[NFBCS] NFBCS Digest, Vol 257, Issue 6

Wed Oct 8 20:26:28 UTC 2025

Sharon,
When both my son and I tried the link, we received the following error:
Something's not right. This page doesn't exist.

Donna Ring

-----Original Message-----
From: NFBCS <nfbcs-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of nfbcs-request at nfbnet.org
Sent: Wednesday, October 8, 2025 8:00 AM
To: nfbcs at nfbnet.org
Subject: NFBCS Digest, Vol 257, Issue 6

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Today's Topics:

   1. Re: has anyone taken the EC Counsil certified network
      Defender certification? (ameliapelli95 at gmail.com)
   2. Laptop Recommendations (Michael Forzano)
   3. Re: Laptop Recommendations (Mike Gorse)
   4. Re: Laptop Recommendations (Elijah Massey)

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Tue, 7 Oct 2025 13:23:51 -0500
From: <ameliapelli95 at gmail.com>
To: "'NFB in Computer Science Mailing List'" <nfbcs at nfbnet.org>
Subject: Re: [NFBCS] has anyone taken the EC Counsil certified network
	Defender certification?
Message-ID: <004301dc37b7$894fbf40$9bef3dc0$@gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain;	charset="UTF-8"

Beth,
As I had mentioned in my email, I have tried looking on Bard, Learning Ally and Bookshare. EC Counsil, like the SANS institute creates courses around their certification exams which normally cost between 6 and 7 grand if a university wasn't paying for it. So, they are very protective of what they deem intellectual property. I also looked on amazon kindle knowing that the PC app is fairly accessible, and no dice there. I received some very good news this morning in the fact that I now own an accessible pdf. I am aware that orca would work just fine on XRDP. However, I made the assumption several days ago that setting up containerized ssh connections with something like Kubernetes would be much simpler to throw together in a short amount of time. Yes, of course I would prefer full parity of experience, but I personally don't mind working solely out of the command prompt, and could probably tailor many of the labs to my specific needs. Many of the assignments require you, as the attacker, to launch exploits on a misconfigured windows server with weak security controls, and then harden the same windows server. Nearly all of the roles and features with MS server 2022 can be configured with PowerShell, and I already do this consistently at work each week. Also, I would argue that in the real-world, a legitimate attacker or penetration tester would frequently only have the benefit of a terminal. I am also aware that as far as accessibility is concerned, we frequently have to pick our battles. If I could at least hop on a terminal and complete some of the labs for the time- being, that would go a long way towards ensuring that I don't fall too far behind. We turn in screenshots for the deliverables, so theoretically nothing would stop me from starting the portions of the lab that I can complete in a command prompt, and then joining later with the XRDP connection. I have also read and researched that VNC is feasible to connect this way, when you use the pulseaudio service to relay back speech. Some folks have had luck with this approach, but the VNC tiger interface itself isn't very accessible. Tuesday is my day off, so I will contact EC Counsil by phone at this point, and I will share on the list and with other students what the response will be. We also have RDP at the Security Operations Center, so in theory they should just be able to give me dedicated VM's as a substitute. I won't complete the exact same labs, but they surely must be very similar. Many cybersecurity competitions and Capture the Flag challenges are pretty much the same type of exercise when you get right down to it. I don't want/don't feel it is my responsibility to essentially rewrite the curriculum for them, but I feel that at this juncture we need to act fast to allow me to complete my coursework on time.
At this rate, if I have to take an incomplete, I won't qualify for the NFB National scholarship, because I will have only finished 2 core-subject science courses. You can naturally see how this is really screwing up my future trajectory in the degree program.  

-----Original Message-----
From: NFBCS <nfbcs-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Chris Nestrud via NFBCS
Sent: Thursday, October 2, 2025 7:59 PM
To: NFB in Computer Science Mailing List <nfbcs at nfbnet.org>
Cc: Chris Nestrud <ccn at chrisnestrud.com>
Subject: Re: [NFBCS] has anyone taken the EC Counsil certified network Defender certification?

Amelia,

The page at https://www.eccouncil.org/contact-us/ suggests an email address of support at eccouncil.org and a phone number of
+1 (833) 675-1925.

Best of luck.

