From: Kelly Pierce
Subject: computer user network news
Below is the tenth newsletter of the Blind Computer User Network
in Chicago. For back issues, check out our home page at
http://www.city-net.com/vipace/friends/chicago.
Computer Users Network News
Adaptive Technology
for the Blind and Visually-Impaired
Fall, 1996
Vol. II no. 4
Published bimonthly by
The Computer Network
Blind Service Association
22 West Monroe Street
Chicago, Illinois 60603
Copyright: 1996
Editor: Cindy Brown
Project Coordinator
Dave Porter
rdunique@ripco.com
CONTENTS
Two Important Notices """"" 2
From the Editor's Desk:
AnExplanation Is Due """""" 4
CompuServe Through Windows:
A Pane at a Time
by Anna Byrne """"""""""""" 9
Internet Glossary """""""" 18
Dates to Remember! """"""" 35
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Two Important Notices!
First--All memberships must be renewed before getting the next
issue of this newsletter.
The annual membership donation is a minimum contribution of
fifteen dollars, made payable to Blind Service Association,
Computer Network. Donations should be delivered to or mailed to
Blind Service Association, c/o Computer Network, and must be
received by Jan. 15, 1997 in order to assure you of getting on
the mailing list for the Jan.-Feb. issue. Please indicate in
which format you wish to receive the newsletter: cassette tape,
diskette, or standard print.
Second--be sure to attend the Computer Network's fun-filled open
house on Saturday, Dec. 7th on the ninth floor at BSA's office,
from 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM. Events will include: vendors
demonstrating the latest in adaptive technology for the blind and
visually-impaired computer user, the unveiling of the CN web
page, and a raffle ($5.00 for each chance to win a refurbished
computer)! Don't miss it!
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From the Editor's Desk:
An Explanation Is Due
By Cindy Brown
This is the tenth edition of our Computer Users Network News, and
that is something to celebrate.
But we had promised you twelve editions by this time. What's the
problem?
The answer is not simple, and, in fact, there is more than one
answer.
As you may remember, we did somewhat swimmingly in getting the
newsletter out according to schedule for the first year. But the
operation became more complicated-- first, when we decided to
mail out issues rather than having persons pick them up at
monthly meetings. We felt it wasn't fair that if members were
paid up, they had to travel to downtown Chicago on a particular
Saturday morning of the month to get what was due them as part of
their membership donation. So we did what we thought was
necessary to get the various formats of the newsletter mailed--
securing the appropriate envelopes from BSA and assigning someone
to do the labels. Well, it has become clear that printing up
address labels for this group is not easy for blind or visually-
impaired persons; and as hard as we tried to resolve this issue,
we repeatedly had difficulty getting the job completed.
A subsidiary problem to the printing of the labels has been the
lack of coordination in maintaining an accurate
membership/mailing list.
A second complication has been in regard to the brailling of the
Newsletter. We began with a wonderfully competent and available
Marie Porter to do the Braille printing. She had her own printer,
and initially brought it down to BSA, hooking it up beside BSA's
Juliet printer. She, with the help of Tim Paul, Wayne Smith,
Jimmy Sue Castleberry, Denise Avant and others printed,
assembled, and stuffed envelopes, getting the newsletter mailed
out on deadline. However, when it became difficult for Marie to
get down town, she began doing the printing in her home with the
help of Mary Ann Bartkowski who would join her there. This
complicated logistics--i.e., getting paper, envelopes, etc. to
Marie's home; and, furthermore, there was now only one printer,
so the printing time was doubled. Marie and Maryann never
complained about the time it took, but we have since learned that
it takes about ten hours to print forty Braille copies.
In recent months, Marie has become incapacitated, and thus unable
to carry on as our publisher. Anna Byrne has nobly taken up the
task, but has discovered how much time and energy this takes. Increasing the
workforce doesn't help when we have only one
printer.
Even print copies have not been easy to duplicate and assemble in
large numbers with the equipment and resources we have.
