AMY RUELL: And I would say our group ranges in age from, I think the
youngest member is about 22 and the oldest is 86, and they vary in
ability from someone who barely knows how to turn on a computer to
people who can run circles around me. I am self-taught, primarily, so
that colors my perspective, as well. I want to start with just a
couple of concepts, and some of this you probably already have heard
or may have [:40]. But I think it's worth remembering that your
perspective is both the [:47] for obstacles and it's also to give you
the potential for change and positive results.

One of the things that I did in preparation for this is that I sent
out an email to [1:02] and I said, "Okay, what are the challenges
that we face. What are the things that we wish were different?" And
I would say that 95 percent of the people who responded, this is a
technology group, but all of them said, "Tell them not to be afraid
of connecting with them. Tell them that we're all the same. Tell them
not to make erroneous assumptions about our abilities, and tell them
about the power of collaboration."

So many times, and I'll give you just a really brief example, this
happened some years ago, but it could have easily happened yesterday:
I was walking into a bus station using my cane, headed to, I believe,
it was Worcester that day. Somebody came up to me, grabbed me by the
arm, and said, "I know where you're going," and pulled. At which
point I planted my feet, and I said, "Whoa, excuse me, but how do
you know where I'm going? Are you telepathic?" And they said,
No, no, they're all over there." Well, I didn't know who "they"
were, but I knew I didn't want to go. So, I had to convince this
person that I wasn't going with a group of blind people that happened
to be going somewhere else that day. But people made an assumption.

We get a lot of people who come, and we're delighted to do this, we
have a lot of people who come, come to [2:31] and they ask us for our
opinions, and they say, "I want to build X." And they're not
really asking us, "Do you need X?" Sometimes they're saying,
I want to build X." And sometimes X isn't what we need. And, you
know, people spend a lot of money and a lot of time and energy
sometimes deciding what it is that we need rather than asking us. And
I think the collaboration, the power of that is that the tools that
all of you have that perhaps we as users don't have can be combined
with our ideas and experience, to make a much more powerful product or
piece of software, or adaptation.

So I just want to encourage you to continually keep that in mind.

There are a lot of specific challenges. And some of these, I've listed
a bunch, and, please, if you have a question, just say, "Question."
I don't do [3:33] so you could wave your hand all day and I wouldn't
know. So, but there are a lot of different challenges. And I'll try to
comment where I can about how people are using technology to address
them. But some people can't, because we're not all the same. Some
people have different capacities. Some people have different degrees
of blindness, and some people have different degrees of both the
capacity to learn some of the technology, which is a huge challenge,
or the capacity to afford it.

So, transportation. Time is of the essence. Today, I wasn't able to
take my usual train ride. I live in Hingham, which is about 15 miles
south of Boston. And because of my injuries, I had to take the
[4:26]. So, I wanted to get here, I told them 12:30 because I didn't
want to be late. So, they picked me up at 10:30. I then had to
transfer vehicles at 11:30.

Q:  Question?

AMY RUELL:  Yeah.

Q:  How far away do you live from here?

AMY RUELL: I live 15 miles south of Boston. So, they took me from
Hingham to Ruggles, near the Ruggles T station in Boston. I had to
then transfer vehicles. It happened that the vehicle to which I had to
transfer was there at 11:15 when I arrived. So, in fact, had he not
gotten lost, I would've been here by 11:30. The good news about that
is that I have an iPhone and I can read books and read the sports
pages and do all sorts of other things. But it really would be nice
not to have to do that. If I had to drive here from my house, it would
take 35 minutes. And when I go home, I probably won't get home until 5
o'clock. Again, time.

When I used to work in Brockton, which is a 22-minute ride from my
house, it took me four buses and two and a half hours each way to get
there. You do what you have to. You've got to work. But it's a
challenge. Another challenge? Airports. First of all, in an airport,
the kiosks (?) are not accessible. They could be made to be so. The
technology is there. But as you may have heard in some of these
lawsuits, they're not going to be very interested, the companies, the
airlines are not very interested in making them accessible. I know of
blind people who have missed their planes because they've had to wait
for a person to help them with their boarding pass. Or they want to
put you in a wheelchair, so you have to wait until the person with a
wheelchair -- And I categorically refuse to ride in a wheelchair. I
cannot see. I can walk just fine, unless I've cracked a couple of
ribs.

