BLIND Digital Forensic Investigator?

Joel,

There is some previous discussion at http//www.forensicfocus.com/Forums/viewtopic/t=8166/ which may be helpful.

Also, you might want to edit your poll's response options 😉

Jamie

Jaime, thanks for that link! I think there's something wrong with the poll. I deleted it and only allowed 2 different responses again, and when I view them they are the same response. I just removed it.

I appreciate any assistance and/or suggestions !

To be honest it's probably some kind of bug - the poll system is a little ropey if you don't get it right the first time and then try to make any edits. Sorry!

I've read a couple threads on this topic over the years, including one here on FF. I applaud anyone who works to overcome a difficulty, no matter what it is. But I do have trouble imagining how a typical DF investigation would work for a blind person. I spend gobs of time looking at huge tables of detailed info, whether in X-Ways or EnCase or Excel or whatever. How would that work? It would take forever for the computer to read just one such screen out loud, and how would you keep up with that level of detail being read to you? Maybe I'm missing something, and I'm certainly open to having that explained to me, but at first blush it just doesn't seem realistic to me.

Chop I agree completely.

Can't ever knock someone for wanting to overcome difficulty, do the job they love or anything like that but there are just some things that can't be automated or overcome.

How will software identify the subject matter of any pictures or videos?
There are so many visual cues that are used in analysis work that would be lost when conveyed verbally, and if we are talking about viewing hex how would the software determine sector boundaries which are usually visually represented.

There are many many more issues at play here not to mention the time issue as described above.

I have seen hardware and software that is capable of interpreting text files to braille which is then pushed out to a pad sort of set up which creates braille strips on the fly for a blind person to read. But I'm not aware how commercially available they are and if they are advanced enough to interact with all types of software.

I'm genuinely curious as to how your student proceeds with this so please post updates as they happen and how they overcome some of these issues.

I disagree with the notion that blind individuals could not work in the digital forensics world.

There are many subsets of digital forensics which do not require looking at images.

In my experience, blind individuals have a much higher level of "visualization", and relationship interpolation capabilities, because of their handicap.

In my personal experience I know some of my musically inclined blind friends can identify a tune just after a few notes - not just that, can link it to several other tunes that are minor variations. Same with editor. She was a walking copyright machine. She could identify many books by a paragraph.

I can remember 7 maybe 14 items in a list. Most blind people, in my experience can memorize twice if not more of that. Think about the benefits when scrolling through e-mails trying to get a pattern.

I see no reason why blind people could not make a niche in the digital forensics industry.

I think they may excel in pattern recognition.

Just a thought.

I'm with jhup. Don't doubt, enable.

Hey I'm happy to be proven wrong, it means I learn something new.

I'm just picturing the work I do now and the work I did when LE and I just can't see how it could be done.

I fully agree that a blind persons other faculties could be more developed, but recognizing patterns, identifying songs or sounds……not the type of work that has anything to do with the vast majority of digital forensics. Maybe working with DOD cracking codes or as an Audio analyst yeah, as you say niche work. But bread and butter digital forensics…I just don't see it happening.

Most of LE work revolves around child exploitation material, yeah there is fraud, stealing, assault, murder etc etc but in my time with the Police 90% of work was all Child related. So that basically puts a blind person out of the running for that work.

From a corporate perspective why would I hire a guy who can do 10% of the work? It would mean I'd have to hire a second guy to do the rest, why not just hire someone who can do the lot.

But, as I said, happy to be proven wrong and very interested to see how this guy gets along with the assignment and doing forensic work in general )

I'm pretty sure in the US, employers have to make "reasonable accommodations" for those who are disabled. Most of the analysis work that I can think of right now just wouldn't be possible, or would take forever without being able to see.

However, I suppose a lot of data could easily be imported in a database where a blind person would be able to run queries.

Relevant link http//taosecurity.blogspot.com/2011/11/dustin-webber-creates-network-security.html

Video http//vimeo.com/32712939