Summary Notes
GTT Edmonton Meeting March 14, 2016

The most recent meeting of the Get Together With Technology (GTT) Edmonton Chapter was held March 14 at 7pm at Ascension Lutheran Church 8405 83 Street in Edmonton.
15 people attended.

March Feature Topics – Braille Sense, Victor Stream, Explore Magnifiers

HIMS Braille Sense U2
Owais Patel, a grade 7 student and member of GTT Edmonton, presented his HIMS Braille Sense note taker. Below are Owais’ presentation notes.
The Braille Sense U2 is an incredible device for Blind and Low Vision people. It doesn’t matter if you’re in School, University or a worker at a job, this device is always helpful. It has a 32 cell Braille Display and is the first Braille Note taker to have a built in LCD display for sighted people to see what the user of this device is doing. Also this is not just a Braille Note taker it is really a Braille Computer. It has a 32 Gigs Internal Flash disk and it has one SD card port and 4 external USB Ports. At the back of the device there is a Ethernet port which you can plug in a cord which should allow you to use the Internet if you don’t have a connection with the Wireless Internet. Also there’s a VGA port which can allow you to connect with a monitor for a bigger screen. It has 80 functions on this device. Every function has tons of functions inside it. There’s a File Manager that allows you access to the internal and external disks on the device. There is a Word Processor which allows you to work with tons of file formats and allows you to write as much as you want. Also you can do many different types of math. Also you can print stuff directly from the Braille Sense U2. It has a document reader which can read you your files.
However, you can use the built in voice for all the things you do and the voice in the Braille Sense can speak in many different languages. However, the Braille Sense can also work with tons of different types of Braille Codes. An email program is also in this device and many media programs. There are 3 types of Web Browsers and 4 Social Networking Sites.
For more information on the Braille Sense U2 visit:
https://hims-inc.com/products/braille-sense-u2/
If you have any questions for Owais you may contact him at:
owaisipatel@gmail.com

Gerry Presented Victor Stream Online Features. Highlights:
• Podcast feeds can be searched for, subscribed to and episodes can be downloaded automatically or manually
• Bookshare library books can be searched for by title/author/keyword or browsed by category then downloaded all without a computer.
• Over 35,000 radio stations worldwide can be searched by station id or keyword and saved in one or more playlists.
• On line Reference tools Wikipedia and Wiktionary can be searched for articles and word definitions. Articles can be saved and exported to the SD card.
• CELA library Direct to Player books can be downloaded automatically or manually from the user’s holds list on the CELA library computer. To place books on the CELA hold list you can use your computer or contact CELA to create an automatic book selection profile for you.

HumanWare Explore Electronic Hand-Held Magnifiers
Michel Pepin From HumanWare joined Lisa Boone from Aroga to present the 3 models of HumanWare’s new Explore magnifiers. Highlights:
• Explore 3 is pocket size , with built-in stand, 2 x to 16x magnification, autofocus, zoom, contrast and color controls, TV output, rechargeable battery, built-in flashlight.
http://www.aroga.com/explor-3-portable-magnifier/

• Explore 5 has a slightly larger HD 5 inch screen, 2x to 22x magnification, use with folding handle or in desktop mode, stores up to 1000 images, customizable viewing options, TV output, rechargeable battery.
http://www.aroga.com/explor-5-portable-magnifier/
• Explore 7 has HD screen with close-up and distance viewing, 2.3x to 19x magnification, choice of 12 contrast and 3 color settings, can be operated with only 2 thumbs, pop-up stand for desktop use, TV output, rechargeable battery.
http://www.aroga.com/explor-7-portable-magnifier/
• For more information about the Explore models contact Lisa Boone, The Aroga Edmonton assistive technology specialist:.
Toll Free 1-800-561-6222
Email: lboone@aroga.com

Next Meeting (Monday April 11at 7pm)
• Our members, Menna and Russel, will present the Apple TV and show how it is accessible with both Voice Over and Siri voice command available on the remote control. Thus, you can find and download programs and have full control over playing them even if you are totally blind.
As always, for help with other technology bring your devices and/or questions to the meeting.
• Send your meeting topic ideas to GTT.Edmonton@gmail.com.

Meeting Location and Logistics
• Ascension Lutheran Church 8405 – 83 Street NW, Edmonton.
• We meet in the basement hall. There is elevator access.
• Enter the church from the back door. There is parking at the back and drop off space for taxis, DATS.
• Meetings are every second Monday of the month at 7pm.
• If you have someone helping you your assistant is welcome to remain for the meeting.

GTT Edmonton Team
• Carrie Anton is visually impaired and is the accessibility specialist for Athabasca University.
• Gerry Chevalier is blind. He is retired from HumanWare where he worked as the Product Manager for the Victor Reader line of talking book players.
• Heather MacDonald is a career and employment specialist with extensive experience helping blind and visually impaired people find employment.
• Russell Solowoniuk is blind and works with alternative formats and assistive technology at Grant MacEwan University.
• Lorne Webber is blind and is the accessibility specialist for Norquest College.

GTT Edmonton Overview
• GTT Edmonton is a chapter of the Canadian Council of the Blind (CCB).
• There are GTT groups in Ottawa, Toronto, Kingston, Northern Ontario, Pembroke, Sydney, Edmonton, Grande Prairie, Victoria, Nanaimo, Vancouver, and more to come.
• There is also a national GTT monthly toll free teleconference.
• GTT Edmonton promotes a self-help learning experience by holding monthly meetings to assist participants with assistive technology.
• Each meeting will present a feature technology topic and general question and answer about any other technology.
• Small groups or one on one assistance is possible at the meetings.
• Participants are encouraged to come to each meeting even if they are not interested in the feature topic because questions on any technology are welcome. The more participants the better able we will be equipped with the talent and experience to help each other.
[End of Document]

Summary Notes for the first Get Together with Technology meeting in Grande Prairie
Held: Friday, March 4, 2016.
Time: 6p.m to 8p.m
Where: In the CNIB Board room located in room 218 9804 100Ave
People in attendance: 6
Hosted by: Nikita Phillips and Alberte Ruel from GTT West
Subject: How to use Siri the iOS personal assistant available on the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch.
The meeting started off with introductions of all of the participants. After the introductions Alberte Rule from GTT West did an introduction on how the program GTT had started. Nikita had started off by doing some basic iPhone gestures on how to efficiently use the IOS devices.
Basic Voice Over gestures
• Flick with one finger from either left to right to move the voice over cursor.
• Double tap with one finger to select an item. Or do a split tap by focusing the voice over cursor, have one finger on the desired app or item and have another finger touch anywhere on the screen to select the app or item.
• To read a whole page or a book from iBook’s take two fingers and swipe down and it will read the page or take two fingers and swipe up and it will start reading the page from the top.
• To pause when reading a page just take two fingers and touch the screen and to resume reading just do the same action.
• To go back to a previous page or to go back just in general do a two finger scrub.
Those are just some of the jester’s that Nikita went over. She didn’t get too in depth, but is planning on doing so in future GTT meetings. Now on to using Siri.
To activate Siri press and hold the home button for three seconds and you will hear a beeping sound and that is when you start to talk to Siri. Because you have heard Siri activating you can let go of the home button and when you are done talking Siri will then know that you have finished talking. Also if your request was short you can do a two finger double tap and that will also stop Siri. In iOS 9 you can use the Hey Siri feature, which means that you don’t have to activate Siri by pressing the home button, but for the new iPhone 6s the Hey Siri is always working in the background, on jearlier versions of the iPhones you can only activate the Hey Siri Feature when your IOS device is plugged in. Because there are so many things that you can do with Siri Nikita has chosen 5 things that she wanted to share with the group and at the end of these notes there will be a document that will tell you the 25 things you can do with Siri and a link that will carry you to a page that has a list of 50 plus funny things that you can ask Siri.

