When I first came online in 1984, cyberspace was considerably less populous than it is today, and the internet as we know it didn’t even exist. Over 23 years I expanded the reach of my newsletter, Heritage Music Review, by launching a plain-text e-mail edition, contributing articles to other publications, and learning to tap the boundless resources of the World Wide Web.
What makes my story unique is that I did it all in Braille, without the aid of a conventional computer. Now, thanks to a built-in screen-reader program called ‘VoiceOver’ that makes the Apple Macintosh accessible to the visually impaired, there’s a Mac Mini in my life. The learning curve is huge, but for this MacNewbie, love is blind, and it conquers all.
Where There’s A Will
Music has been my life’s most consistent passion, and I’ve been playing instruments and collecting records since I was five years old. During the spring of 1969, while attending the University of Washington, my bluegrass band, The Country Victrola, played a benefit concert. I recorded the show, and wrote a scrupulously objective review for the organization’s monthly magazine.
I went to Rolf Stromberg at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in search of a job, and he told me that he liked my writing, but the paper had no openings. In September 1981, I was happily employed as a musician, but buried beneath other pursuits my dream of music journalism remained alive.
It occurred to me that the best way to pursue the dream might lie in creating my own publication. One morning, I awoke with a crystal-clear vision of the shape my creation would take. I wrote down my idea in full detail. Twenty-eight years later, I’m firmly convinced that if I hadn’t committed my inspiration to paper, nothing would have come of it. (Click here to read more details about the launch of The Review.)
The March of Technology
I started going out and listening to bands, taking copious notes on my conveniently portable Braille slate, and turning those notes into publishable stories. Compared to the ease with which I work today, article preparation was an amazingly time-consuming process back then. It involved writing each draft in paper Braille until I arrived at a finished piece and then typing the articles for cutting and pasting into a complete issue. With the help of a graphic artist, I launched Heritage Music Review in November 1981.
The paper-based slate and Perkins Braille Writer were replaced in 1983 by my first cyber-spacecraft: a ten-pound contraption called a VersaBraille that could store up to 200k of text on each side of a 60-minute audiocassette. After nearly twenty years of faithful service, it was finally replaced by the Braille Lite 2000, a DOS-based device considerably smaller than a conventional laptop. The ‘screen’ is an 18-character Braille display which consists of pins that move up and down as needed.
By 2007, an optical scanner that converts printed research materials to speech or downloadable ASCII text, and a dialup service with a text-based Lynx browser opened the power of the Web to my humble Braille Lite. My work had become a thousand times easier. All I lacked was a way to listen to online sound files of the artists I was researching.
Yes, Virginia, There Is A Santa Claus(es)
In the fall of 2007, I learned that Apple’s latest operating system included a screen reader program called VoiceOver – rendering the Mac accessible to blind people. My fate was sealed in November when one of my cousins, seeing my excitement, offered me the deal of a lifetime on his wife’s old Mac.
The Santa Clauses in my life pledged enough Christmas support to fund my new Mac-quisition, so I approached the holiday season with all the wonder and excitement of an eight-year-old kid. I conversed eagerly with all the Mac users I knew. With my trusty Braille Lite, I grabbed the VoiceOver starter manual off the Apple website and studied it hungrily.
When December 25th came, I celebrated with my girlfriend and family, and my marvelous toy, complete with the new Leopard operating system, boxed up for travel. Several days later I retrieved the astonishingly tiny computer, with its keyboard and set of speakers, from the box. Having taken good notes from consultations with my fellow MacNewbies, I knew exactly which keystroke would boot up VoiceOver’s QuickStart tutorial. It worked, and soon I was listening to a pleasantly professional male voice giving instructions through my stereo system.
Then There Are the Voices
I reached the section in the VoiceOver manual that deals with choosing preferences for the computer’s synthesized voice, and the Mac operating system offers a veritable smorgasbord of voices from which to choose. What I find, on checking them out, is that most sound hopelessly artificial and some are downright bizarre.
