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Don’t Miss a Special New Year’s Day Desert Cafe!

December 31, 2006 • Darrell Shandrow Hilliker

Hello Everyone,

You won’t want to miss tomorrow’s special edition of the Desert Cafe show on ACB Radio Interactive.  We’ll be talking about and asking all of you what
you gave and received for Christmas, playing inspirational music for the New Year and just generally having a great time.  The Desert Cafe can be found on ACB Radio Interactive tomorrow (Monday) from 22:00 to 01:00 Universal time, that’s 2:00 to 5:00 PM Pacific, 3:00 to 6:00 Mountain, 4:00 to 7:00 Central and 5:00 to 8:00 Eastern time.  So come on over and join us to start off the New Year just right!

Happy New Year,

Darrell, Karen and Dougie

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Happy New Year!

December 31, 2006 • Darrell Shandrow Hilliker

Karen, Dougie and I would like to wish all our loyal friends and supporters a very happy, prosperous New Year in 2007!

This evening, Karen and I will listen to Marlaina’s New Year’s Eve show on ACB Radio MainStream, watch the movie When Harry Met Sally, eat snacks such as chicken wings and pizza bagle bites, take in the television coverage of New Year’s Eve in Times Square with Fox News and Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve, toast in the New Year with sparkling apple sider and, finally, go to bed no later than 12:30! Karen must work tomorrow, but after that we will have Tuesday and Wednesday off together.

Don’t forget to listen to Marlaina’s show coming right up in about 40 minutes on MainStream. It promises to be a great time for all!

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Scott Sigler Gets Rid of CAPTCHA

December 30, 2006 • Darrell Shandrow Hilliker

I know I am a bit late to the game reporting this, but Scott Sigler sent me a note a couple of weeks ago letting me know that he has removed the inaccessible CAPTCHA from his podcast site, thus reinstating the ability of blind and visually impaired listeners to post comments. Our wholehearted thanks go to Scott for making this welcome change.

Categories: CAPTCHA, podcast
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Merry Christmas to All

December 24, 2006 • Darrell Shandrow Hilliker

Karen, Douglas and I would like to wish all of you a very merry Christmas and a happy, prosperous New Year from all of us here at the Blind Access Journal!

This year we are spending Christmas at home, just the two of us. Our presents to each other are wrapped and under the table upon which our small fiber optic Christmas Tree sits. Gifts from relatives are sitting nearby. We will open our gifts on Christmas morning. A recording of this will be made and broadcast on Christmas afternoon on our Desert Cafe live show carried on ACB Radio Interactive from 22:00 to 01:00 Universal time (2:00 PM to 5:00 PM Pacific, 3:00 to 6:00 Mountain, 4:00 to 7:00 Central and 5:00 to 8:00 Eastern). Don’t miss us!

You might also enjoy a short podcast of us chatting and listening to Christmas Carolers singing at the Hyatt Regency Scottsdale’s Squash Blossom Restaurant as we savored a wonderful Christmas Eve dinner.

Download and Listen

Categories: Christmas, podcast
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Avoid Skype’s Internet Explorer Toolbar

December 24, 2006 • Darrell Shandrow Hilliker

Yesterday, I installed Skype 3.0 on my brand new Dell XPS 410 system. During the process, it seems I mistakenly opted for the Internet Explorer toolbar add-on. As this was one of the last things I did to the system last night, I didn’t notice any problems at the time.

As I started working this morning in Internet Explorer 7, I noticed that JAWS 8 was having a great deal of trouble reading links as I navigated using the tab and shift+tab commands. I was not having similar issues during the entire previous day. Thinking through the typical troubleshooting process, and knowing how some toolbars and similar extensions have been known to cause access difficulties in the past, I promptly disabled Skype’s Internet Explorer 7 toolbar. Taking this action resolved my issue immediately!

If you start experiencing unknown access issues with your web browser, I recommend the removal of any recently installed add-ons by taking the following steps:

  1. Open Internet Explorer 7.

  2. Press alt+t to pull down the Tools menu.

  3. Down arrow to Manage Add-Ons and press enter.

  4. Press enter on Enable or Disable Add-ons.

  5. Select show add-ons currently loaded in Internet Explorer. Use up and down arrow keys to select this option if it is not already the default.

  6. Press tab to reach the list of currently installed add-ons.

  7. Press down arrow until you have reached the item you wish to remove. The Skype toolbar would represent an excellent example.

  8. Press tab to reach the settings for the selected add-on.

  9. Press down arrow to select the Disable radio button.

  10. Press tab until you reach the OK button and press enter to make the changes to your browser.

Categories: Skype
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Replay A/V 8.02 is Out and Much More Accessible!

December 20, 2006 • Darrell Shandrow Hilliker

Applian Technologies has now released Replay A/V 8.02, and it is more accessible than ever! After some initial accessibility setbacks in versions 8.0 and 8.01, Applian is getting back on track with this release.

Replay A/V 8.02 now sports a standard menu bar at the top of the window enabling access by pressing the alt key and featuring keyboard shortcuts. Previously defined alt key commands have been switch to the control key to relieve conflicts with menu shortcuts. The Application key or Shift+F10 command can now be used to access the context menu for each show in the list. My only gripe is the presence of a quirky “hints” dialogue box that pops up with a check box and OK button that do not seem to be accessible using either the space bar or enter keys. The screen readers mouse movement and left click commands must be used to access these controls. Read this Product Update notice for more details. If you are a current Replay A/V 7 user, this upgrade can now be highly recommended. We thank the folks at Applian Technologies for listening to the blind community by making Replay A/V accessible.

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