A Long Winded Story of Disability - 4 Posts Start Here
Estimated Reading Time: (all 4 posts) 21:47
Recently I had a problem – not the first – with
accommodative technology ala Microsoft. In many venues, streaming or otherwise,
I have trouble comprehending what people are saying, though with my latest
hearing equipment, it’s fairly manageable overall. Thus, I was using an
accommodation provided in Windows called “Live Captions.”
Live Captions does what it says – it captions any speech
coming through the “speaker” side of the computer audio stream. The quality of
the captioning is considerably better than Google’s “Live Transcribe” on my
phone (for that device’s audio), but it’s still nowhere near perfect, and can
easily be compared to a standup comedian (including audience hurled tomatoes)
with some of the errors it routinely makes.
That said, it was more helpful to me than not, so I made it
my de facto standard for streaming venues on the PC. Then one fine day, it
abandoned me like most of my past girlfriends did when they discovered I like
garlic in most things that aren’t dessert.
It simply decided to retire from the Windows environment,
even though it was still recognized by the system and even had an icon that you
could merrily click away on – with absolutely no result – as if nobody was home
at all in the Microsoft mansion.
Being the technophile that you all (um…) know I am, once I
got past my miserable frustration, I took the situation as an interesting
techno-challenge. So below is a short list of things I did in sequence to see
if I could win at least a bronze medal at the Microsoft techno-Olympics.
1.
Restart the computer with a hopeful heart. Nope.
2.
Cycle the power on the computer (chippy-doos
might have gotten clogged). Nope.
3.
Run SFC
and DISM tools – techno babble names for a couple of powerful system scan and
repair procedures when things get really goobered up. Nope!
4.
Do an underhanded re-install of the whole
operating system (overwrites Windows but keeps user files & folders) – more
complicated than you want to know here. UNBELIEVABLY, Nope!
What this complete failure of problem resolution means is
that:
a)
The computer hardware is fine.
b)
The Windows operating system as certified by
Microsoft is fine – according to Microsoft anyway.
c)
Tough nuts, there’s a bug in the certified
Windows operating system – so it’s fine, it just doesn't happen to work at
present (hehe). Maybe Microsoft will fix this at some point. Punchline -they
did eventually!
All of the above can be considered as the “why” for what
follows. I was at one of those pivotal points where I could only decide that I
needed to look around (AKA Google search) for a better captioning solution than
Windows could (or couldn’t at that time) provide.
One of the things that came up in my search was “Speaksee” an outfit located in Rotterdam
(yes, Netherlands) that offers a fascinating pile of networked
captioning hardware and software that allows real-time captioning of speech
(ala microphones) that end up on your phone via an app (mine is Android, but
I’m pretty sure iPhone is also supported). They also have an app for Windows
that will caption all the computer output audio as text in a way better format
than the Microsoft thing. Gotta love them big letters in any color I want! I
contacted them and wound up in an early morning (my end) Teams meeting with an
awesome sales guy who took me through a whole demo of the product with captions
showing up on my phone with him talking from all the way across
the sea! It was phenomenal, so I said the line from an old song (inversely paraphrased)
“… lay that paper on me and show me where to sign!”
It took a little intercontinental money transactional
transference gobbledygook, but I ended up purchasing their “Microphone Kit”
thus gaining free access (for one year) to all their services including the PC
app. Everything they sell that’s not physical (like is the physical aspect of
the Microphone Kit) is based on subscription – which I generally eschew – but
this is pretty important to me, and I hadn’t seen anything better. So, I jumped
in with both feet.
One very important thing I should mention here, in case
anyone is reading this and for whom this sort of thing may apply (AKA deaf/HOH
people), is that this stuff isn’t cheap. You’ll need roughly a couple
of grand U.S. to dive in for real. To be honest, much faith was required for me
during most of the process up till recently (a couple of months now).
I’m happy to report that my faith has been validated
multiple times, though not without difficulties. At this point, I really love
this company and the people I’ve interacted with. They took every single issue
I brought to them very seriously and wouldn’t rest until I was happy with the
resolution.
The above makes perfect sense because the entire reason the
company exists is because its founders (still there) were frustrated.
Why frustrated? Because the founders are or intimately know deaf/HOH people.
They understand. They understand how modern technology corporations (see
Microsoft and Google above) give a passing nod to hearing disabled people
(probably other disabilities as well), and sure, try their best to not get sued
over rules/laws like the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). But the technical
solutions they (Microsoft, etc.) provide are currently second tier at best, just
enough to pass muster with an apparent lack of understanding of what we (HOH)
people really need and want.
And in case you haven’t guessed, I didn’t bold/italic
the word frustrated above for nothing.
When I think about it, I’m pretty sure I’m not at all alone
in my frustrations as a person with (multiple) disabilities. As mentioned in an
earlier post here, earthlings in general (including me) are lazy bastards, and
will expend the minimum energy required to get something done, whether or not
the state called “done” represents “complete success,” whatever that means.
History doesn’t really smile on people with disabilities (as
we currently define them – don’t get me started). We’re certainly better off
today than we were in, say, the 12th century. Back then (as I
understand it) they didn’t have many disabled people! Of course not. If a
person was not fully endowed with functioning motor or communications or
cognitive equipment (biological), and if they weren’t snuffed out at birth, the
only reasonable expectation for them was to live in squalor and want, hanging
on a thread of charity until they finally succumbed to the typical afflictions
earlier than people without those limitations encountered – things were pretty
bad for everybody back then, I’m pretty sure.
So here we are rocking the 21st century, almost ¼ way, and
technology is the thing, man! Give me a walking gizmo, a seeing gizmo, a
speaking gizmo, a hearing gizmo, and maybe even a pooping gizmo, and oh, I
forgot, a thinking gizmo! Now you all know that if you hand me
any of those bits of techno-magic, I’ll be all over it, doing my best to break
it if not master it.
As you’ve already read, the offerings of what I call the
“big boys” (don’t feel bad girls, it’s not a compliment) are very expedient for
them but less so for us. Their expedience, of course, hangs on the profit
margin. No, I won’t dive down that rabbit hole, I promise. I’m not going to
blame my misery on big capitalism (today). My point is about reasonable
expectations that a person like me with several “disabilities” can hold –
reasonably.
I’ve heard it said that nobody other than ourselves can
possibly know what you or I need in order to be happy in this life. Sure, there
are the basics of some slop to eat, a cardboard rain shelter and an AK-47 for
entertainment. Roughly speaking, I’ve had the first two. My disabilities mostly
crept up on me slowly, one at a time, inviting their friends to join in along
the way. By the time the (U.S.) Social Security Administration got hold of my
application, all of those (about 4 or 5 of them) waved their arms wildly
screaming “Look at us! One at a time we’re little and silly, but together we
have POWER!” SSA (at the time, anyway, and after many months and a doctor’s
note) was friendly enough to say “Ok! Shuddup all of you! We’ll give him the
goods.”
Nothing quite like a “constellation” – as I like to call it
– of disabilities.
So how is Paul disabled, you (maybe) ask? Let us count the ways!
1.
Nearly lifelong and progressive hearing issues
2.
An associated balance disorder, somewhat
inversely progressive
3.
A who knows if it’s associated mental disorder
4.
Allergies to absolutely anything that grows from
the ground, tosses up pollen and is green
5.
Alcoholism (who knew that was a disability?)
Now let’s extrapolate one by one. Next post:
https://fullyanchoredblog.blogspot.com/2024/11/the-hearing-issues-long-story.html
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