Sarah: How did you meet your wife, Amy, Mick?
Mick: After school, I started doing a bachelor of IT at La Trobe, I did that for about a year, but I felt that I needed a bit of a break from study and everything. It was good, but I just felt it was sort of more to life. I wanted to make a bit of an impact and so around the time of just leaving school, I started to participate in a in a sort of a branch of Blind Citizens Australia called Young Blind Citizens Victoria, which was sort of a youth advocacy branch for blind people. And I had a few friends there. I started going to their committee meetings and eventually I put my hand up to be the President. And at the same meeting, when I put my hand up to be President, this other person put their hand up to be Treasurer. And the funny thing was, I thought she was so darn arrogant for doing that and like, why would you do that? I've never seen you at a meeting before.
Sarah: Sounds like the start of a great love story!
Mick: We got on very, very, very well. I think what really probably attracted me to her is that she was willing to challenge my intellect. Like a lot of people, I think up until that point, no matter what I you know, this might be partly to do with my blindness, partly to do with, I don't know how my extended family viewed me and stuff like that. I think that some of my family just always said, Oh yes, yes, that's nice. Yes, you're right, without really thinking about it or challenging me, you know, whereas Amy, my wife, questions everything which is great and, you know, on an intellectual level and I respect that and that's sort of what I need, you know?
Sarah: She wasn't going to be polite to you because you are blind.
Mick: I mean, we argued almost from the first date, but that's that's the point, you know?
Sarah: What was University like? I mean, intellectually, I'm sure you were engaged. But but what about the practicalities?
Mick: Yeah, the practicalities were hard for me. For anyone with a disability, there's always extra effort we need to go into at university in terms of getting everything organised. I mean, it's not just like sort of school. Most of the time, you know, your teachers are well aware of what you need. Your parents and other staff can help you organise things at university. You're you really need to do all this on your own. And I mean, you are prepared for this in school. They do, you know, tell you this is what it's going to be like in uni. But yeah, you've got to do everything yourself. You've got to go to the Disability Liaison Unit, you've got to work with your own lecturers and get what you need from them. There's some support at university there from the Disability Liaison Office and that, but they are only really there to consult and help you with a few things. But you’ve got to be independent. You've got to do that without asking too much of your lecturers, you've got to coordinate all that kind of stuff. So you've got to deal with that first. You've got to get your materials in an alternative format. So, you know, electronic or braille or whatever you've got to be able to do that when you sit exams, you've got to request that you have longer time to do that and you may need specific equipment. So that's no different for any other blind person. That's fine. I went through all of that as well, but I had a few extra things. I have a lot of social anxiety and so being around a lot of people is difficult for me. It's hard talking to new people, especially when you know I need to ask them about things that I need. So for instance, I was pretty good talking with my lecturers and stuff. They were all very interesting people. I loved working with them. I love learning from them. But it was hard sort of in tutorials and things where we'd have a new tutor come in who perhaps didn't understand my needs or whatever. That was stressful for me. Also, I went to La Trobe University in Bendigo and then also Monash University in Melbourne. And certainly Monash is a very big University and there's a lot of walking around from class to class, and that really took a toll on me. I mean, not only as a blind person because you need to learn where all your classes are and use a lot of energy to to just, you know, get from A to B and also carrying all my heavy stuff, my laptop and my, you know, whatever, but also I have a scoliosis, a curvature in my spine. And and I'm not that fit either due to other, you know, medical issues and that and so it just took a great big toll on me. And I think in the end, that was one of the major reasons why I decided to. I said defer at first.
Sarah: But you're not the first university student who's used the defer as the soft, the soft landing for quitting. I spoke with the American disability rights activist Judith Heumanm this year, and I remember her describing how exhausting it was to have to ask for help all the time.
Mick: Yes, it's a really good skill and it needs to be done. There's no way around it. So yeah, you do need to really advocate for yourself. You know, it's the best skill that you can ever have. And I'm actually really thankful to my parents, especially my mother, for teaching me that kind of thing for standing up for myself. And I, you know, learnt this very early, you know, in doctors surgeries at school and things where I would be in meetings with mum and see the way that she negotiated for me and fought for me for various things. And I very quickly learnt how to do that myself. So I was certainly capable of it. But yeah, it really takes a toll, though.
Sarah: So you decided to come up to Queensland and spend some time hanging out with this good friend, Jamie, and basically nerd out doing computer stuff together. What kind of software were you getting really interested in at this point?
