I own a variety of technology and have used many different types of tech items since the 1970s. I was blessed to have had the privilege of owning many of them throughout my life, even before working in the assistive technology field. As important and momentous as those items were I can’t recall the exact day that I acquired most of them.
There are two exceptions to this. One of them was my first iPhone, which was the iPhone 5C. My wife and I were going through the mail on March 31 of 2014 when she found an advertisement from Verizon, which was our mobile phone carrier at that time. I don’t remember what phone she had but I was using a Samsung Haven due to the fact that it was 99% accessible. I loved that phone but I really wanted an iPhone. I had briefly seen one and my brother already had one and I heard so much about it from him. My wife also did not have a smart phone at that time and we assumed that the phone plans for them would be more expensive than the plans we were currently paying for. However, the ad that arrived that day promised that we could get an iPhone 5C at no cost. It also advertised a free Motorola phone whose name now escapes me. This deal would only be available until … you guessed it … March 31. Well, I said to my wife, we need to get to the Verizon store to take advantage of this. She agreed. So off we went to the Verizon store and went home with our new smart phones. I think we got them that day; I don’t remember having them delivered to us via mail. For the most part, though, I can tell you roughly when I acquired a certain tech item but not on the exact day … with another very notable exception.
In 1988 a buddy of mine and I were chatting over the phone and he told me about this cool device he had seen called a Braille ‘n Speak. As he described it to me, with its small size and its functionality, it almost sounded magical to me. Eventually, I traveled to Sense-sations which was an adaptive equipment store located in Philadelphia to see it as they were selling the Braille ‘n Speak. The proprietor of the store was more taken with the Smalltalk computer from GW Micro and wanted me to take a look at that machine but I was undeterred. I would see the Braille ‘n Speak and wasn’t interested in anything else. He showed me the Braille ‘n Speak. It may have had fewer keys than other computers but I felt even more that there was something very special about this machine. In late 1988 I decided to sell my VersaBraille P2C, a machine I really enjoyed using. I would use the funds acquired from the sale to purchase my very own Braille ‘n Speak along with some accessories. I knew I’d be giving up Braille output for a device that only had speech but I didn’t care. I was determined to own this machine. I was easily able to sell my VersaBraille in the Matilda Ziegler magazine and on February 17, 1989 I sent a check for $1249 to Blazie Engineering’s office located at that time in Street, Maryland. I ordered a Braille ‘n Speak with the addition of the stopwatch and calculator which cost an additional $99.00 at that time. I also ordered a service contract and an interface kit which contained a collection of serial adapters for connecting the Braille ‘n Speak to different types of connectors. I also ordered the cassette tape interface device which allowed me to copy my BNS files onto a cassette tape and you could also transfer files from tape to the BNS. There was no disk drive accessory at that time; that device wouldn’t get released until the summer of 1990. I didn’t even own a computer; I wouldn’t acquire my first DOS machine until the spring of 1991. That check went out to them on February 17 and I received my Braille ‘n Speak with the additional items the following Friday, which was February 24. I remember staying up half the night studying Fred Gissoni’s original manual along with an addendum for the 1988 revision recorded by Irwin Hott.
I learned every command that machine had to offer and used it for my phone directory, taking down information for two different jobs and going online calling bulletin board systems. I did all of this on a small device that weighed less than a pound that I could easily carry anywhere.
I’ve used many different tech items throughout my life. I’ve enjoyed all of them. Many of them did some wonderful things. Few of them felt truly magical to me. The two exceptions for me are the iphone along with the Braille ‘n Speak. The Braille ‘n Speak, along with the iPhone, never felt boring even after years of using it. The novelty never went away. They got better but they never got old. Is it any wonder, then, that the day I got my first Braille ‘n Speak was a very special day that I can’t seem to ever forget.
David Goldfield,
Blindness Assistive Technology Specialist
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Thoughts from David Goldfield 