Top 5 things with Siri
1. Sending a text message
To send a text message press the home button and say send a text message. Siri will then ask you who you would like to send the message to. After that tell Siri what your message is and then Siri will ask you three things. The three things are, review, which is that Siri will reread you the text that you wanted to send, the second thing is change, which is to resay your message, and finally to cancel your message. After you have your desired message you can say send to Siri and it will send it to the person you want the message to go to. You can also reply to a message with Siri. Just simply Ask Siri If you have any new text messages and Siri will read them to you and after Siri has finished reading the new messages you will then be asked if you want to reply to the message. If so, just say yes and say your message.
*Note: you can tell Siri to text multiple people by just saying the names of the people you want to text.
2. Posting on Facebook or Twitter

To post on Facebook ask Siri update Status and tell Siri your new status and it will post it on Facebook for you.
To create a new Tweet just say create a new Tweet. Just say you’re Tweet and it will post for you. You can even put hash tags in your Tweet.
*Note: Say your Tweet first and then add your hash tag at the end because if you put your hash tag at the beginning it will make your whole post a hash tag.
3. Asking the weather
To know what the weather is like in your area just ask what the temperature is outside. Siri will then tell you. You can also ask it for the weather in any town or city around the world.
*Note: You have to enable location settings to get an accurate reading.
4. Playing music

To play music just ask Siri what you would like to hear. Siri will play any music that is available in your music library. If you are a subscriber to Apple music you can have Siri play any song or album even if you don’t have that song in your music library, also if you really like that song and you don’t have the song or album you can ask Siri to add it to your library.
5. What’s that tune?
If you are listening to the radio and you have no idea what song is playing, just ask Siri and it will tell you. If you have Apple Music you can ask Siri to add the song to your music library.
I would like to thank albert Rule for being present on Skype and kicking off the meeting on giving us a little intro on how the GTT had begun, thanks to Bobby Weir and the CNIB for letting the meeting take place in the board room.
The next GTT meeting will take place on Friday, May 6, 2016 and the meeting will be about how to use Facebook on your iOS device.

26 Actually Useful Things You Can Do With Siri:
http://www.howtogeek.com/229308/26-actually-useful-things-you-can-do-with-siri/

Some funny things to ask Siri:
https://techranker.net/funny-things-to-ask-siri-questions-jokes-video/

http://www.macworld.co.uk/feature/iosapps/58-funny-things-ask-siri-on-ios-2016-mac-3633686/

Windows Ribbons Explained by Christopher-Mark Gilland
*Note: I thought some GTT Followers might benefit from this article so I share it here. If you have questions for Chris I will pass them on to him, so send them to Albert Ruel, GTTWest@CCBNational.net

Posted on Thu 3/10/2016 1:39 PM on the Windows 10 Screen Reader Users
List at, Subscribing: win10+subscribe@groups.io

I want to start out by explaining what exactly is meant by a ribbon. Let’s take this into literal terminology which could be probably compared to something concrete that you can visualize in your mind.

Do you know what a clothes line looks like? OK, you have this big long rod, right? It’s totally horizontal. It might span over say, 5 or 10 feet long from the left end to the right end in width. Basically just imagine a sheet of paper, then take a ruler and place it on the paper, in a horizontal left to right position going across the very top edge of the page.

OK, that’s the line itself. Now, imagine what it looks like when this line is full of clothes. It has maybe shirts, skirts, dresses, pants, sweaters, coats, whatever, kackies, you get the point, hanging from it with clothespins. So, if you can kind a visualize this for a second, you have this long horizontal rod running left to right from end to end. Dangling from it, you have a piece of clothing, then a teeny little bit of space, then moving on to the right, you have another piece of clothing which is dangling from the bottom side of the rod. Then a little more space, keep working to the other end of the line, you have a third set of cloting. Right? So on so forth. Are you following me so far up to this point?

OK. This is exactly how the ribbon bar behaves. The ribbon is basically two levels in height. Think of it like a 2 story house. You have an upper level, and you have a lower level. OK, let’s go back to the clothes line for a second here. Take all those clothes you have hanging from the rod. Let’s say you have three shirts. OK, so all three of those shirts are grouped together in their own section of the clothes line. Then, you have a little space, thenyou’re your pants are grouped together side by side. Then a little space, then say, maybe, oh, I dunno, maybe, you have a few dresscoats all aligned together side by side. In other words, each type of item is in its own group. Again, this is exactly how the ribbon works.

So, let’s go back now to the ribbon. Honestly speaking? Get the word ribbon totally out of your head! just forget entirely that you ever were told it was a ribbon. I think that was the stupidest! Term Microsoft ever could have used! Why? Because it doesn’t really per sé look like a ribbon. I know MS’s logic of thinking, and where they were trying to go with that, but honestly, they really made it harder than it has to be, and really have obviously confused a lot of people, both sighted or not with things by introducing that lingo. So, again, I want you to just totally throw the word ribbon away. It doesn’t exist for now.

I’m sure you understand how the menu bar looks though. You have menus which go across a horizontal line/bar, hence why they call it a menu… what?… bar! Going left to right, you have things in the top level of that bar, right? Things like File, Edit, View, Insert, Format, Table, Window, Help.

Once you navigate to one of those menus, what do you do? You down arrow to open it. right? Why do you do that?

Well? Think about it.

You have a virtical menu which pops open right below the top category, be it file? Edit? Whatever.

Within each of those menus, you may have a submenu, or as Window eyes users would know it, a pulldown. So, what is a pulldown/sub menu? Exactly! It’s a menu which branches off to the right of the original menu item. If you remember back in the days of Windows XP, you may remember under start, you had programs submenu. When you went to programs, what happened? It brought up another menu with all of your programs over to the right of the start menu itself. Correct?

OK, well, guess what! The um… word we’re not gonna remember… LOL? is the same way in escence.

So, think of it like this for your ribbon.

You have two levels. An upper ribbon, and a lower ribbon. Underneath your lower ribbon, you have items which are sectioned off into groups.

So, for example. Let’s take Outlook for instance. I’m not where I can open up Outlook right this second to give you the literal order/hierarchy of the Outlook ribbon, but that’s actually a good thing, as I don’t want you looking right now. I want you to totally do this cognitively in your head.

So, the top of your ribbon has these different categories. Those categories are called tabs, BECAUSE, ESSENTIALLY, SURPRISE SURPRISE, THAT’S ALL THEY ARE! Yes. You heard me 100% correctly. That’s all? they, are. Just tabs. No more? NO less. As you move across the top level, the bottom level will dynamically change and update accordingly. So, for instance. To access the ribbon, hit your alt key, doesn’t matter which one. Either your left or your right is fine, your choice.

You now will hear the last tab that you landed on. Now, if you left and right arrow, you will horizontally move and activate each of these tabs. So, say for example that you want to compose a new message. You’d hbit the alt key. Next, you’d arrow left and right across the top of the ribbon. Let’s say that you hear things like, Home, view, message, I’m saying this not in one big cluster, I mean as you move. So again, Home, View, Message, Format, Insert, so on so forth. Once you left and right arrow to either end of the bar, it will wrap you back around. So, say that the far left most tab was Home. The far right most tab was format. So if you’re on home, and you left arrow, you’d reach what?

Exactly! Format! So, say you’re on Format, and you right arrow once. Exactly! Now you’re on what? Home! Good job! See? This isn’t so hard, is it! All it did is wrapped you around, just as any menu/dialog box would do.

Once on the tab you want, though it visually! has dynamically updated your lower ribbon, we’re still on your upper ribbon, so we need to now activate that tab and get down inside of it. To do that, how do you activate most things in Windows? Exactly! You hit the enter key. Great job! So, that’s exactly what we’d do here. So, let’s go back to our little example. We want to compose a new e-mail message. Again, going across the top, let’s say that we have from left to right: Home? Message? View? Insert? and Format.

Which one of those tabs do you think most likely compose message would be inside? Well, obviously, it’s not going to be inside View. That would be for modifying the way things look. Would it be under Insert? No. You’re not insertting anything. What about Format? Nope. That would be for setting fonts and such. What’s left? Yes! Message it is.

So, you’d navigate left and right with your arrow keys. You’d hit alt to enter the ribbon bar. You’d arrow left and right until you heard Message tab. Now we need to get to the stuff inside of the Message tab. So, we now activate the message tab by pressing the enter key.

This now will drop us down to the lower ribbon. If you need to go back up to the upper ribbon, then just hit your up arrow key once.

OK, so now we’re down inside the Message tab. Now, you may hear something like Composition group: New Message Button. That’s what we need. So, we could just press enter.

OK, let’s now talk more about groups in your lower ribbon. Remember me saying that the lower ribbon has things in groups? So think of a group as basically what a classic based menu would call a submenu.

So Within our e-mail message, we want to make a bulleted list. Up to the ribbon we go with the alt key.

We now find the Format tab and activate it, again, how? Right! With the enter key.

Now, again, we’re in the lower ribbon. Again, left and right arrow, just like before, and we want to find the bullets button. Now here’s however where things get really cool! Let’s say that as you’re right arrowing, you hear things like color Group: Text color button. You right arrow, and hear Highlight color button. You go again and hear, center button. Again, Justified button. Again, bold button. Again, Italic button. Again, now, pay attention here. You hear the Following:

Paragraph group: Bullets button.