Mick: I think we sort of what we were sort of interested in at the time was sound software because we were both into sound engineering. We used a lot of sound engineering software, but historically that's not very accessible to blind people. In the early days, it was all physical consoles and all that kind of stuff for doing your sound engineering. That was great. That was all accessible because it was all hardware. But as it started moving into software, it wasn't so accessible, even though we had our screen reading software and all that kind of stuff, or the commercial one at the time that the sound engineering software are available wasn't still wasn't that accessible. And so what Jamie and I used to do was customise the screen reading software we were using at the time to work better with our sound engineering software, so essentially it's sort of sort of doing programming within another piece of software to make it work better, make the two pieces of software work better together. And so we actually became quite well known for this sort of scripting of the sound engineering software and stuff. And a lot of people used our scripts to use the sound engineering software. And, you know, we used to hear from people who definitely, you know, were being paid to do this kind of stuff, making albums and all that kind of stuff And it was really quite exciting, really, you know, to know that our stuff was being used.
Sarah: Did you ever want to charge for it?
Mick: No, no, we never did. Jamie and I were both very big fans of the open source movement. We'd both used Linux and all that kinds of open source stuff, and we believed it applied in all areas and especially in what we did because we did it because we just found it. I mean, firstly we just found it fun to do and challenging. So we just enjoyed the work anyway. And secondly we are still are both extremely passionate and caring people about the world in general and about welfare and all that kind of stuff. I mean, both of us had had stints of going, trying out, doing counselling or psychology or whatever at university because we, both of us I think, struggle as to where we fit between it and helping people.
Sarah: How does screen readers work, Mick, and why did that become the project that you began to really concentrate on?
Mick: I guess why we started to do it was that we'd always talked about it, you know, one of our things, you know, when we used to talk till four in the morning or whatever we sort of used to joke about otherwise, you know, why isn't there a free screen reading software on the on the Windows Operating System? Wouldn't it be great that we didn't have to pay $2000 extra, you know, to use a computer because essentially a blind person needs this software known as a screen reader, which essentially reads what's on the computer screen, so it gathers all the text and on screen and and it reads it back in a in sort of synthetic speech. Or if you have a braille display, which is a sort of a small machine that can produce like a line of braille at a time with the computer output, you can you can read what's on the screen in either speech or braille. And essentially the screen reader allows you to independently use the computer, do word processing, web browsing, check your email, online shopping, whatever you know, it works with all the software on the computer, so whatever you can do on the computer as a sighted person, most likely we can do. I mean, obviously there's certain things you can't do in terms of, you know, photo editing or something like that. But in terms of text and information, yes, we can be extremely independent. But as I say, that software up until then cost $2000 or more, and we thought that was terrible and why should it be that way? But I think, you know, a lot of blind people thought that way, but they didn't do anything about it. I think they were just like, Oh, well, there must be a reason for it. You know, it's one of those logical fallacies. If no one's ever done it before, there must be a reason. You know why it's too hard. I didn't think like that.
Sarah: How hard was it, though technically to to write your own?
Mick: It's extremely hard, I think, because there's no books on how to do this. It's trial and error. It's reverse engineering. It's, you know, learning, learning lots about the operating system from, you know, the Windows operating system from a technical level. There was no reference or anything because all the other screen readers, of course, were commercial and closed source, meaning you can't see how they've done it. We needed to reinvent the wheel, which is sad and stupid. But that's what we had to do.
Sarah: Was Jamie is as invested as you were, as excited as you were back at the start?
Mick: Not at the beginning, though. I mean, I think he found it interesting that I was doing it and, you know, was happy to watch from the sidelines like, cool project, you know? But I think he was very sceptical. And, you know, we joke about this all the time. He was very sceptical at first until about maybe three months in where he noticed that I wasn't giving up, you know, and I had produced something that was promising. You know, it didn't do a lot of things, but it certainly was enough for me to sort of use a lot of basic, you know, software applications on my computer independently without having to revert, you know, revert to the other commercial screen readers that we had. And so he was getting excited and he started contributing little bits here and there at first sort of just intellectually sort of, Oh, why don't you do that or why don't you try that? And then eventually he started really taking things on and which was great because he actually has more software experience at university level than I do. And he's also had some sort of Real-World jobs as well. So he brought a lot more experience in terms of sort of the project management and all that kind of stuff and software lifecycle and all those kind of do's and don'ts and things about running a project which I didn't have. You know, I was sort of the I don't know the cowboy who thought he could do anything and was just sort of, let's tinker with this. Let's play, you know, like I understood the code, but it's about actually, you know, getting it done in the long term sort of thing. And so he brought a lot of that.
