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Adjusting Your PC Set-Up To Cope With Sudden Sight Loss
Barence writes "PC Pro's Davey Winder has written a first-hand account of how he overhauled his PC workstation to cope with a sudden deterioration of his eyesight. Winder contracted wet macular degeneration, a progressive disease that strikes very quickly, and turns items in the field of vision into a grey smudge. He explains how he continued his work as a journalist by changing his word processor, swapping his desktop monitor for a touchscreen, and by replacing his keyboard with an Accuratus Monster keyboard (or Big Freaky Yellow Keyboard, as he's renamed it). He also explains why he had to swap his favourite Chrome browser for Internet Explorer, and how a £3.99 iPhone app saved him from spending hundreds of pounds on a dedicated hardware reader."
The thing that surprised me most about TFA was that the author was able to find some feature that wasn't in MS Word. It always seems to have every feature known to man, except the feature I want, when I use it.
Look for Fookes Software to be purchased any day now. . . .
Always check your router if you can't get to a sight !!
a £3.99 iPhone app saved him from spending hundreds of pounds on a dedicated hardware reader.
The iphone app will be £99 now
Yet another argument for separating them.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
(MY GOD this is an ad-heavy site. Every page pops-up a sale pitch. Also it's making IE9 act wonky.)
NoteTab Pro - Because unlike MS Word, he can use bright yellow text against a dark blue background
Gmail - the mail display density could be set to âoecomfortableâ, which spaces each item further apart within ruled lines with High Contrast Scheme for radioactive green text on a black background
IE9 - Because it has a touch interface. "It isnâ(TM)t that Chrome doesnâ(TM)t support touch, but itâ(TM)s slower to respond and not everything seems to work â" with IE9, it just does." (I wonder if some other browser might have better touch support, like Opera? Or Firefox?)
"I wear a pirate-style eye patch for reading, writing and watching TV, to prevent the ghosting and distortion of the right eye being processed into what I see with both eyes. Iâ(TM)m constantly exploring what applications and hardware can do to make my life easier. And Iâ(TM)m far from alone in having a touch of the Mr Magoo about me, so maybe itâ(TM)s about time that developers started taking the problem a little more seriously?"
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
I'm rather surprised that he needed to replace the keyboard, given that he's a journalist and should know how to type without looking at it.
I would only replace a keyboard if I lost fingers or a hand - certainly not from going blind.
I had an a macro-aneurysm in my left eye which left a smudge caused by congealed blood which the ophalmologist told me might be permanent.
I tried various high-contrast settings in Windows (for work) and Ubuntu at home. I was astonished at how bad most of these modes really are when you need them. There always seems to be an application which insists on having dark text even when the system window colour is dark. Visual Studio is pretty poor in HC, quite a few of the dialogues were unreadable no matter what setting I tweaked. You don't appreciate usability until you really need it, and at some point most of us will.
With his eye problems, I guess even an old 320x200 screen would be considered a retina display.
Wavey always seems to have something wrong with him. Last time I saw him in the mid 90s he was hobbling around London with a walking stick.
I want my Ixian eyes *now*, damnit!
OS X has a built in screen reader for those with visual impairments VoiceOver. The quality of this built-in software is better then expensive commercial software that needs to be added into Windows OS.
I iPhones have the the same VoiceOver visual impairment feature. Heard it works well but no personal experience here.
I can't even close the Verisign pop up ad to RTFA with Chrome...
Heard it works well but no personal experience here.
You have no personal experience with an iPhone/iPod or are you just singing Apple's praises without having personal experience with being visually impaired?
The developer who wrote that "expensive commercial software that needs to be added into Windows OS" that you're putting down wrote it because he lost his sight in an accident (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JAWS_(screen_reader)#History) which gave him very good insight into what determines the "quality" of screen reader software. How many of the developers of Apple's VoiceOver product personally need it to use their computer?
Growing up with my parents they knew if they saw monitor light under the door I was still awake. I quickly learned to use the computer with the monitor turned off with simply keyboard shortcuts and no audio cues such as VoiceOver.
Hello, I have a very similar disease (Best disease, a genetic degenerative maculopathy).
Degeneration is slower than the one mentioned by the author, but the outcome is pretty much the same.
I use my PC about 10-12 hours a day and yes, I do have a lot of difficulties as I work in the BI domain and I code in different languages.
My preferred solution is to use Linux Ubuntu, it's easy to set bigger fonts everywhere and Compiz with its zoom functionality really helps.
I have two physical screens (23 " each) on my desk, which helps to mitigate the fact that using big fonts uses a lot of space.
I also use virtual screens a lot, where I "park" my email program and stuff I need to be handy, but I am not using it as a primary task.
Compiz top left "hot spot" allows me to switch between virtual screens extremely quickly (despite the fact that Unity tends to get in the way... well, I consider Unity a real nuisance in general)
Tried Orca (reads vocally the content of a window, a menu etc) and found it useless for a practical usage as the process is too slow, it's way faster to zoom in, read and zoom out again.
Blue background and yellow fonts are my favorite settings since Turbo Pascal 5 (20+ years ago), I never changed since then, so I use GEdit with that settings for pretty much everything (I code Java, C, SQL, HTML,Javascript etc in GEdit).
I really found touch screens not practical for my job, they are slow (a mouse travels much faster) and not precise enough.
Chrome as a browser does the job for me, it reacts way faster than other browsers when zooming in and out.
As a keyboard a common black keyboard is ok for me, once you know how to type, you don't need much to watch where you put your fingers I think.
On that regard, I found that software that accepts a command line (i.e. CAD systems) is way easier to use for me than use small icons I cannot properly see.
This may prove invaluable, now Logitech needs to step up and develop a mouse for guys with progressively hairy palms.
Yeah, but what's the point of using a computer with no screen? As a glorified MP3 player?
Never heard anything but good things about Emacspeak.
Exactly.
If the prognosis is bleak, as in complete loss of vision soon, then get off screen all together. Start using terminal programs, like mutt, or even ed. Learn braille readers. There is always emacs too.
I know that it may not be the "ideal formats for the sighted" to work with, but they can deal with their format conversions on their own.
Going with vision aids is only good if you can see. If you go totally blind, then all these aids are completely useless and are not helping in the transition...
B e t t e r _ u s e _ C T R L _ a n d _ t h e _ m o u s e w h e e l.
"PC Pro's Davey Winder has written a first-hand account of how he overhauled his PC workstation to cope with a sudden deterioration of his eyesight .. He also explains why he had to swap his favourite Chrome browser for Internet Explorer"
That wasn't entirely necessary, ctrl | + or ctrl | mouse-wheel-up zooms in quite all-right, works on Firefox and Chrome, and you can set the default font size in either.
AccountKiller
Get our eyes checked as soon as something is "different." A couple of "black lines" similar to "floaters" and I was at the doctor the next day. I was at the ophthalmologist a few days later with a diagnosis of wet macular degeneration. Two weeks after I noticed something wrong, I was getting a stabilizing drug injected in my eye. A week later, I was undergoing laser treatment -- the two rounds of laser zaps, a total of 1100+, was far was than the shot.
Even reacting that quickly, it had been going on for a little while. Although I've lost some sight in that eye, the biggest issue is it's difficult to read normal-sized text. Luckily, the other eye is fine.