INTO THE “JAWS” OF FREEDOM.

Those of you who have read this blog may well be wondering how it is possible for a blind person to have achieved writing stories without being able to see the computer screen.

I intend answering this question by paying tribute to the charity which taught me how to use it and to describe what it does too.

Before I could learn anything I had to obtain a computer of course. A kind man from the Guide Dogs Association who heard I wrote stories and was impressed with my ideas, offered to pick up a computer and did so. This was money well spent by me I can tell you. He set it up but in order to save me further expense, he installed what turned out to be a much less versatile piece of software. This was noticed by my computer tutor who came from a small charity which teaches disabled people how to access technology. UCANDOIT then provides ten subsidised lessons to clients and further after care visits. It was from them that I learned to email and listen again on the internet and look things up in Google.

Having uninstalled the inferior software, my tutor also wanted to save me further expense and gave me “Jaws” (the name for this software) as they had a spare copy at UCANDOIT. She asked in return that I use it regularly which I most certainly do and that I publicise the work of the charity which I am more than happy to do.

I received further paid assistance from a blind man who is an expert in the use of jaws (the first two letters stand for something I can’t remember and the last two for windows software I believe) and that means I can now send attachments and stories to people. As a result of this I was able to send an account of my life as a blind person, “I Feel how you See” which gives an open and honest account of how blindness has impacted on me, to someone I met on an internet website. This may have seemed a silly and risky thing to do – Sending a story to someone I didn’t know – But of course a lengthy correspondence took place first and things she told me made me feel I could trust her. Also when I typed in: “Internet radio stations” google came up with one and now after a lot of trial and error I have managed to customise my radio stations and was able to amend my profile which I first made a mess of.

My trustworthy friend C. suggested I create a blog and she has been enormously helpful in this regard since at present I’ve been thwarted in my attempts to gain further help to get my longer stories formatted so that publishers will look at them. However, C. couldn’t have helped without the help I received from UCANDOIT and the blind man and it would have been no good the kind man from the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association picking up the computer for me if it couldn’t be made to talk to me so it’s all down to “Jaws”, the little CD which my computer tutor inserted into the machine and gave me, which means you can read this now. Am I glad I stepped into the “Jaws” of freedom and worked very hard to learn not only how to use the machine but to learn the software commands too. I still don’t know everything about it but I do know just how much it has revolutionised and transformed my life, pulling me from the isolating grip that blindness and other disabilities had upon my ankles and planting my feet in the land of freedom and expression – The freedom which was made possible by the invention of “Jaws”.