Re: Top Ten list of tools and techniques I used to successfully complete my first college semester as a blind student
Hello David, Best of luck in your PhD pursuit. The only advice I can offer regarding working with tables is to suggest you consider taking a lesson or a series of lessons from Anne Archie Robertson via Skype. They've developed some good procedures for dealing with the accessibility quirks and limitations in the various iWork applications and though I wasn't required to create any documents with tables this semester, I was glad to have had the Pages lessons under my belt. If you're interested, you can find out more at Anne Archie's website, www.cecimac.org. The site is in French by default, but if you VO right a few times you'll find a link to the English section of the site, which includes contact info and an overview of the lessons they offer. Cheers, and best of luck, Bryan On Dec 18, 2011, at 5:59 AM, David Griffith wrote: My main problem which I need to over come is that I have to deal with plethora of word documents with tables. So far I have tried Text Edit, Bean, Nius Writer Pro and pages. The program which seemed to cope best was the free bean program but --- Mac Access At Mac Access Dot Net --- To reply to this post, please address your message to mac-access@mac-access.net You can find an archive of all messages postedto the Mac-Access forum at either the list's own dedicated web archive: http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/mac-access/index.html or at the public Mail Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/mac-access@mac-access.net/. Subscribe to the list's RSS feed from: http://www.mail-archive.com/mac-access@mac-access.net/maillist.xml The Mac-Access mailing list is guaranteed malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free! Please remember to update your membership options periodically by visiting the list website at: http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/mac-access/options/
Re: Keynote 5.1.1 Accessibility question [Was: Re: Top Ten list of tools and techniques I used to successfully complete my first college semester as a blind student]
Hi Bryan, To be honest I've noticed no discernible difference(s). however, I simply opened a powerpoint presentation, went into slideshow mode and then discovered that it was still lousy. Sory I can't be more possitive, Dónal On 19 Dec 2011, at 02:59, Bryan Jones wrote: Hello Donal, Thank you for your feedback. I'm interested in your comments regarding the accessibility limitations in Keynote. I'm not yet a heavy Keynote User, but I did notice that the recent 5.1.1 update included a mention of improved accessibility and am wondering if the slide show or any other access issues were addressed in this update. Apple, as usual, seems to offer no details regarding the improvements, so I'm hoping someone familiar with the product and it's shortcomings might be able to opine on this. Cheers, Bryan On Dec 18, 2011, at 10:26 AM, Dónal Fitzpatrick wrote: One aspect where OSX and VO are truly abysmal is in the area of making presentations. Anne Robertson has played with this extensively and has come up with several ingenious workarounds. However, it seems criminal that two years after release, VO still cannot access a presentation when the thing is being played in slideshow mode. What do Apple think blind people want to do with Keynote, create presentations and have someone else make them? --- Mac Access At Mac Access Dot Net --- To reply to this post, please address your message to mac-access@mac-access.net You can find an archive of all messages postedto the Mac-Access forum at either the list's own dedicated web archive: http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/mac-access/index.html or at the public Mail Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/mac-access@mac-access.net/. Subscribe to the list's RSS feed from: http://www.mail-archive.com/mac-access@mac-access.net/maillist.xml The Mac-Access mailing list is guaranteed malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free! Please remember to update your membership options periodically by visiting the list website at: http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/mac-access/options/ Dónal Fitzpatrick dfitz...@computing.dcu.ie --- Mac Access At Mac Access Dot Net --- To reply to this post, please address your message to mac-access@mac-access.net You can find an archive of all messages postedto the Mac-Access forum at either the list's own dedicated web archive: http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/mac-access/index.html or at the public Mail Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/mac-access@mac-access.net/. Subscribe to the list's RSS feed from: http://www.mail-archive.com/mac-access@mac-access.net/maillist.xml The Mac-Access mailing list is guaranteed malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free! Please remember to update your membership options periodically by visiting the list website at: http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/mac-access/options/
Re: Top Ten list of tools and techniques I used to successfully complete my first college semester as a blind student
