The UCB Flier
A publication of
Utah Council of the Blind
May 2018
For the latest news updates call the Utah Connection 801-299-0670 or 1‑800-273-4569.
(You may also leave a message at the end of the announcement.)
Mail correspondence to: UCB, PO Box 1415, Bountiful, UT 84011-1415.
E-mail us at ucb.board@gmail.com.
The UCB Flier is available in large print, Braille,
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If you would prefer to receive your newsletter in a different format, please
call the Utah Connection or send an e-mail to ucb.board@gmail.com and let us know.
In This Issue
President’s Message.................................................................................. 4
Scholarships Available............................................................................... 6
A to Z Braille: Uncontracted Braille for Reading
Partners........................... 7
Accessible
Voting....................................................................................... 9
Tech Corner............................................................................................. 10
Microsoft’s App For The Blind Called A Kid
'Contemptuous.' Here’s Why That Matters............................................................................................. 11
Utah Opera helps visually impaired patrons feel the costumes,
props and words of ‘The Magic Flute’........................................................................ 20
Blind Utah students experience interactive art exhibit 'dreamscapes' in
Salt Lake City.................................................................................................. 22
Chicken Lasagna in a Crockpot................................................................ 27
Ingredients.............................................. 27
Directions................................................ 28
Freezer Bag Instructions......................... 29
General UCB Information......................................................................... 30
Upcoming Board Meetings...................... 31
Note
to Braille and Audio Readers
Article links
are omitted from these versions for ease of reading, but may be found in the
newsletter archived on our website at http://www.utahcounciloftheblind.org/newsletterlist.html
Disclaimer
Articles and
announcements included in this publication are presented for your information
and interest. They reflect the opinions of the respective authors and are not
necessarily endorsed by the UCB.
By Tina Terry
This month has been a month of challenges for me. I feel like there are
many beneficial things that have taken place. One of them was a meeting I had
with Low Vision Services, the Independent Living Centers, and DSBVI.
I would like to take a moment and talk about each of these groups
because they are all so important to the blind community.
Low Vision Services offers evaluations to help determine whether
magnification will help and what type would be the best. If equipment is
needed, they can also determine the best way to obtain it. They also carry a
variety of canes, talking watches, and other tools that are helpful for
everyday living. Low Vision Services serve the blind statewide and appointments
can be made through the Blind Center.
The Division of Services for the Blind and Visually Impaired (DSBVI)
helps provide extensive training and helps people who have the goal of
obtaining employment. They also accept students who receive extensive training
in cooking, mobility, computer, braille, and other great skills. DSVBI also can
refer clients to Vocational Rehabilitation counselors who provide counseling
and work with individuals to obtain technology or other services needed to
obtain or maintain employment. An application process and assessment are
required.
There are Independent Living Centers throughout the State of Utah. The
goal of these centers is to help individuals with various disabilities to
function independently. They can help with equipment, as well. They do ask that
an application is filled out, an assessment be done, and determination to be
made that the equipment is necessary to meet an independent living goal. They
also have classes each month for those who are older and losing their sight. I
have found them to be very supportive of the individuals in their programs.
It was my privilege to meet with individuals from these three groups and
be able to share how we can be of benefit to them. I was able to share
information about our transportation programs, teacher trainer programs, and
the other skills we have to offer. I hope that we can continue to work together
and support each other in the years to come. All our goals are to serve low
vision and blind individuals and offer the support that is needed. My goal as president
of the UCB, and the goal of our board is to see us work together and make sure
that your needs are met.
Applications are now available for UCB Scholarships to be awarded at the
annual business meeting in September. To obtain an application, please contact
Leslie Gertsch at 801-292-1156 or call the Utah Connection and leave your name
and phone number after the announcement to receive a call-back.
Submitted by Leslie Gertsch and Chris Bischke
University of Utah (SPED 5960) 1 credit hour
Have you always wanted to learn to read braille?
Do you wonder what the dots say inside of the elevator?
This class will teach you how to read and write alphabet (uncontracted)
braille and braille numbers.
Monday, June 10th – Thursday, June 13th 2019 4:30 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
Locations: U of U Salt Lake Campus (Distance sites possible. Note:
Distance sites must be requested no later than May 1st, no exceptions.)
