“Wow! Look at that,” my wife says. “Look at what?” I say, expecting some sort of explanation of a visual image. “There is a guy hanging off the sunglasses!” Wait… what! Sunglasses! “What do you mean he is hanging off the sunglasses?” “You know,” she says. “The sunglasses sculpture.” “No, I don’t know,” I say. “What sunglasses sculpture?” “But they have been here for ages,” she says. “No, I didn’t know…” “Can we go over READ MORE
Category: Accessibility
Understanding the Trajectory of Visual Impairment in the Workplace
In this webinar, Jeremy dialogues with long-time friend and colleague, Dr Michelle Botha, about the complexities of incremental vision loss while being employed. Since both Jeremy and Michelle have significant visual-impairment, they dialogue in an entertaining and anecdotal style, providing insight into challenges and opportunities for both the employee and the employer, and highlight many hidden aspects of this mostly overlooked area of Disability management.
The Travel-Chain for Visually Impaired Persons
In this webinar, Jeremy discusses an example of the travel chain for a person with a visual impairment. Using his guide dog, and following the route from his home to the local railway station, Jeremy covers in detail the various obstacles and good access features of the journey. Using his considerable technical knowledge of access issues and blind mobility, Jeremy succeeds in highlighting the importance of recognising the significance of NMT (non-motorised transport).
The Things We Miss: Making a Case for Audio Description
In this webinar, courtesy of the Low Vision Centre of Learning, Jeremy discusses some of the realities of audio description in South Africa. Jeremy highlights how easy it is for blind and visually impaired people to miss out on so much that sighted people take for granted in film, television, theatre, art, heritage and sport. In his words, audio description is like ‘the best kept secret’ with, essentially, only Netflix offering any consistent audio description facility in South READ MORE
But why should we make the hotel accessible?
In my last Perspectives on the Employment of Persons with Disabilities 3/4 blog which featured the podcast produced by Lois Strachan, and I discuss the business case, I mentioned a favourite cartoon which I think encapsulates the whole business case argument beautifully. Believe it or not, this cartoon was commissioned by me after this incident really happened.
Stairs!
“Stairs! Stairs!” They cried. I am standing in a train, at the entrance of a carriage looking out. In front of me is the platform of one of the downtown stations in Salt lake City. Upon the platform, stand my wife and daughter, shouting up at me, “stairs, stairs’’, although at the time, I wasn’t clear on exactly what they were saying. I in turn, am frozen in place, confused and frightened. Being a grizzled READ MORE
Do accessible signalised intersections and crossings ensure pedestrian safety?
In Cape Town we are blessed to have a great many universally accessible, signalised intersections and crossings which include an audio or audio/tactile facility, which are useful for blind and even deaf/blind as well. In fact, to the City’s credit, it is a matter of policy that audio signals are installed in any new intersection being set up or refitted. This means that for pedestrians, including the blind, in theory at least, crossing at intersections READ MORE
Why are there so few audio traffic signals?
It is almost three years to the day, on the 9th of September 2019, that the late Deputy State Attorney, Webster Sekwati, was run over on Pritchard Street, in downtown Johannesburg, right outside the High Court, at a pedestrian crossing. Mr Sekwati, by all accounts, was a humble, hardworking, and very competent lawyer. What is interesting is that the media made less mention of the fact that he was run over by a taxi clearly READ MORE
Is there Room in the Diversity Narrative for Disability?
At lunch recently with a bunch of people I didn’t know, I was reminded again how separated we, as People with Disabilities are. I was once again fascinated by the level of basic ignorance, displayed by normal average folks, about the basic capabilities of blind people, and the various bits of kit available to them, talking watches, Voice-over on the iPhone, (and you should have seen their faces when I told them that the phone READ MORE
There is No Such Thing as an Accessible Train…(on its own)
Reading a helpful tweet from Metrorail about how they can be of service and, bearing in mind that it is Global Accessibility Awareness Day, made me think of the recent rail excursion involving the Western Cape Disability Network, which included this writer. At the time, several people with visual and physical disabilities, caught the new “People’s Train” or “Blue Train”, which had long been vaunted by Metrorail as being accessible. The point of the exercise was READ MORE