Look at how much work that took to get there! Gee! Willikers! After hitting enter on the Format tab in the upper ribbon, you had to then arrow 7 times roughly to the right before you hit that bullets button. Well, here’s the thing. There’s a way to move group by group.

If you press the alt key, you’ll get into the upper portion of the ribbon. This is where all your main tab categories reside. In this example, you’ll move across the top until you find the Format tab, then you’ll activate it with enter. Now, you’re again, in your lower ribbon. Right?

OK, now watch this. Rather than right arrowwing aa’aall? The, freaking, way, over to the bullets button, We know it’s not in the color group. Bullets have nothing! to do with color, do they? So, that doesn’t even make sense for them to be there. So, rather than waisting your time going through that whole group, just navigate with ctrl+Right arrow to the next group.

Think of it this way.

What do just the left and right arrow keys do when reading through a document? Exactly. They move item by item, or in that case, character by character. What if you want to jump in a bigger increment? Say, word by word? Excellent job! You’d hit ctrl+Left, or ctrl+Right arrow. So, Think of the items in your lower ribbon as individual characters. Then think of your Groups in the lower ribbon as words.

If you wanted quickly to get to the letter G in the word oranges in the following sentence:

The fruit on the plate consists of oranges, pineapples, and grapes.

You really don’t want to start on the capital T in the word, the, and then right arrow all the way over to the G, do you? Well, if you do, then O, Kayyy, more power to ya, but that’s really a waist of time!

You’d move item by item! Group by broup. Each group in that case would be like a word.

So The would be one group, fruit would be one group, on would be a group, etc.

So, you’d ctrl+right arrow to the, oranges, group, then within that group, the first item is, O. then you’d right arrow through that group on your lower ribbon, until you got to the G. Then you’d activate it with enter.

The final thing about the ribbon I’d like to talk to you about is something known as split buttons.

OK, so this is really easy! All that a split button is is, think of a button that has a virtical divider which extends across the whole virtical height of the icon. This virtical bar/line seperates the button in half. Think of the way a bandaid looks once it’s out of it’s rapper. You have two pieces of tape, with the little square pad in the middle. Right? Basically a split button is a bandaid. The little padded square is your split. It splits off the button, if you will, in two parts. I’ll give you a great example where you may have seen this, even if you don’t have Office.

Go to IE 11, and download a file. When your information bar pops up asking if you want to run or save the file, hit alt+N. Then tab. You’ll hear save split button. That’s because the save button is divided into two pieces. The left side is Save. This will do just that. It will save the file in your default location, probably your downloads. However, the righthand side of this same button is split off and says, Save as. This would bring up the standard save as screen letting you name the file, and choose where! to save it.

So, the way split buttons work is like this. If you press the enter key, you’ll activate the primary action of the button, which is the lefthand side of the button. If! however, you want to activate the secondary action of the same button, then once you land on the split button, instead of pressing enter, hit your down arrow key. Note: I’m speaking of your arrow keys not on your numeric keypad. I’m speaking of the invertted T arrow keys usually right below your 6pack on a desktop keyboard, and probably bottom right edge on most laptops.

What this will do is open a dropdown menu that you now can up and down arrow through to select either of the two actions. Arrow to the one you want, then, you guessed it. Hit enter.

One more way to think of the ribbon bar is like a multi-tab dialog, like you’d have in Control Panel, or whatever. Your tabs across the top which you could hit ctrl+Tab, and ctrl+Shift+Tab to move between would be basically like the top level of your ribbon. Things like General, etc.

Then, all of the content on that tab, populates directly under those tabs going across the top. The ribbon bar is the exact same principle. The ribbon is basically nothing more than a multi tabbed dialog, with the exception of pressing enter to activate the focused tab, and that you cannot ctrl+Tab nor ctrl+Shift+tab between the items in the upper ribbon. Aside that though, it’s identical!

Everyone have a great ribbon of a day! LOL! Just kidding.

This is an awesome web site for beginners to learn their iDevice. Not only is the content superb but the navigation via headings allows you to easily and quickly get to the parts you are interested in. Also, the fine tuning to your particular device is exactly what beginners need. It avoids the tedious “if your device is x then do y or if your device is w then do z etc.”

For best results they recommend that you access the web site from your computer while following the lessons with your iDevice.

http://www.voiceover-easy.net/

Hello GTT Edmonton;

We have good news. In addition to the agenda just sent out we will have guests at our March 14 meeting. Lisa Boone the local rep in Edmonton for Aroga
will join us. Lisa will be accompanied by Michel Pepin the Canadian sales manager for HumanWare. Michel will bring the latest Explore electronic hand held
magnifiers from HumanWare. These new magnifiers come in 3 different sizes and are excellent for magnifying print whether at home or on the go. They also
plug into your TV to view documents on a large screen.
There is more information about the Explore models at the Aroga web site:
http://www.aroga.com/portable-print-magnifiers/

If you are low vision, these new units are well worth checking out. Join us March 14.

Best regards,
Gerry Chevalier
GTT Co-coordinator
gtt.edmonton@gmail.com
Tel: 780.465.7021
CCB National Blog and Resources
http://www.GTTProgram.wordpress.com

American Council of the Blind
February Braille Forum

The Things I Do Today
Part 1: A Plethora of Possibilities
by Paul Edwards
As I write this article, I have a baseball game on in the background. I am currently using satellite radio to listen to it. Essentially, this means Sirius XM radio. It offers me a range of listening options that, for the most part, did not exist 15 years ago. My subscription allows me to listen to every major league baseball, football, basketball or hockey game. I can listen to the Cable News Network, MSNBC, Fox News, the BBC World Service, three public radio channels, 80 or 90 music channels and much, much more!

I have over 200 Internet radio stations loaded on my Victor Reader Stream, second edition. I have several programs on my iPhone that allow me to choose from among thousands of listening options. I am currently downloading 15 or so podcasts automatically to my Stream or my phone, and get dozens of newspapers through NFB-Newsline both on my phone and on my Stream just as painlessly.

Put simply, I can now get more information every day than I can possibly use, and it has revolutionized some of the ways I spend my time. I am going to use the next few articles to provide more information about some of the things I have talked about so that more of you may have the same problem I have. I have so many options in terms of what I can listen to that I couldn’t possibly access nearly all that I have, even if I worked at it 24 hours a day.

I read books using Bookshare, BARD, Kindle, Audible, Librivox, and Ibooks, to name some of the sources I use. I have probably 25 accessible games on my phone. I have four or five GPS programs, a few scanning programs, a couple of money identifiers, a few calendars, a light detector and a whole host of other applications that I can use whenever I choose.

Does this seem like information overkill? Perhaps it does to some! For me, instead, it represents diversity and choice. Oh, and did I mention that I have almost 5,000 songs on my phone and several music-playing programs?

The truth is, oh best beloved reader, I can choose to read in braille, using high-quality speech synthesis through Voice Dream or listen to human readers. I am writing this article using a notetaker, and my notetaker allows me to access Facebook, Twitter, play music, listen to radio stations, download podcasts, and on and on and on. I probably spend more time with all these toys than most people do because I can! I’m retired now and I never slept much anyway. But, even though you don’t have to be a constantly connected nerd like I am, you should be able to know what’s out there, and ought to know how to do the things I do.

I don’t have to depend on American news sources. I can get my news, and do, from the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and a whole range of other countries that make online information available in English. When I was growing up, I did some of the same things using shortwave radio. However, reception was iffy and sunspots would often make reception questionable. While stations occasionally go silent for a few seconds, for the most part, everything I listen to is crystal clear. The quality of the books I receive is essentially “publisher” good!

So, stay tuned over the next few issues for articles about podcasts, Internet radio, satellite radio, Voice Dream, and other stuff too! But don’t blame me if you get less sleep and can’t turn the stuff off. It is addictive to have access to the world, and I don’t want to kick the habit!

I do not consider myself an expert on any of the subjects I am going to be writing about. I hope that one of the things that will happen is that what I write will prompt others who know more than I do to write about their experiences and their approaches. I will be telling you about the way I deal with things and will provide my understanding of how things work. I have not been a real technology guru since DOS went away, which is a very long time ago.

The other issue I will deal with, to a degree, concerns platforms. My next article will be about satellite radio, so the problem will only arise to a minimal extent. For other articles, there are more devices than you can shake a stick at that can do what I will be talking about. I will try to provide some information about which they are, and talk a little about how each works. I do not intend to provide detailed instructions for most things, but I hope that the advice I give will help folks be more prepared to take the plunge! Devices change too, and so do applications. I will be writing about the current versions of both software and hardware. I will tell you what I use, but inevitably there will be changes that will invalidate some of what I will say. That is the way life is in today’s ever-changing digital world, and I have no intention of going back and correcting outdated details.

