Date of Meeting: September 9, 2023
When: 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m.
WHERE: Virtually
The meeting was called to order at 1:05 by President Frank Ventura. Following introductions, the following announcements were made.
Tim Cumings, webmaster, was not at the meeting as this was a travel day for him. All is well with the website and there have been no changes.
Frank announced that Jerry Berrier has decided he is no longer able to assume the position of Vice President. When an officer leaves mid term the board has the option to fill that vacancy. All officers voted to appoint Margaret Gaffney as our new Vice President.
Steve Dresser announced that the Jaws Public Beta for 2024 is out and there are some incredible new innovations for people who use Braille Displays. Specifically, Jaws takes the Braille display and divides it in to two segments. In the first half of the display you have the normal text of that on which you are working. In the second half you can do a number of things, such as a translation option to learn UEB, or set it to UEB Grade one or computer Braille. Buffer view captures the text you are looking at, stores it in a buffer, and you can store either the current paragraph or the document. You can store upp to 32K. You can copy from the second half of the display to another application such as notepad. There are also options for Excel, Outlook and Power Point.
Maria Rueters was able to confirm that the problem she experienced with the blind shell, dictation and Youtube is not an issue--the problem was an error on Maria's part, and this has now been documented in the VIBUG demo on the website.
John Smith stated that during our summer break we acquired 2 members, so we are at 40 members. We have one expense for our internet hosting at a cost of $76.19. Our finances are fine.
Jeanette reported we recently had an officer's meeting. We will be developing a policies and procedures document regarding making announcements, how to put things on the two lists, a history of VIBUG when we first established ourselves as an independent group so people can understand why we do things as we do. We will also be establishing a welcome letter that everyone will get every time they join with lots of questions and answers so that we will all be on the same page. We will also discuss the guidelines regarding the process that will apply for people who pay in November of any given year.
In November we have our elections for officers. Frank will appoint a nominating chairperson who will establish the nominating committee and recommend a slate for the coming year. Remember that anyone can run. If you are interested in an office, let the nominating committee know.
Following questions and answers, the following demonstrations occurred:
Mika Pyyhkala demonstrated some new features in the Be My Eyes app.
Margaret Gaffney demonstrated the vision glasses.
Following these demonstrations, the meeting was adjourned at 3:00 p.m.
Respectfully submitted, Jeanette Kutash, Vibug Clerk