I know you have to make sure the battery is in the computer before it will boot. Does anyone know of a way around this? I have a toshiba lap top that is about 5 years old, and it won't boot. I did try a friend's battery and it worked then. I am blind and will have to get someone to check the voltage on the power supply and make sure we have voltage on the terminals on the computer also. Bet some of you guys have had this problem before. E-mail me back to this address if you can help. Located in Georgia and have unlimited long distance. Not verry good at typing out the problem.
I do not know what model you have, but I trust you are aware of the problem that some Satellite models had with the power connector jack?? List what model you are dealing with and perhaps someone can help. The model I have will power up and boot without a battery if you use the power adapter to power the unit. If yours will not, it could be that is why your battery is bad and swapping another from a friend worked.
Once again proving what an asshole you can be. I know a ham radio operator who is completely blind. He can touch type and uses text to speech software to use E-mail nd browse the web. Another ham taught him to assemble a computer form scratch, and install the OS and application software after his asshole boss made a comment about how F'ing useless the blind ham was. The funny part was the blind ham assembled & set up the computer faster that the friend's boss who owned the computer store.
I met him about 15 years ago when he had computer problems, and had let Best Buy work on it since they were only a few miles away, and my shop was over an hour away. They had installed two additional HD controller cards along with the original, all set for the same base address and IRQs. I pulled the new cards and found a minor problem, then sent him on his way.
Its probably easier for blind contributors on Usenet than practically anywhere else on the www because of all the bloated sites /frames / flash mangling and obscuring whatever info is buried in there. Usenet having started with test-only terminals and 400 baud or so modems.
Are there stand alobne DVMs with voiced output ?, pc scopes with descriptive text ? I imagine there are electronic repairers with poor sight , but are there any blind repairers ?
Sight isn't necessary to interact with a computer. Especially in a forum like this -- devoid of useless graphics, etc.
It is unfortunate that so many devices that we interact with on a daily basis take sight -- as well as hearing -- for granted, needlessly. Think about what's around you and how you would interact with it if you were visually impaired; or hearing impaired; or suffered from tremor; or any of the dozens of other problems that many folks deal with every day (if you live long enough, you *will* go blind *and* deaf!)
I've known a couple who were legally blind. They could make out some things with special glasses, but they only worked with simple, tube based equipment. Another tech I knew was handicapped. His arms were severely twisted, and he couldn't hold his head upright. It leaned about
45 degrees to his right, so he would lean even further to his right to repair tube radios & TVs. I wonder what happened to them? It's been over 30 years since I've seen any of them.
I spend a good deal of time dealing with -- and designing devices to be used by -- people with various disabilities.
Let's flip your criticism of *my* comment around: can you explain any reason for *your* reply to the original poster -- besides wanting to see your name in print?
Great! Maybe she and Dana can exchange life experiences and how they each cope with their specific issues!
Look, if you want to lecture me on electronics repair I'll be happy to read. But if you are trying to educate me on the virtues of being polite and proper, save it for someone where it will do some good.
The fact is I'm not polite or proper just to 'fit in'. And if some of the replies I get from people on Usenet had been done in person, some people would have been crawling away missing some teeth. Feel free not to read my posts, I stress that upon everyone from time to time.
Now go hug your spouse and kids if you have them and pet your dog or cat,
Exactly. Note that there are some (voluntary) standards that people can adopt to make "blind friendly" web pages, etc. (e.g., "Bobby Approved"). However, it is painfully obvious that most sites are geared towards the sighted.
You will also discover -- should you ever try to use the "disability features" in your Mac/PC -- how clumsy these interfaces can be. Turn your monitor off and see just how well *you* can adapt
Maybe 300 baud? (400 isn't a standard baud rate)
Yes. But then you need a speech synthesizer that has a serial port (DECTalk, DECTalk express, etc.). Or, nowadays, a speech synthesizer running on your PC tethered to the DMM, etc.
Note that there is a difference between "legally blind" and "blind". Also, the cause of blindness and its relative onset in life play a big factor. For example, those blind from birth adjust differently than those losing their vision later in life from things like diabetic retinopathy (e.g., learning Braille in your 60's may just not be an option -- especially with the neurological damage that accompanies a disease like diabetes).
Decades ago, I worked on the Kurzweil Reading Machine (a device that "reads books" to the visually impaired). At the time, it was implemented with a minicomputer (i.e., the size of a dishwasher) and a hand-built scanner (consumer scanners did not exist back then). It was not uncommon for us to talk a blind client through the process of disassembling the minicomputer to the point where boards could be reseated or swapped out. Nowadays, isn't that all *real* "factory service personnel" do??
