[Trainer-Talk] More on those iDEVICE using students

[Deborah Armstrong]

Adding to the thread from a few weeks ago which I started - I just had a conversation with one of my college students who dropped in to see if her book would be done soon. I do alternate media and am only unofficially a trainer.

I had used our cloud storage to send her an earlier book, and she complained she couldn't figure out how it worked. So I suggested she pull up the email  the system sent her so I could help her download the book.

She started digging through her inbox using voiceOver and there were thousands of messages in there. Thousands!

Well, probably only a hundred, because I think that's all the iPHONE will show you, just the most recent hundred.

But it felt like thousands, and she was unable to find the message from One-drive with the link to download the file I sent her.

I realized my techniques for organizing wouldn't work for her; I use Outlook at work; Thunderbird at home. I make heavy use of filters and folders and rules. I am a geek.

She is a poor lost blind student on gmail, which uses labels and not folders. She isn't comfortable with a screen reader. She does everything on her phone.

I know we had this conversation on the list before, but I feel so frustrated because I don't know how to help her. I've looked in to using Gmail labels, and there are keystrokes for doing it, but I don't even know if you can use gmail labels on your phone. I could suggest she learn the gmail or inbox apps, but I don't see her wanting to learn a lot more confusing techie stuff. I have suggested for example she try VoiceDream reader and she never has, perhaps because it's yet another new and confusing thing to try and figure out.

I use my phone a lot too, but I can't imagine trying to use it as my primary email client or download attachments with it on a regular basis.  I download an attachment to read on my commute, but my computers are where I store and back up stuff.

I feel like such an old fart because these young people don't want to learn computers or screen readers, but I haven't found one who is organized enough with mobile technology they can act as a role model.

--Debee