So, you know, and I have almost missed a plane. And so, often what I
will do is I'll go on my own, I'll just say, "Okay, tell me which
gate I'm going to," and I just start walking and I ask
directions. But a lot of people don't do that. A lot of people don't
have the guts to do that, and they feel like they need to wait. How do
you find a cab? I can stand on a street corner all day and I don't
know when a cab goes by. That's just something that's really
frustrating when you're --

I used to travel. I worked in a job for several years where I had to
travel all over the country. And I ended up always having to schedule
cabs, find a cab company ahead of time, explain the situation, blah,
blah, blah, because I can't hail a cab. In most places in the country,
unless there's been a lawsuit or a lot of activism, bus stops, station
stops, are not announced. And that sometimes means that you miss your
spot, or if the driver doesn't speak English well or whatever language
you happen to speak, they may not be able to communicate with you.

Now, some people have managed to deal with that one by using GPS
technology, and it's great A) when it's accurate, and that's true for
anybody, whether you're sighted or blind, and B) if you can afford
it. Most GPS products, there are some, if you use them in combination,
you can use a few iPhone apps. I think if I use two at a time I can
usually find the information I need and figure out where I am and
where I'm going. But that takes a lot of skill and back and forth. And
those specific blindness GPS products are incredibly expensive. I
think the cheapest one is probably about $1,000 -- out of the reach
of most people.

And the other part of it is, you can't get there. I mean, there are
places you just can't get to. I, in my own town, cannot literally get
from one part of the town to another very easily. I live in a town
that you can navigate by car in about 10 minutes, but I can get from
Hingham to Boston more easily than I can go across town. And there are
often areas, as you know, in the country where you can't get anywhere,
and there are jobs that people can't take. There are jobs I've been
unable to take because I couldn't get there.

Now, there are, again, some technology that's coming along that may
help address this, but probably not in my lifetime. Things like the
car that Google is trying to build, and the blind driver challenge
that they've done through the National Federation of the Blind. If you
go to NFB.org you can read all about it. They actually have built a
car along with Virginia Tech University, that a blind person can
drive, using sensors and different, they wear specific gloves, they
wear receptors that give him information about [9:45].

Also, I've often said being blind is not such a big deal; it's just
expensive. If you have to take cabs, if you have to hire a driver, if
you have to take the [10:00] it's expensive in terms of money and
time.

Q:  Yeah, I think that's definitely true.

AMY RUELL: Some people have trouble with crosswalks or curb cuts that
are on the diagonal. That can make it hard to cross the street
straight. And some people have also mentioned things like low-hanging
branches that are a real obstacles, because the cane or a dog is not
going to necessarily sense that. And also basics: What street is this?
I mean, I love it when I get directions, most sighted people, I'm
sorry to say, do not know how to give directions. So they'll say,
Okay, that's a couple of blocks down." Well, that's
helpful. Because a couple of blocks, they really might mean five,
because they've forgotten that there are two little streets that they
don't think about because there aren't lights at them or the three
alleyways that they forget about that are there. So, that's really,
you know, "What street am I at? Can't read the sign. And what
building is it?"

And then there are the lethal killers -- and I own one -- is
hybrid cars. I can't, if my car pulls up, I barely can hear it. And
there is, again, technology, some of the consumer groups have been
successful in getting passage for a bill that will force the
car-makers, and now some of them are onboard, to make some sound, to
force their cars to have some sound that's emitted. But that took a
lot of advocacy. Again, it's [11:36].

And, again, if you don't know an area, how do you travel without
directions? Some people, there are not that many maps
available. People who have the technology, I mean, I can use my iPhone
and get directions. I can Google, I can use different things. But
sometimes those are car directions and not pedestrian directions. And
sometimes it's hard to ascertain if they are pedestrian
directions. So, those are transportation.

And then of course there's indoor navigation. How [12:07] the
building? Okay, now we're going [12:12]. Because I had to use the
ladies' room and there's no signage. As you can imagine, that can be
an issue. So there's no signage. If you go to a mall, you can't read a
mall directory. It's impossible to know. Even though there are laws on
the books, I was at a hotel recently in New York where there was no
audible signal or speaking or anything when you went up and down the
floors, so you never knew what floor you were on. And there were no
Braille numbers. It's really scary at midnight, if you're in a hotel
with no Braille numbers, and if you're way down the hall, you just
hope to God you're at the right door.