So, now I have another thing to do with my day! I get immense fun out of what I do! I want more of you to try some of the things I like doing. Let me know what you like and don’t like! If I am making people mad or frustrated, I need to know it. I may not be too old to change!

So come with me! Let me tell you what I know and what I think and what is good and what is bad about the things I do today!

Summary Notes, GTT Vancouver

February 10, 2016

Attendance: Shawn, Matt, Clement, Albert, Betty, Geri, Faye, Carol, Maria, Peg, Victor, Owen, John, Mary and Monty.

Matt started the presentation by slowing down the iPhone speech then went over the basic settings of the iCloud app. Phew, thanks for that Matt.

1. Open Settings and one-finger swipe right until iCloud is found;
2. Double-tap with one finger to open it and it will display the iCloud heading;
3. One-finger swipe right to explore the screen where your Apple ID/iCloud account user name/email address is found first;
4. The next item is the Family Sharing icon. This will display nothing if you are not sharing with others, and will display the name of the account being shared. Note that the credit card assigned to the shared account will be available to all who share it. Restrictions can be placed on it so go forth with care.
5. The next item is called Storage and is followed by the amount of space remaining in the free 5GB offered by Apple, or the remainder of your purchased storage. Items stored there are Backups, Photos, Documents, Contacts, Emails and Calendar entries.
6. Next is iCloud Drive and it will display an on or Off Button. This is a file sharing Cloud based storage system like Dropbox, One Drive etc.
7. The next several items allow you to turn On or Off the specific apps access to iCloud. Each can be customized so explore them to see how you wish to have them saved to iCloud.
8. Note that if Voice Over says the word Button after the On or Off indicator it means that you will have other features to customize once you one-finger double-tap on the item. If it merely says On or Off, then it will alter that state when you one-finger double-tap on it.
9. The Backup item in iCloud is where you can customize the things you wish to have backed up and when that will take place. You may have it done automatically, or manually as you prefer. If your iDevice is indicating that a Backup hasn’t happened for some time you can ask it to Backup Now . Just double-tap on Settings/iCloud/Backup/Backup Now.
10. The Find My iPhone can be used to locate your phone if it’s been lost at home or on the bus, and it can be used to delete all data on the device if stolen. A version of the app is available for other iDevices, and can be used using a PC or Mac from a web page to locate the missing iDevice.
11. The Log Out button at the bottom of the iCloud Settings page if clicked will prompt you to delete or save the items you currently have in iCloud so use it with care.
12. Note that your iCloud and Apple ID user names and passwords are key to you having access to these vital services, so ensure that you have a secure means of storing and accessing this info when needed.
13. The end of the meeting saw the group discussing how to upload Photos to Dropbox as a means of removing them from the iDevice. Also, documents can be stored in Dropbox so that they can be accessed from your iDevice while in meetings etc.
14. Discussion also ensued around the management of the storage on your iDevices generally. If your iDevice is getting short on space you can look at the apps that aren’t being used, the books already read and photos no longer needed on the device with a view to removing them as a strategy to free up space.
15. By double-tapping on Setting/iCloud/Storage/Manage Storage icons you can explore which apps are using all the space on your iDevice. The highest users are usually listed at the top. This will allow you to decide what might no longer be needed so that you can go to those apps and start deleting material.

Question: If one doesn’t want to use iCloud are there other options?
Answers: iTunes can be used to backup your iDevice, and photos may be uploaded to Dropbox and similar Cloud storage services. If iTunes is used then your Backups aren’t in the Cloud but right there in your own computer.

Question: Is iCloud safe to use? Will it mean that Apple now has access to my children’s photos?
Answers: It’s not strictly necessary, however it is convenient to use for Backups and to share resources across your devices.
*Security of Cloud technology is similar to that of Credit and Debit Card transactions, and all other forms of online purchasing.
*Risk always exists, and yet Apple’s inscription systems are thought to be more than adequate.
*Apple does retain a master key to all files stored on their servers and will hand it over to Police Agencies when legally required. The Apple servers are located in the USA and are bound by American laws. They may mine the data for target marketing, so the user is wise to read the agreements before using this product.
*It is most helpful when the user loses a phone and wants to have everything restored to the new one.
*If you don’t want your work email account to be saved on iCloud you can customize many of its features.
*It can be used to keep an eye on what children purchase through Family Sharing etc.

Question: What about Syncronizing? What happens if you delete something from one device, will it disappear from the others as well?
Answers: These types of customizations are available in the iCloud app.
*If the same Apple ID is used by others then it is thought that all saved Contacts etc will be shared.
*iCloud Drive allows you to access folders of photos etc, however the Backup system can only be used to Restore the Backup to the device in question.
*For Family Sharing there is a limit of 6 people who can be added to an account, so that means French Catholic families can’t share as broadly as others.

Question: Are Text Messages also shared through iCloud?
Answer: No, settings are available in the Messages app in Settings that allow sharing between devices.

Resource: The National Braille Press sells a couple of books that are well thought of for those who wish to learn more about their iDevices using Voice Over. They are called iOS 7/8/9 Without The Eye and are written by Jonathan Mosen. They are reasonably priced and come in several different formats. Here is some contact info from his first offering:
iOS 7 WITHOUT THE EYE
Jonathan Mosen
Distributed by:
Mosen Consulting
http://www.mosen.org

Before the break the group was asked if a CCB Chapter can be established provided that at least 6 individuals are willing to become members of the Canadian Council of the Blind. Shawn who has been Coordinating the GTT Vancouver group is already a member of the POCO Youth Chapter, and Clement and Matthew are Volunteer Facilitators so will become Associate Members. Several participants opted to purchase a $10 annual membership so a Chapter was born. Now we need someone to step forward as Co-Coordinator to assist Shawn in that work.

Non-members will always be welcomed, so this doesn’t mean that the meetings are now restricted to only CCB members.

Congratulations and welcome aboard GTT Vancouver.

Respectfully submitted,

Albert A. Ruel
CCB Western Coordinator
GTT Initiative

Hello Barrier-Free BC Supporters,
 
Due to circumstances beyond our control, our Wednesday media event on the Steps of the BC Legislature has been postponed.
Please stay tuned for an announcement regarding the rescheduling of our official launch.
 
Thanks very much,
 
Reed (Barrier-Free BC Oversight Committee member)

*Note: This may be in US Dollars so buyer beware:
For immediate release!

Due to increased production the price on the very popular Talking Infrared Thermometer (model IRT-1) from Brooks Technology has been reduced to just $99.95!

The thermometer was designed specifically for the blind and vision impaired as a cooking and safety aid and can easily measure the temperature of items
being cooked, the oven, fridge, freezer, bath water, coffee, etc. without the need for physical contact. It is powered by 2 AA batteries, weighs just
5 ounces, and fits comfortably in the palm of your hand. It includes a built in speech tutorial, and can be set to speak in English, Spanish, or French.

The temperature range is from minus 94 to 716 Fahrenheit. 3 buttons allows the user to change language, and set readout to Fahrenheit or Centigrade.
It speaks clearly and is easy to use.

In the year since I designed and introduced the IRT-1 it has found a multitude of uses, from helping blind auto mechanics do car repairs, a blind restaurant
owner verifying food temperatures, to blind herpetologists maintaining proper tank temperatures for their gecko lizards!

The IRT-1 can help promote safety and independence to vision impaired individuals and is especially useful for the newly blind in overcoming the fear of
cooking!

The IRT-1 is available for $99.95, plus shipping. For organizations that require it my W9 form will be sent on request.

A picture is attached, as well as a few links to podcasts where a demonstration of the thermometer can be heard.

Thank you

Phil Brooks, Owner

Brooks Technology.

Contact information:

website:
http://www.brooks-technology.com

email:
sales@brooks-technology.com

Telephone: 408-781-4577. Hours of operation are 9AM to 5PM Central Time

Links to podcasts:

1.Â
http://www.blind-geek-zone.net/introduction-to-the-irt-1-talking-infrared-thermometer/

2.Â
http://media.serotalk.com/podcasts/SeroTalk/Phil%20Brooks%20Interview.mp33.Â
http://blindbargains2.rssing.com/chan-19002605/latest.php

Summary Notes
GTT Edmonton Meeting February 8, 2016

The most recent meeting of the Get Together With Technology (GTT) Edmonton Chapter was held February 8 at 7pm at Ascension Lutheran Church 8405 83 Street in Edmonton.
14 people attended.

