This is how inaccessible tech was for blind people 20 years ago

He plays on an Xbox, navigates his way using a GPS and knows when to turn the lights off — but life wasn't always this easy for David Woodbridge.

Woodbridge, who lost his sight when he was 8 years old, says things were very different 20 years ago.

"I had to do a lot more work and running around to get the same level of access I do today," he tells Mashable. 

"I was very reliant on my laptop and [had to have] multiple standalone devices: a talking calculator, watch, GPS, diary."

The task of reading a printed document, for instance, had to be scanned in to the computer and analysed with OCR (optical character recognition) software — a tedious process. Read more...