Congratulations and an extremely interesting read. As of last Thursday I m recommencing my PhD after 18 months break. When i suspended due to ill health I was an exclusive Windows user, now I have switch to the Mac. There are are areas of your experience that I have not considered and I look forward to your write up of bento. I had not considered this as a learning aid and am intrigued as to how you used it. My main problem which I need to over come is that I have to deal with plethora of word documents with tables. So far I have tried Text Edit, Bean, Nius Writer Pro and pages. The program which seemed to cope best was the free bean program but was still difficult so I have ended up using Fusion and Microsoft Word to cope with Tables. I was hoping that Nisus Writer pro would provide the answer as this has received good write ups but doe snot appear to have cracked this nut yet. In terms of scanning I would give a cautious recommendation for the EyePal Scanner and software. The scanning is lightning fast and the recognition is good. You can scan a 300 page book in about an hour. The practical drawback of the scanner is that it freezes every time that you scan a blank page, so if thou try to scan a letter and you have put the wrong side under the camera then bye bye application. The software is self voicing and you have to turn Voiceover off to use it as it is a port of the Windows software under the X11 utility. Very nearly a fantastic product but extremely expensive. David GriffithDavid Griffith d.griff...@btinternet.com On 18 Dec 2011, at 05:08, Bryan Jones wrote: Hello All, I wanted to take a moment to thank everyone on this list who shared your school experiences with me and offered good advice on tools and techniques. Now that my semester is over, I want to give back some information about some of those tools and techniques in hopes somebody else might find them useful. I just completed my first college semester in over 20 years, my first as a blind person, and I'm proud to say I did very well in both of my classes. I've now enrolled as a full time student for the Spring 2012 semester with an estimated graduation date of June, 2013, only 29 years after I took my first college course. grin. I was able to perform all necessary computer-related functions using my Macbook Air and iPhone 4. Half way through the semester I installed Windows 7 in a FUsion VM just in case, but never even got around to installing NVDA because I did not encounter any accessibility roadblocks that couldn't be handled on my MBA or iPhone. Here is my Top 10 list of tools and techniques I used this semester. 1. Pages on the Mac. This past SUmmer I took a series of Pages lessons via Skype with Anne and Archie Robertson. (For those who are new to the list, Anne is an assistant moderator here.) The lessons were informative and enjoyable, as Anne Archie are a great team with a wealth of experience working with Apple products and accessibility tools and techniques. During the semester I wrote several dozen essays, most of them in Pages, and never once had a problem creating a document that met the requirements of my professors. My university is standardized almost exclusively on Windows, MS Office, and Outlook, yet I never had a problem opening any Office documents in Preview, TextEdit or Pages and was easily able to use Outlook Web Access via Safari on my Macbook Air to send receive emails and attachments. 2. The ABBYY FineReader Express Mac App. I used ABBYY extensively this semester. One of my textbooks was only available in print, but I was able to scan important chunks of the book using the flatbed scanner on my HP PhotoSmart C6100 MFP attached via USB to my Macbook Air. I scanned using Vuescan and then let ABBYY do the OCR into an RTF file. I also used ABYY to OCR graphic PDF files such as those output from OSX's save to PDF print function as noted below in the section where I talk about textbooks. And of course, I received a number of incorrectly created PDF files for such things as class syllabi and tuition invoices, all of which ABBYY handled quite nicely. 3. The Flashcards++ IOS App. I made extensive use of the excellent and fully VO-accessible IOS App named Flashcards++. I posted a review of the app on applevis if you're interested, but I'll just add here that this app blows me away every time I use it. The simplicity of the interface hides a tremendous wealth of options. There are numerous ways to import cards you've created, such as via a simple CSV created in TextEdit, or via the major flashcard sites such as quizlet.com. You can also create the cards manually right on the device and can edit any of the cards you've imported or created. Once you've created your cards, you have access to a vast number of ways to display the cards, and the built-in logic really worked well to focus on the
Re: Top Ten list of tools and techniques I used to successfully complete my first college semester as a blind student
Bryan,
This is a superb commentary. I think this should appear somewhere on
Mac-Access (mods?) and form the basis of a wiki style resource for students.
