Top Tech Tidbits - Volume 182
The Week's News in Access Technology

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

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.

1) A student senior Meghanical Engineering Design Team at MIT is striving to design and build a better braille labeler. They have a questionnaire which they would like interested people to complete. People living around the Boston area may get to examine and comment on prototypes as well. For information, e-mail:
karina.pikhart@gmail.com

2) EASI offers two free webinars in November as well as a four-part fee-based course on Taming Microsoft Word and Excel. The webinars are "Making Accessible Forms in PDF" on Thursday, 16 November, and "Captioning Educational Material on a Large Scale" on Thursday 20 November. Both begin at 18:00 GMT. For information about all this, go to
http://easi.cc/clinic.htm

3) Dorina Nowill Foundation for the Blind of Brazil has created BBReader, a free Daisy book reader, an add-on to Firefox, available in English, Spanish and Portuguese versions. This is the link to the English page:
http://www.caracol.com.br/agora/doc.cfm?id_doc=1982&lang=en

4) A new version of the Firefox Accessibility Extension is now available:
http://firefox.cita.uiuc.edu/#beta

5) window-Eyes version 7.01, with bug fixes and some enhancements, has been released:
http://www.gwmicro.com/upgrade </upgrade
Two articles have been added to the Gw Micro Knowledge Base: "Getting and Reading the Current Line Number in Word 2007"
http://www.gwmicro.com/kb1096
Buying a New Computer That Works with Window-Eyes
http://www.gwmicro.com/kb1097

6) Several articles about the upcoming Windows version, Windows 7, are to be found among other articles at
http://www.betanews.com/
And this blog discusses the engineering of Windows 7:
http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/

7) ViewPlus announces an update to its Tiger Software Suite, enabling translation of math from Microsoft Word into Braille through the intermediary of MathType Version 5 or above from Design Sciences.
http://www.viewplus.com/

8) Jamal Mazrui has created an interactive programming environment for the Perl language, designed to improve accessibility to programmers:
http://empowermentzone.com/ipl.zip
And one for Python:
http://EmpowermentZone.com/InPy.zip

9) Here are a few useful compendia of information courtesy of Fred's Head Companion: First, how to find accessible nutritional information:
http://www.fredshead.info/2006/05/accessible-nutritional-content.html

10) Next, Shopping for Unique Gift Items:
http://www.fredshead.info/2007/01/shopping-for-unique-gift-items.html

11) Here is a post entitled Top Ten Myths about the Mac and Its Accessibility to the Blind:
http://www.fredshead.info/2007/07/top-ten-myths-about-mac-and-its.html

12) The final compendium, though slightly out of date, contains good information regarding pdf documents and how to read and convert them:
http://www.fredshead.info/2005/10/adobe-acrobat-current-solutions-to.html

13) In briefer pieces of information from Fred's Head Companion, the Global Text Project claims that it will create open content electronic textbooks that will be freely available from a website.
http://globaltext.terry.uga.edu/
WitGuides claims to be a source for downloadable e-books:
http://www.witguides.com/
And Open Textbook is an online registry of textbooks free for anyone to use:
http://www.opentextbook.org/

14) NoteMesh is a free site where students in the same university class can exchange course notes.
http://notemesh.com/

15) Saving perhaps the best for last, if this site really does what it claims, a lot of us will make lots of visits: Tv Radio Cat claims to be a worldwide database of radio and tv stationswith regularly updated information and links to online broadcast:
http://tvradiocat.com/

16) Version 10.01 of the Dolphin line of screen readers and screen magnifiers is out, with a Startup wizard and some new features and fixes:
http://yourdolphin.com/productdetail.asp?id=1&z=3

17) Each year for the last few, Tek Talk has offered two sessions devoted to Stocking Stuffers, low-cost items that could make interesting gifts. The first StockingStuffer session for this year will take place on GMT Tuesday 4 November at 00:00.
http://www.accessibleworld.org

Would you like to receive text-only versions of the Tidbits and Flying Blind, LLC E-Newsletters? If so, find the link at the bottom of every E-News 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, but I know a lot of people don't understand many of the items because little explanation is given. If a Tidbit brings up a question in your mind, feel free to ask, and I'll answer as time, knowledge and inclination 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.

People can subscribe to Tidbits via e-mail: tttt-join@topdotenterprises.com (Make sure to get all 4 T's into the address!)

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