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."

Comments

My biggest surprise

[dtmos]

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. . . .

Re:My biggest surprise

[Hatta]

Except for separating content from presentation. That would be particularly important for this guy, as he could make things as big and ugly as he needs to for his poor eyesight, and still produce an attractive final document.

Re:My biggest surprise

[CastrTroy]

I'm not sure what kind of journalist he is (has his own blog, writes for some major paper, etc.) but I would think for the most part, using MS word wouldn't be the best choice for a journalist anyway. The article is most likely going to be edited and reformatted anyway when printed, so there's no point in do any formatting at all, especially not by the journalist.

Re:My biggest surprise

[Luckyo]

By far the best and borderline mandatory. In addition to features, the most important thing to a freelancer is compatibility. If openoffice et al botches formatting a bit and the editor you're sending your article for review finds an unreadable mess, you can stand to lose several times worth of office's price in lost income.

Which is simply not worth the risk.

Re:My biggest surprise

[Loosifur]

This all day. I'm a freelance writer, and I couldn't live without Word. I don't know how it is in other parts of the world, but I've only ever worked for American clients, and, aside from one who wanted RTFs, they all want DOC or DOCX. I used OOo for a little bit out of a combination of contrariness and poverty, and I remember spending too much time wrestling with formatting, and then losing all the formatting when I saved it as a DOC file.

And I don't know if this applies universally, but the days of a room full of typesetters are long gone. Yeah, your copy is going to be formatted by a copy editor or layout editor if you're working with a fairly large publisher, but they still want it to be as close to their end formatting as possible. They'll be using InDesign or Quark to do the layout, or they'll have some CMS that they use for online. In either case, they'll be expecting a standard format so that there are no hiccups when it's imported.

And, particularly if you're freelance, the editing is going to be removing text and some light formatting. If they've got to spend more than two minutes proofreading, they're not buying your piece. Which means they'll expect a standard format (Times, Courier, or sometimes Arial, 12 pt, double-spaced, 1" margins) so they can breeze through it, and they'll want a DOC file so that their copy of Word will open it without any issues. Because I guarantee you they'll be using Word 2003, or maybe 2007 if they had a really good couple of years.

CHECK ROUTER !!

[Anonymous Coward]

Always check your router if you can't get to a sight !!

Presentation vs Content

[Qzukk]

This particular editor allows me to also quickly increase the size of the text to something easily visible (which for me is 20pt or more) without any of these display-only factors impacting upon the printed document or actual file copy.

Yet another argument for separating them.

List of Reasons he choose different programs

[cpu6502]

(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?"

Re:List of Reasons he choose different programs

[westlake]

"It isnÃ(TM)t that Chrome doesnÃ(TM)t support touch, but itÃ(TM)s slower to respond and not everything seems to work Ã" with IE9, it just does."
IÃ(TM)m constantly exploring what applications and hardware can do to make my life easier. And IÃ(TM)m far from alone in having a touch of the Mr Magoo about me, so maybe itÃ(TM)s about time that developers started taking the problem a little more seriously?"

When will Slashdot support cut & paste?

Re:List of Reasons he choose different programs

[jimicus]

It's not cut & paste, it's a character map difference. Those A(TM)'s are almost certainly smart quotes.

Re:List of Reasons he choose different programs

[Mister Whirly]

NoteTab Pro - Because unlike MS Word, he can use bright yellow text against a dark blue background

You can change the background color and text color in Word - this is a total non-issue you brought up.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word-help/change-background-colors-images-or-text-in-a-document-HP005233746.aspx
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/powerpoint-help/change-the-color-of-text-HA010338280.aspx?CTT=1

Re:List of Reasons he choose different programs

[philip.paradis]

It's caused by Slashdot's failure to handle Unicode properly, a problem I don't expect will ever be fixed.

High Contrast Modes

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

I can see why he needed to go to IE from Chrome...

[rullywowr]

I can't even close the Verisign pop up ad to RTFA with Chrome...