President’s Blog

OK so we had a general election on Saturday and now the country pretty much knows where it’s going for the next three years. But did it ever occur to you just how crucial it is to our electoral system that your vote is secret? Well maybe your vote isn’t absolutely secret because the system still needs to know enough to validate the votes cast but we don’t need to go into that much detail right now.

Suppose you are part of a family that really holds strong left or right wing views. But deep down you really feel that you’re not going to vote for the same party the rest of your family supports. You can keep this entirely to yourself. Nobody will know how you actually voted.

That is not the case for blind and vision impaired people. Read the rest of this entry »

We met over the weekend of 3-4 September and here are some of the outcomes of that meeting that I think might be of more general interest. Read the rest of this entry »

At a Parliamentary function hosted by the Minister for Culture and Heritage, Hon Chris Finlayson, on 11 July, we launched our “brief” on accessible banking.

We all know I think that nowadays you can’t do much in our society without a bank account. The days of being able to carry out all our transactions using hard cash are pretty much gone.

As blind and vision impaired people, we are unable to access the banking system with the same degree of independence, confidentiality and dignity afforded to our sighted counterparts. Divulging personal banking information to another party to execute transactions on our behalf compromises our rights, responsibilities and obligations to the bank, and exposes us to potential criminal behaviour. Read the rest of this entry »

At a Parliamentary function hosted by the Minister for Culture and Heritage, Hon Chris Finlayson, on 11 July, we launched our “brief” on audio description.

Being unable to follow body language, activity, scenery, facial expression, clothing and manner of dress etc, blind, deafblind and vision impaired people benefit from audio description because it provides a commentary on these aspects of the visual experience. Audio description has existed for more than 15 years and can be regarded as the equivalent of captioning for the deaf and hearing impaired. Read the rest of this entry »

At a Parliamentary function hosted by the Minister for Culture and Heritage, Hon Chris Finlayson, on 11 July, we launched our “brief” on accessible websites. As blind people, we are unable to communicate and access information visually, and we may also be restricted in our ability to get out and about. The World Wide Web (with the use of adaptive technologies ) has opened many doors for us, allowing us to access the same information and carry out transactions independently in the same way as our sighted peers. It is particularly empowering to at last live in a world in which we can read our daily news, interact with others, do our shopping, pay our bills, manage our finances, apply for services and do many other things online with full independence.

Well designed websites make life better for everyone; however they can be particularly beneficial for people who are blind as we can access the same information with full independence and without being marked out as in any way different from everyone else. Some disabilities (such as deafblindness) can severely restrict a person’s ability to access information and interact socially; for these people, properly designed websites can actually be life changing, providing perhaps the only means to access everyday information and communicate and interact with others. Read the rest of this entry »

It was July last year in fact when we launched our brief which explains what blind and vision impaired people need from the telecommunications industry. Now one year later, we attempted to promote the brief and a new brief on accessible websites by inviting telecommunications companies and other interested people to a forum which we hosted as part of this year’s Wellington Seminar. Now through this post I can explain the concerns we have about telecommunications and why it is so important. In my next post I will highlight our recently published brief on accessible websites. Read the rest of this entry »

This is the time of the year when our Board members stay in Wellington for two further days after our regular Board meeting, and usually we try to have meetings with politicians and key Government staff so we can persuade Government to understand and hopefully cater for the needs of blind and vision impaired people. Each year we focus on just a few specific issues or themes. This year they included audio description, telecommunications and banking. Read the rest of this entry »

We met over the weekend of 9-10 July and here are some of the outcomes of that meeting that I think might be of more general interest. We held our annual Wellington Seminar event on the two days following this meeting. I will comment on that in my next post. Read the rest of this entry »

In recent issues of our magazine Focus, we have endeavoured to keep our members and supporters informed about funding discussions between consumer organisations and the Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind. This blog post is based on my most recent article on this subject published in the current issue of Focus. Read the rest of this entry »

We met over the weekend of 14-15 May and here are some of the outcomes of that meeting that I think might be of more general interest. Read the rest of this entry »

We met over the weekend of 12-13 March and here are some of the outcomes of that meeting that I think might be of more general interest. Read the rest of this entry »

An odd question perhaps but one that is not altogether unusual in lunch rooms around the country. Why? Because if one of the staff in the lunch room is blind, there’s a good chance that, like most of us it seems, they are a fan of the street. And somehow that programme is designed in such a way that it tries to end on a dramatic note that all too often is conveyed only through visual action. All you hear is a crash or a shout or a groan or whatever it might be, or just someone looking suspiciously at something from a distance, and just when you’re trying to work out what happens, on comes that familiar tune to tell you that you’ll have to wait until next time to find out. Sighted people of course will probably have seen what happened.

