On Day three, we really put the Road in Road to CSUN. We traveled over 550 miles, and experienced the natural beauty and diversity of California. We passed towering redwood trees, and traveled curving roads and hairpin turns. Where else but California can you go water skiing and ice skating in the same day? I I had to expand my view of California, or at least the part we traveled through. When people think of this state, words such as Urban, and Technology come to mind. While this is true, we traveled through some very rural areas, where technology is severely limited. It is both ironic and sad that in some places where it is most needed, reliable Internet access is difficult to find. This is why it is so important to advocate for Internet access to the most rural areas. For someone who is blind, lack of connectivity means lack of information, and most likely isolation from friends, family, and helpful services.
One organization that is attempting to bridge the gap in rural areas is the Tri-County Center for Independent Living in Eureka, which we had the pleasure of visiting. Unfortunately, there is still much work to be done. Navigating to their site shows only inaccessible Flash content. Still, what really stands out to me is that whether we are traveling through urban or rural areas, every stop has allowed us to meet dedicated, passionate, diverse people who without exception, have greater accessibility as a primary goal. If you would like to see and hear more about our trip, I encourage you to check out the video of Day 3 from the Microsoft Accessibility team.
We ended our day in Berkely, and look forward to visiting the Guide Dogs for the Blind campus in San Rafel on day 4. We will wrap up the next steps of our road trip in San Jose.
Please feel free to look for me online, as time and connectivity allow. You can listen via iBlink Radio, the Tech Chat Room on SAMNet, or via our Accessible Event at the Road to CSUN page. If you have the iBlink app, please feel free to leave us your comments there. On Twitter, you can follow me, as well as the Microsoft Accessibility Team. Also, don’t forget to search for the #Road2CSUN hashtag to keep up with all the exciting things that are happening on the Road to CSUN!
Listening to serotalk, Mike C talking about the bone conduction earphones. That is not new technology at all. Audiologists have been using it to test bone conduction hearing as part of standard hearing tests for decades. Some people who don’t have ear canals wear bone conducted hearing aids. Usually the vibrator sits on the mastoid bone right behind the lower part of your ear, not in front of your ear. If you put it in back of your ear, it will have a more direct route to your inner ear (cochlea) and require less power. One thing about BC phonestheir frequency response is limited, compared to air conducted phones (through the ear canal). The have much more power in the lower frequencies, and very little power for the higher frequencies. The batteries used are hearing aid batteries, and most hearing aid batteries last about 30 days.