Wireless technology adds convenience to everyday life for many. For people like Jed Barton, a mortgage loan officer from Barrington, it’s become a vital cornerstone of his life.
Barton, 30, is legally blind. He uses a wireless broadband connection to keep his laptop connected to the Internet at work, at home and everywhere in between.
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“The more access I have to the Internet, the better,” Barton said.
Barton uses his silver Dell Inspiron 1150 for everything – to read newspapers, keep in touch with friends, run his DJ company, maintain his hobbies and file loan applications. And the wireless broadband connection, which he got in March, makes all those things more accessible and much easier.
“It’s how I work and it’s how I keep in touch with people,” said Barton, who receives between 200 and 300 e-mails a day. “I use the computer in lieu of paper. The more access I have, the better.”
Barton reads the screen with the help of Freedom Scientific’s JAWS for Windows screen reader. He’s used computers for years.
“Computers have always fascinated me,” Barton said.
Barton said he uses the wireless technology every single day. As a loan officer, he travels to Realtors’ offices. He’s able to fill out and file applications and request credit checks on the spot. Before he got the wireless connection, he’d have to collect the customer data while at a Realtor’s office, then re-enter it when he returned to his office at Professional Mortgage Corp of America in East Providence.
“We can start the loan process right away,” Barton said. “It makes everything more efficient, and I love efficiency.”
Barton moonlights as a disc jockey for his company, DJ Music Unlimited. He and a co-worker were traveling to an event when they became lost. Barton whipped out the laptop and procured directions from MapQuest.
“We got there on time,” he said.
The wireless access also came in handy when Barton was working a wedding and had a problem with a vital CD – a copy of “Wind Beneath My Wings” for the father-daughter dance.
“Well, the laptop has FTP capability, so I just logged onto my home computer and downloaded the song,” Barton said. “In 45 seconds I had the file.”
Finding a way
Darren Burton, a national program associate for the American Foundation for the Blind’s technology unit, said wireless technology has been evolving since it became mainstream.
“By necessity, (blind people) use computers to read and write,” said Burton, who is blind.
Burton said he has a wireless card in his PC that allows him to use it in his office and in areas that have “hot spots.”
Making wireless technology available to the blind population is essential in making education and employment available to them, Burton said.
“Wireless technology makes it easier to do college work and other schoolwork,” he said.
“And it helps especially with employment. Right now we have a 70 percent unemployment rate. If we could get this technology into more people’s hands, we could drop that rate significantly.”
Burton said cell phone companies have been making strides to make wireless phone features more accessible to the blind.
“In 2003, there wasn’t much available to us to get screen information – we could do the basics, like dial and receive calls,” Burton said. Using other screen features like Web browsers, schedulers and more wasn’t an option because no screen-reading software was available.
Some carriers have begun manufacturing phones that make almost every option accessible to the sight-impaired. A Federal Communications Commission regulation now requires every phone manufacturer to provide at least one phone choice for the blind or sight-impaired.
Jed Barton said he is an everyday cell phone user, but generally only needs it to make calls. Sending e-mails and Web browsing is better left to his wireless broadband-powered laptop.
“For some people, it’s just a tool, but for me it’s a source of information,” Barton said. “The thought of not having Internet access scares me. I haven’t traveled out of range yet.”
