HISTORY AND FUTURE OF THE BEFORE AND AFTER

I have been wondering how far we have managed to progress over the past 40 years or so and, from a personal perspective, is now the best time to be blind? Don’t get me wrong, there’s never a good time for this to happen to anyone!

 

When my husband and I were at school, talk of “blind asylums” was still in living memory and the “special school” requiring kids to leave their homes for long periods was the norm.

 

I remember using lead type in a frame in maths lessons and my husband was the first to use a Perkins to write braille rather than a frame where you have to write in reverse one dot at a time.  Coincidentally, writing braille one dot at a time was almost the only way of producing braille for over 100 years and the first bible produced in braille was created in this way, over 10 million dots of it.

 

The span of literature available to us could be measured in low thousands, focused around laboriously produced braille books, often with supposed unsuitable passages censored, and talking books produced by RNIB.  Our reading was a tiny sub-set of what might be available to everyone else, selected by well-meaning and often worthy librarians with an impossible task of representing an explosion in writing of all forms not previously seen in the history of English or any other language for that matter.

 

The influence of technology in the 1970s extended to the occasional talking scientific calculator costing £360 at the time.  A BBC Micro with a braille printer pouring out endless code on a single line of tape might be found toward the end of the 1980s, or a rather lethal countdown timer with a spinning braille disk showing 10^th of a second intervals, shredding your fingers if you dared to try to read it while it was working.

 

Learning to touch type on a manual typewriter was a painful experience but one of my most valued skills today.  My husband recalls his typing teacher who imparted this invaluable skill to pupils over a 40-year period.  So many pupils, including my husband, mucked about lesson after lesson, yet those same pupil’s years on prize that skill above many others.  

 

Spin forward to 2016.  Most of the special schools are gone and it’s rare to find blind children anywhere else other than primary and secondary schools with varying levels of support.  A lucky minority will get support from organisations such as Blind Children UK with orientation and other skills, but so many will no longer learn braille or experience the true wonders of science in the classroom. Will children only focus on core subjects because that’s all a mainstream school can reasonably manage?  

 

Technology is everywhere for all of us, but its pervasive nature is even more pervious for blind people.

 

Holding a phone over a piece of paper and hearing what’s written on it seems almost mystical.  Gone are the shackles of book selection committees, replaced by a bewildering array of books, magazines and newspapers accessible in an instant.  Even the form of information seems less relevant – why download a magazine when you can make your own from a variety of web sources to reflect your particular interests. This may seem insignificant, but blind people can read what they want rather than what even the most well meaning person provides.

 

Step out with your phone, turning on voice guidance on your GPS navigation system to give you greater confidence on routes you hardly know.  Find a film you really want to see and enjoy audio description when you get there.

 

We live in a world of unparalleled access; so why doesn’t it feel wonderful all of the time?  Why do I feel so frustrated by so many things?

 

Technology is so nearly there in many respects, so nearly perfect, but it often falls just short of being helpful and in to the mire of frustration.  As I log on to another website and begin the registration process for a service or shopping experience, I’m already anticipating that point where the “prove you’re not a robot” box fills the screen with impenetrable visual identification. As I load the latest application update, will it render my heating system useless or deliver even better access – I won’t know until I try it and I can’t go back once I have – am I prepared to play that game of chance?

 

Technology promises and threatens all at the same time.  I recently bought a microwave and, ideally wanted to get a multi-function option which would shop, unpack everything and cook exactly what I want with no effort on my part.  Such wonders rely on flat panel controls and those that don’t employ endlessly turning controls which render a myriad of options on a display.  Whether it’s a washing machine, cooker or even a toaster, the flat panel is taking over the world.  I fear a soon coming day when it will be impossible to purchase household appliances I can actually use.

 

On an optimistic note, technology continues to hold more promise than threat, although it often terrifies me.  Here are some of the things I hope might happen in the not too distant future.

·       A smart guide dog harness including camera and GPS with the ability to connect to someone when my lovely dog gets me lost.  This technology could also help people to learn new routes and it’s available now if someone feels like packaging it together.

·       Massive progress in biotechnology focused around prevention of blindness.

·       Voice recognition for all household appliances that’s good enough to recognise even my accent why is this so slow to take off?

·       Affordable and useful home robotics that do more than cut the lawn or inaccurately clean the house.