What Next? Blind people driving cars?

Yes, we’ve all heard a variation on that theme when someone questions why it’s necessary to make such adjustments to web sites for blind users. Would we do the same for cars to make them driveable? The answer is, of course, no - people realise that would never happen. But what about flying machines?!

Well, this news just in - a blind pilot has flown from England to Australia:

So, time for a disclaimer- he was flying with a fully sighted co-pilot! All the same, it’s a massive achievement but not the first one that Miles Hilton-Barber has had. Among the list of achievements, he has:

• Completed”The Toughest Foot-race on earth” - 150 miles across the Sahara Desert in the Marathon des Sables
• Climbed to 17,500 feet in the Himalayas
• Climbed Mt Kilimanjaro and Mt. Blanc- Africa’s/Europe’s highest mountains
• Circumnavigated 38,000 miles around world using 80 forms of transport
• Set the Malaysian Grand Prix lap record for blind driver in 200kph Lotus

Not a bad list of achievements, eh?

Apparently the microlight aircraft is equipped with ’speech-output technology’ (as BBC News put it) to enable him to pilot it. Amazing stuff, but I was a little surprised to see this:

Did Miles write this page himself or did someone else do it for him? I suspect the latter, as Miles would almost certainly balk at the idea that ‘click here’ links were in use on his own site (why ‘click here’ links are bad). Kind of ironic that the ‘click here’ link goes to a site called Seeing is Believing.