Blind and Visually Impaired Community
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Need help justifiying why I should get a touhscreen laptop to my assisstive tech suppliers (self.Blind)
submitted by lethal_universed
Title. The department that i am ordering from has been a really pain in the ass and has constantly screwed me over to prevent me from getting technology that I need. In particular, a touchscreen and an ipad. Ive used touchscreen all my life and it is more convient for me to easily pinch zoom on a screen than using a mousepad or keyboard. And an ipad is something I can take on the go to enhance simple things like a resume. I still want some other stronger reasons so I can convince them to buy these for me.
Edit: Things I need so far:
Large Touch Screen Laptop- convience compared to regular
IPad- can enlarge things when traveling
Slant Board- to keep me from hunching over when writing on paper
Edit: Things I need so far:
Large Touch Screen Laptop- convience compared to regular
IPad- can enlarge things when traveling
Slant Board- to keep me from hunching over when writing on paper
KillerLag 8 points 1y ago
For the ipad, while it is more expensive than other tablets, you can also point out it has better accessibility than other tablets. And a lot more of their apps are also accessible.
vwlsmssng 3 points 1y ago
You need an iPad as a tablet because it has accessibility features that are effective and improve your productivity. You need the iPad to run Microsofts Seeing AI and Soundscape apps
You need a tablet (possibly) because
- you can hold the screen closer to your face to see details of text and images you are working with
- it can help you do presentations because you can stand up holding it and see what people are viewing on the projector screen by looking at the Ipad screen.
- you can use apps like Seeing AI to help you navigate the cafeteria menus and food labels, recognise people, read the noticeboard, check currency notes, and quickly scan and read documents people hand you. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/ai/seeing-ai
- you can use an app like Microsoft Soundscape to better navigate your surroundings https://www.afb.org/aw/19/8/15067
- a tablet can allow you to access work materials while sitting in positions that allow you to relax and put less strain on your body, and to take rest for the stressful positions you are put in from using a laptop all the time. This will avoid the need for you to sue your employer / equipment provider in 10 years time for injury caused by negligence.
- you need something more portable than a big laptop to take to meetings or other away from the desk activities
- you need a wireless keyboard to go with your iPad
You may need a number keypad on your laptop keyboard for the keyboard shortcuts for any accessibility software you are using (e.g. Dolphin Supernova Magnifier and Screen Reader) which is usually only available on 15.6" laptops
A touchscreen laptop will improve your productivity because you can interact with the device more quickly and smoothly.
Does that help?
You need a tablet (possibly) because
- you can hold the screen closer to your face to see details of text and images you are working with
- it can help you do presentations because you can stand up holding it and see what people are viewing on the projector screen by looking at the Ipad screen.
- you can use apps like Seeing AI to help you navigate the cafeteria menus and food labels, recognise people, read the noticeboard, check currency notes, and quickly scan and read documents people hand you. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/ai/seeing-ai
- you can use an app like Microsoft Soundscape to better navigate your surroundings https://www.afb.org/aw/19/8/15067
- a tablet can allow you to access work materials while sitting in positions that allow you to relax and put less strain on your body, and to take rest for the stressful positions you are put in from using a laptop all the time. This will avoid the need for you to sue your employer / equipment provider in 10 years time for injury caused by negligence.
- you need something more portable than a big laptop to take to meetings or other away from the desk activities
- you need a wireless keyboard to go with your iPad
You may need a number keypad on your laptop keyboard for the keyboard shortcuts for any accessibility software you are using (e.g. Dolphin Supernova Magnifier and Screen Reader) which is usually only available on 15.6" laptops
A touchscreen laptop will improve your productivity because you can interact with the device more quickly and smoothly.
Does that help?
PrincessDie123 3 points 1y ago
Idk about the laptop because I hate my touchscreen so much I disabled that feature but I love iPad and iPhone for my assistive tech. Point out that the disability features on apple are very good and that the camera is better than most actual adaptive technology devices while being at least half the price and still doing more, for example a digital magnifier looks like a camera from 1999 and it only works up to 5 inches away from whatever it’s magnifying but it’s more expensive than my iPhone XR which has a better all range camera and zoom feature plus now has a built in app that can read text aloud to me so I can snap a picture of a menu and upload it to the app and have the app read it or I can download a free app called seeing AI and hover over the text with my iPhone camera and have it read that too, for free (unless I want to pay for premium features but that’s still cheaper than assistive tech).
TechnicalPragmatist 1 points 1y ago
Are you being entitled here or do you actually need it. I don’t know if I see the actual benefit of a touch screen. The keyboard shortcuts can do basically the same things. Maybe you’re trying to ask for too much here. Some of this stuff seems like you should save up for and buy yourself kind of luxuries.
lethal_universed [OP] 1 points 1y ago
Touch screen is just more accessible to me as I have a harder time seeing the keyboard (and its not like they actually provided me anything to enhance the keyboard size). Especially since if I buy a touchscreen, it wont come with other accesories like zoomtext. I want to try to make the most out of a service provided to me, certain things like a slant board yeah I could just purchase, but with a mountains worth of things I already have to work to pay for (school) I want to try to minimize the costs as much as possible.
TechnicalPragmatist 1 points 1y ago
Can you learn keyboarding? People who really actually type a lot and the most professional at tech people even sited people don’t look at their keyboard. The fact you’re looking is signifying you don’t know your keyboard and is spending extra time and effort in looking for your keys. This means work on your keyboarding and typing speeds. It will help. Learn short cut keys while you’re at it.
The gestures on a touch screen on a computer with a keyboard already with a screen reader is doubled and basically accessible via the keyboard already. So the justification of extra features can’t be made here. Logically there seems to be not a real good reason to get a touch screen and you should be able to work without one. Yes they are honestly pretty cool and it makes the device more luxurious and pricy but that’s about it. But why it must be there is mere convenience.
I don’t think your pros at the it desk is really honestly playing around with the touch screens hahaha! A lot of that is just add on fun in a sense, if I was to be honest. That’s not easy to justify no. You’d pretty much have to lie to justify it. And I am sorry ethically I can’t do that.
I would suggesting you requesting computing and typing lessons though. Learn to use the keyboard and your computer better and faster and maybe even get the keyboard shortcuts down.
The gestures on a touch screen on a computer with a keyboard already with a screen reader is doubled and basically accessible via the keyboard already. So the justification of extra features can’t be made here. Logically there seems to be not a real good reason to get a touch screen and you should be able to work without one. Yes they are honestly pretty cool and it makes the device more luxurious and pricy but that’s about it. But why it must be there is mere convenience.
I don’t think your pros at the it desk is really honestly playing around with the touch screens hahaha! A lot of that is just add on fun in a sense, if I was to be honest. That’s not easy to justify no. You’d pretty much have to lie to justify it. And I am sorry ethically I can’t do that.
I would suggesting you requesting computing and typing lessons though. Learn to use the keyboard and your computer better and faster and maybe even get the keyboard shortcuts down.
DannyMTZ956 0 points 1y ago
Hi, I imagined you used these things in highschool. Those reasons may still be reasonable, so use the documentation from high school ′o support your case.
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