[nagdu] Virtual Guide Dog

Jewel S. herekittykat2 at gmail.com
Wed Mar 24 02:18:17 UTC 2010


Hi all! I came across a most interesting thing today....a little
background first.

I used to play Second Life, before my injury that took my vision. I
loved the ability to build, program, and converse. I was a member of
many virtual groups, with both real-world interests (like military
wives) and virtual interests (like learning how to program items to do
this and that and everything). I absolutely loved Second Life.

However, in 2008 when I lost my vision, there was no alternative way
for blind people to play Second Life. So, when my vision went from
20/70 to 20/200 to 20/600, I said good-bye to all my friends on Second
Life. My virtual family (a few friends who considered me like a
sister/daughter) cried when I left, and while I knew some of them as
their real-life selves, since they were in another part of the world,
continuing contact was difficult (many of them were British).

I found a text SL program recently (<textsl.org/>) that is for blind
and VI players of Second Life. So, I looked into SL for the blind
more.

I came across an article about a player of SL, VI herself, who is
programming a virtual guide dog, named Max, who will help blind
players navigate Second Life. Currently, it just looks good (with its
harness on a lovely sled dog type dog) and allows the avatar to follow
another avatar who acts as a sorted of sighted guide. But they are
working on the programming. The website is
<http://www.virtualguidedog.com/>

What do you all think of this?

~Jewel




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