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Zuko was an idiot. It’s not like that was anything new. But this time, it was really frustrating.
He kept complaining that he had way too much reading for school and that it was giving him headaches and made his eyes burn, but every time she brought up assistive technology he immediately shut her down like the idiot he was.
The first time was the worst.
Zuko had been doing research on Wikipedia and complained that the text was too blurry, even with Zoom.
She had mentioned text to speech software as a possible solution. Zuko’s reaction had been to viciously exclaim, “I’m not blind!” like that was the worst thing ever. Like being blind was bad.
And yeah, okay, being blind in a seeing world could sometimes suck, but his voice had made it clear that’s not what he meant. He had meant “blind” in a derogatory sense, like blind people were bad.
She’d never admit it, but that hurt. She hated it when people did that.
There was nothing wrong with her. Nothing wrong with being blind.
“Hey Sparky, you better think long and hard about what you just implied, and then take it back!”
He did take it back, but Toph wasn’t so easily mollified.
Thankfully, he gave her a proper apology later on. He talked about how his father would have never accepted an “imperfection” like vision loss and how he internalized that. How it took a long time for him to admit he had vision loss and even longer to realize that that wasn’t a personal failing or a flaw.
And, most importantly, he acknowledged that that didn’t give him the right to put down other visually impaired people and promised to do better in the future.
Toph graciously accepted the apology.
Anyway, back to the present. Zuko was once again complaining about reading. And he was once again; on his tablet.
If it was one of his printed school books, she would understand. But on a tablet?
She’d face-palm, if he wasn’t sat directly beside her and would see that.
Toph had to be subtle. It wasn't her strongest suit, but sometimes there was nothing to be done about it.
“You know, Sparky, podcasts are becoming really popular.”
He seemed surprised at this complete non-sequitur.
She soldiered on, “A lot of people prefer listening to reading, which makes perfect sense if you ask me. Some news sites and blogs have even added this button that reads the article out loud for you. Not that it’s really necessary on a tablet, but —“
“Why isn’t it?” he interrupted her.
She had him. Hook, line and sinker.
“Because your tablet already has a button for that. You just open a page and click the play button. Duh.”
“My Tablet doesn’t,” Zuko argued.
“Yes, it does. Go to settings, accessibility, spoken content. It’s below the “large text” and “screen reader” options.”
“Huh, you’re right,” he said, turning on the options. A ‘play’ button appeared in the corner of his screen. “But what does that have to do with what we were taking about?”
“It’s a bit like a podcast, isn’t it? I see a clear connection.”
“I guess,” Zuko mumbled, not realizing that their conversation had nothing to do with podcasts. Neither did he realize that he had just turned on an accessibility option.
It wasn’t quite a screen reader yet, but it would at least give his eyes some rest for longer articles.