Darren Paskell’s relationship with technology spans thirty years, and while the devices have changed, his passion for what they can do and the skills he has developed have been constant.
For example, Darren, who works for Guide Dogs, learned to touch-type at Primary School.
“I have an interest in everything tech-related. I am registered as severely sight impaired, but I think of myself as blind. I have been pretty much since birth, and so most of my adult life, in fact, probably all my adult life and a lot of my time growing up.”
Darren added: “I was very fortunate in that I learned to touch type while at Primary school. And I look back on that as probably the best thing I got out of primary school. It was all almost by accident, you know. Come and sit down with this tutor for half an hour a week during what would otherwise be assembly time for a term and see how you get on. But I've been using that skill daily ever since.”
An early adopter of assistive technology
He was an early adopter of technology and recalls some twenty-five years ago, “taking a computer apart to install a modem.” Another constant in Darren’s life is his Braille Display.
Today, he uses a portable Braille Display, but he recalls using a Perkins Braille Reader.
He said: “They're considerably larger, considerably bulkier and heavier. It’s particularly noticeable when carrying around with you from classroom to classroom; they're also quite disruptive regarding the noise they make while manually punching dots in paper.”
Learning to use the Braille Display was, says Darren, hard work. “Looking back, I thought, ‘I’ve got to demonstrate competency with this thing. No one's going to teach me.”
Darren also uses specialist screen reader software on his computer. “That's by choice more than something that I would need these days. I use a paid professional screen reader because I'm extremely competent with it. But that's quite niche now.”
Read more about a project we funded that encourages Braille training and literacy.
Assistive technology is mainstream
Today, Darren says things are easier as assistive technology has become mainstream.
“All I just talked about from growing up was specialist equipment. The manual for the Braille Lite 2000 note-taker machine that I was issued with was extremely well written, but it was also very full of technical data,” said Darren.
He added: “I had to learn about data transfer protocols, which I'd never encountered before. It's the sort of detail that most standard users, sitting at a computer at work in the 1990s, would never have been confronted with. Now, you can go to any laptop, phone, or tablet, and accessibility features are built in. That is game-changing. It’s amazing.”
Now, you can go to any laptop, phone, or tablet, and accessibility features are built in. That is game-changing. It’s amazing.
Darren says that being able to transfer skills across devices is vital. “It’s all very well learning how to use one device [but] how will you learn how to use other devices equally? The device I used at school no longer exists. So, I’m confident that the machine I'm talking to you about will be very different in, you know, 5-10 years.”
People and technology working together
Darren says artificial intelligence represents a significant opportunity in helping people better interact with technology. “If we're looking at how somebody interacts with something to obtain better information or contribute something, why should somebody be burdened to learn how to use the system?”
“I've mentioned a screen reader. Hundreds of keystrokes go into making effective use of a screen reader. It's hard, particularly if you come to it as an adult or later in life. To me, it seems like completely the wrong way around. The system should empower the person to get the most out of it. AI can help break down that barrier.”
AI must adapt to everyone who needs to use it, including people who are blind and vision impaired. “One of the real challenges of AI is that it is often developed on typical use cases, and in the development of these models, disabled people in general haven't necessarily been represented in their design.”
He explained. “If an AI model had been following me around learning what I've been doing, it would never have worked out any importance in terms of visual data because I never look at anything, and yet one of the most powerful use cases I have now for AI is sending it photos and asking it for descriptions.”
“I hope what will happen is that as the AI becomes more aware of the demands of people who are using it more broadly, as well as on an individual personal basis, it will be able to anticipate better, perhaps more likely, requirements of somebody with a vision impairment.”
Darren is reading with smart glasses from Meta and BeMyEyes. “It does it more conveniently. “There's an app for reading. There's an app for describing what's going on around you. The glasses are perfect for the form factor to convey information seamlessly - freeing up my hands for whatever I'm doing.”
