|
|
|
Nonactuarial Pursuits of Casualty Actuaries
Sound Information by Marty Adler
So much of our daily routine as actuaries involves reading. Imagine how difficult it must be for people unable to do that. One of our Fellows devotes time to helping them cope with their disability.
He volunteers for Electronic Information and Education Service of New Jersey (EIES), an organization dedicated to helping blind and low-vision people. For about an hour and a half each week using his home phone, he reads a weekly newspaper into a recording. The recording is then made available for people to access via telephone through a facility known as the telereader. In addition to his readings for EIES, he also set up the organization’s Web site.
Our Fellow first became sensitive to the needs of low-vision students while in high school. Then while in college he recorded math textbooks on tape for Recording for the Blind. It requires considerable effort to read math symbols verbally in an unambiguous manner. For example, ((x2 + y2)/(w2 + z2)).5 is read as follows: “The square root of the quantity which is a quotient, whose numerator is the sum of the square of x plus the square of y, end of numerator; and whose denominator is the sum the square of w plus the square of z, end of denominator, close square root.”
EIES has its own small building in South Orange, New Jersey next to the library that he had passed many times over the years, but a flyer on a library bulletin board finally got him to volunteer. Most of the volunteers either record at the EIES office or read live over the radio station. That, of course, requires commitment to a specific time period, which his work does not permit. He may read at midnight or six in the morning, whatever fits his schedule. Very few volunteer opportunities offer this much flexibility.
The telereader provides the detail of a newspaper with extra flexibility for the listener. For instance, you can listen to an article and jump to the next one without finishing, or you can go back and listen again. Our Fellow is happy he can provide some things from the newspaper that a listener isn’t going to get from a normal TV or radio news program, for example, the obituaries.
Among the favorite columnists he reads is a film critic who seems to pride himself on writing extremely long sentences. He often wonders, “When will the sentence end?” Upon actually meeting this film critic, our Fellow told him he is probably one of the few people who literally reads his work word for word— and it’s too long! Another favorite is a music critic who reviews musical pieces with names in languages our Fellow doesn’t understand. He is sure he does an amusing job mangling these other languages. Still another is a theatre critic who writes with the most amazing puns. Sometimes he cannot read the column without bursting out in laughter.
Although not claiming to be a professional Webmaster, he has designed personal Web sites for a long time. Self-taught, he merely bought a book and looked at other sites. One site readers may have accessed is actuarialjokes.com, which gets hits from all over the world. He also has created a Web site giving advice to beginning actuarial students, a personal Web site, and a number of other sites. These are all simple sites— he doesn’t do dancing bears or other clever graphics.
Thus he volunteered to be the EIES Webmaster, designed their Web site, and even recently added the ability to listen to the live EIES broadcast. This was quite different than anything he had ever done before. He was surprised there are still hardware/software compatibility issues in live audio streaming that have long been resolved in other areas of computing.
Low-vision people use the Internet with audio translation software that reads the text orally. In fact, he had been e-mailing a Webmaster, from an organization similar to EIES, in another state, and not until they had exchanged much e-mail did our Fellow learn the Webmaster is blind. The telephone and radio broadcasts are, of course, easily accessible to low-vision people.
Although listeners to EIES are encouraged to provide their comments, they are not ordinarily directed to any particular reader. Jerry Tuttle says he naively assumes he has fans who eagerly await his recording and who are peeved when he is late.
Many who do their reading at the EIES office stay to socialize. As someone who reads from home, however, Jerry meets very few fellow volunteers. An unexpected benefit of this volunteer work came when someone who worked at EIES invited him to call another EIES volunteer, who records from home, for a blind date (no pun intended). They have been dating for some time now.
