How to read when you're blind: Ron McCallum at TEDxSydney
-
0:12 - 0:17When I was about 3 or 4 years old
-
0:17 - 0:22I remember my mom reading a story
to me and my two big brothers. -
0:23 - 0:27And I remember putting up my hands
to feel the page of the book, -
0:27 - 0:30to feel the picture
they were discussing. -
0:31 - 0:36And my mom said,
"Darling, remember that you cannot see -
0:36 - 0:39and you cannot feel the picture
-
0:39 - 0:42and you cannot
feel the print on the page." -
0:42 - 0:44And I thought to myself,
-
0:44 - 0:46"But that is what I want to do.
-
0:46 - 0:49I love stories, I want to read!"
-
0:50 - 0:52Little did I know
-
0:52 - 0:55that I would be part
of a technological revolution -
0:55 - 0:58that would make that dream
come true. -
0:58 - 1:02I was born premature
by about 10 weeks -
1:02 - 1:04which resulted in my blindness
-
1:04 - 1:06some 64 years ago.
-
1:06 - 1:09The condition is known
as retrolental fibroplasia, -
1:09 - 1:12and it is now very rare
in the developed world. -
1:13 - 1:15Little did I know
-
1:15 - 1:21lying curled up
in my prim baby humidicrib in 1948 -
1:21 - 1:22that I had been born
-
1:22 - 1:26at the right place
and the right time, -
1:26 - 1:27that I was in a country
-
1:27 - 1:32where I could participate
in a technological revolution. -
1:33 - 1:38There are 37 million
totally blind people on our planet, -
1:39 - 1:41but those of us who shared
in the technological changes -
1:41 - 1:45mainly come from North America,
Europe, Japan -
1:45 - 1:48and other developed parts of the world.
-
1:49 - 1:53Computers have changed the lives of us all
in this room and around the world, -
1:53 - 1:56but I think they have changed
the lives of we, blind people, -
1:56 - 1:58more than any other group.
-
1:58 - 2:01And so I want to tell you
about the interaction -
2:01 - 2:05between computer-based
adaptive technology -
2:05 - 2:09and the many volunteers
who helped me over the years -
2:10 - 2:13to become the person I am today.
-
2:13 - 2:18It is an interaction between volunteers,
passionate inventors and technology -
2:18 - 2:21and it is a story that many other
blind people could tell, -
2:21 - 2:26but let me tell you a bit about it today.
-
2:26 - 2:29When I was 5, I went to school
and I learned Braille. -
2:29 - 2:34It is an ingenious system of 6 dots
that are punched into paper -
2:34 - 2:37and I can feel them with my fingers.
-
2:37 - 2:40In fact, I think they are putting up
my grade 6 report. -
2:40 - 2:43I do not know where
Julian Morrow got that from -
2:43 - 2:44(Laughter)
-
2:44 - 2:46I was pretty good in reading,
-
2:46 - 2:51but religion and musical appreciation
needed more work. -
2:51 - 2:53(Laughter)
-
2:53 - 2:55When you leave the opera house
-
2:55 - 2:58you will find this Braille signage
in the the lifts. -
2:58 - 3:00Look for it.
-
3:00 - 3:02Have you noticed it?
-
3:02 - 3:05I do, I look for it all the time.
-
3:05 - 3:07(Laughter)
-
3:07 - 3:09When I was at school,
-
3:09 - 3:12the books were transcribed
by transcribers, -
3:12 - 3:15voluntary people who punched
1 dot at a time, -
3:15 - 3:17so I'd have volumes to read,
-
3:17 - 3:19and then it had been going on,
mainly by women, -
3:19 - 3:22since the late 19th century
in this country, -
3:22 - 3:25but it was the only way
I could read. -
3:25 - 3:27When I was in high school,
-
3:27 - 3:31I got my first Philips
reel-to-reel tape recorder, -
3:31 - 3:32and tape recorders became
-
3:32 - 3:36my sort of pre-computer
medium of learning. -
3:37 - 3:39I could have family and friends
read me material, -
3:40 - 3:44and I could then read it back
as many times as I needed. -
3:44 - 3:48And it brought me into contact
with volunteers and helpers. -
3:48 - 3:49For example,
-
3:49 - 3:55when I studied at graduate school
at Queen's University in Canada, -
3:55 - 3:59the prisoners at the Collins Bay jail
agreed to help me. -
3:59 - 4:02I gave them a tape recorder
and they read into it. -
4:02 - 4:03As one of them said to me,
-
4:03 - 4:06"Ron, we are not going anywhere
at the moment." -
4:06 - 4:08(Laughter)
-
4:08 - 4:09But think of it.
-
4:09 - 4:14These men who had not had
the educational opportunities I had -
4:14 - 4:19helped me gain
postgraduate qualifications in law -
4:19 - 4:21by their dedicated help.
