[Blindtlk] The Cost of Independent Travel

[Gary Wunder]

 Hi Mike.  I like your post and agree with most of it.  If we target the
unemployment and underemployment of the blind, where should we put
resources? Eliminating the earnings cliff is a good start.  Nobody should be
expected to act against their own economic self-interest.  Ssdi discourages
work through an earnings limit used to determine all or nothing benefits.
Work which pays anywhere near the limit and is the least bit variable opens
one to the charge of overpayments, sometimes long after the event.
Beneficiaries are frequently without records and sometimes cannot get them.
So our bills and resolutions to change the system are certainly relevant in
changing the situation for some who do not find it in their interest to
work.

I agree that HR 4533 will go a long way toward seeing we can use the gadgets
society requires for work and living independently.  Not only are we working
on legislation, but trying to cultivate important relationships in
industries that matter.  This means sending our people to conferences of
engineers, manufacturers, and resellers.  The message is, "We have a market
out here which your product isn't serving," and the question which
frequently comes back is "How much of a market are we talking about?"
Sometimes we convince people who can make a difference that our market
segment matters, or that there is an opportunity for some good publicity.
Occasionally we are successful in convincing important people that there is
a moral imperative to include us.  It's hard to measure moral imperative on
a balance sheet.  Lastly we have the lawsuit which is very expensive and
which presumes there is really law on which to rely.

I think there is another, perhaps more difficult, question to address the
issue of employment and it is the same one at which you hint.  Who are the
unemployed blind and how interested are they in employment? What stands
between them and employment besides the discrimination and work
disincentives we normally mention? When I get a note saying IBM wants
people, I don't have the people to recommend.  When the IRS says they want
people, I don't have names of folks who tell me they are willing to go
anywhere they need to go to get a job.  The fact I don't know people who are
actively looking for jobs doesn't mean they aren't out there, but I
certainly do know a lot of people who seem very comfortable where they are.
The very few people I know who say they are looking for jobs are people I
probably wouldn't hire because of their inflexibility, social ineptitude,
and the way they present themselves to the public.

When I find someone who is truly unhappy with their money, their lifestyle,
and thinks work will change it, it's a blessing and a joy.  So very often
the conversation comes to a grinding halt when we start talking about where
they live and whether there are really any jobs there.  Sometimes there are
no jobs for anybody be they blind or sighted.  Sometimes there are jobs for
sighted folks but they are not places we are likely to get hired.  Quite a
few folks are resistant to training, either because it takes them away from
where they live or because it may take six to nine months and they say they
don't have the time.  If I ask them how they've spent the last five years,
they've spent it doing the same thing they're complaining about and want to
change, so how could six or nine months be time they don't have to start
working toward a goal?

The best thing I know to do is provide examples of working people and the
advantages they get from their employment: the money, a reason to get up in
the morning, and going to bed at night feeling that the tired they feel has
been earned for a reason are starters.  Sometimes people risk to change.
Sometimes all we do is just not enough.  We need to bring all the creativity
we can to this issue.  We don't have to help everyone, but what a joy for
those we can.  I love the parable about the starfish where a man laughs at
another because he's on a beach with thousand upon thousands of starfish who
have been stranded on the sand.  "You can't begin to make a difference with
all of these fish," the man says." The man who is frantically working picks
up one, throws it into the water, and says, "I made a difference to that
one."

Gary
 

-----Original Message-----
From: blindtlk-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:blindtlk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
Behalf Of Mike Freeman
Sent: Friday, August 27, 2010 9:47 PM
To: blindtlk at nfbnet.org
Subject: Re: [Blindtlk] The Cost of Independent Travel

Right on, Gary.

I think part of the difficulty some of us have wrapping our minds around
this project is that some of us are more suspicious of the hype than are
others. I, for one, am loath to make promises I cannot guarantee can be
fulfilled and I have a hard time with publicity that minimizes the
difficulties of a project. I suspect there are many like me. Yet, properly
understood, this project allows us to increase our understanding of the
limits of current methods of rapid information access and to assess possible
new methods of such access.

I can certainly understand the feelings of those who feel we should spend
money on other projects. I presume that decreasing the unemployment rate for
the blind and fighting for accessible electronic technology would be among
the projects people would favor spending resources upon. It is questionable,
however, whether these projects would be helped by more money. I know that's
counterintuitive in that those of us who do not have much money tend to
imagine what we would do if we had more. But consider: decreasing our
unemployment rate is a matter of a war on two fronts: (1) changing societal
attitudes and (2) increasing the skill base (both in terms of job knowledge
and of social eptitude) of the blind themselves. I contend that these fronts
are largely immune to increased monetary stimulus. They are amatter of
successful propaganda both of society and of ourselves.

