A better calendar for the Blind

For a couple of years now, I have been teaching technology to the blind. (In fact, I have been teaching technology for about ten years, at College-prep/secondary and college level). I have found working with the blind to be one of the most amazing and rewarding endeavors, not only for the opportunity it affords me to work with an often overlooked group of exceptionally bright and talented people, but because they can teach me so much about how all people utilize technology. As a technology educator, I am always amazed at how narrow many people’s vision of educational technology can be. Case in point, the prevalence of PowerPoint as a cornerstone of secondary technology integration.

So, to the story… my student Jeremy, who is blind and a great computer user came to me the other day with a seemingly easy request: help him find a good calendar program. Jeremy is a whiz with e-mail, podcasts, and his screen reader JAWS. We tried Sunbird but found it suffered the same limitations with JAWS that Firefox does. We tried calendars specifically for the blind, but those too didn’t offer the flexibility that Jeremy wanted. So, we turned to a less conventional solution. Jeremy is not yet using this, but I am, and I am extremely excited about the potential.

First, I’m using Sandy, which is a very neat web-based calendar and reminder service. I’ve been using Sandy for a few weeks and I absolutely love her. She sends me a simple e-mail digest of my calendar and to-do list each morning which helps me start the day. I can set it up to have Sandy send me SMS text message reminders, e-mail reminders or no reminders at all. It is possible to SMS appointments from my phone to Sandy, post them from the web, or send them from an e-mail. I can create groupings, just like in any calendar and add items to the group simply by appending “@group” to the end of my messages to Sandy.

Now, many of the features I just mentioned are not of much interest to a blind person, as SMS text messaging is not particularly blind-accessible, and getting a million e-mail reminders can be more trouble than it’s worth. Generally, it is a nice feature to have on occasion, but if used all the time, it is a total nuisance. However, the ability to manage a complex calendar from a simple voice interface (i.e. a cell phone) and receive daily a clean text e-mail digest of your daily obligations, is truly something most blind people would find amazing.

So, now we add Jott to the formula. Jott is a very good voice to text service available on the web. Like Sandy it is completely free, but requires registration. Using Jott, I can call an 800-number from my cell phone. A pleasant automated voice asks me “Who do you want to Jott?” Depending on who I have added in my list of contacts, I can simply say: “Myself” or “Twitter” or a person’s name, and the voice will then ask me to record my message. I’ve just completed a Jott to Twitter (which can be found in my Twitter thread to the right) which went like this:

ME: Dial Jott on my cell phone. (I can’t remember the actual number, I programmed it into my phone).

JOTT: Who do you want to Jott?

ME: Twitter

JOTT: Twitter, is this correct?

ME: Yes

JOTT: (Beep — indicating it is time for me to start talking)

ME: Test Jott for a blind student.

JOTT: Got it!

Jott will now ask me to either hang up or Jott someone else.

Jott is a great way to generate text from a cell phone. In fact, much of this posting was done from my cell phone while I was walking from my office to my car this afternoon. When I got home, I merely re-fashioned the text I found in my e-mail inbox and pasted it into my blog.

So, here’s where Sandy and Jott come together. Set up and account on each. Make sure you fill out the requisite information in both so Jott knows your cell phone number, your e-mail address and the personalized e-mail address to which you send Sandy stuff (Sandy will provide you this e-mail address once you have completed your registration). Once you have both accounts set up, spend a few minutes learning Sandy. Sandy uses a specific shorthand system which is not at all difficult to use or understand, but it might require a blind person to sit down with someone and practice a few things to get the hand of it.

So. Once both accounts are activated, simply rely on the cell phone. Call Jott, when asked who you wish to Jott, say, “Sandy” then when you hear the beep say your business (Reminder meeting with Leland Thursday afternoon at 1pm) and lo-and-behold, Thursday morning, an e-mail will arrive in your inbox with a digest of your daily calendar telling you that you have a meeting at 1pm with your computer teacher Leland.

In all honesty, this is a rare kind of combination, which offers blind users (as well as technology teachers and pretty much any other busy person on the planet) the opportunity to use a simple tool (i.e. their cell phone) to manage a great deal of their text communications, calendar management and scheduling, as well as general productivity. Blind or not, the opportunity to speak a few notes into your phone to help you get a start on that paper, presentation or important blog posting all from the comfort of your bus-seat on the way home is truly remarkable. Also, Jott is very accurate. Not as accurate as a fully trained set up with Dragon Naturally Speaking, but for a phone-based system it is exceptional. When in doubt, spell it out. Jott, understandably has trouble with names and URL’s and other things like that, so say them, then spell them out. Speak as clearly as possible, and enjoy!