mattioli@took.dec.com (John R. Mattioli --- DTN: 226-7752) (04/07/88)
It seems that there has been some interest (or is it argument) about the
"new generation" of operating systems (the latest and greatest) and their
usefulness to the blind. As one of the blind I feel well qualified to point out
a few obvious problems that, in many ways, are so obvious people are likely to
overlook them.
First of all, while it may be true that the main advantage to the new
os's is device drivers and not graphics, it is not true that these new systems
are not graphical. They require, in all cases I know of, graphics and/or window
ability.
Second, one can not simply say, "the equipment for the blind is an
inspired kludge therefore we need not concern ourselves with it." Imagine if
Apple or Tandy hadn't supported cassette storage cause they knew that some day
diskettes would be cheap and easy to buy. For that matter, why support
diskettes with hard disks so readily available.
Thirdly, Braille (and to a greater extent speech) is a very
non-graphical, non-windowable, medium. They're both very stream oriented. It
may be that the possibilities are endless but the logical, practical,
easy-to-use, solutions narrow down the field of possibilities quite a bit. Take
for example a nice graphic display that can show 4096 colors. If someone can
explain to me how you can take shading like that (which may or may not even be
detectable by the human eye) and express it in one braille cell (six dots) I'd
be interested to know.
Finally, it should be understood that I'm talking about my job here.
This is not just a hobby, this is not just something I wish I could do. This
computer stuff pays the bills! Let's be realistic about this (just the facts).
If someone can come to my office with a mac/gem/whatever type interface and a
device driver for a braille or speech terminal, and if I can run macwrite or
macpaint with it I will agree that the new systems are great. I don't buy
stories like "oh the new systems are great. If you could communicate with them
you'd be all set." That's not good enough for me. Let's face it, if I want to
keep my job, I'd better be able to communicate with the machines.
Yes I'm demanding and why shouldn't I be. Everybody else is, they want
high resolution displays, laser printers, rodents on their desk, everyone is
demanding. It used to be that computer companies couldn't even get a
full-screen display, such as what most editors produce today, and everyone was
using one line editing (remember teco?). Now, with the advent of graphics,
people can't get a one line display. Talk about coming full circle.
I aplaud Microsoft's inclusion of a switch to support external terminals
in codeview. I can think of many reasons why they'd do that but I hope they
don't stop there. I hope they do more of it. As far as Apple, DRI, etc goes I
chalenge anyone out there to figure out how to make hundreds of character fonts
and 3-d rotations and all that stuff make sense in braille. Until that's done I
consider these machines useless. That's an unfortunate attitude to have about a
company like Apple (I got my start on an Apple II+), but if I am to survive, it
is a necessary one.
FLAME OFF,
John R. Mattioli, Jr.
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