Life happens

For those paying attention to my Twitter feed as well as students in my classes, it appears that I dropped off the face of the earth a couple of weeks ago. Although I am still a long way from fully recovered, I wanted to share my experiences and insights over the past couple of weeks. In a nutshell, I suffered a detached retina. A few decades ago, this would have meant certain blindness in one eye. Since it was caught rapidly and I underwent an emergency surgery, there is strong likelihood that I will eventually regain some sight in that eye. I anticipate a long period of recovery and more surgery. Of course, it had to happen in my dominant eye. For those who are really curious what my vision is now like, I provide a Photoshop rendered version (yes it is fairly accurate).  To the left of the black line is what I see with my left eye. To the right is what I see with my right eye. In both cases, I am wearing glasses. Note that vision in my good eye is somewhat blurry as well. Ok, now you know the details. If you find typos in my work – deal with them.

Before proceeding, I must express my sincere thanks to all who have wished me well. Obviously, Jeri, my wife has been incredibly supportive (as have my son Ben, daughter in law Lindsay and grandsons). Family means a lot. I was particularly touched that my wife’s colleagues at her place of work all signed a get well card for me. Bill Cullifer (Executive Director of Web Professionals.org) has been an exemplary colleague and friend. He calls nearly every day to ask my various questions to keep my mind engaged. Bill – I really appreciate your efforts on my behalf. I also wanted to thank Shari Tripp for her efforts at picking up the remaining grading in all my classes. Shari has also been in contact with me via the phone periodically and I really appreciate those interactions as well. Glenda Sims has also been very supportive and understanding as she awaits my recovery to continue work on projects we have initiated recently. Doug Orwig provided several audio books and I am most appreciative of his efforts as well. I am certain there are a number of email messages from others. I will do my best to respond as I am able. I can now only spend a little time working on the computer each day and this post has definitely taken more than one day to compose. As best I can tell, I have over 3,000 email messages (non-SPAM) to deal with at some point soon. For those waiting – I appreciate your patience.

Here are some insights I have gained in the past weeks. First. I have a host of devices which should be accessible to those with vision problems. They fail 100%. If anyone has spare funds and want to pursue enhancements to these devices, I think some significant money could be made. Keep in mind that my condition is temporary. If it were permanent in both eyes, I would not hesitate to invest in tools like JAWS. That being said, these tools are expensive (both in terms of money and time to learn to use them properly). Permit me to provide a simple example to indicate the problems I face. Because of the implications of the surgery, I have been unable to read or use a computer for the past few weeks. The phone (specifically incoming calls) has been my only available technology (no I can’t read to dial out). No worries, I have multiple Amazon Kindle devices and a wealth of books I have purchased over the years which are  all text to speech enabled. Cool. But, wait, in order to activate the text to speech reading, I have to visually see the screen. #FAIL. How tough would it have been to simply place an extra button on the device somewhere which one could touch to activate this feature? Ok, my wife is kind enough to activate the feature when she is available. However, when I power the device off at some point, I need to reactivate the feature when I power it back on. Again, massive failure in design for accessibility. Yes, I will focus on these sorts of issues more in the accessibility class I teach every fall.

Probably the most important insight I have gained is that I can and will overcome any obstacle thrown in my way. It may take me longer. However, I have found most individuals as understanding and patient and I really appreciate that. For those who are curious, I have no intention of giving up any of my speaking engagements (typically week long seminars) on HTML5, CSS-3 and the implications of multi-screen devices to education. I will be in multiple states throughout the summer (at the moment, it looks like California, Missouri, Texas, Massachusetts and perhaps a couple more I have forgotten). I will also be a significant contributor to the national web design contest in Kansas City in June. I am looking forward to all these interactions. There may be fewer prepared materials, but that will also give me time to help everyone focus on the specific technology and spend more time experimenting with it. In many respects, I can already see that this physical issue is opening new doors for me that I was previously less aware of. Yes, I intend to become even more of an advocate for those where technology significantly enhances their life and is not simply an option.

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