Special Note: The group observed a minute of silence in memory of a dear friend and member, Harold Schnellert, who passed away January 27, 2016. Harold was the husband of Wendie Schnellert our volunteer treasurer. Harold was also the former president of CCB National. Both Harold and Wendie were instrumental in supporting the start of GTT Edmonton. Our hearts and prayers go out to Wendie and her family. We will all miss Harold.

February Feature Topic – Free Screen Readers
Ximena (pronounced Menna) presented her Apple MAC. Highlights:
• Mac has a screen magnification Zoom feature included (Command, Options + or Command options -) The two buttons next to the space bar and + to zoom in – to zoom out.
• Voice over (the built in talking screen reader) is easily accessed (Command F5). Command key is on either side of the space bar.
• VoiceOver has multiple voices to choose from both male & female.
• The Mac even has Described Video Access through the settings Accessibility menu.
• If you have follow-up questions, Menna may be contacted at ximena.perez@shaw.ca

Russel presented Window Eyes screen reader for PCs. Highlights:
• Window Eyes is a powerful screen reader for Windows PCs.
• You may download Window Eyes for Free if you have a licensed copy of Microsoft Office 2010 or later installed on your computer. You can download it from:
http://www.windoweyesforoffice.com/
• Window Eyes provides support for braille.
• eSpeak and the Microsoft Speech Platform are included.
• you can also purchase Eloquence and Vocalizer Expressive voices from any Canadian distributor. There is a list of distributors at the above web site.
• Window Eyes will conveniently unmute your computer if it is muted when you start the program.
• You can easily modify speech rate, volume, and tone using Control+Alt+ arrow keys.
• Window Eyes is a product of AI Squared who also make the Zoomtext screen magnification software.
• If you do not have Microsoft Office you may also purchase Window Eyes from Aroga.

Lorne presented the free screen reader NVDA for PCs. Highlights:
• NVDA (non visual desktop access) is a powerful open source screen reader for Windows PCs.
• It is used by over 60,000 users in over 120 countries and 40 languages.
• The NVDA project was started by two blind programmers in Brisbane, Australia. You can download it free from:
http://www.nvaccess.org/
• They request a donation which helps to continue NVDA development especially to make it available in developing countries.
• NVDA keyboard commands are similar to JAWS.
• NVDA provides support for braille.
The built-in text to speech voice is eSpeak.
Other voices including Eloquence and Vocalizer Expressive can be purchased as add-ons.
• There are many other NVDA add-ons developed by programmers around the world to do many additional tasks. You can learn more about the add-ons at:
http://addons.nvda-project.org/index.en.html
• Because NVDA is free and used extensively, many Windows software companies now test the accessibility of their programs using NVDA as their benchmark.

After Sight Device
• Mike McWilliams asked members if adding a directional audio indicator to his After Sight device would be of use to help you walk a straight line such as when crossing an intersection or open area. Participants were enthusiastic about adding this feature.
• Mike is also hopeful the object recognition database can be expanded from 1000 to 5000 objects.
• You may contact Mike McWilliams at:403-488-1247 or mike.mcwilliams@after-sight.com
Web: http://www.after-sight.com

Next Meeting (Monday March 14 at 7pm)
• Our member, Owais, will present his HIMS BrailleSense note taker and show the power of computing and using the Internet with Braille.
• Gerry will present the online functions of the Victor Reader Stream new generation including Podcasts, Bookshare, radio, Wikipedia/Wiktionary lookups, and Direct to Player books.
• Send your meeting topic ideas to GTT.Edmonton@gmail.com.

Meeting Location and Logistics
• Ascension Lutheran Church 8405 – 83 Street NW, Edmonton.
• We meet in the basement hall. There is elevator access.
• Enter the church from the back door. There is parking at the back and drop off space for taxis, DATS.
• Meetings are typically every second Monday of the month at 7pm.
• If you have someone helping you your assistant is welcome to remain for the meeting.

GTT Edmonton Team
• Carrie Anton is visually impaired and is the accessibility specialist for Athabasca University.
• Gerry Chevalier is blind. He is retired from HumanWare where he worked as the Product Manager for the Victor Reader line of talking book players.
• Heather MacDonald is the specialist for CNIB career and employment services. She has a wealth of experience helping blind and visually impaired people with the challenges of finding employment.
• Russell Solowoniuk is blind and works with alternative formats and assistive technology at Grant MacEwan University.
• Lorne Webber is blind and is the accessibility specialist for Norquest College.

GTT Edmonton Overview
• GTT Edmonton is a chapter of the Canadian Council of the Blind (CCB).
• There are GTT groups in Ottawa, Toronto, Kingston, Northern Ontario, Sydney, Edmonton, Victoria, Nanaimo, Vancouver, and more to come.
• There is also a national GTT monthly toll free teleconference.
• GTT Edmonton promotes a self-help learning experience by holding monthly meetings to assist participants with assistive technology.
• Each meeting will present a feature technology topic and general question and answer about any other technology.
• Small groups or one on one assistance is possible at the meetings.
• Participants are encouraged to come to each meeting even if they are not interested in the feature topic because questions on any technology are welcome. The more participants the better able we will be equipped with the talent and experience to help each other.
[End of Document]

Summary Notes, GTT Vancouver

January 20, 2016

Topic of the day was Siri and many of the ways he/she can make your life easier, with 17 in attendance and Matt and Clement conducting the session:

1. Use Siri to search for things like the score in the hockey game, what movies are playing, what time it is, dictionary definitions, weather where you are or anyplace else you can name, etc. Sometimes Siri will give you the answer verbally and sometimes she will tell you to take a look. When she says take a look you have to use your finger to check what is on the screen and double tap on the one you want to see more closely.
2. Creating reminders – Ask Siri to remind you to make a call when you leave this place, or when you get to work or home, provided both places are programmed into your contacts it will remind you when you get there, or when you leave.
3. Creating events – if you want to add something to your calendar you would say something like “Create an event for Jan 21 at 1:30 PM titled, Dentist Appointment with Sally Sue. That will have Siri create the event with a Subject Line and if Sally Sue is in your contacts list she will receive an invitation to the appointment by email. Events in your calendar will need to be checked. Siri will only remind you about an event in your calendar if you have also set default reminders. If you create an event in your calendar you will find a reminder button. If you click on that it will ask you remind me in an hour, a day, a week, etc. You can also ask Siri if you have any appointments on April 7th, or when is my next Dentist appointment?
4. Setting alarms – Wake me up at 6:00 am or turn on my 9:00 alarm, and you can also turn off all alarms by asking Siri to do just that.
5. Calling and Facetiming people – You can say “Call persons name” if they are in your contacts. If they are not in your contacts you can say their phone number. Facetime is free to another person with an Iphone or Ipad. It’s an Internet call that requires an Internet connection
6. Turning on the timer – Say “Set a timer for 10 minutes – Great for cooking. You can also set a timer while you are walking on the treadmill, listening to music or to a book
7. What time is it will have Siri tell you the time, and if you ask for the time in Toronto Canada it will give you that as well. You can also ask what day is it, or what day will April 7th be.
8. What song is playing – If a song is playing in the background it will tell you.
9. Play songs from your favourite artist – If you have an artist on your phone you can ask Siri to play songs by Bon Jovi for example. If you have Apple music it will even play artists that are not yet on your phone.
10. Make reservations if the restaurant that does reservations through Open Table.
11. Ask Siri to open any app on your phone like mail, messages, settings, Blindfold Blindfold Blackjack, etc.
12. Performing calculations – Ask what is 24 times 3 will give you the answer. The answer will be on your screen so you can use your finger to refer to it again.
13. Conversions – You can ask Siri to convert dollars to pounds or metric to inperial. How many cm is 3 feet.
14. Dates – What day of the week is Chinese New Year or or Ash Wednesday this year it will tell you, and if you ask it what day of the week your birthdate was it will show you the results.
15. Use Siri to change settings – Ask it turn on blue tooth, turn on airplane mode, or turn off cellular data.
16. Mapping – Ask how do I get home or how do I get to White Spot. It will start up directions and it will give you the turn by turn directions
17. Texting – To send a text to a person in your contacts you say “Tell Matthew hello”. Siri says “Your message to Matthew says Hello” Do you want me to send it? You say yes, and the text is sent. You can reply to a text with Siri as well. Tip: Hold the home button until you stop speaking so Siri doesn’t cut you off before you are finished your message. If you know the number on your regular bus stop you can text 33333 which will give you the bus schedule for that stop.
18. Movies – Ask Where is Star Wars playing or What time is Star Wars playing at the Landmark cinema.
19. Following sports – What was the result of the last Canucks game, when will they play again or who scored during their last game.

Topic for next time – iCloud on Feb. 10 from 10:00 AM until 12:00 PM.

