three or four years old i remember my mum reading a story to me and my two big brothers and i remember putting up my hands to feel the page of the book to feel the picture they were discussing
that i would be part of a technological revolution that would make that dream come true
i was born premature by about ten weeks which resulted in my blindness
some sixty four years ago
the condition is known as retrolental fibroplasia and it 's now very rare in the developed world
that i was in a country where i could participate
in the technological revolution there are thirty seven
million totally blind people on our planet but those of us who 've shared in the technological changes mainly come from north america europe japan and other developed parts of the world
computers have changed the lives of us all in this room and around the world but i think they 've changed the lives of we blind people more than any other group
and so i want to tell you about the interaction between computer based adaptive technology and the many volunteers who helped me over the years
to become the person i am today
the books were transcribed by transcribers voluntary people who punched one dot at a time so i 'd have volumes to read and that had been going on mainly by women since the late nineteen
when i was in high school
i got my first philips reel to reel tape recorder and tape recorders became my sort of pre computermedium of learning i could have family and friends read me material
and i could then read it back
as many times as i needed and it brought me into contact with volunteers and helpers for example when i studied at graduate school at queen 's university in canada
in law by their dedicated help
tape recorders were everything to me
in fact in my office in one thousand nine hundred and ninety i had eighteen miles
one of the reasons i agreed to give this talk today was that i was hoping that lois would be here so i could introduce you to her and publicly thank her
i saw my first
how very wrong i was in one thousand nine hundred and eighty seven in the month our eldest son gerard was born i got my first blind computer and it 's actually here
it was invented by russell smith a passionateinventor in new zealand who was trying to help blind people sadly he died in a light plane crash in two thousand and five but his memory lives on in my heart it meant for the first time i could read back
but by using charge coupled device flatbed scanners and speech synthesizers he developed a machine that could read any font
and his machine which was as big as a washing machine
for the first time i could read what i wanted to read by putting a book on the scanner i didn 't have to be nice to people
i no longer would be censored for example
i was too shy then and i 'm actually too shy now to ask anybody to read me out loud sexually explicit material
but you know i could pop a book on in the middle of the night
the kurzweil reader is simply a program on my laptop
one is another american inventor ted henter
ted was a motorcycle racer
he then turned to being a waterskier and was a champion disabled waterskier but in one thousand nine hundred and eighty nine he teamed up with bill joyce to develop a program
you see if i read like that i 'd fall asleep i slowed it down for you i 'm going to ask that we play it at the speed i read it can we play that one
you know when you 're marking student essays you want to get through
but you know i find
reading with machines a very lonely process
i grew up with family friends reading to me and i loved the warmth
and the breath and the closeness of people reading do you love being read to and one of my most enduring memories is in one thousand nine
harry potter and the philosopher 's stone isn 't that a great book i still love being close to someone reading to me but i wouldn 't give up the technology because it 's allowed me to lead a great life
of course talking books for the blind predated all this technology after all the long playing record
w three c has developed worldwide standards for the internet and we want all internet users or internet site owners to make their sites compatible so that we persons without vision can have a level playing field
there are other barriers brought about by our laws
or read for we blind persons
but those books can 't travel across borders
for example in spain there are a one hundred thousand accessible books in spanish in argentina there are fifty thousand
in no other latin american country are there more than a couple of thousand
but it 's not legal to transport the books from spain to latin america
there are hundreds of thousands of accessible books in the united states britain canada australia etc but they can 't be transported to the sixty countries in our world where english is the first and the second language and remember i was telling you about harry potter
well because we can 't transport books across borders there had to be separate versions read in all the different english speaking countries britain united states canada australia and new zealand all had to have separate readings of harry potter
and that 's why next month in morocco a meeting is taking place between all the countries it 's something that a group of countries and the world blind union are advocating a cross border treaty
so that if books are available under a copyrightexception and the other country has a copyrightexception we can transport those books across borders and give life to people particularly in developing countries blind people
who don 't have the books to read
my life has been extraordinarilyblessed with marriage and children
and certainly interesting work to do
i 've indeed been a very fortunate human being
i wonder what the future will hold
the technology will advance even further
but i can still remember my mum saying sixty years ago remember darling
you 'll never be able to read the print with your fingers
i 'd like to thank my researcher hannah martin who is my slide clicker who clicks the slides and my wife professor mary crock who 's the light of my life is coming on to collect me i want to thank her too
i think i have to say goodbye now bless you thank you very
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