From: Jay Hennigan (jay@west.net)
Date: Mon Nov 10 2003 - 18:40:24 GMT-3
On Mon, 10 Nov 2003, John Smith wrote:
> Just wondering if anyone knows of any Blind CCIE'S?
No, but I have a close friend who is blind and highly clued.
> So what does Cisco do for the Lab? Does anyone know if any facilities support Blind people and then have any blind people sat for the exams, and then have any passed and where are they now?
>
> I'm not blind, but I do know someone who is, who does It stuff now, and is interested in broadening his horizons.
The blind typically use a speech synthesizer to "read" the screen text,
and type using a regular keyboard. Cisco CLI and UNIX/Linux are far more
blind-friendly than Windows and other GUI apps, although the speech units
work after a fashion with many Windows apps.
The main problem I can see with the CCIE lab would be time, as the speech
box is considerably slower than reading text, especially when it comes to
reading strings of numbers like IP addresses and access lists. The other
consideration would be the lab integrity and allowing the accommodation for
the speech hardware, as external electronics of any type are typically
forbidden in the lab. The scenario booklet could be printed in braille.
The blind candidate could use headphones on the speech box, but taking
notes on a braille writer could be somewhat noisy, so I would suspect that
if such were to be allowed it would have to be in a separate area from the
other candidates.
I would think that Cisco would have some blind employees within their
organization who might be able to assist should your friend pass the
written exam and want to attempt it, or at least lobby the CCIE program
people to allow the lab attempt.
By the way, my blind friend is extremely talented in terms of analytical
thinking and could probably pass the CCIE if given an opportunity, although
his interests presently are elsewhere. He explains it in a way that makes
sense... "Think how much faster and more efficient your PC would be if it
didn't have to deal with all of that graphics processing. I don't have to
deal with any graphics."
-- Jay Hennigan - CCIE #7880 - Network Administration - jay@west.net WestNet: Connecting you to the planet. 805 884-6323 WB6RDV NetLojix Communications, Inc. - http://www.netlojix.com/
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