-
4:22 - 4:23When I went back
-
4:23 - 4:27and became an academic
at Melbourne Monash University, -
4:28 - 4:30for the first 25 years
-
4:30 - 4:33tape recorders were everything to me.
-
4:33 - 4:39In fact, in my office in 1990,
I had 18 miles of tape. -
4:41 - 4:46Students, family and friends,
all read me material. -
4:47 - 4:49Mrs Lois Dory,
-
4:49 - 4:52whom I later came to call
my surrogate mom, -
4:52 - 4:55read me many thousands
of hours onto tape. -
4:56 - 4:58One of the reasons
I agreed to give this talk today -
4:58 - 5:00was that I was hoping
that Lois would be here -
5:00 - 5:04so I could introduce you to her
and publicly thank her, -
5:04 - 5:08but sadly her health has not
permitted her to come today, -
5:08 - 5:13but I thank you here Lois
from this platform. -
5:14 - 5:23(Applause)
-
5:26 - 5:33I saw my first Apple Computer in 1984
and I thought to myself, -
5:33 - 5:37"This thing has got a glass screen,
not of much use to me." -
5:37 - 5:39(Laughter)
-
5:39 - 5:42How very wrong I was!
-
5:43 - 5:47In 1987, in the month
our eldest son Gerrard was born, -
5:47 - 5:50I got my first blind computer,
-
5:50 - 5:52and it is actually here.
-
5:53 - 5:55See it up there?
-
5:55 - 5:59And you see it has no–,
what do you call it? No screen. -
6:00 - 6:02(Laughter)
-
6:03 - 6:05It is a blind computer.
-
6:05 - 6:07(Laughter)
-
6:07 - 6:10It is a Keynote Gold 84K,
-
6:10 - 6:14and the 84K stands for
it had 84 kilobytes of memory. -
6:14 - 6:17(Laughter)
-
6:17 - 6:20Do not laugh, it cost me
4000 dollars at the time! -
6:20 - 6:22(Laughter)
-
6:22 - 6:24I think there is more memory
in my watch. -
6:24 - 6:26(Laughter)
-
6:27 - 6:28It was invented by Russell Smith,
-
6:28 - 6:32a passionate inventor in New Zeland
who was trying to help blind people. -
6:33 - 6:36Sadly, he died in a light-plane crash
in 2005, -
6:36 - 6:38but his memory lives on in my heart.
-
6:40 - 6:41It meant for the first time
-
6:41 - 6:44I could read back
what I had typed into it. -
6:45 - 6:47It had a speech synthesiser.
-
6:47 - 6:51I had written my first co-authored
labor law book on a typewriter in 1979 -
6:51 - 6:53purely from memory.
-
6:54 - 6:58This now allowed me
to read back what I had written -
6:58 - 7:00and to enter the computer world,
-
7:00 - 7:02even with the 84 KB of memory.
-
7:03 - 7:05In 1974,
-
7:05 - 7:08the great Ray Kurzweil,
the American inventor, -
7:08 - 7:10worked on building a machine
-
7:10 - 7:14that would scan books
and read them out in synthetic speech. -
7:14 - 7:19Optical character recognition units
then only operated usually on 1 font, -
7:19 - 7:25but by using charged-coupled device
flatbed scanners and speech synthesizers -
7:25 - 7:29he developed a machine
that could read any font. -
7:29 - 7:33And his machine,
which was as big as washing machine -
7:33 - 7:36was launched
on the 13th of January 1976. -
7:36 - 7:39I saw my first
commercially available Kurzweil -
7:39 - 7:42in March of 1989,
-
7:42 - 7:43and it blew me away.
-
7:43 - 7:45And in September of 1989,
-
7:45 - 7:51the month that my associate professorship
of Monash University was announced, -
7:51 - 7:54the law school got one,
and I could use it. -
7:54 - 7:59For the first time I could read
what I wanted to read -
7:59 - 8:00by putting a book on the scanner.
-
8:00 - 8:03I did not have to be nice
to people. -
8:03 - 8:05(Laughter)
-
8:05 - 8:08I no longer would be censored,
-
8:08 - 8:09for example,
-
8:09 - 8:10I was too shy then,
-
8:10 - 8:12and I am actually too shy now,
-
8:12 - 8:16to ask anybody to read me outloud
sexually explicit material. -
8:16 - 8:19(Laughter)
-
8:20 - 8:23But you know, I could pop a book on
in the middle of the night and–. -
8:23 - 8:25(Laughter)
-
8:26 - 8:30(Applause)
-
8:33 - 8:38Now, the Kurzweil reader is simply
a programme on my laptop, -
8:38 - 8:40that is what it shrank to.
-
8:40 - 8:42And now I can scan the latest novel
-
8:42 - 8:44and not fight to get it
into talking libraries. -
8:44 - 8:47I can keep up with my friends.
