[stylist] creative non-fiction prompt

[Jacobson, Shawn D]

Chris

I finally got to read this.  I did like the end, though the history of touch screens gets a little tedious.

I can see enough to read some of the buttons (and have a magnifier that helps me as well.

I think the next accessibility battle may be in church.  We are transitioning to presenting material to overheads in the name of making worship more accessible to the next generation.  Not only does God have a sense of humor, but it's twisted as all get out.

Shawn

-----Original Message-----
From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Chris Kuell
Sent: Wednesday, January 23, 2013 2:47 PM
To: Stylist
Subject: [stylist] creative non-fiction prompt

Greetings. A couple of weeks ago, Eve asked me to post another writing prompt. I decided to utilize the excellent lesson Bridgit posted about creative non-fiction, and asked that folks write a creative non-fiction piece related to blindness. I even offered a cash reward for anyone who got their piece published. The response has been... underwhelming. Nonetheless, I did the prompt, and here it is.
 



My Kingdom for a Button

 

By Chris Kuell

 

Last Christmas my wife and I decided to shuffle into the twenty-first century. We've never been cutting-edge people, and have always been slow to adopt new technology. We got our first CD player in 1997, about 15 years after everybody else jumped on the band wagon. We moved to DVDs during the final years of the Bush presidency, and still have some treasured VHS tapes stored in a closet.  Now it was time to take the technology plunge yet again and get one of those newer, big flat screen televisions. We went to Best Buy, got an excellent education from one of their knowledgeable salespeople, and then went to Costco to buy a 45 incher for half the price Best Buy was selling it for.

 

After unhooking the old TV, cable box, stereo and speakers, my son and I hauled the 200 pound entertainment center out to the curb. Next, I manhandled the old, 150 pound television outside, taping a 'STILL WORKS' sign to it. In the meantime, my daughter, who apparently can read Chinese and has incredible engineering skills, built the new entertainment center I'd bought online the week before. The new television, which couldn't have weighed twenty-five pounds, was placed center stage, and after some rewiring and finagling and cursing, we too could watch Ellen life size and in living color. Not me, of course. I'd be happy with a two inch screen, as long as it had a good sound system. But the big TV made my family happy, and my wife was downright giddy to watch Iron Chef on the big screen. And as a famous philosopher once said, "A happy wife means a happy life."

 

The trouble came last Saturday, as I settled into my recliner with a cold beer and a jar of peanuts to watch the Patriots play the Texans. Although there are at least seven different remotes controlling our house, I know which one runs the cable box and which one works the television. Between the two essential remotes, I counted 472 buttons. My wife had showed me which was the power button, the channel up, channel down, volume up and volume down. As for the rest, I have absolutely no clue what any of them do. I took a sip of beer and turned on the cable box. Next, I turned on the TV. I knew it was on, because I could hear static getting louder and softer when I played with the volume buttons, but I didn't appear to be on any show, and nothing happened when I pushed the channel up and down buttons. Hmmm. I turned everything off and started the process again, with no luck. Albert Einstein once said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and!
  expecting a different result. So I repeated the process a dozen or more times, all the while my blood pressure was rising. Next, I ventured into the twilight zone, hammering at random various combinations of the400 plus unknown buttons. Maybe a missile launched in Poland, maybe my neighbor's microwave time changed, I can't say. But the football game, or anything else for that matter, certainly wasn't playing on my new television, that was for damn sure.

 

In the years since I went blind, I've developed a love-hate relationship with buttons. Either there's too many, or there aren't any. At our state NFB convention last year, the hotel elevator must have had over 30 buttons, all in some random order. In the upper left corner, the Braille read 10. Below that, 7, 4, 2, then a star, then a B, then a double dash. What the hell is a double dash floor? And where was 6? Inevitably, before I found 6 another passenger would come onto the elevator, see the blind guy on his knees communing before the bank of buttons and ask slowly, as if talking to a mentally challenged deaf child, "Can I help you?"

 

On the other end of the spectrum is the dreaded touch-screen. Where there used to be nice, logical buttons, now there is a flat, smooth plane of nothingness. It started with microwaves, where some ace employee at the factory probably figured touch-screens looked "cooler" than all those pesky bumps. Then, after running it by the engineers, they managed to produce them cheaper as well. In time, all the blind friendly, easy to use microwaves went the way of the dinosaurs. But, we blind people are a crafty bunch. Someone (I can't find who) invented a product called the loc-dot, which is a small sticker with a raised bump on it. These can be placed on a microwave touch-screen where all the numbers are and, viola! Now it's blind friendly.     

   

Yet, the plague of touch screens has continued to spread. First to dishwashers, then to stoves, washing machines, dryers and even some refrigerators. And loc-dots don't always help here, because there are digital read-outs which can't be made tactile. To work my parent's stove, you push a touch screen until a digital read-out lets a sighted person know what temperature it's set to. Me-I have no friggin' clue. My brother's new stainless steel refrigerator has a touch screen panel on the front, which allows him to program the temp of the freezer, the vegetable bin, the beer shelf. Very cool stuff, which I can't use. 

 

In January 2001, Apple launched a new product which is still changing the world-the first iPod. Smaller than a deck of cards, the iPod allowed users to compress and store their music digitally, so without CDs or drives or any external hardware beyond painful ear buds, the user could store and listen to tens of thousands of their favorite songs. It had one button-the on/off switch. Everything else was controlled via a new, tiny, patented touch screen in the shape of a circle. While the world fell in love with their newer and smaller iPods, the blind were left listening to outdated Walkmans or those select portable CD players that still had buttons for operation. 

 

In time, the folks at Apple hopped onto the accessibility bandwagon. Fourth generation iPods, as well as iPhones, came with speech output and a new technology called voice over, which does allow a blind person to use them. I have several friends who, after a month or two of aggrevation and frustration, now love their iPhones. 

 

As for me, I think I'll drag my feet for a while longer. I do listen to my music on an iPod shuffle-the only apple product with raised buttons and no screen. I still utilize an old cell phone I got in 2003. It has a numeric keypad, an on/off button, a send button, and that's it. It's simple, it's tactile, and I love it.

 

As for the football game, I ended up listening the old fashioned way, tuning it in on the radio. When my son came home, he helped me figure out that while the power button on one remote turned the cable box on, when I turned the television on with the other remote, it turned the cable box off. There's an old Irish expression that's perfectly appropriate here, but my editors wouldn't appreciate me dropping the F bomb.

 

Now that mystery is solved, I can independently watch television again. But what will happen when remotes someday become buttonless, or people control their technology completely via their touch screen phones? Our kitchen stove, an iron behemoth still controlled with knobs, has to be 70 years old. Rust has chewed it's way through one corner, and I can only deflect my wife's demands for a new one for so long. Same goes for our push-button dishwasher. Last week it made a horrible sparking sound, then smelled like burnt rubber bands while it chugged and churned. When old Bessie finally kicks the bucket, will I have to resort to washing dishes by hand?

   

 I have little doubt that my pleas for a simple, button adorned world are useless. Progress, as somebody famous once said, marches on. I am comforted, at least a little, to know there's one button that will never leave me. The first button we all experienced as babies. My treasured belly button. 

  
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