GTT Victoria Meeting, January 6, 2016

Summary Notes

The January meeting took place at the Central Library, 735 Broughton Street from 1-3:30 PM. There were 11 people in attendance.

This month’s meeting featured a presentation by Mike Gower from IBM Canada, regarding accessibility of the ribbons that replaced the traditional menus as of Microsoft Office 2007. He explained that Freedom Scientific added a new feature to the JAWS screen reader, enabling users to virtualize the ribbons. Thanks also to Linda Bartram, who experimented with virtualized ribbons after the meeting and producing the notes attached at the end of this report. Thanks also to Mike for offering to do occasional presentations on other topics that may be of interest to the group.

Tom then gave a brief presentation about Q-Seek, another convenient tool from Accessible Apps for Windows PC users. This is the same company that produces Q-cast for podcast management as well as the Chicken Nugget Twitter client, demonstrated at previous meetings.

Q-Seek provides the capability for a very flexible pop-up reference and search facility anywhere in Windows. Simply select text, then Alt-Control-Q to open the Q-seek window with the selected text automatically copied into the search field. Then tab to a list of the search types and use the arrow keys to select from ten choices. These include: word definitions; synonyms; antonyms; calculation; spell check; translate (into English); Wikipedia search; manage lookup (for programmers); stock quotes; and, urban dictionary. Press enter and the search result appears in a text box. Paste the result anywhere by pressing Alt-F4 to close Q-seek, place the cursor in a document and do the usual Control-V to paste.

Note that Accessible apps software is developed by blind programmers, so all of their apps are extremely screen-reader-friendly. All apps are available as free demos for a limited time, so you can try before you buy.

Tom also gave a very brief tour of what it is like to navigate around the screens of a Windows phone, as he has had the chance to use a Nokia Windows phone, running a beta of WindowsPhone 10. It looks like it has the potential to be quite accessible. The worst problem so far is that the on-screen keyboard is extremely sensitive and currently difficult to use, even for someone who has a lot of experience with the iPhone on-screen keyboard. We will provide feedback to Microsoft in this regard and will be watching for improved accessibility in the first public release of WindowsPhone 10.

Linda announced that there will be an open house at Pacific Training Centre for the Blind on Thursday January 21 from 4 PM to 7 PM.

The next VocalEyes described event at the Belfry Theater is “The Valley”, and takes place on Sunday, February 21 at 2 pm. The Belfry Theatre is located at 1291 Gladstone Avenue in Victoria (250-385-6815). Described by Rick Waines and followed by a Touch Tour. Ticket prices vary.

Suggested topics for our next meeting include, a discussion of accessible games and game apps, and music apps. Tom can share his experience with Apple Music. We also hope that members will do some exploring, or share their experience regarding other music apps and accessible games.

We will send out a notice a week or so before the next meeting, which will take place at the Central Library at 1 PM on Wednesday, February 3.

Information on Virtual Ribbons
from Linda Bartram

To turn on virtual ribbons:
1. Go to the Jaws screen
2. Press alt to open the menu bar
3. Right arrow to help
4. Down arrow to Start Up Wizard and press enter
5. Tab to next and press enter.
6. Tab to next again and press enter.
7. Jaws will say “use virtual ribbons” check box unchecked.
8. Press the space bar to check.
9. then tab to next and press enter three more times until you come to the finish button
10. Press the enter key. You will be back on the Jaws screen and the startup wizard will close. Virtual ribbons is now your default.

GTT Nanaimo Summary Notes

December 3, 2015

Attendance: Jean, Donna C, Aedan, Jeff, Art. Regrets were received from Hugh, Shauna and Donna H

Donna C is a new attendee to the Nanaimo group and was there to investigate the potential for using an iPhone as her main means of voice communications with family, reading and writing emails and using the internet. All who attended talked at length about the various ways the iPhone can be used for GPS navigation, reading books, searching the internet, storing contact info for use with the email and telephone apps and for storing appointments. The group spent time showing Donna the many apps and strategies they employ in their daily lives, and she was provided a device to test out some of the gestures required to operate iDevices. A Bluetooth foldable keyboard was also shown as another means of inputting information into iDevices.

Many comparisons were made between the iPad, iPod and iPhone for doing many of the above tasks. Because Donna also wants to be able to make and receive phone calls she decided that the iPhone will be her best choice.

The OrCam was demonstrated as a potential means of reading text, and pocket sized DAISY readers like the VR Stream and Plextalk Linio Pocket were also demonstrated. Computer apps for magnification, screen reading and OCR were discussed as other alternatives should she wish to continue using that device as vision deteriorates.

The group referred her to the Nanaimo and District DRC for lessons on how to gain maximum use of such a device should she opt to make that purchase.

At the meeting’s end it was decided to not hold a meeting in early January, so the next meeting of the GTT Nanaimo group will be on Thursday, February 4, 2016. No topic has yet been selected so email Albert with your suggestions.

GTT Victoria Summary Notes

December 2, 2015

Attendance: David Shrive, Robin Love, Saanich Volunteer Services Society, Tom Dekker, Albert Ruel, Bruce Turner, Lorna Pophum, Skye Mundell, Linda Bartram, Susan Gallagher, Corry Stuive, Annalese Ryan, Susan Stepen, Erin Lacharity, Heidi Propp, Sabine Laubental, Greg Koyl, Trevor Jones and Josie Horsman.

Tom welcomed everyone to the meeting saying that this is GTT Victoria’s first meeting of its second year in existence.

1. Barrier Free BC/ British Columbians with Disabilities Act:
Albert gave a brief presentation on the progress of the Barrier Free BC initiative and how it relates to the AODA in Ontario, the Manitobans with Disabilities Act and the initiative launched for a Canadians with Disabilities Act. The BC Government through its White Paper indicated a willingness to look at such an Act for BC, so the Barrier Free BC group will be using the next 18 months to secure commitments from the Political Parties and MLA candidates toward a BCDA. Organizations and individuals are encouraged to provide Barrier Free BC with letters of support as it moves this initiative forward.

On the website Barrier Freen BC offers a “Just Say Yes” Tool Kit that gives interested parties many suggestions on how to become involved, including a sample resolution that may be passed by any organization board which will provide Barrier Free BC the needed support.

Albert Moved and Tom seconded that GTT Victoria support Barrier Free BC. Passed unanimously.

To contact this organization you can email BarrierFreeBC@Gmail.com, or visit the website at http://www.Barrier FreeBC.org. On Twitter they can be followed @BarrierFreeBC and on Facebook at Barrier Free BC.

Barrier Free Canada is also active and can be contacted through donna@barrierfreecanada.org), and found on the web at, http://barrierfreecanada.org/home/.

Many in attendance offered to contact organizations like IDHH, Victoria DRC and MS Society to encourage their participation in these two initiatives. All are welcomed.

2. Advocacy and the GTT Group:
Tom read a document outlining some of the advocacy initiatives being undertaken by some GTT Victoria members, like BC Transit talking GPS system, Barrier Free BC indoor navigation systems and other access needs of the blind and low vision population. This group is meeting with City Councilors, MLAs and MPs with a view to moving the advocacy agenda forward. For more info please contact Tom Dekker.

This group is attempting to retain the GTT program as a peer mentoring gathering and will report back on progress made on the advocacy front. Please share your ideas for this group and when group participation is required all will be asked to pitch in. For now the size of the group is manageable.

Linda B asked about how this group will fit into the City of Victoria’s Accessibility Committee. Tom D and Greg K will attend their upcoming meeting to see how we can consolidate all efforts toward a more accessible community.

3. Podcasts and the VR Stream DAISY Player:
Tom talked about the last meeting’s podcast app demo he provided and how important he finds them to be as a self-teaching tool. So many podcasts are freely available online for all things technological, so all are urged to learn how to use their specific devices to access podcasts. Albert demonstrated the New Generation VR Stream as another means of getting to all this free learning.

Albert walked through the process of connecting the Stream to his iPhone in order to access the internet for downloading. WIFI connections are the usual way to do this, however for demonstration purposes an iPhone was used today.

The Podcast app was accessed and a search was created to find CBC podcasts. One hundred and twenty were found, so the Stream was navigated through a few of them to show how they are listed and labelled. Some were subscribed to by pressing the Confirm Key, then played by pressing the Play/Pause Key. Once a podcast is subscribed to the 3 newest episodes will automatically download each time your player connects to the WIFI in the same way that it downloads audio books from your CNIB Library subscription.

Tom mentioned how much easier it is to listen to a podcast about the iPhone while listening to it on a separate device like the Stream. It’s too difficult to listen to a tutorial podcast on the same device that you are trying to learn. This goes for any computer related tutorials you might wish to use as well.

