VIBUG MEETING MINUTES

DATE of Meeting: December 11, 1999

The meeting was called to order by Amy Ruell, President,at 1:05 PM. The minutes were read by Jeanette Kutash, clerk, and were accepted. Amy told all present that the speaking engagement at the Hanson Lions Club went well. She also stated that the Article in the Christian Science Monitor was available as of the 9th. She explained that several articles had been written and that an audio file had also been created; All articles will be placed on the WEB. A reporter from the Globe contacted Amy through nbp because of musings. Her Article is to come out on Monday.

Amy also informed us that there is now a Link on our WEB page which provides information about how to make web sights accessible. Amy told us that she had been contacted by Cristina Berwell who had been given a grant by Microsoft so that she could gather information about accessibility issues. SHE stated that NBP graciously offered the use of their facility; a series of meetings was held so that people who were well-versed on the subject could provide this individual with information about the current limited usefulness of the Microsoft accessibility features and make recommendations about additional desirable improvements.

Amy has Contacted Arkenstone,and Kurzweil about demonstrating their products. Additionally she is negotiating with humanware; She hopes to secure permission to borrow the Braille companion; so that she can learn how to use the product and demonstrate it. She announced that David Bradburn will be at our February meeting; Hewill be demonstrating how Kurzweil 1000 works with dragon. She also indicated that she had spoken with Clarence Wiley of Gw Micro who expressed interest in presenting to Vibug in the future. Amy reminded us that the Excel class will be held in January at 11:00.

In our question and answer period we discussed the issue of date stamps with programs; it was largely felt that most of us would not run into the difficulties posed by y 2 k because most of us do not use programs which specifically depend on whether the computer will recognize the current date.

Also, we talked about the difficulties some people had had with running Norton 2000. It was felt that there may be a conflict between jfw 3.31 and Norton. It was suggested that to solve the problem the user should Try running Norton with JFW 3.0.

Al Stenn informed us that Jamal created a program called homer.zip for creating commands to copy text. He also told us that Batcon.zip would allow us to convert a program help file to a text file.

The business meeting was adjourned at 1:35 and our annual Christmas Party was held.

Respectfully Submitted,

Jeanette Kutash,

Clerk