And I used to try things like putting a rubber band on the door, so I
would know that that's where I needed to be. People would take it
off. Not helpful at midnight. And then there are just a lot of daily
living things. We can't read handwriting. I don't care how clear it
is, there's not a device in the universe that will scan
handwriting. You can't read it, no matter what. The mail. If you are a
good computer user and you have a computer and a scanner, and an
operable character recognition program, now you've gotten, now we're
into some money, and some of the mainstream ones are very accessible
if you're a good computer user. But, again, people's abilities vary,
and people's training vary.

So, what's in the mail? And that's a privacy issue. It's a privacy
concern. Because if you have to get somebody to read your mail, and a
lot of blind people, I'm sorry to say, don't have as much access to
sighted people and to resources, informal kinds of support. How do you
get that done?

Q:  Question.

AMY RUELL:  Yes.

Q:  Can you comment on the Optacon?

AMY RUELL: Yeah, you know, the Optacon. I was one of the users of the
Optacon when it first came out, and it cost a lot of money and it was
great at what it did. And there are people who still love it. You have
two problems. One is, I think the learning curve is quite steep
because it had a camera that came across the paper, and unless you
could do that very straight it skewed things. Also, it was slow. It
was so painfully slow. I'm an inpatient person.

Q:  You're only seeing one letter form at a time?

AMY RUELL: Yeah, you're using one letter form at a time, and it's
slow. I think the highest, I don't know the exact number, but I think
some really good users got to like 120 words a minute. Much too
slow. And, again, it would depend. You have to know all the different
-- I was amazed when I learned the Optacon, actually, because I didn't
realize how many kinds of print -- people think Braille is
difficult. Are you kidding? Six dots? You guys have more fonts and
styles and all this stuff that I never knew existed until I started to
use the Optacon. But that solved a problem for people who had the
patience, the manual dexterity, and the money to get it and use
it. Good question, thank you.

Perusing the supermarket aisles or the store when you want to go buy
something. I manage that now by, much to my credit card company's
delight, I manage that by, I can go shopping, I can use [15:52] if I
just want to see what's around. I can, I'm fortunate, I have people, I
have friends who will put up with my asking them about different
products and so forth. But a lot of people don't have that, or don't
have the computer skill, and you just sometimes, yes, you can go to a
store, and that's what I used to do when I lived by myself, I used to
go to the store with a print and Braille list, and I would wait at the
courtesy counter until somebody would take me around, and I would give
the option, I'd say, "I want to pick out my meat and
vegetables. You get to pick out the rest, and I'll go with you."

So, but a lot of people, again, have to have volunteers do that, and
it's -- But if you just want to know what's in an aisle or read
directions, it's harder to do that, or takes a long time. There are
things that will identify, barcode scanners, but the ones that really
do it well, the omnidirectional cameras, cost $1,200, out of the reach
of most people. And there are some apps on the iPhone that are trying
to do that, but, right now, it is not going to take pictures well
enough to do it, which is part of it. But, also, they're just not good
enough to make it reasonable.

Q:  Question.

AMY RUELL:  Sure.

Q:  Maybe -- this is Cathy Cahill.

AMY RUELL:  Hi.

Q:  I was wondering, have you ever used the T-Pod (?) site yourself?

AMY RUELL:  Yes.

Q:  Does it work okay with the screen reader?

AMY RUELL:  It's really pretty good.

Q:  That's amazing, because those sites always struck me as just [17:30]. 

AMY RUELL: You have to use a screen meter, which is part of the
issue. One of the things is, when you're using a screen reader,
there's lots of navigation built in. If you use an H, for example,
it'll go to the next heading, if you use a T it goes to the table. And
you can find a links list. But there are commands for a lot of
things. Two problems. One is, most people don't know them, even if
they have the screen reader. I know people who have had a screen
reader for 10 years, and they listen to the whole thing when it comes
up. Or if they know how to navigate, they do one of two things: They
tap or they arrow, because they don't have the training.

