I’m struck by how much the lockdown and social distancing is impacting on me and like most people, it’s become a bit of a preoccupation. An earlier post, which started to raise the question of how important it is to be able to see people in order to have an authentic conversation with them , triggered some interesting conversations. The post related specifically to the current use of video conferencing/’chat’ platforms for meetings and social gatherings, but it has raised important questions (for me at least) about the apparent general acceptance of the supremacy of video over audio. It feels a bit strange hearing these arguments for video when it was only until relatively recently that we managed perfectly well conducting (or supporting) everything from our friendships and closest relationships, to highly detailed work, to crisis interventions and suicide prevention on the (audio only) phone. The writer and journalist Malcolm Gla...
Following my earlier post, I realised that I hadn’t fully made my point and wanted to finish it. Sight, with its ability to see faces, might provide ways in to a more connected experience of neighbourhood and community than blindness. As people walk about the streets, nodding or smiling in acknowledgement of each other as they pass. Without being able to see people’s faces, to see them making such non-verbal acknowledgement of my existence, I find walking around the streets of my neighbourhood an isolating experience, passing countless people in complete silence and at most moving out of each other’s way (other than those who know me). This is far more so for me in the city where there are people who won’t speak to each other, than in the countryside where I might encounter nobody. I noticed people actually speaking to each other on the streets during lockdown – just saying ‘HI/Alright’ and hoped that the pr...
In yesterday’s post giving information to new readers about the background to this blog, I recalled how the blog platform that I’d previously used in 2007 had been updated with ‘improvements’ for sighted users but had become much more confusing and unfathomable (if not completely technically inaccessible) for me to use with screen-reading software. I consequently lost control over my own blog and let it go. This led me to remember numerous times that perfectly accessible and hitherto well designed websites and (more recently) smartphone apps have undergone updates that while apparently making improvements for sighted users, have either made them less usable or completely inaccessible for blind people. There have been so many times when a website or phone app have become integral to my home or working life and suddenly, overnight the update has meant that an aspect of my life has temporarily ceased while I find work-arounds, new ways of doing things ...
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