Sarah: How long did it take until you were ready to share it with other people? How long were you there squirrelled away in your bedroom working on this?
Mick: I actually started sharing right from the beginning because I truly believed in open source and I wanted, maybe ignorantly believed in it so much that I was sort of excited about it, and I didn't care if it was, you know, only half complete or whatever. Like, I was honest about that, but I wanted to bring people along for the journey, too. There's just something in me that sort of said, No, I think people can learn from this. I wasn't. I still wasn't sure whether I would fully succeed on it. I had no idea, but I just wanted to try and it was fun. And hey, why not? If we can make use of other blind people to help us out, why not? Because I don't know everything in the world, but together, maybe we could do it.
Sarah: When did you start hearing, or what did you start hearing from other blind people then?
Mick: So within about five months we had an email from someone in Brazil saying, Really like what you're doing? Do you mind if I translate your software into Brazilian Portuguese because we don't really have up to date commercial screen reading software here. Similarly, I got another email from someone in Slovakia sort of saying, look, we're really struggling with, you know, screen reading software and your software, although, you know, as basic it is right now has already really changed my life =and others for the better in my small community, because we can now access software that we couldn’t before because the commercial screen reading software that they had was either way too expensive or wasn't translated into their language or was severely out of date.
Sarah: They must have been pretty amazing responses to get.
Mick: It was because up until then, although, although I chose to make it open source, still, the main reason I was doing it was for myself. It's partly fun, but also I didn't really have the money. I didn't have a job or anything to pay for all the updates for my commercial screen reading software that I had to pay every year. And so, you know, writing my own free screen reader was a way of solving that problem and then suddenly hearing about people who wanted to contribute to the project from all these other far-off countries, you know. and then hearing that that it actually was a life changer for them. I thought, Wow. But it fuelled me on even more to continue.
Sarah: How many how many languages has your programme, NVDA, been translated into now?
Mick: I think it's around 60 or just under. Yeah, it's amazing. And all these contributions from the community, I mean, we don't, you know, know all these languages or anything like that. These are all voluntary community effort. These blind people are driven to do it themselves because they require the screen reading software or they want their communities to have it. And they're happy to do that work and it's wonderful to work with them.
Sarah: When did Big Tech companies start sniffing around your little adventurous experiment?
Mick: Yeah, probably about seven months in or so I got an email from someone who was representing Mozilla talking about the web browser Firefox, and this guy contacted me and said, Look, I really like what you're doing, and I think we have a lot of the same sort of core beliefs and, you know, belief in their sort of accessible web for all and all this kind of stuff and the rights for, you know, people, blind people and stuff to have full access to the internet and all that kind of stuff. And we would like to make sure that your screen reading software works with our Mozilla Firefox web browser. And because up to then we'd sort of really only supported the Internet Explorer browser. So I said, yeah, I'd love to be able to start supporting Firefox. So he said, Well, look to get you started. I would like to invite you to this disability technology conference in California in March that year.
And I knew about this is called the Sea Sun Conference. It's run by the California State University. It's a very well-known disability tech conference, probably the certainly the largest in the US anyway, and very well respected. I was really excited to go, and it was such an experience for me because to suddenly be there with all these big companies talking about what I was doing, you know, collaborating together, talking with it, = intellects who all seem to believe in the same thing I did, it was just an amazing experience.
Sarah: Sounds like your idea of heaven when you describe it like that. Were they interested in commercialising it, though? Did you have to sort of fend off offers to purchase your technology? Or were you safe in your Open-Source beliefs?
Mick: I don't think anyone directly approached us, but I think everyone sort of had their little opinion and sort of like you know, but you'll be commercialising this right? Or, you know, you will be you'll be rolling in it when you do, you know, or why don't you? Because then you can better support it and all this kind of stuff. But we really stuck to our guns and we knew we could see the impact already, and we knew that we were doing something special. And so we from the outset decided, no, we're not going to, and we never have. But we truly believe that that's what's kept us so well respected in the in the blindness industry and the accessibility industry is because we didn't deviate from that.
