I was supposed to have another visit with Sharon at Frick last Friday, but she was at a conference. I will perhaps be able to see her one more time before the semester ends, which is disappointing, as I thought I would get a lot more visits in. Oh, well.
We were talking in class a couple of weeks ago about how blind people use the Web, and I was wondering how that works. One way that usability is improving is by describing images and then having a text reader give the description. It’s interesting we were talking about it, because I just read an article in a recent Smithsonianmagazine about a computer scientist named Luis von Ahn at Carnegie Mellon University who’s using “participatory Web” technologies to help label images for the disabled. It’s interesting work, though I was a bit dismayed by von Ahn’s utopianism. The article can be read at http://www.smithsonianmag.com/specialsections/innovators/von-ahn.html.
Well, I have to go catch a bus now. Hopefully I won’t go too crazy over break thinking about all the stuff I have to get done before the semester ends.