I'll now give you this from the other side of the fence. As some may know, I'm
a lecturer (assistant prof. to use US/Canadian Parlance) so I have similar
issues in terms of needing to access textbooks etc.
Some will disagree with this, but (particularly if in the US) Bookshare.org has
a wealth of information which I've found useful. It should be noted that many
of their computer-science e-texts are available to international subscribers,
however the issues surrounding electronic dissemination of materials
highlighted by Bryan limit what they can provide. There are, erm, ways around
this but I have *no* intention of posting them here or elsewhere so don't ask.
One aspect where OSX and VO are truly abysmal is in the area of making
presentations. Anne Robertson has played with this extensively and has come up
with several ingenious workarounds. However, it seems criminal that two years
after release, VO still cannot access a presentation when the thing is being
played in slideshow mode. What do Apple think blind people want to do with
Keynote, create presentations and have someone else make them?
My preferred way to prepare presentations (and in fact most documents) is
LaTex; and I know that James Austen also uses this with considerable success.
Basically for those not familiar with it, you use a markup like HTML (relax
people it's not the same just similar in idea) to prepare your document. So if
I want to create a slide I'll dO:
\begin{slide}
% content
\end{slide}
You then generate a PDF from this, and use Skim to present. In another
blinding example of Apple's genius, Preview is horrible in slideshow mode. And
yes before the usual suspects (apple fanboys and girls for whom the corporation
can do no wrong) jump on the band waggon, I have reported this several times.
For development work I use xcode for some things such as correcting C++ etc.
But for other things I just use a text editor and command line tools.
this mail has gone on longer than I thought so I'll leave it there.
Cheers
Dónal
On 18 Dec 2011, at 05:08, Bryan Jones wrote:
Hello All,
I wanted to take a moment to thank everyone on this list who shared your
school experiences with me and offered good advice on tools and techniques.
Now that my semester is over, I want to give back some information about some
of those tools and techniques in hopes somebody else might find them useful.
I just completed my first college semester in over 20 years, my first as a
blind person, and I'm proud to say I did very well in both of my classes.
I've now enrolled as a full time student for the Spring 2012 semester with an
estimated graduation date of June, 2013, only 29 years after I took my first
college course. grin.
I was able to perform all necessary computer-related functions using my
Macbook Air and iPhone 4. Half way through the semester I installed Windows 7
in a FUsion VM just in case, but never even got around to installing NVDA
because I did not encounter any accessibility roadblocks that couldn't be
handled on my MBA or iPhone. Here is my Top 10 list of tools and techniques
I used this semester.
1. Pages on the Mac. This past SUmmer I took a series of Pages lessons via
Skype with Anne and Archie Robertson. (For those who are new to the list,
Anne is an assistant moderator here.) The lessons were informative and
enjoyable, as Anne Archie are a great team with a wealth of experience
working with Apple products and accessibility tools and techniques. During
the semester I wrote several dozen essays, most of them in Pages, and never
once had a problem creating a document that met the requirements of my
professors. My university is standardized almost exclusively on Windows, MS
Office, and Outlook, yet I never had a problem opening any Office documents
in Preview, TextEdit or Pages and was easily able to use Outlook Web Access
via Safari on my Macbook Air to send receive emails and attachments.
