in attendance (12 Participants)
Derry Walsh, Ken Walsh, Martha Parkinson, Declan Meenagh, Albert brown,
Dominique Farrell, Marian Moloney, Jackie McBrearty, Noreen Meagher, Gavin
Allman, Chris Egan, Cearbhall O'Meadhra.
Bert reported that Microsoft is pushing people to use a PIN rather than a
password to log in to Windows. During the week he found that he could not log
in to his PC and that JAWS was silenced at the start where it had always spoken
before. The dialog offered a choice between entering a PIN or logging in in the
usual way. He felt that this was Microsoft's way of preparing for a future
change in Windows.
Jackie tried the new Corona app and found it to be compatible with Voiceover.
She was happy that the developers of the app would keep it compatible with
assistive devices for the future. Declan wondered if the app would be effective
since it is based on Bluetooth and might have difficulty detecting boundaries
that are sufficient to screen off a person but made of such materials that
Bluetooth passes through them unhindered.
Martha drew the group's attention to NCBI's latest drive to establish Tech
clubs in various centres around Ireland. These clubs seem to be similar to the
fb-exchange clubs but are more Q&A sessions responded to by expert staff rather
than peers.
Jackie introduced the "ramble tag". It is a guidance aid, designed to be worn
on the upper arm or wrist of a guide with a visually impaired person. It
acts as a simple alternative to linking or holding arms, offering more
independence to the user while increasing comfort for both users.
See full details at: https://rambletag.co.uk/#jupiterx-primary
A few members reported that they were afraid to get on buses as they would not
know which seats are blocked off and whether someone might come and sit beside
them when in a single seat. It was agreed that this was a problem and that the
only way to gain the 2 metre separation would be if people were seated at the
window seat on opposite sides of the same row.
Marta recounted a friendly incident when she was unable to enter a bus that was
at the limit of its permitted load. A gentleman stopped the driver from moving
off and got off the bus to let Martha and her guide dog take his place. The
driver then stopped the gentleman from leaving and returned the favour by
inviting him to stay on the bus, standing at the door.
Ken described the problem he had solved during the week in which a rogue
character appeared in an email. He was copying an announcement of the usual
zoom meeting. After pasting the text into the new email, he found that the Zoom
link did not work even though this link had always worked before. He and
Cearbhall worked on the problem and found some machine code in the top left
corner of the message body. It appears that this must have caused the email
program to misinterpret the link and convert it to text. Ken found a work
around to avoid the problem by keeping a clean copy of the email in Drafts and
re-editing it each time he needed to send it out. Windows Live Mail does not
have a resend function unlike Outlook.
Bert found that he could not determine if the new upgrade of the Audible app
put him in the cloud or not. Others pointed out that the app defaults to the
Cloud under the name "Library" and that the collection saved on the Device is
found under the label "Download".
All agreed that there were some useful features in the new version such as that
which permitted a flick of one finger up or down to delete a title instead of
the more complex usual method. It was generally agreed that the web site is
messy for screen reader use compared to the app.
Ken bought new earphones on Amazon for €15 and found the quality to be
excellent after a faulty start.
Martha Was unable to get to the Amazon checkout and found herself locked in the
Cloud. After some discussion the group agreed that this must have related to a
system fault where her card details were corrupted, pointing to a different
country. She resolved the issue by changing the country back to Ireland and all
is now well.
Chris explained that YouTube retains the last used position in an video stream
so that the user can pick up again where he or she left off last time the app
was run.
Declan asked the group to help him to prepare a list of all the useful
assistive devices that they could recommend for each room of the house. This is
a list to be presented to people experiencing visual impairment for the first
time.
The meeting ended.
All the best,
Cearbhall
m +353 (0)833323487 Ph: _353 (0)1-2864623 e: cearbhall.omeadhra@xxxxxxx
===========================================================
The fb-exchange mailing list
Manage account, subscribe or unsubscribe:
//www.freelists.org/list/fb-exchange
Archives: //www.freelists.org/archives/fb-exchange ;
Administrative contact: insight@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
===========================================================
