A Web3-style venture: the story of a computer teacher and a group of blind geeks

Author | Chen Chen

Edit | Lin Xiu

"Scramble Reading" is a screen reading software designed to assist visually impaired people in operating computers. At present, the cumulative number of downloads of "Scramble" has exceeded one million, and the users have also covered the United States, Russia, Canada and other countries. But measured by the metrics of a "company", "scrambling" is still very niche, with no considerable profits and no glory worth talking about. In addition, in the team of about a dozen people, except for Zhengdu himself, who is a full-time entrepreneur, everyone else is part-time.

Also, many of them are blind.

What does it mean to be visually impaired? What is conceivable is: dark, inconvenient, difficult to get rid of the subtle labels of sympathy and long companionship. In fact, deeper down, it also means giving up. We all know this metaphor for ideals: in the yellow woods there are two paths, one is reality and the other is ideal. But for blind people, when most of them reach a certain age and need to face the future, there are really only two paths in front of them: one is massage, and the other is music.

In the interview, many blind programmers and entrepreneurs we talked to have faced such a choice and suffered from it. What they may have in common is simply that they are sensitive to technology and have a geeky heart. It is like a drop of hot blood in the vast sea of people, allowing these people to smell each other's scent, come together, and make something that can be called a career.

Our feeling is that "scrambling" is not exactly a story about entrepreneurship, for example, how a valuable idea is proposed, how a bug-ridden software grows and perfects, and popularized, all of which are not told according to standard business logic, and it is difficult to judge its success and failure under this logic. It has richer dimensions of evaluation, such as faith, friendship, and human courage. The most precious part of this story is not the technology, nor the patterns, but these people.

Who are they?

01 Yang Yongquan

"Actually, I'm a person without a story." Yang Yongquan said in his chat with me that he also confused reporters who always wanted to find stories in him.

He has no story, but he has legend.

Since 2012, there has been a question hanging on Zhihu: "Who is Yang Yongquan?" At that time, Zhihu had just been established. More than half a year ago, it was still in beta, not open to the public, and users needed to use invitation codes to join this elite and pseudo-elite community. At that time, Yang Yongquan, who was labeled "blind", was very active. The text is clear and fluent, answering netizens' curiosity about blind people.

The netizen who asked the question said, "I am curious how he used Zhihu and how did he brush Weibo?"

Yang Yongquan saw this problem, and the next morning he replied: "Use the computer, rely on the help of screen reading software."

I know the question about "Who is Yang Yongquan"

The working principle of screen reading software, simply put, is to convert the information visible to ordinary people into speech and broadcast it through the speaker. For the blind, the screen reading software plus the speaker form a display that uses sound to display information. Its technical logic is simple: how to convert visible information into voice broadcasting?

It's not high-end and it's not complicated. In Yang Yongquan's own description, it can be called a difficult place, more in the cumbersome adaptation link. "Windows has a dedicated accessibility interface that provides accessibility interfaces for developing applications under the Windows platform. IoS systems also have specialized accessibility interfaces, Adobe also has specialized interfaces, and w3c also has specialized web accessibility specifications. Therefore, as long as developers follow these existing specifications when doing product research and development, they can provide a good experience for blind people and give blind people a barrier-free operation experience."

"But most developers think it's something that doesn't matter." Yang Yongquan said that for a long time, blind people can only sigh secretly and cannot do anything.

He has no story, he only has experience. Yang Yongquan suffered from congenital glaucoma and was completely blind at the age of 14. His life after that is no different from our speculations about how a blind man should live in this world. He spent unimaginable adaptation and confusion, and then, entering the School of Special Education of Changchun University, the major he could choose was music and tuina, and he chose the latter. After graduating from college, he returned to his hometown of Yantai, Shandong Province, and opened his own massage shop with a rent of 6,000 a year. Most visually impaired people can walk this way.

02 Scramble

Yang Yongquan's encounter with "Scramble" was a coincidence. At that time, "Scramble" was just a person's screen name, a university computer teacher.

Yang Yongquan loves computers. He admitted to being an "Internet addict". During college, I saved money to go to the computer room to surf the Internet, rub the C language class of the computer major, and learn some scattered programming knowledge. Soon after graduation, just after having time to have the conditions to access the Internet, he shuttled between various QQ groups and forums, and also loved to download the software in the "Sky Software Station" list one by one, and wanted to try any type.

"For example, if I work seven or eight hours a day, I may sleep for eight hours, then I can use the Internet for five or six hours, and it should be no problem to work seven or eight hours a day for more than five or six hours." 」 Yang Yongquan said.

