In my own work with blind and visually impaired students, I often had to help their teachers change the mode of assignments or texts, particularly for those students who could not use magnification. I was often astonished by the ingenuity they showed in providing the information through audio or in a tactile form, which I always found quite difficult to do myself. Changing the mode of this assignment brought up some of the same difficulties. The picture I took of my bag at the beginning of the term was a point in time, and attempting to show a single point in time with many objects through an audible mode through sound would probably just sound like a cacophony to the listener. I could make the audible mode short, but probably ought to avoid making it extremely short in an attempt to replicate the nature of a photograph. Having considered the transformation, I attempted to show both the contents of the bag at the moment and the history of technology in it. The audio starts with the oldest devices which I carried some years ago.
These were two devices designed to be used by Braille readers, one called the Braille ‘N Speak, while the other and newer device is called the Braille Sense. The devices originate from two different portions of the stereo field, because they were, like much of the technology of their time, machine to perform specific and separate functions. The history of the technology which I have carried starts with these two devices, each of which had some very basic functions including writing text, displaying that text in braille, reading text and occasionally connecting to the internet. The soundscape then goes on to show the laptop computer as the next step, starting up from both channels since it incorporates all the functions of the previous technologies. What the older devices could do, the laptop running Windows could do in one device, though usually for a shorter period of time on a charge. Finally, the last three sounds are those of Apple’s mobile devices, which I now carry in the bag. These both shrink the technology and are able to do more.
The sounds indicate not the starting of the product but the product’s connection with the outside world, in its ability to notify of communications and capture photographs. This also connects to my work in IT, since that work involves a great deal of communication. It is worth noting that, unlike photography, the display of devices is not very simple through sound. Chargers and other instruments make sounds which are fairly generic, and may therefore be more suited to being displayed visually or through a tactile mode.
