Top Tech Tidbits for Thursday, April 9, 2015 - Volume 504
The Week's News in Access Technology

A Flying Blind, LLC Publication
http://www.flying-blind.com/

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Greetings,

1A) This is quite the week for opinions, and counter opinions. Mike Calvo and other members of the Serotalk Podcast team got together and covered a variety of topics, including the likely failure of the forthcoming Apple Watch:
http://tripleclickhome.com/2015/04/01/triple-click-home-episode-37-watch-for-aliens/

1B) The Blind Educator doesn't agree with everything in the podcast:
http://blindeducator.com/2015/04/08/new-age-or-revival-of-an-old-era-serotalk/

2A) Meanwhile, the April 2015 issue of The Braille Monitor contains an article entitled "Accessibility at Microsoft: More Challenges than Victories:"
https://nfb.org/images/nfb/publications/bm/bm15/bm1504/bm150403.htm

2B) And our reliable voice of independent thought, Chris Hofstader, while agreeing with portions of the article, takes the author and the organization he represents to task for most of it:
http://chrishofstader.com/accessibility-and-nfbcs-more-questions-than-results/

3) Of late there have been a number of articles discussing the pros and cons of Guide Dog use. Here are a few to get you involved in the conversation, if you'd like to be:
3A) https://wheresyourdog.wordpress.com/2015/03/21/go-away-guide-dog-goop/
3B) https://blindbeader.wordpress.com/2015/03/20/all-blind-people-should-have-a-guide-dog/
3C) http://serotalk.com/2015/03/18/5-reasons-why-guide-dogs-are-a-terrible-idea/

4) Leaving all this seriousness behind for just a moment, somebody out there has both excellent creativity and audio editing talent and too much time on their hands. The result is "Microsoft Sam in the War against Mac Alex Part 1:"
http://dl.twup.me/1428086811/Microsoft%20Sam%20in%20the%20War%20against%20Mac%20Alex%20Part%201.mp3

5) CAVI will offer a four-week, $80 course on Microsoft Excel starting on May 5 or 6 depending on where you are in the world:
http://wiki.cucat.org/index.php?n=Main.Excel

6) From the Vision Loss and Personal Recovery Blog comes the informative article "Video Magnifiers: An Expert Leads You Through The Maze:"
http://www.visionlossandpersonalrecovery.com/video-magnifiers-an-expert-leads-you-through-the-maze/

7A) On the Hadley Instructional Videos page you can find around 40 iFocus videos for learning to use VoiceOver on the iPhone:
http://www.hadley.edu/InstructionalVideos.asp

7B) Unfortunately, their latest iFocus video hasn't hade it to that page yet. It's viewable on YouTube, and concerns the dictation function:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcDKyhh-5Vs&feature=youtu.be

8A) Learn about the new Blaze ET from HIMS on Tek Talk on GMT Tuesday, 14 April at 00:00:
http://conference321.com/masteradmin/room.asp?id=rsc9613dc89eb2

8B) Meanwhile, HIMS' next webinar is called "Teaching Tips from TVI's (Teachers of the Visually Impaired) for TVI's," and will be held on GMT Tuesday, 14 April at 19:00 GMT:
http://hims-inc.com/webinars/

9) Accessible Spotify, iTunes and Facebook are Now Available in the Leasey 1.1 Update:
http://www.leaseycentral.com/leaseyupdate #Leasey

10) If you have wanted a layer just for navigating table cells similar to the table layer offered by other screen readers, it is now possible in NVDA with the Easy Table Navigator Add-On:
http://addons.nvda-project.org/addons/easyTableNavigator.en.html

11) The iPad has been among us for five years now, and this fact figures prominently in the Blind Bargains Weekly Apple Rundown:
http://blindbargains.com/b/12596

12) Eyes on Success has completed a two-part series on sports. Episode 1514 dealt with beep baseball, while 1515 concerns cricket for the blind:
http://eyesonsuccess.net

13A) 22 Point is a new venture aiming to create accessible apps:
http://www.22point.com.au/

13B) Their first Android game is called RapiTap:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=au.com.twentytwopoint.rapitap

13C) And here is a podcast about it:
http://www.22point.com.au/apps.html#audio

14) The "Guide to Using Android" is an e-book by Aaron Linson, available for $3.95 through Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Guide-Using-Android-Aaron-Linson-ebook/dp/B00UUN1ZPG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1428460360&sr=8-1&keywords=the+guide+to+using+android

Wrapping up with a couple of podcasts:

15A) Maccessibility 81 is out:
http://maccessibility.net/2015/04/03/mrtp-81-the-hearts-arent-labeled/

15B) And Accessible Devices #43 runs for over 20 minutes:
http://accessible-devices.com/a11y-devices-podcast-43/

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