The Cafe Returns to the Desert for a New Year’s Eve Special

Hello Everyone,
 
Get ready for a special New Year’s Eve edition of The Desert Cafe starting at 22:00 UTC (2:00 PM Pacific, 3:00 PM Mountain, 4:00 PM Central and 5:00 PM Eastern time) tomorrow, Monday, December 31! We’ll play some edited audio footage from our recently concluded trip to New England, where we visited Karen’s side of the family, along with music to inspire you for a brand new year. Karen will be working, but she’ll call in during the broadcast. Visit http://interactive.acbradio.org to hear the show exclusively on ACB Radio Interactive, where your listening is our business!
 
Happy New Year!
 
Darrell and Karen Shandrow

The Christmas Eve Winter Cafe in New England

Hello Everyone,
 
We hope all of you and your families are enjoying a festive, happy holiday season and wish all of you a merry Christmas. Coming up at 22:00 UTC (2:00 PM Pacific, 3:00 PM Mountain, 4:00 PM Central or 5:00 PM Eastern time) we are bringing all of you a special treat. In addition to your favorite modern and traditional Christmas music, you may hear from our nieces and other relatives here in New England. We may also bring to you some sound seeing from the Christmas Revels, sledding and possibly other fun surprises along the way. Of course, we’ll have all your favorite holiday deserts and other yummy treats in the virtual cafe. You definitely won’t want to miss this special Christmas Eve show.
 
We hope you and your family will join us and our family in the cafe coming up in approximately 3.5 hours from now right here on ACB Radio Interactive. Simply visit http://interactive.acbradio.org to listen to the show.
 
Merry Christmas,
 
Darrell and Karen Shandrow
The Desert Cafe
 
 
 

In Memorial of My Sister, Michele Yvonne Sinnock

My sister, Michele, passed away after a short battle with lung cancer last Thursday. The obituary was published in the State Journal-Register, an Illinois newspaper. Believe it or not, I’m still at a complete loss for words at this difficult time. The following short poem was printed on cards handed out at her visitation.

In Loving Memory Of

Michele Yvonne Sinnock

He Only Takes The Best

god saw she was getting tired

and a cure was not to be.

So he put his arms around her

And whispered, “Come with me.”

With tear-filled eyes we watched her

suffer and fade away.

Although we loved her deeply,

we could not make her stay.

A golden heart stopped beating,

hard-working hands put to rest.

god broke our hearts to prove to us,

He only takes the best.

Author Unknown

Born: July 20, 1957 in Champagne, Illinois

Entered Into Rest: November 29, 2007 in Tonopah, Arizona

Visitation

12:00-4:00 P.M.

Sunday, December 2, 2007

Menke Funeral Home

Sun City, Arizona

Concluding services to be private.

Jim Fruchterman speaking tonight at talking communities

Tonight Jim Fruchterman, Benetech CEO and Founder of Bookshare.org, is the
Guest of Friends of Bookshare Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Topic: The Future of Bookshare.org

We are especially pleased to announce that next Tuesday the Friends of
Bookshare will be privileged to have Jim Fruchterman, the founder of
Bookshare.org, as its honored guest. During his presentation, he will
explore his vision for the future, will discuss the challenges of
delivering high quality textbooks while maintaining the user-created spirit
of Bookshare.org, and will talk about the expansion to serve all students
with print disabilities in the U.S., while starting to support International
Bookshare.org, as well.

In the blindness community, Jim Fruchterman is truly a legend. Not only did
he create a massive, not for profit, web-based library of downloadable
accessible eBooks, made legally available to blind , visually impaired and
print handicapped people but he invented the well-known Open Book reading
access machines, using technology originally meant for the military. Much of
his time is devoted to his responsibilities as CEO of Benetech, but also in
assisting numerous human rights organizations throughout the world. In all
of his endeavors, Jim's explicit goal has been to use the power of
technology to serve humanity.

Date: Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Time: 6:00 p.m. Pacific, 7:00 p.m. Mountain, 8:00 p.m. Central and
9:00 p.m. Eastern

Where: Friends of Bookshare Community Room at:
http://conference321.com/masteradmin/room.asp?id=rs7867a2369e0e

There are no membership requirements, no direct costs, no need to
pre-register, and no passwords required. All you need is a PC running
Windows 2000 or later, an Internet connection, a sound card, and speakers.
Since this is an audio conference, a microphone will be needed to allow you
to interact audibly with the presenter and each other. However, text chat is
also available.