In May 2008, Yang Yongquan, a heavy QQ user, hoped to find a software that automatically read QQ messages, and when searching for CSDN (a popular IT technology exchange platform at the time), he searched for a "chat companion" released by Zhengdu, "After installing it, sending a message to others, you call up the QQ window, it can read the message to you."

But that software wasn't very good. Yang Yongquan sent an email to the author, saying (this software) that it is not very convenient for us blind people to use, can you help us improve it.

The author of the software is Contend. His eyesight is normal, and he made this software just to solve the problem of washing clothes in his dormitory and not seeing the news.

Zhengdu saw Yang Yongquan's private message, and the two people added QQ to each other and began to talk. At that time, Zhengdu knew that blind people could use screen reading tools to access the Internet normally, and that there were blind people using the small software he released casually.

At that time, there were only two screen reading software in China, Sunshine and Yongde, and Yang Yongquan used it every day, which was Launched by Yongde in 1999. Yang Yongquan told Zhengdu that screen reading software generally has problems such as slow response and inability to capture effective information. Zhengdu quickly thought, "Then we might as well make a screen reading software ourselves."

Yang Yongquan was interviewed by the media | Image credit: Lightning Video

After much discussion, both men felt that the idea was feasible. So they gathered seven or eight blind people they met online, formed the initial screen reading development team, and the people in tiannanhaibei launched a web3-style cooperation. Zhengdu is the person in charge, mainly responsible for software programming, and others are responsible for product design, evaluation and publicity.

Technically, the word "screen reading" can be disassembled as: the screen reading software loaded on the computer or mobile phone system, obtaining the information on an application interface that is also loaded on the computer or mobile phone system, and after a series of technical processing, they are pronounced aloud and heard. There are three parties involved in this process: screen readers, computer or mobile phone systems, and apps. Where the application is the provider of information, the operating system is the transit station, and the screen reading software is responsible for the output of information. Three-way interlocking, any point of incompatibility will breed a variety of bugs.

Most of the team members are blind, and from their own needs, they believe that the new software should respond quickly to keystrokes and support a wide range of software. But it's not that easy. After months of hard work, they made the software give its voice.

For how to capture the information in different software, in addition to one adjustment, there is actually no better way, can only come step by step. Debugging from the desktop, start menu, to the browser, QQ and other software, for several months, the team's time is occupied by software evaluation. Yang Yongquan said, "At that time, everyone never slept before twelve o'clock."

In May 2009, the team held a press conference online to announce the upcoming launch of a new screen reading software called "Battle for The Crossing Screen Reader".

In September, the first official version of the reading screen was launched, priced at 650 yuan. At that time, the price of screen reading software on the market was mostly around 1,000 yuan.

03 Yu Han

In the early days of the development of "Scramble", Yu Han paid attention to this team. "At that time, a new screen reading software appeared, and there was a big reaction in the major blind forums and the QQ groups where the blind gathered. Because there were not many screen reading software."

But he did not immediately become a "scramble" user, the price is not high, but it is a sum of money after all. Moreover, for blind people, changing familiar tools also requires learning costs.

A month after the launch of "Scramble", Windows 7 was released, and the team that was at the peak of entrepreneurial enthusiasm immediately updated the version. At that time, other screen reading software was not fully compatible with the upgraded system, and in the gap between fast and slow, The battle gained a lot of new users and established some reputation.

But the window of opportunity is not always available. In the next two years, the problem of the lack of experience of the startup team was also revealed: the overall software function could not keep up. This has also led to the fact that the screen reading has not obtained many paid users. "If few people use it, your software will not play a valuable role."

In 2011, the situation did not improve much. The team made a simple decision: directly launch the free version, first increase the user base. Yang Yongquan recalled that at that time, he felt, "We still have to let everyone use it first, and only after using it can we give us feedback, and then we can make it better."

More or less, this is also associated with a certain idealism, "screen reading software is as important to blind people as air and water, and there should be a free version," Yang Yongquan said.

Before the launch of the free version of The Battle, there was no free screen reading software in China, and the free version was made for more than ten years. Even now, the screen reading software is still the only screen reading software in China that provides a free version under the Windows system.

It was at this time that Yu Han began to switch to the Reading Screen.

Yu Han is born with visual impairment, in 2007, when he was in junior high school, he was first exposed to computers in a newly opened computer class. He was still impressed in the first few weeks of the course. "At that time, we got a computer classroom, and we got some bad keyboards that were broken or eliminated, so we poked and wrote down the keys every day."

