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                            THE BLIND NEWS DIGEST

                                 Issue # 1024

                          Wednesday, March 02, 1994

Today's Topics:


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                                Bowling Alley
                          Designing Accessible News
                            Teleconference info.
                              Events in Braille
                               Canes New types
                   Re: DECtalk internal versus standalone


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thoughts in the next issue, please send electronic mail to
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                              Bill McGarry (Moderator)
                              (203) 926-6187



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Subject: Bowling Alley
From: klford@facstaff.wisc.edu (Kelly Ford)
Organization: University of Wisconsin-Madison, Meteorology and Space Science

I wonder if anyone out there in network land knows of bowling
alleys in the San Francisco Francisco area that happen to have the
rails that someone who iss blind uses to bowl available for use.

I'm talking about the small rail that goes from the end of the ball
return to the foul line, not the ramp some individuals in
wheelchairs use.

Hey, come to think of it, if you know of any around the nation,
send me a note and I'll add them to this database of different
disability services I keep.





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Subject: Designing Accessible News
From: HUDSON@msu.edu (Michael.Hudson)

Hello,

I received the following letter and wanted to share this info with others who
may be interested or may be able to have an impact.  As you know, there is a
critical need for such development in the blind community.

Hope this helps.
----------( Forwarded letter 1 follows )----------------------------------------
from: 99puzzuo@lab.cc.wmich.edu (A Puzzuoli)

I just got off compuserve and ran accross a couple things you might be
 interested in, so here they are.
I'll send two messages.

#: 73634 S5/Vision Impairments  [DISABILI]
    22-Feb-94  15:26:48
Sb: Digital Newspaper RFP
Fm: David Andrews 72157,3547
To: ALL

                ACCESS FOR THE HANDICAPPED, INC.
               1220 East West Highway, Suite 1222
                  Silver Spring, Maryland 20910
                         (301) 587-4617
                       (301) 587-4924 FAX



  19 February 1994

  Dear Colleague:

  The CPB/WGBH National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM) was
  recently established to encourage and support greater access
  to mass media for various under-served audiences, including
  deaf and hard-of-hearing and blind and visually impaired
  people, minority-language users, learning disabled people,
  and others. One of its many initiatives is the Print Access
  Project which is attempting to spur the development and
  proliferation of state-of-the-art, electronic daily
  newspapers which will be fully accessible to print-disabled
  people in the United States.

  The purpose of this letter is to solicit proposals for
  provision or development of software and its support as part
  of a prototype digital daily newspaper to be delivered
  on-line by modem and over the telephone using high-grade
  synthetic speech. Access for the Handicapped, Inc. is
  managing this project for NCAM under a grant from the
  Corporation for Public Broadcasting. A test of this
  prototype digital newspaper will take place during a
  six-month period in 1994 at the National Federation of the
  Blind in Baltimore, Maryland.

  Proposals for software and support must reach this office by
  March 18, 1994. The funds available to the Project for
  software and support are less than $20,000. Reasonable
  travel expenses for the software Provider to work in
  Baltimore will be provided separately by the Project.

  Licensing and rights to software provided to the Project
  will be negotiated, with agreements dependent upon whether
  the provider is offering existing software or software to be
  developed, and, if existing, whether the software requires
  adaptation with Project funds. The Provider will be
  encouraged to sell the software to future digital newspaper
  sites which will be provided with the research results of
  this Project. In addition, upgrades to the software after
  the initial six-month period will be made at the discretion
  of the Provider. Preference will be given to companies with
  a proven track record in software development for persons
  who are blind, companies which employ blind persons in
  software development, and/or companies which have a proven
  track record in development of software to manage on-line
  and "dial-in" newspapers.

  Hardware for the operation of the prototype will be provided
  separately. The hardware platform is likely to be a
  Pentium-based PC with sufficient RAM and hard-disk space,
  two 14,400 bps modems, and four PC-board speech synthesizers
  with telephonic capabilities. These modems and speech
  synthesizers will service six telephone lines.

  The software provided to or developed for the Project must
  perform the following tasks:

  1.  Strip graphical characters and/or control characters
  from the electronic version of a newspaper (daily data to be
  provided by the publisher in a format to be determined).

  2.  Automate the coding of articles within a newspaper so
  that they can be placed in identifiable categories for ease
  of user navigation.

  3.  Provide a user-friendly, menu-driven computer
  bulletin-board system which will permit an on-line user to
  automatically download up to three sections of a newspaper
  without significant intervention.

