Top Tech Tidbits - Volume 243
The Week's News in Access Technology

Distributed by Flying Blind, LLC
http://www.flying-blind.com/

This Issue's Featured Advertisement:
Povidi Announces the Availability of the SoundPost Orientation System For North American Customers
 
Povidi NZ LTD has announced the availability of the SoundPost Orientation System for customers who live in North America. SoundPost is the first orientation solution of its kind offering vision impaired customers an unparalleled means of safely identifying a desired location while traveling throughout their community. SoundPost consists of a hand controller that the user holds to locate strategically placed base stations which can be mounted to doorways, light posts, ambiguous bus stops, etc. For additional information, or to purchase a SoundPost Hand Controller (US$175), Base Station (US$195), or a Kit which includes 1 Hand Controller and 2 Base Stations (US$545), simply visit http://www.flying-blind.com/ and select the appropriate "Add to Cart" button.

Greetings,

1) Some may find this ODLIS, the online dictionary of library and information science useful:
http://lu.com/odlis/

2) Recent versions of Window-Eyes have been characterized by stuttering or sluggishness for those using EloQuence as their synthesizer. This patch fixes these problems and improvves performance:
http://www.gwmicro.com/Support/Downloads/?fileNo=1145

3) This Fred's Head post gives some information and resources concerning Rockbox, an open-source replacement firmware for mp3 players which adds speech access to many commercial players.
http://www.fredshead.info/2006/07/your-mp3-player-can-talk-with-rockbox.html

4) Serotek Tech Chat 48 covered power searching the internet including sites for news, hard-to-find information, useful search engines and search techniques.
http://serotalk.com/2010/01/21/tech-chat-48-internet-power-search/

5) EASI offers its four-part fee-based Accessible Web Design class starting on 1 February.
http://workshops/easiweb.htm

6) Instructions for the vOICe program have now been translated into Chinese.
http://www.seeingwithsound.com/extra/The_vOICe-Chinese.pdf

7) The article Getting to Know the GW Toolkithas been added to the Gw Micro knowledge base.
http://gwmicro.com/kb1115

8) Handy Tech is now selling the iRead, an OCR program for the blind designed by Handy Tech Germany. The program costs $750 and a 30-day demo copy can be obtained here.
http://www.handytech.us/iRead_1.0.2.0a_Setup.exe

9) Humanware will be demonstrating the BrailleNote Apex, and answering questions about its blindness products, at the Lighthouse for the Blind inSan Francisco on Thursday, 18 February from 21:00-23:00 GMT. Those who can't attend in person can take part online or via telephone. To RSVP, e-mail by 16 February
damian.pickering@humanware.com

10) The US IRS makes many forms available in accessible format to the blind.
http://www.irs.gov/formspubs/article/0,,id=98135,00.html

11) Firefox version 3.6 has been released. You can read about the accessibility improvements it contains here
http://www.marcozehe.de/2009/11/09/new-accessibility-features-in-3-6
And download it here:
http://www.getfirefox.com

12) The Global Voice continues to produce technology shows as well as many others. They do not have a podcast feed yet, so they are sending e-mails to their lists to let listeners know which shows are not in the archive and can be downloaded. Find out what they air and how to join their lists at their home page
http://www.theglobalvoice.info

For questions and comments regarding Tidbits, please e-mail Dean Martineau at dean@topdotenterprises.com. Dean Martineau provides adaptive technology training by phone, online, and in person, with flexible arrangements, and at affordable prices.

Would you like to receive text-only versions of the Tidbits and Flying Blind, LLC Newsletters? If so, find the link at the bottom of every Newsletter titled "Update Profile/E-Mail Address", and check this newly-available option.

Feel free to forward individual Tidbits, or the entire tidbits issue, to interested people (but make sure they don't already receive it; a lot do!) When doing this, please have the courtesy to cite your source, perhaps directing them to the tidbits website (see below.)

Tidbits is intentionally concise, and we know a lot of people may not understand some items because little explanation is given. If a particular Tidbit brings up a question in your mind, feel free to ask, and I will try to answer as time and knowledge permit.

Visit the Tidbits page at http://www.topdotenterprises.com/tidbits.htm where you can subscribe to the RSS feed and grab back issues. All that welcome information for future issues can come to me at dean@topdotenterprises.com.

You can subscribe to Top Tech Tidbits on the Flying Blind, LLC Website at: http://www.flying-blind.com. Here you will find an accessibly friendly and secure form into which you can enter your email address, click submit, and begin receiving Tidbits weekly. It's that easy.

| Flying Blind, LLC | 955 Pembrook Road | Cleveland Heights, Ohio 44121 |