Visually impaired students studying computers in special schools | Image source: Zhengdu official website

The junior high school computer teacher's requirements were not high, but Yu Han still poked very seriously, and he told me that he was very grateful to himself at that time, "Subconsciously, I may realize that if you want to learn better, you must know every key."

A person's love for a thing, like a seed that must germinate, it really just needs to be thrown in the dirt. When poking the keyboard, Yu Han felt that he was very sensitive to this feeling and pleasure. But more than that, the junior high school computer class has a supporting teaching CD, which is far richer than the school teaching, Yu Han copied the content of the CD into his own MP3, and began to go where to listen to the self-study. He also looks for programming books in the e-books stored on the school's computer.

"At that time, it was very difficult to read this thing, and the more I went to the back, the more I couldn't understand it." Yu Han recalled that now he was still teaching himself programming, and a lot of his knowledge as a student had long been blurred. He remembers that there were many people around him who were interested in programming, but most of them did not last long. "Now that I think about it, most of them are actually new" and "Time will screen out people who are constantly enthusiastic."

In 2012, Yu Han graduated from secondary school, and if he continues to study, he can only choose from two majors: tuina and music. "But none of them wanted it." At that time, he said, he decided to "slow down" at home. In the years of staying at home, Yu Han became a Tieba bar owner, managing a blind person using mobile phone-related Tieba and also sharing some screen reading software technology on various platforms and group chats.

At that time, the team made a chat room and positioned it as an "online home for the blind". The chat room will hold some entertainment science activities such as the big stage and the big lecture hall, and many users will ask questions and chat in it, and Yu Han is an active person in it.

Scramble for Homeland Forum

In 2014, Yu Han joined "Scramble" and became the administrator of the chat room of "Scramble Homeland". Also in this year, As a company, Yangquan Zhiduo Electronic Technology Co., Ltd., Zhengdu Reading Screen was established with a registered capital of 100,000.

04 Teacher Yao

Yao Daming met Zhengdu Reading Screen more than a decade ago, and Yang Yongquan called him "Teacher Yao".

Teacher Yao was not born blind, his blindness came long and unexpected. In the second semester of junior high school, he found that his eyes were very easily fatigued. After the examination, the doctor concluded that there might be future blindness.

After graduating at the age of 20, Yao Daming became a music teacher, soaking tapes, playing with stereos, driving cars, and reading magazines every day. Some hidden worries are hidden in the heart. It wasn't until he was 28 that his eyesight really began to decline rapidly.

Every month, more than a dozen magazines are delivered to him, "Music Lovers", "Friends of the Car", "Overseas Digest", "Aviation Knowledge"... These were all set for more than five years, and then "Man seed" and "Overseas Stars and Moons", these were set for three or four years." Before, when the magazine arrived, he couldn't wait to read it; later, he couldn't see it clearly with a magnifying glass; and then, this time, the "later" had a clear time marker: in 2008, his eyes finally had only a sense of light.

After the eyes can't see, music and audio novels accompany Yao Daming through the most difficult days.

After becoming "blind", Yao Daming also quickly felt the obstacle. Even listening to the simple thing of novels is full of difficulties, for example, turning off pop-up ads is difficult for him. "Drag the mouse to touch, lucky ten times can have a half click right to continue listening, once the click is wrong, either there is no response, or give the point no sound, can only turn off the stereo by themselves." 」

During Yao Daming's blind exploration period, a former colleague once gave him a CD-ROM, saying that he went to a blind massage yesterday, saw that the blind person "actually" could use the computer, and then asked, the other party said that this thing is called screen reading software, and the colleague got him a copy.

But Yao Daming can't install it, his computer system and this screen reading software are not compatible, and it is not okay to reinstall it once. He had tried to contact the company and ask what to do, but the other party was vague and impatient, and he didn't care.

At the end of 2012, he happened to hear about the reading screen in the "Voice of China" program friends with disabilities, and he wanted to try again, and once he downloaded it, he found that it could really be used and was free. After that, yao Damingto's program host wanted to go to Yang Yongquan's phone, drip him from time to time, and ask him how he should operate.

It was Yao Daming's fifth year of complete blindness, and it was only then that he began doing what he could do every day before he went blind: going online.

After a month of acquaintance, Yang Yongquan invited Yao Daming to join the Homeland scramble and host a talk show on the YY channel. After many chats, he understood Yao Daming's vocal conditions and his perception of words and art.

At that time, Yao Daming had been suspended at home. He recalls that the new experience in the scramble gave him a very big message to rebuild his life. And these blind partners are also precious companions on the road of "fighting for" the vision of barrier-free access to the Internet for blind people.

