[NFB-Science] View Plus Website

Fri Feb 1 18:50:59 UTC 2019

Hello John and everyone,

I visited your website several days ago and found it to be very navigable
with a screen reader. We'll be exploring it more.

Peter Donahue

-----Original Message-----
From: NFB-Science [mailto:nfb-science-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of John
Gardner via NFB-Science
Sent: Friday, February 01, 2019 6:50 AM
To: Kendra Schaber; NFB Science and Engineering Division List
Cc: John Gardner
Subject: Re: [NFB-Science] Technical gaps that need to be filled for math
classes.

Kendra, the ViewPlus web site is accessible, it is just still being
optimized. It is the best place for info on ViewPlus products and how they
work. ViewPlus is good at making things accessible, but user feedback is
critical to improving and debugging both our products and our web site.
Small companies cannot afford "experts" to tell us what we usually know
already. Users are far better at helping us make things better. Access tech
products come from small companies. If our users would not help us, access
tech products would inevitably be of lesser quality and higher price. So
please don't expect somebody else to make things perfect for you. You have
to be part of that process.

John

From: Kendra Schaber <redwing731 at gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, January 31, 2019 8:34 AM
To: John Gardner <john.gardner at viewplus.com>; NFB Science and Engineering
Division List <nfb-science at nfbnet.org>
Subject: Re: [NFB-Science] Technical gaps that need to be filled for math
classes.

Hi John!
 I have to agree with you on that one. But Chemeketa is small conpared to
something like OSU or Yail University. However, with the number of blind
students that go there, if I were head of their Disability Services, I would
have gotten a braille embosser at least 20 years ago and just kept
upgraiding them as they ware out or as their parts and computers changed.
I'll take a look at your website. But if I can't navigate it at all, I would
appriciate your information in another form because of your web
accessability problems due to your upgrade. Is there another alternitive way
to get the same information? I want a back up alternitive because it sounds
like you can't do anything to fix your accessability problems at the moment.
Not until you bring in the web experts at any rate.

Thank you for taking the time to read this Email!
Blessed be!!!
Kendra Schaber
Chemeketa Community College,
350 Org,
Citizen's Climate Lobby,
National Federation of the Blind of Oregon,
Capitol Chapter,
Salem, Oregon.
Home Email:
Redwing731 at gmail.com<mailto:Redwing731 at gmail.com>
Chemeketa Community College Email:
Kschaber at my.Chemeketa.edu<mailto:Kschaber at my.Chemeketa.edu>
Phone:
971-599-9991
"When the student is ready, the teacher will appear", Author unknown.
Sent from my iPhone SE.
Sent from my Gmail Email
Get Outlook<https://aka.ms/qtex0l> for iOS

________________________________
From: John Gardner
<john.gardner at viewplus.com<mailto:john.gardner at viewplus.com>>
Sent: Thursday, January 31, 2019 05:23
To: Kendra Schaber; NFB Science and Engineering Division List
Subject: RE: [NFB-Science] Technical gaps that need to be filled for math
classes.

Kendra, the ViewPlus web site (https://www.viewplus.com)has info on all
those things, as well as an extensive library of tutorials, in recognition
of the sad fact that STEM products are such a niche that there isn't much
info available otherwise. The web site has been undergoing extensive
upgrading, and its accessibility presently is not yet up to my standards. I
apologize if you have any navigation difficulties, but you should be able to
find all this.

I am a bit shocked that your college doesn't have embossers. How can one
educate blind students without the necessary technology?

John

From: Kendra Schaber <redwing731 at gmail.com<mailto:redwing731 at gmail.com>>
Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2019 10:36 PM
To: NFB Science and Engineering Division List
<nfb-science at nfbnet.org<mailto:nfb-science at nfbnet.org>>
Cc: John Gardner
<john.gardner at viewplus.com<mailto:john.gardner at viewplus.com>>
Subject: Re: [NFB-Science] Technical gaps that need to be filled for math
classes.