Sarah: That goal is mainstream tech now catching up to the kind of software that you developed. Is it getting better at meeting the needs of people with disabilities like vision impairment?
Mick: At the time, there was no sort of voice to text, no screen reading software in any of the operating systems. Officially, I mean, the Linux did have some screen reading software, which was free, but on the Windows platform there was only commercial products you know, which you had to buy separately. But slowly and surely, they all died off, except for maybe two of them, sort of as we came in and then also Microsoft. So on the on the Windows platform, Microsoft did start to make their own screen reading built in screen reading software on the Windows platform and good on them for doing it. I mean, you know I've always I'm very transparent about saying that my dream is always to be able to just walk into a computer, shop, pick up, you know, buy a computer and go home and use it. That's what I should be able to do as a blind person, right? But I think the difference with us is that we have a very strong community. We're translated into all these different languages. We're compatible with a lot more software than the Microsoft offering. We're a lot more flexible. We provide a lot more updates where a lot more customisable and the blindness community sort of just love what we do and love working with our software. So essentially, we're around because the community wants us to be. But also you can be a lot more productive at the moment with the offering that we have versus what Microsoft does, though that's of course changing. And, you know, I really hope that they do succeed in making a product that that is great. And you know, in theory, I mean, you ask any person who runs a charity and you know, they'll say charities shouldn't have to exist, right? So we would be very happy to close up, shop one day and go, Well, actually, there's no need for us to be around because that means the problem's been solved, but it's far from solved at the moment. You know what I mean? People still definitely depend on what we do for employment and education and all that kind of stuff. And so we've got a lot, a lot of work ahead still.
Sarah: As well as work, you and Amy have a family. Did you always want kids?
Mick: Yeah, I certainly did. Yes. There was I have a very, very strong drive.
Sarah: Everyone who plans to have children has to think through logistics, you know, whether that's housing or childcare or finances for you. And for you and Amy what did the logistics as vision impaired parents involve?
Mick: I think from a purely practical point of view, I'm not so sure we really did think about it.
Sarah: You know, you meant to and then you realise in retrospect!
Mick: I had just, you know, written a screen reader. I think I thought that, you know, I was sort of invincible sort of thing. Yeah, let's have kids. Why not? At this time when we decided I still wasn't really being paid for this, this was all voluntary. You know, from a few other point of view, yeah, we did need to think about what we needed to do as blind parents and was there a risk that our child could be blind, etc. So for instance, we went and saw a genetic counsellor and things like that. Of course, though, we didn't mind if our child had a disability or was blind or whatever. But we just wanted to be prepared. That's all because, you know, I was well connected in with the blindness community and the disability community. I knew about all the wonderful services that you can get, of course. And so we just wanted to be prepared. It happened in the end that neither of our children are blind or have a disability, which you know, we're very thankful for. So you know, we were lucky. But as blind parents, yeah, we need to work a bit harder in terms of being independent, looking after a child, sometimes you need to prove that you can. I remember when our first daughter was born, we have the baby and this happens with a lot of blind people. You have the token social worker, who comes to the hospital and asks a lot of questions about how your home life and how you're going to cope when you get back home. And so you sort of have to prove yourself. And thankfully, this was one of the times when my mother was in the room and she really ripped shreds off the person. I mean, just because I don't think at first they were sort of listening, but we certainly had enough to prove that we were extremely independent ourselves. I ran a company, you know, and all this kind of stuff, and we were very independent. We travelled and all that kind of stuff. So no, the children weren't going to be a problem for us, and they haven't been.
Sarah: And what about you and Jamie? Do you still have those long conversations you started having as teenagers?
Mick: When we when we remember to do it? Yes. So once we do get in a room, you know, we can talk for hours. Absolutely. But and it's funny because we only live five minutes from each other. We both live in Samford. Our kids both go to the same school. But we find it so hard to find time, though, to to talk to each other. Because Jamie, so although Jamie worked with me for a good 10 years on the on the project, you know, we were both employed and that was such a wonderful time to work with each other. He's now gone off to Mozilla to work on Firefox and things like that, but he's still on our board of directors, so he still has a lot of input into the company and the software, and we still try and catch up, you know, once every two weeks for lunch. But we have both have such busy lives, though, as well with our kids and school and our jobs and things like that. But it's so wonderful, though, to just, you know, meet up and just chat. I mean, a lot of people sort of people have said in the past that we share our brain. You know, we when we when we get to talking, you know, even if there's other people around, we talk sort of so cryptically and so fast and quietly to each other. And sometimes, you know, just picking on each other and then someone will go, What were you just talking about? We go, Oh, we just had a fight, but it's okay. You know, it only took a second or something. And because we just understand each other so well that if we do have a disagreement or something, it's so efficient because we know how each other thinks. So we don't push each other in directions that we just know won't work. You know what I mean?
