Blindness

thanks to my friend Mohammed khawaja for this post about me on his blog:

Blind with vision

I have recently started experimenting with Orca, an open source screen reader designed to work with Linux distributions using Gnome.

this has been a big challange, because it not only meant dealing with a new assistive technology envention, but it also meant a whole new experience with Linux as a totally unexplored area.

I must admit that the learning curve has not been easy, and rather very challanging, but as usual, it has been very rewarding.

I am often asked how can I use the computer although i am blind. Often times people will even doubt that it’s doable. The short version of the answer is that I use the computer through a screen reader. which is basically a software that tells the blind user what is displayed on the screen at any given event, through either speech or braille. That event may be a dialogue box, an edit window, a hyber text document, a VB project, etc.

Being blind since birth, I never really had an idea about the meaning of colors other than the theoretical perception gained by my imagination, and the
common knowledge I got from school, although it wasn’t much. More on my school life will be posted later.

Ironic as it may sound, I have always been in need of a vivid understanding of colors due to my passion in designing web pages. I could, however, always
get away by getting help from sighted people.

Through my work in the field of adaptive technology and through direct contact with various institutions in the Arab world, I have always wondered, how
serious are people in charge taking their responsibilities? How much trained and knowledgeable those entities are to make the right decision?