Hi John!
 I have visited your place last summer with the BELL program. I remember
that meeting where we met during the state convention. Can you please send
me more information about your software, the calculator in particular,
because I have a Dell laptop computer with JAWS 2018, NVDA, and Windows 10
installed on it. I also take my laptop computer everywhere I go while I'm at
school because I use it extensively during my writing class. I have a TI84
graphing calculator that's very nice but overly complicated. I can't ditch
the TI84 graphing calculator because of the requirements of my math
teachers. However, I need something that is going to help me be as efficient
as everyone else with their math. For example, I have not yet found a very
efficient way to find the maxamum and minimum and my teacher and I agree
that the slowness that we ran into while he was walking me through this
prosess with my TI84 was a very great major concern. I think I might get
more benefit from your graphic calculator software in conjunction with my
other technology. Also, can you please send me the information and
requirements of your braille translation software so that I can pass that
information on to my accomidations specialist? They don't currently have an
embossor but since I'm planning on attending Chemeketa Community College for
a few years. Because I'm not their only blind student, I know that they'll
greatly benefit from them knowing about you guys. In fact, I'm not even sure
if they do know about you guys. Gods!!! I wish you could demonstrate your
audio graphics on this list!!! We all would benefit from that demo. I'm
sorry that some of your software is not doing well!!! I hope that you can at
the very least, get some more good software and make it widely avalible for
all of the STEM blind folk that's out here.

Thank you for taking the time to read this Email!
Blessed be!!!
Kendra Schaber
Chemeketa Community College,
350 Org,
Citizen's Climate Lobby,
National Federation of the Blind of Oregon,
Capitol Chapter,
Salem, Oregon.
Home Email:
Redwing731 at gmail.com<mailto:Redwing731 at gmail.com>
Chemeketa Community College Email:
Kschaber at my.Chemeketa.edu<mailto:Kschaber at my.Chemeketa.edu>
Phone:
971-599-9991
"When the student is ready, the teacher will appear", Author unknown.
Sent from my iPhone SE.
Sent from my Gmail Email
Get Outlook<https://aka.ms/qtex0l> for iOS

________________________________
From: NFB-Science
<nfb-science-bounces at nfbnet.org<mailto:nfb-science-bounces at nfbnet.org>> on
behalf of John Gardner via NFB-Science
<nfb-science at nfbnet.org<mailto:nfb-science at nfbnet.org>>
Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2019 21:55
To: NFB Science and Engineering Division List
Cc: John Gardner
Subject: Re: [NFB-Science] Technical gaps that need to be filled for math
classes.

Kendra, I am more than a little frustrated by your letter. I have spent a
lot of my life creating solutions to some of the problems you describe. You
have even seen these solutions in visits to ViewPlus and Oregon NFB
meetings. I believe you also attended the NFB convention two years ago where
I coordinated a series of STEM tutorials on solving the kinds of problem you
are facing.

*Graphics: The APH electronic graphing device may or may not ever see
commercial success, but ViewPlus has been producing tactile graphics
embossers for years that make excellent images. These are superior in every
way to the APH device except of course that you have to wait a minute or two
for the image to be embossed on paper. ViewPlus also has several software
solutions to creating/converting images to tactile form. Right now, it is
possible for your SSD office to create either tactile or audio-tactile
graphics in minutes for you. I am in Orlando at the ATIA meeting and will
give a presentation tomorrow on Tactile Graphics in Minutes. Wish I could
broadcast it to this list.

*Graphing Calculator: The very first software product introduced by ViewPlus
almost 20 years ago was an audio graphing calculator software app for
Windows. It is still on the market. It is a bit more limited in capability
and less portable than the TI calculator, but it works, and it certainly
solves your problem of finding maxima, minima, etc. It allows you to hear
the graph and find those points. You can also use a hot key to move your
cursor to them to read the data points at/near the maxima or minima, things
that the TI cannot do. And the reason that the AGC does this is because it
was designed by a blind scientist who understands the needs that you have.

*Braille Books: The ViewPlus TSS software suite allows you to translate a
Word document with math equations into braille, and even permits graphics to
be embedded if you want. I see no reason for SSD offices to pay thousands of
dollars and wait for braille when they just need to make a Word copy and
emboss it. Making a Word document is tedious but something that most STEM
students could make for the office. If you need the original ink, you can
even get words and math printed on the braille with one of the ViewPlus
ink/embossers.

These products are used widely but unfortunately not universally for making
STEM accessible. ViewPlus is 30 miles from your community college. Maybe
somebody should pay us a visit.

