Access Fandom

My cognitive impairments mean I always mess up time zones. I’ve participated in many events in the past five years. Only one managed to sense my current time zone and adjust all the info on their site to match. (And of course I can't remember which one it was.)

Which is why I love https://dateful.com. It’s an excellent tool when you’re communicating across time zones. It’s free. It features:

• Time Zone Converter: convert between major world cities and timezones instantly as you type
• World Clock: up to 20 clocks to see how the rest of the world can participate in your event
• Time Calculator: adds and subtracts times, dates, and durations

And best of all:

• Eventlink: create a link that converts an event’s time to the user’s current time zone and day. You can add an event title, description, and URL (meeting link or a web page), and you can offer an “add to my calendar” which works with Apple, Google, and Outlook.

All that info in a single link. You don’t need an account, but if you create one, you can go back and edit your Eventlinks.

I’m able to do these things with the keyboard; I welcome insights from readers using adaptive technology.

kestrell explains how we can make more books readable.

Bookshare.org provides ebooks to folks who have official status as print-impaired. Unlimited access is free for students and US$50 per year for adults.

Many writers and publishers still don't know about Bookshare, so in my emails I usually include a link to the Bookshare page describing how authors can get their books added to the library
https://www.bookshare.org/cms/partners/authors

Heartening success story: kestrell chatted with his publisher in the Readercon dealer's room and next year Chip Delany's books were on Bookshare

Annalee Flower Horne leeflower, an SF writer and coder, just published an outstanding essay on disability representation. It’s a great entry point for educating folks with no disability experience. It also offers a useful new-to-me concept “TV paraplegia.”

Disability, Representation, and the X-Men

begin quote
Professor Xavier has “TV Paraplegia,” which is a form of nerve damage that completely paralyzes the legs of people on television without causing chronic pain, muscle spasms, or incontinence. Depending on the version of the X-Men universe he’s in, Xavier either has a spinal cord injury or his legs were crushed. Neither injury is portrayed realistically

​ […snip…]

Realism aside, the big problem with Xavier’s TV paraplegia is that while it’s the leading cause of wheelchair use in popular media, the overwhelming majority of people who drive wheelchairs in the real world are not paralysed at all. Those who do have some form of paralysis exist along a broad spectrum of motor function.
quote ends

https://thebias.com/2017/10/31/disability-representation-and-the-x-men/)

It IS exciting to see kids interested in engineering, and I know selkiechick posted with the best intention.

However, that announcement pushed a whole row of my Assistive Technology Geek buttons, and I gotta rant. I'll can use the "BRAIGO" to illustrate why I get so hot under the collar. (My cred: I've hung out with people who use assistive technology since 1982; I designed and sold braille translation software and embossers in the late eighties; and I've personally depended on assistive technology since 1991.) Based on thirty year's close attention to the development/PR/funding/purchasing/abandonment cycle for assistive technology, here's my take on the BRAIGO announcement.

( DESIGNERS GET COOKIES FOR PROTOTYPES, NOT AFFORDABLE PRODUCTS )

( DEVELOPMENT WITHOUT EXPERT ENDUSERS IS POINTLESS  ) That's why the BRAIGO can't create useful braille.

( PR BECOMES DISINFORMATION ) A $350 embosser would be an amazing thing. Hundreds of well-intentioned editors and readers are willing to take the inventor's word for it. But this device is not a embosser.

( EXPERTS ARE AVAILABLE on REQUEST! ) We live in a press release culture: what the company wants to say is what we hear. Or in this case, what a 12 year old (who mentions absolutely no contact with braille users) says gets broadcast.


( FAST FACTS RE EMBOSSERS & BRAILLE )

Start from the first dot at the RNIB's Learning Braille site or pick an excellent start for adults at the Achayra firm in India. Teach more at the National Federation of the Blind's Braille is Beautiful resource for kids.

tl;dr Just because assistive technologies are tools for people with disabilities doesn't mean we must accept only good intentions. We want the best engineers working on our designs, the best marketers making them affordable, and the best politicians making them subsidized.

This was featured in the New York Times Magazine last week, but the home site is even cooler:

www.thealternativelimbproject.com

Sophie de Oliveira Barata is the principal artisan of these bespoke limbs, which are marketed as functional, decorative, and expressive — some combination of a neck brace and a tatoo.