But New Zealand took a small but still very significant step forward on 1 March this year with the first broadcast of audio description on television. Read the rest of this entry »

We’re already well into March and for me, well my holiday was great but it’s already a distant memory. It’s going to be a busy and challenging year again for us in many ways. But that is the nature of the work we do.

This year we got off to a sad start as a result of the Christchurch earthquake. We’ve all heard the stories of people in the Canterbury area having no power, no water and no sewage, and having to cope with houses that have been basically ransacked, damaged and in many cases completely destroyed. We’ve heard about the cracked roads and footpaths, the scattered debris of collapsed buildings, the silt and muck that pervades much of the area both inside and outside, and the dangers of buildings that are still standing but teetering on the verge of collapse. And saddest of all, we’ve heard about the tragic loss of life.

For those of us who are not there, the impact is hard to imagine. But the impact on blind and vision impaired people is so much worse. Just think for a moment Read the rest of this entry »

These last two to three months have been really busy for me and the Association generally. As I turn to the blog to bring you all up to date on what we’re doing and perhaps more importantly to give you some ensight into what lies behind what we do, I realise there’s a lot to get through. This entry will pick up a number of items in brief and then I’ll deal with some topics in more detail. Read the rest of this entry »

For a few years now, the Association has been pushing for the introduction of audio description into New Zealand television. Our old analog system of television broadcasting does not lend itself to audio description, so we have had to go without while we knew that blind people in many other countries have had at least some audio described television for more than twenty years. Some countries now mandate a minimum number of hours a week that all major broadcasters must provide.

But now with the Freeview digital TV service up and running in New Zealand, we believe it is possible. Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier this month I posted an entry giving my initial reactions to the recent announcement by the Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind concerning major changes it is about to make to its rehabilitation services. If you read that entry, you should know that I am generally pleased with what the Foundation says it will be doing but I also drew attention to a number of questions the Association still has which remain unanswered.

At that time, the only information I could go on was an email message sent by the Foundation’s Chief Executive on 27 May to various email lists operated by the Foundation, together with information I had obtained through informal communication. In my blog entry, I mentioned that consumer organisations had asked for a comprehensive briefing paper on the proposed changes, but given that an announcement had already been published, ultimately I decided to publish my comments on 13 June although at that time we had not received the briefing we were waiting for.

Now, just for the record, I can tell you that we received the briefing paper this week. At this stage I haven’t had time to read it. We also have a Board meeting in a couple of weeks time. I’ll post an update on this subject therefore later this month when we have digested the information we’ve now received.

Did you watch Television New Zealand’s Sunday programme last Sunday (20 June 2010)? One segment took an interesting look at the Chinese economy and asked if the current growth rate is really sustainable and whether the bubble could be about to burst.

As documentaries go, I suppose there was nothing really outstanding about it but still the topic was interesting. It was a pity though that some of the people invited to comment spoke their comments in a Chinese language. Now I, like most New Zealanders, am basically monolingual. My school French would probably be sufficient to get me into serious trouble if I relied on it in a city the likes of Paris, and my German is worse. As for other languages, I’m running on empty. Probably we could all make more of an effort these days with languages but I’m sure that in this respect I am like most people living in New Zealand. We just haven’t been exposed to lots of languages down in this part of the world. Read the rest of this entry »

The Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind recently announced changes to the way it will deliver basic rehabilitation services. Bearing in mind that consumer organisations have no more information than what has been announced, and given that we haven’t met yet to even discuss it, this blog entry is my personal reaction and commentary on what has been announced and what we have learned. It might be premature, but I think this is such a significant change in service that some initial comment is warranted. Read the rest of this entry »

The Government is conducting a review of special education. We have submitted our views on the points raised by the review and we have contributed to a submission on behalf of the blindness sector. Last week Martine Abel and I appeared in person in front of the review panel to speak in support of our submission. Amongst the panel members was the Associate Minister for Education, Hon. Heather Roy.

First and foremost, like all other students, blind and low vision students have a right to be educated to their maximum potential. This is the principle that guides our approach to this topic. Read the rest of this entry »

I have to admit that I rather hit the wall towards the end of last year and the blog has been a casualty. I don’t want to make a lot of excuses, Read the rest of this entry »

In this third posting in my series on access by blind people to everyday published information, I will briefly discuss the concept of copyright exemptions and explain why they are needed.

The starting point is to understand how blind people access information. Because publishers almost never publish books in an accessible format, it falls essentially to the mostly voluntary blindness agencies around the world to apply their own resources to create accessible versions of books. According to the World Blind Union’s Right to Read campaign, Read the rest of this entry »

In this second posting in my series on access by blind people to everyday published information, I will look briefly at the situation that developed earlier this year when Amazon released its Kindle 2, and what we learned from that.

