The Landline Challenge

The landline phone is a strange and mysterious device. For something so far behind internet technology, it offers a mixed bag of mysterious happenings through its wires, like its better-quality sound compared to, say, my Nokia or even Skype. It provides a stable handset that can’t do other confusing things, like send tweets or alert users of new emails. Within a simple handset, the landline hides a monstrous secret. It can royally confuse internet-fed youths like me when setting it up.

A host of friends and I are in my apartment this afternoon. We’re playing a healthy dose of Halo on the Xbox when I have the urge to check for a package. Back in September, I ordered a talking landline phone that cost me $125, and it didn’t even have a phonebook. I figured I could use Google Voice as my permanent address book and place free calls that way since the facility where I live charges for outbound calls to anyone not in the building. I’d use a landline here a ton, so I went ahead and bought the handset.

I walk down to the mailroom to see if the phone has arrived. I wonder if I should check my mailbox while I’m downstairs but decide against it because I’m on a very important mission, and I’m a man who always completes very important phone missions.

The package has arrived, and I’m so giddy that I send a picture of the packaging to my friends and even a few coworkers.

“You’re weird,” one of my editors writes in response to my smiling message.

“I know!” I boast.

After I lug the phone up to my apartment, my young friends gape as if it’s a new iPhone. All three of us open the box, which has tiny print even though the phone is supposed to be for the blind and the visually impaired. My two friends stare at the inner packaging, and I look around for something.

“So, do you want to set it up now?” Dwayne asks me, fumbling around in the box.

“Yeah,” I say, wondering what’s happening in the blind tech world for no reason at all. “Yeah. Let’s hook it up.”

We get to work —- or, I should say, they get to work while I look for a manual in the box. I’m not one to try something until I’ve read the manual thoroughly and multiple times. I like to know about every facet of what I have. I can find things out on my own, but that often leads me to mess something up, and that’s horrific. When I mess technology up, I mess it up horribly since I’m such an advanced user.

As my hand searches inside the box, I listen in on what my other college-educated friends are doing. They both have different cords and are saying, “I’ve got this cord!” and “I have that cord here!”

Finally, I find the manual and lift it out of the box. I expect some sort of large print or even braille, but ironically, it has tiny letters and small drawings I can’t see.

“Wait! I’m totally lost!” Jamaal says to Dwayne, who’s setting up the base of the phone. “If this is the outlet cord, this long prong shouldn’t go in the phone jack, right? But if it’s hooked into the phone jack, will it still work?”

“Let’s wait on Robbie,” Dwayne says. He looks up at me with a very sexy smile and raised eyebrows.

Jamaal groans at this flirtation. “Look, dawg. He’s cute, but I’m still confused.”

I look down at the manual again, trying to decipher something, anything. I don’t even have enough sight to make out the sections. The book fits in the palm of my hand, and the text isn’t boldfaced. I’m squinting and straining to see a character in the booklet, wishing more than ever that I could use the internet. If I had the internet, I could just open a PDF and zoom in as far as I needed, or I could have had NVDA read it to me.

“Dude, dude, dude!” Dwayne’s yelps jolt me out of my thoughts. “What does the manual say?”

“I don’t know,” I reply sadly. “I can’t even read the darn tootin’ thing.”

During a pause, my friends exchange glances.

“He’s definitely a country boy,” Jamaal whispers to Dwayne, who’s looking at the remaining cords spread out across my apartment floor.

“All right!” Dwayne exclaims, and we look up at him quizzically. “We don’t really need the instructions, eh, guys? After all,” he points to the three of us, “we have a totally huge and diverse group of experts. Our perseverance will beat this setup! So, we can definitely do this. Look, guys, we’ve got an engineer, an accountant.” We stare as he continues giving a Hollywood speech like we’re in Independence Day. Finally, he gets to me, beaming, “And a journalist, so boo-yeah! We be rockin’ this hardware snag.”

We cheer, and my friends keep hooking the wires up to the walls and sockets. Then, I step forward to try to use the handset.

