Date of Meeting: September 14, 2019
Where: MIT 77 Mass. Ave., Bldg 5, Room 134, Cambridge, MA
The meeting was called to order at 12:00 p.m. by Vice President Jerry Berrier. Following introductions, the minutes were read and approved as written.
Jerry reported that we have 48 members, including one who joined on Friday night.
We were reminded by Bob that our treasury is essentially the same. Exact amounts will no longer be put in the minutes, but members can always check with our treasurer if there are questions. Always check your emails if you get something suspicious, and if you have any questions, please check with the officers. Bob will be requesting purchase receipts for any money requests. His preferred payment method is paypal, as he has an electronic record of transactions.
Jeanette Kutash talked about upcoming elections, explaining that the nominating committee will share its recommendations for officer positions in October, but that nominations can be taken from the floor on election day. If more than one person wishes to run for an office, the voting will be done by secret ballot. The nominating committee is composed of: Jeffrey Drucker, Nina Kagan and Mikka Pyyhkala. Remember that dues must be paid by the end of the October 12th meeting in order to be eligible to vote in the election. New members may pay in November or December and their dues will count for the next year.
Jerry announced that Jaws has a new version called Jaws kiosk which is a nailed down version to make JAWS more useable in a very restricted situation.
Smart kitchen gadgets are going to be discussed on Hadley's Tech it out on September 25 gmt at 0100, which is 8:00 our time. Transcripts and recordings of this event will be available soon after. The August meeting was about reading print with various adaptive technologies.
There will be a coding class for visually impaired adults through Our Space Our Place' for $260.00 FROM 7:30 P.M. TO 9:30 P.M. you will learn HTML and CSS. The final product will Be a basic web page, and LEARNING how to upload pages and how to modify them. The class is 9 weeks, starting October 3rd. It will finish on December 19th. It will be done on Zoom, and there will be office hours on Sundays from 1:00 p.m. TO 3:00 p.m.
Jaws 2020 will be released later this month. The announcements will happen on FS Open line on September 20th.
There are some youtube programs you can listen to about google.
http://www.applevis.com website has information about apple's latest releases. IOS 13 will be released on September 19th. More updates will follow at the end of the month.
There are safety features on the Lyft and Uber apps and the emergency feature on the iPhone works quite nicely.
Orca Screen reader 3.34 has been released.
Funding is available again for this year for Social Rehab Training at the Carroll Center.
The Carroll Center will be holding their technology fare on November 26, 2019.
There is an accessible radio from Sangean, the PRD17 model, which has menus that speak and other features that make it accessible.
There is a talking toaster oven from Black and Decker which Jerry Berrier demonstrated.
Karst Hoogsteen discussed his project which is the development of a mobility app which will allow blind people to maneuver independently through their envioronment. He is doing research to determine what factors are most important for blind people when traveling. He is looking for people to travel with him and evaluate environments he has chosen.
David Kingsbury talked about "autotext" which can be used in both Word and Outlook.
Jerry Berrier discussed gmail and google calendar.
The meeting was adjourned at 3:00 p.m.
Respectfully submitted, Jeanette Kutash, Vibug Clerk