Crossings and coincidences

As I was walking to the tube this morning, I saw a blind man waiting at a crossing. The little green man was indicating that it was safe to cross the road, but there was no auditory signal. Without really thinking, I stopped and said to him "It's green. Would you like a hand across?" Before I even finished speaking he was off, mumbling, "No, I can manage." Luckily the approaching cyclist was not so near that he presented a danger, so I walked on. But it made me think, What if he'd stepped into the path of an oncoming vehicle? How would the good samaritan have felt then? Are the blind man's other senses so sharp that he can tell the road is clear? In which case, why have audio signals at all?

So many questions, so little time...

Ok, so get this. My Graphical User Interfaces lecture this morning was taught by a blind man! Not only that, he talked at some length about traffic crossings. The topic was adding audio to interfaces. It was a fascinating lecture, not only for the content, but also to see how a totally blind person does things that sighted people take for granted.

He was holding a piece of paper to his chest throughout most of the lecture. I wondered what it was for a while, then had a "Doh!" moment, realising it was his notes in Braille form. I hadn't even seen his fingers moving across it. At one point his computer started talking loudly, at an accelerated speed. He quickly turned down the volume on the control panel on the desk, almost as dextrously as he would if he could see it. As an aside, there is precious little audio labelling in the world. I don't think there is any kind of speaker on the panel that would enable one to find the volume knob quickly.

Later on he demonstrated some 'earcons'. These are like icons, but not for your eyes! (Of course). His computer started jabbering again. He said "in between you'll hear some talking; that's just my screen-reader." Again I had failed to spot the blindingly (sorry) obvious. I had been wondering whether his computer keys were Brailled, forgetting that his screen was fairly useless to him. Anyway, the earcons in question were sounds, 2-3 seconds in length, that represented fairground rides. The ride type is mapped to a particular instrument, the ride intensity to the pitch, and the price to the number of notes. Something like that. So a scary rollercoaster might be represented by a rapid highpitched phrase on a piano, a carousel by a couple of low notes on a cello.

I mentioned my ideas to him about different computer input devices that don't use a text-based paradigm. Again I was referred to another member of staff. As it was the same recommended to me before, I'm less of the opinion that I was being fobbed off, and thinking more that I should make contact with the person recommended. Perhaps I'll do that now...