VIBUG MEETING MINUTES

Date of Meeting: March 14, 2020

Time: 1:00 to 4:00 p.m.

Where: Virtual Zoom Meeting

Jerry Berrier, the Vice President, welcomed all. Following inttroductions, Jerry asked for officer reports. We have 33 paid members at this time. The minutes were read, a motion was made to accept as written and passed unanimously.

We discussed sending the meeting minutes to be read in advance. We agreed not to put in websites, as most items can be looked up on the internet. Jerry made this motion: rather than having minutes read at the meeting, minutes will be sent out no later than two weeks after the last meeting. If corrections are made they must be made known to Jeanette a week before the next meeting. Corrections will be made, and the minutes will be approved, based on the corrections, with Final approval at the meeting. Tim seconded this. The motion passed unanimously.

Bob Resnick stated people can pay dues on line through payPal or a major Credit card. If you cannot pay that way, contact him to make arrangements to pay with cash or a check. He said we had 53 members last year. His treasurer's report was read and accepted.

We talked about re-establishing a membership committee, perhaps sending out a membership reminder, and perhaps a reminder through PayPal. Jeanette will work with Jerry on a letter to be sent out.

Tim Cumings reported we have 19 members on line and that zoom is working well today.

Technology announcements include: sensorpush, is an app you download to the iphone-buy a thermometer/hygrometer, to check temperature in room, cigar humador, or anywhere you want to put the thermometer, as well as checking the humidity in the rooms in your house.

Orbit Research announced their Orbit Reader Plus Braille Display, which will be $695.00.

Orbit Research is coming out with a 40-character display, though the actual price has not been determined.

There is also a device called the Orbit Writer Smart-phone Companion, which will cost $100. It has an erganomic braille keypad, is smaller than an IPhone. You will be able to fully operate an IPhone, Android Phone, and other devices. It has an arrow pad with arrows and enter button to replace using gestures when using this device.

Aira has made changes, as of March 31, including discontinuing their glasses which connect to their Horizon phones as these phones are no longer being updated by the carriers. Your phone will be reset back to Galaxy 7 defaults, and you may put a sim card in the phone, and you can use it as a phone. You will be able to use the phone with Wi Fi, or with the Sim Card and an updated phone number and your carrier.

There is a document related to soddering for the blind from Smith Kettlewell.

There is a web-in-r from Larry Lewis from the Paciello Group called "Overcoming Obstacles of Manual Testing". This is for testing websites manually as opposed to using tools available to catch errors people make when they write websites.

Mystic Access has a tutorial for the Blind Shell phone.

APH is partnering with humanware. They are producing Braille displays. One is the Chameleon 20. This is targeted for the education Market, and the government, and all consumers. The second one is the Mantis Q 40, with both Braille and Qwerty keyboard capabilities.

Playback Magazine is now available as a download of everything they ever wrote.

Kelsey Nicolay talked about the app for IOS that allows you to use one-Drive on your phone. She demonstrated IOS-13's option of creating your own voiceover gestures.

Jerry talked about reddit, which is a social media platform which allows people to write something, and get comments or replies to it, which are read by anyone who subscribes to whatever the topic group is.

David talked about the Smart News app. Jerry talked about the Hourly News App. He spoke some about the Slide to Type app. The meeting was adjourned at 2:58 p.m.

Respectfully submitted, Jeanette Kutash, Vibug Clerk