February VIBUG minutes
Location: National Braille Press, 88 St. Stephen Street, Boston
Date/Time: Saturday, February 16, 2008 from 1:00-4:00PM
VIBUG president Amy Ruell began the meeting at 1:00PM. It was postponed from February 9th, 2008 due to security issues in the building and a work commitment Amy had. The steps up to the building have been fixed.
Our monthly demonstration of a new product took place first, with Leon from AbiSee presenting the iPal, a new product for blind users similar to ZoomEx.
The next meeting will be on March 8, 2008 and will feature a demonstration of System Access To Go by Steve Dresser.
Treasury update: The six-month CD is now in place. Please get dues in to Jim Roberts, Treasurer, ASAP. Amy reiterated the idea of partially funding someone through VIBUG to attend CSUN 2009 and would like to have an end-of-year raffle for this. Expenditure: Amy reported that she had to spend money upgrading JAWS to the current version.
Announcements: Amy attended the ATIA conference in January and found out about at least three new developments: SeraTech's development of SystemAccess; the KNFB Reader on a cell phone and scripting capability for WindowEyes. BlindBargain.com staff did recordings and podcasts related to these products that can be accessed on Access World's website at www.accessibleworld.org and on Main Menu, as well as on BlindBargains.com.
Digital TV update: Sunish Gupta followed up Ed Gilbert's January announcement about digital TV converter boxes. We will need the converter boxes by February 17 2009. FCC's rebate program allows people to buy the boxes and receive rebates good for 90 days after the boxes have been mailed out to customers. Get the rebates by calling 1-888-dtv2009, or try the website: www.dtv2009.gov. Sunish also called up BestBuy, which carries the Insignia brand of converter box for $60 with a $40 mail-in rebate. Ed Gilbert says that the VHF and UHF channels in big cities are now giving digital broadcasting. Jeff Drucker added having found out on the Computer America Radio Show that there was a segment on digital TV; he called in to talk to them about channel-changing inaccessibility, but also found out that a coalition is already complaining to the FCC about the possibility that the SAP channel for DVS won't be accessible once the conversion takes place.
Please sign up on the VIBUG website to receive emails from VIBUG. Amy also announced that as VIBUG president, she receives many requests for help from people conducting research or testing products, four to six times a month. She has not been forwarding them to us because of the number of requests, but will forward them to individuals who might be interested in them. The membership encouraged her to keep filtering them.
Tax Filing Announcements: Dennis Brady announced that he successfully navigated Taxact Standard using JAWS 7. Amy was able to e-file her children's tax returns online with the web interface for TurboTax.
Following the announcements, we held the question-and-answer section of the meeting. The meeting was concluded at 4PM.
Respectfully submitted,
Jennifer Bose, VIBUG Clerk