Date of Meeting: November 12 2022
When: 1:00p.m. to 3:30 p.m.
WHERE: Virtually
The meeting was called to order at 1:05 by President Frank Ventura. Following introductions, these announcements were made.
,p>David Kingsbury announced that the Carroll Center was having it's annual tech fare on November 22nd; the event starts at 9:00 a.m. with presentations in person and on zoom. There will also be venders at the tech center. VIBUG will have a table at the event. David will be discussing new things that will be in his book. There will be demonstrations on Google Suite, using the home assistant, with Alexa, and the agenda is on line with the demonstration form.If you use any Freedom Scientific (Vispero) products, the 2023 versions are out there and you can get them by subscription or by license.
Nina Kagan announced that at the last meeting we decided to have the holiday party again at the Corrib Pub in West Roxbhury and we have confirmed the date with them for January 14, in place of our January meeting, and people can contact either Nina or Jeanette. The announcement for the party will go out in early December. The deadline for signing up is established because we need to let the restaurant know how many people will come so they can have adequate staffing.
Dave Hunt announced that he has revisited Mastodon and there is an IOS client called Metatext that looks a lot like the Twitter app for IOS. It is on the PC. There is a blindness optimized client that is very much like Chicken Nuggett.
David K. updated to Windows 11 which is called version 2022 and stated the new Narrator voices are as good as any of the vocalizer expressive voices. The voices are easy to load and the file sizes are quite small.
Bob Resnick spoke with X-finity and they sent out a highly accessible remote which has a high visibility contrast (white with black buttons), but you need to have the X1 box with the voice guidance and other accessibility features. This remote is free. There is no direct line for accessibility support any longer, but you will get there more quickly if you ask for closed captioning.
Jerry Berrier started using Twitter on the web and he has done well with it and would consider doing a demonstration of it.
Frank stated that you can change your name on the IPhone by going in to the "settings" app, then go to "general", and "about", or you can change it in the zoom app under the "more" tab in zoom.
Elections for our five officers were held and the results are as follows:
Mika Pyykhala talked about why we would want smart locks, and what are some of the advantages of having them, and then he talked about some of the technology that is available for them and some of the pitfalls he ran in to in installing them. He finally demonstrated how some of the technology he had worked with these locks.
Steve Dresser demonstrated the latest format that Bookshare supports, human audio, and how easily it can be downloaded and played on the BS6.
Following these two demonstrations, the meeting was adjourned at 3:30 p.m.
Respectfully submitted, Jeanette Kutash, Vibug Clerk