During my schooling I received special education for 12 years (2 years in kindergarten, 6 in primary, and the first 4 years of secondary) at the I.P.E.S (“Institut Provincial d’Enseignement Spécial”) of Ghlin; today it is the C.P.E.S.M (“Centre Provincial d’Enseignement Spécial de Mons”), in the “TTBC” section — that is, “Office Work and Accounting”, where things went relatively well.
Then, between ’96 and ’98, since that institution did not offer classes beyond that level, I headed toward a curriculum at the ETH of Saint-Ghislain, in the “Public Administration” section, a regular school, where I was the only blind student among 1,700, and that too went really well. Then, from ’99, I completely changed direction and shifted toward computing.
I took a night class training comprising 6 modules at the Franciscan College of Tournai, where I was the only blind student among 3,500. It was a general computing training: Windows, Word, Excel, Access, Internet. I had some problems with Excel and Access, and finally I had to skip the PowerPoint module which, at the time, was entirely inaccessible for me.
From that moment I really focused on every piece of technology made by and for the visually impaired. I like to help other blind persons who need it, in fields such as computing, internet, mobile telephony, multimedia (especially its “audio” field), new technologies (connected or not), and adapted or adaptable hardware — all that on an entirely voluntarily basis, so that as many persons in difficulty as possible can access as wide a range of tools.
– But how do you earn a living if you only have it as a hobby?
In Belgium blind people receive from the State an ARR (“Allocation de Remplacement de Revenus”) and an AI (“Allocation d’Intégration”). It’s true that my life, like all blind people’s lives, is complicated. But I have an advantage by being blind from birth: I have no regrets because I never experienced anything else, whereas someone who becomes blind after years of normal life will have to cope with enormous difficulties, because they will constantly remember what they used to see without being able to really mourn it.
Moreover, from a certain age, such persons can no longer learn Braille because they did not have the innate sense of touch. This sense allows one to distinguish the Braille dots, their number, their position, etc., but can only be acquired up to the age of 25. In addition it requires enormous intellectual concentration which quickly becomes exhausting. Whereas I can read Braille without any fatigue.
– And for moving around, do you use a guide dog, for example?
No, I cannot because I am allergic to animal fur. But beware of preconceived ideas: a guide dog is not a GPS – it will not take you to new places other than ones it’s familiar with. It merely eases your movement. Here again the life of a blind person is not easy every day. When you walk with a white cane and yellow vest, you must constantly make enormous neurological effort, and if there is the slightest grain of sand on your path, for instance a place where there are street works, you lose the feelings you had and you find yourself lost for a moment.
And even close persons do not realize the enormous difficulty you face even to cover only two meters.
– Can you tell us about your webmaster activity? I suppose it’s not easy at all to make a website without seeing what’s on the screen.
In fact the project came from the Internet training I took in evening classes. The teacher asked us to design a mini-site of 3 or 4 pages but with “our vision” of the Internet. I gave him a website mock-up of about twenty pages but the essential characteristic was that when you clicked on a page a sound file read its content. The teacher told me he would never have dared imagine this solution, and asked me to call him when I would start designing a site so he could help me. And indeed thanks to him I was able to begin building my first sites, because he taught me to code directly in HTML using the Notepad text editor.
Because you must know that at the time editors such as Microsoft FrontPage demanded many graphical interactions — for example placing an image in a page — which were not possible with only the keyboard, and the solution for me was to learn to code, and that is how I could launch sites fairly easily.
Currently I rely on HTML5 for everything concerning audio tags and this solution proves more reliable than the old methods like Windows Media Player etc. And, icing on the cake, you can also read them on a mobile phone.
The first of the three main sites I created is called DOS Collection. It has lots of software antiques, applications and OSes of yesteryear, and especially the different versions corresponding to those software, because many people use somewhat obsolete systems and seek the old versions of programs they want to continue using. There are indeed sites that claim to do the same but in the end they only propose the new versions of the software.
