About Me
Hello and welcome to The Tech Demon. My name is Dave and I am currently the sole creator of this website, which I hope can grow to become a favourite amongst blind and visually impaired tech fans. I'm living in Dublin, Ireland and have a condition called Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP), a degenerative condition of the retina, meaning my vision is slowly but surely getting worse over time.
My History With Technology
Like many people, I grew up mostly using Windows, well after having a Commodore 64 and an Amiga 500 as a kid of course. As my vision worsened I began using magnification software on Windows, mainly the built-in magnifier, which got me by just fine for a long while. However as my productivity levels began to slip, the time came to start thinking about screen readers. Technically my first screen reader was Talks on a Nokia phone, followed later by an iPhone, but more about that later. On the PC side I learned my way around Jaws at the National Council for the Blind of Ireland (NCBI) Training Centre in 2010, a big change from using Windows visually all those years. The iPhone though led me into the Apple universe and I bought a Macbook Pro with its beautiful built-in screen reader VoiceOver at the end of 2010 and I've never looked back! I do though still use Jaws and NVDA on a Windows laptop at work.
The Mobile Side
Around mid 2007 I found out that there was a screen reader called Talks for Nokia Symbian phones and I wasted no time in getting my hands on one. However great as this was, and it really was fantastic, I did look very jealously at my friends and their iPhones over the next couple of years. At that stage I wasn't very engaged with the blind community and certainly not with the access technology field, but one day in 2009, a little while after the release of the iPhone 3GS, I literally stumbled upon the news of VoiceOver being added to iOS. Rather than taking the plunge straight away, I bought myself a third generation iPod Touch to get a flavour for it. Honestly, I took to it like a duck to water, and by January 2010 I had my first iPhone, a 3GS. Since then I have had a 4S, 5S, 6Plus, 6S and my current iPhone 7, as well as my recent month on android of course, using a Nexus 5. I have also become much more involved with the community generally and taken a particular interest in technology. As well as the Mac mentioned above, I also added an iPad in 2010. I currently use a 2015 13 inch MacBook Pro and a 9.7 inch iPad Pro. An Apple Watch and Apple TV round out my collection. I like to keep up with what's going on in Microsoft, Android and elsewhere too, but it's fair to say I'm mostly living in the Apple eco system!
Get Involved
If you would like to contribute to the website, or contact me for any reason, please fill out the form on the Contact page. You can also find me on Twitter @davidnason1.