If you are a first-time user of the Accessible World online conferencing
software, there is a small, safe software program that you need to download
and then run. A link to the software is available on the entry screen of
each room.

Note: Archives of events are available for download at:
http://www.friendsofbookshare.org

Media Contact:
Pat (Patricia) Price, Planning Committee Chair
Friends of Bookshare
http://www.friendsofbookshare.org
317-254-1185
pat@patprice.org

Happy Thanksgiving!

We at Blind Access Journal wish all of you a very happy Thanksgiving Day.  Let’s all give thanks for our families, friends and all good things we enjoy, while moving forward toward even brighter days ahead!

AxsJAX Brings Accessibility Features to Web 2.0

I have just one critical question, my friends. Why haven't the "leading"
screen reader makers incorporated any of this technology into their
products?

Wired.com News
Thursday, November 15, 2007

AxsJAX Brings Accessibility Features to Web 2.0

By Scott Gilbertson

Google Reader's recent makeover wasn't just skin deep. Most people probably
didn't notice it, but the revamped Google Reader also added an accessibility
layer which makes the app screen reader friendly.

LINK:
http://firevox.clcworld.net/

Web 2.0 sites may be slick and easy to use for most people, but such sites
often lack accessibility support, making them difficult, if not impossible,
to use with screen readers and other assistive technologies.

In an effort to improve accessibility on AJAX-heavy websites, Google
recently released the framework behind the new Google Reader tools as an
open source project dubbed AxsJAX. The code has been reworked and most of
the Google-specific features removed, which means it should work for just
about any site that chooses to use it.

LINK:
http://code.google.com/p/google-axsjax/

AxsJAX is designed to enhance the accessibility of AJAX applications.
Charles Chen, who added the accessibility features to Google Reader and
develops Fire Vox, an assistive device friendly add-on for Firefox, writes
on the Google Code Blog:

Based on the experience of access-enabling Reader, we have now refactored
the code to come up with a common JavaScript framework for enhancing the
accessibility of AJAX applications. This framework is called AxsJAX, and it
was refined in the process of access-enabling Web Search.

We're now excited to open-source this framework since we believe that there
is nothing Google-specific in the techniques we have implemented. We invite
the Web developer community to help us collectively define a robust
framework for rapid prototyping of accessibility enhancements to Web 2.0
applications.

LINK:
http://google-code-updates.blogspot.com/2007/11/introducing-axsjax-access-enabling-ajax.html

AxsJAX features can be accessed by users in several ways: as a bookmarklets,
using Greasemonkey or through Fire Vox. The underlying code implements the
W3C's WAI-ARIA spec (Web Accessibility Initiative – Accessible Rich Internet
Applications). Rather than simply providing assistive device users with a
non-AJAX page as is the standard practice, ARIA makes the results of AJAX
calls accessible to screen readers. Check out the ARIA roadmap for more
details.

LINK:
http://www.w3.org/TR/aria-roadmap/

If you'd like to know more about the AxsJAX framework, have a read through
the documentation on the Google Code project page.

LINK:
http://code.google.com/p/google-axsjax/

SOURCE
http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2007/11/axsjax-brings-a.html

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

Hello Everyone,
 
We have a brand new Main Menu and Main Menu Live for you all this week!
 
During the first hour on Main Menu, Dean Martineau of Top Dot Enterprises demonstrates Jamal Mazrui’s FileDir accessible file management utility.  After that, listen to Matthew Horsepool’s Newsbriefs to catch up on technology news from a blindness perspective.
 
During the second hour of Main Menu Live, join our panel of experts (Jeff Bishop, Darrell Shandrow, Don Barrett, Rick Harmon and Steve Bauer) for an exciting discussion of GoldWave, Studio Recorder, Sound Forge, Total Recorder and possibly other audio editing software applications.  If you are a blind or visually impaired audio engineer, podcaster or otherwise are involved with digital audio production in either a hobby or professional capacity, you’re sure to learn something new by listening to and participating in this show.
 
Here is how to participate in the show:
 
The number to call into the show is 866-400-5333.
You may email your questions to: mainmenu@acbradio.org
You may also interact with the show via MSN (Windows Live) Messenger. The MSN Messenger ID to add is: mainmenu@acbradio.org
 
Would you like to interact with a group of Main Menu listeners about the topics heard on Main Menu and Main Menu Live? You can do this by joining the Main Menu Friends email list. The address to subscribe is: main-menu-subscribe@googlegroups.com. Come join an already lively group of users.
 
