The Deaf-Blind Communicator

RantWoman enthusiastically directs her readers to the following gushy articles about a really hot new communications device aimed at making life a lot easier for deaf-blind people and the people they interact with:

http://www.theolympian.com/southsound/story/881612.html

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/education/2009642696_deafblind12m.html

RantWoman further commends the company that produces the deaf-blind communicator, http://www.humanware.com/ , a worthy provider of many forms of assistive technology. RantWoman shops their website often and one of these days will actually plunk down some cash on her own behalf. Meantime, here is a link on the company site about the Deaf-Blind Communicator http://www.humanware.com/en-usa/about_us/press_releases/2008_press_releases/031208_press_release

Now having shared much joy and happiness and orders of magnitude wider horizons for many people, RantWoman needs to go back to doing what she does best, ranting, pushing the envelope, subjecting marketing hype to the ruthless test of her daily life. RantWoman is humble about the fact that this is a brand-new device and people have not even learned how to use it well enough to appreciate all the things it will certainly make possible. Thus RantWoman would not mind being wrong about pitfalls that may accompany its introduction.

1. The Communicator apparently assumes the person the deaf-blind user will interact with can read the stinking text message him or herself. RantWoman has set her own cellphone with enlarged incoming text messages but has no option for doing this on outgoing ones. Therefore she does not text. If offered someone else's cellphone with a text message she is supposed to read might just laugh. Despite the fact that RantWoman is a huge and maniacal user of digital text-to-speech, sometimes RantWoman understands digital text-to-speech; sometimes she does not. RantWoman found a picture of the other person half of the Communicator and thinks MAYBE she could interact with it if it has an option for enlarging the text quite substantially. RantWoman also hopes the audio could be adjusted.

RantWoman envisions the sort of employment future where the ordinary workforce would be peopled with enough people with disabilities that this could be a problem. RantWoman can conceive of a digital future that helps aggregate the experiences of people with similar needs and issues and helps organize efficient and efficiency-reinforcing ways for these people to get, receive, and produce services. In other words, RantWoman is still excited enough that she can wax all digressive and gushy.

RantWoman cannot tell from the photo but for the sake of optimism, she is also going to assume that the keyboard has enough tactile heft that she could rely on audio feedback and respond to the user's messages. Well, RantWoman wants to hope so, but she could probably figure out a scenario for crash-testing just to make sure.

2. The deaf-blind communicator assumes the person one is interacting with uses the same language as the user. This, cough, is not to be assumed in multicultural Seattle. StarTrek had machine translation by the 24th century. RantWoman supposes it might be plausible a LITTLE sooner but that cannot be expected of such a device now. In customer-service terms, RantWoman supports a diverse workforce, but she has a lot of experience where the help can understand orders but cannot themselves explain options that the customer cannot read on a menu. RantWoman can envision a few different ways the new communicator could help overcome this gulf. At places one patronizes regularly, this would be a great tool for developing a relationship with staffpeople, but RantWoman is a little less sanguine than the marketing hype about instant communication on a casual basis.

3. The Communicator is no help if the parties one needs to communicate with refuse to get with the 21st century. RantWoman this week has a pet peeve about several different medical and marketing entities that are pathetically incapable of communicating with a deaf person via that person's preferred mode of communication, email. From phone conversations, RantWoman has concluded there may be a few different reasons for this, but RantWoman is going to add the subject to her list of "do something about" tasks she is ruthlessly dumping back into the laps of the people needing to do the communicating. RantWoman would be thrilled to find allies for that campaign among new users of the Deaf-Blind Communicator.

4. RantWoman can be a flake and walk off without things she really needs; RantWoman also has days where she lends out her special 20/20 pens and does not get them back. RantWoman also keeps things like her cellphone firmly tethered around her neck so she cannot walk off without them. So, sexy as bluetooth is, RantWoman might leave in fear of leaving the other half of her Communicator somewhere; and RantWoman might like some kind of easy way to tether the pieces together or to home in on the location on the other half of it.

RantWoman supposes she should actually read the product specs to see whether some of her quibbles have already been addressed. RantWoman also notes the device is just getting shipped. RantWoman expects it will take a little time to get enough of the devices out there and enough different user / public experience with them to see how they really work. Of course, something like this probably does not have to live up to all of RantWoman's hyperbole-laced fantasies to be a roaring success.