Top Tech Tidbits for Thursday, March 3, 2016 - Volume 550
The Week's News in Access Technology
A Flying Blind, LLC Publication
http://www.flying-blind.com/
If you will be attending the AFB Leadership Conference being hosted this week in our nation's Capital, please be sure to connect with Flying Blind, LLC's Founder, Larry Lewis, throughout the weekend.
He'll be participating in an Author "Meet and Greet" in the AFB Press Booth in the Exhibit Hall at 3:30 PM to discuss his soon to be released book, "iOS In The Classroom", and looks forward to sharing his excitement and enthusiasm about the publication with all of you!
He'll also be conducting two presentations on Saturday morning. The first focuses on incorporating Cloud Computing into your vision impaired students' technological tool kits. The second provides strategies for getting the most out of today's GPS solutions.
Get full event information at: http://bit.ly/1OSfyLQ, and check the conference agenda at: http://bit.ly/1QUPbg2 for presentation times and locations! Until then, travel safe!
Greetings,
1) The American Printing House has created a free program, Send to Braille, that willl generate a bare-bones UEB Contracted Braille Document from Word or other types of documents:
http://tech.aph.org/lt/
2) "AppleVis Unlimited: What's New in Accessible Apps for February 2016" is ready for your perusal. We would have mentioned several of the items found here as separate Tidbits, but since they're all located in this handy newsletter, we recommend subscribing to it to you if you want to keep up on the most important news in the iOS and Mac worlds as it is released:
http://applevis.com/blog/advocacy-ios-apps-mac-apps-news/applevis-unlimited-whats-new-accessible-apps-february-2016
3) From Freedom Scientific we learn about the company's CSUN activities, some new forthcoming JAWS features and information about Optelec products in FSCast Episode #121:
http://www.freedomscientific.com/About/FSCast
4) In addition, Freedom Scientific has released an update to OpenBook V9 with OCR improvements and the ability to use Onyx or Topaz video magnifiers as cameras:
http://www.freedomscientific.com/Downloads/OpenBook/OpenbookWhatsNew#enhancements
5) Turning to a few items to improve functionality on the Mac, you can study "All the Special Key Combinations that Change Your Mac's Startup:"
http://lifehacker.com/all-the-special-key-combinations-that-change-your-macs-1761327018
6) This post directs you to "Hold Option+Command When Selecting Text on a Mac for Precise Highlighting:"
http://lifehacker.com/hold-option-command-when-selecting-text-on-a-mac-for-pr-1761138196
7) And for $35, you can buy a highly-recommended book on using Pages on the Mac, "My Mac Pages," written by a couple of experienced teachers with vast VoiceOver experience:
http://mosen.org/mymacpages/
8) The newly-named Hadley Institute for the Blind and Visually Impaired has a number of Quick Tip Videos which supplement their existing audio recordings on getting along with low vision:
http://lowvisionfocus.org/LVF_videos.asp
9) The first essay in a new series, "LightHouse Interpoint: Weekly Essays by the Best Blind Writers," is out:
http://lighthouse-sf.org/blog/lighthouse-interpoint-weekly-essays-by-the-best-blind-writers/
10) Some Google Docs Users can now Edit Files with their Voice:
http://www.blindbargains.com/bargains.php?m=14873
11) While we're mentioning Google, you can see if you learn anything new about "Best Google Apps And Services: 10 Google Products You Might Not Know:"
http://bgr.com/2016/02/26/best-google-apps-services-top-10-unknown/
12) The NVDA mailing list has moved to groups.io. This is the page where members and non-members can read the list archive, and from which you can join the list:
https://groups.io/g/nvda
13) Also using the same email delivery system is the Win10 mailing list for blind users of that operating system:
https://groups.io/g/win10
14) "Hound Launches on iOS as a Formidable Personal Assistant Competitor to Siri:"
http://9to5mac.com/2016/03/01/hound-ios-competitor-siri/
We have two contributions from 22 Point this week:
15A) A Big Increase in the Number of Available Large Mouse Pointers for Windows:
http://www.22point.com.au/cursors.html
15B) And a blog post about the new Black Theme for Microsoft Office:
https://22point.wordpress.com/2016/02/25/microsoft-office-has-a-new-black-theme/
16) A San Jose, CA firm seeks a Mobile App Developper. If interested, email:
rajiv.dayal@toyota.com
And finishing out the week with some announcements of podcasts, we have:
17) Hear about the new iOS App for TeamTalk on Cool Blind Tech:
https://www.coolblindtech.com/teamtalk-for-ios-is-here-bringing-clarity-to-voice-communications/
18) The Tech Doctor examines Sonos:
http://www.drcarter.com
19) Hear about the present and future of the NFB Newsline mobile App on Eyes on Success:
http://eyesonsuccess.net
20) And we don't want to forget Blind Bargains Qast #53:
http://blindbargains.com/bargains.php?m=14862
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