In all the research I’ve done on the art of public speaking, one important factor has always stood out - be prepared for anything to go wrong. Speakers are advised to imagine all the technological things that go awry - like lap tops and projectors failing, lights suddenly going out etc - as well as things like getting a bad introduction, dealing with a heckler, having a blank “senior’s” moment. You end up with a long list of what could go wrong, for which you need to find solutions so that absolutely nothing fazes you on the day.

As a blind public speaker, I think I’ve had to come up with disability-specific things that could challenge me on the day.

I must admit, I haven’t had a lot of these over my time as a speaker. The last one I remember was about three years ago when my guide dog and I almost got mashed in a revolving door as we entered the venue where I was addressing about two hundred senior staff members. The person escorting me to the venue didn’t think to tell me we were going through a revolving door until we were in it. Just in time, I realised that my dog would be crushed between the edge of one of the winged doors and the wall, so I did the only thing I could. I screamed, dropped Lucy’s lead and prayed. Luckily, Lucy backed up quickly and escaped the inevitable. I was so shaken afterwards, that I could have used a stiff drink. Instead, I had to pull myself together, focus and do my talk as though there had been no near death experience fifteen minutes before.

Well, this week the gods decided I needed to be tested again on my ability to rise above the disability challenges of public speaking. I was addressing a group of business professionals when I had my most embarrassing moment. Before the event started, I was being shown to my seat at a table to enjoy a lovely breakfast, when I did the dumbest thing. I felt my jacket hanging on the back of my chair, didn’t check which way the chair was facing, decided it was facing me, so turned and sat down. Needless to say, I found myself on the floor. The room went deadly quiet. No-one knew what to say, do or probably, where to look.

I went straight into damage control. I didn’t want these people to think that all blind people miss their chairs when they go to sit down. So I made a joke of it, saying ‘the problem is that I keep forgetting I can’t see!’, and ‘I’ve never done that before!’. Now, believe it or not, this became a useful lead in to my presentation. I used it to put people at their ease, so that they could see I laugh at myself.

It worked well, and I had a great presentation. In fact, I found this group - Perth Business Swap - such a knowledgeable, professional and ecclectic business network, that I am thinking of joining them.

So falling down on the job isn’t always a bad thing!

Sean McManus sent a speedy reply to my email about both not being able to comment on his blog, and about inaccessible web sites. I also told him about Google Analytics, a great tool to provide feedback on visitors to your web site, but inaccessible to blind users. Here’s his response, printed with his permission.

Hi Janet

Thanks for your email. I’m sorry to hear about the problem with the comment validation. I’ve switched it off across the whole blog so that it does not become a barrier to people commenting in future.

I wonder whether you might be prepared to try to post your comment again please? I’d love to include your comments on the blog and respond to them publicly, and have them correctly attributed to you. If you don’t have time, I’ll post them myself and credit you and respond to them there.

Here’s my response:

I find it incredible that people are unwilling to make small changes to enable everyone to have equal access to technology, particularly when asked to do so by someone who is blind and who can explain the problem and demonstrate why it’s important. Google Analytics is a good example of the new wave of sites that use AJAX technologies to update the page without refreshing it. These sites cause massive accessibility problems for people with a range of different needs. People using screen magnifiers often can’t see what’s been updated because it’s outside the part they’re viewing. People using screenreaders have great difficulties because they’re using a linear interface to access content that could be changing anywhere along the line. The site is highly dependent

There is a misconception that making an accessible site means compromising on its design. But there’s no reason why Google Analytics couldn’t include a more accessible table output, or the option to download an accessible spreadsheet. Indeed, there is already an option to download a spreadsheet and text format report, only the link to do so uses javascript (inaccessible) and seems to be buried in lots of other links (inaccessible). There’s no reason why sites like Tadalist and Twitter can’t provide simple forms-based versions of their content either so that they can be used on all HTML-compliant devices. It’s just that designers don’t take it seriously enough. I’m particularly disappointed in Google (which also owns blogger) because they have enough smart people and resources to get it right, if only they considered it a priority.

Thanks again for your input, Janet.
Best regards
Sean

Note from Janet: Thanks to Publicityship I can access a small amount of the information provided by Google Analytics in the form of a table. Publicityship set up my web sites for me.

