[nabs-l] questions about taking Spanish in college

[Jason Polansky]

I should also add that when typing accent symbols, (such as A acute, E acute, I acute etc), you have to navigate to the bottom of the page with control-end to find the buttons to type them. Select the one you want, and then use the e shortcut to get back to the edit field in which you were typing your answer. There are also some questions that involve selecting an item from a combo box or radio buttons. The only ones that are not really accessible are the ones that involve matching. Overall, I would say that it's accessible, but kind of annoying and tedious at times. Luckily, it only counted for about 10% of the total grade, and the professor did take into account the accessibility factor. For all other assignments, I just used my Braille Sense notetaker and learned the braille symbols for the accent signs, which I actually already knew from high school Spanish. If you have a notetaker, I would learn those Braille symbols! That is, if you use Braille regularly. Also, your notetaker will most likely use computer braille, so you will need to learn the Spanish braille symbols for numbers, which are basically the literary numbers with a dot-6 added to them. So the number 1 is the CH symbol, 2 is the AR symbol, 3 is the SH symbol etc, and there's no number sign, and the period is dot-3. If you don't use Braille, and will be using Jaws or a screen reader for everything, then I can't really help you, but I'm sure someone else in the NFB probably could. I have heard that the Mac with VoiceOver is better for handling languages than Jaws, but I don't know how much Mac experience you have. Hope this helps. 

> On Dec 13, 2017, at 8:19 AM, Jason Polansky <jpolansky.nfb at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi Sophie, I think we met a few times while I was in training at the Louisiana Center. My college uses Supersite through Vista Higher Learning as well, and I used it for three semesters of Spanish. It is pretty accessible with Jaws, and buttons are well-labeled. I will say, it's very particular about how you answer. For example, it always wants you to type the subject before the verb, even in situations in which the subject is not needed. The only major issue that I had was trying to do Spanish with an English Jaws voice. I think there's a way to get Jaws to speak Spanish, but I didn't have much success figuring it out. It's also a typical web page, so there is still English on the site when it comes to the names of the links, headings, and buttons as such. Just make sure that you communicate with the professor, ask questions, and ask her or one of your peers to describe anything visual, and you should be fine. Good luck. 
> 
>> On Dec 12, 2017, at 11:40 PM, Sophie Trist via NABS-L <nabs-l at nfbnet.org> wrote:
>> 
>> Hi All,
>> 
>>     I hope all of you are well, successfully completing finals and gearing up for the holidays! I will be taking my first Spanish class next semester, and I have a couple of questions.
>>     First, my professor has told me that she uses a software called Supersite Plus as a companion to the textbook, which comes from Vista Higher Learning. Has anyone ever used Supersite Plus, and is it accessible with a screen reader? If so, does it work better with one screen reader than others? Any info on Supersite Plus would be extremely helpful, as I just heard of it a few hours ago.
>>     The professor also told me that she will use a lot of gestures, videos, and other visuals in class to avoid using English. I have never taken any college-level language courses before, so if anyone has advice for how to deal with this, please send it my way. The professor has a very good attitude, so I feel confident this will work out, I'm just looking for some tips.
>> 
>> All Best,
>> Sophie Trist
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