I am an American author with congenital blindness. I see shapes and shadows but no detail. For instance, I can see where my face is in a mirror, but I cannot see my lips to put on lipstick. This may seem a trite problem, but my husband keeps introducing me as Ronald McDonald.
Writing blind can be challenging. Typing is not a problem—typos are. My computer helps solve this. Computers offer new abilities to sight-impaired people. Screen brightness, color contrast, and font size can be manipulated to meet special needs, opening a world previously inaccessible to anyone with visual impairment. Verbose computer programs can read aloud everything from web pages to email—even regular mail if you have a scanner.
When I first began writing, I used a word recognition program with playback capabilities. This is not a foolproof solution. Word recognition is at best 90% accurate, which means that nine out of ten words will be right. That's fine for a sighted person, but all I could hope for was that the word that was wrong was not a really important one. And if I was tired and slurred my words, I ended up with sentences like hatchet fizz in the goop bandana.
Today I use a computer program that echoes the keys I press and reads the screen to me. The robotic voice took a little getting used to, but I've come to rely upon it. My computer is a frustrating and essential partner. It does more than help me write. It helps me research and promote—and it connects me to other writers.