I stumbled across a much needed advocate for the development of accessible web sites to people with disabilities.
Sean McManus is a UK business and technology writer. He talks about how simple it is to make web sites easy to use for people who read using screen readers, or who need to use the keyboard instead of the mouse. He believes the reason there are so many sites that cannot be navigated by people with disabilities is due to the laziness of the designer.

I can relate to this totally, and I don’t know why I haven’t blogged about it before. One classic example for me is recent correspondence I’ve had with a professional writing organisation who “improved” their web site last year to make it completely useless to me. I pay membership fees to this group, and have explained to them how important it is for me to be able to use their site. I’ve sent them lots of information on how to make changes and therefore remove the obstacles to my access. But all I get in return is comments like: ‘We’ll do our best, but we can’t guarantee anything’, and ‘You can always send us an email with your question and we’ll do the research and get back to you’. Not good enough, but I’m getting nowhere. And the sad fact of the matter is that the Disability Discrimination Act can’t do anything to make them change their site for me.
And so I’m missing out on - I dont’ know what, because I can’t read the site!

I had a similar situation with another professional group who responded immediately to my request to put text labels on their graphics so that I could use their site. In one day, the site had been changed. It was fantastic.

It’s hard to understand why designers don’t see our dilemma. Why can’t people with disabilities have the same access to the world wide web as everyone else? It’s so simple, really. I wonder how they would feel if they were in our shoes.

On a funny note, I tried to post a comment on Sean’s blog. He uses blogger.com. They have one of those much-loved visual verification features where you have to read letters in a picture in order to post a comment. Yes, there was a “listen to the letters” link, but guess what? It doesn’t work! I’ve often found that on blogger.com blogs, and have given up trying to post my comment, because I’ve already wasted a lot of time. But I’ve emailed Sean to let him know. I’m sure he will be concerned enough to maybe do something. Here’s hoping.

Following my blog on the ‘Seeing with Sound’ technology, I received an interesting email from someone who is using the software to see.

Brian is twenty-seven years old and has been totally blind from birth. He has been using the ‘VOIC’, or ‘Seeing with Sound’ software to see using soundscapes for the past two years.

The way Brian is able to use the technology in his life shows just how valuable it is. He manages to teach horse-riding to people with disabilities. Being a horse-rider all my life, this grabbed my attention. It made me wonder if perhaps the ‘Seeing with Sound’ technology could also assist someone who is blind to ride a horse with confidence. For example, could it help the rider ’see’ an overhanging branch, a fenceline, the markers in a dressage arena? Perhaps this could open up a whole new world for riders who are blind to enter dressage events, or maybe even show-jumping.

Brian did say it takes time to get used to the sound waves, but it is worth it in the end. I have asked him to give me some more details, as I’d love to understand how it works for him in his teaching role.

I would also love to hear others’ stories of how this technology has reconnected them with the sighted world.

In my post Choosing Blindness Over Sight I raised the issue of the brain’s ability to continue “seeing” both when vision had been lost and when a person had been born blind. The inference here was that the blind person formed mental images of the environment which were as clear as vision.

But this isn’t the only way a blind person can interpret his/her world. It is also possible to see through sound.

In the Seeing With Sound website, this seemingly unbelievable fact is explained. In summary, visual images captured by a video camera are converted into sound waves which the blind person then translates back into images. When you listen to a demonstration of this phenomenon, it is very confusing. The sound waves change their pattern depending on the object in front of the video camera. To understand what that object is, the blind person also needs to use his or her sense of touch. It is then a matter of training the brain to recognise the different sound patterns and turn them into images.

Sound confusing? Well, yes it is, for the uninitiated. When I listened to the sound patterns for a bowl of popcorn, a door frame and blinds, I couldn’t “see” what the trained blind person could see. But it obviously takes much time and patience to become competent in seeing with sound.

In the broadcast I listened to on this site, the brain’s ability to interpret sound images was tested by a neuro-scientist. MRI imaging of two people listening to sound waves - one who was blind from birth, and one who had lost vision later in life - showed the visual cortex being activated in both subjects. This again proves that the visual cortex does not stop functioning once sight has been lost. In fact, the scientist in this experiment believes that we use all our senses to “see”, and that much more of the brain is used to bring us visual images.