Instructor: Kate Borg, TVI
Course Fee: $60 (A limited number of Utah Braille Literacy Committee
$100 stipends are available [$60 reimbursement for the course fee and $40 for
the participant]. Contact Chris Bischke [chris.bischke@utah.edu] for more information.)
ALL Course materials and activities are included in the
registration fee.
This 1-credit hour course has been specifically designed for
-Paraeducators
-Graduating High School Students interested in braille and/or a career
in Special Education
-General Education Teachers
-Early Childhood Specialists
-Parents and Family Members of Children who read braille
-Community Members
Participants will learn the following skills:
-How to read and produce the braille alphabet
-How to read and produce braille numbers
-How to make children’s braille books and games
Register at:
https://continue.utah.edu/contracts/SPED6/1196
Registration must be completed prior to May 15th.
By Tina Terry
The State of Utah is leaning toward voting by mail. This is good for the
visually impaired or blind in the sense that it means we do not have to arrange
transportation to voting booths, or whether the accessibility features will be
working. It does present a problem for us because the ballots are currently in
print and we will have to have them read to us. Voting is one issue that I like
to keep private. I do not want to rely on someone else to place my vote. It is
important that we speak up for accessible voting by mail. Right now, is an
important time to speak out. We would appreciate everyone calling the State of
Utah and expressing your desire to have accessible voting. Please contact
Justin Lee. He is the Director of Elections at the Lieutenant Governor’s office.
His phone number is: 801-538-1041.
By Tina Terry
I would like to take a minute to tell you about two new resources that
may be helpful.
Many of us use Victor Reader Streams or Victor Reader Treks. We would
like to take a moment to let you know that Humanware has a new feature when you
call. It is called the training center. It is open 24-7. It offers modules
covering many questions you might have about the Stream, Trek, or other
Humanware products. The training center is very easy to use and can be another
useful resource for us. If you would like to try it out, you can call Humanware
at 800-722-3393. You just follow the prompts to indicate which product you
would like to learn about.
Another resource that may be helpful for those of you who use iPhone are
lessons put out by the Hadley School for the Blind. These are 5 to 7-minute
lessons on different gestures, settings, and Voice Over navigation for iPhone,
iPad, Apple tv and new gestures for iPhone X. To find out about this and many
more courses offered through Hadley, visit their website at www.hadley.edu or call 800-323-4238.
Submitted by Tina Terry
By Parmy Olson, Forbes Staff Writer
https://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2019/03/12/microsofts-ai-app-for-the-blind-called-a-kid-contemptuous-heres-why-that-matters/#b61f98166772
My neighbor Katina does not fit the description of an early adopter of
technology.
She is a 75-year-old
sculptor and for much of her adulthood has been completely blind. But
technology sets the rhythm for her life. A handheld glucose monitor reads a
patch on her arm to manage her diabetes. Classical music plays through her
Google Home speaker. She navigates her iPhone, its screen always blank, with a
dizzying flurry of taps and swipes.
One day she sits down to
show me a new app she is trying out, called Seeing AI. Launched in July 2017 by
Microsoft for people with impaired sight, it uses the company’s
vision-recognition software, a form of artificial intelligence that it licenses
to other businesses, to narrate the world through her phone’s camera.
Eager to try it out myself,
I use the app to take a photo of Katina. A robotic male voice says,
“Forty-five-year old woman with brown hair smiling.”
“I like this!” she says,
clearly pleased at the age it has given her. My 8-year-old daughter is nearby.
Try making a funny face, I say. When she does, the app has this to report:
“Six-year-old girl with brown hair looking contemptuous.”
We can’t help but laugh.
Later though, the app’s pronouncement gives me pause. Its last judgment wasn’t
exactly wrong, since my daughter had stuck her tongue out. But this was a bold
word for a computer to pick.
Within a few weeks I am
speaking to Saqib Shaikh, one of Microsoft’s lead engineers behind Seeing AI,
who has also been blind since childhood. How had his app picked a description
like “contemptuous?” It turns out this came from the data that Microsoft’s
algorithms were trained on.
To build the system,
researchers from Microsoft in Cambridge, U.K., had decided on a set of
eight emotions that spanned
ethnicities and cultures, including sadness, anger, fear and contempt, he
explains. Microsoft announced that research in November 2015, when it released an emotion-recognition
tool that other software developers could use for building apps.
