Gadgets make big difference

The Wow! Factor

By VIRGINIA WINDER - Taranaki Daily News

Deep in the night, Lance Girling-Butcher lies awake with a pounding headache and a dilemma.

The blind  man needs to take  paracetamol, but doesn't want to wake  his wife, Ali, and is wondering whether  to go it alone.

The 67-year-old chooses the solo approach and heads for the medicine cabinet. He feels around and finds what he thinks are painkillers, but decides to check. Like a spy in a Bond movie, Girling-Butcher uses his phone to photograph the box. Within seconds, a robotic voice reads the label out loud.

"It was the wrong one, and then I found the right one, so it was reassuring, because I wasn't taking blood pressure pills that don't belong to me instead of Panadol," he says.

The device at the heart of this story is a $4500 Nokia N82 cellphone paid for by ACC.

"You cannot buy them in New Zealand," Girling-Butcher says. "They are imported by a supplier especially for the blind. He puts all the extra software in them, including Talks, Loadstone and also the knfbReader."

The last application is what ensured the New Plymouth District councillor got a handle on the label. It's also helping him keep on top of his council reading.

On his home computer, he has screen reader software called Jaws (Job Access With Speech), but that's not always enough. When the former editor of the Taranaki Daily News is at council meetings, documents can be tabled on the day. With his phone, he can take a photo of the page or pages and immediately listen to the words through a Bluetooth earpiece. It also helps him keep up with - and even ahead of - meeting proceedings.

"I chair the disabilities issues working party, so I can put my agenda into here," he taps the phone, "and have it playing in the background and prompting me what I want to do next."

Each week, with the help of technology, he chews through about 200 A4 pages of agendas and other documents.

At the start of the month, he hadn't received a digital copy of a document about services, so took pictures with his phone of each page and listened to the metallic voice read it back to him.

"This is the smallest portable scanner you can buy. It will read other things. It will read CDs and even wine- bottle labels. Nobody can give me a bum wine now."

Another revelation has been reading mail.

"I read our American Express account and I noticed we were paying two insurances."

Further investigation revealed that one could be useful.

"It transpired that we actually have insurance for loss of eyesight and loss of limbs, which I had forgotten all about. It's two-and-a-half years since the accident that's caused this problem in this eye, but we're going to have a go. It's worth $100,000 an eye, but I can only claim one eye."

Girling-Butcher has had glaucoma in his right eye since his 40s and this didn't respond to treatment and got steadily worse.

"That's one of the reasons I'm blind, because my right eye is much worse than my left."

Eventually, his left eye also began to deteriorate because of another ailment that caused it to go cloudy. He retired as editor in early 2006 and, in July that year, had a corneal transplant in his left eye that was supposed to fix the problem. But on November 4 that year, Girling-Butcher walked down a friend's driveway and into a branch. It scraped his eye, leaving behind a fungus.

"Because I was on steroids to prevent the rejection of the cornea, it made the perfect breeding ground for this fungus. It took hold."

After many months of battling the invader, Girling-Butcher learnt the damage was irreparable and he was facing life as a blind man. He can detect light, but can no longer see people's faces or read. Instead, he listens.

"What other people see, I hear, and what they hear, I also hear."

It would normally be a straightforward switch, from visual to aural senses, but Girling-Butcher is completely deaf in his left ear. That was caused by the removal of a tumour from inside his skull 12 years ago.

Thanks to even more new technology, he is wired for sound. A special hearing aid sits over his right ear and feeds a processor and small plastic tube in his left ear. "I am now able to hear sounds on this side - not perfectly, but sufficiently well that I get a bit of stereo so I can hear what's going on around me."

He can also hear his phone and all its sound applications.

Because it has Talks, he can hear his texts and, if he chooses to, can surf the internet and listen to emails.

He also has other sounds.

"When you are blind, there is so little to entertain you. You just can't sit the way I used to and look at people or scenery. That's why I've got a talking book on there and why I've got music on there and the radio."

These have been invaluable for doctor waiting rooms, but now he can also scan and read a magazine.

"I've done that. I don't know what I'm reading until I start reading it. You pick up some interesting bits of information. I was reading about a substitute for tampons the other day."

Which was perhaps not quite as useful to him as the Loadstone GPS programme. This has enabled him to save points of interest into his phone to create a map of New Plymouth and even Pukekura Park.

People often see Girling-Butcher out walking with two dogs - the family's black Labrador, Rosie, and his guide dog, Orca, a golden lab crossed with a bit of retriever.

Just the other day, Loadstone and Orca helped him walk from his central city home through the park and across Coronation Avenue to his daughter's Awanui Street home in 45 minutes. He has mapped all the way points in the CBD, so when he's out and about, he knows exactly where he is in relation to roads and buildings.

Through his Bluetooth earpiece, he is fed information every 15 seconds, but only he can hear it.

"It means people aren't hearing this funny voice going down the street saying you're 230 metres from the Devon Street, Liardet Street corner and you're travelling in a direction of x number of degrees."

Loadstone doesn't work inside houses, but does transmit into cars.

While on the open road, Girling- Butcher receives constant updates on direction, altitude, speed and what streets or roads are coming up. "Al hates it - she's driving along and I can say, Why are you going around this corner, or you're going too fast or too slow. It makes me a backseat driver."

She felt warmer towards Loadstone when the open source software helped the couple find the way to Hamilton hospital after a trip to Raglan.

"It gives you independence and a feeling of self-worth because you are doing things for yourself and I hope that other people can see you do things and it motivates them to try."

Having role models in the blind movement is incredibly important, he believes.

"That's what keeps me going. I heard about a blind guy flying halfway around the world with talking instruments. I thought, if you can do that, you can do anything."

The blind man, Englishman Miles Hilton-Barber, has completed a list of feats that would challenge most sighted people (see Freaky Facts).

Then Girling-Butcher met Hamilton man Bob Wicks, who had a phone with Talks on it.

"He was holding down a job and using the software. And I thought, if he can do it, I can do it.

"For a reasonably technologically adept person, there are so many aids now, it just makes a huge difference."

He pays tribute to the Royal New Zealand Foundation for the Blind, whose staff set up the phone and its applications for him.

"ACC has been pretty good, too, in providing me this phone and the Jaws programme.

"I was pretty capable on the computer before I went blind, so I thought, why shouldn't I get cracking again?"

Girling-Butcher is on a number of community organisations and council committees.