Re: Visually impaired technical writers

["Hutchings, Christa" <cwhutchings -at- HOMEWIRELESS -dot- COM>]

Boy, David, this is a tough one! Not being visually impaired, it's hard
to make a judgment call on what is or is not within their capabilities.
However, TW is a very visually-oriented profession. It requires an awful
lot of "looking" at stuff - inspecting products/applications first-hand,
reading specs, etc. Then you have other issues, such as page layout,
illustrations, etc. to deal with. It seems to me that a visually
impaired TW would require an awful lot of hand-holding and I wonder how
many engineer/programmers are out there in geek-land that would be
willing to patiently describe (over and over) exactly how their gizmo
works. It's hard enough sometimes to get them to explain things to
someone who can see and play with the gadget.

Just my $.02.

Chris Welch-Hutchings
Senior Technical Writer
Home Wireless Networks, Inc.
mailto:cwhutchings -at- homewireless -dot- com


-----Original Message-----
From: David A. McMurrey [mailto:hcexres -at- IO -dot- COM]
Sent: Thursday, July 02, 1998 12:52 PM
To: TECHWR-L -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU
Subject: Visually impaired technical writers


We've received several inquiries from blind students about their
prospects
for working as professional technical writers.  Does anyone have any
experience in this area?  Can the visually impaired work as technical
writers?  If so, what are the accommodatioons that must be made?  Thanks
for any help anybody can send my way!

-- David

------------------------------------------------------------------------
---
David A. McMurrey, Ph.D.
hcexres -at- io -dot- com
Technical Communications Department         Ph: 512 223-4804  Off: NRG
4225
Austin Community College             Online Technical Communication
Courses
Austin, TX 78758
http://www.io.com/~hcexres/
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---

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