VIBUG MEETING MINUTES

Date of Meeting: November 14, 2020

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

Where: virtually

The meeting was called to order at 1:00 p.m. by President Frank Ventura. Following introductions, the following announcements were made.

Tim Cumings stated everything is working well on zoom and he appreciates that recordings are easier to manage.

Bob Resnick reported that our treasury is doing well and reminded people that they could go to VIBUG.org and find the paypal button where they can pay by paypal or credit card and if they need to pay via check or another option they should contact him via treasurer@vibug.org If anyone needs help paying their dues of $20.00 they can also contact him at that email address for assistance. He will try to devise a system to assist people who may not remember if they have already paid dues, but encouraged everyone to try to keep track. New members who pay in November or December will have their dues count toward the nexdt year. This does not apply for current members.

Jeanette Kutash appologized for not getting the last month's meeting minutes out sooner but stated they would go out soon after the meeting. She also thanked people for being more aware of muting and unmuting as it makes it easier to write minutes from the meetings.

Jerry Berrier stated we have added a few members and always welcome new members from anywhere.

Frank announced that people voted to keep our current officer slate: Frank Ventura for President, Jerry Berrier for Vice President, Jeanette Kutash for Clerk, Bob Resnick for Treasurer and Tim Cumings for webmaster.

Frank made these announcements:

we have a VIBUG announce and a VIBUG support list. We try to avoid any affiliations with any type of blindness related or advocacy groups. If you have something you would like to post that has to do with advertising a product or service that a blindness agency or advocacy group is offering, please send it to one of the officers before hand so that we can review that. Generally speaking if it has to do with something like that, we have a place on the website called resources that we can put it in. This will allow us to maintain that type of independence of being nonaffiliated with blindness related groups or agencies.K

If you are a macintosh user, their new operating system which is named "big sir" is in the app store. Frank will try to have some information to report next month. If you are used to using an IOS operating system there is a lot now that is much more similar to that, with a more seamless transition.

David Kingsbury reminded people that the Carroll Center's Technology Fair is on November 24th, 2020, and it will be virtual. Presentations will be favorite apps being used since the pandemic started, accessing PDF's, the web-browsing group and more. David Goldfield posted it on his website as well.

Steve Dresser reminded people that the official Jaws 2021 is now out of beta and has been publically released. If you are running Jaws 2020 you will get a notice in the updates, which is a change as it used to be that when a version changed you had to go get the new version and download it. Now, the update process is just as it has been in the updates section of Jaws 2020 and earlier.

Now Jaws has its own version of voice commands for jaws commands. The wake up word to use this feature is "sharkey". Though some thought windows commands were available by voice, David and Frank thought only "jaws commands" might be available through "sharkey."

Jerry Stated that if your SMA is not current, when you try to update, you will be notified of this.

Frank stated that zoomtext and Fusion also have their 2021 releases.

Jeanette announced that the officers and the committee looked at all the possibilities and the specs provided to us by the Carroll Center, considered all the concerns raised by everyone in the meeting and made the decision not to participate in the technology fair this year. We will revisit this option next year.

David Goldfield announced that Leasey (Learn enable advance so easy) is now compatible with Jaws 2021 but you will need the latest version 5, build 5069. It also works with Jaws 2020. It is available from Brian Hartgen.

There are some scrips from Doug Lee. There is a thing called JAM (Jaws Alert Messsages) and these scripts make it possible to read alert messages from Windows and store them if you need to do so. Go to dlee.org for more info.

David Goldfield talked to us about a service that he administers that uses an e-mail distribution list to keep us informed about new technology developments and how he selects his content.

Margaret Gaffney told us about some of her findings about her new iPhone 12.

Jerry Berrier demonstrated how to password protect a Word document.

Following these demonstrations, the meeting was adjourned at 4:00 p.m.

Respectfully submitted, Jeanette Kutash, Vibug Clerk