Another problem: What's in style. Clothing is a real issue,
particularly, not only knowing what's in style and what looks
appropriate, but also, once you get the clothes home, matching and
marking them. I don't think we have good systems for that, at
all. And, you know, I marvel at people who are brave enough to let
store people tell them what looks good on them. I would never do
that. I'm fortunate. I have people I can go with, but I would be
careful about who I ask, because my friend, really, is a size 4. I
haven't been able to fit into clothes that she can wear since I was
4. It's one of those things, you have to be careful.

Again, point of [18:54]. Appliances with all kind of flat panels,
buttons that don't sound or make any tactile difference when they're
toggled, and appliances that can only be navigated by the use of
silent menus. Real problem. Things like, "What do the lights look
like on the remote?" I have Comcast. Last night, Comcast didn't
acknowledge that they had a problem, and I suddenly lost
internet. "Well, what do the lights look like?" Well, if I could
tell you that [19:36]. "Don't you have somebody with you?"
No, not at the moment." So that's a real issue. Now, there is an
app on the iPhone that I heard of that may help with that. But, again,
if you don't have an iPhone or you're not tuned in, I mean, I spend a
lot of time researching technology. But, again, that's a real issue.

I can't use my TV remote A) because there are too many darn buttons on
it and B) because I can't read the menus. So I can't navigate my own
television, and there are no set top boxes right now in the US that
are accessible. Things, basic stuff like you can't see the, you know
when the warnings come across the bottom of the screen, I don't know
that they're there. And that's an issue, that's a real issue. What if
there's an emergency? Sometimes it's good, because you avoid some of
the stuff that you really don't want to know about. But [20:35] would
like to know.

Or reading manuals. You know how when you get a new appliance or you
get a new device, the manuals are full of pretty pictures. You can't
read them. And even if I can speak them, which I can, it'll say,
To do this function" -- blank. Because it's graphic, which no
screen reader is going to read.

Measuring things. Measuring blood pressure, glucose monitoring, that
kind of stuff. Yes, there are devices. They cost upwards of $250 and
often are not covered by insurance. So, again, you're talking
expense. And another privacy issue? Filling out forms. I love to go to
medical appointments or other places where I have to fill out forms,
because if you tell them ahead of time that you're blind they'll give
you a hassle, most of the time, or if you ask them to please mail it
to ahead of time, often they don't do it. And then they love it when
you get there and, "Well, you didn't bring somebody with you. We
really don't have time to do this. But if you really want me to do
this, come over here." I really can hear you -- it's not that I'm
deaf. And I really don't need the entire universe to know what my
medical issues are. But that's an issue, it's a major issue.

And also, I was in the emergency room two weeks ago. They gave me
seven printed pages of instructions as to what to do. I mean, I'm
fortunate. I could go home and scan the stuff and I have sighted
people available to me. But a lot of people don't. Vary the
lighting. I won't talk too much about that. I'm sure you've heard
plenty of that from other people, but that's a real issue, I think,
for a lot of people with partial vision. I don't have any vision, so
thankfully I don't have to worry about that.

People with disabilities need to move more. We're much too sedentary
as a group. We need interactive games that sighted and blind people
can play together, both on the computer, because all the kids do video
games, but we also need, I mean, I love accessible tennis or
accessible volleyball, but not some special game that only blind
people play. It's something that I can play with my kids or play with
other adults. When I was a kid, it was always a challenge, because I
took, I went to a public school before it was politically correct to
do so, and so I took regular PE like everybody else. It was a real joy
to be on those darn uneven parallel bars, hanging upside down, and
they'd say, "Hmm, I wonder how we explain the next part." I'm
thinking, "Couldn't you have thought about that before I got up
here?" But it really is important for people to be active. We need
more innovation for that.

We need help learning how to take pictures, because of the impact that
it can have. Now, again, Apple has made some inroads. They actually,
in the latest version, it actually will tell you if you've got a face
in view, and you may be able to take a successful picture. But we need
to learn more how to do that, so we're better at using optical
character recognition apps and so forth. We want to, we need to know
what's on menus without having to stand with an object 12 inches above
the table and have the rest of the world wonder what in God's name
we're doing to get a menu that we might or might not be able to read
electronically. Most places don't have Braille menus, or they're not
updated. And only a very few people know Braille, which is another
issue.

