Reid My Mind
Blindness

There’s probably no better day to begin blogging again. The rain is coming down as though it’s day 20 out of 40, as in Noah’s Ark. I’ve had so much on my mind for the past few months, I figured I’d share a bit here. ACB Convention: This summer I had an opportunity to attend [...]

Continue reading “Catching Up With A Bit Of A Rant” »

Apple’s announcement that VoiceOver, there built in screen reader, is included in the latest version of the iPhone has the blind community buzzing.   Accessibility built in, I love it! I’m hoping to get my hands on one to test, especially since my current AT&T contract is expiring in August. More to come on that [...]

Continue reading “Accessibility, There’s An App For That!” »

I received the below email from the Author’s Guild in response to the Reading Rights Coalition protest held yesterday in NYC. Based on their statement it  still appears that the definition of audio rights will have to first be agreed upon. As someone who has been reading both books using TTS and audio narration, I [...]

Continue reading “Author’s Guild Responds to Protests” »

This was one of the slogans chanted during Tuesday’s protest  organized by the Reading Rights Coalition. The demonstration, held  outside of the NYC office of The Author’s Guild, seemed to be well attended both in person and virtually. Thanks to Mika Pyykhala and John Oliveira of the Association of Blind Citizens for streaming the event. [...]

Continue reading “No More Greed, We Want To Read!” »

I just signed the petition started by the  Reading Rights Coalition.   This organization began after Amazon released their latest version of their E-Book reader, the Kindle 2.0. The product which has built in Text to Speech has been attacked by the Author’s Guild. The Guild argues that this feature which uses synthetic speech to [...]

Continue reading “Allow Everyone Access to E-books” »

For the past few months I have been taking courses from The Hadley School for the Blind. If you’re not familiar with Hadley, it’s a free distance learning school for people who are visually impaired and blind. Their mission: To promote independent living through lifelong, distance education programs for people who are blind or visually [...]

Continue reading “Learning to Read, Again. Thanks Hadley!” »

Explaining my sight loss to old friends and acquaintances has never been an easy task. In the months following my surgery I had many experiences with this. Some didn’t go as well as I hoped. There were several people who just couldn’t take the news. I imagine they believed I would become a different person. [...]

Continue reading “Using Face Book to Inform – I’m Blind” »

Amazon announced that they will now modify the Kindle to allow the holder of the copyright to turn on/off the Text To Speech (TTS) functionality.   I thought I would put this in plain English, well sort of…   Amazon got Punked!   Now I don’t have any inside information so this is entirely speculative. [...]

Continue reading “Amazon Got punked” »

For those of us who have experienced Retinoblastoma (RB) as children, there seems to be this automatic bond with other RB Survivors. Hearing someone else had a prosthetic eye was one thing, but finding out he or she too had this very rare form of childhood cancer, well that made you feel special, but not [...]

Continue reading “Thanks Ben Underwood” »

I just came across this post from the BBC’s blog. Apparently, some wanted news commentator’s to spell out url’s and other references rather than saying “As you can see on the screen.” This is something I know many of us have experienced and ended up missing out on a telephone number or website.   The [...]

Continue reading “The BBC News Wants Accessibility” »