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Ask HN: How do I put together a computer for my blind mom?

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Re: Ask HN: How do I put together a computer for my blind mom?

#41

Post by walterbell »

a3n wrote: post #31
a2tech wrote: post #5

The 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.

> The 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. Really? This day and age? No one in my life is blind, so I just assumed at least some minimally level of accessibility. I wonder how many blind and sight-impaired people there are in the general population?

Work on "eyes-free" user interfaces can also be helpful to sighted users, e.g. for multitasking.

Re: Ask HN: How do I put together a computer for my blind mom?

#42

Post by astrodust »

lawn wrote: post #18
ArcticCelt wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You may have a much better time with an iphone/ipad/ipod touch The biggest problem with modern intelligent phones, specially apple ones, is that there is zero tactile feedback on the screen vs good old buttons or keyboard.

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.

You can get a physical keyboard for an iPad if you want one. Then you get a touch screen and a keyboard.

Re: Ask HN: How do I put together a computer for my blind mom?

#43

Post by knob »

I hope you see this, because 1st-hand-experience.

My brother is blind. He has been using JAWS for over a decade.

I love OSS, and I know many distros have screen readers.

Yet JAWS is just out there ahead.

If she finds it too complicated: try and simplify things. Remove unneeded icons and menus. Customize her shortcuts. Install TeamViewer (if she is remote).

Keep helping her man. The internet, for my brother, is a place where his limitations are minimized.

Yet to have the world open up in front of you, is all worth it. My brother (just as me), speak spanish. He uses JAWS still the same, although the bulk is in english.

Let me know if I can help you in any way.

PS: If anybody can point me in a direction to help OSS screen reader software, please do let me know. Would love to contribute back.

Re: Ask HN: How do I put together a computer for my blind mom?

#44

Post by clavalle »

a2tech wrote: post #5

The 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.

Actually the screen readers are pretty decent these days. If web creators follow good form and images are annotated blind people can do ok. Javascript heavy sites can be a killer but screen readers do a fairly good job at reacting to those as well but that can definitely be more iffy.

Source: I worked at a school for the blind and have completed accessibility projects for legacy web applications. Even those bloated beasts just needed a relative handful of changes and were mostly usable.

Re: Ask HN: How do I put together a computer for my blind mom?

#45

Post by duskwuff »

dimino wrote: post #11

Not sure if this'll help, but on the Daredevil Netflix series, Matt Murdock (who is blind) was using a refreshable braille display[1]. Could this be useful? [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refreshable_braille_display

Most of the blind and partially sighted users I've known have used text-to-speech. I suspect the Braille display was mainly in there because it looks cool, not because it's functional. :)

Re: Ask HN: How do I put together a computer for my blind mom?

#46

Post by chrmaury »

knob wrote: post #43

I hope you see this, because 1st-hand-experience. My brother is blind. He has been using JAWS for over a decade. I love OSS, and I know many distros have screen readers. Yet JAWS is just out there ahead. If she finds it too complicated: try and simplify things. Remove unneeded icons and menus. Customize her shortcuts. Install TeamViewer (if she is remote). Keep helping her man. The internet, for my brother, is a plac…

NVAccess.org manages the NVDA screenreader which is free and open source. It's what I rely on to use a computer.

It's also stealing massive market share from JAWS.

Re: Ask HN: How do I put together a computer for my blind mom?

#47

Post by DanBC »

a3n wrote: post #31
a2tech wrote: post #5

The 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.

> The 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. Really? This day and age? No one in my life is blind, so I just assumed at least some minimally level of accessibility. I wonder how many blind and sight-impaired people there are in the general population?

In US: about 1% of the population is blind; about 1.3m Americans are "legally blind" - which is defined as " visual acuity with best correction in the better eye worse than or equal to 20/200 or a visual field extent of less than 20 degrees in diameter"

http://www.visionproblemsus.org/blindness/blindness-map.html

Re: Ask HN: How do I put together a computer for my blind mom?

#48

Post by geocar »

I'm a sighted person who had a period of temporary blindness[1] and had a positive experience using the built-in software of my iPhone -- I quickly "got used" to having Stephen Hawking read my email to me while I was on a conference call, and would seriously recommend you take a look at it.

I also used emacsspeak for programming, and I don't think I would recommend it as easily.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9284567

Re: Ask HN: How do I put together a computer for my blind mom?

#49

Post by gress »

tjohns wrote: post #10

I'd recommend looking at a tablet, either Android or iOS. Navigation is simpler in general, which means navigating via the screen reader (TTS) is going to be easier. You also get access to Google Now / Siri, which is nice in this case because it gives you a natural language interface to some of the information on the web — especially since many websites don't play nicely with screen readers. Another option you could…

Not android.

Re: Ask HN: How do I put together a computer for my blind mom?

#50

Post by dbbolton »

knob wrote: post #43

I hope you see this, because 1st-hand-experience. My brother is blind. He has been using JAWS for over a decade. I love OSS, and I know many distros have screen readers. Yet JAWS is just out there ahead. If she finds it too complicated: try and simplify things. Remove unneeded icons and menus. Customize her shortcuts. Install TeamViewer (if she is remote). Keep helping her man. The internet, for my brother, is a plac…

Debian has some decent accessibility resources:

https://wiki.debian.org/accessibility https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-accessibility/software

ORCA is probably the strongest FOSS competitor of JAWS:

https://wiki.debian.org/Orca https://help.gnome.org/users/orca/stable/

I don't know whether Debian would be the best choice for OP or not. In my experience, I wouldn't install any new OS for someone unless you are willing and available to help the person until they get the hang of it.

My parents have been using Linux (formerly Debian and now Mint) for over a decade after they got fed up with Windows. I still have to help them from time to time, but I think that would also be the case with Windows, except I would be trying to remove malware instead of showing them how to burn a DVD or what have you.

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