Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
(Dixie Sanderson)... and that's the sun, and then we must be looking at the water this way.
(man) Yes.
(Dixie) Okay. So then, behind us over there, is the, uh, gazebo,
and there's a marshland over there.
There's like, paths in the marsh, used to take little kids back on the paths.
Docks are over to the left.
(man) Right.
(Dixie) Um, and then over here is ah, Faulkner's Island.
I spend as many hours as possible on the beach, with my feet in the sand.
The edge of the water.
My name is Dixie Sanderson, and I've been blind for 8 years.
What happened, um, I had what's called psuedotumor cererbri.
It's when your body thinks that there's a tumor, but there really isn't.
My body makes too much spinal fluid.
I was given an antibioitic, in May of 2004,
and one of the side effects of that antibiotic,
is it increases your spinal pressure.
It crushed my optic nerves, cut off the circulation,
and then they tried a couple of different surgeries, um,
but it was too late.
On the Monday I lost my sight,
I drove up to the school, to bring my daughter something she had forgotten,
went home, and called the doctor and said,
"Somethin's wrong with my eyesight".
And that afternoon I went to the doctor, that night I was in the hospital.
The next day I couldn't see.
It's - you know - it's that quick.
When I lost my sight, I was a bookkeeper, I had my own bookkeeping business.
I have an associate's degree in accounting.
With my bookkeeping business, I had about 10 clients,
mainly independent contractors.
After 3 or 4 weeks of hospitalizations,
I'm calling them up and saying, "I don't know what I can do".
You know, it was months of training on the computer,
trying to get it to work,
and at that point they had found other bookkeepers.
Losing my business - it was hard.
I enjoyed going to work every day.
It was - it was - part of my life.
It was my friendship circle.
I believed I was going to be able to get back to work,
and so I didn't feel - have a defeatist attitude.
It wasn't until I realized that this wasn't going to work,
that, you know, we tried all the roads, avenues,
with the different screen readers, and me learning them,
and then trying to apply them to QuickBooks,
that I realized that we weren't going to get back.
My income currently is from Social Security/Disability.
I never expected to need help.
I always wanted to be the one that was giving it.
(Dixie's Daughter) My mom used to do everything.
[ the two women laugh lightly]
My mom used to be a bookkeeper, she used to manage a pool,
she was a lifeguard instructor, she was a lifeguard -
I mean, the woman did everything.
Plus being a mom, which is a lot in itself.
(Dixie) At this stop sign, your going to take a left, then a quick right.
And then a left.
You're gonna go over the railroad bridge,
um, and then the road will be on the left.
On the right, I'm sorry.
It's called Seaside Avenue.
I can drive, I just can't drive out on the road.
When I cook, I can't do it by sight,
I do it now with a temperature guage, by the feel of the chicken.
People who just see a blind person, just see a blind person.
But people who have met me, and seen what it's like, realize that it's -
- it's an inconvenience.
[screen reader voice] window - open resort company - open resort company
open the company file - open the company file - radio button available
(Dixie) And I get a little bit in there, um,
but I - the labeling on the field is incorrect,
so that the screen reader can't even see the labeling.
So I'm entering the wrong information in the wrong place.
Purchase order numbers, I'm entering um, ah , addresses.
There's a couple of things that it's saying,
but it really isn't saying hardly anything.
I know that there is a lot more on that screen, than the screen reader can see.
I have always said that if I had to go blind, now is the time to have done it.
If I had gone blind 20 years earlier,
it would not have been so easy as it is for me today.
Feels like - I know that it's this close.
If this would just change, I could do it again.
But it's that one little technical glitch,
that is making it impossible for me to get back to work.
It's pretty impressive to me, that Intuit is going to look into making this program accessible.
You know, there are a lot of blind people out there.,
and there's a lot of blind independent contractors.
And if they can all do their own bookkeeping,
with a simple program like QuickBooks,
I think that this would open up a whole new world for people who are blind.
I am so excited. We can change the world this way.
♪