And, again, identifying cans, identifying all those objects that we do
get at home.

More challenges. Probably the biggest one, I'm very fortunate -- I'm
one of the percentage of people that has almost always been employed --
two short periods of unemployment. Seventy percent of blind people are
working [24:42] blind people in this country are not employed. And
that is a waste of talent, and it takes a tremendous financial toll
and costs you a lot of money as taxpayers, because you end up paying
for Social Security and food stamps and government programs to sustain
people who could be employed.

There's a lot of software accessibility challenges. I don't know all
the technical jargon, but I'll claim that flash technology is the bane
of most people's existences. I know people who work in IT who are
blind, who are having tremendous difficulty, because their IT
departments continue to use inaccessible flash technology that the
screen readers don't work with. I have another friend who has worked
for the Department of Transportation for 30 years, and he's retiring
in part because they don't have jobs that he can do now, because of
the programs that they're using. And when you make, when you develop a
program that can only be navigated with a mouse, if you develop a
program where accessibility, if at all considered, is retrofitted
rather than incorporated as a part of universal design, you're always
on the backburner. And there's no such thing as separate but
equal. Anybody who builds a website that says they're going to build a
special website just for people with disabilities, they're not
updated, they don't have the -- Amazon [26:22]. They have an
accessible website on Amazon. All the same parts aren't on there. And
there's no way they're going to keep up two websites.

Websites written with a lot of Java script are real difficult, because
screen readers just consistently, when the page refreshes, they go
back to the top of the page and start reading, because screen readers
will put things in a virtual [26:52].

Poorly colored websites, maybe black, all text, use flash, or don't
follow the accepted standards, are real problems. One of the boons has
been, frankly, that because some of the mobile sites that are used now
for people with mobile devices, that's been great, because they're
easier to use, and that's been helpful. So a lot of us will go to a
mobile site as opposed to the regular site. I have a friend who's been
working for 30 years modifying database applications that are written
in emulation programs, terminal emulation programs, and he has to try
to capture the salient parts of the window, and it takes a tremendous
amount of time and scripting to do it. And he's one of the few in the
country that knows how.

We're fortunate in Boston. I will tell you that I've had two jobs in
my lifetime that I would not have been able to take were it not for
his expertise.

Inaccessible training materials. A lot of times if you work for the
mainstream, and sometimes even if you don't, I have had one job in the
blindness industry, and I will tell you that they weren't a heck of a
lot better than other employers. There was a copier that I couldn't
independently use. Sometimes there would be files that would come out,
and this happens in a lot of companies, that are image PDFs, so they
don't work. There's no screen reader that's going to be able to read
that. In Adobe, it just says "Empty document." And what you have
to have, which sometimes works and sometimes doesn't, is a special
optical character recognition program, like Open Book [28:37], that
will cost you about $1,100, and then maybe it will work.

And then there's one of my favorites, which is capture. Why can't
people just give me an addition problem? Unless I'm really
math-challenged, I probably know what 2 plus 3 is, which, you know,
[28:57] but mostly yes. That's a real problem. I have several email
lists for my computer group. I couldn't independently set up the darn
list on Google groups, because there was a capture, and the audio
capture was broken. So I had to, and I'm well organized, so my habits
are a little strange, so at three o'clock in the morning the only
person I knew who was going to be up was my son, because he's an
architecture student. So I had to have him log in and do it for
me. Not a good solution.

Another problem when you're working or a social situation as well, but
particularly when you're working, I want talking name tags,
please. You haven't lived until you walk into a room, you've got 150
people, and you don't know who's who and where's where, who's where,
and you have to mix and mingle and make connections. Something needs
to be done for that. That's probably the biggest challenge that I
face, working and going to conferences, trying to find the people that
I want to talk to. That's a real issue, particularly in a noisy
environment. There's a lot that's being done with adaptive
technology. I've said before it's expensive.

I'll tell you that my screen reader, and I own, there are a couple of
free ones. Let me stop and say that. MVDA is one, System Access to Go
is another, which that one works if you have an internet
connection. They work fine for somebody who is a very casual computer
user. If you want to get into anything more complex, you're going to
need something like [30:32] or Jaws. The price of technology is coming
down, but I will tell you that Jaws Professional, which is what I
need, is about $1,200. I pay $200 every few years to keep it
current. I just had to pay another $200 because I needed a version
that would allow me to use Citrix.