-
8:48 - 8:51There are many people
who helped me in my life -
8:51 - 8:53and many that I have not met.
-
8:53 - 8:56One is another American inventor,
Ted Henter. -
8:57 - 8:59Ted was a motorcycle racer,
-
8:59 - 9:03but in 1978 he had a car accident
and lost his sight. -
9:03 - 9:06Just devastating if you are trying
to ride motorbikes. -
9:06 - 9:07(Laughter)
-
9:07 - 9:10He then turned to
being a water skier -
9:10 - 9:13and was a champion
disabled water skier. -
9:14 - 9:19But in 1989 he teamed up with Bill Joyce
to develop a programme -
9:19 - 9:22that would read out
what was on the computer screen -
9:22 - 9:25from the net or from
what was on the computer. -
9:25 - 9:28It is called JAWS,
Job Access With Speech, -
9:28 - 9:30and it sounds like this.
-
9:30 - 9:41(Fast voice synthesizer speech)
-
9:42 - 9:43Isn't that slow?
-
9:43 - 9:44(Laughter)
-
9:44 - 9:47You see, if I read like that,
I would fall asleep. -
9:47 - 9:48I slowed it down for you.
-
9:48 - 9:51I am going to ask that we play it
at the speed I read it. -
9:51 - 9:53Can you play it that one?
-
9:53 - 10:07(Voice synthesizer speech faster)
-
10:08 - 10:09(Laughter)
-
10:09 - 10:12You know, when you are
marking student essays, -
10:12 - 10:14you want to get through them
very quickly. -
10:14 - 10:14(Laughter)
-
10:14 - 10:19(Applause)
-
10:23 - 10:26This technology
that fascinated me in 1987 -
10:26 - 10:30is now on my iPhone
and on yours as well. -
10:30 - 10:31But you know,
-
10:31 - 10:36I find reading with machine
a very lonely process. -
10:36 - 10:41I grew up with family,
friends, reading to me, -
10:41 - 10:46and I love the warmth and the breath
and the closeness of people reading. -
10:46 - 10:48Do you love being read to?
-
10:48 - 10:51And one of my most endearing memories
-
10:51 - 10:54is in 1999,
-
10:54 - 10:59Mary reading to me and the children
down New Manly Beach, -
10:59 - 11:02Harry Potter and the Philosopher's stone.
-
11:02 - 11:04Is it not a great book?
-
11:05 - 11:08I still love being close to someone
reading to me, -
11:08 - 11:10but I would not give up
the technology -
11:10 - 11:13because it has allowed me
to lead a great life. -
11:15 - 11:19Of course talking books for the blind
predated all this technology. -
11:19 - 11:24After all the long playing record
was developed in the early 1930's -
11:24 - 11:29and now we put talking books
on CDs using the digital access system -
11:29 - 11:32know as 'DAISY'.
-
11:32 - 11:35But when I am reading
the synthetic voices, -
11:35 - 11:38I love to come home
and read a racy novel -
11:38 - 11:40with a real voice.
-
11:40 - 11:42(Laughter)
-
11:42 - 11:46Now, there are still barriers
in front of people with disabilities. -
11:46 - 11:50Many websites we cannot read
using JAWS and the other technologies. -
11:50 - 11:54Websites are often very visual
and there are all these sorts of graphs -
11:54 - 11:57that are not labelled,
and buttons that are not labelled, -
11:57 - 12:01and that is why
the world wide web consortium 3, -
12:01 - 12:03known as W3C,
-
12:04 - 12:07has developed world wide standards
for the Internet -
12:08 - 12:13and we want all internet users,
or internet site owners, -
12:13 - 12:17to make their sites compatible
so that we persons without vision -
12:17 - 12:19can have a label playing field.
-
12:20 - 12:24There are other barriers
brought about by our laws. -
12:24 - 12:29For example, Australia,
like about 1/3 of the world's countries, -
12:29 - 12:33has copyright exceptions
which allow books to be Brailled -
12:33 - 12:36or read for we, blind persons.
-
12:36 - 12:39But those books cannot travel
across borders. -
12:39 - 12:40For example,
-
12:40 - 12:44in Spain, there are 100,000
accessible books in Spanish. -
12:44 - 12:46In Argentina, there are 50,000.
