President’s Blog

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. (more…)

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. (more…)

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. (more…)

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. (more…)

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, (more…)

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, (more…)

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. (more…)

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. (more…)

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. (more…)

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. (more…)

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. (more…)

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. (more…)

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. (more…)

Sorry if this post is a bit long, but this is a complex subject. It also explains why it is several weeks since I updated the blog; I have just had to do a bit more research and give a lot of thought to this before I felt ready to publish. So here goes.

It seems to me that as technology keeps “improving”, it is actually becoming more difficult for blind and low vision people to do our business on the net. It should be the other way around because the net, if well managed, offers huge potential for blind people to do business in a way that is more inclusive than ever. So why are we heading in the wrong direction? (more…)

Here we are in 2009 and it is now time for me to ensure that I keep this blog fresh and up to date, keeping you all informed on issues of concern to blind people in New Zealand and what the Association of Blind Citizens is up to. I will try to update the blog at least every week or fortnight.

Sometimes the blog will be rather personal, and that is the case this time. For me, this year began with a personal trip to Paris to share in the celebrations of the 200th anniversary of the birth of Louis Braille. New Zealand was actually very well represented by something like eleven people, (more…)

Yet another blog? Well maybe but there aren’t many blogs that deal with disability issues and we hope this one will be a regular read for people interested in such things. Also we see this as another simple way to keep our own Association members up to date with our activities. (more…)