When I first got my first computer in 1996, I paid more for, I paid
$5,000 for the adaptive technology and I paid $2,500 for the
computer. And it's interesting -- why am I using hard copy Braille,
you might ask? I have a Braille display. I'm very fortunate. It cost
me $1,800. It's one of the cheaper ones. The battery is not user
replaceable and it died two days ago. So, guess what? I'm doing paper
Braille.

Q:  Question.

AMY RUELL:  Sure.

Q:  The Braille display only gives a line or two of Braille, right?

AMY RUELL: One line. They all do one line. There is some development
around trying to make a full page Braille display, but it's never come
out. Braille technology is so expensive, it's prohibitive for the most
part. The average note-taker, if it has, say, 20 cells, will cost you
upwards of $3,000, $3,500. And if it has 40 cells, it's more like
$7,000.

Q:  Question.

AMY RUELL:  Yes.

Q:  Actually, go ahead and finish the answer.

AMY RUELL: My Braille printer that I use to print this on, and it's
the cheapest one, one of the cheaper ones, it cost me $2,200. Now, you
think about that. When you want to go buy a printer, your printer is
not working anymore, what do you do? Do you bother to get it fixed?
No. You go out and buy another one, because you can go and get a
cheapie for $49. I have to buy, and I have to keep it updated. So I
have to pay for maintenance agreements, and I have to ship it back if
it doesn't work. And unless you are, and sometimes rehabilitation
agencies will buy you equipment for work, but not for home. And most
people don't qualify for that stuff. You had a question?

Q: Yeah, back to the screen readers. Have you heard any feedback from
the Coalition of Blind Users for the OSX, that little screen reader?

A: Yeah. Actually, I think Apple has made, and, actually, you just
went back to my next thing, which is called the Apple Revolution. But
Apple has turned the AT industry on its head. I'm delighted. And it's
changed the way that blind people think, and it's going to change the
way adaptive technology vendors have to think and developers have to
think. Because for the first time, and I can't tell you how wonderful
this was, I pulled that thing out of the box, I set it up by myself --
no people to have to ask anything of, no numbers or codes I had to
read off of a box. Didn't have to do anything. Pulled it out of the
box and just hit that home key three times, and voice over came up.

And this is stuff you guys all take for granted. You have no idea what
a thrill it is to be able to do that independently, the same way I
felt when I first voted independently, which was only a few years ago.

And I think Apple, I think the Apple machines are good. I haven't used
the latest version. I will say that I think where Apple is behind is
in work accessibility. Most offices still use Windows, and I don't
think that they're asked for, things like the equivalents for Word and
Excel are as robust for blind people. And I think one of the other
problems is consumer choice. Sometimes you get whatever the state, if
the state is buying it for you, decides you're going to get. That may
have to do with who the vendor is that they are partnered with, who
they get the best deal from. Sometimes there isn't as much consumer
choice as there ought to be.

Or I would say, I have an iPhone and love it. I'm not ready yet to go
to Apple for my primary computer because of the work that I do, and
the need to use Office applications. But I think one of the challenges
is that now, we can get something, I mean, my first phone, talking
cell phone, I bought the phone, I paid $325 for the joy of buying a
screen reader which could talk, but that I then had to load into the
phone, which I needed sighted help to do. At that time, they've
learned a little more since then, but at that time it was tied to the
phone. So if you bought, if you had another phone, if your phone died,
if your phone fell in the water, which mine did, if your phone, if you
wanted a new phone -- guess what? You had to buy it all over
again. So, again, very costly.

And one of the other problems, frankly, is training. Even if people
have the devices, there's so little training. Often what happens is
that you have, even if you are a person who's working and who
therefore goes to a training center, you go for two weeks, you get a
crash course, then you go back to your office or back home. If your
computer isn't set up the way that that training center's computer was
set up, or if you have, you know, if you happen to come across
something that is foreign, there's often nobody to help.