Chris

On Thu, Oct 02, 2025 at 01:42:06PM -0500, Amelia Pellicciotti via NFBCS wrote:
> Hello all,
> 
> My college institution utilizes the EC Counsil curriculum to teach 
> their certified network Defender Certification.
> 
> I cannot complete my course labs at present, because the browser has 
> the virtual machines imbedded in an image that sighted students would 
> click on to interact with live operating systems. I know that 
> underpinning this setup is Hyper V virtualization. So, setting up a 
> remote desktop or ssh connection for myself and the other blind 
> student should be fairly easy and straightforward.
> 
> Further, there are also problems with the pdf of the textbook. We use 
> the Vital Source textbook app to access the course content, but the 
> version of the book that was uploaded into their software is a scanned 
> image, thus when I arrow through the reading pane, jaws and NVDA say 
> blank, blank, blank. I might have otherwise tried to OCR the images of 
> the book, but it is 4400 pages!
> 
> The problem is that I have been siloed and shut out of any 
> communications with the publisher, ECCounsil. ECCounsil lists an email 
> address of support at eccounsil.com <mailto:support at eccounsil.com>  as 
> their support ticket email address. However, every time I contact this 
> address my email bounces. It would appear that this domain is not 
> accessible to the public facing internet, or it no longer exists. Yes, 
> I am working with a department head at my university. When I have 
> brought up these concerns, she explained to me that they want to work 
> on making the PDF of the textbook accessible first. Meanwhile, my instructors have already assigned 8 labs.
> 
> We tried looking for the Certified Network defender 3rd edition on 
> Amazon Kindle, but it is not available there, on bard, with Learning 
> Ally, or with Bookshare.
> 
> This decision to solely work on the pdf was made without my consent, 
> and I do not see how this precludes  different departments from 
> working on both things at the same time. I work at the SOC at my university, and have VPN
> access, so I also suggested being permitted to     build my own virtual
> machines on the school servers. This idea was likewise nixed, because 
> there are specific files and scenarios needed for each attacker/victim simulation.
> 
> 
> I am searching desperately for anyone in the computer science Division 
> that has gone through EC Counsil certifications before, and provide us 
> some guidance on how you studied and practiced the material. I was 
> also told that we do not have the option of hosting their VDI files on 
> our servers, because that could be a violation of the contract with ECCounsil.
> 
> I am very much hoping for any guidance and advice that you can give. 
> Please, no doom and gloom about how horrible accessibility is for 
> blind people in the IT space.
> 
> I am looking for solutions, not to waste the thread by complaining. 
> Please reply only if you have suggestions when dealing with something similar.
> 
> Could advocating with the NFB be the solution? I have to continue at 
> my current university, at least for the time being because my working 
> as a paid intern is contingent upon my being registered for classes, 
> irrespective of the subject. I had considered unenrolling from the 
> tech courses to instead focus on something else, such as my needed 
> core science courses. However, I feel that response will only result 
> in kicking the can down the road, and not giving EC Counsil  an incentive to push forward with this.
> 
> Best Regards, Amelia
> 

> _______________________________________________
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> com

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------------------------------

Message: 2
Date: Tue, 7 Oct 2025 16:39:48 -0400
From: Michael Forzano <michaeldforzano at gmail.com>
To: NFB in Computer Science Mailing List <nfbcs at nfbnet.org>
Subject: [NFBCS] Laptop Recommendations
Message-ID:
	<CAKRnMMUPP12HuVF2kdWubkboL-8HC73FuStscFT5e20OKF31yA at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

Hi All,

I've been using HP Elitebook 840 laptops for work for years, and have had to replace one on average once a year due to various hardware failures (USB C ports, headphone jack, and keyboard were the most recent). I have the opportunity to purchase something different and wanted to ask for recommendations from fellow blind developers. I feel like I've heard good things generally about ThinkPads so was primarily looking at those though i'm open to other suggestions. The ThinkPad X1 Carbon seems to have good reviews across the board, but I'm concerned it won't be powerful enough for developer use cases. I use VSCode primarily and typically have up to 2 or 3 workspaces open at once, and I tend to have a lot of browser tabs open at any given time. Good battery life is important to me (at least 4 hours with practical usage). I also took a look into the T14S (Intel version as an Intel processor is a requirement for me) and the reviews from PCMag etc.
were mixed.

Does anyone have personal experience with these, or other premium laptops in a similar class that they can share?

