The Times Newspaper and Thunder

On Thursday last, Screenreader.net had a minute of fame with a brief article about us appearing in the London Times Newspaper in the careers section. The story as told below is substantially true and its remarkable how a journalist can put together an uncomplicated summary of our last eight years of work in 300 words. But what I liked most was that it presented a picture of blind people doing well, achieving something good and not the more usual helpless image as often portrayed by some fund-raising charities’ campaigns. When you read this piece, you will also realise that no mention was made, sadly, of Sensory Software Ltd, who created the Thunder software.

Roger Wilson-Hinds achieved academic success despite his
blindness and rose to senior jobs in education. But he was
uncomfortable as an employee and, when 50, he and his wife,
Margaret Wilson-Hinds, started a successful business to supply
ICT equipment and teach other blind people how to use it. Illness
struck. While recovering, Roger resolved to create and give away
screen reader software to any blind person. Now with 100,000
users, ‘Thunder’ is gaining large fees for developing variants.

Our big idea

GIVING your product away to anyone who wants it is certainly an atypical business model, but for Roger and Margaret Wilson-Hinds, it was the pivotal decision that turned their screenreader idea into a commercial reality.

Blind since birth themselves, the Wilson-Hinds were busily running a disability training company, having won a government contract to teach blind people to use computers. Then, in 1998, Roger was diagnosed with cancer, forcing the couple to quit the business and gift it to a close friend - who has continued its success and now employs nine people.

During the ensuing treatment the Wilson-Hinds realised that, although programmes that could scan text on a computer screen and read it back to the user were available, the typical £700-£800 software packages were beyond the pocket of the majority of the world's blind community and they became determined to produce a low-cost alternative.

At 60 most people contemplate turning the wick down a little, but fuelled by the idea of "opening up information literacy to blind people anywhere", in 2000, Roger enrolled himself and his wife on a course for social entrepreneurs instead.

Having self-funded the product's development, the screenreader, called Thunder, was finally ready for market, but, after a few years of trying to sell it at low-cost, the take-up was slow.

"It seemed like a good idea at the time, but low-cost is often seen as inferior and it wasn't until we studied the Google model and embraced the notion of 'free to the end user' that things really got moving," Roger says.

Immediately the product became free a German company with links to European Blind Union got in touch and, two months later, the Wilson-Hinds were in receipt of an EU grant of ¤240,000 to fund French, Italian, German, Slovak and Estonian versions of Thunder.

Since then, more funding has been forthcoming, a version specifically for people with learning difficulties is in development and, with almost 100,000 users, the company now advises businesses on how to make their websites available to this untapped market.

http://www.blogger.com/www.screenreader.net

By MARK BARBER

We do look forward to a great future for the Thunder screenreader software and what it can do to empower blind and visually impaired people throughout the world.

Well, I feel ashamed that it has been so long since my last blog. Put it down to old age, being too busy and…whatever; but there is good news to report.

Screenreader.net has received a grant from UK Children In Need to make the software available to families where there is a child with little or no sight. We have funding for three years and can employ someone to run our Telephone helpline. So we will be setting all this in motion, hopefully starting in June.

On Wednesday, I am going for an interview in the hope of getting some funding from Unltd to lay the foundations for a better organised admin process here. We began this business many years ago and just kept working and never set up a proper database and management system etc. Better late than never. Its only in the last two years that we have moved over from thinking of ourselves as a helping charity to what we are now – a business which delivers software on a large scale and needs to up-scale its presentation etc.

We have updated our manuals, yet again. There is no standing still in this game. I now use a Windows Vista machine and its great; but not easy for a blind person in the early days. Nothing is where you expect it to be but once the new habits and key strokes are in the auto-pilot of the mind and fingers, its plain sailing again. So I have written up a brief manual which teaches others with little or no sight how to migrate from Windows XP to Windows Vista.

Thunder continues to gather still more users. Nearly 80,000 have visited the download page and we will soon be up to 30,000 registered users. We could do with more feedback from happy or even unhappy Thunder users. We learn most when people tell us what needs to be improved.

Margaret and I actually had a short holiday last week and enjoyed a wonderful long weekend by the sea. The weather was fine and warm and we walked a lot and listened to a talking book in the sunshine. Its great to be able to listen to a book and share together. We have worked hard on the Thunder project over the past three years and now its all coming together. On Wednesday evening, I shall be in Frankfurt at the last EU partners meeting and very soon Thunder will be up on the web in five European languages as well as English. The EU website is www.screenreader4free.eu. So its onwards and upwards for Screenreader.net.