2. The ABBYY FineReader Express Mac App. I used ABBYY extensively this
semester. One of my textbooks was only available in print, but I was able to
scan important chunks of the book using the flatbed scanner on my HP
PhotoSmart C6100 MFP attached via USB to my Macbook Air. I scanned using
Vuescan and then let ABBYY do the OCR into an RTF file. I also used ABYY to
OCR graphic PDF files such as those output from OSX's save to PDF print
function as noted below in the section where I talk about textbooks. And of
course, I received a number of incorrectly created PDF files for such things
as class syllabi and tuition invoices, all of which ABBYY handled quite
nicely.
3. The Flashcards++ IOS App. I made extensive use of the excellent and
fully VO-accessible IOS App named Flashcards++. I
Re: Top Ten list of tools and techniques I used to successfully complete my first college semester as a blind student
Bryan,
This is a superb commentary. I think this should appear somewhere on
Mac-Access (mods?) and form the basis of a wiki style resource for students.
I'll now give you this from the other side of the fence. As some may know, I'm
a lecturer (assistant prof. to use US/Canadian Parlance) so I have similar
issues in terms of needing to access textbooks etc.
Some will disagree with this, but (particularly if in the US) Bookshare.org has
a wealth of information which I've found useful. It should be noted that many
of their computer-science e-texts are available to international subscribers,
however the issues surrounding electronic dissemination of materials
highlighted by Bryan limit what they can provide. There are, erm, ways around
this but I have *no* intention of posting them here or elsewhere so don't ask.
One aspect where OSX and VO are truly abysmal is in the area of making
presentations. Anne Robertson has played with this extensively and has come up
with several ingenious workarounds. However, it seems criminal that two years
after release, VO still cannot access a presentation when the thing is being
played in slideshow mode. What do Apple think blind people want to do with
Keynote, create presentations and have someone else make them?
My preferred way to prepare presentations (and in fact most documents) is
LaTex; and I know that James Austen also uses this with considerable success.
Basically for those not familiar with it, you use a markup like HTML (relax
people it's not the same just similar in idea) to prepare your document. So if
I want to create a slide I'll dO:
\begin{slide}
% content
\end{slide}
You then generate a PDF from this, and use Skim to present. In another
blinding example of Apple's genius, Preview is horrible in slideshow mode. And
yes before the usual suspects (apple fanboys and girls for whom the corporation
can do no wrong) jump on the band waggon, I have reported this several times.
For development work I use xcode for some things such as correcting C++ etc.
But for other things I just use a text editor and command line tools.
this mail has gone on longer than I thought so I'll leave it there.
Cheers
Dónal
On 18 Dec 2011, at 05:08, Bryan Jones wrote:
Hello All,
I wanted to take a moment to thank everyone on this list who shared your
school experiences with me and offered good advice on tools and techniques.
Now that my semester is over, I want to give back some information about some
of those tools and techniques in hopes somebody else might find them useful.
I just completed my first college semester in over 20 years, my first as a
blind person, and I'm proud to say I did very well in both of my classes.
I've now enrolled as a full time student for the Spring 2012 semester with an
estimated graduation date of June, 2013, only 29 years after I took my first
college course. grin.
I was able to perform all necessary computer-related functions using my
Macbook Air and iPhone 4. Half way through the semester I installed Windows 7
in a FUsion VM just in case, but never even got around to installing NVDA
because I did not encounter any accessibility roadblocks that couldn't be
handled on my MBA or iPhone. Here is my Top 10 list of tools and techniques
I used this semester.
1. Pages on the Mac. This past SUmmer I took a series of Pages lessons via
Skype with Anne and Archie Robertson. (For those who are new to the list,
Anne is an assistant moderator here.) The lessons were informative and
enjoyable, as Anne Archie are a great team with a wealth of experience
working with Apple products and accessibility tools and techniques. During
the semester I wrote several dozen essays, most of them in Pages, and never
once had a problem creating a document that met the requirements of my
professors. My university is standardized almost exclusively on Windows, MS
Office, and Outlook, yet I never had a problem opening any Office documents
in Preview, TextEdit or Pages and was easily able to use Outlook Web Access
via Safari on my Macbook Air to send receive emails and attachments.
