The Coburn Blog

This is pretty neat. The Central Cost Assistive Technology Center puts this TV broadcast over the internet every so often about different types of assistive technology for different types of disabilities. This one demonstrates the CCTV the CCTV I have at home.

Curb Cuts. how visually impaired read

I have the CRT model that Voc Rehab got me, but as you can see, the CRT model isn’t very portable. I do use it at home though, which helps me a great deal read my mail, and textbooks and stuff. Thats the first time I’ve seen that portable model, something like that would be neat for school, where the camera rotates from a textbook, to the blackboard, for example. My Independant Living Skills instructor didn’t recommend that praticular model, because she said the camera doesn’t do a very good job of focusing at a distance, like for the blackboard or overhead projector, but yeah the CRT model that the old lady is using, thats the model I have here at home. Like I said, the only thing i don’t like about it, is I can’t take it outside of the house, and as big as it is, I really don’t have room on my desk for it as it is. I’d eventually like to get a longer desk to put it on, as I’d use it more if it had wheels on it for example. pretty slick though eh? They have another episode that talks about assistive technology for recreational activities too, which is really neat to watch.

okay, now that I am no longer blacklisted from my own website, hehe, I can make a post to my blog. Oh that was just too funny. For anyone running Wordpress, there is an update to Bad Behavior that fixes a bug from blog owners being blacklisted from their own blogs. Oh that is too funny.

Anyway, this is soo cool! The company that developed the software I use to read the computer screen with, aisquared, has just released a new product called Zoomtext USB that I am extremely happy about today!

The great thing about this product, is it will open up the world of working with Computers for a living, for me . Oh man, you just can’t imagine how excited I am about this product. The product will set me back $100 for the upgrade, which I am hoping I get for Christmas so I can purchase this thing. I don’t know, I hope so.

What is so neat about this, I’ll be able to take my copy of Zoomtext, with me to any Computer I do service on, so lets say I’m working for a company, and they want me to do field work at someones house. All I’d have to do, is plug this little baby in, and instantly have the ability to work on that clients Computer, without having to put any special software on it. This will open up a world of possibilities for me. Field Technician, Systems Administrator, Network Engineer, whatever field I decide to get into. I must say, this has got to be, the coolest thing.

Now see, if I ever do loose my vision completely, I could just get one of these..

Sighted Guide Horse

Sighted Guide Horsey! I want one!! aren’t those CUTE!? They look like miniature ponies don’t they?

Just need someone to build me a barn, and I’d be all set. hehe Of course, the best idea would be to get a goat. sighted guide goat, there we go. Could ride on his back to take me to school, walk me around walmart, and eat the grass from our lawn.. No more mowing the stupid grass, WOOOHOOO!!!! hehe

Ya know, I wouldn’t mind the yardwork so much, if I had a rider. These push mowers are a pain in the butt. hehe. If it wasn’t for them stupid apples that fall all over the ground, and the bees from the rotten apples, and the weeds all around the inside and outside of the fance

At least now I understand why I can’t moe grass. I fussed and fussed with that growing up at my dads house. I never understood why I can’t moe grass in a straight line, until my independent living skills trainer explained it to me last month. She explains, its because I cannot see the blades of grass like normal people can, the lawn just looks “green” to me, I can’t see the grass itself, just the green color, so I am not able to see where the row was I mowed last.. I always knew that, just didn’t know how to explain it to anyone before. So like, when I moe down a row, I cannot see where I just went down, even if the grass in that row was much shorter, it all just looks “green” to me. She explains, that is why I can’t moe in a straight line, and why I miss big patches of grass in whole rows. So in this house, Susan has to moe. I do get out there and help with it though, because its physically hard for Susan to do by herself. She doesn’t have the strength in her arms to pull the string, so I have to get it started for her while she mows it. In the spots I go, its all crooked, and I miss whole rows of grass. Its perdy though, my dad can tell yah, even as a kid he used to get frustrated with me not being able to moe the grass right. but if I can’t I can’t.. She did tell me a couple of tricks to try though, like setting up 2 chairs and mowing towards the chairs. She doesn’t know how big my yard is, but she says for small yards that should work. In this yard it would take me all day to moe that way though, but it probably would work for small yards, smaller then this one I mean. hehe

I still like the goat idea, or just letting it all die and putting out astro turf! yeah!!! isn’t that what its called, that fake stuff, Astro Turf? hehehehe I did find on the internet one time, I can’t remember the website, but I could find it again, about a special kind of grass seed that only grows so tall, so you only have to moe like once a year at most. That’d be MY kind of grass seed! hehehe

I was soo happy when I received this in the mail yesterday.

QuickLook Zoom portable magnifier

I received this from Voc Rehab. Since I can’t read without a CCTV anymore, my instructor recommended this for me, oh man this thing is cool!! its got

• 3x - 18x Digital Zoom Magnification Range
• Color, Black and White, Reverse video, blue on yellow, or yellow on blue displays
• High brightness, non-glare display
• Lightweight… only 8.8 ounces
• Up to 7 hours battery life, on a 3 hour charge
• 4.3 inch wide screen display

This thing will be perfect for reading the menu in a restaurant, labeling on prescription bottles, recipes in the kitchen, read the bills I don’t have the money to pay LOL, review mail order catalogs and TV program listings, all kinds of stuff.

CCTV stands for “Closed Circut Television”. What it basically does, is puts stuff written on paper onto a TV like screen, where the image can be magnified. My large CCTV magnifies up to 50x, but is unpractical to take with me, because its connected to a 17 inch CRT display, and is quite heavy, about 100 lbs I’d say, so I was glad when this portable model came in the mail.

