a speech synthesizer. The words are frequently run together and the result sounds like mush.
I have to laugh a bit at myself. At work I can get bored when discussions drag on about whether some image is a pixel or two off but in my own way I guess I’m just as picky.
This evening I opted to watch Control and it made me realize how much I miss Descriptive Video (DVS) when it isn’t available.
As movies go Control was certainly not one I’d recommend. That said it is a bit frustrating to sit through a movie, only to have it end with the sound of a gun and not know which character or characters die at the end.
A recent article in the Quad-City Times gives a good explanation of how DVS works. The short version is that movie goers that are blind get a small walkman-like device that is used to hear a special audio track for the movie. Gaps in dialog are filled with descriptions of actions, scenes and character appearance. A sample from The Lion King is available online.