“The scientists came up with
a list of the things they thought were important, like gender and age and hair
color and emotion,” Shaikh says. Then a team of humans classified thousands of
images with those descriptions to teach the software.
And it turns out, he adds,
that same research underpins the more mainstream vision-recognition software
that Microsoft now sells to businesses under the name Cognitive Services. A
business intelligence firm called Prism Skylabs, for instance, has used it to help
retailers monitor video feeds to see
when their delivery trucks have arrived.
Though Seeing AI has a small
audience of users, its evolution points to how the rest of us might use
AI-powered technology like vision recognition in the future. Already much of
the tech that people use today, from the computer mouse to text-to-speech
software to predictive text, even the typewriter, has its roots in disability
research.
Audible arguably owes its
existence to blind people, and Nuance, the voice technology company once used
to power Apple’s Siri, was born from disability research, executives from that
company told me. Necessity is the mother of invention, and the deaf and
visually impaired are technology’s unlikely pioneers.
“We have evolved to process
speech and language,” says Tony Allen, a former lecturer at Nottingham Trent
University who was working on speech-enabled systems and automated online-form
filling for people with disabilities as early as 1998, predating Amazon’s Alexa
by 16 years. “We need to adapt computers to us rather than adapting us to
computers.” Developing tech for people who are blind, deaf or paralyzed can
help push research further in that direction, he adds.
Today’s souped-up hearing
aids are already finding pockets of mainstream adoption. Apple’s wireless
AirPods have a feature for people who are hard of hearing called Live Listen,
which lets them use an iPhone microphone to hear conversations in a noisy room.
People with perfectly good hearing have exploited the feature for
covert listening.
Starkey Hearing Technologies
started in 1970 as a hearing-aid manufacturer in Eden Prairie, Minnesota. Now
it’s launching what it calls the world’s first smart hearing aid, a sleek and
tiny device that tracks steps, detects falls and can translate more than 20
languages. Adding all those extra features “is how hearing technologies will
break into the mainstream,” says Starkey’s technical director, Paul Lamb, who
is a hearing aid user.
Katina uses Seeing AI to
read handwritten cards and to count the change in her purse. Robin Spinks, who
is partially sighted, uses the app to read the menu when he visits a
restaurant. “I do it really discreetly so I don’t look different from anyone
else,” Spinks says, adding that the app reads directly to an Apple AirPod in
his ear. “It’s an incredibly normalizing effect.”
Another blind person has
used the app to narrate subtitles from a foreign language movie, while another
points his phone at the TV during soccer matches so it can read him the latest
score, Shaikh says. Shaikh hopes to one day use the app to recognize landmarks
while he walks down the street, like shops or new construction.
Shaikh, who is 37 and based
in London, helped spearhead Seeing AI in 2014 during a gathering of Microsoft
engineers.
Eventually they used
Microsoft’s deep-learning software, a popular approach to AI that uses layers
of data to help predict an outcome. They added their own training data to the
system, taking thousands of photographs of $10 bills so the app could recognize
money and currencies.
A recently added feature
allows users to swipe their fingers over a photo so they can “touch” the edges
of an object in the image like a table or a plant. They can now sense the edges
through tiny vibrations, known as haptic feedback, and sounds.
But there are meatier ways
that Shaikh could update his app.
I ask Katina if there are
certain other details that she would like to know about people she meets,
narrated to her privately. “Cleanliness,” she answers straightaway. “I find
that extremely important. Whether a person looks groomed. Well cared. They
might have patched or torn clothes, but be clean.”
Spinks wishes for richer
detail on the history of art, people or architecture around him. He describes
these visual clues as things that sighted people take for granted. “The number
one thing [blind] people want is parity with fully sighted people,” says
Spinks, who also works for the Royal National Institute of Blind people in the
U.K.
A colleague of Spinks’ who
is blind said he’d like an app that discreetly tells him if someone is
attractive or not. “That’s a genuine request,” says Spinks.
Would Microsoft imbue its AI
with such an ability? What about someone’s race or body shape?
“In general, we believe that
we should provide information that lets our customers make judgments,” Shaikh
says. “I don’t think it’s … you don’t want an App to be making the judgments
for you, because these are very personal things.”
