[nobe-l] searching for a scanner and VoiceStick

Wed Sep 7 08:46:40 UTC 2016

Hello,
What is a voice stick?

Sent from my iPhone

> On Aug 31, 2016, at 12:15 AM, Kayla James via NOBE-L <nobe-l at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> 
> Hello, my name is Kayla James. I'm a college student.
> I'm looking for a scanner. I need it to scan textbooks from the print
> copies to the computer. It also has to hook up to MacBook.
> 
> 
>> On 8/30/16, Geogie via NOBE-L <nobe-l at nfbnet.org> wrote:
>> Hey there,
>> I have some experience with Google tools that I can share. I just finished
>> working at a Public Charter School as a literacy tutor/teacher for sixth
>> grade. I'm also blind and have been all my life, and I was the only blind
>> person working there. We used Google Drive, Docs, Forms and Sheets all the
>> time. I struggled for the first few months, because I honestly couldn't
>> find
>> any blind folks who used Google stuff extensively who I could discuss it
>> with. But here is some of what I picked up from trial and error.
>> On my PC I used the latest version of JAWS at the time with FireFox. There
>> is an accessibility mode in the different Google tools that you should turn
>> on right away. And you'll want to keep it on, because it doesn't work well
>> at all without it. Google Drive is accessible, but you'll need to tab
>> around
>> a whole lot. Same situation with Google Docs. I also found that the speech
>> will lag a bit, especially inside of a Doc or Sheet. It's not much of a
>> lag,
>> but it's enough that it drove me crazy. But you can use the same commands
>> from Word when in a Doc, and the same ones from Excel when in a Sheet, so
>> aside from the lag it's not bad. Google Forms is very accessible most of
>> the
>> time, but if you run into trouble with something in a Form, one great
>> work-around is to have the form sent to you in the body of an email. This
>> is
>> one of the options when you make and send a Form, but it's not the default
>> I
>> don't think. I never had any trouble with Google Forms once I had them sent
>> this way, and I received four or five every week.
>> I would definitely recommend using the iPhone aps. I found them very
>> navigable with VoiceOver. I liked the Docs and Drive apps, but did not find
>> Sheets to be accessible. If you open a Google Sheet in Safari, then it's
>> pretty easy to navigate by moving by rows. For some reason I can't get the
>> roter to give me the rows option when in the Sheets app, and that was a big
>> drawback. Also, one very important feature for me as a tutor was the
>> comments feature. Unfortunately, after a recent update, the comments
>> feature
>> is not accessible at all in the Docs app. It's a shame, because it used to
>> work very well, and I would type comments to my students about there work
>> using a Bluetooth Keyboard. Another useful feature when teaching that is
>> missing in the Docs app is the extended time breakdown of recent edits. On
>> a
>> computer, a teacher can pull up a list of when all of the changes were made
>> to a document. Great way to keep an eye on a student's progress on an
>> assignment. The app doesn't allow for this detailed time log, but it will
>> tell you what time the most recent edit occurred.
>> Sorry if this is too much Google info! I just want to make sure you don't
>> have to figure it out from scratch like I did!
>> Georgie
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: NOBE-L [mailto:nobe-l-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of David Andrews
>> via NOBE-L
>> Sent: Tuesday, August 30, 2016 10:30 PM
>> To: National Organization of Blind Educators Mailing List
>> <nobe-l at nfbnet.org>
>> Cc: David Andrews <dandrews at visi.com>
>> Subject: Re: [nobe-l] accessibility of Google products
>> 
>> Google has been doing a great deal of work on the accessibility of these
>> products. While not perfect, they have improved a lot.  Use Google (LOL)
>> and
>> search for accessibility topics with the products, there is stuff out
>> there.
>> 
>> Dave
>> 
>> At 08:38 PM 8/30/2016, you wrote:
>>> Thank you for asking this. Whoever answers, please share wisdom as far
>>> as both jaws and window eyes. We are heavily into google this year too,
>>> and I am struggling a bit.
>>> 
>>> Kathy Nimmer
>>> Even in the valleys, keep believing in the mountains.
>>> 
>>>>> On Aug 30, 2016, at 9:01 PM, Craig Cooper via NOBE-L
>>>> <nobe-l at nfbnet.org> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> Greetings,
>>>> Today, during our teacher meetings, we had an extensive discussion
>>>> on using various Google products, including Google Docs, Google
>>>> Sheets, Google Forms, and Google Apps.  These products are widely
>>>> used in schools, as they allow teachers to be able to do a number of
>>>> creative and interactive lessons, along with making it easy for
>>>> teachers to collaborate on documents.
>>>> It can be a bit overwhelming, learning the products and determining
>>>> whether they are accessible with screen readers.
>>>> I would love to hear your experiences with these various Google
>>>> products.  Do you use them in your teaching practice?  Are the
>>>> iPhone apps or PC Google products more accessible?
>>>> Thank you so much.
>>>> Craig Cooper
>>>> Teacher: U.S. History, World History, and English III Brookings
>>>> Harbor High School
>> 
>> 
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