Twitter Link

Thursday, April 29, 2010

In Celebration of National Poetry Month (April) ...

As I was looking back at some of my emails, I found a wonderful poem written by one of our students. I wanted to sneak in this poem before April ended. Her name is Laura, and I posted one of her poems toward the end of last school year. Rereading some of her poems, this one just hit me (with all of the wars and war-like behavior I've been reading about in the news lately, Laura's poem struck a chord). Laura uses her mPower (an accessible PDA for braille reading and writing), daily and enjoys writing. She is in high school now, and I hope she continues to share her thoughts and insights with us. Enjoy:

AT THE BLOODY FIELD
by Laura D.

As I peer at the bloody field
and see comrades dead
they shout at us
"This is war and war is hell."

I shout back
"war is hell"
but if war is hell
and you cause us hell
we'll return the favor

and so
doing so
we are giving hell to the world.

Friday, April 23, 2010

Accessibility of the Mac--CTEBVI 2010 Workshop

I'm here at the California Transcribers and Educators for the Blind and Visually Impaired, our state conference held once a year. This year it's in Los Angeles, at the LAX Marriott. I'm presenting a workshop on the accessibility of the Mac computer. I've been a Mac person for many years, but have spent the last couple of years exploring Apple's newly accessible hardware/software for people with visual disabilities.
I'm lucky to know a wonderful former student (she graduated from high school in June, 2009), who agreed to be my 'guinea pig' to test out a Mac Mini with OS 10.6--Snow Leopard. Paola worked with the Mac in the computer lab with me, and then took it home to see what she could do on her own. I asked her to write her initial reactions of trying to use VoiceOver to do what she's used to doing on a Windows computer. Here's the short article she wrote a couple months ago. As you'll see, Paola had some successes and some frustrations, but I think this is an evolving option for computer users who have limited vision or are blind. Enjoy her review, and if you post a comment or question for Paola, I'll make sure to pass it along.

"To be honest, I am only a recent Mac user. I was introduced to the Mac when I started helping Ms. Schindler at Frances Blend on Fridays so I have only been using it for a few months. Still, it is enough time for me to notice several pros and cons about the Mac.

"One of the good things about having a Mac is that it already comes with a built-in talking program so you don't really have to buy any extra programs like JAWS or Serotek. Voice Over has a very human sounding voice that is easy to understand and you can adjust the speed and pitch very easily. There are also other voices besides the main voice which is Alex. I myself prefer Alex, but you can take your pick. Another thing I enjoy about the Mac is that you can navigate websites that are not always accessible with JAWS. Sometimes on websites, there are links and when you press enter on them with JAWS, they make a little clicking sound and don't open. On the other hand, the Mac opens these links quite easily. One example of a website like this is Fanfiction. When I went on this website with JAWS, I had a hard time accessing my account. However, when I tried it with the Mac, I got through quite easily. Yahoo mail is another thing that's easier with the Mac. It's becoming a little bit less accessible with JAWS these days. Since I have a yahoo email account, this was not good news for me. With the Mac however, I could check my messages and reply quite easily. Those are just some of the good things I have discovered about the Mac.

"Although the Mac does have its good points, there are also some things that may need some work. For example, sometimes when you go to certain web sites, voiceOver will say "Safari busy" and refuse to read anything even those the website clearly appears on the screen. No matter what key you press, the computer will only say, "busy" over and over again. One website where VoiceOver does this is Gmail. That is one glitch that in my opinion, needs to be checked out. Another thing I've noticed is that I can't navigate the internet as quickly as I did with the pc computer. Still, as I am a recent Mac user, I may just not know all the commands yet. When I'm on a website on the Pc, I can go to links list, press the letter of the link I want until I find it, and press enter. This gets me where I want to go much faster. With the Mac however, I have to go through all the links until I find what I'm looking for. Like I said though, my problem may only be that I don't know all the commands.

"In conclusion, I think that the Mac is a very good piece of assistive technology for the visually impaired and a lot of people would benefit from it. I know I have a lot to learn and I look forward to exploring more about the Mac world."