Sarah: Oh, congratulations on what the two of you created together, and thank you so much for telling your story on Conversations.
Mick: Thank you. It's wonderful.
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Sarah: Michael Curran was my guest on Conversations Today, and this conversation will be available for you shortly as a podcast now also available at our website and wherever you get your podcasts. There’s also a little chat I had with Jamie The, Mick’s best mate, with whom he set up NV Access. So a little bonus extra story for you today. I'm Sarah Kanowski. Thanks for listening.
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Transcript of Sarah Kanowski's interview with Jamie Teh:
Sarah Kanowski: An extra story for you today on conversations with accessibility tech engineer Jamie Teh. On the show today, my guest was Mick Curran, and together Mick and Jamie developed software that allows blind people to use computers revolutionising many lives all around the world as a result.
Hi, Jamie. Hi, how you doing? Very well. When I chatted to Mick he said that that people have commented that you and he seemed to share the same brain. Does it feel like that to you?
Jamie Teh: Yeah. I mean, we don't work together now as much as we used to. Just I've moved to a different company, but I'm still very heavily involved. But I think even now when we talk, it's like we share the same brain. And many people have made that observation and they sort of joke that we talk in some random computer code and then we'll be like, you know, we actually we just had an argument.
Sarah: You know, he gave the same example. How many arguments do you have?
Jamie: Oh, not many. But with these little ones, I can sort this out and then we have a chat and like, OK, now we've come up with the solution now and everyone's just like, what just happened?
Sarah: So this approach to emotional connection now sounds very efficient. What do you remember about first meeting Mick?
Jamie: Well, in 1994, we met at a music camp for the blind, and I think the thing I remember the most is we both loved this. This programme called Dr Bardzo, which is like, it's not really artificial intelligence. It pretended to be artificial intelligence, but it was low grade intelligence, right? You could chat to this thing in tech, so you would type and it would answer and give, you know, canned responses to things. And it would ask you, you know, your name and you could ask it questions. And it like proposed that it was a doctor. You could ask it questions and it would, you know, try to counsel you. It was. It was just a bit of fun, really. And we both used to play with this thing, and we talked about it a lot. So it was very clear we are both into technology and playing with that stuff and also obviously into music. Even we were at a music camp, so we were sort of inseparable from that point.
Sarah: What instrument were you playing back then?
Jamie: Piano primarily.
Sarah: And how did you start learning? When did you start playing in?
Jamie: I think about a year before I started and I started lessons. Then I imagine I'd been sort of dabbling on piano before then. But my parents are like, oh, let's get some lessons and see where this goes!
Sarah: And who taught you? Did you have one of those terrifying piano teachers?
Jamie: teacher's name was Yvonne Wall, and she was amazing. She was very encouraging. She found creative ways to teach and she wanted me to learn the music that I needed to learn for exams and things, but also really encouraged the stuff that I really liked, which is like improvising and making my own stuff. And so, no, I think all I could say is, you know, encouragement from was great.
Sarah: Mick did say, Jamie, that the first time he met you, you were sitting in a cupboard.
Jamie: Oh, yes, I forgot about that.
Sarah: And can you explain why you were doing that?
Jamie: Ah, do I have a good reason? I don't really have a good reason. I mean, what? What does what child has a good reason for sitting in a cupboard? I think it was just acoustically interesting, like a sighted kid might climb up somewhere high to see something or. And for me, it was like having a cupboard. Obviously, the darkness wasn't relevant, but it sounded interesting, and it meant that I could jump out of the cupboard when people went past. I think I also sat on top of the cupboard at one point. It was just a really interesting ride. Yeah, I don't know. I just found it fascinating.
Sarah: You were at a mainstream school at the time with sighted kids. What was it like being around other blind children?