The second site, dedicated to visual impairment in general, is called Monochrome Web and the third, which is a big piece with more than 300 GB of data hosted, is named Sonochrome Web. This last site is really devoted to all things audio. I have my old radio broadcasts, a huge number of audio sagas of the comedic type and even the podcast “Série Noire Pour Une Canne Blanche” in which a lady recounts little anecdotes from the life of a blind person.
– Thank you Stéphane for all this information about your activities. But how did you finally come to get interested in the world of Linux?
Kind of by chance. I did not want to migrate to Windows 11 and I was looking for an alternative solution when, a few months ago, a friend told me about Linux Mint but without really knowing whether I could access it in the absence of accessibility tools. So I signed up on their forum, then on those of Debian Facile and Ubuntu. I started to ask the difficult questions and got only evasive responses except one person on the Debian Facile forum who told me about the Emmabuntüs distribution which was precisely looking for blind people to run tests. He then put me directly in contact with Patrick and thus we started our collaboration.
– What were your first impressions of Emmabuntüs?
What I immediately appreciated with your distribution is that I don’t need anyone to install the system thanks to the vocalization of the installation step. Because there is nothing more frustrating for a blind person than not being able to install the system by themselves. But there, I succeeded in creating a virtual machine with VMware, then installing Emmabuntüs on it, and at first I managed to test the distribution with that setup. And it was a very good experience for me, especially since I like to learn a little more every day. And then it is enriching to be able to have several environments, and in fact I also work under macOS because the Apple universe is totally accessible to me.
It must be said that Apple is one of the first computing companies to consider blind and visually impaired persons and to have made a major breakthrough in 2005 with VoiceOver.
Moreover they implemented the screen reader in all their devices starting from the iPhone 3GS, which allowed a fully blind person to have total access to their phone, their computer, etc.
And for us that was an enormous advance because before we only had Windows and its screen reader JAWS which is not free (between €1,500 and €2,500 depending on the versions).
– But then why commit to Emmabuntüs if you are perfectly satisfied with the Apple solution?
One reason in particular is to be able to run most of the old laptops I still have at home, which are sometimes in museum condition, but which are at the end of their life under Windows, and also it’s for me an additional experience and maybe a system I will someday adopt, given that Windows 10 has now a very limited future. In fact, for me any experience in computing is good to take, whatever the system, and developers must understand that the less effort they make in this domain, the less they will reach an audience which needs these kinds of solutions.
I really liked in my first exchanges with Patrick when he told me that the Emmabuntüs collective had developed this version for the visually impaired and non-seeing but that he wanted to ensure that a blind person could actually use it without needing their eyes, of course. For me that is a very good attitude, unfortunately little shared. Often we report bugs to developers but they don’t take them into account, and so what they developed only leads to false hopes.
The inverse also exists. Some applications are accessible even though they were developed without taking this problem into account. For example the site where I can order my coffee pods is accessible even though the lady who developed it didn’t intend it. But she was happy to learn that actually it was. When I told her and even suggested some improvements, adding text to pictograms, she did them. Conversely, I had tested a Brother mini-scanner which was quite great but worked with three buttons, each with 2 functions, and I had suggested to the representative to add one or two sound beeps depending on the selected function. Unfortunately my request never came to fruition.
– What do you think of free software which allows among other things to study, modify and share source code?
Yes of course, but on condition that it does not become an occasion to remove accessibility. For example when Skype was bought by Microsoft, strangely it ceased to be accessible. And now Skype has been replaced by Teams which is even more complicated for us concerning navigation, but apparently for sighted people it isn’t very easy either! But we digress a bit: Microsoft is not really part of the free world.
– And Jitsi then?
Yes frankly I like this way of communicating and I use it more and more because it’s so easy for us already because of its simplicity. I had started using it some time ago with a blind colleague who introduced it to me precisely because Skype had just disappeared and we could no longer hold our group meetings between 5 and 10 people.
