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Ask HN: My son might be blind – how to best support

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Re: Ask HN: My son might be blind – how to best support

#111

Post by DanielleMolloy »

tway_GdBRwW wrote: post #108
DanielleMolloy wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for sharing. I'm in research that is somewhat attached to the technology side and find 2) particularly interesting. Did you ever look into electrotactile tongue display units? What is your opinion? I'm curious about what neuralink will present soon. Musk mentioned "atari graphics" recently, so they probably will for now only focus on generating phosphene-based crude bitmaps in the primary visual cortex (whi…

I guess that might depend on how much you trust Musk.

I trust Musks ability to attract stupid money and hype towards highly beneficial technology and research goals.

Re: Ask HN: My son might be blind – how to best support

#112

Post by pvaldes »

lynx23 wrote: post #60
pvaldes wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blind people could benefit of carrying one or several ultrasonic sensor like those used on cars to park. That would emit soft bleeps, faster when something is on the way or closer to an obstacle. Can be built easily with an Arduino I think that another possibility could be to fill your home or workplace with those devices put on walls or furniture. The idea would be that your table could say to you "lookout, I'm here…

These products exists since the 80s. I have never seen one that is actually practical in real life. The elevator-pitch always sounds nice, to sighted people at least.. Please don't fall for this patronising attitude that just because you are a tech person, you can invent all sorts of helpful gadgets. Educate yourself about the disability before giving advice or your great $0.02 ideas. They are always ment in a good w…

Ok

Re: Ask HN: My son might be blind – how to best support

#113

Post by onemoresoop »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #99
steve_adams_86 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coping is quite literally necessary. It’s the same for people with cognitive or psychological disabilities. The world isn’t organized or structured with you in mind… You need to cope with the immediate challenges and find solutions, and often you need to cope with the psycho-emotional aspect of living in a world that often works against rather than with you. It’s difficult. Not coping is a recipe for a really bad tim…

I’m comfortable with it but most members of the various disability communities would not like me since, among other things, I strongly advocate for pre natal testing and elective abortion of people with serious issues like blindness. I think that being blind makes life not worth living. I’m extremely supportive of MAID and physician assisted suicidal for these exact reasons. “Coping” by telling those who don’t want t…

> various disability communities would not like me since, among other things, I strongly advocate for pre natal testing and elective abortion of people with serious issues like blindness.

I think they're right to not want you around them, you sound odious to them and your ideas are very questionable. Where do you draw the line as there are various degrees of disability. What if you discover that you yourself already have a disability such as lacking empathy for example and while you adapted to your life well someone comes along advocating to terminate pregnancies with your condition?

Re: Ask HN: My son might be blind – how to best support

#114

Post by onemoresoop »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #86
ndarray wrote: post #63

Normal schools are not appropriately prepared for blind people. They're bullying hells for blind kids (from social exclusion to assault) and the lectures heavily rely on vision, so a blind kid will be left behind even when he makes audio recordings (can't write braille fast enough for useful notes), which some teachers may even take issue with, for extra drama.

John Hughes deserves to be a pauper for what his films have done to American society. The way that American children have systemized and perfected bullying culture is disgusting and needs to have been shattered two generations ago. Bullying to anywhere near the same extent as you see in America is so alien to most of the rest of the world. Do you know that nerds have the total opposite reputation in most of the third…

What a ridiculous take. Kids or adults don't bully because they saw it in the movies.

Re: Ask HN: My son might be blind – how to best support

#115

Post by pvaldes »

fwip wrote: post #69
pvaldes wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blind people could benefit of carrying one or several ultrasonic sensor like those used on cars to park. That would emit soft bleeps, faster when something is on the way or closer to an obstacle. Can be built easily with an Arduino I think that another possibility could be to fill your home or workplace with those devices put on walls or furniture. The idea would be that your table could say to you "lookout, I'm here…

Blind people don't have a big problem with bumping into furniture in their own home, much the same way you don't wipe out when walking from your bed to the bathroom in the dark. And instead of you getting 30 seconds of practice every other night, they navigate that way all the time. Also, a bunch of noise playing whenever you walk through your house sounds like a huge bother.

Is the refrigerator door open or closed? What about the drawers? Is the vacuum in the middle of the path?

Blind people don't need to know this things, of course. Don't need anybody, and can navigate everything like champs. On the other way, would really do harm to be able to know this on advance?.

