[nfbcs] Anyone had success with SimNet based courses
Beth Hatch
bhatch200 at comcast.net
Fri Sep 4 16:46:55 UTC 2009
Hello Steve and all,
Whenever I've had to take online classes, I always ask if the course has a
simulation component. Many times the person I'm asking doesn't know what I'm
talking about because they aren't technical people, so I either try to run
the course myself in a demo mode and/or I get someone to explain to me how
the course works from the makers of the course to know whether a screen
reader will work with it. Once I had to take a course in Cisco routers.
Everyone in the class was using a simulator for the router I could not use.
I tried the simulator, it wouldn't work with JAWS or Window-eyes, so I tried
working with a reader and my textbook to understand the commands. When the
textbook mentioned that the normal process to configure a router was to log
into it using a terminal emulator, I asked my instructor if I could simply
hook up a real cisco router to my machine and log into it myself. I figured
this would give me an idea of how the router worked, and I would actually
learn something instead of depending on someone to use the simulator. It
ended up that I had to go to the chair of the information technology
department and advocate for myself to hook up to a router because she at
first didn't want me to deviate from the process that everyone else was
using. I told her that since I couldn't use the simulator and that I wasn't
learning enough about how the router works using a reader that I needed to
access the router myself on my computer. After several conversations, she
agreed with me and le time use the router. My point in saying this is that
I think sometimes we as blind people--and I include myself in this--get so
caught up in accessing the same information and the same programs as the
sighted people do in our class that we sometimes don't think of the obvious
or more sensible things that we might be able to do to complete our
assignments and learn the programs we need.
In one of my other classes, I had to complete a lab in learning how to use
Excel. The instructor provided a textbook along with the exercises on a
disk that contained the spreadsheets I needed as well as the instructions
for the exercises in Word format. Every student used Excel on their own
computers but the sighted students had a textbook about how Excel works and
a workbook containing the exercises we needed to complete. This worked
well, since course was not a simulation, and I had access to all of the
instructions and spreadsheets needed to do my work.
Thank you for listening, and have a great day!
Beth
-----Original Message-----
From: nfbcs-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:nfbcs-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf
Of Steve Jacobson
Sent: Friday, September 04, 2009 8:16 AM
To: NFBnet NFBCS Mailing List
Subject: Re: [nfbcs] Anyone had success with SimNet based courses
Hopefully this doesn't sound too much like me being up on my soapbox, but
Tracy's comments touch on something that I've found very important over the
past twenty years as I have had to deal with courses as part of my job.
While I believe it is very important to push for accessibility of on-line
classes, I also believe that the way we access something like Excel adds an
extra layer to the learning curve. If one truly wants to learn it for
themselves, it may not be as much an extra layer as simply a different
interface, but it won't be an interface that most on-line classes can
address.
However, if one is going to learn something like Excel using a course that
is required for a class and is used by others in the class, it can make a
lot of sense not to get bogged down in trying to figure out what is
accessible and take the course with a reader. This allows one to
concentrate on learning the specific software and work out how to access
that software separate from the on-line class. This is difficult when one
is taking the class from home, I understand that, but I don't know a good
solution. Some on-line courses that I've tried actually interface with the
software being taught taking control of the mouse and keyboard and such, and
I have found that such courses often conflict with screen readers or are at
best confusing. Other approaches include screen shots which are not visible
with screen readers, but even if they were accessible would be of little
value without knowing what is highlighted and such. I have found that it is
far easier for me to figure out the best approach to how to access software
if I understand the software first.
Having said all this, I don't know that it is worth struggling with an
on-line course for Excel given the fact that there are specialized tutorials
out there. If a course is required to get a credit and it is more trouble
than it is worth to try to find an alternative, then just getting it
completed with a reader might be the best approach.
People with more experience than I have with on-line courses for software
may have some techniques that will help, and I have taken on-line courses
through work that teach concepts rather than software that have worked well.
Clearly there is going to sometimes be overlap that will allow the
innovative student to take an on-line course that some of us might not
manage, so we need to be open to other opinions and techniques. However, in
the end, we take a class to learn the course content and I think it is
important to realize that accessibility can sometimes fit in but sometimes
add an extra layer that can actually get in the way.
Best regards,
Steve Jacobson
On Fri, 4 Sep 2009 08:36:35 -0400 (EDT), Tracy Carcione wrote:
>I had no success at all trying to use an online system to learn Excel,
>because, as Doug says, it displayed the screen people would see, but
>Jaws didn't see anything there. I then was supposed to answer
>questions about the screen I couldn't see. I gave up at that point,
>and found a tutorial written for blind people on using Excel.
>I have not had any good experiences with online training, though
>admittedly I haven't done it much. There always seem to be critical
>elements that don't work with speech, like the Excel screens that are
>just images, or flash movies with inaccessible controls. I wish there
>was something we could do about this. I've been trying to get online
>mandated training at my workplace to be made accessible for at least 3
>years, and nothing has changed. HR usually just sends a reader over,
eventually.
>They can make it sing and dance and talk Spanish, but they can't make
>it accessible?
>Tracy
>> I would be extremely surprised if this works right with any screen
>> reader. Screen readers tend to rely on MSAA, object models, and
>> off-screen models, all of which are different or entirely missing in
>> a simulated environment, because the simulations tend to focus on
>> simulating the visual elements of a program, not the entire
>> underlying structure of it. So you might see a web page that
>> visually looks like an Excel spreadsheet, but underneath, it's still
>> a web page, and JAWS and other screen readers will be following the
>> underlying structure and will present you with a view very different
>> than what the actual program would present.
>>
>> All that said, if your goal is just to keep up with the class, not to
>> learn how to use the application with JAWS, you may be able to do
>> that. The interaction will be different, but the results should be
>> the same, assuming the environment itself is accessible.
>>
>> On Tue, Sep 01, 2009 at 04:27:30PM -0500, Robert Jaquiss wrote:
>> Hello:
>>
>> As part of my studies, I am supposed to take a self-paced class
>> in Excel. The class uses something called SimNet by McGraw Hill. The
>> student buys this "card" and can then log onto a site where various
>> Microsoft products are simulated. Anyone had luck using JAWS with
>> this? Thank you.
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Robert
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