Personal Introduction

Hello, my name is Steven Hazelhurst.

 

Click to show/hide picture

 

I have been involved in software development all my working life, and now own a business in Windows software and support. But this is my personal website. Here, you will find a treatise on myself and my work, almost autobiographical in places, though I do not write specifically in that frame.

 

I was born on 13 March, 1963, with very limited vision but almost normal hearing. I could see enough to ride a bike, not very safely to be sure, but I did do it and could see where I was going up to a point. I could see colours quite well. I have not been conscious of deteriorating sight over the years, probably because it was never good enough for me to rely upon it in any significant way, but I know it has deteriorated because I cannot now see things that I remember being able to see as a child (and the bike's a non-starter), I am aware of outlines only, very vaguely, and can perceive light and dark if I think about it.

 

As a child, my hearing was virtually intact. I used to experience some problems with foreign accents and in places with certain acoustics, but otherwise could socialise and get into trouble just like everybody else. The most notable memory of hearing problems in my primary school days is a school trip to Chester Zoo. In the tropical fish section we were lined up listening to the tour guide and I was having my work cut out hearing him, so I started edging the boy in front of me forwards to get closer, not knowing that he was on the brink of a tropical fish pond guarded only by a low stone wall, over which he toppled with my assistance; my sense of balance being what it is, I went in as well and the lecture was adjourned for us to dry off outside in the sun! I did have noticeable problems though, I remember overhearing one of the girls say to another: "Miss Purseclove says we shouldn't call him Cloth Ears" - perhaps they weren't quite as cloth as she thought at that time.

 

I started having more severe hearing impairment in my early teens and it got worse quite rapidly for a few years, though I was not going deaf in the conventional sense, and tended to pass standard hearing tests with flying colours. Since I had a bad reputation for not concentrating anyway, at least not on what I was meant to be, this was generally taken to be the reason for not hearing what was said and I had a hard time convincing people that I was in fact experiencing difficulty.

 

The difficulty lay in decreasing clarity of sound rather than volume. This was particularly so with speech, voices became very indistinct although I could, and still can, hear when a person is speaking, but not usually what they are saying. I was on my way to becoming a deafblind (condition of combined impairment of both sight and hearing to a point where neither faculty is of any practical use for mobility, communication or information gathering)
person. I made it through my "a"-levels, but started using the deafblind manual alphabet (method of communication known as finger spelling, where the "speaker" spells out words using touch signs on the "listener's" hand) as my primary means of receiving one-to-one communication during the summer break before I started at University.

 

Click to show/hide the deafblind manual alphabet

 

 

It should be noted that the deafblind manual alphabet is only an alphabet, or more precisely, a method of delivering the standard alphabet, it is not a language. It takes about 5 minutes to learn to use and although both reading and writing speeds vary from person to person, it does allow for a perfectly normal conversation in real time. My own reading speed is about average, enough for fluent up-to-speed communication. People who say it is too slow for them or doesn't keep pace with their thoughts are just using that line as a cop-out.

 

So with both sight and hearing of little use to me apart from relatively mundane applications such as hearing the doorbell, I have since my college days used computers with Braille in almost every aspect of my life. Although there are Braille computing devices in existence for visually impaired people, most of my work is with mainstream systems like Windows, where use via Braille is facilitated with purpose-designed software driving a separate Braille display that connects to the computer like a printer or any other peripheral, and it is along these lines that I have built my business.

 

I am not a manufacturer of the software products that make most popular Windows applications work with Braille, my aim has been to redress the gaps in this technology for myself and other deafblind people.

 

The first problem was that of telecommunications - using the 'phone for straightforward conversation like most people take for granted. Deafblind people first achieved independent use of the telephone using purpose-built computers with a built-in Braille display. But this independent access to the telephone bade fair to be only a transitory advance when the development trend shifted from manufacturing purpose-designed machines to providing access to mainstream computers.

 

While home PC's do run software that enables conversing over the 'phone, the standard design renders it very tedious to use with Braille, impossible for many. I produced my first solution to this problem in the early 1990's, and have specialised in the field ever since.

 

However, telecommunications could hardly be said to be the only area that needed a little work. The amount of information on a computer screen that is accessible to a Braille display user, and how easily and meaningfully, depends not only upon whether it can actually be made accessible, but also upon how the screen reading software developer perceives the relative importance of the various pieces of information and how they should be represented, if at all. I have had wide experience in addressing these problems in diverse situations using whatever means jumps out at me as being best suited for adapting the computer to meet the needs of the individual (often myself), including providing completely new programs.

 

For more information, please see my profile and other sections of this website, and my business web pages.

 

---