Re: Ask HN: My son might be blind – how to best support

#116

Post by zdragnar »

matsemann wrote: post #70
jesterswilde wrote: post #27

I am blind, it was degenerative so it sounds different than what your kid has. I have a few pieces of advice. This is more about my own upbringing, so don't take any of it as an accusation towards you. 1) Don't hide things about their condition or prospects. I grew up in a very loving home. However, my parents found out I was going blind when I was ~8, I didn't find out until I was 13. My mother wanted to protect me…

Ref point 3 about high speed metal, moving to a place where things are in walking distance / less car centric could perhaps be a way to better enable independence?

Yes, if you can afford it. Bussing is feasible, and some communities (not nearly enough) are good about providing or have non-profits that operate shuttles for those in need as well.

A typical suburb will often have apartments near retail areas, but residential districts without alternate transit options may as well be deep rural if your only option is walking through intersections without traffic lights.

Re: Ask HN: My son might be blind – how to best support

#117

Post by onemoresoop »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #102
miki123211 wrote: post #74

Congenitally blind person here, here are a few pieces of advice that I think are the most important. 1. Be the polar opposite of a helicopter parent. A lot of blind people end up extremely incapable as adults, because their parents were too afraid to let them learn anything that might have possibly been somewhat dangerous. Sighted kids can recover from this by watching how others do things, or, in the worst case, wat…

This is a great post. Thank you to share. First hand experiences like this are one of the best parts of HN. This part: > If you can find a way to teach your kid good white-cane skills without making them miserable, they'll be grateful to you forever. Can you go a little deeper on this one? What are some good ways vs bad ways to teach white-cane skills? Last: A question for myself. Sometimes, when I ride the subway, I…

Blind people aren't as thin skinned as you imagine. Simply asking them if they need assistance is okay. They'll tell you if they do.

Re: Ask HN: My son might be blind – how to best support

#118

Post by pvaldes »

squigz wrote: post #51
pvaldes wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hum, that last idea deserve more time I want to propose this system. Imagine that you are on a workplace where blind people came often to work or as clients. There is a soft, low, slow and sparse music that is pleasing to hear as a background for anybody and is always changing. Now lets imagine that this music is codified and played on a 3D system. Every time we hear a piano note it means "door here", all bass notes…

Muzak but specifically for blind people! Such an engineer's solution. :P The glaring issue here would be standardization. Either every place uses the same sounds, or you have to learn a new system for each place you visit using this sort of thing. This is also why you couldn't change notes regularly, which would be boring and repetitive for everyone else.

The same instruments should be used for the same things everywhere. Yep. This is the idea.

Or at least to navigate a complex multistore building with a lot of repeated elements. I wonder if a videogame could be designed as a soundgame for blind people replacing images by sounds.

Re: Ask HN: My son might be blind – how to best support

#119

Post by pvaldes »

navigate8310 wrote: post #61
pvaldes wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hum, that last idea deserve more time I want to propose this system. Imagine that you are on a workplace where blind people came often to work or as clients. There is a soft, low, slow and sparse music that is pleasing to hear as a background for anybody and is always changing. Now lets imagine that this music is codified and played on a 3D system. Every time we hear a piano note it means "door here", all bass notes…

Instead of the sound clues triggering every minute, it may trigger on arrival of the person wearing RF ID or phone.

Unless there is a lot of blind workers in the room, much better, yep.

Blind people at least should have a way to be able to evacuate a building with sound clues instead the traditional lights that turn up if there is a fire and are useless for them. The emergency lights are mandatory by law, but including emergency blips could be also useful for everybody in some areas where a lot of blind people are expected (or live).

Blind people should be given the opportunity to evacuate a building or a school just by their own means, even if is alone or left behind in a emergency. You can't always rely on touching to orientate yourself if there is a fire. Specially metallic things.

Re: Ask HN: My son might be blind – how to best support

#120

Post by EricE »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #99
steve_adams_86 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coping is quite literally necessary. It’s the same for people with cognitive or psychological disabilities. The world isn’t organized or structured with you in mind… You need to cope with the immediate challenges and find solutions, and often you need to cope with the psycho-emotional aspect of living in a world that often works against rather than with you. It’s difficult. Not coping is a recipe for a really bad tim…

I’m comfortable with it but most members of the various disability communities would not like me since, among other things, I strongly advocate for pre natal testing and elective abortion of people with serious issues like blindness. I think that being blind makes life not worth living. I’m extremely supportive of MAID and physician assisted suicidal for these exact reasons. “Coping” by telling those who don’t want t…

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