Albert also demonstrated how to access the Internet Radio available on the VR Stream. Although there are many stations already pre-programmed in the device, many more can be searched from all around the world. Searches can be done by genre or title.

The other player on the market that costs the same as the VR Stream is the Plextalk Linio Pocket. It boasts the same range of features as the Stream, and one more. Plextalk has a calendar for appointments.

Someone indicated that monthly payments can be arranged through PayPal for the purchase of items like the Stream. Check this out at:
https://www.billmelater.com/cm/paypal/landers/ppbmlsmcore.html

Someone asked if MS Word files can be saved to the Stream. The answer is yes for both the VR Stream and the Plextalk Pocket. In fact, the related desktop units produced by the same manufacturers as the above devices can also use MS Word files. Support in learning how to do this is available through Albert at 1-877-304-0968, Ext. 550.

Some people have been successful in having devices like the Stream funded through Technology@Work as something that supports their paid or volunteer work. Contact Albert Ruel or Tom Dekker if you have questions about how to access Tech@Work and how assistive devices will be evaluated for eligibility.

A tutorial on how to search for and download CNIB books onto the Stream has been produced by Gerry Chevalier, GTT Edmonton, called “CNIB digital library audio tutorial”, and is available as a DAISY download, a DAISY CD, Direct to Player and online streaming from the CELA and CNIB Libraries.
http://www.cniblibrary.ca/iguana/www.main.cls?p=&v=*

Also, Mystic Access has produced a professional tutorial that covers all aspects of the New Gen VR Stream which can be purchased through Humanware/Aroga for approximately $100. Contact Steve@Aroga.com, 1-800-561-6222:
http://www.aroga.com/

If anyone wants one on one instruction on how to access podcasts or internet radio stations on the VR Stream, or with their specific devices please contact Tom or Albert and they’ll attempt to connect you with a peer who can help, or they’ll help you directly.

Someone asked what podcast stands for and while Albert and Tom struggled to sort out what it might be, Corry S was researching it on his iDevice. POD stands for Playable On Demand.

4. Additional Accessible Apps for the Computer:
Other accessible aps for the computer were discussed, like QCast for podcasts, QRead for accessing all manner of audio files and converting them to formats that are compatible with your specific devices, and Chicken Nugget which makes Twitter far more accessible and usable. These are all produced by blind programmers for blind computer users.

Someone asked if texting can be done from the computer, and Lorna P indicated that she does this with her grandchildren. Her husband set up a contact in the email program that allows her to send and receive text messages with specific people.

5. ZoomText Fusion:
ZoomText Fusion was asked about, which is the latest offering from AI-Squared where they have married the ZoomText magnifier with Window Eyes. This now means that a full functioning screen reader is available for ZT users as they transition from using magnification to speech for accessing information on the computer screen. For more info contact Richard or Wanda at AbleTech, Info@AbleTech.ca. For more info on the ZT Fusion app:

Fusion

Sky Mundell is working with it and will be available to teach people who need this tool. A special price exists for ZT users to upgrade for the time being, so if you’re interested contact your local vender like AbleTech.

6. Technology@Work:
Bruce asked if an iPhone can convert text to speech and speech to text? Tom indicated that further conversation can happen around this, and that he might access Technology@Work to request such a range of devices as an iPhone and compatible hearing aids to support his volunteer work with IDHH. It was recommended that he contact Wendy C at the Victoria DRC.

7. Additional Apps and Devices:
Brief discussions on the Fitbit, OrCam and BuzzClip took place. These items have either been demonstrated recently, or will be available in the spring for further trialing.

Tom mentioned a pair of shoes from India that will use Wayfinding technology to deliver information to the wearer through vibration to indicate whether the destination is on the left or right, or if obstacles are standing in the way.

8. Book Clubs:
On the third Thursday of each month the GVPL hosts an Audio Book Club, and the CCB hosts a teleconference Book Club on the forth Saturday of each month. For additional information call Karen at the Greater Victoria Public Library, or Albert for the CCB book club.

9. GTT/CCB Dues Are Due:
Someone offered up some Christmas cake, and Albert indicated that 2016 GTT/CCB membership dues are due. Please contact Albert or Tom if you haven’t yet paid your dues.

The next meeting of the GTT Victoria group will be on January 6, 2016 at the GVPL Community Room from 1:00 until 3:30 PM. The topic will be the Microsoft Ribbons and how to use them, and for the second hours bring your devices and questions for the group to assist with.

Respectfully submitted,

Albert Ruel, GTT West Coordinator

GTT Vancouver Summary Notes

November 18, 2015

Present: Shawn, Rosamunde, Carol, Fay, Louise, Pat, Albert, John, Peg, Mary, Clement, Matthew, Lilo

Clement and Matthew presented a variety of ways that Podcasts and both eBooks and Audiobooks can be accessed with iDevices:

iBooks App:
• iBooks can play both eText and audiobooks
• Some of the more popular places to get audiobooks are; iTunes, Audible.com, Publishing companies and directly through iBooks
• iBooks that you get from I-tunes might be from Amazon or many other places. eBooks will be read by Voice Over whereas audio books are read by a live narrator
• When you open iBooks you get 5 tabs along the bottom; My books, featured books, top charts, search, and purchased
• Once you purchase an audiobook it will show up in my library
• When you click on the title it will start reading the book where you stopped reading last time
• You can skip back 15 seconds by doing a one-finger double tap on the Back Button, or double tap and hold it and it will keep skipping back in 15 second segments providing beeps at each 15 second interval.
• The purchase tab is just for E-books, not for audiobooks
• eBooks are electronic files which are read by your screen reader or Voice Over. Audiobooks are a recording of somebody reading the book.
• In an iBook there will be a table of contents tab

The Sleep timer:
• Once you have selected the number of minutes in sleep timer the user must click the Done Button
The sleep timer can be engaged after a number of minutes or at the end of the current track/chapter

Gestures that work in iBooks:
A Two-finger double tap will pause and resume playing the audio book you’re listening to.
A two-finger single tap will pause and play an eBook you’re listening to

A two-finger swipe down will start reading from where you are in an eBook
If your phone rings while you are listening to music or any type of book a two finger double tap will answer the call, and the same gesture will hang it up again. When your phone starts to ring it will pause your book or music immediately, and it will resume playing as soon as the call is terminated.

The Audible App and Audible.com:
• You must purchase audio books over the internet on a computer or your iDevice
• Once your books are purchased you can open the audible app on your iDevice or the Audible app on a computer to access them
• Tapping the Refresh Button will update all your purchased books on your phone for you to download
• Rate and review – they will recommend other books that are similar to the ones you rate high
• Good Reads is an app that will recommend books
• Mark as finished allows you to search by unfinished books which will make your list shorter
• Once you start downloading a book you can start reading almost immediately
• You can set the sleep timer to turn your book off in a desired number of minutes
• You can change the number of seconds to skip back if you do fall asleep or lose your place in the book for some reason
• The Sleep timer can be found under the more Button
• Make sure you have selected device instead of cloud to ensure you are not using data to listen to your downloaded books.

Audio and Video Podcasts:
• A podcast is a radio show that you can listen to on demand
• Topics range from sports, assistive technology, life skills, religious info, schools, etc.
• You subscribe to a podcast to transfer files to your device – either audio or video
• Once subscribed to a podcast you will automatically receive the latest ones when you connect to WIFI
• Podcasts are free
• You can listen to your favourite internet radio program

Downcast is a good app for listening to podcasts and costs $3.49 on the App Store:
• Once you are in the downcast app you can search through the podcasts you have
• To add a podcast you select Add at the bottom of your screen
• To add a podcast manually you can enter the web address with the internet feed
• Top podcasts are the popular podcasts
• You can go to Search and type something like CBC; You’ll get a list of about 120 CBC podcasts
• Once you select a podcast it will give you options to add the podcast or subscribe
• You can adjust your settings to only download when you are on WIFI
• Look for other adjustable settings within the app
• You can set it only to download the last 5 or 10
• In downcast settings you can set it to only keep the last 5 podcasts you have listened to and it will automatically delete the rest.

Clement and Matthew recommended podcasts:
• AppleVis
• CoolBlindTech
• iFocus – Hadley School for the Blind
• Americas Test Kitchen
• Joe Rogan is a good comedy podcast

Next Meeting will be December 16 and we will not have a set topic planned. Plan to come and bring your technology questions and get some help and answers.

GTT Vancouver Summary Notes

October 21, 2015

Attendees: Clement, Matthew, Shaw, Lilo, Carol, Fay, Louise, Pat, John, Mary, Albert and Bruce.

iTunes on the PC for downloading music:
Matt started the presentation by outlining what iTunes is and what it can do.

