Showing posts with label Blind. Show all posts

Angel Flights Coming Soon

"Gabe then heard a small voice he hadn't heard in four year… and never expected to hear again.“Angel…? Angel… it… it’s Cricket. I need you.” The last words broke into a wailing cry.

In the mid-1960s, a group of southern California doctors banded together. They were tired of

seeing young girls in their Emergency Rooms, hemorrhaging or worse—from butchers in back alleys.Some of the butchers had some minimal medical training—others had nothing more than a supplyof used wire coat hangers, and a lust for fast money.

The doctors bought a large hacienda where they could do abortions safely on the weekends.They just needed a group to transport the young girls across the border—both ways. Theirs,and the girls salvation came in the form of men that would be least expected to do such a thing—hardened bikers.

Every girl was given what looked like a tattoo on their arm—it was their name for the weekend.Every biker had the same one name—Angel. Based on events that are best remembered as—the bad days..."

First Ride

by Baer Charlton

Like a puppy snuffling into a pile of week-old laundry, her nose was burrowed in between the beaver fur collar and the musty worn leather of his jacket. Her green eyes were shut against the wind and cold as she huddled closer to the tawny frame bundled against the winter night. The smells of burning fireplaces and freshly snowed evergreens melded with the deep stew of the old worn leather, years of saddle soap, mink oil, and sun-baked oil, and road fumes. If she moved her nose a couple inches higher to his neck and hair, she knew that she would still breathe deep the scents that went with his motorcycle.

He had ridden motorcycles since he was twelve years old, perching on the back of his older brothers for rides bummed to school or just to go riding in the summer. At the earliest age allowed by his parents, he had secured his very own. Through the years, he had owned one kind of bike or another, always moving up and getting larger. Now, after much hard work and saving, it was a six years old 1965 Harley Davidson salvaged from a police auction.

Over the many months of their dating, and while washing or polishing the machine in her parent’s driveway, he had patiently explained to her the many features of the motorcycle. Why it was called a 74-inch, what cubic displacement really meant, and what made a ‘Pan-Head’ different from the neighbors Honda, other than sounding so much different.

Removing the top of the motor, he had carefully cleaned all of the now exposed parts. He had then guided her slim young fingers over the little moving pieces as he slowly turned the motor over by pushing the kick starter by hand. With his other hand, gentle as a baby sparrow’s breath, flowing over the moving tappets, her fingers sandwiched between his, he identified each felt piece of machinery as it moved, and explained its part in the success of the workings. She put the ‘Pan’ on top of his head and crowned him Charlie Chaplin for the day. They wrestled and tickled all over the grass of the front yard. Then she carefully polished chrome as he quietly reassembled the engine so he could go home across the valley.

The motor thumped gently in the night as they sat stopped at a light. Her hands pushed deeper into the pockets of his leather jacket. Reaching the bottom of the pockets, she pulled back into his stomach and hugged him, flattening her body across his back. His shoulder blades flexed and slid, acknowledging the hug and its communication. The light winked green and the Harley chuffed and barked as the tableau slid away from the intersection, sinking into the inky night of the street, a warm bubble of humanity.

The bike had always sat cold in the driveway of her parents’ house. His tawny hair only blown about from the open window of her mother’s borrowed Rambler. It was fine with her parents that they dated. He had become like one of the family, but she was not allowed to ride on the motorcycle. So they had always taken the car.

The seat had been shockingly cold when she had first sat down, and the throbbing of the motor was not what she had expected. It had never been so... intense before when it had been only her hand resting on the gas tank. Placing her feet safely on the buddy pegs was a job first done by him grabbing her ankles and planting her feet. The excitement tingled inside her as she exchanged ‘be careful’ and ‘we will’ with her parents standing in the front doorway. The unsteady wobble as he backed out of the driveway clamped her hands tighter in his pockets. Nerves warring to call off the ride she had bargained for and the fear of the unknown.

A’s and B’s were the price she had paid for the ticket of tonight. Her sixteenth birthday one month before had come and gone without so much as a candle on a cake at dinner, all given up without a whimper for this one ride—a short mile and a half each way. A lifetime away from anything she had ever done. The cold December night rasped against her one exposed cheek, an experience never felt in her sheltered world, so she turned her head straight to expose both cheeks. The lone street light flashed off the chrome as the trio crossed Teller Road at a quarter till midnight.

The parking lot was packed with people. With hushed greetings to friends, they all quietly moved toward the building. The lone motorcycle rumbled slowly across to a corner and stopped. Sliding the kickstand down, he turned the key to off. Motor burbled to silence as the night wrapped around the couple sitting on the bike.

As he moved to dismount, she squeezed him softly in restraint. “Shhh,” she whispered. In understanding, he relaxed as they both snuggled into the after roar of silence, each bump of the ride being remembered. Each sound cataloged and preciously wrapped up and stored away in the treasure trove of her memory, knowing that the chance to savor the ride would not be given on the ride home. For now, the two sat silently as the organ in the church started the Midnight Mass for the blind.