Jamie: So it wasn't surprising to me, and I also had some other blind friends. But I suppose it meant that there were more people that had had some of the same experiences and challenges and just ways of thinking and doing things. So I don't think I found it particularly jarring or anything like that, but it certainly was nice to, you know, to have. It's always nice to have shared experiences
Sarah: The first time you met Mick at camp. He was still partially sighted, but when you met again as teenagers, he had he had lost all of his vision. Did that change your friendship?
Jamie: I don't think it changed the core of our friendship, I think it meant that we had some more common interests and alignments, maybe I wouldn't like to say it was a defining aspect of our friendship, but you know, any change that happens to anyone in their lives. You know, just as an example, you've got friends and then you both have children, and that is a new axis of commonality between you. And I think that it definitely changed things, but I wouldn't say it was like a defining aspect of our of our, you know, friendship.
Sarah: Tell me about you as a as a little kid and as a baby. What happened with your vision as a baby, Jamie?
Jamie: I was born with cancer of the retinas, very severe cancer of the retinas. That wasn't. It took them a while to diagnose. But my mum, you know, being a mum, knew something wasn't right and kept persisting, and I had both eyes removed when I was about six months old.
Sarah: What had your mum observed before that? When you say that the cancer wasn't diagnosed, what was your mum saying that that told her things weren't right?
Jamie: Most kids look at their at their parents adoringly and, you know, look at look at them when they're when they're feeding and all of those things. And I just wasn't doing any of that. I was, I think mum was saying I was looking at light. There was the only thing that I would look at if there was a light, a bright light in the room, I would kind of look at that and that was about it. And she's like, There's something not right here. And I think people were saying, well, you know, some kids take them a while. She's like, no, my gut says there's something wrong here.
Sarah: What options did doctors give your parents when they finally worked out what was happening?
Jamie: I believe the two options really were radiation and removal of the eyes. Radiation is not particularly reliable and obviously has some side effects. And I think there wasn't really enough vision left to risk it really well. It wasn't like I could keep most of my vision if they tried that, you know, sometimes it's worth the risk. But it would have been, you know, keep very little vision at the risk of it reappearing without anyone noticing with side effects. So I think the choice was really clear.
Sarah: You had both your eyes removed. Did you wear prosthetic eyes after that straight away?
Jamie: Yes, I did. I believe I went through various different kinds of prosthetic eyes. Some of them were marble shaped, and apparently they used to just fall out of my head on a regular basis. Poor mum, you know, she tells this story of being in shopping centres and realising that I'd lost my eyes and looking around, you know, Myer shopping centre, scrambling around the floor looking and someone comes, Excuse me, ma'am, can I help you? No, no. It's fine. I mean, what do you say? My child's just lost his eyes.
Sarah: Yeah, that's not an expected comment in the shopping centre, that's for sure. So, so what? How are prosthetics made now that that fit better or more comfortable?
Jamie: They're more like a shell shape. I'd like to say convex or concave, but I can never remember what it is, so I'm just going to go with a shell. And so they're hollow at the back, and as a result, they're a lot lighter and less irritating. They're still not amazing. I've got to say I don't love them, but they're much better than apparently they were.
Sarah: And I guess it's something that you don't need to wear. They're worn for sighted people, aren't they?
Jamie: Yeah, that's something I've been reflecting on a bit lately, actually, that there are some people that wear them all the time because they find it uncomfortable to not wear them. I honestly, I wear them when I'm out and I rarely wear them at home. I don't particularly enjoy it. And it's nothing, you know, it's not hugely uncomfortable, but if I ever had a choice, I wouldn't wear them.
Sarah: Did your parents have much experience with blindness or with family members or friends who were blind before you came along and join the family?
Jamie: No experience at all, which I think was really jarring and upsetting for them just having to navigate, frankly, very difficult, uncharted and unknown landscape, and there wasn't a huge amount of help. Even now, I think it's not necessarily clear where to go. But back then, it was even worse trying to find the right people. Everyone had different opinions. People believed that blind kids would be years behind. Couldn't, you know, necessarily make it in the world? Lots of lots of struggles.
Sarah: You have three siblings. Were you treated all the same by your mum and dad? What do you remember about being part of a family of kids?