The larger CCTV I use for reading textbooks for school. It has a tray underneath the display, with a camera, useful for reading textbooks because you can set your book on the tray and move it from left to right as your reading. This is the only way I was able to read anymore, so now that the portable model came in the mail, I won’t have to ask Susan, or my family, to read the menus and stuff to me anymore

Well, I got my copy of Zoomtext in the mail the other day.. VR got me the wrong version though, they got me a License just for the Magnifier, but check this out

boy, yesterday was certainly an interesting day.

First off, the taxi didn’t know to pick me up at 8am like it normally does when I goto Bristol. Normally, what happens, is my instructor calls my counselor to make arrangements for me to be picked up. She calls my counselor, and he calls the taxi and has them pick me up, so I don’t have to pay for it. I go there about once a week, I have been since April. Its my Blind training school. Living skills is what they call it.

Anyway, my counselor said he called the Taxi the day before and told them all the dates I would need picked up, including that day, but they had forgotten, so my counselor asked to speak to a manager, to find out why they had forgotten he talked to them, and the manager said it was because a new crew of people for the day came on, so he got rather irritated about that, and asked them if they ever write stuff down? hehe. I told him I says, the fast cabs taxi service does that to me all the time. I call ‘em like 2-3 hours in advance, cuz otherwise they won’t pick you up at all, and either they show up late, which would be ok, except other times they don’t show up at all, and we’re not talking a day, but a couple hours later, so I told him it does get rather frustrating, esp if a person has to take a taxi for work, being late to work looks bad on the employee, not the taxi service, so its rather frustrating to deal with.

but the KABS service, which is a bus, closest we have to public transportation here, is better at picking people up on time. in fact, there the oppisite, the only way they will take you anywhere, is if its for work or something, so like, taking them for rides to school will be out, because school schedule changes every semester, and the bus doesn’t like it when your schedule changes, so when you stop riding at that scheduled time from last semester, they no longer pick you up at all, but those are the only 2 choices we got here in Warsaw for public transportation, rather frustrating at times, esp because the bus service is only for disabled and retired people, but yet its rediculous how they treat retired and disabled people like that.

Anyway,I got to NILLS around 10pm, about an hour and a half late, but in this case wasn’t a big deal. She started me on keyboarding training and using the Zoomtext software.. I didn’t realize what all that Zoomtext software can do, it was really neat.

At first I thought I would just be using the magnification and contrast controls, but she showed me that the speech part can be very helpful too. For instance, and I think even 20/20 people can appreciate this, it has 2 options called an “appreader” and a “docreader”. The Docreader will simply just read your word, excel, access documents to you word by word. The appreader, is nice for web sites by reading the content inside internet explorer or firefox to you. It either skips over images, or reads the description of the image. so like, once it encounters an image, it reads whats in the alt=”" tags, so if the webmaster leaves the alt field blank, it skips over the image, but if they put in alt=”smiley face” then it’ll read the words “a smiley face” to you. cool eh? so it gave me a WHOLE different perspective on web development I tell yah, and how powerful those “alt” tags can be for images, because if you put in say, alt=”:)” it will say “colon left-bracket” which to a blind person, doesn’t mean anything, doesn’t even mean anything to me and I can see it. LOL, so it gave me a totally new perspective on using those alt tags correctly in websites.

Anyway that was really neat.. She was also explaining to me, that different software called “Jaws for WIndows” is better for the totally blind. Visually impaired usually like zoomtext better, because its got zooming, contrast, and speech controls, but for a totally blind person, zoomtext speech isn’t that good, so for totally blind they usually recommend Jaws. She was showing me that program too, and I agreed that I did like Zoomtext better, but I did like the speech much better on Jaws, its much clearer spoken, has different voices male or female, it sounds more like human speech rather then just a computer generated voice. plus, Jaws has options just for blind people, like zones, so like, you have complete control over what is read to you. both programs have options to control what is being read to you, like for instance, you can have it read “just” the content of a web page, and not the title bars, menu bars, or address bars. but Jaws has more controls for that then Zoomtext does, which is why its better for the totally blind, but still, Zoomtext still has alot of those, so like, if my eyes aren’t feeling very good one day, and I just want it to read my email for me, or a website for me, then it can word for word, its really neat.

so anyway, that was my fun yesterday. Of course Computers are always fun for me, but that speech software stuff, even someone with 20/20 can appreciate that, just have your email or documents or webpages read word for word to you, very cool stuff Zoomtext will even go as far as underlining, or wedge or circle, around the word thats being spoken, so you can follow along while sitting back in your chair.. Both programs were just updated to work with Microsoft Vista too, so there pretty up to date software for the most part. Costly, of course. I think Zoomtext was $595, and I can’t remember how much Jaws is, around that same price range, cheaper then zoomtext but not by much. Way beyond what I can afford, of course, but Voc rehab is going to get me a copy of Zoomtext for me to use for my Online classes, so when I get it in a few weeks, I’ll be able to use it for everyday stuff too, but mostly for the online classes, for I won’t have to get transportation to the school to take those classes when there given completely online.

Now I just need to figure out how to get ahold of a copy of Office 2003 or 2007 and I should be good to go for summer classes.  I may end up having to go into class to use the computers there, may not have a choice on that one, but if I can get ahold of a legal copy of Office somehow, then I can take the Access class this summer from home without having to try to deal with the taxi stuff..

This is a test to see if this audio podcasting plugin works. Susan and Angie say this song reminds them of me, so its my new nickname I guess. hrm!

This song was deleted due to copyright reasons, but at least now I know the player works.. I may turn this into an audio blog at a later time if it’ll work for dialup users.

Susan found this while doing one of her google searches, I thought it fit me perfectly.

Farting Bear

I think we should all chip in and get me one, what ya think? hehehe