A crash course in changing the world.
NEXTSTEP on affordable technology for blind people
My NEXTSTEP is inspired by this post: http://www.urgentevoke.com/profiles/blogs/cellphones-and-the-visually
Shakwei Mbindyo knows that people in developing countries often have to access to education if they are blind, deaf or otherwise disabled.
Its a big problem but I can take one small step towards a solution.
I will work with FERNANDO BOTELHO, a blind techie in Brazil to make the USB sticks that have the assisted technology built in easier to use.
I am going to contact the Thibaut Lauzière (code name slym) creator of LinuxLiveUSB and find out if he has time to work with us on adapting the work he did with portable Virtual Box to be super accessible and if he needs to be paid to do it. If he needs to be paid I'll work with Fernando to get a grant.
Nontechie translation - Fernando has a cool tool, its free and it makes it much easier for blind people to use any computer, even shared ones, cause its all set up for blind people. The hard part is you have to change the BIOS to boot from a USB. What you don't know what a BIOS is?? Yeah, nobody does, and how to change it is different on every computer.
The good news is this other guy, slym, has another cool tool that lets you boot either from the stick or use any computer already running windows. This makes two ways to get to the operating system on the stick. And that makes it twice as easy, and means more people can do it on more computers.
however, there is always hard work needed to make it simple! So my next step will be figuring out what the next step in that hard work is.
Its a baby step, but thats where we are. We have the big pieces working! We need to take baby steps towards the hard work.
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Tags: USB, accessibility, blind, computer, linux
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Comment by Mita Williams on March 11, 2010 at 5:45pm -
Good working building on the work of another!
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Comment by Radhika Darbari on March 19, 2010 at 2:38am -
The Blind and disabled need to be more considered.So good blog!thanks.
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