One sounds like a pirate’s parrot suffering from prolonged water deprivation. There’s also a voice labeled “Hysterical”: I simply choose not to go there. And then there’s the pipe organ: a configuration that sounds like the genuine instrument and sings the information displayed on the screen! Perhaps I’m just an aging dweeb with my “Sense of Humor” button turned off, but given such absurdly useless choices as these, I’m beginning to think that Apple should keep a closer watch on the sugar cubes that go into the developers’ coffee.
Among the stranger options is a female voice called “Good News” that sings its information in the style of a Gregorian chant. (There’s also an option called “Bad News.”) In the course of inspecting all these voices, I accidentally clicked Ms. Good News on. Consequently, I wound up with the somewhat young and professional-sounding Alex serving as default voice while the aforementioned digital singing sensation chanted such identifiers as, “Table” and “Pop-up Button.”
I decided then and there that if there were such a place as hell, I would be stuck for all eternity with a computer that was configured just that way, with no possibility of changing the voice settings. Knowing, however, that I was still on Earth, I pored over the manual, tried a few things, and fixed the problem.
Dude, Where’s the Screen?
In February 2008, I had just finished setting up my broadband modem when George, my faithful printer, arrived to deliver the February issue of Heritage Music Review, hot off the press. Having told him about my new Mac, I asked him if he noticed anything different. To my astonishment, despite the fact that a keyboard and speakers were now taking up most of my remaining desk space, he was hard put to answer.
From his perspective, one crucial element of the picture was missing: the screen! The idea of a blind person operating a computer without a visual monitor is certainly logical enough, but it was so alien to his experience that my new computer didn’t even register. I suspect that the improbably small size of the Mac Mini didn’t help.
Initiation of A Surfer Boy
After taking my first halting steps in cyberspace via Mac’s Safari browser, I finally experienced the fulfillment of the dream that had enticed me to get a ‘real’ computer. Looking for just the right jazz supper-club experience for a birthday celebration, I visited the website belonging to Seattle vocalist Greta Matassa. I hadn’t heard her in quite a while and was curious to know how she now sounded, but when her audio clips came through my new computer’s speakers in exquisitely produced stereo, I went into a state of blissful shock.
I was equally awed while researching a story on my childhood heroes The Kingston Trio when I heard the unmistakable banjo introduction to the 1959 hit “A Worried Man” streaming through my speakers as the group’s website opened.
I’m well aware that millions of people have been listening to music via the web long enough to take it completely for granted, but for a MacNewbie like me who spent years able to retrieve nothing more than text from musical sites, it’s downright miraculous.
Old Dog, New Tricks
As I gain more confidence, I find that my information retrieval habits are changing. Although I’ve been happily downloading news articles for years, I’m amazed to discover how much time and Braille Lite storage space I’m saving with the instant access afforded by a DSL-enabled computer.
Yet, most exciting of all, is my newfound ability to listen to sound clips. Once able to do no more than read about local performers, I can now gain first-hand experience of their music in less time than it takes to get to one of their gigs.
With the power of the appropriately named World Wide Web, it will be just as easy to discover, interview, and write about a Sixties-flavored power-pop band in Texas, a New York vocal group preserving the doo-wop harmonies of the Fabulous Fifties, or a skiffle band in London maintaining the legacy of Britain’s first folk-rocker, Lonnie Donegan. With such resources at my disposal, I could easily grow up to be one of the world’s greatest roots-music talent scouts from the comfort and convenience of my own home.
Finally equipped with a ‘real’ computer, I also expect a much easier time creating and maintaining my website, opening the door to an improvement in my income stream, and for the musicians I discover and promote through my articles.
Considering the humble beginning from which my publication sprang, the possibilities are downright mind-boggling! There’s a challenging and continuous learning curve, but for this empowered MacNewbie in Wonderland, the situation is best summarized in the early ‘60s jazz-pop lyric, “The best is yet to come, and won’t it be fine!”
About The Author: Seattle musician, and Fremont resident, Doug Bright publishes Heritage Music Review: a monthly guide to early rock, blues, folk, classic country, and traditional jazz in the Seattle area and elsewhere. He currently performs with the bands Filé Gumbo, Harmatones, and The Howdy Boys.
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‘MacNewbie In Wonderland’: ©2011 Doug Bright
Website: ©2011 Kirby Lindsay
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