That’s a noble sentiment,
but Seeing AI is already making personal judgements about age and emotion. And
while Shaikh says users can contact Microsoft with corrections, many will
simply trust what the algorithm tells them. Shaikh doesn’t rule out the system
identifying attractiveness or race down the line.
If it does, that could bring
blind people closer to the parity that Spinks hopes for, but it could also
throw up new complications around prejudice when such technology goes
mainstream. During our interview, Katina starts to walk back her request for
insight into tidiness when she recalls an encounter with a man in her local
park.
“We got into conversation,
and it was perfectly nice and normal,” she says. As they said their goodbyes, a
nearby friend revealed that Katina wouldn’t have spoken to the man if she could
have seen what he looked like. “He was filthy,” the friend said.
“But he was nice. Perfectly
nice,” Katina remembers. “That taught me a lesson.”
Submitted by Sarah Smith
By Sean P. Means
Published: March 8, 2019 in the Salt Lake Tribune
Visually impaired music
lovers and their companions got to experience the opera this week at a special
dress-rehearsal event of Utah Opera’s production of Mozart’s “The Magic Flute.”
Guests on Wednesday got a
chance before the show to feel props and fabric samples from the production’s
costumes and learn about the set design. Translations of the opera’s
supertitles in Braille and large-print copies of the opera’s synopsis were
available — as were headsets through which guests could hear a translator give
a play-by-play description of the action on stage.
Utah Opera holds this event
every year, collaborating with Moran Eye Center and the Utah Council of the Blind.
The Utah State
Library for the Blind and Disabled has Braille-translated supertitle scripts and libretti available for
checkout. Contact Marie Parker at the library, 801-715-6789, to sign up for the
service.
Performances for “The Magic
Flute” are Saturday at 7:30 p.m., Monday and Wednesday at 7 p.m., Friday, March
15, at 7:30 p.m., and Sunday, March 17, at 2 p.m. Tickets, from $36 to $114, are
available at arttix.artsaltlake.org.
Submitted by Sarah Smith
By Lauren Bennett
Published: April 8, 2019 in the Deseret News
SALT LAKE CITY — Emory Jensen, a 10-year-old
fourth-grader, ran her fingers across a wall covered in art work as she walked
through an art exhibit — something that would typically get a child in trouble
or kicked out.
But for Emory, who is visually impaired and
colorblind, she said she sees in part with her hands.
Emory wasn't kicked out because it wasn't at
a typical art museum, but at the fully immersive art experience called "dreamscapes," which
uses different sounds, smells and textures in the artwork it displays.
"It's good because we can all just feel
it and not it's just stuff, we can only look at," she said. "I think
it's awesome because then we have the ability to see it."
Emory visited the art attraction Monday at
Gateway with Utah Schools for the Deaf and the Blind as part of a field trip
designed to help expose art to blind students.
"Most of these students probably have
never been able to go to an art museum or really get to experience what art is
because everything is hidden away and behind glass and is hands-off, don't
touch," said Kate Borg, director of blind campus programs. "And so,
for them to be here today that they get to interact with everything and touch
it and experience, and those that have some vision to get right up close to see
it has just been phenomenal."
The 30 students, who ranged from preschool to
fifth grade, said this was the "best field trip ever," according to
Borg.
The art project was created by the Utah Arts
Alliance, a Utah nonprofit with a mission to "foster the arts in all forms
in order to create an aware, empowered and connected community," according
to a news release.
"I think for the students, it has been
really great, but I think it's also been really important for the grown-ups,
for the teachers, for the staff to see; 'hey this is how we can make art
accessible,'" she said. "It's been really neat for the people that
work here."
For some staff, it was emotional to watch the
children experience the art.
"I cried, I cried a couple of
times," said Andrea Silva, "dreamscapes" manager. "Being
with the kids, they just took to all of the art exactly how it was intended,
which was fully immersive, looking at the textures and the different sounds and
smells and all sorts of stuff, so it was pretty emotional for me."
Silva, who said she's seen thousands of
patrons since its opening, had never seen a visitor so engaged with the art.
She took some of the children on the tour of the attraction and made sure to
highlight rooms where smell or touching was a focus.