John

-----Original Message-----
From: NFB-Science
<nfb-science-bounces at nfbnet.org<mailto:nfb-science-bounces at nfbnet.org>> On
Behalf Of Kendra Schaber via NFB-Science
Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2019 5:10 PM
To: NFB Science and Engineering Division List
<nfb-science at nfbnet.org<mailto:nfb-science at nfbnet.org>>
Cc: Kendra Schaber <redwing731 at gmail.com<mailto:redwing731 at gmail.com>>
Subject: [NFB-Science] Technical gaps that need to be filled for math
classes.

Technical gaps that need to be filled for math classes.
Hi all!
I'm taking college algebra which has an awesome teacher and awesome support
from my school's Disability Services. Dispite this awesome support, the
longer I'm in this class, the farther south I seem to be treading. No, it's
not entirely because I can't solve a quadradic equation to save my life.
It's because I keep running into some major ethical and technical gaps that
really need to be filled. I have an Orien TI84 graphic calculator, a Polaris
Braille Sense with the Polaris Math app, a Dell laptop computer with both
JAWS and NVDA installed on it, an iPhone SE with Voice Over and of course,
this math class requires braille textbooks.
I'm not here to ask for spasific help in one area here. But I have quickly
spotted some major gaps that I think all math students are facing that need
to be dealt with asap.
Technology:"
Orien TI84 graphic calculator:
This graphic calculator is an awesome tool when you have mastered it. The
ethical problem here is for those of us who are in our 30s and who are also
not computer programers and who are also not young enough to have a sixth
sense on how to figure out how to work technology. I'm one of the amiture
folks who knows how to work technology once I have learned how to use this
technology. I have noticed that the calculator is not as simular to the
normal vertions as everyone wants you to believe. Whenever I have gone and
had a sited person, tutor or teacher show me how to work this calculator, we
often run into technical hang ups with the accessibility. For example, just
before this writing, I was sitting in my math classroom after class itself
had ended with my math teacher. He was walking me through how to discover
the minamun point on a coordinent plane. We have noticed how much I'm slowed
down when reading the points to hunt for this minamum. My teacher and I
couldn't figure out how to get the calculator to quickly list off this
information without spending five minutes, (not egzaderating) just to read
through the points to find the minamum. We have noticed that if I were to
get ten of this kind of problem in my homework, that if I were to try this
kind of problem without a pair of sited eyeballs, it would take me
literarly, all day just to get through just that set of ten math problems.
This example is just one of a few that I could list off the top of my head
that are of this nature. While I'm on the same thread, this ethical
technical issue also connects up to a bigger picture. I have noticed that
everyone wants to point people like me to the usual resources like the
school's tutoring center, etutoring and of course, Professor U Tube and
Professor Google and the manuals that are better served in the recycling
bin. Sure, everything but the mannuals do have their place. Don't get me
wrong! But for people like me who are not born with NASA technical brains,
we actually need our own teacher who already knows this calculator and who
can actually teach better than the tutors that come from most school's
tutoring centers. The ethical issue is just as much a technical issue. These
experts don't igzist in most places where accessible tech is taught. I had
to put out a call for help on the math list. Luckily, I managed to get a
blind calculus student in college who knows this calculator. But I could
just as easily have not found any one at all who could help me out. I also
got more of the expected feedback in which I was told to go to the usual
resources. But what people don't truely don't understand is that those
resources leave just as many gaps as they fill whenever they do help out.
Also, the U Tube vidios have so much visual information that they leave more
gaps for a blind audience than they actually give to that same audience.
Also, when you do run into something that is remotely useful, it costs an
arm and a leg for those of us on SSI. So, either way, we are doomed for
aquiring the right resources that are actually going to assist us normal non
NASA brained folks.
The Polaris Braille Sense:
The Polaris Braille Sense is even more of a specialty piece of technology
than the calculator. This awesome braille note taker is so new that there is
not enough useful information that is presented in such a way that a blind
person would benefit from when trying to learn how to use this note taker by
using U Tube vidios. Just like the calculator, there are not enough
specialty tech teachers who knows how to work this device. As the result, it
can and does take months just to learn how to use the Polaris Braille Sense.
There is a deeper layer with this device that I believe it leaves even more
gaps than it actually fills. This gap is the Polaris Math app. True, this
app is useful when you know how to use it, particularly when you need to