I’ve never used a landline phone except in hospitals, so I keep looking at the handset, searching for the power button to turn it on. The phone doesn’t have a screen at all, so I’m not even sure how I’m supposed to turn it on. Is it on? Do I just put it up to my ear? I don’t know what to do, and since I can’t read the manual, I’m even more lost. I decide just to try. I feel a bit foolish as I press the receiver to my ear.

“Does it work? Have our collectively epic brains conquered the phone?” Dwayne asks.

“I don’t think so. I don’t hear a dial tone.”

“Really?” Jamaal, the engineer, asks. As if to prove me wrong, he listens to the receiver as well.

“Told you.” I smirk.

My friends go back to replacing wires and connections. Meanwhile, I wish I could be yelling out instructions from the manual on my computer. Since the booklet is so small, I can only glance longingly at it, as if it’s a straight guy who’ll never glance back. I wonder if it’s worth scanning it.

Just as I’m about to place the booklet onto the scanner, Jamaal taps me on the shoulder. “Okay, cutie, you’re all set up.”

“Smashing,” I declare. Then, I happily pick the receiver to bask in the dial tone. Since the hard part is finished, I blurt out before regretting it that I’ll be fine from here and that I don’t need them to read anything to me.

Because they have tests to study for, they leave an hour later, giving me time to fiddle with my new phone. It has huge buttons and very distinctive ringing sounds, but something’s missing. I wonder why the phone isn’t talking to me.

I’m sure the answer is in the manual somewhere, so I sit at my computer. I try to scan the manual and have it converted to speech. Scanning the manual is a nightmare. It takes me several tries to get a good scan of a single page, and sometimes the text isn’t even in complete sentences because it includes illustration captions.

Finally, I make it to the end of the manual, but it doesn’t say anything about talking features. I look at the FAQ section and learn, after ten scans of the page, that the talking features must be turned on using a switch in the back compartment, which my sighted friends hadn’t seen. I vow not to give them any of the good candy this Halloween. I relent and call Dwayne to come back. He does, and he fixes the phone for me before leaving for good, tripping on the air as he exits my apartment. We all have degrees in one specialty or another. The world should be nervous.

Finally, I get the phone to work. I keep fiddling with my handset, playing with the buttons to figure out which does what. The irony isn’t lost on me. I’d never have to do this if I could use the internet. But what about the people who are blind or visually impaired who have no choice but to read manuals that won’t scan perfectly? What if they don’t have any sighted assistance?

Online, we can make any document at any time accessible via screen readers. The sheer fact of having the internet gives blind and visually impaired people the tools for more significant independence. I want to be clear: independence is what people make of their own lives, and I’m still independent now. My independence isn’t diminished by seeking help. Yet, without the internet, in many cases, information is sacrificed as well as power.

I’ve been adapting to this new way of living, relying on humans more than the net to get things done. But a human isn’t nearly as vast, knowledgeable, or available as the World Wide Web. I feel powerless, relinquishing the control I used to have to another human being. I don’t yet know how to fully accept this level of trust.

I’m missing my freedom. Before, I’d say proudly that I didn’t need help with certain things because I could use the internet. I could use servers to get the information I wanted where and how I wanted. It’s difficult to describe this level of independent living to someone who hasn’t had or needed it, but after a while off the grid, I feel as if I’m losing facets of my independence.

I’m certain this is how people who lose their sight later in life feel. They can do things like driving, so they have the world at their fingertips. They can get anything from anywhere because they have the built-in tools to see whatever they want to see and get where they want to go. When they lose their sight, they must learn how to trust and adapt to a completely new way of life. People can try to adapt in a million ways, but these efforts require a huge amount of trust in someone else. They don’t know anything about this way of life, so they cling to people who’ve already been blind, like me, for support and guidance.

I think I finally understand how they feel.

I want to trust again in a host of connected servers that I can manipulate and control to fit my needs. I want to go back to being the master of my own information. And I want my friends to spend their time being my friends, not providing functions that society could provide.