More than 50 Utah artists worked on the
project, and it was originally intended to open for one month, from March 15 to
April 15, but Silva said it's been extended into May.
Art is typically focused on visuals, but
"dreamscapes" is aimed at other senses as well. Silva said sight,
touch and smell are a big part of it, as well as emotional senses.
One room Silva wants to add to the art
project is one that shows what it's like to be colorblind.
"Where the room's divided into four
pieces and you stand in the center and each wall is identical, but you're
looking at what it's like to be colorblind … it's just as important to show
people what sensory deprivation can do."
The students wanted to give back to the
exhibit and decided they would create an art project as a thank you to the
workers.
Borg said the effort will include braille,
and each of the six classes that attended will create a separate project.
Accessibility for art is
crucial, Borg said.
"We read research after
research that talks about creativity and arts being so important for children
in their development and growth," she said. "And just because a child
is blind or visually impaired doesn't mean that they shouldn't have the same
access. They absolutely need that same access; we just have to be a little more
creative in making sure we provide that."
Editor’s note: We are reprinting this recipe from last month’s
newsletter because some of the fractions used a symbol that did not come
through correctly in the various formats. Thank you to our readers for letting
us know of the error and for your patience.
Yield: 6 Servings
4 boneless skinless chicken breasts
1 large onion, diced
2 carrots, peeled and sliced
4 tsp minced garlic
1/3 cup flour
64 oz chicken broth
15 oz can cannellini beans, rinsed and drained
1 Tbsp chicken bouillon
1 tsp dried parsley
1 tsp dried basil
1/2 tsp dried oregano
1/2 tsp dried thyme
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
2 bay leaves
10 lasagna noodles, broken into 1-2” pieces
2 cups half and half
3 cups of chopped, fresh spinach
1 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1. Chop onion, slice carrots, chop fresh spinach.
2. Whisk together flour with chicken broth.
3. Put all ingredients except noodles, half and half and cheese into slow
cooker.
4. Cook on low 4-6 hours.
5. Chop or shred chicken.
6. Break noodles in pieces and add noodles, half and half, spinach and
Parmesan cheese.
7. Cook on low another 30-45 minutes, until noodles are tender (you may
need to add a bit of hot water if it’s too thick)
8. Garnish with mozzarella cheese
1. Chop onions, slice carrots and chop fresh spinach.
2. Whisk together flour with chicken broth.
3. Put all ingredients except noodles, half and half and cheese into gallon
size, freezer safe bag.
4. Label and lay bag flat in freezer.
5. Get bag out of freezer the night before you plan to cook it.
6. In the morning, place contents of bag into slow cooker.
7. Cook on low 4-6 hours.
8. Shred chicken.
9. Add noodles, half and half, spinach and Parmesan cheese, cook on low an
additional 30-45 minutes, until noodles are tender.
10. Garnish with mozzarella cheese.
Donni Mitchell volunteers in the UCB
Office at DSBVI, 250 N 1950 W, Salt Lake City, UT, from 12:00 to 3:30 p.m. on
Wednesdays. If you wish to make a purchase, we recommend you give her a call at
801-520-3766 to be sure she is there when you visit to purchase cab coupons,
t-shirts, screwdriver/hammers, 20/20 pens, signature guides, or measuring cups
and spoons.
We are always looking for articles,
book reviews, or interesting tidbits of information from our readers or other
interested persons. The deadline for submitting items for publication is the
1st of the month, e.g. the deadline for the December newsletter is November
1st. You may e-mail any articles you wish to submit to newsletterucb@gmail.com or
send Braille or print to UCB Flier, PO Box 1415, Bountiful, UT 84011-1415;
please allow extra time for processing Braille or print.
If you have questions or concerns for
any board member or to be placed on the agenda of a board meeting, e-mail ucb.board@gmail.com or leave a message on the Utah Connection, and you will receive a
timely reply.
Members are invited and encouraged to
attend meetings of the Board of Directors. These are typically held the fourth
Monday of each month at 4:45 p.m. at DSBVI in Conference Room R (in the north
hallway), except as noted.
·
Monday,
May 20, 2019
·
Monday,
June 24, 2019
·
Monday,
July 22, 2019 (may be cancelled, so check the Utah Connection for updates)
·
Monday,
August 26, 2019
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