Two Brain Cells

So, a BBC News editor sends out internal memo asking presenters to read out web addresses, email addresses and phone numbers, rather than just saying “as you can see on your screens”, so that blind and other visually-impaired viewers can use them too.

The usual anti-PC crowd, as usual, gets the wrong message and decides that the BBC is banning the phrase “as you can see” because it might cause ‘offence’ to blind people. The actual, simple motivation is, of course, accessibility — offending people never came into it.

The editor posts a clarification to his blog.

Cue hilarious comment thread where Joe Public struggles valiantly to deal with the concept that blind people might actually use computers in the 21st century.

Brickbats all round, but particularly to these stand-out comments:

• zsalya: People who are actually blind don’t make much use of URLs or email. #
• RelaxedSteak: How would a blind person be able to turn on a computer, open up a web browser find the navigation bar and type in bbc.co.uk or some other web address? #
• bringbackbiscan: this is going to sound insensitive, but what use is a url to a blind person? they wont be able to see the information anyway and surely the audio will only be of use on certain sites? #
• QantumBlip: What planet is the author of this article living on?

  I am all for improving disabled access to computers, I think computers can help disabled people a lot, but, let’s look at this issue objectively:

  The specific complaint was that of television presenters not reading out the URL of websites and simply referring viewers to look at the URL presented on the television screen.

  How useful is a website going to be to a blind person if they can’t even see the website in the first place!!

  So what value is there in reading out aloud the web URL to blind people if they can’t even access the website!

  Now whilst there are some text to speech conversion programs around, they’re only going to be of any use on websites which are very high in textual content, and then how can the blind person navigate around the website using hypertext links if they can’t even see those links in the first place!

  The author clearly hasn’t thought through what he’s proposing. #

• QantumBlip: Someone please tell me, how a blind person can navigate a mouse around a webpage when they can’t see where the mouse is and can’t see where they want to place the mouse cursor.

  If they could achieve that, then they surely could drive a car from one town to another! Not sure the Police would be too happy about it.

  Be realistic folks. #

• mrkcrtr: Surely, if a visually impaired person cannot see the URL on the TV screen then they will not be able to see the BBC website either? #
• JonL87: I have a simple question…if a blind person needs to have the URL spelled out on TV, how would they be able to read the website? #

And, among the few voices of reason, a bouquet to TheRealCatherineO for this wonderful remark:

I’m staggered at the comments that blind people don’t make much use of the TV, computers or email. What do they imagine they do all day? Weave baskets? #

Basket-weaving indeed.

The Judge Rotenberg Center is a special needs school in Massachusetts that uses electric shocks to discipline its students. The school claims that the electric shocks (which they tastefully call ‘GED treatment‘) are a valid form of medical ‘aversive’ treatment that helps young people with severe self-harm and behavioural problems, and cite a number of success stories (1, 2).

However, a recent report by NY education officials paints a far less rosy picture. Rather than being a carefully managed treatment administered by medical professionals, it appears that shocks are administered for range of minor, everyday offences, such as ‘nagging, swearing and failing to maintain a neat appearance’, and that even ‘newly-hired staff with little to no training’ are allowed to shock students.

I can’t comment on the potential benefits of a proper medical programme that includes electric shock aversion therapy. It may well be a good treatment. But it’s not what’s going on here, by a long shot. If the report is accurate, then what’s going on here isn’t medical treatment. It’s just plain fucking disgusting.

The center can trot out a handful of ’success stories’, but that doesn’t justify putting these young people through what amounts to a daily life of fear.

(As an aside, how would you respond if you started a new job supervising students, and without any training were told that you could and should administer electric shocks to the children when they misbehaved? I think I’d be horrified at the suggestion, and I think I’d be too worried about the wrongness of the situation and my inexperience and lack of understanding to actually do it. But then we all know about the Milgram experiment.)