On the other hand the OpenOffice suite was long inaccessible and has only just begun to be so, whereas LibreOffice was much better, apart from the first window where you have to enter your name etc., but that is beginning to be resolved too. On the other hand Thunderbird — at least under Windows — does not offer adequate accessibility for us who primarily use a mail client rather than dedicated web mails. Now I need to test it under Emmabuntüs because we sometimes have good surprises when changing system. And that could be part of the reasons that will lead me one day to use only Linux.
In fact I will start to talk about Emmabuntüs around me because I see that many people have problems with Windows, and this could precisely be the solution since the system is very simple, and easy to access with shortcut keys.
It must be said that in Belgium, contrary to France, blind persons have the luck to have complete state aids for all tools like JAWS or Duxbury for embosser printers: you don’t have to put anything out of your wallet. But all isn’t perfect in Belgium either: the brand new station of Mons has some big accessibility shortcomings, like for example doors that open outward at the top of the stairs, missing tactile guidance, or assistance terminals on the platforms rather than at the entrance of the station.
– Now, how do you envisage cooperation between your community of visually impaired and non-seeing persons and Emmabuntüs in order to improve it further?
I think I will still find functions to add in terms of accessibility as I use the system more deeply, but I will begin by doing very thorough tests starting with the very long list of keyboard shortcuts to detect possible errors. But again, the fact that you can install it alone is very attractive. I think here of the counter-example of ACIAH-Linux which installs on Linux Mint but which cannot be installed blindlu! And moreover when you ask a question they send you to web pages with tons of links which for us are very complicated to browse and analyze.
– It must be particularly time-consuming?
Indeed. But Patrick talked to me at length about ChatGPT and it’s true that AI allows us to launch … much more intelligent searches! I also installed on my iPhone the free app Seeing AI, developed by and for the blind, which allows me to read text on the fly using the camera. For example I point it at a box of tea and it reads everything written on the box. Note: this app was originally developed by Microsoft for iOS! On the other hand there is another app Be My Eyes which was developed so that someone can help a blind person remotely when AI cannot help sufficiently. On the other hand, for assembling furniture, I don’t use the plan which is always complicated even visually. I first touch the piece of furniture on display in the store, and I picture the model in my head. Therefore I rely heavily on my memory, for example I memorize all the routes I must make daily.
– One of the difficulties I have encountered with accessibility is having to memorize a large number of shortcuts. How do you manage that?
In fact I memorize most of them but it’s part of things I remember instinctively. For years I memorized a lot of telephone numbers that I never forgot since at the time we did not yet have mobile phones, nor even fixed phones with menus. Whereas my wife, she, does not know my number by heart.
– Returning somewhat to accessibility in Emmabuntüs, until now we had no access to an embosser (braille printer) nor a braille display. How did that go for you?
Everything is functional. It was sufficient to plug the braille display into a USB port so that it was instantly detected once we checked the “braille support” parameter in Orca. For the braille printer – the embosser – it was a bit more complicated and Patrick made a small script to detect the connected printer model and to install the correct driver using the correct path. Patrick improved his script and I must rerun the tests, notably with other brands and models of displays.
– Stéphane, is there a question I did not ask but you would like to answer?
Not really a missing question but I would like here to pay posthumous tribute to a person who meant a lot to me. It is Luc Van Lancker (author of many books on programming languages [Eyrolles] and sharing his valuable pedagogical advice online) who was my instructor in the Internet training at the Franciscan College of Tournai. He was, in my eyes, not only an outstanding teacher (The first thing he told me, when I entered his class was: “I’m here to teach you a thousand things, but I hope above all you will teach me ten-thousand times more!”), regarding all the adapted hardware, special software environments related to blind persons, etc.). But above all he was an excellent friend who regularly visited me, then co-webmaster of my websites. Unfortunately he left us on 13 July 2022, and his memory will forever remain engraved in my heart.
– Thank you Stéphane for your time today and I hope we will travel a long path together in the company of Emmabuntüs
I hope so too because as I told Patrick in one of my last emails your collective has a human dimension and a spirit of mutual aid which are really very appreciable since this is not the case for everyone!