With respect to more accessible electronics, our Technology Bill of Rights
will do more than any infusion of cash from us.

Just some thoughts.

Mike Freeman

----- Original Message -----
From: "Gary Wunder" <gwunder at earthlink.net>
To: "'Blind Talk Mailing List'" <blindtlk at nfbnet.org>
Date: Thursday, Aug 26, 2010 7:10:14
Subject: Re: [Bltlk] The Cost of Independent Travel

>
>
> Hello Ray, and all of the people who have contributed thoughtful posts
here.
> I think we should acknowledge that driving is a risky proposition as 
> it now stands. I don't know what the statistics are now, but one 
> argument I remember back in the days of the Vietnam war was that we 
> killed more people on our nation's highways every year than we lost in the
jungles of Asia.
> Errors in judgment cost lives. Most of the time people take driving 
> seriously, but there are many distractions which caused drivers to pay 
> less attention to the road than they should. Well-known examples are 
> cellular telephones, checking one's makeup in the mirror, or trying to 
> be the disciplinarian for the children in the back seat.
> 
> Currently there are airplanes which are designed in such a way that 
> they cannot be flown without the assistance of a computer. They are 
> simply not airworthy unless a computer is constantly adjusting the air 
> foils or surfaces of the plane which come in contact with the air. In 
> these situations, these complicated vehicles aren't run by just one
computer.
> There are always multiple computers and coordinating software which is 
> designed both to share the workload and detect the failure of a unit 
> and reassign its tasks. This will certainly be a part of anything we 
> design to be purchasable by blind drivers.
> 
> There has been significant speculation about the cost of a vehicle we 
> design. It is much too early to know what that cost may be. Part of 
> the equation will depend on how much of what we develop is usable by 
> sighted people. Scanners are cheaper today because they have a 
> marketplace which extends well beyond the blind. The same is true with 
> speech synthesis. The same is not true, however, of screen reading 
> applications, although there are some uses which industry has for what 
> they call screen scraping technology.
> 
> We have speculated here about who will be able to afford a car 
> modified so we can drive it. I suggest that any society which is 
> willing to spend $6000 on the BrailleNote to make a person more 
> efficient in reading, writing, and taking notes in class or on the job 
> will be very willing to help front some of the costs of a vehicle. 
> This will be true for several reasons. First, there are many jobs 
> which blind people are capable of doing but which are so underserved by
mass transportation that we do not have access to them.
> Second, there are many jobs in this economy which directly rely on 
> operating a vehicle. Over the road trucking is a splendid example. My 
> sister currently works for a company delivering parts from one 
> location to the other. If we can begin to get a handle on creating a 
> blind-drivable vehicle, we will open up a wide range of jobs which simply
aren't practical for us to do today.
> 
> 
> 
> Some have quite reasonably expressed the concern that developing this 
> vehicle won't automatically mean we are able to drive it, because of 
> current law and the need for insurance. These are important 
> considerations and will pose significant challenges for us, but until 
> we have a vehicle which is really workable, there is no way to take 
> any meaningful action on these fronts. Identifying them as challenges 
> as appropriate. Considering them as reasons not to do the project 
> misses the mark. It is, in transportation terms, putting the cart before
the horse.
> 
> Ray, you offer the concern that we are placing too much emphasis on 
> technology. In many respects I agree with you. I think it would be 
> tragic if we decided to no longer teach handwriting because so many 
> devices were readily available for typing or otherwise turning 
> information into text. It is tragic when people who cannot see well 
> enough to read and write print aren't taught to use the slate and 
> stylus. none of this alters the evolving requirement of society that 
> we be able to communicate with each other in ways which older 
> technology will simply not allow. I can't use the Internet with my 
> slate and stylus. I don't miss those days of typing my papers only to 
> realize that my ribbon was poor or that someone had set the typewriter 
> to stencil. I don't for one moment want to go back to the day when the 
> ringing of a telephone would mean losing my train of thought and being 
> unable to go back and determine whether or not I had entered the comma 
> after my last phrase or placed two spaces after the period. I hope we 
> never have to go back to a time where we write three or four drafts of 
> a paper, having each time to start by fully retyping that which was 
> good and altering that which we wanted to change. Wordprocessing has 
> changed our world forever, and I'm glad it allows us to participate in the
kind of discussion we're having here.
> 
> Warmest regards to all,
> 
> Gary
> 
> 
> 
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