This Blog Has Moved

This blog has moved. You can now find it at: cleverlydisguisedadult.blogspot.com. Why the move? WordPress has made a few changes to the admin side of things, and unfortunately certain features are no longer accessible to me as a blind user.
This is something that often happens when websites decide to ‘improve’ things, and a subject I’ll probably be blogging about on the new blog.
Hope to see you over at my new place.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Death

By Mitch Benn

Please show your tickets at the window as you come inside
My name is Nigel and I’ll be your tour guide
I’ll be happy to answer questions on anything that’s shown
First we’ve got a big surprise, I’d rather not spoil it
Oh well, all right, it’s Elvis Presley’s toilet
So you can all re-enact the moment the King fell off his throne

All those stars who made all those groovy sounds
Still live on, though they’re six feet underground
Come and see how they took their final breath
At the Rock and Roll Hall of Death

See the pills that Karen Carpenter took to stay skinny
Gene Vincent’s motorbike and Marc Bolan’s mini
Take a ride in Eddie Cochran’s taxi or Buddy Holly’s plane
See Sid Vicious’s syringes and a little bit later on
The very vomit Jimi Hendrix choked on
Jim Morrison’s rubber duck, and a smattering of Kurt Cobain

All those stars who wrote all those timeless tunes
We still love them, except perhaps Keith Moon
They lived fast, died young, and we’ve got all that’s left
In the Rock and Roll Hall of Death

We’ve got Mama Cass’s sandwich box and Brian Jones’s flippers
Freddie Mercury’s moustache comb and clippers
But I’m sorry to say that isn’t the saddest thing in here
Look behind the 3D mobile of Michael Hutchence
Past the space reserved for Martine McCutcheon
There’s a small, unmarked urn in which we keep Peter Andre’s career

All those stars we all loved throughout the years
We hold on to the things that brought them here
Be it booze, guns, cars, heroin or crystal meth
To the Rock and Roll Hall of Death

Second Blog Now Online

Just a quick update to let you all know that I now have a second blog. You can find it at: innerdreams.wordpress.com. this is where I’ll be posting all my creative stuff – poems, fiction, etc – in the future.
I will also be removing all the creative writings in the sidebar here as I post them on Inner Dreams.

Why the change? I really like/need feedback on my creative writings, but having them separately in the sidebar on this blog wasn’t getting me that feedback. I’m hoping that posting them as ‘proper’ blog posts will make it more likely that readers will comment.
So if you do pop over to take a look, comments would be very much appreciated. There’s only one post on there now, but I will be updating regularly – though not as often and on this blog.

That’s all for this post. I am now off to munch my way through a cake I found lurking at the back of the freezer. Will be back to annoy you tomorrow.

One Size Does Not Fit All

Written for Blogging Against Disablism Day, May 1 2009

From the age of 13 I attended a residential school for the visually impaired. At the time it was agreed that there was no way I’d cope in a mainstream school and the special primary school I’d attended didn’t provide secondary education on a ‘normal’ level.

For the first three years or so, I was very happy there. But then I got to the stage where I was gradually expected to be more independent and that’s when the palaver started.
Due to my extra disabilities (hearing impairment and an ASD) I had a lot more trouble with all sorts of things than my peers. Unfortunately, neither the school nor the staff at my house took this into account.

This wasn’t the fault of any single individual; it was simply that the school had a ‘one size fits all’ approach when it came to dealing with the students. And if you couldn’t keep up or didn’t meet their expectations in whatever way, it was just assumed to be your own fault.

When it came to visual impairments, no problem. They had all the equipment, all the extra training like mobility training and independent living skills. But when it came to extra issues that didn’t fit there standard approach, they were simply ignored.
I was never given any kind of professional help for my fear of failure, for example. And nobody even considered that my issues with taking initiative and other social situations might be more than me just being immature or not trying hard enough.

And this isn’t just my experience. I know several other people who for one reason or another didn’t fit the ‘standard’ approach of the school. They were also left out in the cold.
Quite often these people were dumped in sheltered work places. I have nothing against sheltered work places; for those who aren’t able to do any other type of work they’re a great opportunity. But for a person who is academically able and wants to get a ‘normal’ job or get into further education, this is not the solution. I certainly found the work incredibly boring.

If the school had been a bit more flexible and been willing to think outside the box, I may well have found something more suitable much earlier on. I only came across the day centre I go to now, because we were visiting the sheltered accommodation next to it to see if it was suitable for me. The day centre had been mentioned as an option for when I lived there.

I am very happy at the day centre and I’m lucky things worked out the way they have. But most of it was down to me metaphorically putting my foot down and saying: ‘This is what I want. So bugger what you all think is the ‘right’ road for me’.
And until organisations and other establishments let go of the ‘one size fits all’ model, people like me who don’t fit are going to continue being left to fend for themselves.