Would you like to subscribe to podcast feeds for Main Menu and Main Menu Live? The RSS feeds to add to your podcatching application are:
 
Main Menu -http://www.acbradio.org/podcasts/mainmenu
Main Menu Live -http://www.acbradio.org/podcasts/mainmenulive
 
Main Menu and Main Menu Live can be heard on Tuesday evenings at 9:00 Eastern, 6:00 Pacific, and at 1 universal (GMT) on Wednesday mornings on the ACB Radio Main Stream channel.
 
Follow this link to listen to the show:
 
http://www.acbradio.org/pweb/index.php?module=pagemaster&PAGE_user_op=view_page&PAGE_id=8
 
Jeff Bishop and Darrell Shandrow
The Main Menu Production Team

Invitation to Join the Blind Access Journal Mailing List

All Blind Access Journal readers are cordially invited and encouraged to join our brand new mailing list! We will, of course, discuss issues related to all things accessibility, including the following topic areas:

  • Approaches to accessibility advocacy and their effectiveness.
  • Coordination of Blind Access Journal and other advocacy initiatives.
  • Collect and report accessibility issues in need of evangelism.
  • Constructively work with all companies and individuals who are doing the right thing with respect to accessibility!

This new mailing list is not intended as a resource for technical support. There are many other excellent blindness related lists for that purpose.

If you would like to subscribe to the blind-access mailing list, please send a blank message to blind-access-request@lists.blindaccessjournal.com with the word subscribe in the subject field. Please feel free to visit the blind-access list home page to view archives or modify your participation in the group. Your active participation is both appreciated and encouraged.

EdSharp 2.2 released

http://www.EmpowermentZone.com/edsetup.exe

Version 2.2
Released September 8, 2007

This version adds advanced features related to snippets, regular
expressions, and user-defined tokens. It also strengthens the ability to
select and download files from a web page. Fixes and enhancements are
documented below.

Jamal

Fixed the Replace with Regular Expression command (Control+Shift+R) not
interpreting standard tokens like \n in the substitution string. Fixed a
space not being inserted before an attribute name in an HTML snippet. Such
an attribute may now contain \n or other nonprinting tokens. It may be
commented out with a semicolon (;) as the first character of the line.

Added a check for whether the file in the current editing window has been
modified by another program since being loaded from disk. If so, you are
prompted whether to open it again (like what Alt+O does manually). If you
answer No, version checking on the current file stops until you save or
reload it.

The Print command (Control+P) now prints a file with a .rtf extension using
the associated program for this operation in the Windows registry (typically
Microsoft Word or WordPad). The Export command (Alt+Shift+E) now includes
options for ASCII format (characters with ANSI codes above 127 are removed),
Mac format (line break is \r), and Unix format (line break is \n).

Added more search commands. As before, Control+F or Control+Shift+F search
forward or backward for standard text. Alt+F3 or Alt+Shift+F3 search
forward or backward for either the chunk at the cursor or selected text.
Control+F3 or Control+Shift+F3 prompt for a regular expression for searching
forward or backward. F3 or Shift+F3 search forward or backward for the last
target, which may be either standard text or a regular expression.

Fixed problems with the Web Download command, and added more commands for
checking and navigation in this and other list-based dialogs (similar to the
FileDir application). Press Shift+DownArrow for check and Next, or
Shift+UpArrow for check and Previous. Press Shift+End for check to Bottom,
or Shift+Home for check to Top. Shift+NumPad5 checks the current item. F8
marks the start of a checking operation, completed with Shift+F8.

Adding the Alt modifier key performs the same action except for uncheckging
rather than checkging. Thus, Alt+Shift+NumPad5 unchecks the current item,
Alt+Shift+Home unchecks to the top of the list, Alt+Shift+End unchecks to
the bottom, Alt+Shift+DownArrow unchecks en route to the next item, and
Alt+Shift+UpArrow unchecks en route to the previous. F8 then Alt+Shift+F8
unchecks items in that range.

Other arrow keypad actions navigate among checkged items. Control+Home goes
to the top checkged item, and Control+End goes to the bottom one.
Control+DownArrow goes to the Next , and Control+UpArrow goes to the
previous.

Shift+Space tells you what items are currently checked. Alt+A says the
address of the current item in the list, e.g., 11 of 42.

A new section of EdSharp.ini is called Tokens. Each of these user-defined
tokens is an expression in Microsoft JScript .NET. Three examples are
currently provided in the configuration file. The CurrentDirectory token
illustrates a call to a static method in the .NET Framework Class Library
(FCL) — in this case, returning the current directory of the EdSharp
process. The Signature token shows syntax for a literal string — in this
case, a signature block with multiple lines. The Unordered List token
refers to a JScript file called ul.js that is provided in the HTML snippet
folder.

