Date of Meeting: January 9, 2021
When: 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Where: Virtually
The meeting was called to order by President Frank Ventura at 1:05 p.m. Frank told people how to mute and unmute and requested that people try to stay muted unless they were speaking.
Bob Resnick announced that we are in good shape with our treasury. He reminded people that it is time to pay 2021 dues which you can do by going to the VIBUG website, vibug.org and clicking on the Paypal button where you have the option of either paying via Paypal or by credit card. If you need Bob's Assistance or need to pay by check, please contact him at treasurer@vibug.org and he will work with you.
Jerry stated he is delighted to see dues coming in, the more the better. He reminded people we have two email lists, one for support and one for announcements only. If you are not on the support email list and you are a member, send Jerry an email at jerry.berrier@gmail.com. He will send you the instructions to subscribe to the list, or you can get the instructions from the website. If you do not pay your dues and are on the membership list, we will quietly remove you after giving some reminders to pay dues.
Tim stated all is working well with the website and zoom calls.
Frank announced that for the past couple of months we have been doing live captioning. That means what we say is transcribed into text. The issue is that paying for this is reasonably expensive. If people feel this is valuable to continue, we would appreciate some feedback. We have not received any feedback from the person who originally requested this service.
If anyone has an interest in seeing something presented or in presenting a topic, please let him know.
Jerry stated that there is a new service called Captionmate. It provides completely automated captioning of phone calls. He does not know whether it works with zoom, but it requires a phone number and four digits of a social security number. It can do both sides of a conversation or just the incoming side. We know that it is made by Clarity, which means it should work with a Braille display. The app itself is available from the app store. The officers will begin working with this app and report back at a later meeting about whether we should consider using this service.
Tim announced that you can pull the data over from an old iphone by doing the following: turn on bluetooth on the old iphone; when you set up a new iphone set up the option that allows you to pull all the data over from the old iphone; this option works flawlessly. He did not have to restore from a back-up.
Jerry was able to get "voice control" to work on the iPhone with some exercise apps. This function is worth exploring. However, David Kingsbury did point out that this is a drain on the battery; however "voice control" works well for people who struggle with using gestures.
David Kingsbury demonstrated the Outlook application of iOS.
Kelsey Nicolay showed us how to use braille screen input.
The meeting was adjourned at 3:30 p.m.
Respectfully submitted, Jeanette Kutash, Vibug Clerk