Re: Visually impaired technical writers

["Eric J. Ray" <ejray -at- RAYCOMM -dot- COM>]

At 01:52 PM 7/2/98 -0400, Hutchings, Christa wrote:
>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,

Hmmm.
Chris' point about the visual orientation of technical communication
is well-taken, but I think the last bit, about

>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.

This is a little misplaced, at least in my experience. I've worked with
two blind programmer/engineers, both of whom were (through nature or
necessity or both, I don't know) infinitely better than I am at
remembering what was explained to them and cruising through
software programs requiring a mind-boggling number of
odd options, etc. I'd say that there are tradeoffs, but the
necessarily verbal, rather than visual, orientation of someone
who deals primarily with the written or spoken word might
have some real advantages for effective written communication.

The only handholding necessary in my interactions with
both of these guys was 1) repeatedly explaining commands
(them to me) and 2) reading an initial SCSI ID from the drive
in the pile of parts on the floor so that one of these guys
could rebuild the computer. I read it (once) to him,
he put the system together from there.

Both of these people are in "geek-land"--one is an
NT system admin and programmer for a large
international company, the other is a data
communications expert/network guru (and
UNIX sys admin). They're the SMEs that we as technical
writers GO TO for information.

Just by the way, I tried to call one of my blind
friends up the other day, but couldn't talk with him--he was
fifty feet in the air, installing a new ham radio antenna on
his tower. No, I wasn't surprised--I got over that when
he took a couple of days off a few years ago to reroof
his house.

Making assumptions about limitations of blind or visually
impaired people is a pretty slippery slope.

Eric



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