When EdSharp finds that a token refers to a file in the current snippet
folder, it interprets the content of that file as JScript. The ul.js
example creates an unordered list element in HTML after prompting for the
number of items to generate in the list. Its content is as follows:

[Begin Content of ul.js]
var iCount = Interaction.InputBox("Number of Items:", "Input", "0")
var sTag = "<ul>\n"
var i = 1
while (i <= iCount) {
sTag += "<li>Item" + i + "</li>\n"
i++
}
sTag += "</ul>\n"
[End Content of ul.js]

User-defined tokens may be included in a snippet that has the "form" keyword
in its header. They may also be typed in a document being edited. As
before, the Evaluate Expression command, Control+Equals, evaluates the
current line or selected text as JScript code and places the result on the
line below. The new Replace Tokens command, Control+Shift+Equals, swaps
tokens with their computed results in all or selected text. Thus, you might
press Alt+Shift+M for Manual Options and define a signature token as
follows:

[Tokens]
Signature=("Sincerely,\nJohn Doe\nJohn.Doe@NiftyHomePage.com\n")

Then type %Signature% in your document where you want that to appear, and
use the Replace Tokens command to do it.

Added the Transform Files command (Alt+Equals) to apply a saved set of
search and replace tasks to one or more files — typically to massage data
or formatting in predictable ways (like the Massage Operation command of
TextPal). EdSharp prompts for the job file containing the regular
expressions to apply. Each task is defined by three lines: (1) a comment
explaining the operation, (2) the search expression, and (3) the replacement
expression. A blank line seperates each task. The current editing window
should contain the list of files to process, one per line. Such a list
could be typed manually or generated via the Path List command
(Control+Shift+P). If a file does not include a leading path, the prior one
is assumed.

Here is the content of a sample transform job that defines two tasks:

[Begin Content of TrimLine.txt]
Remove leading space or tab characters from each line
(\A|\n)( |\t)+
$1

Remove trailing space or tab characters from each line
( |\t)+(\r|\Z)
$2
[End Content of TrimLine.txt]

EdSharp 2.1 released

http://www.EmpowermentZone.com/edsetup.exe

Version 2.1
Released September 1, 2007

This version primarily seeks to implement some ideas I gathered about
writing HTML. The new pasting capability is tailored for either HTML or
text — the latter snippet type being applicapable to templates and prose
generally. HTML support already included checking syntax with the Tidy
utility, as well as converting between Markdown and HTML. Fixes and
improvements are documented below.

Jamal

Fixed Section Break (Control+Enter) and Replace (Control+R) commands not
handling tokens correctly.

Improved compatibility with Dragon voice dictation software. Made EdSharp
change the current directory to that of a file opened by the user.

The Open Previous setting determines whether files open at the end of the
previous EdSharp session are automatically opened at the start of the next
one. The default is No in this version, but it was Yes in version 2.0 when
this setting was reserved but not actually implemented. Since upgrading
EdSharp generally does not replace installed settings, your setting may be
Yes inadvertently. If you would prefer that EdSharp not open files
automatically in this way, you can press Alt+Shift+C for
Configuration Options, then Alt+O for the OpenPrevious edit box and N for
its value. Alternatively, create a fresh configuration file by pressing
Alt+Shift+M for Manual Options, Alt+Shift+D to delete the EdSharp.ini file,
Y to confirm, and Alt+F4 to close EdSharp. The next time you load EdSharp a
custom configuration file will be created with default values.

This version increases word processing functionality by adding bullet
justification in addition to left, center, or right (Alt+Shift+J).
Superscript and subscript support is also added. Press Alt+Shift+6 (think
of a caret symbol) to change the virtical alignment of text. Press
Control+6 to go to the next change in baseline, or Control+Shift+6 for the
previous one. The Query Styles command (Alt+Slash) says current styles
(bold, italic and/or underline), as well as justification and baseline
alignment.

The Web Download command, Alt+Shift+W, lets you pick one or more files to
download from a page whose address you specify. If Internet Explorer is
open, EdSharp uses the value in its address bar as the default. Each item
of the resulting checked listbox shows both the clickable text of the url
and its target file name. Press Spacebar to toggle the checked state of
an item. After picking files, you are prompted for the target folder on
disk. If a file with the same name already exists, a unique name is created
by adding a numeric suffix, e.g., page_01.htm, page_02.htm, etc.

