[stylist] Adventures in learning the Mac and braille

[Donna Hill]

April,
Glad to hear you are making progress with Braille! Also, the idea of writing
up procedures when you're actually learning them is a good one. I have a
whole Procedures folder that has been a God-send on many occasions.
Cheers,
Donna

-----Original Message-----
From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of April Brown
Sent: Sunday, January 19, 2014 11:24 AM
To: stylist at nfbnet.org
Subject: [stylist] Adventures in learning the Mac and braille

Good morning,

      I don't want to tread on my friend's toes who writes the "Adventures
in Low Vision" blog.  However, today is time for a post on "Adventures of
the Hard of Hearing and Low Vision."

      I've been a computer geek for ten years.  Never paid attention to my
hearing loss, though I did get a hearing aid, likely five or more years ago.
I thought VoiceOver should be easy to learn.  Insert hyena laugh, and every
cartoon laugh you ever heard.

     I've been a reader all my life.  I have low memory due to brain damage
a few decades ago.  Lost most of my memory.  I have little appreciation of
shortcuts, as I can't comprehend them.  I thought learning braille wouldn't
be likely.  I had to try anyway.  Insert hyena laugh, and every cartoon
laugh you ever heard.

What happened?

Computer geeky: Yeah right.  What do those terms mean again?  Does anyone
have a definition?  Yesterday, I had 1.5 hours to study VoiceOver again.  I
took over an hour to get the nerve up to turn it on.  This after having been
told no one has time to create, or even send a link, to a step by step Voice
Over manual.  Guess what?  In that 30 minutes, I made a little progress
using it in Pages. I'm leaving the Internet alone for a bit.  I've lost over
100 hours trying to figure out how to use it there.  At least in Pages I can
now find the menu, and even change the font size.  Oh, and search and find.
I wrote out a step by step manual for what I succeeded on yesterday.

Reading braille?  I was too bored with the slowness of the online course.  I
found the contracted braille, computer braille, and everything else I needed
online.  I've been studying that as well.  Um, I'm about a year ahead of the
course.  Oh, and I got my first braille book from the library to read last
week.  I am excited.  I can now read again when my eye is too painful to
hold open.

I had tried the talking books.  Being partially deaf, and having
comprehension of vocalization issues, they weren't working.  Unless I sat
completely still, not even twiddling my thumbs to listen to the novels.  I
don't have that kind of time!

April Brown

Writing dramatic adventure novels uncovering the myths we hide behind.



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