Jamie: In a lot of ways, very normal. Like did some of the same things as my siblings. We all played together. I think I wasn't treated differently. For the most part, my parents were fair. They acknowledged very fair. They acknowledged where there were limitations. But they also never wanted those limitations to artificially to artificially limit me. So they really encouraged me to get out there and explore and navigate my environment, and they didn't try to shelter me from things that happened. They were consoling when something, you know, when I might trip over a bike, but they also were kind of like, well, this is how the world is. And yeah, it really sucks when those things happen. But you also need to learn to navigate in that world. And that has been, you know, a defining thing for me.
Sarah: Well, I think one of the the characteristics common to kids is it's not fair, particularly with the sibling. Why can he do that or shoot at that or I want that! How did that play out with you not having vision and you and your siblings being able to see?
Jamie: For the most part, I think it was fine. But I do recall, you know, there might be situations where we went on holidays and my siblings say they were playing a visual ball game or something. I can't think of a specific example, but something that I wasn't able to participate in. Maybe they were running around the neighbourhood, and I just couldn't do that safely. I remember being really upset about those things, and obviously my parents were sympathetic, but they also weren't going to stop the kids from doing it just because I couldn't do it, because that's not fair, either. And so, you know, there are some hard lessons there. It just is what it is to an extent. By the same token, they also encouraged activities that all of us could be included in as much as they could. So it's just that balance really between things that everyone can do and also acknowledging that there are things that no matter how hard I try, I won't be able to participate in.
Sarah: What early memories do you have, Jamie, of being interested in technology and how things worked?
Jamie: Well, I don't really know what started this, but I do remember as a really young kid playing with this big business calculator that my dad had in pressing buttons on it and making noises and just being fascinated by this idea that you could press buttons and things would happen. And that sort of carried into to school and then seeing how computers worked at school and at school. They did have a talking computer and I wanted one. My parents like, well, you know, this is this is an opportunity. This is something we can engage Jamie in. And they bought me one and I wasn't content to sort of just play games and do things like that. I wanted to know how it all worked. I wanted to understand what went on behind the pressing buttons. When you press a button, how does it do this? And so I wanted to learn how to programme computers.
Sarah: So how did you go about teaching yourself how to do that, finding out the resources to know how to start programming
Jamie: Back then, ebooks weren't really a thing. Now you can just open up your Kindle store, your iBooks store or whatever. And back then, that wasn't really a thing. And so my dad would lie on my bed reading a programming book to me, which I have to say was the most boring thing in the universe for him. It was a huge sacrifice. He would lie there and read me chapter, and I would just soak it up. And then he would fall asleep, snoring on my bed while I greedily went over the lessons that I'd learnt and expanded on them.
Sarah: That's a really beautiful thing for dad to do.
Jamie: Hey, it was amazing, and you know, I owe a large part of what I what I do now to that.
Sarah: So did you study it straight away at university once you left school?
Jamie: I was always going to be doing either it or music. Everyone knew it. I knew it. It was just a given. And then in year 12, I was like, Wait, is this really what I want to do? And so I was had this thing of wanting to help people wanting to make a difference in the world, wanting to make other people's lives better. It's just something was really important to me, and I wasn't sure that I could achieve that through either it or music. And so I actually did a year of psychological science at university, and I don't regret it one bit. I learnt some really cool. Stuff, things that that matter to me now and that that help me now. But in the end, I decided after that year that it wasn't what I wanted to do and I ended up doing it here.
Sarah: Tell me about the first conversations that you and Mick had about wanting to develop screen reading software. What were you talking about? What need did you see?
Jamie: I think the ideas started. I mean, the first conversation about the screen reader, really, from my perspective, was it was in sort of 2006 going back a bit further than that, though Mike and I always had an interest in making things accessible to the blind. So we started with trying to make audio software accessible, and that was with a commercial screen reader back then. And the first thing I knew about Mick developing this free screen reader was he called me and I was like, Hey, I've been working on this thing, and it's really cool. I'm like, Oh, yeah, OK. I was a bit sceptical at first.
Sarah: What? That he wouldn't be up to the challenge?
Jamie: No, just that. It's a really it's a really hard problem. And these commercial packages are worth so much money and they've been working on them for years. And so I was really intrigued. But also it seemed like such an insurmountable thing. And then I started looking into it. I mean, like, well, I mean, let's give this a shot. We've got nothing to lose. And so, you know, despite that initial kind of sense, I got into it and I started getting involved pretty heavily and it started to move ahead quite rapidly.
Sarah: And was it exciting to have this friend that you could be working out this problem together? Was it a fun thing to be doing together?