A listbox control of the .NET Framework does not support multiple letter
navigation, so each letter typed jumps to the next item starting with that
letter. To make navigation more flexible and efficient, particularly in a
listbox with many items, EdSharp adds the following features to a list based
dialog. Control+J prompts for text within an item, going to the first match
if a new search, or the next match if the previous value is accepted. Alt+J
goes to the next match without prompting for a value. In a checked listbox,
such as the Web Download dialog, Control+A checks all items, Control+Shift+A
unchecks them, and Shift+Space reads which are checked. The item with focus
when the dialog is closed (but not canceled) becomes the current item the
next time that the same list dialog is invoked. The Jump value of that
dialog is also remembered.

New commands support development of web pages. Press Control+Shift+Period
(think of the > symbol) to go to the closing tag of an HTML element, or
Control+Shift+Comma for the opening one. A documentation section
describes the snippet capability as follows.

Pasting Snippets Press Alt+S to save all or selected text to a file that may
be conveniently pasted into other documents. You may give the file any
name, except that it should have a .txt extension. It is saved in a
subfolder
of the EdSharp data folder. Each programming compiler or interpreter may
have its own set of snippets. The subfolder name is the same as the current
value of the Pick Compiler command, Control+Shift+F5. If no compiler has
been chosen, the name "Default" is used. Press Alt+V to pick one of the
available snippets and paste it into the current document. You can manage
snippet files with the View Snippet Folder command, Alt+Shift+V, which opens
Windows Explorer in the subfolder containing snippet files.

A snippet may be either literal or an interpreted type. A literal snippet
is pasted completely. An interpreted type is seperated into an initial
header line and remaining lines as its body. The header line contains
keywords, in lower case, that control how EdSharp processes the snippet. At
present, two interpreted types are defined: html and text. The type
keyword must be the first word on the header line, and thus the first word
of the snippet file.

The first body line of an HTML snippet is the name of an HTML tag.
Subsequent body lines are attributes of the tag. An optional default value
can follow the attribute name, seperated by an equals sign (=).
Here is an example for the anchor tag:

html phrase
a
href=
name=
target=
class=
title=
src=

The "phrase" keyword tells EdSharp that the tag may be embedded in a
paragraph, rather than creating a block with line breaks before and after.
Another keyword, "empty," would tell EdSharp not to add a closing tag like
</a> when pasting (e.g., for the <br> tag).

EdSharp pastes only those attributes that have values greater then zero in
length as part of the opening tag. To include an attribute with essentially
no value, enter a space character for it in the dialog. If text is selected
when pressing Alt+V, it is surrounded by the opening and closing tags, and
the cursor is placed afterward. If there is no selection, the cursor is
placed between the opening and closing tags.

Over 100 HTML snippets are distributed with EdSharp, including common
attributes used by the tags. Snippet files may be modified or added.
Upgrading EdSharp does not overwrite snippet files with the same names.

With the text type of snippet, EdSharp pastes the whole body after making
possible substitutions controlled by a keyword called "form." This lets you
embed variables or constants in the body. A variable has surrounding
percent signs and an equals sign between the name and default value. For
example, the variable %City=%Silver Spring% means a variable named City with
a default value of Silver Spring. EdSharp creates a dialog that prompts for
the value of each variable it finds in the snippet body. It then replaces
the variable references with the values entered.

Certain constants are also defined: %Date% for the current date, %Time% for
the time, %UserName% for the Windows user name, %UserFirstName% for the
first part of that name, and %UserLastName% for the second part, if any.
Date and Time formats may be customized as EdSharp configuration options,
using the DateTime formatting syntax of the .NET Framework, explained at

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.globalization.datetimeformatinfo(VS.80).aspx
If a snippet header contains the "caret" keyword, EdSharp looks for a double
caret sequence (^^) in the body, and positions the cursor (think of blinking
caret) in that location after pasting. An example text type snippet is
called Letter.txt, located in the Default snippet folder. Its content is as
follows:

text form caret
%Date%

Dear %Customer=%:

Thank you for your purchase of %Product=Super Widget%. ^^

Sincerely,
%UserName%

EdSharp notices that this is a text type snippet because of the first word
of the file. It finds two other keywords on the header line: form and
caret. It creates a dialog with two edit boxes, prompting for the Customer
and Product — defaulting to Super Widget. It substitutes the values
entered, as well as date and user name constants. After pasting, the cursor
is positioned after the first sentence.