[Ncabs] March 8, 2015 minutes

[Currin, Kevin]

Hello fellow blind students of North Carolina and everyone else:

The minutes for our (NCABS's) most recent call (Sunday March 8, 2015 A.D.) are pasted below. Brice Smith, our guest speaker and old friend (i.e. former president) of NCABS, gave an excellent talk on recent trends in assistive technology. It's not just the same old stuff we've been hearing for years, so check it out--things are changing and you will want to know what! Well sort of. Anyway, check it out.

Kevin

Attendance
Kathryn Webster (President)
Kevin Currin (1st Vice-president)
Alan Chase (Treasurer)
Brice Smith
Trey Roach
Mikayla Gephardt
Ashley Coleman
Zoey Groves
Devante Lewis

Called to order: 8:05 PM

President's Report
Maryland will not be able to attend our regional seminar unless we have it in the Fall. However, Virginia and South Carolina are still able to participate.
The letter for BMAP (the braille menu fundraiser) has been made and will be distributed by Kathryn to the listserv.
We need to print out the letter and take it to approximately 5 local restaurants.
We are charging $30 for menus.
The scholarship deadline for NFB of NC is on June 30; the application for the scholarship is online.
The national NFB scholarship deadline is March 31; If you are interested in applying to the national scholarship, you must reach out to the NFB of NC President, Sharren Weddington to schedule an interview.
So far, Kathryn, Bobbi, Alan, and Zoey have expressed interest in attending National Convention.
If you are interested, email Kathryn.
We are starting to have speakers for our monthly calls.
For our April call, we are considering having a representative from the National Association of Blind Students or a representative from the National Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped.
A good person to contact from the library is Gina Powell.

First Vice-president's Report:
The website has been converted to wordpress and Kevin is currently working on setting it up.

Secretary's Report:
Kathryn reported that Veronica will be working a lot with BMAP.

Treasurer's Report:
Our current balance is $1210.27.
We have had no transactions since our last call.

Guest Speaker:
Brice Smith, a former NCABS President, was our guest speaker.
Brice works at a PR company in Raleigh and also is a contractor for Envision Services to teach assistive tech including jaws, voiceover, and NVDA to students.

Brice recently attended an assistive technology conference and shared some of his findings about recent trends in assistive tech with us.
The NVDA screen reader was one of the big focuses of the conference.
NVDA is a free, open source screen reader for windows.
Companies like google and microsoft were demonstrating applications with NVDA as opposed to other screen readers, such as jaws or window eyes.
Examples of these apps are google docs and other google online resources.
Google apps have been improving in accessibility in the last few months, with the most accessible configuration being NVDA on mozilla firefox.
The iOS apps for google drive are somewhat accessible as well.

Every 5 years there is a screen reader show down performed by the Web Aim organization.
The most recent show down compared jaws, voiceover, and NVDA.
A few findings were:
1. Many of these screen readers are very similar and all perform pretty well. 
2. Recently, there have been major improvements in all of these screen readers.
3. Voiceover for the mac came out as the winner of this competition with NVDA combined with mozilla firefox being the second. Jaws came in last, but not by much. However, jaws with internet explorer ranked lowest of all tested internet browser and screen reader combinations.

Brice also attended a session on social networking. 
A few cool tips he picked up are:
For facebook, if you turn off the jaws virtual cursor (by pressing insert+z), the following keystrokes work:
1. j and k will move back and forth between statuses.
2. l will like a status automatically.

Turning off the jaws virtual cursor is also necessary for using many google apps.

A few notes Brice took away from the exhibit hall were:
1. Braille displays are getting better and cheaper, but they are still pretty expensive. A couple new braille displays are the ultravario (20and 40 cell options), 14 cell braille display that can have up to 6 devices connected to it. 
A. VarioUltra: 20 or 40 braille display with up to 5 simultaneous bluetooth connections to different devices.
B. Smart Beetle: 14 cell portable braille display with 5 bluetooth connections and 1 USB connection for a total of 6 simultaneous connections.
2. There are a few new magnifiers from leading assistive tech companies, such as Freedom Scientific.
3. Window Eyes is now free for anyone who has a Microsoft Office account. 

Manuals for assistive tech products are usually the best resource for learning how to use new products.

A few other good resources are:
1. blindbargains.com: Offers tips on how to use certain kinds of assistive tech, including audio interviews with companies who are developing new products.
2. The American Federation for the Blind puts out a magazine called Access World that provides tips for using assistive tech. To access this magazine, visit:
afb.org/accessworld

The most recent version of this magazine has some reviews of magnifiers, iPhone apps, and more.

Brice's email is:
brice.smith319 at gmail.com

Adjourned: 8:37 PM