Seeing Through Technology
Imagine, if you will, waking up one day to find that the world around you has gone dark; that all you knew was gone, replaced by nothingness. A scary thought, isn’t it? Being cut off from the world of sight, unable to do the things you once loved, see the people you cared for. This was the world my mother found herself in, but fortunately for her, this is a world in which technology, and a proper understanding of it, could reunite her with it all. Proper digital literacy has changed the world in a number of ways, doing incredible things such as uniting divided peoples and bringing the disabled into the larger world around them. With proper understanding and use of our current technology, we are able to create a connection between people far closer than ever before, allowing them to bond in ways we’ve never thought possible. This is a level of connection that I and my mother hold close to our hearts, as it has changed our lives for the better.
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And through all the connections I made online and through technology, I still to this day feel that the strongest connection I made was to my mother. The reason this connection through technology was so important is due to the fact that my mother was born with a degenerative eye condition, and as a result has been blind since I was born. For most of my childhood this was no issue, however, as I would see her on a daily basis and such. When I was young, I had never needed a technological connection, as my mother was always right there when I needed her. Around the age of twelve though, my parents divorced, with my father winning custody over my brother and I, my mother leaving to go stay with friends. Due to the arrangements that followed, I would rarely see and spend time with my mother through my teenage years, with our most frequent contact having been through phone calls.
The problem with this was that many nights I would already be asleep by the time she called me, or I would simply miss her call and have no interaction with my mother for the entire day. While texting during this time had become commonplace, my mother’s inability to see meant she could neither send texts herself nor read any text I sent her, which greatly limited my connection to my mother compared with the other people in my life. This coupled with a father who was never keen on the idea of my brother and I spending extra time with our mother lead to the sad situation where I found myself in a world where I could connect with anyone at the push of a button except for my own mother. We found ways around this when we could, such as having someone read her texts and compose her own, but there were still times when she found herself without someone through which to use the tech available to her, and our communication was never quite stable.
This all changed, however, with the advent of the voiceover technology that was introduced to make everything from computers to phones more accessible to the blind. It all started one weekend I had been spending with my mom, when a package arrived at the door. “Its finally here!” she had nearly shouted from the kitchen as she tore open her package. “Whats finally here?” I had curiously asked as I had walked into the kitchen myself. As her response, my mother turned and proudly presented me with a new iphone, cased in pink and ready for use. “Wait what? Why did you get that? How on earth do you plan on using it?” I asked in quick succession, almost sure my mother had been taken in by some kind of online scam. |
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“Just wait, you’ll see!” She said with excitement as she let the phone charge. For the next half hour we sat watching movies together, my mother refusing to tell me what was going on. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity of waiting, she decided it was time to show me what she had bought.
“So you bought yourself a smartphone that you can’t even use?” I asked sarcastically, rolling my eyes as the phone booted up. My attitude changed entirely when her phone spoke “hello brandy!” upon booting. “Whoa wait it talks!?” I had asked, shocked.
“It talks, it reads, it spells out words for me, it does everything! Its called voiceover, and I made sure it came preinstalled when I bought the phone!” she said proudly. After some quick set up she began getting used to the phone and all its features, testing it by sending out a few texts to let people know she was “hip” now and had use of the technology. She even visited the internet for the first time in years afterwards, getting used to google and all the different sites she had at her disposal, quickly falling in love with online shopping and making use of it to order herself audio books. Before long a package showing up to our door containing a rented audio book was a regular occurrence. She even began using online sites to help her and I pick out horror movies to watch.
“So you bought yourself a smartphone that you can’t even use?” I asked sarcastically, rolling my eyes as the phone booted up. My attitude changed entirely when her phone spoke “hello brandy!” upon booting. “Whoa wait it talks!?” I had asked, shocked.
“It talks, it reads, it spells out words for me, it does everything! Its called voiceover, and I made sure it came preinstalled when I bought the phone!” she said proudly. After some quick set up she began getting used to the phone and all its features, testing it by sending out a few texts to let people know she was “hip” now and had use of the technology. She even visited the internet for the first time in years afterwards, getting used to google and all the different sites she had at her disposal, quickly falling in love with online shopping and making use of it to order herself audio books. Before long a package showing up to our door containing a rented audio book was a regular occurrence. She even began using online sites to help her and I pick out horror movies to watch.
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What followed after that was plenty of questions about popular web pages, internet traditions and customs, so on and so forth as I taught my mother all about the digital side of the world around us. This would once again prove, as shown by Hawisher and Selfe, the digital literacy and knowledge can flow upstream in a family, as I taught my mother everything she needed to know.
“And do you know what the best part is?” she asked me happily after a bit of time had been spent playing with her new phone.
“What's that?” I replied
“Now I can talk to you anytime at all! And I can read all your texts!” she told me with glee in her voice. And text she most certainly did, because as soon as I had left for the day she texted me and my brother, loving her newfound connectivity with the world and with her children. She was once again a part of her community, volenteering again, orgonizing parties, and better connecting with her family back in Maryland, who were delighted to now be in regular contact with my mother once again.
While I’ve always been big on technology and connecting with people all over the world, I never truly got the chance to stop and think about just how massive a connection like this is. Seeing how my mother could finally connect with the world around her through technology gave me pause to think about just how much of a boon these machines we have in our lives really are. Not only did it allow my mom a means of communication she had never even dreamed of, but it also helped me bridge the gap between her and I, and all of a sudden, I could talk to my mom every day again, just like when I was a kid. I can also send her funny pictures that she can’t quite see and little emojis of wrapped candy over and over again to screw with her voiceover, just to make her laugh. I think my mother herself put it best during my interview with her years later: “... Im able to have access to the things everyone else has access to, my friends and such. … it’s just wonderful.”
“And do you know what the best part is?” she asked me happily after a bit of time had been spent playing with her new phone.
“What's that?” I replied
“Now I can talk to you anytime at all! And I can read all your texts!” she told me with glee in her voice. And text she most certainly did, because as soon as I had left for the day she texted me and my brother, loving her newfound connectivity with the world and with her children. She was once again a part of her community, volenteering again, orgonizing parties, and better connecting with her family back in Maryland, who were delighted to now be in regular contact with my mother once again.
While I’ve always been big on technology and connecting with people all over the world, I never truly got the chance to stop and think about just how massive a connection like this is. Seeing how my mother could finally connect with the world around her through technology gave me pause to think about just how much of a boon these machines we have in our lives really are. Not only did it allow my mom a means of communication she had never even dreamed of, but it also helped me bridge the gap between her and I, and all of a sudden, I could talk to my mom every day again, just like when I was a kid. I can also send her funny pictures that she can’t quite see and little emojis of wrapped candy over and over again to screw with her voiceover, just to make her laugh. I think my mother herself put it best during my interview with her years later: “... Im able to have access to the things everyone else has access to, my friends and such. … it’s just wonderful.”
All images royalty free taken from pixabay.com