-
12:46 - 12:50In no other Latin American country
are there more than a couple of thousand, -
12:50 - 12:54but it isn't legal to transport the books
from Spain to Latin America. -
12:56 - 12:58There are hundreds of thousands
accessible books -
12:58 - 13:01in the US, Britain,
Canada, Australia and etc., -
13:01 - 13:04but they cannot be transported
to the 60 countries in our world -
13:04 - 13:06where English is the first
or a second language. -
13:07 - 13:09Remember I was telling you
about Harry Potter? -
13:10 - 13:13Well, because we cannot transport
books across borders -
13:13 - 13:17there had to be separate versions read
in all the English speaking countries, -
13:18 - 13:21Britain, United States,
Canada, Australia and New Zeland, -
13:21 - 13:25all had to have
separate readings of Harry Potter. -
13:25 - 13:29And that is why
next month in Morocco -
13:29 - 13:31a meeting is taking place
between all the countries. -
13:31 - 13:35It is something that a group of countries
and the World Blind Union are advocating: -
13:35 - 13:36a cross-border treaty.
-
13:37 - 13:40So that if books are available
under a copyright exception -
13:40 - 13:42and the other country
has a copyright exception, -
13:42 - 13:44we can transport those books
across borders -
13:44 - 13:48and give life to people
particularly in developing countries, -
13:48 - 13:51blind people who do not have
the books to read. -
13:52 - 13:53I want that to happen.
-
13:54 - 14:01(Applause)
-
14:02 - 14:08My life has been extraordinary blessed
with marriage and children -
14:08 - 14:10and certanily interesting work to do.
-
14:11 - 14:14Whether it be
at the University of Sidney Law School -
14:14 - 14:15where I served a term as dean,
-
14:15 - 14:18or now as I sit on
the United Nations committee -
14:18 - 14:21on the Rights of Persons
with Disabilities in Geneva, -
14:21 - 14:26I have indeed been
a very fortunate human being. -
14:27 - 14:30I wonder what the future will hold.
-
14:30 - 14:33The technology will advance even further.
-
14:34 - 14:37But I can still remember my mom
saying 60 years ago, -
14:37 - 14:42"Remember darling, you will never be able
to read the print with your fingers." -
14:43 - 14:48I am so glad, that the interaction
between Brailles for transcribers, -
14:48 - 14:51volunteer readers
and passionate inventors -
14:51 - 14:55has allowed this dream of reading
to come true for me -
14:55 - 14:57and for blind people throughout the world.
-
14:58 - 15:01I woud like to thank
my researcher Hannah Martin, -
15:01 - 15:03who is my slide clicker,
-
15:03 - 15:04she clicks the slides,
-
15:04 - 15:07and my wife,
professor Mary Crock, -
15:07 - 15:10who is the love of my life
and is coming on to collect me, -
15:10 - 15:11I want to thank her too.
-
15:11 - 15:13I think I have to say good bye now.
-
15:13 - 15:14Bless you!
-
15:14 - 15:15Thank you very much.
-
15:15 - 15:16(Applause)
-
15:16 - 15:18Hey!
-
15:18 - 15:19(Applause)
-
15:19 - 15:20(Laughs)
-
15:20 - 15:26(Applause continuing)
-
15:26 - 15:31Oh! Hey!
-
15:31 - 15:41(Applause)
- Title:
- How to read when you're blind: Ron McCallum at TEDxSydney
- Description:
-
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.
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDxTalks
- Duration:
- 15:48
Ivana Korom edited English subtitles for How to read when you're blind: Ron McCallum at TEDxSydney | ||
Julieta Baccaro commented on English subtitles for How to read when you're blind: Ron McCallum at TEDxSydney | ||
Krystian Aparta approved English subtitles for How to read when you're blind: Ron McCallum at TEDxSydney | ||
Krystian Aparta commented on English subtitles for How to read when you're blind: Ron McCallum at TEDxSydney | ||
Krystian Aparta edited English subtitles for How to read when you're blind: Ron McCallum at TEDxSydney | ||
Krystian Aparta edited English subtitles for How to read when you're blind: Ron McCallum at TEDxSydney | ||
Krystian Aparta edited English subtitles for How to read when you're blind: Ron McCallum at TEDxSydney | ||
Julieta Baccaro accepted English subtitles for How to read when you're blind: Ron McCallum at TEDxSydney |
Krystian Aparta
The transcript was very good, congratulations! I fixed reading speed issues in a few subtitles, a few some typos and a few line breaks.
Note: please do not use "wanna." Instead, use the full form, "want to" (to learn more, see http://translations.ted.org/wiki/English_Style_Guide#Gonna.2C_wanna.2C_kinda.2C_sorta.2C_gotta.2C_.27cause).
I noticed that you changed all of the speaker's contractions into uncontracted forms (e.g. "it's" would be transcribed as "it is"). There is no need to do that. For a list of contractions that are conventionalized (i.e. have an official spelling), see e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_English_contractions
Even though it's not a serious issue at all, please note that you do NOT need to break lines in subtitles shorter than 42 characters. A short subtitle broken into two lines could be distracting for the viewer.
Julieta Baccaro
Oh, I think I have read somewhere that all contractions were supposed to be changed into uncontracted forms... Anyway, I will take your instructions into account in the future. Thank you very much for your comment!