But the truth is that the power of "scrambling" is limited, and most blind people are still faced with an unfriendly and obstacle-ridden real world.

Now, "Teacher Yao" and Yang Yongquan are very good friends, and he will also talk about some feelings with Yang Yongquan. For example, after the YY update, the shortcut keys for public screen messages and sending flowers have failed, and Yao Daming can only use the Tab key to cut one by one when he needs to use these functions in class.

Also, Meituan takeaway is also a commonly used software for Yao Daming. After delivering something, the takeaway brother will sometimes say "trouble to give a good review", and ordering a praise is a matter of moving a finger for many people. However, after the software upgrade three years ago, Yao Daming could not find the "Submit" button on the review page. "I just took my phone and turned off the narration and let him do it himself. Many of the little brothers are too busy to have time, so I can only say sorry."

Yang Yongquan said with some helplessness that laying a "blind road" for everyone should be the embodiment of social progress. Then, as the role of software developers, information accessibility should not be regarded as a "sentimental" function, showing noble but dispensable, but should be regarded as a basic function of software development. This is already a well-established concept, but the reality is still long and difficult.

Now, what Yang Yongquan has been doing is to pick up the accessibility scripts of major applications, assist them in optimizing the accessibility design, so that the information of the application can be accurately identified by the screen reading software, this work he has insisted on as a technology enthusiast.

Yang Yongquan's online name is "Sunny Day", and his blog created with qt06 as a domain name and a forum for "blind Android enthusiasts" have become his continuous advancement in the field of Internet information accessibility. In addition to the screen reading software, he also contributed to the barrier-free transformation of Ali Wangwang screen reading version, Tencent QQ, Sina Weibo, YY voice, etc.

Under the goal, in the process of research and development for many years, "Zhengdu" has also had many innovative moves of barrier-free exploration, for example, in 2015, Zhengdu took the lead in using online OCR recognition technology, and further completed the operation and interaction with the recognition content, optimizing the experience of using the subtitle reading function.

05 Common cause

Since its inception, the number of "scrambling" teams has remained at seven or eight, and at most there are only about a dozen. But among them, except for Tsutomu himself, who had to work full-time because of the large amount of programming work, the others were part-time.

"The user market for reading screens is small", Yang Yongquan also analyzed why the team has less than ten people, "our basic life can be guaranteed almost the same, can not support so many people."

"Can this job protect your life?" I can't help but be curious about this question. Both Yang Yongquan and Yu Han gave negative answers.

In addition to "fighting for the ferry", Yang Yongquan and his wife also continued to run their massage shop, setting a nine-to-six work rhythm for themselves; Yu Han went around and began to do massage in 2015, and in 2018, he returned to campus to apply for the massage major for the enrollment of disabled students at a university in Jilin Province. Two precarious jobs underpin their relatively stable lives.

"[Scrambling] is a common goal, or a common thing." Yu Han said so.

Yu Han has been in the team for eight years, and he is the last one on the team to join. Now, he is also beginning to get involved in development-related work, and like the rest of the team, he has entered a state of doing work, such as editing help documentation, such as participating in functional design, and testing and maintenance. And once we find out, we get together to discuss and develop.

So far, more than 20 years have passed since the advent of the first commercial screen reading software Yongde in China, during which the Internet industry has developed rapidly, and various applications have emerged in an endless stream, but there are still not many screen reading software that blind people can use well.

"Scramble" is still the most mainstream one. Since 2014, the number of downloads that this software can count has been millions, and the paid version has gone to the United States, Russia, Canada and other countries, but all this has not made it a profitable business. In fact, there are not many opponents competing with it, and it is there to stubbornly iterate and perfect for human use. It is difficult to evaluate whether such an open and free space for growth is a kind of luck or a kind of helplessness.

At present, the professional payment of "Scramble to Read the Screen" is divided into commercial version and youth version of multiple stalls, and the price is generally around 800. The proceeds from sales are mainly used for product and team development, and the rest is distributed according to the contributions of team members.

Technology is changing, software is changing, and users using screen-reading software are also changing. Yang Yongquan believes that there will always be new needs and new tasks waiting for them, and the guarantee they are willing to give at this stage is that the software will continue to be updated, unless the Windows system is gone.

The veteran screen-reading software Yongde stopped updating before Windows 10, and Zhengdu completed the adaptation shortly after the Win10 and Win11 updates.

During the conference of the reading screen, the preferential amount is five yuan and ten yuan

This team of about ten people, working two jobs, has gone through thirteen years and supported millions of downloads. Behind the admirable combination of numbers, it also means that the needs of so many people stem from the enthusiasm of a group of people. This is an extremely rare, truly idealistic story in the business world.