As fascinated as I am in this new way of seeing, I think I’ll stick with my mental images for now. I find the repetitiveness of the sound waves distracting and annoying. But for others, it works, bringing them vision that they otherwise would not have. And that’s a great thing.

When I was growing up, I wanted to be a journalist. I spoke to one of my uncles, who was teaching journalism at the time, about whether someone like me, with a vision impairment, could do the job. He thought it would be difficult, as I would struggle with describing things around me, so I gave up the idea.

But now the dream is coming true, but in a slightly different, and probably better, format. For the past four weeks, I’ve been working as a ghost blogger for Paul and Jenny Geelen who are Occularists in Australia. I love the work. It involves brainstorming ideas for blogs and being creative with the content. The best thing is that by writing the blogs, really good information is getting out to people all over the world about eye loss and artificial eyes. I say good information, because there is a lot of badly thought-out and poorly written blogs out there. But Jenny and Paul run a professional service, and so their blog reflects this.

To help me do my work, I have a fantastic little audio digital voice recorder. It wasn’t designed for the blind, but the blind have snapped it up. Why? Because it has voice menus. Yes, it talks. I don’t know why the company made it that way, but thank goodness they did. I find it a far more efficient way of recording interviews and notes than by typing things up on my portable computer. It’s amazing how much you miss when you’re typing while you’re listening.

So inbetween the novel writing (which is coming along really well), entering short story competitions, doing talks and generally running my business, I am happily engrossed in my new freelance writing work.

IN fact, this work will overlap with some of the content for my own blog. Since I listened to ‘The Blind Brain’ and posted about it last time, I’m keen to do more research on blindness and other senses. So stay tuned for more blogs on this topic, and maybe some in-depth articles.

If you lost your eye sight through an accident or disease and you were offered the chance to get it back, would you take it?

And if you were born totally blind and had the chance to experience sight, would you take it?

The answer to both these questions might seem obvious, but they’re not.

In a two part series called ‘The Blind Brain’ on ABC Radio National’s ‘All in the Mind’ program, these questions are explored. A man who lost his sight many years ago as a young person through an accident said emphatically that he would not want his sight restored through the use of computer technology, such as chips and bionic eyes. On the other side of the coin, a man born without sight said he would jump at the chance.

What is the difference?

Having lost my sight later in life, I can see the issue very clearly. The first gentleman interviewed spoke about how his brain or mind’s eye has taken over the function of his sight. He ’sees’ everything around him three-dimensionally and in colour. If he is pouring a cup of coffee, he has to look at it, or he will spill it. To ’see’ what is behind him, he has to turn around. He spoke of his world as once being rich with true vision, but now being even richer and sharper with the images he sees around him constantly. And, of course like me, he dreams in full vision.

Before I go into the second man’s case, let me explain this further. Scientists have discovered something critical about our brains. We have an area called the visual cortex which takes up thirty percent of the brain. This area, as it sounds, is responsible for vision. The recent findings by scientists is that when someone loses their sight, the visual cortex does not stop working, but becomes involved in creating images through the use of the other senses. It has shown that the brain is adaptable to changed circumstances, and this is very exciting.

All this makes perfect sense to me, because I still feel that I can see. In fact, I feel my sight has improved and become sharper. For example, I have vivid images of photographs that I know were taken after I’d lost my sight, but I feel that I’ve seen them. My brain has taken over, recreating those photos for me.

Now for the second case - the man born totally blind. It makes sense that he would want to experience vision of any kind, as he has never had the chance. The type of artificial vision the scientists say they will be able to produce will be patchy and distorted. The reason for this is that the eye is an incredible structure that has so many functioning parts, it is impossible to reproduce it. They say that someone with this kind of artificial vision may not be able to distinguish between a cup and an orange.

When I was losing my sight, it was patchy and very limited. But I still tried to use it. Because I was struggling to see, my other senses couldn’t kick in, as they have now, because I see nothing at all. Now I can sense things around me such as trees, walls and people, and my hearing has become acuter. If I was given this distorted artificial vision, I would lose the clarity of vision that I have now.

If you would like to hear these fascinating podcasts, click here