How to read when you're blind: Ron McCallum at TEDxSydney

Professor, a prominent lawyer and a human rights advocate Ron McCallum was born blind. Regardless, he managed to fall in love with reading soon after. In this funny and heartfelt talk, he tours the history of reading gear for the blind and shows how each new design has impacted his life.

When I was about 3 or 4 years old

I remember my mom reading a story
to me and my two big brothers.

And I remember putting up my hands
to feel the page of the book,

to feel the picture
they were discussing.

And my mom said,
"Darling, remember that you cannot see

and you cannot feel the picture

and you cannot
feel the print on the page."

And I thought to myself,

"But that is what I want to do.

I love stories, I want to read!"

Little did I know

that I would be part
of a technological revolution

that would make that dream
come true.

I was born premature
by about 10 weeks

which resulted in my blindness

some 64 years ago.

The condition is known
as retrolental fibroplasia,

and it is now very rare
in the developed world.

Little did I know

lying curled up
in my prim baby humidicrib in 1948

that I had been born

at the right place
and the right time,

that I was in a country

where I could participate
in a technological revolution.

There are 37 million
totally blind people on our planet,

but those of us who shared
in the technological changes

mainly come from North America,
Europe, Japan

and other developed parts of the world.

Computers have changed the lives of us all
in this room and around the world,

but I think they have changed
the lives of we, blind people,

more than any other group.

And so I want to tell you
about the interaction

between computer-based
adaptive technology

and the many volunteers
who helped me over the years

to become the person I am today.

It is an interaction between volunteers,
passionate inventors and technology

and it is a story that many other
blind people could tell,

but let me tell you a bit about it today.

When I was 5, I went to school
and I learned Braille.

It is an ingenious system of 6 dots
that are punched into paper

and I can feel them with my fingers.

In fact, I think they are putting up
my grade 6 report.

I do not know where
Julian Morrow got that from

(Laughter)

I was pretty good in reading,

but religion and musical appreciation
needed more work.

(Laughter)

When you leave the opera house

you will find this Braille signage
in the the lifts.

Look for it.

Have you noticed it?

I do, I look for it all the time.

(Laughter)

When I was at school,

the books were transcribed
by transcribers,

voluntary people who punched
1 dot at a time,

so I'd have volumes to read,

and then it had been going on,
mainly by women,

since the late 19th century
in this country,

but it was the only way
I could read.

When I was in high school,

I got my first Philips
reel-to-reel tape recorder,

and tape recorders became

my sort of pre-computer
medium of learning.

I could have family and friends
read me material,

and I could then read it back
as many times as I needed.

And it brought me into contact
with volunteers and helpers.

For example,

when I studied at graduate school
at Queen's University in Canada,

the prisoners at the Collins Bay jail
agreed to help me.

I gave them a tape recorder
and they read into it.

As one of them said to me,

"Ron, we are not going anywhere
at the moment."

(Laughter)

But think of it.

These men who had not had
the educational opportunities I had

helped me gain
postgraduate qualifications in law

by their dedicated help.

When I went back

and became an academic
at Melbourne Monash University,

for the first 25 years

tape recorders were everything to me.

In fact, in my office in 1990,
I had 18 miles of tape.

Students, family and friends,
all read me material.

Mrs Lois Dory,

whom I later came to call
my surrogate mom,

read me many thousands
of hours onto tape.

One of the reasons
I agreed to give this talk today

was that I was hoping
that Lois would be here

so I could introduce you to her
and publicly thank her,

but sadly her health has not
permitted her to come today,

but I thank you here Lois
from this platform.

(Applause)

I saw my first Apple Computer in 1984
and I thought to myself,

"This thing has got a glass screen,
not of much use to me."

(Laughter)

How very wrong I was!

In 1987, in the month
our eldest son Gerrard was born,

I got my first blind computer,

and it is actually here.

See it up there?

And you see it has no–,
what do you call it? No screen.

(Laughter)

It is a blind computer.

(Laughter)

It is a Keynote Gold 84K,

and the 84K stands for
it had 84 kilobytes of memory.

(Laughter)

Do not laugh, it cost me
4000 dollars at the time!

(Laughter)

I think there is more memory
in my watch.

(Laughter)

It was invented by Russell Smith,

a passionate inventor in New Zeland
who was trying to help blind people.

Sadly, he died in a light-plane crash
in 2005,

but his memory lives on in my heart.

It meant for the first time

I could read back
what I had typed into it.

It had a speech synthesiser.

I had written my first co-authored
labor law book on a typewriter in 1979

purely from memory.

This now allowed me
to read back what I had written

and to enter the computer world,

even with the 84 KB of memory.

In 1974,

the great Ray Kurzweil,
the American inventor,

worked on building a machine

that would scan books
and read them out in synthetic speech.

Optical character recognition units
then only operated usually on 1 font,

but by using charged-coupled device
flatbed scanners and speech synthesizers

he developed a machine
that could read any font.

And his machine,
which was as big as washing machine

was launched
on the 13th of January 1976.

I saw my first
commercially available Kurzweil

in March of 1989,

and it blew me away.