Tapes and diskettes, however, have posed little problem. Getting
the material read on tape by a BSA volunteer, and then having the
tapes duplicated by Dan Nuwelt, has been relatively easy. We
acknowledge that sometimes, the volunteers have not understood
the importance of taping on the 1-7/8-in. IPS to accommodate our
readers who do not have 4-track players, but we think we have
remedied this issue.
Some of these problems have arisen because of decentralization
and lack of communication. But another problem has been to have
no backups for key individuals with functions to perform which
are essential to the completed product. In attempting to remedy
this, except for the writing and editing of articles, tasks will
be completed in the offices of BSA. Anna Byrne (with help from a
sighted relative) is currently printing address labels with
backup from BSA staff, and regular updated information from
membership coordinators, Joe and Darlene DeCourcey and their
committee consisting of Larry Bickhem and Pennie Lilly.
But we have re-examined the continued production of Braille
copies: "Is it worth it?"
At this writing, BSA is in the process of hiring someone to do
Braille printing on a regular basis. But when one considers that
it takes an hour to do just four copies of this newsletter, we
think it is not worth it. We hope our members will understand our
decision to discontinue the Braille production of the Computer
Users Network News for persons who are not both blind and
visually-impaired. An extra fee will necessarily be charged to
non-hearing-impaired persons, insisting on Braille. This new
policy will begin with the upcoming issue, January-February,
1997.
In the meantime, we regret to say we did not meet our goal of six
editions this year. But we intend to get on schedule for 1997
while continually examining how we can improve. We are extremely
grateful to all who have helped us out in the past two years, and
hope that they and others will continue to support us.
(Cindy Brown is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and supervisor
at the Community Counseling Centers of Chicago. She also does
private practice psychotherapy.)
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CompuServe Through Windows:
A Pane at a Time 5
by Anna Byrne
"Welcome to CompuServe."
It's a sound clip, not the speech synthesizer, and it tells me
that I have entered WINCIM, CompuServe's Windows version of its
information manager software--one of the sub-applications this
connection with the cyber-world affords the visually-impaired
user. From here, choices include news, weather, sports, home and
leisure, fun and games, professional, finance, entertainment,
travel, computers, communications, education, shopping--each
accessible by the push of a button. In addition there are menus
for such functions as mail (my personal favorite), "Consumer's
Report," a forum where I can download the latest version of the
speech product I use, the Internet via Netscape, and so much
more.
I have examined tactile diagrams of Windows screens and I
wouldn't give a fig for any one of them; not because they are
inaccurate, but because: Who cares? What I need to know is not
what the screen looks like to someone else, but how it is
navigable for me as the user of a speech-output screen reader.
The CompuServe screen is like this, to me: Across the top is a
list of choices, i.e., a menu bar:
file edit services mail special Windows help
Below that somewhere is a series of "buttons" including the
selections, such as shopping, listed above. Each choice directs
the user to additional selections which can be reached by either
pushing the button or pulling down a menu. Pushing a button means
tabbing to the selection and pressing "enter" or going into
review mode with the screen reader to find the selection and
pressing the mouse-click button designated by the screen reader.
Pulling down a menu means using the down-arrow keys to move
through the choices presented and either pressing enter or doing
the mouse-click thing again to select.
When you move through a group of choices, the one you are reading
is highlighted. That means it is a different color from the
others and often it is flashing on and off. What makes this such
a challenge for screen readers is that a highlight is not always
the same color--just a different one from the surroundings. And,
while we're at it, the screen background and the other words on
the screen may be virtually any color; and if you don't like the
color you can change it to any other. The first thing a screen
reader needs to know is how to track the highlight and how to
read the information just once, not every time it flashes. But I
digress--the visually impaired computer user does not need to
know how to do this but he needs a screen reader that does.
Mail. Pressing the alt key, immediately adjacent to the spacebar,
brings one to the menu across the top of the screen. Here instead
of moving a character at a time, the arrow keys move a menu
choice at a time. At mail, arrowing down instead of right causes
a menu to drop down like a window shade. If, from here, one
arrows left or right, the mail menu snaps back up and the menu
arrowed to pulls down.