Menus Menus Everywhere

You may have heard the phrase ‘The world is becoming more and more visual’. While for some this may well be a good thing, for visually impaired folks like me it’s becoming a real bugger.

One aspect of the ‘visual’ world in particular poses a real problem for blind people. This is that virtually every gadget and gismo available nowadays relies on the user being able to read the screen in order to navigate through all the various menus and options. Being blind, this is obviously very difficult to do.
It is possible to memorise which buttons to press to navigate to a certain menu item, but this is hardly convenient and impossible to manage for all the menus and items on a gadget. And if you make a mistake then you have to start all over again as you can’t get back to where you were.

This means that a lot of popular devices like mp3 players and PDAs are unusable for visually impaired people. At least for mobile phones there is software available that can read out the text on the screen or magnify it.
However this is not available for any other devices.
And it’s not limited to these kinds of gadgets. Virtually everything electronic has a screen nowadays. I am unable to use any of the more advanced options on my (musical) keyboard, for example, because this involves navigating through menus on the screen.

For some devices, like mp3 players, there are versions with no screen. But they generally are very basic and don’t have a lot of functions like the ones with screens. Just because a blind person can’t use the fancy schmancy mp3 players with all the functionality, doesn’t mean they are happy using a really simple one with only the most basic of functions and often very little space for music files. This is the case with me, at any rate.

I personally have given up on mainstream mp3 players, having found a very acceptable alternative, designed for the visually impaired. It has all the functions you’d expect of a decent modern player: decent navigation options through folders; you can store music, podcasts and audiobooks in separate ‘bookshelves’; and best of all… no screen.

Having said that, it is often more complicated getting hold of these specialised gadgets. They’re not available in any high street shop, and are also quite expensive.
While I’m very happy with my ‘special’ mp3 player, I’d be even happier if mainstream devices were accessible to everybody, blind users included. Then I could just go into a shop and buy which ever mp3/player/PDA/mobile phone I wanted, just like anybody else.

A Long Day

Today was both long and very tiring, but mainly enjoyable. It started far too early with a drive down to my eye specialist for a regular check up. As usual everything was fine, but he did want to get photos (not x-rays) taken of my eyes. This is to be able to compare the size of my eyeballs – especially the left one – at future check ups.
I have glaucoma (high eye pressure) which makes my eyeballs bigger. There is a slight chance that they could become so large that they’ll need removing to avoid them exploding or something. Luckily this is a very slim chance, but having photos to compare their current state with, will enable the doctor to detect if this is a real danger early on so we’ll still have time to discuss options.

After having my eyes prodded and poked, it was off to the town centre for some shopping. I needed a few things and the staff at my accommodation never have enough time, so I’d agreed with my mum to combine a shopping trip with the eye doctor visit.
I managed to get hold of everything I needed and in between we also found time to duck into a shoe shop. I am now the proud owner of a pair of dark purple sandals. I only had one pair which was starting to fall apart somewhat, so I figured I could do with a new pair.

The trip was finished off with lunch at the shop restaurant. Then it was back to the car and off home. And after a day of shopping, noise and people shining light in my eyes I am now totally clapped out.
But it was a nice day, and I didn’t get into a single argument with my parents… over anything. And by our standards, that’s pretty good.

On a totally different note: today is exactly 14 years since I lost my sight. What with it being so long ago, and having grown completely comfortable with my blindness, it’s not a sad day for me. However I do notice its passing as losing your sight is a major life changing event.
And looking back, I have certainly come a long way; both in terms of accepting my blindness and independence. Just after I became blind, I didn’t have the confidence to walk down to the bottom of the garden alone. Now I’m living semi independently and, once I’ve learned my way around a place, I have no trouble striding around at a high speed. Often leaving a trail of flattened bill boards in my wake (they always put them slap in the middle of the pavement).

So all in all a good day, despite feeling ready to keel over. At least I’m pretty sure I won’t be troubled by insomnia tonight.

Bits and Pieces

A bit of an odds-and-ends post today. I’m still not quite back into a routine (see this post), but I am trying to at least get back into blogging regularly again.

On Saturday a co-resident came round to my place to make my acquaintance. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but it went extremely well. We ended up chatting for more than four hours straight. I immediately felt completely comfortable talking with him, something which I don’t usually have when meeting a person for the first time.
We have quite a few things in common, too. He is into music like me, and also plays the keyboard. Plus he attended the same residential school as me – though it was quite a bit before I went there.
The next time, I’ll be going round to his flat; he lives in the same building. I think this could be the start of a new friendship.

Yesterday I had one of those ‘moments’ that only a blind person can have. I had been putting up with chocolate cravings all evening, thinking I didn’t have any chocolate left. Then, as I was looking for some dirty cups on the coffee table to put in the sink, I came across a box full of chocolates… and they’d been right under my nose for the last couple of hours. Blind? Whatever gave you that idea?

