When: February 10, 2018
Where: MIT 77 Mass. Ave., Building 5, Room 134, Cambridge, Mass.
The meeting was called to order by President Jerry Berrier at 1:00 p.m. The following announcements were made.
Frank, our Vice President, stated there are approximately 20 members, and anyone who has not paid as of this meeting for 2018 will be removed from the list this weekend.
Bob, our treasurer, reported the following, for our 2017 treasury report.
Bob states 16 members paid before the party and 11 members paid at the party, so the actual membership he has is 27 members.
The minutes were read and accepted as written.
David Kingsbury and Jeanette Kutash stated that the Carroll Tech fair was successful in that people did come to see our booth. While there were no new members that day, there were people who did not know of Vibug but appreciated hearing about our group, its mission and purpose, and did appreciate and take the flyers.
Jerry Berrier announced there will not be a Vibug meeting in March as there is a conflict with the BSCB Spring conference. On Sunday the members of Vibug will speak at the conference, to try to encourage people to join, and perhaps collect money for dues. If you wish to speak, please contact Jerry. Frank stated people could speak about things such as the current state of notetakers or magnifiers.
Bylaws Committee: Last year it was Jeanette Kutash and Al Stenn Clanton. There will only be a committee if we need to make a bylaw change.
Nominating Committee: The committee was thanked for their service, and Jeff Thompson was thanked for chairing this committee.
Program Committee: Maria Rueters, David Kingsbury, and Al Stenn-Clanton. David could chair, he stated, but would be interested in "new blood" and Kelsey Nicolay agreed to be on it. David will generate an email to ask members for their ideas regarding things they would like us to address at VIBUG.
Jerry stated we were to discuss Three-D Printing, but the woman from MIT who was to be here had to cancel.
Membership Committee: Nina Kagan and Jeanette Kutash. Responsibilities are to encourage people to join, talk up VIBUG and reach out to members who were in last year and encourage them to join again this year. Jeff Thompson volunteered to be on the committee.
Jerry stated we need to look into our domain registration, as since Jim Roberts is no longer treasurer we need to move that to someone else.
We discussed the holiday party and agreed that we need to establish and stick by an absolute cut-off date for sign-up for the convenience of the restaurant staff. We also will reconfirm the numbers attending so that things will go more smoothly next year.
Jerry announced that we will be trying zoom meeting for on-line participation. A small group is testing this, and we will alert the membership when we are going to use zoom.
Jerry encourages people to try the bookshare web reader with either Firefox or Chrome. Perhaps we can do a demonstration of it in a future meeting.
If you want to share your WIFI with someone in your contact list using IOS11 you would have them go to settings, wifi, available networks, select your network, and you would get a pop-up asking if you want to share your password, select share, and they can log in to your network without having your actual password.
Appleviz unleashed is a new monthly podcast.
Braille support is available for blind-fold wild card and blind-fold travel card, two audio ios accessable games.
Joseph lee's free NVDA 2018 audio tutorial is available as a zip file or in individual sections.
If you go to mushroomfm.com At 0700 and at 1900 gmt, Jonathan Mosen is hosting a show called "The Daily Fibre" which features music, and the latest tech news. The eastern standard times are 3:00 am and 3:00 PM.
An accessability toolbar is now available in facebook.
Google has a dedicated accessability team which answers emails only between 8:00 and 5:00 p.m. pacific time. The address is: disability-support-external@google.com Emails will be answered within 72 hours.
UMASS Boston is offering a certificate program for assistive tech instructional specialist for people with vision impairments. Contact r.sesslertrinjowsky@umb.edu for more information. Also, You may contact Bob Mcculley at UMASS Boston.
VFO now owns Enhanced Vision.
Duxbury Systems has released dbtwin.1102 SR1 which has additional Embosser support, and other enhancements.
Following questions and answers, and the monthly demonstrations, our meeting was adjourned at 4:00 p.m.
Respectfully submitted, Jeanette Kutash, Vibug Clerk