The mail choices, arrowing down, are: get new mail, search new
mail, create/send mail, send/receive all mail, send file, in-
basket, out-basket, filing cabinet, send forum message, address
book, member directory.
Down-arrowing to "create/send" and pressing "enter" places the
cursor in the addressing area. One can type in a name that was
saved previously and WINCIM will recall and display the address.
Or you can type in a name it doesn't recognize and type in the
address; or tab to the list of saved names/addresses, arrow
through them, and select the one you want and "enter" or "click."
Now there are buttons. Selecting add and pressing enter will
include this address in a list of recipients--one or more.
Back at the addressing line, one can address the message to an
additional recipient or tab to the button that says "OK" and
"enter." Okay.
CompuServe is an off-line mail reader, which means that at this
point the user is not connected to the system at all: no phone
call yet. You can compose a letter at leisure, save it, revise
it, add files to it as many times and for however long as you
wish. When it is ready to send, shift-tab places it in the out-
basket and it is ready to go.
To send mail, arrow to "send/receive all mail" and press "enter."
The computer asks you to confirm the choice: "send/receive all
mail" by placing the cursor on the okay button. You can either
press "enter" again for "OK" or tab to a button that says
"cancel." "Cancel" stops the action before dialing. Pressing
"enter" places a phone call to CompuServe, receives all in-coming
mail to the in-basket and sends out all mail in the out-basket
and then--user's choice--remains connected or disconnects the
telephone.
The mail menu is still pulled down and the cursor is on in-
basket. Pressing "enter" gives a display, with the cursor
pointing to the most recently received piece of mail, sitting on
the "open" button. The other buttons are "close," "delete," and
"list box." Arrowing through "list box" a person can review not
only the new mail--most recent first--but everything in the in-
basket, from the messages just received to articles saved from
months in the past.
I'm finding that in today's mail is a note from a high school
classmate in California. She recognized my sister's name in a database she
was using, wrote my sister, and my sis in Saint 7
Louis forwarded the note to me. There is also a poem my son found
somewhere on the Internet and thought it was funny. I think so
too. Pressing "control-shift" and the "end" key highlights the
whole poem. Then "control" and the letter c together copy the
masterpiece to the Windows clipboard. Pressing "alt-escape" moves
the action to the main Windows screen. Here opening Windows Write
--a very basic word-processor--and typing "control v" pastes the
poem into the word processor. Now it is saved: the four page poem
and probably three pages of addressing information. After the
garbage is deleted the poem can be printed with the Desk Jet or
the Blazer; or at any time in the future selected and mailed to
anyone who might get a chuckle out of it. Or maybe I will just
reread it myself and smile.
CompuServe is waiting--still open. "Alt-escape" returns me to
mail. Pressing "open" displays the classmate's note and the ever-
present series of buttons ("next," "file it," "forward," "reply,"
"delete.") Selecting/copying the address line, I can paste it
into the address book in CompuServe without spelling a thing.
Returning to mail, I select "reply"--and I'm off. When all the
out-going mail is ready, send/receive takes about fifteen seconds
--no stamps, no long-distance charges, and the option of changing
what I've said before anyone hears it.
CompuServe costs $13.45 a month for 5 hours of connect time and
$2 an hour after that. The Windows access software is free and
works well with JAWS for Windows. I have copied information from
"Consumer's Report" to analyze; my son has downloaded (for a
clearly-specified fee) the upgrade for his highly sophisticated
music writing software; I avidly download and test every update
of JAWS for Windows; I have even received a wave file of my son's
children in their own voices saying "Hi, Gramma." I have also
received from CompuServe a CD telling me how to use the service
but haven't taken the time to go through it. (What? me read the
book???)
I recently found a note I composed in Windows Write about a year
ago. It was two paragraphs, and had taken two hours to accomplish
when I was new at it. Now I can't imagine why it took so long!
Learning Windows is a pain!--no getting around it. It requires
new ways of looking at things and new ways of visualizing them,
---
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