🚀 go-pugleaf

                            THE BLIND NEWS DIGEST

                                 Issue # 1061

                           Tuesday, July 19, 1994

Today's Topics:


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                       what's wrong with this picture?
                             Re: Info for friend
                                   mosaic
                          Seeing Eye BBS Available
                            Re: Blind Web Access
                          Re: Help: Voice decoding
                         Re: Braille Scanner/Printer
                            Re: Blind Web Access


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                              (203) 926-6187



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Subject: what's wrong with this picture?
From: LyndaS@edc.org


hi all,

    recently my brother sent for some info on speech scanners. he came by the
other day with the brochure from xerox. it's a nice glossy 4-color with a photo
of an older couple on the front. he's seated at the scanner, she's washing
dishes (never mind that they're old as if to imply that all deaf folk are old,
or vice versa. that's just dumb). but, the caption reads:

        "just because you're blind or visually impaired
         doesn't mean you can't be well read"

    i just wanted to run this by you all for reaction to this wording, because
my reaction was powerful. what's you're take on this? or am i all wet behind
the ears :>...?




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Subject: Re: Info for friend
From: janelson@@bones.et.byu.edu (Jack A. Nelson)
Organization: Brigham Young University

In article <32891@handicap.news> rear@ritz.mordor.com (Robert Rea) writes:
>
>Hi, I have a friend whose lifeline has been email. Now he is becoming
>blind. What solutions are available to him? He has soem friends who might
>come and read his mail to him, but that is a stopgap. I just need basic
>information for him about the possibilites for computer use by the blind.
>Just email me if you have info or to point me to info.
>

Bob:

     I'm doing research on how those with disablities
use e-mail and the Internet for joining an electronic community where their
disabilities don't matter. I'd like to hear from those who use e-mail or
the Net in this way, and hear their stories about how important it is for
them--with some specific examples if possible. Would your friend cooperate?
Or anyone else out there.
        By the way, regarding your request for your sight-impaired friend,
he might contact Paul Kurtz (pkurtz@unf6.cis.unf.edu) who is blind and
manages a computer system. He can describe the equipment he uses.
        Or he can contact Mary suzanne Fowler <msfowler@tenet.edu>, who
writes: "I cannot say enough about the Internet and computer combination.
I have one of my students e-mailing other blind students on the
Internet. They inhale information and want more!"
        Good luck. I hope I hear from anyone out there with a story to tell.
        Jack nelson      janelson@ucs.byu.edu
more!




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Subject: mosaic
From: LyndaS@edc.org


mosaic is for windows and mac. you can try to reach the mosaic folks at mosaic-
x@ncsa.edu. for windows questions try mosaic-win@ncsa.uiuc.edu.

good luck!

st.j
lyndas@edc.org




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Subject: Seeing Eye BBS Available
From: poehlman@clark.net (David Poehlman)
Organization: Clark Internet Services, Inc., Ellicott City, MD USA

I wanted to let everyone know that the Seeing Eye now has a BBS
available.  The phone number is (800) 449-2252.



--
Hands-on Technolog(eyes) Touching the internet.
Call for services:
(410) 435-8821





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Subject: Re: Blind Web Access
From: ebohlman@netcom.com (Eric Bohlman)
Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest)

Tara Kent-Holton (tholton@cabell.vcu.edu) wrote:
: Index Number: 32931

: Most of what I've heard about WWW seems to imply that you need a mac
: or windows to access it.  But I have also heard that there are sites
: where line editor access is available.  Can anyone give me
: information on such access?  Thanks.

If your local site has a Lynx client, you can access WWW pages in text
mode.  Graphics will be marked as such, but not available.  I know Netcom
has Lynx available, and I've used it.





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Subject: Re: Help: Voice decoding
From: ebohlman@netcom.com (Eric Bohlman)
Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest)

Jonas Falkvall (e86jf@efd.lth.se) wrote:
: Index Number: 32948

: Recently though, I saw an advertise for a Voice Controlled Remote (for TV
: and such). Now my question is: This remote must be based on a single
: "Voice Decoding IC". Does anyone have any information of where to get those
: IC's? Make, purchase etcetera?

Almost certainly, it's a custom chip commissioned by the manufacturer of
the remote, and not a general-purpose device.





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Subject: Re: Braille Scanner/Printer
From: ebohlman@netcom.com (Eric Bohlman)
Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest)

Louis J. LePage (lepage@server.uwindsor.ca) wrote:
: Index Number: 32957

:       I am beginning my final design project and thesis report for
: Electrical Engineering here at the University of Windsor.  I am looking for as
: much information related to my topic as possible, especially contacts at the
: CNIB or the American Institute for the Blind R&D facility.

:       My main project encompases the design of a braille scanner for the IBM
: compatible PC.  This will be a serial/parallel port peripheral controlled by
: software.  The scanner will take in a braille document, scan it (with surface
: scanning methods, not light intensity like standard hand/page scanners), and
: then the software will convert the data to a text file using braille
: conversion libraries.

:       I would like to know the feasibility of this project, and any past
: work or current devices which do the same thing.

There's been a fair amount of interest in having this expressed in the
Fidonet Blinktalk conference (which is gatewayed to misc.handicap).  The
main interest is from users who have lots of bulky Braille documents
sitting around and want to make some physical space available, but people
have also suggested that libraries could use such a system to duplicate
older Braille volumes (and stock more books).

As far as I know, nobody has been able to do this yet.  Good luck.





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Subject: Re: Blind Web Access
From: thurlow@concave.convex.com (Robert Thurlow)
Organization: Engineering, Convex Computer Corporation, Richardson, Tx USA

In article <32931@handicap.news>,
Tara Kent-Holton <tholton@cabell.vcu.edu> wrote:

>Most of what I've heard about WWW seems to imply that you need a mac
>or windows to access it.  But I have also heard that there are sites
>where line editor access is available.  Can anyone give me
>information on such access?  Thanks.

The good news is that there is a text-based browser called "lynx"
which does a fine job browsing through WWW.  I used it just now,
with my terminal emulator while logged into my Unix host.  This
client code is freely available, as is the current version of
Mosaic, and should be possible to run native under DOS with
proper networking drivers and connectivity in place.

The bad news is that it wants to use standout mode (I happen to
get reverse video) to show you the words in a document that are
hypertext links.  Perhaps someone has already made this kind of
thing accessible to the blind, and it seems like it should
certainly be possible, but I can't point anywhere to a known
solution.  Of course, if you can hack the free source ...

And while I imagine you know this, Tara, I'll mention for the
benefit of others that the machine you run this on has to also
be connected to the Internet somehow; you have to get packets
to and from servers in real time.  A lot of people who can
send mail to Internet mailboxes get excited with this because
they think they can use it, but they often can't.

If you need help getting hold of the source of a binary for a
flavor of Unix, let me know, and I can likely help.

Rob T
--
hardware, n.  1. the part of a computer which CAN be kicked.




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                 End of Issue # 1061 of the Blind News Digest

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