send your teacher several coordinent plain graphs as homework or in a test.
The problem is that there isn't enough information that's out there that a
blind person would benefit from. Today, I watched a vidio which left out a
few very small but critical gaps such as where the graph button is for
example. Vidios like this often helps the sited person more than the blind
person who is required to use this app every time they go to turn a graph
into their math professor. Again, there are too many people who promptly
point out the usual resources which do have their place but they also don't
understand that such resources leave more gaps than they fill. We simply
need more blind tech specialists to teach the non NASA brained college
student. Even my own tech teacher is a non NASA brained blind tech teacher.
Because of this, her skills are limited even though she specializes in
teaching access technology. But she even needs such experts to farther
expand her education.
Braille books:
I love braille dearly!!! However, I can't stand the way textbook producers
drag their feet with making braille textbooks when the schools who use them
pay thousands of dollars just to make them. First of all, way too many hard
copy braille textbooks are slower than the class that they are suposed to
work in. My math class requires a textbook that my math teacher spasifically
picked out for me to use in his class. I got the first part just fine and
like normal. But from last week on, they got delayed. I waited a few days
just in case the snail mail was delayed only to discover apon farther
digging that they got delayed by at least 2 weeks. Even without any other
technical problem, this issue alone renders a blind person unable to do
their homework independently. I now have to have a reader to cover this gap.
I have also noticed some errors in the braille translation itself. Mind you,
that's not including the unrealistic expectation for a math student of any
form to read 14 vollums of an encyclopitia styled textbook in 2 weeks. I
scated around that by jumping dirrectly to the homework and studdying the
rest as needed. In any case, those pesky hard copy braille books also
address some bigger ethical issues that are gaps for decades.
Braille graphics:
Braille graphics are crazy and hard to produce. However, they are highly
needed in the math and science fields. Because of this, graphs has to come
up here. There has been talk of a piece of technology that's suposed to make
2 demintional graphs. But where is it? Why hasn't it ever made it on to the
markets? This needs to be addressed now!!! For people like me, I can't read
a braille math book on my braille display and get the information that's
needed when it's presented in the graphs that I would get in a hard copy
braille text book. A 3D printer can't address them because the graphs are 2
dementional, not 3 dementional. I have had a picture in my mind of a whole
page that's full of nothing but braille pixles that can pop up anywhere on
the page to. Either write in regular braille text form, Nemeth Code, UEB
code or graphs or the combination. This kind of technology does not igzist.
This kind of technology hasn't even been invented yet. It's 2019, not 1999
and I still have not seen such technology. I thought it would be out by now,
particularly because of how fast most technology moves. Also, I would want
this braille page of braille pixles to connect up to a braille note taker as
needed. I would want to read my homework with this screen but with the note
taker, I would also want to do my homework because a blind student couldn't
read their homework and write it at the same time which is what is needed by
the student. Because of this, a blind person can't work their math textbooks
nor read graphs in less they are done in hard copy form. Hard copy takes up
way too much space, is too comberson to be realistic and is also not always
consistantly ethical because it's not always on the same time, same place,
same date and same leval playing field.
With all that on the table, here is what this does to a blind person based
on my own experiences. This slows the blind student way down, so much so,
that the student in question can't keep up with the class at all. They can't
independently do their homework without help and regarding the technology,
without the correct knowledge, the tech is rendered totally useless. There
are far better ways to improve accessability. Why aren't these issues even
talked about, brought up nor even passed around in normal conversation? I
don't even know the answer. But I know that there are still way too many
dangerous gaps that need to be filled in order to get more blind students
into the STEM fields. What do you all think of the ethics of these gaps?

Thank you for taking the time to read this E Mail!
Blessed be!!!
Kendra Schaber,
Chemeketa Community College,
350 Org,
Citizen's Climate Lobby,
National Federation of the Blind of Oregon, Capitol Chapter, Salem, Oregon.
Home email:
Redwing731 at gmail.com<mailto:Redwing731 at gmail.com>
Chemeketa Community College Email:
Kschaber at my.Chemeketa.edu<mailto:Kschaber at my.Chemeketa.edu>
Phone:
971-599-9991
"When the student is ready, the teacher will appear" Author Unknown.
Sent From My iPhone SE.
Sent from My Gmail Email.
Get Outlook Express for IOS.

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