[Njabs-talk] NJABS Minutes May 13, 2012
Benjamin Vercellone
benvercellone at gmail.com
Mon May 14 04:22:57 UTC 2012
Njabs Minutes for Sunday, May 13, 2012
Members present:
Evelyn Valdez -- president.
Shafeka Hashash -- Vice President.
Benjamin Vercellone -- secretary.
Mark Colasurdo -- Treasurer.
Maxine Lomax -- board member.
Tamera.
Greg Rivera.
Anthony Rayes.
James Hulme.
Sarah Weinstein.
Rick Fox -- guest speaker.
8:04 PM -- call began. Welcome to all and to all individuals celebrating
Mother's Day.
8:05 PM - Moment of silence for any mother figures who are not with us.
8:05 PM -- Shafeka recited the NFB pledge.
8:05 -- Evelyn said thank you for calling in. Greetings from Rustin
Louisiana. It is 7:00 there.
8:06 PM -- Evelyn handed it over to board Member Maxine Lomax. Thank you
for joining. Mr. Rick Fox will talk about other accessible computer
software. She turned it over to him.
He talked about low cost ways of accessing and working with computers.
If you have an accessible way that somebody paid for, and you have to
get on with your studies, stick with it. This is unless you are studying
assistive technology. Rick Fox is in that position and has to know about
these other solutions. He first talked about math trax. This was
invented by a guy who works for NASA. It is for graphing calculations.
You need to download it from the website. You can type an equation into
the math Trax edit field and it will graph the equation. It will
describe the graph to you in text but it will also describe it in sound.
It will make rising and falling pitch sounds. It won't give you tactile
graphics but it will describe it from a text point of view and will make
a sound. The easiest thing to do is to Google mathtrax. It is the first
thing that comes up. The link contains something about NASA I believe.
Next, he spoke about screen reading. Let's say you are in a hotel and
don't have a laptop. Maybe you are at somebody's house with a different
computer. You have no accessible way you know of for getting into the
computer. There is a way to get in using System Access by Serotek. The
process he spoke of is using System Access to go. You press Windows r.
Then, type in www.satogo.com <http://www.satogo.com>. It will come up
and it will tell you instructions. Please press enter to continue. Press
alt r. Press alt r again. You can then log on with your user name and
password if your account has already been created, or you can create an
account. Then you can get a free screen reader installed on that
computer. It is coming down from the net. Most of the commands are the
same as JAWS. You can install a demo for 7 days as well as the SA Mobile
Network. There are hundreds of audio described movies. There are chat
networks that the Serotek Company put together. There is learning and
fun things. You can learn System Access.
You can buy System Access for $400. You can install it on a U3 thumb
drive, and carry it with you and put it on any windows computer. This is
not meant to replace a screen reader you have but is good if you are at
a different computer. Next, he covered Voiceover on Apple machines. TO
begin Voiceover on a Mac, press Command f5. Command is in the same place
as alt on a windows keyboard. There are tutorials. They are found at
www.apple.com/accessibilityvoiceover
<http://www.apple.com/accessibilityvoiceover>. You can learn anything
you want about Voiceover. User guides are available. There is an
Australian blind website with Voiceover demos.
www.visionaustralia.org/appodcasts
<http://www.visionaustralia.org/appodcasts>. For Windows, there is a
free screen reader called NVDA. This stands for Non Visual Desktop
Access. It is suited for people with no other options. He doesn't know
why anybody else would use it unless he or she is a hobbyist or a geek.
You do not need to play with it if you have Jaws or Window Eyes. The
website for NVDA is www.nvda-project.org <http://www.nvda-project.org>.
The site is very accessible. The speech that it comes with is not at all
up to the level of eloquence or other voices that Jaws has. You can buy
a more human sounding voice. He mentioned a k through 12 option for
getting System Access for free. He also mentioned again the USB pen
drive option for installing System Access.
8:19 PM -- Rick said he was Finished. He said there was one more thing.