  4.  Provide a user-friendly, menu-driven touch-tone-phone
  navigation system which will use speech synthesizers to
  "read" the newspaper over the telephone.

  5.  Acquire or develop a text-to-speech dictionary for foreign
  or unusual words to be pronounced correctly by the speech
  synthesizers.

  6.  Operate in a multi-tasking mode.

  In addition, the Provider must install the software and
  support it for the six-month operational period.


  Proposals should contain the following information:

  1.  A statement concerning your company's capabilities and
  history and its specific qualifications to provide or
  develop the requested software.

  2.  A detailed explanation of how each of the software
  tasks will be addressed.

  3.  A timeline and estimate of costs.

  Compliance with Equal Employment Opportunity requirements
  for Federal contractors and sub-contractors will be
  required.

  Your proposal should be submitted in triplicate in hard copy
  as well as in ASCII text form on an IBM-compatible 3.5 inch
  disk. I am enclosing a brief description of the project for
  your information. For further information, I can be reached
  at 301 587-4617 (v/TDD). I look forward to your proposal.

  Sincerely,



  Dr. Harold Snider
  President and Project Manager






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Subject: Teleconference info.
From: HUDSON@msu.edu (Michael.Hudson)

Hello Again!

Today is the day for enlightenment and good news.  Here is yet another
important event for the blind community.
My sincere thanks to Al for forwarding these events to me.
Sincerely,
Michael Hudson
----------( Forwarded letter 1 follows )----------------------------------------
from: 99puzzuo@lab.cc.wmich.edu (A Puzzuoli)


#: 73808 S5/Vision Impairments  [DISABILI]
    23-Feb-94  20:27:49
Sb: Blindness Summit Update
Fm: AM Cooke/D Levine 76417,1353
To: ALL

A change in the way individuals can participate. Simply call 1-800-424-9750
between 2:15 and 2:30 pm Eastern Time on the day of the summit. Give your name
and indicate you wish to enter the Josephine Taylor Leadership Institute
conference. Should you encounter difficulty, a special trouble number can be
reached at 1-800-424-2149. AT&T has donated 300 phone lines for participants.

For those requiring background:


Members of the blind and visually impaired community and other interested
individuals and groups are invited to listen in to a March 3 summit meeting
featuring discussion of an issue of major importance to the blindness/visual
impairment community.

"Collaboration as a Means to Ensure the Future of Specialized Services"  will
be the focus of the historic discussion by Kenneth Jernigan, president of
National Federation of the Blind; Leroy Sanders, president of American Council
of the Blind; Michael Bina, president of AER (Association for Education and
Rehabilitation of the Blind and Visually Impaired) and Carl Augusto, executive
director of the American Foundation for the Blind.  The event is the 1994
Josephine Taylor Leadership Institute sponsored by AFB in Washington, DC.

Recording for the Blind in Princeton, NJ will be one of the teleconferencing
sites from 2:30 to 4:30 p.m. Reservations must be made by calling Annemarie
Cooke, external relations officer, at (609)520-8079.  Individuals may also
listen in via their own phone as noted above.

The event also will be taped by AFB.

Specialized services vs. full inclusion is a topic of major concern because it
affects the way blind and visually impaired children will receive training in
the specialized skills such as orientation and Braille literacy that will
enable them to succeed in the sighted community.

I'll be happy to answer any questions via this forum.

Annemarie Cooke External Relations Officer, RFB






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Subject: Events in Braille
From: judys@mville.edu (Judy Schwartz)

Dear Bill, I have been receiving your newsletter for about eight
months.  I found it interesting from a personal and professional
point of view.  I am an O&M specialist and teacher of the visually
impaired.  I have been in the field for nineteen  years.  I have
written a few replies to individuals over the months.  This time,
however, I have something that may be of interest to the general
readership.  It is from tomorrow's Sunday New York Times' travel
section (Feb. 6, 1994)

It is titled:  "Events in Braille."  The article reads as follows:
"The Greater Hartford Tourism District recently began printing a
Braille version of its quarterly events calendar.  The 33-page
calendar, listing activities in Hartfor and 20 nearby towns, is in
Braille right down to the cover illustration of a horse-drawn
sleigh.

It's the only municipal events calendar in Braille in Connecticut
and possibly the only one in the country, according to Carl R.
Augusto, president of the American Foundation for the Blind.

