Below I list some survival techniques for getting through this thing called life. Some of the suggestions may seem very basic and I do not want to suggest the obvious to anybody. In all honesty many of these things would have made my life easier if I had learnt or thought up these strategies earlier. For example I have only been folding my money for about a year so I hope that I can save someone else just a little less hassle.
In my view the most important task for a Screen Reader user is to accelerate their reading speed to at least that of a sighted person. Until you do this you will always fall behind the productivity rates of sighted employees and students. I have tested this with good sighted readers and I estimate that the default reading speed which comes with Jaws is about half to a third of normal sighted reading speed. People can normally read much faster with their eyes than they can read aloud.
Fortunately Jaws and other screen readers can increase their reading rate.
The default reading rate of Jaws is 15% so there is lots of room for gain. Fortunately increasing your reading speed is easy as long as you take your time about it. I would suggest that if you have not increased your reading speed you should knock up the speed by about 3% immediately. Try running with this. If you find this too fast reduce your increase back by 1%. You will find that most people can increase their reading speed by 2% without many problems at least at first. Continue with this rate for at least a week, and up to a month. After a month or when you are completely comfortable with this speed, and it sounds completely normal, increase the speed by another 2%. If again this seems at all fast then reduce the increase to 1% or even spend some time back on your old rate. Most of you will find that a 2 % increase is not very noticeable. Again continue for up to a month and then remind yourself to try increasing speed by another 2%. If you use a diary like Outlook set up reminders to increase your speed again. After 6 months you will have almost certainly doubled your reading speed with Jaws from 15% to 30% and you will be reading at a speed more comparable to a sighted person.
How fast you go then depends on individuals. I found that the speed at which I increased fell after this. I went quite quickly to 40% but spent a year in the 40% 46% range. I am currently at 52% and now will probably only looked at increasing speed at about every 6 months or so rather than every month. However I now know that rather than being a slow reader I am certainly faster than many sighted readers. I first noticed this in seminars when I and other students would have to read materials. Whereas with sighted reader assistance I was always the slowest at this, provided I received an electronic version I was always the fastest reader.
Three further important things to consider whilst increasing your reading speed.
1. You can always temporarily decrease your reading speed if you are finding a particular thing or section hard to read. Sighted people will do this. They will even pause and read aloud slowly if they find a particular difficult piece of text to read. In Jaws pressing control alt and Page Up and down will increase or decrease the reading rate. The important thing is that a difficulty in reading a small peace of text should not dictate your general reading speed. If your screen reader does not support variable speed than slow it down by reading a word at time by pressing control plus right or left cursor arrow.
2. If you are reading long books do not worry if you do not catch every single word. When sighted people read book they do not read every word sequentially but instead get a general understanding by assimilating key words in a general sweep with their eyes. You can do the same thing with your ears. Try to relax into the narrative of your computer voice and assimilate general information rather than focussing on every word. Remember you can always go back and re-read a crucial part again slowly. This approach got me through many Law books!
3. The voices which sound best at normal speed may not be the best at high speed. An older less human sounding voice may actually perform best at high speed. The Neospiece voices which are fantastic at normal speed tend to distort at high speeds. I have found the old default Jaws Eloquence Voices to be ideal for high speed reading but it is all personal preference.
If you have not already done this learn to Touch Type. It is not that hard believe me. There is an early learning curve in the first 2or 3 weeks with the home keys which put me off for years. It is one of the biggest regrets of my life that I did not do this earlier. Whilst I was losing my sight I constructed more and more elaborate bright lights on large print keyboards in an attempt to still see these. In the end I bought the RNIB cassette keyboard typing course. I simply did not realise how much easier than I thought it would be to learn. I thought it would take the same effort as learning a language. The RNIB cassette course is ideally used with a screen reader giving you audio feedback on words typed into your computer.
The thing about learning touch typing is that learning the home keys and becoming familiar with these is actually the hardest part. Once you have got the hang of these though, it is down hill from there. The RNIB course introduces you to an extra 2 keys in every session and it is amazing how soon you will find yourself touch typing. The important thing is not to go too fast.
2 final tips on learning touch typing.
. Was forever liberated from the bright lights and peering down on my keyboard. I now routinely type in the dark.
One of the most annoying things is to download an electronic document to read and then find that the document is inaccessible to your screen reader. This may be because it is a graphics based file or a inaccessible PDF document. If this is the case and other options like using Accessible programs like ED Sharp are unable to solve this then scanning this document and using OCR may be an option. You could simply print out the document and place it in your scanner. A much neater solution is to print to a virtual scanner on your PC. This can be done by Kurzweil if you have this or Microsoft Document Imaging if you own a copy of Microsoft Office. See the Essential Assistive Technology page for more instructions on how to use Microsoft document Imaging.
