Darrell Shandrow Hilliker

FeedBurner Adds Audio CAPTCHA for Email Subscriptions

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We are very happy to report that FeedBurner now provides an audio CAPTCHA alternative to their visual verification requirement for the Email Subscription service. This now means that blind and visually impaired people are allowed to subscribe to RSS feeds using their e-mail addresses. In the article A New Hack on the Burning Questions blog, the FeedBurner people tell the world this accomodation was implemented within one day’s time.

Check out this excerpt from the article:

At 9:00 a.m. on Thursday, January 18, we put “normal” development on hold, gathered together in our new and improved conference room (now with white-boards and a projector!) and figured out our one-day projects. That’s the rule for Hackathon: enter the day with an idea, exit the day with a fully-implemented new feature for FeedBurner. “That’s impossible! Even for a computer,” you say. Well, this ragged band of rebels was up to the task…

This tells us that bringing down the “no blind people allowed” sign of inaccessible visual verification is mostly a matter of simply getting the decision makers and developers to decide to do the right thing. We just need to keep on the advocacy and the pressure, when necessary, to insist on equal access.

Freedom Scientific declines invitation for Main Menu Live Vista Presentations

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Jeff Bishop reports that Freedom Scientific has declined an invitation to appear on next week’s January 31 ACB Radio Main Menu program discussing Windows Vista. Doug Geoffray with GW Micro and Mike Calvo with Serotek will be present representing the blindness access technology industry, as well as Daniel Hubbell from Microsoft’s Accessible Technology Group. See this article in the Desert Skies blog.

Coming up on Main Menu and Main Menu Live for the week of January 24th

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This week begins a new era for Main Menu. We begin our interactive portion during the second hour of Main Menu starting this week. First of all, what
is coming up in the first hour:

  • We first hear from Stephen Guerra from Independent Living Aids to talk to us all about the Dora the Explorer Interactive Talking Crayons. This is a very innovative product to assist parents in engaging with their young children who may be blind or who may have low vision.

  • We next hear from Marc Mulcahy with a very in-depth review of the Icon from Levelstar.

  • During the second hour we open the phones and bring Marc and Stephen on to Main Menu Live to talk with all of you. You will be able to call in and ask either of our guests questions. In addition, we will have three panel experts on the show with us to answer any technical questions you may have. Randy Knapp will talk about serial ATA external drives and Don Barrett will discuss with us some interesting things about File Dir and TextPal among others from Jamal. Both gentlemen have very technical expertise in the assistive technology industry and in computer technology as well.

  • During Main Menu Live, we will also be presenting the Access Watch Review of the week. This will be a 1 or two minute segment each week with a short review from the Access Watch web site. This week we hear all about Windows One Care Live from Microsoft.

Coming up on January 31st on Main Menu we talk all about Windows Vista in a very special live edition of Main Menu. We will have Daniel Hubbell from the Microsoft Accessibility Technology Group, Mike Calvo from Serotek and Doug Geoffray from GW Micro coming on Main Menu that week. Get your questions ready and call in and ask away. This is going to be a fun one for sure!

Main Menu can be heard on Tuesday evening at 8:00 Eastern, 5:00 Pacific, and at 1 universal on Wednesday morning on the ACB Radio Main Stream channel.

Jeff Bishop

Main Menu Producer

Catch Karen and I on the Marlaina Show This Evening!

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Jeff Bishop reports the following, which you all certainly will not want to miss.

This week we bring Tim Cumings and his wife on to the show to talk to us all about them.  Who is Tim?  What goes into the production work for the shows we hear on Main Stream like Cooking in the Dark among others.  Come and ask both of them any questions pertaining to the shows they produce as well as
any audio production questions you may have.

During the second hour we bring on Darrell and Karen Shandrow.  Many of you know Darrell from his work on the blog Blind Access Journal and the Google petition.  Darrell has an unbelievable story to tell about his childhood and his life and Karen also has a fascinating story to tell as well.  What brought them together?  How did he propose to Karen? Yes, it even has a ACB connection.

We will discuss the new Main Menu line up during the show as well all about the new live format.  You can come and ask questions about this as well.

All this and more is up for grabs on the next Marlaina, heard on ACB Radio MainStream. It all starts on Sunday night at 8 PM Eastern, 5 Pacific, which is Monday morning at 1 Universal. The program will replay for 24 hours, and of course, is available via podcast from the ACB Radio replay page. As always, we’ll take your calls at our toll-free number, 866-400-5333.

A Call to JAWS Scripters to Help with AJAX Applications

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Mike Paciello is calling on expert JAWS script writers to help with some important AJAX related work. If you are a top flight scripter, please get in touch with him right away.

We’re doing some testing and work on AJAX applications with screen readers. We think we’ve discovered some interesting solutions via JAWS scripts. We’d like to talk to one or two expert scripters, if possible. Please contact me if you are available or have a referral.

So Much for Custom Domain Hosting on Blogger…

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Well… We tried Blogger’s new custom domain hosting. As many of you may know, it didn’t exactly work as expected. There was a partial outage of the journal for as long as two days for some of you. We apologize for our absence. We have returned to Blogger’s FTP hosting for the time being and do not plan on trying the custom domain anytime soon. Please let us know if you experience any ongoing issues.