I had a Bell's Palsy in my right eye in May of 2008. My left eye is mostly for decoration, so I was almost blind for eight months, and could only see what was visible out of the bottom left corner of my right eye, and only when I could hold the lid open with my fingers. It was late last year that I regained full control of that eye.
I write HTML in Wordpad to keep the pages compact and fast. I use the bare minimum of code, both for the visually impaired, and those who have to use older computers & browsers.
Without text to voice and the ability to touch type, it's worthless.
Someone had written a simple 'serial to text' terminal program for those type DVMs a few years ago.
I have been on the edge of legally blind all my life. I am not allowed to drive without my glasses. My vision was below 20/200 &
20/400 when I entered the US Army in the '70s and has become worse over the decades since.
I'm on Gabapentin for Diabetic Neuropathy.
Not at the factory. I troubleshot MC68340 based embedded controller boards we built in house. I hand soldered 288 pin ICs under a stereo microscope for several years. Then I was moved to our newest product, a VME based telemetry receiver with several DSP & FIR filters per board. You don't scrap new $8,000 boards if you can prevent it.
Meat Plow is an angry little man with a huge chip on his shoulder. He should stay on alt.usenet.kooks, where he came from.
And you should f*ck off you pedantic pisswit. And I'm not a little man, I'm 6'3" and around 230lbs. Like I told another poster if you said some of this shit to my person you'd leave crawling spitting teeth along the way.
This is one of the early symptoms of Myasthenia Gravis (I am not claiming that you have MG -- just drawing a parallel). But, with Bell's, don't you also tear a lot? I.e., so you almost *have* to actively close your eye to blink away the tears...
Understood. But even things like page format/layout can be confounding. E.g., trying to recognize columns (think: frames within a page) is very hard for someone not "seeing" the page.
My point is that even *with* text-to-speech (TTS), it is very hard for most people to process information. Many people are highly visual oriented. And, have, after a lifetime, developed their skillsets oriented towards processing information in this way.
Try, for example, to have a page of text *read* to you and see how much of it you comprehend afterwards. Then, realize that you can't just flick your "ears" back a few paragraphs to review what you heard "back then" -- which is something we constantly do with our eyes as we rescan text that has previously been read for clarifications, etc.
Ah, cool! But, you still need a PC just to read your DMM. I.e., there is a big inconvenience involved. I get annoyed when I don't have enough room for my 5.5 digit DMM and have to resort to using a Simpson VOM just because it's smaller. (yeah, I really should buy an El Cheapo pocket sized DMM but it seems a waste when I have so many others...)
Well, *technically* I can't drive without glasses, either but that's just because the law (here) requires vision corrected to 20/20 in order to drive. If I had to get to the hospital in a hurry and didn't have my eyeglasses handy, I'd have no worse problem than any other driver (especially those "handicapped" by having a cell phone glued to their ear!)
20/200 is pretty bad. I know a gentleman who is in that shape now. At 12 feet he is effectively "blind".
Hmmm... I thought gabapentin was for epilepsy? IANAD so I'm just recalling things from memory. Maybe used for anything neurological?
Yes, I was being facetious. My point was that a blind man can still do some checking and repair/replacement. E.g., "Can you verify that all of the cables are fully seated? Can you hear the scanner motor starting up and the carriage moving across the machine? etc."
My experience with visually impaired individuals is that they have to rely on memory a lot more than sighted folks do. Whether it is remembering where something is on/in a device or remembering how to do something or remembering where they *put* something.
I have found working with deaf people to be much more difficult. Sight is highly directional. So, we have other senses that compensate and alert us to things that are not in front of us (i.e., not in front of our eyes). Hearing being primary among them. Try getting a deaf person's attention if they are not looking in your general direction...! :-/
NO, I had to use saline solution quite often for the first month or so. Bells's Palsy is caused by the temporary loss of blood flow to the nerves and muscles of the eye, requiring it to regenerate the nerves & muscles. It is one of those conditions they aren't sure of all the causes, but one is a low level infection which I've had problems with for over 35 years.
No frames, and very few tables.
That's me. I was a Broadcast engineer, I also produced & directed live newscasts, while setting some camera shots.
I know what you mean. I spent half a day with 'Blind Mike' the blind ham radio operator helping him fine tune his system to where he rarely had to go through a page more than once. Of course, he had several years practice using the software, and had been blind a lot longer so he's had a lot of practice.
descriptive
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I can drive, if I know where I'm going, but I sure can't read any signs without my glasses. Of course it's a heavy fine if I drove without them, and got caught.
I was told it was developed to deal with the pain from Diabetic Neuropathy.
Spit wads. ;-)
Actually, I talk with one character on line who is profoundly deaf, and was blind for several years. A few years ago they managed to return some vision to him. He is a real nut case, like a lot of the disabled people I know. :) They crack silly jokes about their condition, to cope with their problems rather than become bitter jerks.
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