The good news about the Apple products is that, because the same
interaction, it uses different gestures, but the same controls do the
same thing, that's the advantage of Apple products, because actually
sighted and blind people can work together much more effective. You
use a screen reader, a lot of sighted people are going to have trouble
helping you with anything, because on the web page it's hard to know
where the cursor is. Screen readers present information through, they
change it by using what they call a virtual buffer, and they present
it in a linear way. So, sighted people will say, "Over on the
left." Well, that means nothing to me, because that's not how I'm
going to experience it.

Ease of use is a real issue. You know, I'm a person, I'm very, very
fortunate. I took a lot of time, I'm self-taught, I am tenacious and
stubborn, as most of my family will tell you, and I learned because it
was important to me to do so. Most people don't have that kind of
tenacity. And this stuff, as a blind computer user, you have to be a
lot more savvy, you have to learn a lot more stuff, because your
screen reader is going to go silent, you may not know how to get
out. You can't install Windows yourself. There's no such thing as an
easy, unintended, I'm sorry, unattended installation. So, you can't do
that. You have to wait for sighted help. So, it is a real problem. And
a lot of the training materials are as dry as you can get. There are
some good things on the horizon for those people who have significant
knowledge. There are podcasts that are being done all over the world
by blind people. There are email lists, if you're plugged in. That's
how I learned Windows. When I joined [38:30] I knew absolutely
nothing. They were all using DOS. I wanted to use Windows. So, because
I have a big mouth, I'm fairly organized, and I, you know, I was able
to research and learn a lot, I became more of an expert very quickly,
because I wanted to learn Windows. I didn't want to learn DOS, because
I figured that was away from where the rest of the world was going.

And ease of use is important also because the Baby Boomers are coming
of age, and there are a lot of them who are transitioning to
blindness. And we need products that are easy to use. We also have to
look at the fact that a lot of blindness-related products are
single-use products. One of the problems, I think, that occurs, is
that you have a conundrum, I think, as a developer, because if you
create something that does one thing well, that's great, but, and it
will be cheaper, but people want bang for their buck. So they want
things, blind people, I always feel sorry for people who come to
[39:40], they want one thing to do everything, so they don't have to
buy and carry 10 products. Yet that drives up the development cost. So
that's a real conundrum.

I'm at the point now where if the talking book's available from NLS
where I could listen to those on my iPhone, when I read them, I would
get rid of all my other technology products that I use, because I want
one thing. I don't want to carry [40:11]. Another thing, just really
briefly, deaf-blind consumers, remember that speech solutions don't
work for them. So that's a real issue. And, again, just maintaining
technology -- repair, replacement, shipping it back, all of that is
costly and tend to be time-consuming, and make it difficult.

My hard drive crashed, and because it crashed I couldn't use just any
other computer. They didn't have any computers in my office that were
powerful enough, because I need more memory to run the screen reader
and the 12 applications I run simultaneously, and I had to wait a week
and a half and do things far differently, and just with email, to get
a computer back that I could use. And that was a real impediment.

It's a changing landscape. There are so many things that I can do now
that I couldn't do 10, 15 years ago. I mean, I pay my bills online, I
shop online, I get travel directions, I read newspapers and books, and
there's more that I can ever read now, which is one of my big
complaints. And now there's so much possibility. But there's a long
way to go. And I really appreciate your time, and just want to tell
you that just as people like the folks at Apple and somebody like Jim
Fruchterman (?), who had the inspiration for Book Share, which is a
service that allows you to download books, scanned books, and somebody
like Ray Kurzweil, who invented and continues to invent reading
machines for blind people, all of you have the capacity to make a
difference. And I hope you do. Thank you so much.

[applause]

Q: We have five more minutes to take some questions. Questions from
the group?

Q: I have a question. What are your thoughts about younger blind
people maybe not being as Braille familiar as they used to be, and the
effect that that has on their schooling?

AMY RUELL: Nice question. I worked as the Braille literacy program
manager for an initiative at National [42:37] for seven years. I think
there are several issues. One is that, you know, back in the dark
ages, when I was going to school, about 60 percent of blind people
learned Braille. Now it's down to about 10, 12 percent. There are lots
of reasons for that. One of them is that 60 to 70 percent of blind
people born today have additional disabilities, some of which may make
it more difficult to learn Braille. That's because we're saving kids
at younger and younger gestation.