And in September of 1989,

the month that my associate professorship
of Monash University was announced,

the law school got one,
and I could use it.

For the first time I could read
what I wanted to read

by putting a book on the scanner.

I did not have to be nice
to people.

(Laughter)

I no longer would be censored,

for example,

I was too shy then,

and I am actually too shy now,

to ask anybody to read me outloud
sexually explicit material.

(Laughter)

But you know, I could pop a book on
in the middle of the night and–.

(Laughter)

(Applause)

Now, the Kurzweil reader is simply
a programme on my laptop,

that is what it shrank to.

And now I can scan the latest novel

and not fight to get it
into talking libraries.

I can keep up with my friends.

There are many people
who helped me in my life

and many that I have not met.

One is another American inventor,
Ted Henter.

Ted was a motorcycle racer,

but in 1978 he had a car accident
and lost his sight.

Just devastating if you are trying
to ride motorbikes.

(Laughter)

He then turned to
being a water skier

and was a champion
disabled water skier.

But in 1989 he teamed up with Bill Joyce
to develop a programme

that would read out
what was on the computer screen

from the net or from
what was on the computer.

It is called JAWS,
Job Access With Speech,

and it sounds like this.

(Fast voice synthesizer speech)

Isn't that slow?

(Laughter)

You see, if I read like that,
I would fall asleep.

I slowed it down for you.

I am going to ask that we play it
at the speed I read it.

Can you play it that one?

(Voice synthesizer speech faster)

(Laughter)

You know, when you are
marking student essays,

you want to get through them
very quickly.

(Laughter)

(Applause)

This technology
that fascinated me in 1987

is now on my iPhone
and on yours as well.

But you know,

I find reading with machine
a very lonely process.

I grew up with family,
friends, reading to me,

and I love the warmth and the breath
and the closeness of people reading.

Do you love being read to?

And one of my most endearing memories

is in 1999,

Mary reading to me and the children
down New Manly Beach,

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's stone.

Is it not a great book?

I still love being close to someone
reading to me,

but I would not give up
the technology

because it has allowed me
to lead a great life.

Of course talking books for the blind
predated all this technology.

After all the long playing record
was developed in the early 1930's

and now we put talking books
on CDs using the digital access system

know as 'DAISY'.

But when I am reading
the synthetic voices,

I love to come home
and read a racy novel

with a real voice.

(Laughter)

Now, there are still barriers
in front of people with disabilities.

Many websites we cannot read
using JAWS and the other technologies.

Websites are often very visual
and there are all these sorts of graphs

that are not labelled,
and buttons that are not labelled,

and that is why
the world wide web consortium 3,

known as W3C,

has developed world wide standards
for the Internet

and we want all internet users,
or internet site owners,

to make their sites compatible
so that we persons without vision

can have a label playing field.

There are other barriers
brought about by our laws.

For example, Australia,
like about 1/3 of the world's countries,

has copyright exceptions
which allow books to be Brailled

or read for we, blind persons.

But those books cannot travel
across borders.

For example,

in Spain, there are 100,000
accessible books in Spanish.

In Argentina, there are 50,000.

In no other Latin American country
are there more than a couple of thousand,

but it isn't legal to transport the books
from Spain to Latin America.

There are hundreds of thousands
accessible books

in the US, Britain,
Canada, Australia and etc.,

but they cannot be transported
to the 60 countries in our world

where English is the first
or a second language.

Remember I was telling you
about Harry Potter?

Well, because we cannot transport
books across borders

there had to be separate versions read
in all the English speaking countries,

Britain, United States,
Canada, Australia and New Zeland,

all had to have
separate readings of Harry Potter.

And that is why
next month in Morocco

a meeting is taking place
between all the countries.

It is something that a group of countries
and the World Blind Union are advocating:

a cross-border treaty.

So that if books are available
under a copyright exception

and the other country
has a copyright exception,

we can transport those books
across borders

and give life to people
particularly in developing countries,

blind people who do not have
the books to read.

I want that to happen.

(Applause)

My life has been extraordinary blessed
with marriage and children

and certanily interesting work to do.

Whether it be
at the University of Sidney Law School

where I served a term as dean,

or now as I sit on
the United Nations committee

on the Rights of Persons
with Disabilities in Geneva,

I have indeed been
a very fortunate human being.

I wonder what the future will hold.

The technology will advance even further.

But I can still remember my mom
saying 60 years ago,

"Remember darling, you will never be able
to read the print with your fingers."

I am so glad, that the interaction
between Brailles for transcribers,

volunteer readers
and passionate inventors

has allowed this dream of reading
to come true for me

and for blind people throughout the world.

I woud like to thank
my researcher Hannah Martin,

who is my slide clicker,

she clicks the slides,

and my wife,
professor Mary Crock,

who is the love of my life
and is coming on to collect me,

I want to thank her too.

I think I have to say good bye now.

Bless you!

Thank you very much.

(Applause)

Hey!

(Applause)

(Laughs)

(Applause continuing)

Oh! Hey!

(Applause)