Blindness Technology and Popular Culture:

Blindness

Technology and Popular Culture: Challenges and Opportunities for the Sight-Impaired

There is little denying the reality that popular culture is, in contemporary society, largely shaped by new developments in technology. It is an "environment of accelerated change, where the evolution of technology has become the primary force behind pop culture (Rudman, 2006). For the majority of people, the intersection of technology and popular culture can seem so seamless and ubiquitous as to be unnoticeable. Most, especially the younger generation, have fully adapted to a world of YouTube videos, blogging, virtual worlds, and 24-hour cell phone access. However, the fact that popular culture has become mired in technology, like the Internet, which can be a fundamentally visual medium, can present significant challenges for individuals who are blind or sight impaired. The purpose of this essay is to imagine, if only in a cursory fashion, how this world of popular culture must "look" to a blind person. In the final analysis, while technology is capable of enhancing the blind's perception of popular culture and their interaction within it, the blind will be unable to experience the Information Age schema of popular culture in the same kind of depth with which a sighted person can.

Digital technology has fundamentally altered popular culture and the way in which we interact with it. Major changes in the way that people, especially young people, are adapting to this sea of new technology. For example, life caching is the change in the way we use our brains; no longer do we try to remember everything, but rather simply work to remember how to find information (Rudman, 2006). Names, dates, addresses, places, events, and even memories are increasingly coded digitally, meaning that the ability to access that information is crucial. For the blind, or even the sight-impaired, access to this information can be difficult at best and impossible without clear technical concessions or adaptations of the available information. "Various aspects of the Internet, including shopping and socialization, are changing the concept of disability" by forcing the blind to consider how they can access these resources which are invariably designed to be accesses visually (Blair, 2006).

For a sighted person, a digital day in popular culture might start by checking email and perusing CNN.com and the latest blogs over a cop of coffee. Later, research for work is done with the help of Wikipedia or other online databases, while quietly watching user-generated videos on sites like YouTube. At the end of the day, said individual might use MapQuest to find local restaurants and Amazon to purchase entertainment. For the blind, many, if not all, of these resources are quite simply out of reach. Many websites make concessions to the blind and may design their sites with reader technology in mind, but these concessions will necessarily pale in comparison to the originals. The level of access that a blind person can hope to achieve from these otherwise important pop culture resources will be somewhat lessened when contrasted to the experience of sighted individuals. As a result of this reality, there "is growing concern about a 'digital divide'. This divide [...] refers to the space between those who access, and therefore use, new technologies and those who do not" (Blair, 2006).

Of course, significant strides are being made to harness the technical wonders of modern pop culture in order to help blind people better navigate this new world. For instance, the ubiquitous cell phone has been appropriated to create the "smallest text-to-speech reading device ever built, a device especially useful for people with impaired vision" (Greenfieldboyce, 2008). This technology allows blind people to snap pictures of objects with their phones, which are then analyzed by the phone software to interpret to the text or image for the user. This kind of technology permits previously undreamed of access for the blind, and improves the range of their day-to-day activities, but limits their interaction with popular culture.

One facet of contemporary pop culture, made possible by technology, is speed and rapid interaction with cultural mediums such as the Internet, cell phones, or simply signs and billboards. The blind cannot access and process this information as quickly as the rest of us can simply because they must rely on technical intermediaries to be granted a sliver of the same visual experience the majority of the population experiences. In the end, computers "and the Internet have the ability to change lives positively and link the isolated and marginalized, including people with learning disabilities [...] but the issue of accessibility is very important" (Blair, 2006).