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Wednesday, 16 August 2017

LIVE INTERVIEW BY FIONA CUMMINGS


Good afternoon Bloggets. It’s a boiling day. I’m waiting to hear my Husband on the radio he’s doing a live interview. He wanted me to do it I said nope, he’s fine. Smile. I don’t get at all anxious about doing such things but he is available and eloquent so there you are.

 

Poor Boy Wonder got up so early again for work. He didn’t get in from Shamrocks until after one this morning and started work at six. Hub working from home and our dogs are safely in their beds because their bells during the interview won’t be good also my Wagga has been sick this morning. My fault. I gave her a chop bone yesterday. Naughty but I always feel so sorry putting them in the bin and I did throw most of them in the bin. So, she only had one.

 

My Husbands interview is about accessibility in the UK for blind people. Banking and voting for example. In Australia, they have a much better voting system than us. They can turn up at any voting station and with ID, they can vote whereas us in the UK, it’s not that simple. We can see, well, if we could, our polling station, an yet we have to travel a mile away to vote as there is a line down our street half can vote here the other half have to go elsewhere. Crazy. As for banking, they are really pushing for a staffless, for my English students, not sure staffless is such a word. Smile, banking system in the future. Well right now to put your card in the machine outside a bank firstly it’s not accessible as most of them don’t talk and we don’t know who is watching us. It’s always best to talk with someone. There are a lot of people who are not comfortable with technology and feel better with a real person. Also in some, restaurants and even my hairdressers to pay, there are no buttons it’s a flat screen without speech you are asked to put your pin number in. well because there is no speech, we do not know what we are doing so we have to tell a stranger or even a person we hardly know, our pin number, as a sighted person, how would you feel giving your pin number to your waiter or hairdresser?

  

Shampoo bottles are the same as our conditioner. Some air fresheners are the same as furniture polish. Window cleaner is the same bottle as tire blackener for cars. To look at I am sure they are different colours, but if you can’t see those colours, how do you identify?

 

Clothes shopping now is getting so much more difficult than it used to be. Shopping on line that is. There are live pictures constantly flashing on the screen and it interrupts our speech on our lap tops so we find ourselves right at the top of the screen again and when it comes to paying for our items, again the modern way is worse than the old-fashioned way, it used to be simple, not now everything is done in images rather than words. Or buttons on screen. Not physical buttons but what our software can identify as a button. So, we fill our basket after two hours as it took my friend to buy two, tops, and then find out that the trolley is inaccessible.

 

One suggestion that I have heard made is that a indentation should be put on all conditioners for hair and the shampoo bottles should be just left alone. Sanex, congratulations as you have kindly put Braille on your bottles so it can be done as have bleach. So, if you can read Braille, great. To be honest, I buy Sanex for one reason, to support them for thinking about us.


 

 the fragrance is kind of a natural one and you have a creamy luxurious feel with the shower gels. They are lovely.

 

So, a short blog but one for designers and programmers as well as those who are involved in voting to think about.

 

And if you can see, just think about your everyday things items, life, you take so much for granted. Two million people in the UK who have no sight or little vision, we don’t take things for granted. We appreciate those who take time to think of others rather than themselves. Thank God for the founder of the Apple iPhone. God rest his soul. I hope his predecessors will continue in the work that started so well for us.

 

 

 

 

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