Of course there is confusion. The founder "Zhengdu" once wrote on the official website: "Zhengdu reading screen is not a commercial success, far less than those who run the market and have resources." Yes, from a business point of view, I don't actually see the possibility of "long-term sustainability" in the fight. Even if such a group of determined people come together, can they beat the cruel time?

If there is an answer to this question, I think, the answer is friendship and understanding. In the interview, I heard the stories of these members knowing each other, many of the beginning of acquaintances is just chat in the community of Zhengdu, because of the common situation, and similar vision, they came together (Yang Yongquan is also in The Struggle to know his lover), no one understands better than them, what is the meaning and value of this matter.

06 Lit up people

We all know the adage that knowledge is light and ignorance is darkness. The significance of screen reading software for blind people is interpreted here.

Many blind people who use "Scramble" to freely read information online tell us how this software has helped them. All along, "Scramble" has not had much money to do promotion, but serious, warm products are like the wind, which will unconsciously blow to many places. Searching by keywords, it is easy to find that in the recommended posts of many screen reading software, "Scramble" is in the forefront; in the announcement of the top of the official website of "Scramble", many user and supporter donations are announced.

In the interview, the team repeatedly mentioned a simple concept: "Serve your own users well". Whether it is to solve the OCR recognition of annoying small pop-ups, or to watch subtitles that can be used to watch foreign language movies, or to read stocks, do PPT and other functions, each new function is online, is to solve a real user needs. And those feedback from users, flowing through the various communities of the ferry every day, after discussion and research and development, and finally presented on the product.

Yunxi is also a user who competes to read the screen and is reading her first year of high school this year. As for why he chose it, Yunxi gave a very realistic reason: when he first came into contact, it was best to have a free version. "It's no problem to check information or write a simple document on the Internet."

Yunxi's circle of friends

Recently, Yunxi began to use the paid version of "Scramble". He is teaching himself programming, his ideal is to be a geek, and the paid version of "Scramble" can support some programming tools.

Yunxi and many blind people call ordinary people "clear-eyed people", he said, in fact, many blind people like to go online, because the world of blind people is too narrow. "Clear-eyed people" can go shopping and do a lot of activities after the holiday, but blind people can only passively stay at home and can only surf the Internet at home. And between liking the Internet and learning to program, there is only a bridge, and the stories of the members of the "scramble" have made many blind people see this bridge.

And crutches. Blind people who want to be programmers must learn to use production tools. However, there are very few screen-reading software in the market that can provide good support for programming tools. Yang Yongquan himself admitted, "There are very few users in this part now." But for the company, it's a little profit, and for the user, it's a glimmer of hope.

This hope is precious, but it is heavy. Young Yunxi is studying at a blind school in Qingdao, and the college entrance examination is also close at hand. When I talked to him about his plans for the future, Yun Xi said that as a blind man, he actually couldn't do anything about it.

Since 2014, the ordinary college entrance examination has only been open to the blind, but this newly opened door can only accommodate few opportunities: there are very few blind people who really apply for the examination, and the provinces in the country add up to only a dozen a year. Yun Xi said that this road is only tried by top students, but in his high school, even if he is a "very good senior", he can be admitted to ordinary colleges and universities, have the opportunity to study his favorite major, and it is difficult to find employment after graduation, and few companies are willing to accept blind people.

"As long as you choose the ordinary college entrance examination, you are just a lone traveler, and no one will explore the way for you." 」 Yun Xi said.

The path that Yun Xi and most of his classmates can take is a single exam and a single move, that is, a specific quota provided by colleges and universities for the blind, and the only major is music and rehabilitation massage. After coming out, find a job related to schools and seniors, as well as the protective net of society, which will always support you in this field.

That is to say, this society has support for blind people, but the purpose is only to enable them to support themselves and survive.

But beyond survival, there are always some people who are willing to think a little more, in a bright world, can there be a little space for their ideal placement?

At least for now, the blind are on their own.

Yang Yongquan's massage parlor in Yantai was originally called "Blind Tuina", and later he removed the word "blind". "I don't think it's necessary to highlight the blind, what we're looking for is to do something on our own when the environment can support it," he said.

At the end of the article, I would like to reprint a cry from Yang Yongquan on Zhihu, which originated from the words of a Web engineer who has long been concerned about product accessibility:

"Making information accessible, making every website very accessible to everyone, making every software very accessible to everyone, making every information accessible to everyone, and not discriminating against any particular group of people is the common social responsibility of every IT company and IT engineer, and it is also the embodiment of a social civilization."