by, Renee Wood

You know that old saying, “Technology is great – when it works”. Well, if one depends on technology to navigate their daily life, it’s a pain when something happens and it’s not working. For example, I wrote two books in the last year using voice recognition for people with speech impairments. The software is called Voiceitt. Well, I’ve been using it since last June with a subscription that started last August. Needless to say, the subscription needed to be renewed this August. It said my subscription ended August 14^th, but it was still working the morning of the 15th. Since I use this technology every day now I was trying to be proactive and renew it before time ran out and it stopped working. The subscription is $500 a year – not cheap but I get reimbursed through my county board for adaptive technology, thank God.

After I renewed it, it stopped working right after, and only then prompted me to renew it. That was frustrating to fork out $500 out of my pocket and then have it stop working. Unfortunately, it was a weekend, which you wouldn’t think had anything to do with it. I mean isn’t tech support 24/7? Well tech support wasn’t answering and I was getting peeved that I shelled out $500 to have my technology quit on me. And like I said, weekend or not, I use that technology every day to write emails, Facebook messages, blogs, or whatever. These technology vendors probably think that people with disabilities don’t do anything important on the weekend, or otherwise, so they can wait.

I could feel my blood pressure rising when I thought about Voiceitt not working. However, having my niece live with us the last year and a half, and seeing her get hyper about things she can’t do anything about at the moment, reminded me to keep myself calm. I just told myself, “Monday I would get it straightened out”. If I couldn’t, then I might have been a little bit more upset. Watching my niece, I realized getting upset doesn’t do anything. We can’t get anything accomplished, if we’re too busy being upset rather than problem solving.

However, it’s logical that I might be upset because Voiceitt has saved me a lot of time and energy the past year. What used to take me a half hour to type, I can do in five or ten minutes. I was kind of lost doing it the old-fashioned way when Voiceitt went out. I can still type but it’s hard and tedious, so this weekend I was typing all this email by hand thinking what a pain! I had an email of a guy who worked at Voiceitt a year ago when I first got started. Of course I didn’t know if he still worked there or not, but wrote him on the off chance that he might. Another person answered and said they hadn’t been taking any subscriptions, or renewing them since August 12th due to ongoing site maintenance. She said she’d give me a 30-day extension so I can still use the app. That’s all well and good, but what about my $500? I wish she would have explained if my subscription would activate after the maintenance was done.

I wonder if we’re too hooked on technology? Typing emails I used to do by hand all the time. I still can do it the same as I used to, but now that I’m accustomed to dictation that actually works, going back to the other way is really frustrating. It’s the same with any technology, from specialized wheelchairs, Smart Home Technology, or a number of other things that have made it easier to live life with disabilities. My question is: has technology ruined us in the end? Now we don’t know how to function a little while without it? That’s kind of scary if you think about it.

In the end, my weekend tech hiccup reminded me just how deeply woven technology has become in my daily life – and how vulnerable that makes me when it falters. Voiceitt has been a game-changer, not just in convenience but in independence and expression. So when it stopped working, it wasn’t just a glitch – it felt personal. But through the frustration, I found a little clarity: staying calm, asking for help, and remembering that even when tech lets us down, our resilience doesn’t have to. Maybe the real power isn’t in the tools we use, but in how we adapt when they’re gone.