• It is an audio and video player
• A means of downloading music, audio books and movies from the iTunes Store
• A means of organizing music into Playlists
• A means of uploading music and Playlists to iDevices
• Select the Radio Button you wish to work with using your Space Bar, IE, Music, Movies, TV Shows, Audio Books, iPhone Etc. and the screen will refresh to provide controls for those actions.
• Once the list of Music is found you can use your Arrow Buttons to locate the one you want and press the Enter Key to play it
• When playing music the Space Bar pauses and resumes playing
• Shift Tab to the Songs Button then pressing the Space Bar will allow the user to show lists of Songs, Albums, Artists Etc. Press the Enter Key then Tab back to the corresponding list
• For JAWS users the add-on program called Leasey helps make iTunes a far easier app to use
• The above assumes that your playable content is already saved on the computer’s hard drive
• When saving music to the iTunes Library it will attempt to organize it for you, and those preferences can be changed if you prefer something else
• To Search for songs, Tab to the Search Edit field then to Search Options and select whether to search for songs, albums or artists

Playlists:
• From all the music saved on the computer’s hard drive the user can select a shorter list of them into a Playlist for uploading to an iDevice
• Tab through the iTunes window to find the Playlist Radio Button and press the Space Bar
• Tab to New Playlist and press the Space Bar
• The user will be asked to name it
• Using the Edit Playlist to Add Songs isn’t a screen reader friendly way to add songs
• Tab to My Music Radio Button and press the Space Bar then Tab to find the list of songs
• Arrow to the song you wish to add then press the Applications Menu Key to find the Add to Playlist Submenu
• Right Arrow into the Submenu then Down Arrow to find the Playlist you wish to insert the song into
• The user can select several songs at once then follow the above steps to add them all at once to a Playlist
Note: It is recommended that you spend time playing with iTunes in order to familiarize yourself. It might be like visiting your friend’s house for the first time where you can’t know where everything is. Each time you visit you’ll become more and more familiar. Also, if you organize the music in folders you create it will become easier to use because the organization of it was of your doing.

Clement presented how to organize and synchronize music to the iPhone:
• Start by organizing the music on the computer into lists and folders you can easily work with
• Once songs are synced to your iDevice you can organize them in ways that work best for your usage, like albums, songs or artists
• In preferences on your iDevice you can choose to unsync songs which will only remove them from the iDevice and not the computer
• When you remove a song from iTunes it will ask if you wish to delete it, which if chosen will then remove it from the iDevice the next time it’s connected to the computer and synchronized
• Synchronizing means that if a song is purchased on the iDevice it will sync to the computer, and if purchased on the computer it will sync to the iDevice when connected. The same goes for the deletion of songs
• The iTunes account will be your central synchronizing point from which all iDevices signed into that account will exchange music, so that Playlists created in iTunes will upload to your iPad, iPod and iPhone when connected
• iCloud is another way to synchronize all iDevices, however it is independent of iTunes. A separate session could be done just on iCloud
• The iTunes interface can be decluttered by turning off things not being used like, Podcasts, Audio Books Etc.
• To download music from iTunes in the computer you will Tab to the iTunes Store and press the Space Bar
• Shift Tab to the Search Edit Field and search for a song, album or artist
• Once a search is done the listing will look like a web page, so Quick Navigation Keys like H for Headings can be used to explore the results
• To explore an album press the Enter Key on the album name link and the songs will be displayed in another web page
• Songs can be previewed, purchased individually or the entire album
• When searching for songs, the album information is also made available in the Search Results Table for previewing
• Once purchased all will be listed in the iTunes Library alphabetically by album, song or artist depending on how you have asked the computer to list them
• To synchronize the music to your iDevice you connect the device to the computer using a USB cable, then select the iDevice in the list of Radio Buttons in iTunes
• Once the iDevice is checked by using the Space Bar you can Tab through the list of controls to an icon labelled Sync and use the Space Bar to activate it
• The user can select to have all music synchronized, or only the items specifically chosen
• There are many controls in iTunes to be explored, so play with it to determine how you wish iTunes to synchronize with your iDevices

Other music playing apps for the computer are, Winamp, Foobar, Windows Media Player and Spotify.

Summary Notes
GTT Edmonton Meeting December 14,, 2015

The most recent meeting of the Get Together With Technology (GTT) Edmonton Chapter was held December 14 at 7pm at Ascension Lutheran Church 8405 83 Street in Edmonton.
40 people attended.

December Feature Topic – Aroga Technologies Exhibit
We thank Aroga, Canada’s premiere retailer of assistive technology, for a very extensive exhibit the likes of which we have not seen in Edmonton for many years. Thanks also to Aroga who treated us all with pizza. Participants met the local Edmonton rep from Aroga, Lisa Boone as well as Aroga’s Chief Operations Officer, Steve Barclay, who joined us from Vancouver. See the Resources section below for their contact details. Steve gave an overview of all the equipment and then participants browsed the technology to ask questions.

Exhibit Included in Part:
• Electronic magnification and OCR scanning systems: Davinci Pro, Prodigi Duo, Prodigi Connect, Pebble Mini, Pebble HD, Amigo HD, Acrobat 27”, Magnilink Student HD, and several hand-held electronic magnifiers.
• Electronic Braille: Braille Edge, Braille Sense, U2, U2 QWERTY, Braillenote Apex, Apex QWERTY, Brailliant, Braille Pen 12T, 6-Dot Brailler, Cyclone Embosser, Trident Embosser, and Phoenix Embosser.
• Digital Book Players: Victor Reader Stream, Victor Reader Stratus, HIMS Blaze EZ, Plextalk Pocket, Plextalk PTX1.
• Other: iGlass, Franklin Anybook.

Resources
• For more information about Aroga technology visit:
http://www.aroga.com/
General Enquiries: sales@aroga.com
Or Toll Free 1-800-561-6222

• Steve Barclay, Chief Operations Officer:
Toll Free 1-800-561-6222 ext. 1102
Email: Steve@aroga.com
• Lisa Boone, Edmonton based Assistive Technology Specialist:
Toll Free 1-800-561-6222
Email: lboone@aroga.com

• CNIB STEP Program
CNIB offers the Specialized Technical Equipment Program (STEP) which provides funding for CNIB clients to purchase assistive technology for home use. To learn more about the STEP program visit:
CNIB Alberta STEP Program
Or call CNIB in Edmonton at 780-488-4871 and ask to speak to someone about the STEP program.

Next Meeting (Monday January 11 at 7pm)
• We are hoping to have a representative from Edmonton Public Library join us to discuss the CELA library service available to print-disabled people including DAISY CD, DAISY download, and DAISY Direct to Player audio books as well as other library services. We will confirm this on the meeting agenda early in 2016.
• In breakout groups we can discuss any other topic you wish. Please bring your technology, your questions and answers.

Meeting Location and Logistics
• Ascension Lutheran Church 8405 – 83 Street NW, Edmonton.
• We meet in the basement hall.
• Enter the church from the back door. There is parking at the back and drop off space for taxis, DATS.
• Meetings are typically every second Monday of the month at 7pm.
Try to arrive between 6:45pm and 7:15pm after which the door will be locked. If you arrive late there is a door bell to the right of the outside door.
• If you have someone helping you your assistant is welcome to remain for the meeting.

GTT Edmonton Team
• Carrie Anton is visually impaired and is the accessibility specialist for Athabasca University.
• Gerry Chevalier is blind. He is retired from HumanWare where he worked as the Product Manager for the Victor Reader line of talking book players.
• Heather MacDonald is the specialist for CNIB career and employment services. She has a wealth of experience helping blind and visually impaired people with the challenges of finding employment.
• Russell Solowoniuk is blind and works with alternative formats and assistive technology at Grant MacEwan University.
• Lorne Webber is blind and is the accessibility specialist for Norquest College.

GTT Edmonton Overview
• GTT Edmonton is a chapter of the Canadian Council of the Blind (CCB).
• There are GTT groups in Ottawa, Toronto, Kingston, Northern Ontario, Sydney, Edmonton, Victoria, Nanaimo, Vancouver, and more to come.
• There is also a national GTT monthly toll free teleconference.
• GTT Edmonton promotes a self-help learning experience by holding monthly meetings to assist participants with assistive technology.
• Each meeting will present a feature technology topic and general question and answer about any other technology.
• Small groups or one on one assistance is possible at the meetings.
• Participants are encouraged to come to each meeting even if they are not interested in the feature topic because questions on any technology are welcome. The more participants the better able we will be equipped with the talent and experience to help each other.
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