In other news: I have recently started tweeting at the world as well as blogging (you’ve probably already spotted the widget). You can follow me at: twitter.com/darkangel1985.
And on Wednesday I’ll be getting up disgustingly early to schlep off to my eye specialist in order to tell him everything’s still fine. That’s really how it goes now. I do have chronic high eye pressure (glaucoma), but we only really panic if it causes me severe discomfort; which hasn’t happened in yonks. The only real danger with glaucoma is going blind, which in my case obviously isn’t an issue.
Note: glaucoma was not the cause of my blindness. This happened due to my retina detaching.

Apart from the above, I’ve generally been pottering along, slowly getting back into a new routine. Still having trouble sleeping though, which is a bit of an inbuggerance.
I don’t like to promise I’ll be back to daily blogging as from today, but I am aiming for that.

You have not heard the last of me. Mwahahaha!

Temporary Break in Transmition

The last couple of weeks my routine seems to have gone totally out of whack. It started when I began going more often to the day centre; however this meant a change in schedule, as not all activities are provided every day.
Due to my PDD-NOS, I have a hard time adjusting to change in my routine, especially big ones like this. Unfortunately, one of the consequences of major changes is that I start having trouble sleeping. This then throws everything even further out of whack.

This is also the reason I haven’t been blogging for the last week or so. What with lack of sleep and trying to keep on top of household stuff – tidying, washing up, etc. – I just haven’t had the energy to come up with anything worth writing. I’m not sure when I’ll be back to my regular posting frequency again, but please bear with me. I will definitely be annoying you all daily again soon.

The Dreaded Captcha

Anyone who surfs the internet regularly will have come across them. Those annoying ‘security codes’ that are used on web forms to guard against spam. As these codes are always in an image, they are totally inaccessible to screen reader users like me.
Of course I understand that webmasters don’t want to be bombarded with unwanted spam via their web forms. And I know from experience that the only way to avoid this is to add some sort of extra protection to web based forms.

The thing that really annoys me is that there are far more accessible alternatives out there which work just as well. And I’m not talking about audio captchas. Obviously I’m pleased when webmasters think to provide an audio alternative; however, they are as difficult to understand as the visual captchas are to read. This leaves those of us with both visual and hearing impairments still unable to access them.

There is an alternative though; the ‘math’ captcha. This is generally a simple sum that the user has to fill in the answer to. It’s just as effective as the other captchas and far more accessible. I should know; I use this on all the forms on my Dutch website and haven’t had a single spam message through those routes since I implemented it.

The consequences aren’t limited to just a bit of frustration at not being able to sign a guestbook or leave a comment on somebody’s blog. Registration forms for services like forums or social networking sites often also have inaccessible captchas. This leaves a lot of users unable to register and enjoy these services, simply because of an inaccessible sign-up form. An example of this is Twitter. I had to ask my brother to register on my behalf as I was unable to read the visual captcha or understand the audio one. And Myspace is even worse. I gave up trying to use it due to the number of captchas.

Sadly I don’t think there’s an easy answer. All too often webmasters are simply not aware of these accessibility issues. And contacting every single webmaster of every single site that uses captchas to explain the problem isn’t a very realistic option.
I guess that for the foreseeable future, once I’ve finished swearing at ‘those bloody captchas’ I’ll just have to rely on sighted help.

That Went Better Than Expected

Today my mum came to visit for the day, what with it being Easter and not having seen me for a month or so. On previous occasions when my parents have visited, things didn’t always go smoothly, so I wasn’t really sure how things would go this time.
Thankfully, it turned out surprisingly okay. And looking back, I can honestly say that I had a very nice day. Believe me, this isn’t something I often say regarding a visit from my parents.

I think the main problem was that my mum in particular had a hard time getting her head round the fact that her little girl had got all grown up and independent. My mum has always been overprotective in some areas, while having quite high expectations in others. This invariably led to frustration on my part and a lot of arguing. Mainly over trivial matters like where I store things or how many of things like towels and sheets I should have. We both have rather different views on these kinds of things.

But today I really got the feeling that things are finally settling down. Okay, she couldn’t resist, for want of a better word, interfering a bit, but that’s just mothers for you. But she was far less overbearing than previously.
I suspect that this change is also due to the fact that I have improved a lot in the last couple of months since moving here. I’m now much better at keeping the place tidy – something that led to most of our arguments – and I’m generally less of the stroppy teenager towards my parents nowadays.

So all in all it was a great day. We went out for a walk in the woods around where I live and in the evening schlepped over to the local Greek restaurant, where they happened to have the menu in Braille, which was a nice surprise.
If this is how it’s going to be from now on, then I certainly don’t mind them coming regularly, which my mum had been threatening for some time already