2. The ABBYY FineReader Express Mac App. I used ABBYY extensively this
semester. One of my textbooks was only available in print, but I was able to
scan important chunks of the book using the flatbed scanner on my HP
PhotoSmart C6100 MFP attached via USB to my Macbook Air. I scanned using
Vuescan and then let ABBYY do the OCR into an RTF file. I also used ABYY to
OCR graphic PDF files such as those output from OSX's save to PDF print
function as noted below in the section where I talk about textbooks. And of
course, I received a number of incorrectly created PDF files for such things
as class syllabi and tuition invoices, all of which ABBYY handled quite
nicely.
3. The Flashcards++ IOS App. I made extensive use of the excellent and
fully VO-accessible IOS App named Flashcards++. I
Re: Top Ten list of tools and techniques I used to successfully complete my first college semester as a blind student
Thanks very much indeed Benjamin, I tried one or two of these frameworks under SL years ago but with no joy. I'll certainly look at this one thanks for passing it on. On 18 Dec 2011, at 16:06, Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis wrote: On Sun, Dec 18, 2011 at 3:26 PM, Dónal Fitzpatrick dfitz...@computing.dcu.ie wrote: My preferred way to prepare presentations (and in fact most documents) is LaTex; and I know that James Austen also uses this with considerable success. Basically for those not familiar with it, you use a markup like HTML (relax people it's not the same just similar in idea) to prepare your document. FWIW you might try making slides in HTML and using a browser (perhaps in full-screen mode) to present. There are various frameworks for doing this; here's one: http://code.google.com/p/html5slides/ -- Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis --- Mac Access At Mac Access Dot Net --- To reply to this post, please address your message to mac-access@mac-access.net You can find an archive of all messages postedto the Mac-Access forum at either the list's own dedicated web archive: http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/mac-access/index.html or at the public Mail Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/mac-access@mac-access.net/. Subscribe to the list's RSS feed from: http://www.mail-archive.com/mac-access@mac-access.net/maillist.xml The Mac-Access mailing list is guaranteed malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free! Please remember to update your membership options periodically by visiting the list website at: http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/mac-access/options/ Dónal Fitzpatrick dfitz...@computing.dcu.ie --- Mac Access At Mac Access Dot Net --- To reply to this post, please address your message to mac-access@mac-access.net You can find an archive of all messages postedto the Mac-Access forum at either the list's own dedicated web archive: http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/mac-access/index.html or at the public Mail Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/mac-access@mac-access.net/. Subscribe to the list's RSS feed from: http://www.mail-archive.com/mac-access@mac-access.net/maillist.xml The Mac-Access mailing list is guaranteed malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free! Please remember to update your membership options periodically by visiting the list website at: http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/mac-access/options/
Re: Top Ten list of tools and techniques I used to successfully complete my first college semester as a blind student
Hi, I tend to use LaTeX as well. I'm obtaining a Computer Science Degree, of which UML (Unified Modeling Language) plays a massive role throughout all six semesters. Also, I was kind of forced into LaTeX, but it's actually really useful when you learn how. It also works for a lot of situations, such as UML since you have plenty of tools which plug into applications such as TeXShop, the LaTeX distribution for OS X. I haven't yet managed to use the edition, and wonder how useful it is going to be during teamwork, though I suspect it won't be as useful as it seems right now. I have a lot of doubts as to the style of the plugin. LaTeX is incredibly powerful, though, plugins aside. Even with the UML plugin, you can still draw diagrams. You just can't view those made by others, which is practically essential. Regards, Nicolai On Dec 18, 2011, at 5:20 PM, Dónal Fitzpatrick wrote: Thanks very much indeed Benjamin, I tried one or two of these frameworks under SL years ago but with no joy. I'll certainly look at this one thanks for passing it on. On 18 Dec 2011, at 16:06, Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis wrote: On Sun, Dec 18, 2011 at 3:26 PM, Dónal Fitzpatrick dfitz...