[Trainer-Talk] Idea for Friday Night Workshop: Online Assistive Technology Trainers Expo on May 8 at 8:00 PM Eastern

[David Goldfield]

Hello. I have conducted several occasional online workshops with a focus 
on accessibility which I've referred to as the Friday Night Workshops. I 
have several ideas for upcoming sessions but there is one in particular 
which I think would highly benefit users as well as those who train 
other users in how to use their assistive technology.

Back in the year 2000 National Braille Press released a Braille 
directory called "One on One" which was a listing of people who were 
offering technology training services. Each listing contained the 
trainer's name, contact info, what services would be provided along with 
the cost for those services. If memory serves I believe this book was 
compiled by Dean Martineau. This was a fabulous resource but, like 
printed phone books, directories of this type can become out of date as 
many circumstances can change over time. I've felt that we should have 
an online Web-based equivalent of this type of directory and this is 
certainly within the realm of possibility with the assistance of those 
who are willing to help compile and maintain such a listing.

However, I have thought of something which could provide at least 
something which is better than a printed directory and something which 
we could do even faster than a Web-based resource.

What I'd like to do is to have a list of technology trainers who are 
willing to join this online expo, which would be in the form of a Zoom 
meeting, to essentially advertise their services. I would allow each 
trainer a maximum of five minutes without interruption to discuss who 
they are, what they do and how much they may or may not wish to charge 
for services, how money can be exchanged, etc. So, as an example, 
someone could say something like, "Hi, I'm John Smith. I've been working 
in the assistive technology space for fifteen years. I can teach JAWS, 
NVDA as well as VoiceOver for the Mac as well as on iOS. I can train 
using Zoom, Teams or just standard phone calling although Zoom is 
definitely preferred. My fee is $40 per hour and I accept Paypal and 
Apple Pay."

Of course, you could say all of that in just one minute but that's just 
an example. You could talk about not only what you teach but even how 
you teach and could even provide a quick demonstration with examples. 
Trainers can certainly take less than five minutes but I'm allowing a 
maximum of five minutes per person to ensure that everyone has enough 
time to highlight his or her skills and details of what they have to offer.

I would like to do this by this Friday, May 8 if at all possible. In 
order to do this efficiently I'd like to hear privately from those who 
are interested in presenting so that I'll know how many trainers to get 
to by Friday. I'd rather do it this way rather than hearing from people 
as we do the session live without knowing in advance how many people 
would like to present.

For any comments please email me off list at

david.goldfield at outlook.com

as I don't feel that we should take up the bandwidth of this list for 
follow-up comments.



-- 
David Goldfield,
Blindness Assistive Technology Specialist
JAWS Certified, 2019

WWW.DavidGoldfield.org