Surprisingly Enjoyable

I learned of this book when I heard an interview of the author on The Australian Broadcasting Commission's "Late Night Live" with Philip Adams.

The author sounded like she had a bit of spark about her and was pleasingly light hearted in the interview.

In my past professional career, I occasionally had the opportunity to speak at conferences of blind people to explain topics such as the technology of data communications as it applies to the usage of the internet in the early days of the latter. As a fully sighted person, doing a presentation to a room full of blind people was a new world to me. Should I use Powerpoint slides? What other similar tactical presentation issues should I consider? However, the goodwill extended to me as a sighted person by a hall full of blind and visually impaired people with a great abundance of white canes to be seen, was a very pleasantly memorable experience and my presentations were well received. I once enjoyed the humour shared across the crowd when the MC announced that a while cane with a "country foot" had been found and asked that if anyone cannot find their white cane that they should come forward. The subsequent lunch at a table with a whole bunch of blind people, including a young recently married couple of blind people, was very enjoyable.

So I have been curious for a long time as to the lot of blind people. Certainly at that stage , now many years ago, a lot of them were very capable at using the internet, albeit I was surprised at how one very visually impaired person could actually read a computer screen by looking at it at point blank range, Viz, with nose up against the screen. I would find that to be pretty uncomfortable, myself.

With the author's great sense of humour and with little bits of cynicism expressed by her, I found the 6 1/2 hours of this book to just fly by, whilst I had been doing some gardening over a couple of days. Her discourse helped me to understand just how capable blind people can be and the somewhat humorous limitations of some things like using guide dogs.

It is a very enjoyable "read" and I highly recommend it.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!