@computing.dcu.ie wrote: My preferred way to prepare presentations (and in fact most documents) is LaTex; and I know that James Austen also uses this with considerable success. Basically for those not familiar with it, you use a markup like HTML (relax people it's not the same just similar in idea) to prepare your document. FWIW you might try making slides in HTML and using a browser (perhaps in full-screen mode) to present. There are various frameworks for doing this; here's one: http://code.google.com/p/html5slides/ -- Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis --- Mac Access At Mac Access Dot Net --- To reply to this post, please address your message to mac-access@mac-access.net You can find an archive of all messages postedto the Mac-Access forum at either the list's own dedicated web archive: http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/mac-access/index.html or at the public Mail Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/mac-access@mac-access.net/. Subscribe to the list's RSS feed from: http://www.mail-archive.com/mac-access@mac-access.net/maillist.xml The Mac-Access mailing list is guaranteed malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free! Please remember to update your membership options periodically by visiting the list website at: http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/mac-access/options/ Dónal Fitzpatrick dfitz...@computing.dcu.ie --- Mac Access At Mac Access Dot Net --- To reply to this post, please address your message to mac-access@mac-access.net You can find an archive of all messages postedto the Mac-Access forum at either the list's own dedicated web archive: http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/mac-access/index.html or at the public Mail Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/mac-access@mac-access.net/. Subscribe to the list's RSS feed from: http://www.mail-archive.com/mac-access@mac-access.net/maillist.xml The Mac-Access mailing list is guaranteed malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free! Please remember to update your membership options periodically by visiting the list website at: http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/mac-access/options/ --- Mac Access At Mac Access Dot Net --- To reply to this post, please address your message to mac-access@mac-access.net You can find an archive of all messages postedto the Mac-Access forum at either the list's own dedicated web archive: http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/mac-access/index.html or at the public Mail Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/mac-access@mac-access.net/. Subscribe to the list's RSS feed from: http://www.mail-archive.com/mac-access@mac-access.net/maillist.xml The Mac-Access mailing list is guaranteed malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free! Please remember to update your membership options periodically by visiting the list website at: http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/mac-access/options/
Keynote 5.1.1 Accessibility question [Was: Re: Top Ten list of tools and techniques I used to successfully complete my first college semester as a blind student]
Hello Donal, Thank you for your feedback. I'm interested in your comments regarding the accessibility limitations in Keynote. I'm not yet a heavy Keynote User, but I did notice that the recent 5.1.1 update included a mention of improved accessibility and am wondering if the slide show or any other access issues were addressed in this update. Apple, as usual, seems to offer no details regarding the improvements, so I'm hoping someone familiar with the product and it's shortcomings might be able to opine on this. Cheers, Bryan On Dec 18, 2011, at 10:26 AM, Dónal Fitzpatrick wrote: One aspect where OSX and VO are truly abysmal is in the area of making presentations. Anne Robertson has played with this extensively and has come up with several ingenious workarounds. However, it seems criminal that two years after release, VO still cannot access a presentation when the thing is being played in slideshow mode. What do Apple think blind people want to do with Keynote, create presentations and have someone else make them? --- Mac Access At Mac Access Dot Net --- To reply to this post, please address your message to mac-access@mac-access.net You can find an archive of all messages postedto the Mac-Access forum at either the list's own dedicated web archive: http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/mac-access/index.html or at the public Mail Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/mac-access@mac-access.net/. Subscribe to the list's RSS feed from: http://www.mail-archive.com/mac-access@mac-access.net/maillist.xml The Mac-Access mailing list is guaranteed malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free! Please remember to update your membership options periodically by visiting the list website at: http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/mac-access/options/
Top Ten list of tools and techniques I used to successfully complete my first college semester as a blind student
