[nabs-l] A Struggling Blind Student Looking for Some Advice

[Karl Martin Adam]

Dear Elizabeth,

You're right that many of the suggestions people have given you 
won't help for your test in two weeks.  If you want to continue 
college though, learning braille whether from a training center 
or a Hadley course or whatever or learning how to use something 
like NVDA will be something you have to do.  We can't do that for 
you.  I wish we could, but you have to actually learn the skills 
you need to do college assignments.  One thing you could do is 
take an incomplete get the skills you need and finish the class 
in the fall.  I'm assuming that's more drastic than you want to 
do though.  You could work on trying to learn something like NVDA 
for the next test, and maybe your professor would allow you to 
take this one later if you explained it to them or maybe they 
would let you take it orally.  I understand not wanting to learn 
new technology, I really do.  I hate it, and I've never been able 
to learn Windows and a screen reader well enough to function 
effectively, which is why I use my Braillenote for everything.  I 
think you might be surprised at how easy it is to learn how to 
make a smartphone work though.  Androids are known for taking 
some time to figure out, but Iphone's are fairly intuitive.  When 
I got mine I hated it for a day or two because I couldn't make it 
work, but then it clicked.  All you really need is to type your 
answers into the body of an e-mail and either send it to your 
professor or have your scribe write it out onto the test or 
e-mail your answers to DSS and have them print them.  Learning 
how to do that much really wouldn't be very difficult--even 
someone who has as hard a time with technology as I do can manage 
it.  I really hope you can find a way to do well on your exam!

Best,
Karl

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Elizabeth Mohnke via nabs-l <nabs-l at nfbnet.org
To: "'National Association of Blind Students mailing list'" 
<nabs-l at nfbnet.org
Date sent: Fri, 29 Jan 2016 17:02:48 -0500
Subject: Re: [nabs-l] A Struggling Blind Student Looking for Some 
Advice

Hello All,

I honestly wish I had never posted my email to this email list. I 
really hate the fact that it just seems like all you are wanting 
to do is tell me that an NFB training center is somehow going to 
solve all the problems in my life. Even if I could ever go to an 
NFB training center, I will probably never gain the Braille 
skills necessary to be able to use them in a testing situation.

I have never used a smart phone before, so this option would not 
work for me. There is absolutely no way I would be able to learn 
how to use it good enough to use for a test that is in two weeks. 
I am already trying to catch up in this class after being sick, 
so I am not looking to add anything more to my plate than what is 
already on it.

Using NVDA sounds like a good option, but again, I have never 
used it before, and I cannot understand the voice that comes with 
it . So I am not quite sure how this option would work for me.

I am sorry that I am not able to fight my college and the 
vocational rehabilitation all on my own. The Client Assistant 
Program does not do much of anything here. And no one in the NFB 
has never really been willing to help me either. All I wanted to 
do was to find a way to pass this class. But it looks as though I 
simply do not have the support, resources, and capacity to do the 
things I wanted to be able to do before my accident.

I should have never signed up to take this class. I really did 
not have the money to pay for it in the first place, and right 
now it just feels like this was only a waste of my money. And I 
should just learn that I am never going to be the same person 
that I was before my accident.

Elizabeth

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