Program Helps Blind Use Pcs Computer Training May Boost Employment Options

Mariane Thiede prefers the deep reading voice of Rocko.

Rocko’s synthesized voice will read anything on the blind woman’s computer - e-mail from friends, news articles from the Internet, even books she has scanned into her computer.

The program JAWS - which stands for Job Access With Speech - transforms a PC and a speech synthesizer into a powerful tool for the blind. “Rocko” is one of the voices offered.

With JAWS, she can work with spreadsheets, word processors and just about any document that comes up on a computer screen.

It’s a fairly new program for the region. Thiede teaches JAWS at the Lilac Blind Foundation to anyone who wants to learn. The foundation showcased the program Friday afternoon at an open house.

“I read all my mail with it,” Thiede said.

Before computers, Thiede needed a sighted person to read things to her.

“JAWS really opens a wide area for the blind to get more things on their own,” Thiede said. “You start feeling really inept when people do everything for you all the time. Using the computer is like a power rush you can get all on your own.”

The Blind Foundation invested $50,000 into the computer lab almost a year ago, and staff members honed their skills before going public with the new programs.

“Now we’re ready,” said Gene Domanico, foundation spokesman.

Very few blind people use computers, maybe 50 out of every 1,000, Domanico said.

“The people who are blind and want to work have high unemployment rates,” he said.

Computer training, he hopes, will make a big difference.

“Now the door is open to them,” he said.

The foundation also has a program called MAGic (Magnified in Color) that can magnify a computer screen up to 20 times for people with impaired vision.

One woman, Florence Boutwell, used the MAGic program offered at the foundation to finish her novel, “Spokane Valley Days,” due out this winter.

It wasn’t always so convenient, like in the 1980s when Thiede went back to school.

“It was a nightmare in college,” Thiede said. “I couldn’t get the information. The technology just wasn’t there.”

She eventually became a financial adviser and a real estate agent, but she still has her challenges.

She often gets around by bus and walking downtown. For the past several years, she said, street people loitering downtown have harassed her and her guide dog, Lapis, almost daily as she walks on the sidewalk.

Fed up, she got on the Internet recently to look up Washington state laws on disabilities. Thiede and her husband, Tom Schimmels, want to make downtown Spokane a safer place for the blind.

“In the last two years we said, enough,” Thiede said. “We want a loitering law and no panhandling.”

She is still in the research phase, but if history is any indication, Thiede won’t stop until she gets what she wants.

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The Lilac Blind Foundation, at 1212 N. Howard in Spokane, can be reached by calling (509) 328-9116.