9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 When I was about three or four years old, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I remember my mum reading a story to me 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and my two big brothers, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and I remember putting up my hands 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 to feel the page of the book 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 to feel the picture they were discussing. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And my mum said, "Darling, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 remember that you can't see 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and you can't feel the picture 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and you can't feel the print on the page." 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And I thought to myself, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 "But that's what I want to do. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I love stories. I want to read." 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Little did I know 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 that I would be part of a technological revolution 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 that would make that dream come true. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I was born premature by about 10 weeks, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 which resulted in my blindness some 64 years ago. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 The condition is known as retrolental fibroplasia, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and it's now very rare in the developed world. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Little did I know, lying curled up 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 in my prim baby humidicrib in 1948 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 that I'd been born at the right place 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and the right time, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 that I was in a country where I could participate 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 in the technological revolution. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 There are 37 million totally blind people on our planet,b 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 but those of us who've shared in the technological changes 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 mainly come from North America, Europe, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Japan, and other developed parts of the world. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Computers have changed the lives of us all in this room 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and around the world, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 but I think they've changed the lives 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 of we blind people more than any other group. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And so I want to tell you about the interaction 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 between computer-based adaptive technology 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and the many volunteers who helped me over the years 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 to become the person I am today. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 It's an interaction between volunteers, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 passionate inventors, and technology, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and it's a story that many other blind people could tell. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 But let me tell you a little bit about it today. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 When I was five, I went to school and I learned braille. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 It's an ingenious system of six dots 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 that are punched into paper, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and I can feel them with my fingers. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 In fact, I think they are putting up my grade six report. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I don't know where Julian Morrow got that from. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 (Laughter) 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I was pretty good in reading, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 but religion and musical appreciation needed more work. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 (Laughter) 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 When you leave the opera house, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 you'll find there's braille signage in the lifts. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Look for it. Have you noticed it? 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I do. I look for it all the time. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 (Laughter) 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 When I was at school, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 the books were transcribed by transcribers, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 voluntary people who punched one dot at a time 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 so I'd have volumes to read, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and that had been going on, mainly by women, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 since the late 19th century in this country, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 but it was the only way I could read. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 When I was in high school, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I got my first Philips Reel-to-Reel tape recorder, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and tape recorders became my sort of pre-computer 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 medium of learning. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I could have family and friends read me material, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and I could then read it back 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 as many times as I needed. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And it brought me into contact 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 with volunteers and helpers. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 For example, when I studied at graduate school 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 at Queen's University in Canada, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 the prisoners at the Collins Bay jail agreed to help me. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I gave them a tape recorder, and they read into it. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 As one of them said to me, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 "Ron, we ain't going anywhere at the moment." 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 (Laughter) 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 But think of it. These men, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 who hadn't had the educational opportunities I'd had, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 helped me gain post-graduate qualifications in law 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 by their dedicated help. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Well, I went back and became an academic 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 at Melbourne's Monash University, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and for those 25 years, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 tape recorders were everything to me. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 In fact, in my office in 1990, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I had 18 miles of tape. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Students, family, and friends all read me material. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Mrs. Lois Dowery, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 whom I later came to call my surrogate mom, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 read me many thousands of hours of the tape. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 One of the reasons I agreed to give this talk today 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 was that I was hoping that Lois would be here 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 so I could introduce you to her and publicly thank her. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 But sadly, her health hasn't permitted her to come today. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 But I thank you here, Lois, from this platform. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 (Applause) 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I saw my first Apple Computer in 1984, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and I thought to myself, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 "This thing's got a glass screen, not much use to me." 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 How very wrong I was. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 In 1987, in the month our eldest son Jared was born, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I got my first blind computer, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and it's actually here. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 See it up there? 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And you see it has no, what do you call it, no screen. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 (Laughter) 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 It's a blind computer. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 (Laughter) 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 It's a Keynote Gold 84k, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and the 84k stands for it had 84 kilobytes of memory. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 (Laughter) 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Don't laugh, it cost me 4,000 dollars at the time. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 (Laughter) 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I think there's more memory in my watch. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 It was invented by Russell Smith, a passionate inventor 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 in New Zealand who was trying to help blind people. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Sadly, he died in a light plane crash in 2005, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 but his memory lives on in my heart. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 It meant, for the first time, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I could read back what I had typed into it. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 It had a speech synthesizer. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I'd written my first co-authored [unclear] book 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 on a typewriter in 1979 purely from memory. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 This now allowed me to read back what I'd written 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and to enter the computer world, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 even with its 84k of memory. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 In 1974, the great Ray Kurzweil, the American inventor, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 worked on building a machine that would scan books 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and read them out in synthetic speech. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Optical character recognition units then 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 only operated usually on one font, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 but by using charged couple device flatbed scanners 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and speech synthesizers, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 he developed a machine that could read any font. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And his machine, which was as big as a washing machine, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 was launched on the 13th of January, 1976. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I saw my first commercially available Kurzweil 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 in March, 1989, and it blew me away, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and in September 1989, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 the month that my associate professorship 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 at Monash University was announced, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 the law school bought one, and I could use it. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 For the first time, I could read what I wanted to read 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 by putting a book on the scanner. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I didn't have to be nice to people! 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 (Laughter) 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I no longer would be censored. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 For example, I was too shy then, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and I'm actually too shy now, to ask anybody 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 to read me out loud sexually explicit material. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 (Laughter) 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 But, you know, I could pop a book on in the middle of the night, and -- 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 (Applause) 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Now, the Kurzweil Reader is simply 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 a program on my laptop. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 That's what it's shrunk to. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And now I can scan the latest novel 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and not wait to get it into talking book libraries. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I can keep up with my friends. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 There are many people who have helped me in my life, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and many that I haven't met. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 One is another American inventor Ted Hentna.