科技如何帮我阅读TED英语演讲稿

　　简介：科技改变世界，但它更为盲人的生活带来前所未有的便利。联合国残疾人权利委员会主席Ron McCallum自幼失明。1987年，他拥有了第一台盲人专用电脑。由于有了电脑，有声读物(talking books)和志愿者们的帮助，他成为了一个贪婪的阅读者，同时也成为了一名律师和学者。

科技如何帮我阅读TED英语演讲稿

　　When I was about three or four years old, I remember my mum reading a story to me and my two big brothers, and I remember putting up my hands to feel the page of the book, to feel the picture they were discussing.

　　And my mum said, "Darling, remember that you can't see and you can't feel the picture and you can't feel the print on the page."

　　And I thought to myself, "But that's what I want to do. I love stories. I want to read." Little did I know that I would be part of a technological revolution that would make that dream come true.

　　I was born premature by about 10 weeks, which resulted in my blindness, some 64 years ago. The condition is known as retrolental fibroplasia, and it's now very rare in the developed world. Little did I know, lying curled up in my prim baby humidicrib in 1948 that I'd been born at the right place and the right time, that I was in a country where I could participate in the technological revolution.

　　There are 37 million totally blind people on our planet, but those of us who've shared in the technological changes mainly come from North America, Europe, Japan and other developed parts of the world. Computers have changed the lives of us all in this room and around the world, but I think they've changed the lives of we blind people more than any other group. And so I want to tell you about the interaction between computer-based adaptive technology and the many volunteers who helped me over the years to become the person I am today. It's an interaction between volunteers, passionate inventors and technology, and it's a story that many other blind people could tell. But let me tell you a bit about it today.

　　When I was five, I went to school and I learned braille. It's an ingenious system of six dots that are punched into paper, and I can feel them with my fingers. In fact, I think they're putting up my grade six report. I don't know where Julian Morrow got that from. (Laughter) I was pretty good in reading, but religion and musical appreciation needed more work. (Laughter)

　　When you leave the opera house, you'll find there's braille signage in the lifts. Look for it. Have you noticed it? I do. I look for it all the time.

　　(Laughter)

　　When I was at school, the books were transcribed by transcribers, voluntary people who punched one dot at a time so I'd have volumes to read, and that had been going on, mainly by women, since the late 19th century in this country, but it was the only way I could read. When I was in high school, I got my first Philips reel-to-reel tape recorder, and tape recorders became my sort of pre-computer medium of learning. I could have family and friends read me material, and I could then read it back as many times as I needed. And it brought me into contact with volunteers and helpers. For example, when I studied at graduate school at Queen's University in Canada, the prisoners at the Collins Bay jail agreed to help me. I gave them a tape recorder, and they read into it. As one of them said to me, "Ron, we ain't going anywhere at the moment."

　　(Laughter)

　　But think of it. These men, who hadn't had the educational opportunities I'd had, helped me gain post-graduate qualifications in law by their dedicated help.

　　Well, I went back and became an academic at Melbourne's Monash University, and for those 25 years, tape recorders were everything to me. In fact, in my office in 1990, I had 18 miles of tape. Students, family and friends all read me material. Mrs. Lois Doery, whom I later came to call my surrogate mum, read me many thousands of hours onto tape. One of the reasons I agreed to give this talk today was that I was hoping that Lois would be here so I could introduce you to her and publicly thank her. But sadly, her health hasn't permitted her to come today. But I thank you here, Lois, from this platform.

　　(Applause)

　　I saw my first Apple computer in 1984, and I thought to myself, "This thing's got a glass screen, not much use to me." How very wrong I was. In 1987, in the month our eldest son Gerard was born, I got my first blind computer, and it's actually here. See it up there? And you see it has no, what do you call it, no screen. (Laughter) It's a blind computer. (Laughter) It's a Keynote Gold 84k, and the 84k stands for it had 84 kilobytes of memory. (Laughter) Don't laugh, it cost me 4,000 dollars at the time. (Laughter) I think there's more memory in my watch.

　　It was invented by Russell Smith, a passionate inventor in New Zealand who was trying to help blind people. Sadly, he died in a light plane crash in 2005, but his memory lives on in my heart. It meant, for the first time, I could read back what I had typed into it. It had a speech synthesizer. I'd written my first coauthored labor law book on a typewriter in 1979 purely from memory. This now allowed me to read back what I'd written and to enter the computer world, even with its 84k of memory.

【科技如何帮我阅读TED英语演讲稿】相关文章：

TED英语演讲稿范文:如何跟压力做朋友07-06

科技与自然英语长篇阅读03-25

英语科技文阅读技巧05-15

如何英语阅读速度10-02

TED英语演讲：在死亡面前，生活如何有意义08-17