It is important that you can read away from your PC. Being able to do this will greatly increase your capacity to read text, perhaps on a train, a tube, or even whilst doing the housework. The first and cheapest method is to use the free DSpeech which you will find on the low cost Assistive Technology Page. A low cost paid alternative would be to buy a copy of Text Aloud MP3 for about £20. . See Essential Assistive Technology Page for more information about Text Aloud. You can use this to make mp3 of any text you need to read. If you can possibly afford it save up for a Victor Reader Stream. This costs about £200. This fantastic device has transformed my life and is packed with features. One of its most useful features is that you can send text and rtf files to your stream which can be read immediately on the stream without the need to convert them to MP3 files. This means that before any meeting I go to I can review the agenda and notes beforehand, even whilst travelling. The stream is also fantastic at accelerating reading speed without distortion.
Most Mp3 Players are very inaccessible for people with visual Impairment. There are a range of expensive solutions out there. There is currently one very cheap and good MP3 player if you can manage to get it. The Creative Zen Stone 1 GB is an excellent accessible MP3 player. The reason that it is accessible is that it has no screen so we are put on a level playing field with sighted people. You can get the Zen Stone 1 GB for between £20-£30. It has some other great features’ it is reliable, sounds good and is solid as a rock. Even after recharging or connecting to a computer to download it resumes reading an audio book at exactly the place you left it. I have never known any other mp3 player have this kind of place of play robustness. It saves hours navigating to get back to where you are reading. The main drawback is that like nearly other MP3 player it does not have the capacity to accelerate playback. You’ll need a Victor Reader Stream for this but then the Stream costs about 10 times as much as this player.
The other great aspect of this player is that there is absolutely no need to install any special software or drivers. It simply shows up on your computer as a drive. Simply copy your mp3 or wma files to the device and they will play immediately without fuss. So much easier than a Sony or Apple device insisting on their own software.
Make sure that you get the 1 GB version. Some 2GB versions have screens which are not accessible. If you get a 2 GB version make sure it has no screen on it.
This may be an obvious tip but nobody told me about it and I struggle for years at sorting bank notes in my wallet until I devised this technique about a year ago.
As I say I cannot tell the difference easily between a £5 and a £10 note. And I also struggle with the difference between 10 and a £20 note.
Initially I tried to resolve this by placing money in certain order in my wallet but this soon fell apart as I stuffed change into my wallet, I did not want to hold up any queue of people trying to purchase goods in a shop. I next purchased a fancy electronic gizmo from Cobalt. This did the trick but proved impractical to use outside as it was too long to fit into a wallet and took forever to find if I kept it in various pockets of jackets and trousers. About a year ago I realised suddenly I did not have to take this device out. I simply used it at home and started folding money in my wallet. I guess you can use any method but I folded £20 notes horizontally. I folded £10 by folding down one corner until it looked like half a paper airplane. £5 notes I folded vertically. All of a sudden I had a method I could be sure of.
I have since discovered that the electronic device from cobalt was an unnecessary device. The RNIB sell a low cost cardboard template which can fit in a wallet and does the job just as well. I now use this to check change in a quiet spot and use my folding method again if I have to.
I wish someone had told me this some years ago so I provide it as advice here for anybody else who is struggling.
Shopping online is not straightforward but is a real boon to people with visual impairment when it works. Tesco have particularly good Access pages designed to be used by people with visual impairment. Just imagine, no matter how bad your eyes get or how old and frail you become you will always be able to shop independently with this method.
I personally think that all Community computer classes for people with visual impairment should include a weekly session practising online shopping using a variety of sites. This will have the additional practical benefit of sorting people’s shopping out.
Identifying tins can be a real chore. To some extent you can tell which which is by the shape of tins though this can change unpredictably if supermarkets substitute the tins they deliver in your order. One method is to bulk buy tins in packs and boxes which may be easier to identify. My Sister buys whole trays of tins of tomatoes using this method. Probably rubber bands are the easiest and least complicated method. Buy a big bag of rubber bands and identify the tins that cause you trouble. You may find it necessary to prioritise those types of tins you want to use most of the time. In my case this tends to be tins of tomatoes. You need a one stage sighted help either in the shop or at home. Another method you can also apply is the different cupboards methods. I put tomatoes in one cupboard and kidney beans in another as the tins are very similar in shape. You need to put one band around a tin of tomatoes, two bands around a tin of chick peas and so on. You may not be able to get all your tins labelled this way but it is a lot quicker than trying to Braille out labels etc. You can also get talking tins from the RNIB but I have never really gone this route as I was somehow convinced that I would drop and lose these little magnets.