Generally museums and attractions will make an effort to have their
materials in accessible formats, usually in large print or on tape,
he said.  'But we have yet to hear of another municipality to take
this on themselves'

For a copy, write the Greater Hartford Tourism District, 1 Civic
Center Plaza, Hartford, Conn. 06103 or call (800) 793-4480."
written by Terry Trucco

Hope that this is of interest to you and the list.
Regards,
Judy Strauss-Schwartz
judys@mville.edu





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Subject: Canes New types
From: mikef@pacifier.rain.com (Mike Freeman)

In THE BLIND NEWS DIGEST #1023, briang@bgserv.demon.co.uk writes:
>
> Is there a consensus on the best long cane. I am rather
> intrigued by the sound of the Carbon Fibre telescopic ones, but
> there also appears to be a Canadian rolling ball type. I know
> the latter can be obtained from a source here in the UKm but the
> only contact I have for the others is the NFB in the US. (Do
> they have a FAX number). Does anyone bring them into the UK?
>
The only source for carbon fiber canes (telescopic and
otherwise) is, indeed, the National Federation of the Blind
(NFB).  You may write to:  Materials Center; National
Federation of the Blind; 1800 Johnson Street; Baltimore MD 21230;
Telephone (410)659-9314; FAX (410)685-5653; BBS (410)752-5011.

Asking which type of cane blind persons prefer tends at times
to become a political question here Stateside in that some
members of the other organization of the blind, the American
council of the Blind (ACB) wouldn't use an NFB cane on
principle <grin>.  However, I would maintain that quite a
few blind persons (both NFB members and otherwise) prefer NFB
canes (either fiberglass or carbon fiber) over other canes.
Both the fiberglass and carbon fiber NFB canes are lightweight
and durable.  There are those who prefer one over the other;
the carbon fiber canes, though extremely light and strong,
are a bit more rigid than the equivalent fiberglass cane.

I myself use a fiberglass straight (nonfolding) cane most of the
time but use a telescopic carbon fiber cane often (and it
tends to get used more and more of the time now).  IN fact,
the telescopic carbon fiber cane is the only collapsible cane
I have ever trusted as strong enough to be used in regular
travel, both indoors and out.

I have not heard of the rollerball Canadian cane.  The only
rollerball of which I am aware is a movie <grin>.

Alas, I cannot tell you whether anyone in the U.K. distributes
NFB canes.

Hope this helps.

Regards,





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Subject: Re: DECtalk internal versus standalone
From: mattioli@panix.com (John Mattioli)
Organization: Panix Public Access Internet & Unix, NYC

In article <31582@handicap.news> spb@tntvax.ntrs.com (Steve Bonine) writes:
>
>We are looking at upgrading to DECtalk here on a PC which currently
>has Vert.  One of the options is the DECtalk card which goes into
>the PC.  Another option apparently is a standalone unit which uses
>the same chip set as DECtalk (I think the name is MultiVoice).
>Presumably the speech quality is comparable between the two.
>
>Question:  What are the tradeoffs between the installed card and
>the standalone unit which connects to the serial port?  Obviously
>an advantage of the standalone unit is that you can move it from PC
>to PC.  Has anyone compared these units?  Has anyone gone through
>this decision process and willing to comment on what you learned?
>
Hi,

I must begin by stating that I used to work for Digital (the makers
of DECtalk).  I had nothing to do with the product, in fact the
development team wouldn't even let me test the thing out before it
shipped.  Believe me, I've got no fondness for the developers even
though I worked for the company.

Having issued my disclaimer, given the choice between the DECtalk
PC (internal card) and the Multivoice I'd ask whether you want a
speech synth or a paper weight.  Here are some advantages of
DECtalk PC:

1. It works.  No, this isn't always obvious.  The Multivoice is
reported to have many many bugs!  It's original intent, as I
understand it, was not as a speech synth for blind computer users.
It was originally intended as an assistive communications device
for a person who can't talk.  It's long been known to fail BADLY as
a speech synth for blind users!

2. DECtalk PC is made, and supported by Digital Equipment
Corporation.  Although Digital and I have had our differences, they
are FAR more responsive regarding problems with their products than
Boston Childreen's Hospital has been known to be.  People have had
the impression that Multivoice is a Digital product simply because
it's based on DECtalk technology.  It is not!  Digital licensed the
technology to Children's Hospital, but that's all.  They do not
support or service the units.

        Some disadvantages of the DECtalk PC:

1. It's an internal card.  This means that you can't easily move it
from one machine to another.  If you MUST move the unit around,
consider a different synth.

2. It's a full-size card.  If you're trying to put this into a
laptop, you may not be able to use the DECtalk pc.  It requires one
FULL-LENGTH slot.

                                        John





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                 End of Issue # 1024 of the Blind News Digest

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