Re: An Experiment for Optacon II Users
- From: Gailselfridge@xxxxxxx
- To: optacon-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2006 00:13:30 EDT
Speaking of reading through glass, that reminds me of my work at the
Pentagon. I was a computer programmer and vice president of a small company
that
contracted to design, program, test, and impliment a system for them. At first
they
weren't sure they'd let me use my optacon. I'm not sure what they thought it
would do, but they were afraid it would broadcast some sort of signals that
Russian spies could decode or something like that. This was in 1978. But then
they found a record of someone else who had used one, so they let me bring it
in. But someone there told me it wouldn't work on their CRTs because their
screens were covered with smoked glass. Well, things got tight as far as the
time
we had and I was needed to type code in. I did that and just as a final check I
decided to read from the screen to make sure I hadn't made any errors. In
these days there were no screen readers. I didn't have any trouble at all
reading
the screen with my optacon. Everyone was surprised that I could read through
the glass which must not have been heavily smoked. And that taught me not to
listen to people when they told me the optacon wouldn't work in a given
situation. Sometimes it won't, but I find out for myself because many times it
will.
I've had little success reading from a TV screen but I haven't tried that
much. The only time I wish I could is when something on the TV has to be
changed
and it displays those menus. But I have had it set up the way I want it for
years so I don't really need that. It would be useful for people who have cable
because then you could read the TV guide they have on one channel. I don't have
cable so I don't need that.
Gail
These days, tv screens have all sorts of things on them. Besides 800
numbers in infomercials, they also show all kinds of program guides. How
possible it is to freeze theseor how fast they move is the kind of stuff
we need to know. One of the abilities of every Optacon lens which no one
has mentioned is the ability to read through glass. Not all sighted people
read so fast either. If we can figure out what lens works, there may be
hope for us in reading some of these things.
AS I SAID, IT'S AN EXPERIMENT.
Catherine
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-Catherine Thomas
braille@xxxxxxxxx /
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