Reid My Mind
2008 May

Ever since deciding to bring the issue of Blog Carnival’s inaccessible visual CAPTCHA to   the blogosphere, I wondered how many people would truly be willing to take a stand. The use of Blog Carnival does not have much impact on a person’s “real” life as inaccessibility of a bank or financial institution may. However, Blog [...]

Continue reading “Stand Up, Change the Attitude!” »

As the population of baby boomers ages, the number of people with visual impairments is expected to double. Advancements in technology are  assisting individuals in accomplishing everyday tasks and living independently.   According to the article: The SightMate LV920 vision tool can help approximately 40 to 60 percent of patients improve their visual acuity, and [...]

Continue reading “Sightmate: Technology Assisting People with Visual Impairments” »

This was a busy week, I slacked off in my efforts to contact Brad Rubenstein. I have not heard from him or anyone else from Blog Carnival. I guess Brad Rubenstein has not received or simply chooses to disregard my emails, faxes, voice mails, and snail mail. Maybe it’s true that the leadership sets the [...]

Continue reading “BC Update: "A Soldiers Story"” »

According to New York Times Writer David Pogue, after making his printed books available electronically to individuals who were blind, the books were pirated. He says:   Unfortunately, I’ve had terrible experiences releasing my books in electronic form. Twice in my career, ‘blind’ people e-mailed me, requesting a PDF of one of my books. Both [...]

Continue reading “Is NY Times Writer, DAVID POGUE Blaming Book Piracy on the Blind?” »

Some publishers are catching on – there are profits to be made by providing accessible formats.   It’s always baffled me that books in this digital age, are not immediately accessible to those unable to read print. I work with the assumption that most authors write their manuscripts using a personal computer and therefore probably [...]

Continue reading “Can Profit Equal Access?” »

Finally, the US Appeals Court rules in favor of The American Council of the Blind- saying the current US currency discriminates against people who are blind due to it’s indistinguishable denominations.   This has been a long battle that honestly isn’t over. The Treasury Department can continue by appealing to the Supreme Court.   According [...]

Continue reading “Appeals Court Rules: US Currency Discriminates Against Blind” »

This article from IT Director titled Accessible copiers and printers , discusses an accessibility feature from Xerox. They have added a USB port to their   copiers and multifunction systems.   From the article: The port can be connected to any compatible PC (Windows 2000 or XP) running the Xerox Copier Assistant™ Software. The software provides [...]

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In this week’s note to Blog Carnival Support (Also known as Denise!) I explained that I have taken to of all things, snail mail. After emailing Brad Rubenstein, a founder and CTO of Blog Carnival, I left a voice mail asking him to discuss this issue with me. I have not received a response from [...]

Continue reading “BC Update: Snail Mail?” »

Thanks to Ron from the Access Ability Blog for providing me with the contact information for the owner of Blog Carnival. The fact that the only reply received was from Denise, a customer support representative, leads me to believe that upper management/owners may not be aware of the request to provide access. Earlier this week [...]

Continue reading “BC Update: Let’s Talk to the Owner” »

This application currently being developed, reads aloud data associated with an RFID tag in order to provide individuals with information not just about a product, but rather a physical place.   From the article: The tool can aid not only the blind, but sighted people too. "Basically the idea is that the person’s walking journey [...]

Continue reading “Talking Points” »