The other thing is that there are not teachers of the visually
impaired. You won't make very much money, but if you ever need a
career change, there are not enough teachers for the visually impaired
to teach Braille. And although I could learn from teachers of the
visually impaired, these days you have to [43:24] they need qualified
teachers. I learned in more unorthodox ways. But it's a real problem,
because a lot of people think you can replace Braille with audio. You
really can't. If I only could use audio, I know people who make
speeches and so forth, but if I only could use audio, I'd have
headphones on and I'd be having to listen, talk and try to see whether
you had questions at the same time. It's a much harder task.

The other thing is that there's a lot of bias. People think Braille is
difficult. I have to tell you, in my experience, print is tougher. And
I taught all of my 3rd grade friends in public school with the Slaton
Stylist (?), very old technology, I taught them all how to write real
notes so that we could pass notes that my teacher couldn't read. And I
taught most of them the alphabet within a day. It's not that hard. And
it all depends upon your perspective. The earlier that kids start, the
better it is. And, you know, and I was able to keep up with my
classmates. Some of the stuff I didn't have in Braille, particularly
as I got older and I used professional materials, but I could keep up
with most readers. People think Braille is slower. It doesn't have to
be.

Q: Question. There are groups here and elsewhere doing, investigating
sort of an OnStar model, where if you have enough wireless
connectivity you could have a sighted helper tag along with you
through your tasks and see through the sensors on the device with
maybe an audio feed, two-way audio feed. I know there's a privacy
compromise there.  Can you comment on that?

AMY RUELL: There is a privacy issue, but there's, like, there's Viz
Whiz (?), which people may have heard of, and that is kind of a take
off on that idea. I think there are times when that can be very
helpful. I don't think there's one technology that works for
everything. But I can see, I definitely can see situations where that
would be very, very helpful, and where privacy wouldn't have to be
compromised. If I'm walking down an aisle in a supermarket and I want
to travel by myself and to shop, it's not a real privacy issue for me
if somebody tells me what the can is in front of me. I think that, and
in travel situations I can particularly see that as helpful, because,
as I said, finding the building is a real challenge; even the best GPS
navigation systems will only get you there within 30 feet, if you're
walking. And then you don't even know whether you're necessarily at
the right building. Indoor navigation, particularly helpful. I can see
lots of application for that.

I guess my question, and it's a challenge, is, who's going to pay? I
think people deserve to get paid if they're going to do that. A lot of
volunteer efforts are great, but then people get burned out for
understandable reasons. And that's one of the challenges, frankly, of
technology and development, is that this is a very small market. And
so, to recover your R&D, never mind then paying people to do ongoing
support, is a real issue that we haven't really adequately dealt with.

Q: And aside from the business model, are there situations where you
think that sort of technology would not be appropriate?

AMY RUELL: Yeah, I mean, I think one issue, I might want to know more
about who I'm talking to at the other end. I don't know that I want to
reveal my address, necessarily. I think that's a real issue -- how
much do you let -- I wouldn't want to do anything like show somebody
my tax returns to figure out where to sign them.

Q:  Or credit card numbers.

AMY RUELL: You know, when you're dealing with sensitive medical
documents or financial documents, I think those situations would -- Or
if I want to navigate a ladies' room. In my next life, all men's and
ladies' rooms are going to be exactly the same -- laid out the
same. That's my next --

Q: So, in terms of your [47:56] what kind of collaborative tools could
be made for [48:10]?

AMY RUELL: Collaborative tools? Well, I think one thing is, I really
wish that people would pay attention when they do things like develop
PowerPoint presentations. There are ways to make them
accessible. There's nothing worse than having, I do, I work out of my
home right now for my primary job, and there's nothing worse than, I'm
going to a training online and the person sends me this PowerPoint
presentation that's written so inaccessibly that I can't use it. I
think even just things like having people in your workplace think, if
they think about accessibility from the get-go, and if something's
coming up, even just as basic as contacting you ahead of time to see
what accessibility issues you have, what things you may need if
they're going to be presenting something.

I think another issue is, we might need to think about more formalized
ability to carpool or maybe employer assisted situations where several
employees might be willing to trade off and pick somebody up if they
live in a place that's inaccessible. I could think of lots of
different things.

Q: We should stop there, the clock. Thank you again so much for
speaking to us. [applause]

END

                                                                                                                                              
AMY RUELL
11/14/2011