Top Tech tidbits for Thursday, June 14 (really Friday, June 15) 2007 (
Thursday has become Friday as I created technical problems for myself and couldn't use the computer for some of Thursday.
1) The stand-alone ReadEasy Scanner, a reading machine costing $2,900 US, will be the topic for training during the upcoming week in Accessible World, starting at 00:00 on GMT Tuesday, 19 June.
http://www.accessibleworld.org
2) Bookshare-related online chats will now take place on stateside Tuesday evenings, GMT Wednesdays at 00:00.
http://tinyurl.com/2avczp
3) Freedom Scientific announces that beginning in July, it will ship four new magnification products, two for pc users and two stand-alone units, using a new camera system that allows for three sorts of magnification.
http://www.lowvisionsolutions.com/>
4) Serotek is creating the first-ever web-based accessibility tool, and has released System Access to Go into public beta. It is a screen reader that leaves no trace on the computer where it is used, and gives the user access to the System Access screen reader. Anybody can sign up for a 30-day trial account or use a 10-minute demo; once it is running, hit insert+f to bring up the menu that controls the speech settings for the system.
http://satogo.com
5) Petro has created five new podcasts on Replay A/V, one of which concerns using the versatile recording program with Sistem Access to Go. check his blog at
http://petrogia.blogspot.com/
6) Version 6.6 of the ACBRadio Tuner has been released, incorporating support for System Access and also a new tutorial for using the tuner.
http://www.acbradio.org/tuner
Accessibility reviews of the ACBRadio Tuner, CCleaner version v1.40.520, Cuckoo version 1.0.5 and indeed.com have been added to the AccessWatch database.
http://www.accesswatch.info
7) I don't know how long this file will be available, and most people won't want this large file, but if you have moved up within JAWS version 8, found an upgrade didn't work for you and want to go back, this 281-mb file contains an archive of all the JAWS version 8 upgrades that have been made available.
http://www.sendspace.com/file/sos379
8) Returning once again to Serotek, users have started a mailing list to discuss the various programs, System Access, RAM, RIM, etc. You can view archives and join from the web,
www.freelists.org/list/tal
to join by e-mail, put subscribe in the subject line and write to
talk-serotek-request@freelists.org
9) At the Ear Institute of the University College of London, a sensory substitution prosthesis for blind and visually impaired people is being developed. The general idea is to make the image emit sound. By presenting an audible representation of a live camera image, visually impaired people can use their auditory sense to acquire information their visual sense normally would deliver to them. To better understand the needs for such a prosthesis, we would like to ask you 11 short questions. If you are interested in participating, please go to
http://www.homepages.ucl.ac.uk/~sjjgsst/survey
10) We learn from the EAccess bulletin that Insight Radio, Europe's first station for the blind and visually impaired, broadcasting on 101-fm in Glasgow and online has won the silver prize in the National Sony Radio Academy awards for Best Internet Program.
http://www.insightradio.co.uk .
11) Fred's Head Companion points us to an oft-updated site for sharing good and bad hotel experiences for the benefit of future travelers:
http://www.hotelchatter.com
12) Infotech is a most-monthly audio technology magazine costing 30 pounts, about $40 US, to subscribe. the May issue contains a 2-hour comparison of JAWS, window-Eyes and System Access running Word and Outlook 2007. the next issue will continue the comprehensive side-by-side look at screen readers with Office 2007 by examining PowerPoint and Excel.
http://www.tandt-consultancy.com
13) Sound Taxi is a $15 program, one of whose virtues is the ability to unprotect books from services such as NetLibrary so that they can be played on mp3 players. Brian Hartgen, editor of the aforementioned Infotech Magazine, has made available free JAWS scripts to enhance the functionality of the program.
http://www.hartgen.org/portable.html
14) Greg Kearney has released Louis, an open-source Macintosh-based braille translation program with abilities to translate text and math.
http://w3.wmcnet.org/braille/louis/
15) Two new versions of Skype are available. Perhaps the most interesting is the beta, which contains potential improvements in the accessibility of the text chat feature of the program.
http://www.skype.com/go/getskype-beta.
The latest set of JAWS scripts support this improved feature.
http://dlee.org/skype.
And the latest "stable" version of the program can be had here:
http://www.skype.com
16) Jamal Mazrui continues to upgrade the text editor, TextPal, updated on 9 June,
http://www.EmpowermentZone.com/palsetup.exe
and the file manager, FileDir, updated on 12 June,
http://www.EmpowermentZone.com/dirsetup.exe
Jamal's programs was one of the topics for ACBRadio's Main Menu this week, and the programs are already on the web and in the podcast archive.
http://www.acbradio.org
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