Persona writing sprint this weekend 12th and 13th November

[Hugh Sasse]

On Thu, 10 Nov 2011, Alan Bell wrote:

> On 10/11/11 15:11, Hugh Sasse wrote:
> > 
> > OK, added a couple of things.  I don't have a CCTV magnifier at home, and
> > I don't use a web cam, so maybe someone can add something about:
> > 
> >     Can present day CCTVs input to computers pretty much as standard?
> >     Can you use Web cams (maybe with photography macro adaptors) as CCTV
> >     magnifiers?
> > 
> > With Image Magick, etc that might be a good use case for Simon.
> what is the CCTV for? Is this a security camera of some kind?

:-) No, it's for magnification.  First non-advertising one I found on 
the web was this:

http://www.afb.org/Section.asp?SectionID=4&TopicID=31&DocumentID=221

They'll magnify, change the colours, increase the contrast, and some
even do more processing on what is placed on the tray underneath the 
TV/camera unit.   People use them for close work, reading, etc.

A good description is from Abilitynet.

http://abilitynet.wetpaint.com/page/CCTV+and+Video+Magnifiers

(Not sure about the wetpaint in the domain name.
http://www.abilitynet.org.uk/edu_sensoryhardware#cctv
might be better for that reason. )


Personally I find hand magnifiers easier, but they are less of interest
for this topic.

> > OK, so it's a good enough model of visual impairment, until we need
> > something
> > better. That's a sensible engineering decision.  I was concerned that the
> > experience of RP will be quite different from Macula Degeneration etc.
> it probably would  be, but I am guessing the options we can provide on the
> computer for assistance are pretty much the same, magnification, speech or
> audio cues and tweaks to colours and contrasts.

OK.
> > 
> > I would like to raise the flag for a deafblind persona, though.  In
> > the UK, for example, there are about 24,000 deafblind people, but
> > they so often seem to be batted like tennis balls between the
> > organizations of/for [dD]eaf people and those of/for blind people,
> > but the solutions offered usually rely on having the other sense
> > intact.  There are widely varying stats for the USA
> > http://www.aadb.org/FAQ/faq_DeafBlindness.html#count
> > 
> >          Thank you,
> >          Hugh
> totally agree, but I am not sure what we can do from an Ubuntu desktop
> perspective, to use a computer a deafblind person will require a braille
> output device (which is supported, but I don't have the hardware or skill to
> use it). In theory it would be the same as the blindness profile, but using
> braille rather than speech dispatcher. It would be massively hard to use the
> desktop that way, but probably not technically impossible. I am not sure there
> is much we can do to optimise the desktop for that persona which would be in
> any way different to the blindness profile.

I'm not in regular contact with deafblind people these days, but
when I was I was left with the impression that braille use is
greater among deafblind people as a proportion than it is among
blind people.  But there are other modes of communication which are
more unusual, and I don't know how difficult they are to cater for,
or how common they are now.  As two examples: Circa 1980 there was a
deafblind radio amateur who successfully used morse code by touch.
Circa 2002 there was a project called Dexter which was a robotic
hand producing the US one handed Deaf fingerspelling alphabet to be
read by touch.  Maybe that was driven by RS232, I can't remember
now.  So some of the needs will be distinct from those of blind
people and deaf people.   It might be worth
asking AADB if they'd like any input.  I think they are probably the
biggest deafblind organisation in the world, or at least the
anglophone world.   At a wild guess, anyway.  It might generate some
interesting ideas, anyway.

        Hugh