Thanks,
Mike
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Message: 3
Date: Tue, 7 Oct 2025 20:06:12 -0500 (CDT)
From: Mike Gorse <mike at straddlethebox.org>
To: Michael Forzano via NFBCS <nfbcs at nfbnet.org>
Subject: Re: [NFBCS] Laptop Recommendations
Message-ID: <c6298d49-2f42-6ae9-e522-72cdef129a80 at straddlethebox.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed

My work laptop is a P14s Gen 4 with 64gb ram. I've had it for a bit over a year, and I've been happy with it, although it has an AMD Ryzen 7 Pro 7840U. The battery life is decent on it.

-Mike

On Tue, 7 Oct 2025, Michael Forzano via NFBCS wrote:

> Hi All,
> I've been using HP Elitebook 840 laptops for work for years, and have 
> had to replace one on average once a year due to various hardware 
> failures (USB C ports, headphone jack, and keyboard were the most 
> recent). I have the opportunity to purchase something different and 
> wanted to ask for recommendations from fellow blind developers. I feel like I've heard good things generally about ThinkPads so was primarily looking at those though i'm open to other suggestions. The ThinkPad X1 Carbon seems to have good reviews across the board, but I'm concerned it won't be powerful enough for developer use cases. I use VSCode primarily and typically have up to 2 or 3 workspaces open at once, and I tend to have a lot of browser tabs open at any given time. Good battery life is important to me (at least 4 hours with practical usage). I also took a look into the T14S (Intel version as an Intel processor is a requirement for me) and the reviews from PCMag etc. were mixed.
> 
> Does anyone have personal experience with these, or other premium laptops in a similar class that they can share?
> 
> Thanks,
> Mike
> 
>

------------------------------

Message: 4
Date: Tue, 7 Oct 2025 23:43:22 -0500
From: Elijah Massey <emassey0135 at gmail.com>
To: nfbcs at nfbnet.org
Subject: Re: [NFBCS] Laptop Recommendations
Message-ID: <33697F2A-5A35-4BD3-A62C-7D9C536A50C8 at gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8

I think it would be a good idea to consider the Framework laptops, because when you have hardware problems you can likely fix them by replacing parts. You can even upgrade the motherboard and CPU without buying a new laptop if you want to upgrade the hardware; the processor cannot be separated from the motherboard but everything else can be replaced and the motherboard can be swapped. You can get Intel or AMD processors up to the most powerful laptop models, and up to the maximum amount of RAM the motherboard can hold. Also, if you don't need a screen, when the Optima comes out next year you could transition to that possibly reusing a lot of parts since its based on the Framework, and get something more portable but just as powerful. When I look up what the battery life is, people get widely varying results, but mostly people seem to say it lasts at least 6 or 8 hours.

Also, I know you mentioned you need an X86 processor, but for others reading this I would also recommend looking at the MacBook Pro, which is based on Apple Silicon (which uses the ARM archetecture). It gets up to 24 hours of battery life, probably more than any X86 laptop, and the M4 Max is significantly more powerful than the Intel Core I9-13900K, the most powerful Intel desktop processor, in both single-core and multi-core benchmarks according to Geekbench. You can run Windows and Linux in virtual machines using VmWare Fusion or UTM, and MacOS and Windows both have good built-in X86 emulators that can run most X86 applications well, and there are a few high performance X86 emulators for Linux as well.
Sent from my iPhone

> On Oct 7, 2025, at 15:41, Michael Forzano via NFBCS <nfbcs at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> 
> 
> Hi All,
> 
> I've been using HP Elitebook 840 laptops for work for years, and have had to replace one on average once a year due to various hardware failures (USB C ports, headphone jack, and keyboard were the most recent). I have the opportunity to purchase something different and wanted to ask for recommendations from fellow blind developers. I feel like I've heard good things generally about ThinkPads so was primarily looking at those though i'm open to other suggestions. The ThinkPad X1 Carbon seems to have good reviews across the board, but I'm concerned it won't be powerful enough for developer use cases. I use VSCode primarily and typically have up to 2 or 3 workspaces open at once, and I tend to have a lot of browser tabs open at any given time. Good battery life is important to me (at least 4 hours with practical usage). I also took a look into the T14S (Intel version as an Intel processor is a requirement for me) and the reviews from PCMag etc. were mixed.
> 
> Does anyone have personal experience with these, or other premium laptops in a similar class that they can share?
> 
> Thanks,
> Mike
> _______________________________________________
> NFBCS mailing list
> NFBCS at nfbnet.org
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/nfbcs_nfbnet.org
> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for NFBCS:
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/nfbcs_nfbnet.org/emassey0135%40gmail
> .com

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End of NFBCS Digest, Vol 257, Issue 6
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