There was this discussion on HN about the work of a guy who built an e-ook reader for his nearly bling uncle.
Ask HN: How do I put together a computer for my blind mom?
71–80 of 85 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do I put together a computer for my blind mom?
#72Perhaps create an app or website that reads text. You paste in the text you want it to read to her---web pages, books, e-mail, whatever. Each item you "push" to her gets queued up so she can listen when it's convenient. The controls she would need would be very simple. At a minimum, start reading and stop reading. Maybe something to skip to the next item if she gets bored with whatever she's on. My mother is disabled…
I would start with Nuance. They're into speech.
I'm visually impaired and tried everything mentioned in this thread. VoiceOver on iPad or Marcos is the most user friendly comprehensive and stable solution
Re: Ask HN: How do I put together a computer for my blind mom?
#73I would like to suggest that you contact Jim Fruchterman at Benetech ( http://benetech.org/ ) who has had years of experience with computers for the blind. His email is, I believe, jim(at)benetech.org. About Benetech (from their website): Today, Benetech continues to be a different kind of tech company—a nonprofit—with a pure focus on developing technology for social good. More than two decades after our founding, we…
Yeah, Benetech is a great outfit. I had the privilege of doing the front end work for the Bookshare.org website when they revamped it in 2007. Was a fun project and we got tons of good feedback during development from a terrific community of users. Highly recommend Bookshare.
Re: Ask HN: How do I put together a computer for my blind mom?
#74The Internet is not blind friendly. It sucks, and we need to do better, but for now, blind people are mostly locked out of the Internet. OS X has some really nice screen reading/accessibility stuff builtin and you can have it do things like read books from the iBook's Store out loud. Mail.app has some support for voice control if you're willing to get it all setup before giving her the computer.
I'm not so sure as to say it'd blind-FRIENDLY, but probably more so than much of the world. I have a couple of blind friends who have been using computers since the BBS days. Things have only improved by leaps and bounds in the past 20+ years.
Re: Ask HN: How do I put together a computer for my blind mom?
#75I recently started a project because I am getting bored of reading everything. Friend said the same project could help blind people. I am sorry but its only a POC yet, I got caught up in regular work. I can probably invest some time if its going to get used. https://github.com/Omie/shruti
Re: Ask HN: How do I put together a computer for my blind mom?
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure why you're being down voted. I find the lack of tactile feedback annoying and I can only imagine how it must be for someone blind.
Don't take this the wrong way, but it's obvious from this comment that you've never spent any time working with a blind person on an interface. This idea that a blind person would need tactile feedback comes from a sighted person imagining what it would like to be blind, not the experience of actual blind people with buttons vs touchscreens.
No offense taken, I am in fact just as ignorant as I appear to be.
Re: Ask HN: How do I put together a computer for my blind mom?
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure why you're being down voted. I find the lack of tactile feedback annoying and I can only imagine how it must be for someone blind.
I used to work with some blind individuals, and one thing that's hard to relate to is how much more attention they give to things that sighted individuals do not, such as sounds, spatial relationships, etc. I wouldn't think they'd have any problem, for example, opening a specific app on their iPhone solely by its position on the home screen.
Wouldn't you just use Siri for that? I have enough apps that it's mostly too hard remembering where all but the most commonly used live, so I just tell Siri to open the app. Works like a charm.
Re: Ask HN: How do I put together a computer for my blind mom?
#78I find this challenge very exciting, the rewards to humanity seem potentially great considering that haptic and other ways of sensory stimulation of the user of the technology...can program a lot of subconscious influence on the kind and also at the very least become quicker and easier to use (interfaces) than speech, text, visual, etc.
Re: Ask HN: How do I put together a computer for my blind mom?
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you used VoiceOver? Both iOS and OS X versions have a rotor menu that activates with a two finger touch and twist motion to give access to various sets of items.
I've enabled VoiceOver for testing but had not seen that gesture, thanks for the pointer. It is useful but slightly awkward as you need both fingers to retain contact with the screen while rotating, which is challenging for a 360 degree rotation :)
You don't have to do full rotation in one go. It's hard to explain, but you basically need to do this (assuming right hand): put your thumb and index finger on the screen, and then do a swipe left motion with your index finger, while having thumb in place. Then lift the index finger, move it back to starting position and repeat. With that gesture you can advance the rotor by one position at time.
Re: Ask HN: How do I put together a computer for my blind mom?
#80Earlier this year at FOSDEM there was a blind guy at Debian stand presenting his solution:
http://accelibreinfo.eu/?en/used-materials-and-products
It's mainly based on Debian along with a Braille display if I recall well. I suggest anyone interested to check his website.