Right of First Publication North America
All other Rights Reserved

Read SPORK!'s interview with Baer Charlton here

For more information on Baer, visit his website here

Do you want to write or contribute to SPORK! ? All you need to do is email a sample writing to whitney@sporkability.org . Join us today!

The Braille phones come in a variety of different colours

London-based firm OwnFone has released what it says is the world's first Braille phone.

The front and back of the phone is constructed using 3D printing techniques and can be customised.

Other companies have designed Braille phones in the past, but OwnFone says its device is the first of its kind to go on sale.

For those who can't read Braille, the company can print raised text on the keypad.

The phone, currently only available in the UK, retails for £60 and according to its inventor Tom Sunderland, 3D printing the front and back of the device helped to keep the costs down.

"3D printing... provides a fast and cost-effective way to create personalised Braille buttons," he says.

The device is designed to provide an instant connection between blind users and their friends and family.

Haptic touchscreen

In 2012, OwnFone launched what was one of the world's first partially 3D printed phones.

A year later, the company developed a special child-friendly version called 1stFone, a credit-card sized device with programmable buttons for crucial contacts.

OwnFone's new Braille phone is based on these previous two devices, keeping its small form factor and colourful design.

"The phone can be personalised with two or four Braille buttons which are pre-programmed to call friends, family, carers or the emergency services," Mr Sunderland told the BBC.

"This is the first phone to have a 3D printed keypad and for people that can't read Braille, we can print texture and raised text on the phone. Our 3D phone printing process is patent pending."

Those who wish to buy the phone can create a custom design on the company's website.

However, at £60 it's the most expensive of the three available options, with their previous models selling for £40 and £50.

While this may be the first Braille phone available to consumers, the idea is not an original one.

India-based start-up Kriyate built a prototype Braille-enabled smartphone in 2013, featuring a repressible Braille display and feedback controls (known as haptic touch) that beep or vibrate after receiving certain commands.

Some visually impaired users of mobile phones may not see the need for this device however, with features such as Apple's VoiceOver becoming more sophisticated.

VoiceOver is a "screenreader" that allows users to navigate their phone using gesture-based controls.

There are also a number of apps on both the Apple Store and Google Play that allow for an easier reading experience for the visually impaired.

Read more at BBC

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-27437770

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> A new golden age for cane design?

> Closed-captioning glasses get big rollout to cinemas

By Sean Margaret Wagner

Televisions were much smaller long ago in the bygone era of 1993. Reception was much spottier, too, and the sound quality was not nearly so … Dolby surround. You might have to fiddle with your antennae to get the picture to stand still in 1993. Some of you might say, “That was the year I was born,” and I will scoff, because surely there can be no creatures as young as you. But I digress. Our technologies may have been a shadow of your current, twenty years sleeker and more intuitive devices, but we knew touch-screens and Google Glass-ware were in our future. They were there already, inhabiting our fuzzy screens as all of us tuned into Star Trek: The Next Generation. Well, maybe not all of us, but at least three eleven-year-old girls, drawn together by our lack of athleticism, scholarliness and ability to read social cues. Glued to the television each week: I, with the thick glasses and mouth-crank speech impediment, Sarah the heavyset and asthmatic, and Deena, tiny, black and soft spoken. We founded our own Starfleet against the specter of advancing algebra and well-dressed children who seemed to sniff out our thrift store clothes.

I crafted our little communicator buttons out of cardboard and the backs of clip on earrings I’d found in a Tupperware box full of them in my grandmother’s craft closet. They clipped nicely onto a t-shirt neck. ‘She’ll never miss these’, I thought as I pocketed them and a number of doll eyes. We’d stake out a ridge in the parking lot snow mound just off the playground at recess. We may have had the idea of enacting out own space adventures, but in all honesty we never made it past bartering who got to be whom. Deena would swiftly call dibs on the empathic mind-reading abilities of part human-part psychically endowed alien ship’s counselor Troi. Of all of us, she was the peacekeeper; it made sense. However, Sarah and I would narrow our gaze and haggle over our favorites:

“I want Geordi’s souped-up visor vision.”

“You got the visor last time, you should get Android strength this time.”

“I was the one who brought my dad’s wrap-around sunglasses, I get to wear them. You could be Wesley Crusher, he’s the smartest.”

“No fair!”

At no point in our arguing did it ever occur to us that we were in battle for anything other than the finest super-powers. The heroic attributes of futuristic well-adjusted teammates. In the future it seemed, ailments, challenges and potentially debilitating neuroses were distilled into that individual’s best quality. A blind character, Geordi LaForge, who pilots a vessel and is given the ability to see the entire human spectrum and beyond. A machine, Data, performing complex operations free of any trace of human fear or doubt. How about alien with distinctive face ridges, Worf, embraced without question by the very community of people who might’ve once been his enemies, several short franchise films ago? The biggest bad guy in this universe was homogeny; join and be one with the Borg (you really have no choice)!