Hello All, I wanted to take a moment to thank everyone on this list who shared your school experiences with me and offered good advice on tools and techniques. Now that my semester is over, I want to give back some information about some of those tools and techniques in hopes somebody else might find them useful. I just completed my first college semester in over 20 years, my first as a blind person, and I'm proud to say I did very well in both of my classes. I've now enrolled as a full time student for the Spring 2012 semester with an estimated graduation date of June, 2013, only 29 years after I took my first college course. grin. I was able to perform all necessary computer-related functions using my Macbook Air and iPhone 4. Half way through the semester I installed Windows 7 in a FUsion VM just in case, but never even got around to installing NVDA because I did not encounter any accessibility roadblocks that couldn't be handled on my MBA or iPhone. Here is my Top 10 list of tools and techniques I used this semester. 1. Pages on the Mac. This past SUmmer I took a series of Pages lessons via Skype with Anne and Archie Robertson. (For those who are new to the list, Anne is an assistant moderator here.) The lessons were informative and enjoyable, as Anne Archie are a great team with a wealth of experience working with Apple products and accessibility tools and techniques. During the semester I wrote several dozen essays, most of them in Pages, and never once had a problem creating a document that met the requirements of my professors. My university is standardized almost exclusively on Windows, MS Office, and Outlook, yet I never had a problem opening any Office documents in Preview, TextEdit or Pages and was easily able to use Outlook Web Access via Safari on my Macbook Air to send receive emails and attachments. 2. The ABBYY FineReader Express Mac App. I used ABBYY extensively this semester. One of my textbooks was only available in print, but I was able to scan important chunks of the book using the flatbed scanner on my HP PhotoSmart C6100 MFP attached via USB to my Macbook Air. I scanned using Vuescan and then let ABBYY do the OCR into an RTF file. I also used ABYY to OCR graphic PDF files such as those output from OSX's save to PDF print function as noted below in the section where I talk about textbooks. And of course, I received a number of incorrectly created PDF files for such things as class syllabi and tuition invoices, all of which ABBYY handled quite nicely. 3. The Flashcards++ IOS App. I made extensive use of the excellent and fully VO-accessible IOS App named Flashcards++. I posted a review of the app on applevis if you're interested, but I'll just add here that this app blows me away every time I use it. The simplicity of the interface hides a tremendous wealth of options. There are numerous ways to import cards you've created, such as via a simple CSV created in TextEdit, or via the major flashcard sites such as quizlet.com. You can also create the cards manually right on the device and can edit any of the cards you've imported or created. Once you've created your cards, you have access to a vast number of ways to display the cards, and the built-in logic really worked well to focus on the cards I was having difficulty learning. While the app is great for general purpose learning, it was actually developed by a student of languages and includes tools to handle many languages. You can select a different language for the fr ont and back of each card and, if you don't want to rotor between VO voices to hear correct pronunciation, a button is provided to speak the words via a TTS engine hosted somewhere on the Internet. 4. The Speak It IOS App. This App was recommended by Esther, and I used it more and more as the semester progressed. Essentially, speak It will read a block of text pasted into the App, and, unlike VO, will continue to read it aloud even when the iPhone has been locked. I would often cut and paste chapters from an OCR'd textbook into Speak It, lock the iPhone screen, stick the phone in my pocket, and listen to the information over and over again as I went about other tasks. 5. The ClearRecord IOS App. I used this App on my iPhone to record every lecture this semester. It somehow manages to do a good job of blocking out some of the extraneous classroom noises while capturing the important stuff. One shortcoming of this App is it's weak playback controls and options. I worked around this issue by using iTunes on the Mac to tag the recordings as audiobooks for playback via other Apps. 6. 11 inch Macbook Air. Most days I walk several miles to and from classes and the 2.5 pound weight of my MBA is a blessing on my skinny frame,especially on those days when I'm also packing an umbrella, water bottle, towel, dog kibble, etc. My MBA has the i7 CPU and was able to handle everything I threw at it. Sometimes
