From: "Nicole Massey" 


"John W. Kennedy"  wrote in message 
news:92d1b335-0ce4-4ef8-9cc4-bb1317cc7919@u9g2000vbm.googlegroups.com...
On Nov 27, 7:59 pm, "Nicole Massey"  wrote:
> "StarFuryG7"  wrote in message
>
> news:5bfadb03-2cfa-4039-a09c-ee74b2f9181e@f17g2000vbz.googlegroups.com...
> On Nov 24, 8:48 pm, "John W. Kennedy" 
> wrote:
>
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> > On Nov 23, 2:41 pm, deneb...@deepthot.org (Jay Denebeim) wrote:
>
> > > In article
> > > <1535d503-dfce-4694-94c5-846c8c16c...@b12g2000vbg.googlegroups.com>,
>
> > > StarFuryG7  wrote:
> > > >On Nov 8, 9:14 pm, "Nicole Massey"  wrote:
> > > >One of the things that's
> > > >always bothered me about "Covert Affairs" is that one of the main
> > > >characters is supposed to be something of a computer whiz even though
> > > >he's blind, which I've found to be incredibly unrealistic.
>
> > > She's not the first person. Software engineering/computer
> > > administration is one of the traditional things a non-sited person can
> > > do really well. Of course in these days of GUIs its a bit harder.
> > > Plain text helps I would imagine.
>
> > Back in the old days, IBM mainframe provisions for blind users were
> > off-the-shelf options, such as braille adaptors for standard printers.
>
> > But modern GUI frameworks do a pretty good job; text-to-speech is
> > standard on Mac OS X (and iOS, too), and if Windows doesn't have it,
> > well, shame on them. Of course, an individual app developer can screw
> > it up, but most government departments would never pass software that
> > did that.
>
> What you people seem to be missing here, since none of you appear to
> be viewers of the show I mentioned, is that the character I referenced
> has to move fast, sometimes often, and that the lives of agents out n
> the field depend on his getting things done as quickly as possible. It
> seems to me that as a person who's blind, he's probably not the best
> qualified for that kind of a position.
> ---
> You'd be surprised how fast a blind person can move about and do things in
> an environment in which he or she has control of the space. Of course I
> can't comment on the show, as I've not heard of it, much less seen it or
> more accurately listened to it.
> But since you said nothing about needs for mobility in your first post,
> instead just commenting on the character being a computer whiz, we had no
> indication of any need to be able to move around, did we? Please put the
> goalposts back where you found them.

It's on USA Network, one of their many character-oriented light
dramas. It stars Piper Pirabo as a novice CIA agent, and Christopher
Gorham as her blind, computer-whiz handler (entirely realistic) who
occasionally goes into the field, and, yes, when he does that, things
do sometimes get a little unrealistic -- but what blind TV hero
doesn't have that failing? (On the other hand, a lifetime ago, I knew
Harry Krents, who could do some pretty incredible things when he
wanted to, and he usually did.) It's between seasons right now (like
most USA-Network shows, it runs multiple short seasons per year), and
I don't know whether the show has a descriptive track -- being action-
oriented, it's probably impossible to follow it without one.
---
If it doesn't have one now, and it airs during prime time, it'll have one in 
the next year or two, as all prime time shows, broadcast or cable, are 
federally mandated to have them and also captioning now, on a fiarly tight 
implementation schedule.
And yes, this will also propogate to webcasts, too. 




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