There is a book you can get on the apple voiceover which is $75. It
comes from Triumph Technologies. www.attriumph.com/?page_id=32
<http://www.attriumph.com/?page_id=32>. You can Google Triumph
Technologies. There is a training link in there. You can go in and buy
the book. There is also a Voiceover getting started guide in braille. It
is in an Electronic brf file. It is in 3 volumes.
www.apple.com/accessibility/voiceover/downloads.html
<http://www.apple.com/accessibility/voiceover/downloads.html>. It gives
you an introduction to Lion, which he thinks is 10.7. He likes voiceover
and apple, but they are different than windows and it takes some getting
used to. The word processor for text editing that comes with the Mac is
good, but if you have to do a lot of text editing, you may want Jaws and
Microsoft Word. The internet on the Mac is very good. You can do a lot
with Text Edit. It is better than notepad. It has a spell checker. If
you have to do a paper, you still will do better with Word. The voice
with Voiceover is now good. It is Alex, and is an understandable voice.
An important question for choosing a computer concerns what apps you
need to get things done. If you need a lot of writing with office, Word
is still better. If you are in college and have work with Excel or Word,
you still need windows with jaws. Jaws and Window Eyes are better with
excel than System Access. If you use windows speech recognition with
System Access, it is very good. You don't need dragon. You can use win 7
speech recognition. There is magnification included with System Access.
If you are in a business setting and have to bring something up or if
you are in college and have to bring something up without your own
computer, use System Access to Go. Someone asked a question about
scanning apps using apple products. He said he will have to get back to
us on that question. There was a question about Adobe accessibility with
Voiceover. He believes that voiceover reads adobe but will check on
that. With the latest upgrade with zoomtext, a lot of things previously
available only on Jaws and Magic are now available. You used to not be
able to do a find with a whole website. Now you can. If you have a web
cam, you can take a picture of anything in your environment and enlarge
it like you have a cc TV. You can copy items and transfer them to mp3
and other formats. You can put it on a player and read it on the bus. Go
to www.aisquared.com <http://www.aisquared.com>. For the mac, you can
use Docuscan to scan. Greg says it is $100. If you buy it for Windows,
it can work on the Mac, and vice versa. It is not a mobile app at this
point. It is cloud based. For other scanning apps, you can go to
Applevis.com. They mention Docuscan.
8:35 pm -- Rick says it was a pleasure. His email address is
richardfox1 at comcast.net <mailto:richardfox1 at comcast.net>. He says he
will get back with the adobe stuff. See you in Dallas.
8:36 PM -- Quick attendance.
8:39 PM - Evelyn mentioned the cruise next year in April. If you want
more info, please contact Lin Reynolds. Her email is
lhr1827 at optonline.net <mailto:lhr1827 at optonline.net>. You can buy cruise
tickets. The NJ affiliate gets $100 per room. If we are going to raise
more money, we need more rooms. It is in 2013, the week of April 13.
Contact Lin Reynolds, or Joe Ruffalo to get more info, including Lin's
number. This is a New Jersey fundraiser. Also, Anil Louis has gotten a
post by Barach Obama at the Whitehouse. There are different positions.
He got a post. Remember the contest we entered NJABS into concerning the
Whitehouse?
It concerned MTV. Another nfb group got the award. We are glad it is
still blind people. We are making some headway. The convention is in
Dallas in July. It is from the 30^th of June to the 5^th of July . The
deadline for the preregistration and the Texas barbecue and the banquet
is May 30. It is cheaper to preregister. On the state level, Hank
Miller's case won. His family sued the school because he was refused
Braille instruction. They won now. People from Louisiana went to fight
with Hank's family. Evelyn is at the Louisiana Center for the Blind. She
will be in the play that will be performed at the convention. She will
play the wife of DR. Jacob Bolotin. Dr. Jacob Bolotin was a blind doctor
in the 20's. Next month will hold our last call before the summer. It is
the second Sunday of June. Please tune in. Thank you. Happy Mother's Day
to all the moms. Thank Maxine Lomax who put together this call.
8:47 pm -- call ended.
Respectfully submitted,
Benjamin Vercellone, secretary.
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