This is one of the problems that I find most annoying. If I drop something like my hearing aid it can take an age to find it. I know that a sighted person may spot it in a matter of seconds. I have limited advice here and if anybody has better suggestions then please email me at low_vision_survival@yahoo.co.uk to tell me what I should be doing! What I have learnt is the following.
As I say if anybody else has some bright ideas let me know.
NEW Clifford Blackwell has emailed me with some useful tips on finding dropped items. His email is below.
David,
I was reading your Tips and Tricks
page on your web site and came across you request for ideas on how to find
dropped items. I have a suggestion that
is not universally applicable.
I am a cane user for mobility. I am almost totally blind and have been for
just over 40 years. If I can't locate a
dropped item relatively quickly with my hand, I set my cane down on the ground
and sweep the area in which I think the item is most likely to be found. As you suggest, moving the cane slowly is
required or you'll shoot the lost item somewhere else.
I've found that this technique allows
me to find most items by either touch or sound.
Yes, it undoubtedly looks funny and one has to be careful not to trip a
passerby, but it is also likely to gain an inquiry about help from someone
observing.
My children all feel free to ask to
borrow my cane for sweeping under furniture or playground equipment to find
things that they have lost too!
If you're not a cane user, there are
relatively small folding poles or rulers that can be carried in a backpack or
other bag for such purposes if a frequent problem.
You've got a good web site. Hope this provides some help.
Clifford Blackwell
This is the most difficult thing to do on my list but potentially has some of the greatest benefits. What I can definitely tell you is that your fingers will get more sensitive with practice. Only a small minority of even registered blind people read Braille. I think it is as low as 5%. This is very unfortunate.
There seems to be a growing belief that the advancement in electronic and digital speech is making Braille less and less relevant. I believe that this is really a very serious mistake and that Braille should be reintroduced everywhere we can. Whilst it is true that I would probably always listen to a talking book rather than struggle slowly through a Braille version of the same book this misses the point of Braille. Using Braille to read books only scratches the surface of how Braille is useful.
For me reading books is the least useful implementation of Braille.
Consider you are chairing a meeting with a complicated agenda. How much more appropriate it is to simply feel down your Braille copy of the agenda and remind yourself of times that are allocated to each item. Consider how disruptive to yourself and the meeting the prospect of having to either don headphones or play out aloud a speech synthesised version of the agenda. Whilst listening to the speech synthesiser you can not of course listen to the person speaking in the meeting properly.
The same principles apply if you are giving a presentation or a lecture. Putting on headphones interrupt the flow of your speech whilst having to listen to your notes. Using Braille provides a much more seamless set of notes that you can constantly refer to whilst you are talking. The reverse is also true if you are attending a lecture. If you are lucky enough to have a electronic Braille note taker consider how much more appropriate it is to take notes in Braille. I used to try and take notes in lectures whilst I was a student but abandoned this. I had to abandon this as the speech feedback of my laptop was drowning out the sound of the lecture as well as creating disturbance in the lecture for other students. I instead relied upon recording the lecture and making my notes afterwards. This is a much more time consuming way of taking notes.
Braille can be incorporated into games like Monopoly or various card games. It is only through using Braille that you can play with sighted family and friends on an equal playing field.
With Braille you can often identify the various medicines we need to take from time to time. Braille is increasingly becoming useful and relevant in our environment as various Disability Equality Initiatives are set up. With Braille you can eventually do maths. With Braille learning a foreign language becomes more straightforward as you can supplement your learning of accent with textual practising.
With Braille you can read out aloud from a script. I hope that I have persuaded you.
Finding a Braille class is not easy and I have found the excellent Phoenix Blind Club in Haringey an essential resource. Whilst Braille classes tend to be free learning is not cheap. You will need as a minimum
The Fingerprint course from the RNIB. Make sure that you have the version with the cassette tapes to support the course. The Fingerprint course is about £25 I think. However the real cost lies in the purchase of a Perkins brailler at about £400. My personal view is that it is incredibly hard to learn Braille effectively without writing Braille. It is like learning English without learning to write. The process of writing consolidates your understanding and shape recognition. Attending a Braille class and using their equipment may be a temporary stopgap but honestly you will need your own brailler to learn Braille. The RNIB may be able to help with the identification of second hand Perkins to purchase.
The good news is that if I, with my sausage fingers can learn Braille there is hope for all of u.
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David Griffith