Shownotes
Listen as I chat about the online coverage of the recently concluded NFB and ACB blindness organization conventions. I continue to be disappointed with the complete lack of coverage provided by NFB. I also briefly touch on the safe return of the Space Shuttle Discovery and the current war in the Middle East. I may also soon be broadcasting on ACB Radio Interactive. Your thoughts on a name for the new show are quite welcome. Enjoy the show and please comment.
Don’t miss the continuing live coverage of the 2006 convention on ACB Radio Mainstream, culminating in the banquet starting at 4:00 PM Pacific time, 7:00 PM Eastern time tonight. We at the Blind Access Journal send along our heartfelt thanks to ACB Radio for the excellent coverage of the convention. Keep up the great work!
We thank Scott Spaulding for recording and podcasting a significant amount of the 2006 NFB convention. Check out Scott’s Podcast to download the audio.
Some of you may have noticed that, for a short time, the counter near the bottom of the home page was displaying an inaccurate number of hits to the site. It appears the data used by this tool became reset to 0 late yesterday night or early this morning. This problem has been corrected by manually resetting the counter to an estimated number of hits that should be reasonably accurate. Apologies for any confusion this may have caused.
Joani from the Carroll Center for the Blind reports that Microsoft has decided to develop tools to support ODF. See Microsoft to Support ODF for more information. I am very happy to see that Joani has returned to us on the pages of the All About Access blog.
The American Council of the Blind is once again providing live coverage of its annual convention via its ACB Radio streaming Internet broadcast outlet. Coverage of official convention business can be found on ACB Radio Mainstream while the more spontaneous environment of the convention exhibit hall may be found on ACB Radio Interactive during the day time hours between July 8 and July 13.
Shownotes
Listen as Karen and I chat about everything from our Independence Day weekend celebration with the Bishop family to the future of the podcast. Enjoy and please give us your thoughts.
We have recently learned that John Wilson has made his “from the Keyboard” tutorials, previously sold by National Braille Press, available online free of charge. Unfortunately, it appears these materials may not be updated further. We thank John for making this information available to all.
In response to my recent attempts to initiate positive dialogue with Sirius Satellite Radio concerning their visual verification scheme, Patrick Reilly, the company’s Senior Vice President of Communications, reported that the issue was resolved on Tuesday night, June 27, through the implementation of an audio CAPTCHA. In answer to Mr. Reilly’s query, Senior Web Producer Brock Boddie wrote the following:
Audio CAPTCHA was launched last night. A sight impaired user using a screen reader should now be able to log into our media player. If one is to click on the speaker image next to the field that says “enter the text as shown in the box below”, they should hear a sequence of numbers that should then be entered into the aforementioned text field. The audio CAPTCHA will not match the image, but it will grant a user access to the player if entered correctly.
We appreciate the prompt responsive action on the part of Serius Satellite Radio to once again allow its blind and visually impaired customers access to the company’s online services. We hope and expect that other companies will follow examples such as this by providing accessible alternatives to visual verification on web sites and that web developers will proactively consider the impact of these schemes on customers with disabilities by building in appropriate accessibility accomodations at the beginning of the design process rather than as an after thought in response to strenuous, persistent advocacy.
For quite some time now, I have been dealing with a couple of perplexing, intermittent JAWS issues. First, edit fields in web pages were blank when in forms mode. The text could not be read with the arrow keys, text selection was not spoken and it was impossible to edit using backspace, delete, etc. This problem was becoming critical, as it reared its ugly head in a web based application on which I rely on a daily basis to perform the duties of my job. Second, the message history area of MSN Messenger and Windows Live Messenger was totally blank. Not only was it impossible to read the text using the arrow keys with the PC cursor active, but the text was also absent when reading with the JAWS cursor. These two problems were quickly becoming a source of frustration, so I began a serious effort to resolve or work around them.
After various unsuccessful trial and error procedures, including deactivating my video card’s diagnostic service and enabling “use legacy Internet Explorer support” in the JAWS 7.1 configuration manager, I found the culprit in the way JAWS seems to handle logging in to and out of Windows profiles. Since I telecommute, I use the same desktop computer for both personal and work related activities. I keep these relatively separated through the use of separate Windows profile accounts for home and work use. Switching between these profiles is typically a matter of simply opening the Start menu, choosing Log Off and selecting the desired profile from the list. This seems to work well with JAWS on the surface, except for the presence of these significant caveats. The unfortunate work around is to switch profiles by restarting the computer. Restarting the computer requires a great deal more time than simply logging off one profile and logging on to another.
The question is, what is the root cause of these issues? Is this just one more quirk observed when running JAWS as a service? Is the problem one of transitioning between system and user space? Has anyone else experienced this issue or similar difficulties? I would be interested in your opinions or other potential work arounds.