[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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