4 Feb
2014
4 Feb
'14
10:45 p.m.
On 4 February 2014 14:47, Chuck Guzis <cclist at sydex.com> wrote:
Okay, how about this proposal for bottom-posting?
1. No HTML posts. Everything is plaintext ASCII.
2. Edit the post to which you're responding to the minimum relevant part
(as above). Quoted text to be signified by ">" in the first line position.
Yes, that works excellently. Though, the beginning line of ">" does
help visually distinguish quote text. Which is important for those
with low vision who don't rely on screen readers. It's all a balancing
act between "good for the screen reader" and "good for the
magnifier."
A single level of quotes (which I tend to trim messages down to,
occasionally leaving a second level for context), works well, all
though the stream of "LESS THAN" can be a bit distracting.
I can sympathize with your frustration with screen
readers; the last time I
tried to use one, I thought I'd go crazy.
Personally, I barely use screen readers; I work well with magnifiers,
and at home I have a monitor roughly the size of Spain. I've also a
~40" LCD TV beside my desk, cavled up to my desktop; occasionally I
put stuff on there. (Normally, I just use it for YouTube videos
instead of watch the roughly 100 channels of commericals that is
called cablet television.)
I once put a terminal emulator on that screen, with irssi in a screen
session... I think my conversations were visible from space. :P
Hmm... I need to see what RSX-11/M+'s RMD looks like on a 40 inch screen...
Onwards to other things. One of the major things that keeps me from
jumping ship from the Wonderful World of Windows to free software
(FreeBSD or Debian, I like both), is that from my experiences of the
free software world, accessibility and ease of use features seem to
have been implemented by a lobotomized rhesus monkey. The "proper"
screen reading and screen magnification software, that which is sold
commercially and used/vetted by organizations, tends to be stuck as
Windows software only, with some companies finally going to Mac OSX.
Trying to run software like ZoomText or Kurzweil on a Linux or BSD
system is damn well near impossible, at least the last time I tried.
The free software is buggy, like the one magnifier/reader which by
defaults starts up as a reader only, no magnification; after
configuring it, it promptly goes "LOLNOPE" to keeping its new config
after exiting the config screen.
To bring this slightly back on topic, what kind of accessibility
accomodations and software was around in classic hardware? Being a DEC
fanboy myself, with some interest in IBM mainframe systems, I'm
wondering specifically about those two "worlds", the System/360 and
System/370 kind of system, and the PDP-11.
Cheers,
Christian
--
Christian M. Gauger-Cosgrove
STCKON08DS0
Contact information available upon request.
4 Feb
4 Feb
11:06 p.m.
On 02/04/2014 10:45 PM, Christian Gauger-Cosgrove wrote:
To bring this slightly back on topic, what kind of
accessibility
accomodations and software was around in classic hardware? Being a DEC
fanboy myself, with some interest in IBM mainframe systems, I'm
wondering specifically about those two "worlds", the System/360 and
System/370 kind of system, and the PDP-11.
Back in the 70s at CDC Sunnyvale, I recall two cases. One was with a
visually impaired worker who was given a sort of camera-with-CRT setup
for reading manuals and such (remember that back then, everything was on
paper and little else). The other was a blind programmer; he read
output punched into cards.
--Chuck
5 Feb
5 Feb
5:29 a.m.
On Wednesday, 5 February 2014, Chuck Guzis <cclist at sydex.com> wrote:
Ah, CCTV readers, they still are still around.
Although of late, they re
tending to be digital based, as opposed to analog, this has a few
consequences. First, its much easier to play with the video signal, i.e.
You can change colour modes, change contrast settings. But, with
digitization, some companies have resorted to being cheap, and instead of
magnifying the image with glass, they just use digital zoom.
Although some of the digital ones are alright, I know one company produces
a tiny little portable reader, costs three hundred CAD and government
support programs won't cover it, but they are nice. (I don't really need
one so I didn't spring for one, I have friends that did and they say its
handy.)
Neat anecdote about the blind programmer. I don't have anything nearly as
interesting. Except that back in December I had to write a programming
final at my university. For reasons only Microsoft and AiSquared can
comprehend, ZoomText refused to get along with Visual Studio. So I ended up
writing an entire programming final without even reading a line of code I
wrote. The amazing thing is I ended up with a ninety-six as my mark on the
final. (Compare to the sighted students averaging low seventies and high
sixties. Then again most of the people who were in this section of the
course weren't programmers by hobby.)
Cheers,
Christian
--
Christian M. Gauger-Cosgrove
STCKON08DS0
Contact information available upon request.
Back in the 70s at CDC Sunnyvale, I recall two cases.
One was with a
visually impaired worker who was given a sort of camera-with-CRT
setup for
reading manuals and such (remember that back then, everything was on paper
and little else). The other was a blind programmer; he read output punched
into cards.
8:56 a.m.
On Wed, Feb 5, 2014 at 12:45 AM, Christian Gauger-Cosgrove <
captainkirk359 at gmail.com> wrote:
Onwards to other things. One of the major things that keeps me from
jumping ship from the Wonderful World of Windows to free software
(FreeBSD or Debian, I like both), is that from my experiences of the
free software world, accessibility and ease of use features seem to
have been implemented by a lobotomized rhesus monkey. The "proper"
screen reading and screen magnification software, that which is sold
commercially and used/vetted by organizations, tends to be stuck as
Windows software only, with some companies finally going to Mac OSX.
Trying to run software like ZoomText or Kurzweil on a Linux or BSD
system is damn well near impossible, at least the last time I tried.
The free software is buggy, like the one magnifier/reader which by
defaults starts up as a reader only, no magnification; after
configuring it, it promptly goes "LOLNOPE" to keeping its new config
after exiting the config screen.
I thought I'd mention this in the offchance that you haven't seen it
yet...
in OS X there is a built-in zoom/magnify feature... if you hold down
control while scrolling up and down to zoom in and out. Focus follows the
mouse by default... not sure if you can have it follow the cursor or not,
but I use it fairly often even though I'm not a "low vision" user.
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