These characters were wholly accepted, beyond their battles, and esteemed in a way many of us are not. While we argued for the benefits of that pair of wrap-around sunglasses- I mean, visor, I don’t imagine any of us would have found ourselves demanding the role of Geordi sans his visor. Nor would we have probably found emotionless banter as endearing had it not come from android programming, but as it usually does: a product of brain chemistry. And even thousands of years of advancement couldn’t deter heavily made-up extras from pointing to the motley crew invading their planet via shimmery beams and demanding to know “What is that?”

The limits on our inclusivity were stark in 1993, and reaching out to the differently abled was never as easy as the future made it appear. We were segmented from our radically mentally and physically different peers by a public educational system that was too harried and underfunded to encourage us to widen our definition of ‘different’ and see difference in ourselves. So there we stayed, encountering alien races from the parking lot snow mound where our away team frequently beamed, if only in theory. In fact, that’s precisely how we found each other; among the rare kids who stumbled on us strange children playing with paper-towel tube phasers and didn’t mock us openly. Joining Star Fleet was much easier in the 20^th century than it would be in the 24^th, but a lot of kids wouldn’t be caught dead.

The impression we absorbed unconsciously back in 1993 was that forming an enviable squad was the result of tireless effort, not just the dumb luck of holding a scratched pair of wrap-arounds. If we three eleven-year-olds could have taken our own shortcomings and traded them up, I’m sure we would have jumped at the chance. But think of any episode of Star Trek where the guest player is handed some magical device to make them younger, powerful or more fun at parties. They are made mighty for fleeting moments, then brought low by their own ill-preparedness. Meanwhile, our favorite spandex officers would take every temporal loop in stride, and immediately return to work on that malfunctioning warp drive. You never know when the captain’s going to give you a warm pat on the shoulder and ask you to ‘engage’.

Sean Margaret is a Chicago playwright, musical bookwriter/lyricist and storyteller. You can find her on Twitter: @SMargaretWagner

Read more at Sporkability.org

By Jorden Weir October 13, 2013

Everyone loves stories about people who achieved fantastic things despite their disabilities; they make us feel better about the human race and, by extension, ourselves. Well, these stories aren't like that. These are about people who not only overcame their horrific disabilities, but did so in such balls-shatteringly unbelievable ways that they make the rest of us look like shit in the process. Prepare to feel completely worthless when compared to the awesomeness of ...

View list via Cracked

http://www.cracked.com/article_20653_5-people-whose-major-disabilities-only-made-them-stronger.html#ixzz2j4JJVjGK

By TANYA MOHN

Published: October 25, 2013

ON a recent Friday night, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York held its first public exhibition of original art made in its “Seeing Through Drawing” classes. Participants — all blind or partly sighted — created works inspired by objects in the museum’s collection that were described to them by sighted instructors and that they were also allowed to touch.

In another gallery, a tour in American Sign Language was followed by a reception for deaf visitors. And on select Fridays, new “multisensory stations” invite all guests — including those with a range of disabilities — to experience exhibits though scent, touch, music and verbal imaging, or describing things for people with vision impairment.

“The Met has a long history of accessibility for people with disabilities,” said Rebecca McGinnis, who oversees access and community programs. As early as 1908, the museum provided a “rolling chair” for people with mobility issues, and in 1913 held talks for blind public school children, she said. Today, there are programs for people with disabilities nearly every day...

Read more at NY Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/27/arts/artsspecial/welcoming-art-lovers-with-disabilities.html?_r=1&

Video: Many local authorities are restricting rehabilitation help for the blind

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By Rhiannon Mills, Sky Reporter

Blind people are being left to fend for themselves - and in less than 10 years could have no support from local councils, a leading charity has warned.

The Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) said there had been a 43% drop in the number of blind and partially sighted people getting even basic council support.

That is down from 55,875 people to 31,740 since 2005, according to the RNIB's Facing Blindness Alone study.

But the charity fears that in just 10 years' time not a single blind or partially sighted person will receive any support from their council if the trend continues.

The research also found that a growing number of local authorities are restricting access to rehabilitation or only offering a six-week course.

Read more at News Sky

(http://news.sky.com/story/1139513/blind-people-face-increasing-lack-of-support)

Minerva Hussain with his award-winning work.

A DEAF artist has been commended for his intricate work based on Chester Zoo – made all the more remarkable because he has been blind since he was a teenager.

Minerva Hussain has Usher syndrome, which started to affect his sight when he was 18, gradually getting worse until he was left with just peripheral vision.

But the 44-year-old uses photographs, a magnifying glass and his memory to create vivid, incredibly detailed and tactile work that the viewer can see with their fingers as well as their eyes.

His Chester Zoo collage is full of different animals hiding and peeping from behind thick paper foliage and stiff cardboard fences, the enclosures are covered in glassy plastic, and he has included safari trucks, a ticket office and the zoo’s much-loved monorail.

“It was hard work, especially with my sight, to do everything myself,” he said.

“I cut out everything – there was a lot of sweat involved when I was sat down cutting things out and I had to make sure there was plenty of light so I could see everything.

“It took five weeks to do.”

Read the full article and view the video at Northwich Guardian