Hi to all.

As I was reading through the posts on accessible handhelds, it occurs to me
that a lot of different things constitute accessibility.

In our modern age, we've gotten used to thinking of accessibility as voice
readout and an auto tuner, and as much as I love my HF rigs that have these
features, I know that there was a time when it wasn't so.

While I was in college in the late 1970's, a good friend of mine who was
totally blind had a Ten Tec Triton IV, which had the following modifications:

A dial skirt with single dots on the five khz marks, two dots on the 10 khz
marks and three dots on the zero.  He also had an audio oscillator hooked
up across the LED for the ALC so that when the LED lit, the oscillator
beeped.

With those two modifications, he could always adjust the radio for proper
levels, and he could always get it on frequency.  In that sense, it was
accessible.

I had a Standard C528A HT in the 1990's.  It was pretty straightforward in
its command set, with articulating beeps for the various functions, much as
John described on the THF6A.  At the time, I still had my vision, yet I
hardly ever looked at the display because I got so much feedback from the
beeps on the radio that it wasn't necessary to look at the display.  So, in
my mind, that radio was truly accessible.

At times, I think that half of the battle in accessibility is in getting
accessible documentation that explains things from a blind person's point
of view.  For example, I had a rotten time with the Icom IC-706 Mk II G
until someone put up a really great key chart on www.icanworkthisthing.com
and suddenly a bunch of things made sense to me and the radio became much
more usable.

I think the area of documentation is one area where the industry could do
better, but I suspect that they do not even realize there is a problem there.

Anyway, I thought that Jerry's post was amusing because of the assumptions
that he started out with.  Incidentally, I believe that the reason why
there are not HT's with voice boards is not because the industry cannot do
it, because the technology is readily available to do just that, but
because there has always been a conscious effort to keep these radios very
small, lightweight, and above all, to sacrifice anything that would degrade
battery life.  And, even if I was prepared to live with a little shorter
time between charges, thinking about how tiny my Icom IC-T7H is, I would
not want to try to install anything into it.

Incidentally, I program it with the Icom Cloning software from my PC.  The
software works great with JAWS, and I see no reason why it shouldn't work
with Window-Eyes, so in that sense, my present HT is at least
"semi-accessible."

73, de Lou K2LKK




Louis Kim Kline
A.R.S. K2LKK
Home e-mail:  [log in to unmask]
Work e-mail:  [log in to unmask]
Work Telephone:  (585) 697-5753