Amazon is a well-known publisher of electronic books or e-books. These books are electronic files you read using a portable electronic device often called an e-book reader. In Amazon’s case, their reader is called the Kindle. The second iteration of the Kindle, the Kindle 2, was released in February this year. This caused considerable controversy in the blind and intellectual property communities as I will explain shortly. Read the rest of this entry »

Remember that old folk song “rock my soul in the bosom of Abraham”? Yes go ahead and Google it if you’re too young to remember. I wonder if boy scouts sing that song today around the campfire like we used to. The words that come to my mind at the moment are “so high, I can’t get over it, so low I can’t get under it, so wide I can’t get round it…”. That’s what it’s like when you come up against a barrier. Right? Well, yes, but only if it is a physical barrier.

The thing about physical barriers is that they are easy to see and understand. When the disability movement really took off in the late sixties and seventies, it built on the gains won by earlier movements that fought for racial equality. The first focus of the disability movement was to claim our right to live in the mainstream of society, to fight against discrimination in areas such as employment and access to public spaces. In this regard we have been largely successful I think, with many countries now having legislation to ensure that public spaces are basically accessible to people with disabilities and to prevent discrimination on the grounds of disability in various aspects of life. Read the rest of this entry »

Greetings again. The colder weather only serves to remind us that we are just about half way through the year. Where has it gone?

I want to bring you up to date with the latest developments concerning the Foundation’s governance proposal. This is important because it is all about our ability as members to directly govern those specialised services that are there to meet our needs as blind people.

Some of you reading this won’t know what this is about so perhaps some background is in order. Read the rest of this entry »

Gosh, I am embarrassed to realise that it is now a month since I updated the blog. I do have some excuses but you don’t want to know. So my humble apologies.

One section of the blind community that is often not heard is that of young people. On this occasion, I’m referring to blind and low vision people between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five. These are young adults, old enough to have left school, ready to take on the world, yet still at that age where it isn’t exactly cool to be going to meetings of an organisation like our Association. I can easily recall my attitude at eighteen years of age. I certainly had no time for meetings and commitments. Read the rest of this entry »

For a number of years, the Association has been quietly working with the banking industry to push them towards introducing talking ATMs. ATMs, or automatic teller machines, often called cash machines, bank machines etc, are all over the place so people must use them.

Sighted people, that is. Blind people have not been able to use them because even though we can at least on some models learn which button is which, we can’t actually interact with these machines because we can’t read what is on the screen. Read the rest of this entry »

Today I was riding in a taxi, as I often do, and I said to the driver just drop me off along here where you see the driveway down into the basement garage car park. I quickly realised the driver didn’t stop so I just said just stop anywhere along here please. Now I know that often there are a lot of cars parked along this stretch of road and taxis can’t always stop so I wasn’t too concerned when we travelled still further. Then when we did stop, the driver asked “Is here OK”? By this time I was thinking anywhere to get out would be better than nowhere. “Yes this is fine”, I said, and paid the bill. He did kindly offer to help me walk back but really this stretch of street is pretty straightforward so I didn’t need help.

Now I had to walk back about a hundred meters or so which was no big deal, but it gave me a moment to ponder on why this had happened, particularly because I do this every day and quite often it seems drivers just don’t understand where I want them to stop. Like most drivers in Auckland, and I think more than anywhere else in New Zealand, English was not this driver’s first language. Read the rest of this entry »

This Association continues to call for effective and accessible public transport so people with disabilities can participate fully in all aspects of society. This week in the news we heard that the Government is now not going ahead with a regional fuel tax that we were told would have funded critical developments in Auckland’s public transport infrastructure. The Government has instead opted for a lower nation-wide fuel tax. Not surprisingly, people around the country have not been slow to express their outrage at having to, as they might put it, pay for Auckland’s roads, Read the rest of this entry »

At our National Conference last year, we passed a remit calling on the Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind to stop using the term “partially sighted”, and use instead “vision impaired” when describing the community it serves. So far the Foundation has ignored us.

So why does it matter? What’s in a label. Looking at the whole disabled population, we used to be handicapped or crippled. Some time later we were disabled, and then we were “people with disabilities”. Read the rest of this entry »

One area that takes up quite a bit of my personal time is education of blind children. I represent the Association on the Board of Trustees of the Blind and Low Vision Education Network (NZ) (BLENNZ). This is a relatively new organisation that combines the old school for the blind we used to know as Homai College with virtually all of the visual resource centres around the country.

Most blind children today attend local schools, and face immense challenges in their education. Subjects are often taught visually, and nowadays there is a lot of technology in the class room. But much of this is inaccessible to blind children so they can easily miss out on getting the same education that other children get. Read the rest of this entry »