[NFB-Science] Access Tips

[John Miller]

Hello,

Here are some tips I have to help with working from home.

I would love to hear solutions and challenges others are facing as we blind individuals continue to do science while working from home.



When I use a virtual private network (VPN) such as when working from home, I often lose connectivity to any shared network drive.

A shared network drive often appears as a letter drive that can be selected with the windows explorer windows e.

In my case it is a remote drive where I place files or retrieve files when colaborating with coworkers.



I have a batch file named, for example, netdrive.bat.

It unmaps a drive and remaps the drive for a few shared drives.

After I run VPN, I open the command prompt by tapping the search key and typing cmd enter.

Then I type the command netdrive and press enter.

The batch file responds with "A was deleted successfully."

It then echoes the drive mapping command and responds with

"The command completed successfully".

The body of the batch file is something like:

net use A: /delete

net use A: \\drivePath



Note that drivePath is often somewhat of a complicated string of text.

The string for drivePath is sometimes displayed if you use windows e to open the windows explorer and bring the drive name into focus.



Once I have a shared drive mapped, I can post files or collect resulting data and files from coworkers via a shared drive.



I sometimes forget how to accept a Outlook 2016 meeting request.

With the e-mail invite open, I type alt-h c s.

Here s is for send the response now.  The choice e is for "edit the response now" such as if I wish to indicate that I may be late or that a different time is better.

The choice d is for "do not send response".

Sending the response with s is a more efficient communication practice.

In the past I did not get meeting invites so very often.

I sometimes would ask a sighted colleague to stop at my desk and accept the meeting.

This is just because I did not know the easy keyboard method for accepting a meeting.



Please let me know how I can be of help to you while the coronavirus is making us reinvent how we do work.





Best Regards,

John