kestrell | Entries tagged with assistive tech will make you crazy

After years of searching, Alexx got me a Book Port Plus. Unfortunately, the box doesn't seem to contain a USB cable that fits the jack in the Book Port Plus itself.

I have a box of USB cable and adapters. Nothing fits.

This was not the plan I had for my day.

Current Mood: aggravated
Current Location: aerye

The good news: I've been stuffing my brain by memorizing more Jaws keyboard commands and updating my skills using other apps.

The bad news: at some point I accidentally turned on a Jaws sound effect that makes a slight buzzing sound to signify SOMETHING IMPORTANT, but I'm not sure what. It happens when I'm down arrowing through a document.

Now I'm really hoping I can manage to persuade MCB to give me a Jaws upgrade, because I don't think I am ever going to figure out what is making that weird noise.

Yesterday my iPhone developed a new glitch in which the volume goes really tiny. Originally, this was only when I asked it something, such as What song is this? Then I asked Alexx to see if he could fix it, and it began doing it whenever it felt like it.
Today I woke up and my iPhone had developed a new voice. It's male and British and reads messages as soon as they arrive, and I've never heard this voice before.

I think my iPhone has decided that now is the perfect moment to take over. I don't know if it's trying to take over my brain, my body, Melville Keep, or the entire world, but don't say I didn't warn you.

I added a book to my bookshelf, but now I can't seem to get tot he bookshelf, which I would like to delete and start over. I keep getting an error message which keeps suggesting that I go back to the support center.
As for Web Reader, I have yet to find a "Read Now" button.
I have the feeling that the FAQ has left out some important steps. Thoughts?

you should send me an e-mail. Galatea, my little laptop which went with me to MIT and upon which I composed my thesis, finally gave up the ghost. She was noble enough to give signs of failure, so I had enough time to back up my files, but not my address book.

Now I am trying to learn how to use Hypatia, my Mac Air, which looks like even more of a "Death Sliver" than Galatea did. Progress is slow, because most of the how to books only describe how to do things using a mouse and graphics, so I'm still trying to figure out how to get files from a USB onto the Mac Air using keyboard commands.

Oh my, the latest version of my screen reader has a built-in spellchecker for online forms, like this one for posting to DreamWidth and LiveJournal. It just told me that I misspelled DreamWidth and LiveJournal, so I expect the novelty will wear off soon but, for now, I think it is pretty spiffy.
Note to my screen reader-using friends: yes, I always lag far behind in updating new versions of my screen reader program, and I don't really read the press releases, so I realize that I probably should have discovered all this months ago; alas, I feel the word "upgrade" always gives me the heebiejeebies (which, my screen reader informs me, I have also misspelled--get off my friggin' back already, Hal! Yes, I *know* I misspelled "friggin'"! AAAArrrrghh!).

It keeps turning on driving mode, where everything is at full volume, and when I try to tell it to deactivate, it just gives me the time. Voice recognition: still not perfect.

So my BookSense accessible ebook reader just died.
It's a $600 device which didn't even make it to two years old. You have to love assistive tech companies--they make used car salesmen look respectable.

Anyway, can any of my blind geek friends recommend a cheap ebook option? I'm trying to find out if I can borrow something from Perkins, but no one seems to be answering phones today.

Weirdness: this book
http://openlibrary.org/books/OL6332139M/A_nursery_in_the_nineties/daisy
doesn't show up through NLS, and when I downloaded it to my BookSense, it opened, but seemed to read a list of contents--About this book, etc.--and then just stopped. The Web site FAQ mentions needing a NLS key, which I have, but doesn't mention any info about how to read this kind of Daisy book. I don't even know if it's audio or text--how can I find out? Has anyone else used this flavor of Daisy books?

I saw this link posted to an accessible tech list yesterday and spent a few hours trying to get it to run, but no luck for me--I get an infinite loop re Microsoft Journal Viewer not being fully installed. I mentioned this glitch on the list and one of the people had the same issue on one of his machines, although it installed and ran fine on another machine of his. Other issues are coming to light, but you can't break it till you've tried it, so try the free download at http://www.amazon.com/kindle/accessibility

Yesterday I installed my Jaws upgrade, and today I'm discovering the things which are suddenly less accessible. Like the location links in the map in Echo Bazaar. Yesterday with Jaws 11 I could click on the mouseover links just fine; today with Jaws 12, nothing is happening, even when I manage to accomplish the finger tantra of the insert+control+enter combination on a laptop, which is basically insane to begin with, imo.

Growl.

Any Jaws users have useful suggestions for accomplishing mouseovers using Jaws 12? And no, the links are not showing up in the Jaws links list, although that was accessible yesterday, also.

A. seems to have given me his cold, so I'm not feeling up to experiencing this myself, but I have been reading about the user experiences of those who downloaded Ray Kurzweil's Blio Reader, available as a free download as of today from blio.com .

What the publicity announcement from KNFB doesn't mention is the fine print from the download site, which says that an "accessible" version will be available in October. Good to know that the "NFB" in "KNFB" still means something.

Also, numerous accessibility professionals who have downloaded the program have stated that it has failed to run, but instead merely crashes.

Having had my doese of irony for the day, I'm returning to the paranormal romance I was reading, as it is making more sense to me at the moment.

Okay, so my OCR program is really poor at keeping in hypens, and the first time I read this word I read it as consisting of the syllables
copi lot
which I thought might be some subgenre of Roman gladiator. However, reading the word just now I realized that the word is actually "co pilot," as in the person who rides shotgun and messes up reading the map.

So, is that word hyphenated?

and it requires a serial number to do things like file a request for tech support service, it would be a really really super-spiffy keen idea to put that number on the device in an *accessible* format, like braille, though one might beg the question that if the info is so friggin' important why it was not put in the accessible status information menu on the device itself.

Now, see, who says I don't have self-restraint I didn't even scream that in caps, although I believe some developers really need to have the point brought home to them in a forceful manner that might actually make an impact, or a dent, or a permanent impression (or do I mean depression?).

Positive points to GW Micro that despite that fact, the tech support person was polite and mostly efficient--although whether the service needed to repair a known hardware issue will be covered under warranty he couldn't say, because see above about not having the serial number in an accessible format----and he didn't ask that question that makes blind people actually see the color red: "Don't you have a sighted person who can do that for you?".