Jamie: Really exciting working out fun problems like this for us, as I was saying before, was not new for us. We'd done it on several occasions in the past and so the working relationship was already there. But having this new thing to work on was really exciting. And then what was particularly interesting about this was seeing the interest from all over the world, seeing people from countries like Slovakia and Brazil saying, Hey, we want to translate your software into our language. We haven't even thought about that aspect. We'd realised that, you know, commercial screen readers are really expensive, and we want to make sure that everyone who speaks English can access that technology, but then to realise that there was a whole other part of the world that couldn't access the commercial software, let alone, you know, anything else was really about, say, eye opening.
Sarah: Well, I get it. It's life changing. Were you surprised at the scale of interest, like the way that it took off and has been embraced by users around the world?
Jamie: I think initially it was surprising. I think on some level we knew that once we started it, that there would be interest. And in fact, on one hand, there was there was interest. And on the other hand, there were people saying you'll never succeed. I mean, that did was a thing that was said, and I think that even more determined to push ahead with it like, well, actually, we're just going to figure this out and make it work. And so I think it started to become really apparent that we could do something like this. So yeah, I suppose it was surprising, but also unsurprising in its own. In its own way, people have been crying out for this kind of thing for a long time.
Sarah: You are now on the board with NV Access rather than working with the company. What's your actual job now? Jamie, what do you do for work now?
Jamie: I'm a software engineer working on the Firefox web browser.
Sarah: And what does that entail?
Jamie: So I work, I'm still in accessibility. And so it's really sort of the the other side of the coin is like making Firefox and and other Mozilla products work well with things like screen reading software. And so interestingly, of almost done some of the job from both sides and I, I still get to look at it from both sides. So it's just almost a different aspect to the same kind of work.
Sarah: Is mainstream tech catching up now, do you think, with the needs of people with disabilities, is it a very different scene than when you and Mick started working on your software back in the 2000s, early 2000s?
Jamie: I think yes and no. Yes, in that mainstream technology often has built in accessibility now and that's growing and that a lot more software and products are accessible from the get go. But no, in the sense that the world's also getting more and more complex. And we're having, you know, now there are elevators that have touch screens and people don't necessarily think about how to make those things accessible. So we're creating these new experiences that aren't necessarily having the accessibility thought about early enough. So I think it's still there's still so much work to do in this space. And if anything, it just constantly changes and evolves
Sarah: As well as work. You're you're a dad. How do you and your your wife, Jen, balance parenting? What's things like? What are things like at your home?
Jamie: First and foremost, I think parenting for us has never been…the disability hasn't been a huge part of the game. It obviously affects how we do certain things. Jen is more efficient at certain things than I am. And so, for example, if we're short on time, Jen can cook more quickly than I can, and so it'll be Jen cooks while I wrangle the children and get them both, get them ready for bed. So without any arguments, that kind of thing. But for the most part, it's about having a unified front and the values that we have as parents together. And all of that, just like any other parents. Jen tends to be I'm her patience and calm with the kids just never ceases to amaze me. I'm not too bad, but she's definitely the calmer, more patient one. But then I'm also the one that tends to be the roughhousing and the, you know, Hmm, how do I get this child to go for a bath? Oh, I know I'll carry them upside down up the stairs, and that will convince them generally works. So, you know, like any other family we balance based on the needs at the time and what one person can manage at the time.
Sarah: And what about your friendship with Mick when you look back over the impact that's had on your life and the impact it's had for all those people who use the software you developed together? How do you think about his role?
Jamie: He's the person that created this thing that created NVDA. I was very much involved from the beginning, but he is the one that decided to do this thing and that's amazing in and of itself. And I think blindness community owes him a huge debt for that. The working relationship we have is really, absolutely phenomenal. I love my job now, but I do miss working with me. We just had, you know, as we discussed before, we have this, we communicate it on another level entirely, and it's a very rare thing to have. I don't think we could have achieved what we did without that. But aside from anything else, he's also just a really great person and I really value him as a as a close friend.
Sarah: Well, I'm really glad you both went to that music camp and found each other, and it's really lovely to meet you. Jamie, thank you for sharing your story.
Jamie: Thanks so much, Sarah
'The NVDA screen reader can be downloaded free of charge by anyone. We do this because we believe everyone, especially the world’s poorest blind people deserve access to computers and a way out of poverty'.
NVDA Software - https://www.nvaccess.eu/download/