I’ve made passing reference to a podcast I started a little over a year ago in posts here. The home page for the podcast can be found at TPTBNL.com. I wanted to share links for those who might want to subscribe. Subscription links follow:
Leave a CommentCategory: General
Recently I had the opportunity to view a rocket launch. My wife and I were about 13 miles away from NASA’s launchpad at Space View Park in Titusville, Florida.
Here is a bit of audio from the launch. I’m not sure how to add captions directly to this file so a bit of a description follows.
The audio starts with a fair amount of crowd noise. Someone was playing a live webcast of the launch in the background and a few seconds into this recording you can hear the rocket launch from that audio. It was really interesting to note how quickly the crowd grew quiet and remained so for about 90 seconds.
Shortly after you hear the rocket, again from the web cast, someone says, “Wow!” Then you hear a child laugh and then say, “Oh my God, I can see it, fire.”
At about 90 seconds there is some applause from the crowd and just a few seconds after that you hear the rumble of the rocket itself while the webcast plays in the background. The rumble continues for the rest of the recording as crowd noise picks up.
At the distance we were from the launch site, it wasn’t the loudness of the rocket I found striking. It was just the full range of the sound spectrum the sound consumed. If power has a sound, that was an example.
The other interesting thing for me that I really didn’t notice as much during the actual launch was how quiet the crowd became. From all the laughter and chatter just before the launch, things go almost silent, excluding camera clicks, for many seconds.
Experiencing a rocket launch live was a first for me. Even though this flight was crewless, it still makes you think about how we’ve harnessed the technology to escape the gravity and atmosphere of our planet. I can’t help but wish we could find the resolve to do the same for many of the other ills that we impose on ourselves as a race here on our home though.
When I first wrote about using virtual machines with a screen reader, I mentioned that the machine management of VMWare’s Workstation was challenging. VMWare Workstation 16 seems to have corrected the majority of these issues.
The list of virtual machines is now something you can reach with the tab key. Up and down arrow will move to the different machines and a context menu on each machine available with Shift+F10 or the computer’s application shortcut key brings up all the options you’d expect for power, snapshots and more.
In addition, the menubar in the program now reads correctly with multiple screen readers. You can press Alt and hear that the top menu has gained focus and expected behavior with keyboard and screen reading works.
There is still at least one quirk I’ve encountered when using any menus in the program. When you are using the down arrow to move through a list of items on a menu, up arrow does not seem to move in reverse. For example, in the context menu for a virtual machine, there is a list of devices you can make available to the virtual machine. If you move down past one of these devices, you have to arrow down through all the menu choices to get back to what you skipped.
Overall in a couple days of using VMWare Workstation 16, I’ve had success. As I mentioned in my original post here, this is not a free option but with these changes it is one I’m going to be putting back into my virtual machine toolbox.
On the Mac side, VMWare has released Fusion 12. This is a must if you are going to run Apple’s newest update for the Mac OS.
I also believe this is new but there is now an option for a free personal license to use Fusion on the Mac. The license supports the typical non-commercial uses, such as education, personal use, and more. Take note though, signing up for the license requires completion of a captcha challenge that has no audio option. So far VMWare has not responded to a tweet asking about this.
If you do try Fusion on the Mac, I did post about how I resolved the Capslock conflict between VoiceOver and Windows screen readers. My work and personal interests require me to use both Windows and Mac daily so I find this to be a very viable option.
Leave a CommentSan Francisco State University has a position posted for a Web Accessibility Coordinator. According to the announcement,application reviews will start on November 13. The salary for the position is posted as an estimated range of $6,667.00-$6,867.00monthly or $80,004.00-$82,404.00 annually.
Leave a CommentOver the years I’ve used a range of solutions for solving the basic challenge of wanting to experiment with new versions of operating systems, screen readers, applications and more without breaking a working system. From using dedicated test computers, various hard drive imaging solutions, dual booting (running two operating systems on the same machine) and of course using what are known as virtual machines through the various virtual machine technologies available.
The majority of my experience has been running virtual machine technology on Windows to run other windows machines in a virtual environment. Information in this post is therefore limited to that combination. There are viable solutions on other platforms as well.
The goal of this post isn’t to provide a full tutorial on using virtual machines. It is to share a few notes and things I’ve learned in case they are of assistance to others using similar technology in conjunction with a screen reader as a starting point.
For those unfamiliar with what a virtual machine is, think of it as a way to run a second or third computer on an existing computer through a software program. There are many benefits to this including as mentioned the ability to try things out without breaking a working environment.
The three virtual environments I’ve used are Hyper-V, built directly into Windows; VM Player and VM Work Station from VMware and VirtualBox from Oracle.
There is no one perfect virtual machine solution and in my experience each of the three options I’ve explored has strengths and weaknesses.
I have had success using all three of the solutions I’ve mentioned. Each requires you understand what’s necessary to get the virtual machine configured and how to access the machine of course. I do routinely use virtual machines in my environment though and they can be a very helpful tool.
Aside from possibly having to enable the feature, Hyper-V being part of Windows can be very handy and the machine management user experience works well in my experience with screen readers. In general screen reader-friendly tree-view and list-views are used for most controls. Perhaps the biggest limitation is that Hyper-V does not support audio directly until you are able to establish a remote desktop connection to the machine. This means that unless you are skilled at fully unattended operating system install and configuration, there’s a strong possibility you will need assistance in creating the initial virtual machines you want to use.
I have used both the consumer-oriented VM Player and the more enterprise-oriented VM work station over the years. The machine management experience in VM Player works well with screen readers. Again, most controls are screen reader-friendly tree-view and list-views. However, VM Player is limited in some key areas such as the ability to run multiple virtual machines at once or take what are commonly known as snapshots of a virtual machine. Think of a snapshot as a way to capture your virtual machine at a point in time so if something goes wrong or you want to get back to that point, it is as easy as applying that snapshot.
VM Work Station is a full-featured VM solution. However in my experience the machine management part of the program did not work as well with screen readers. Additionally, in my environment I have found more keyboard quirks when switching from a virtual machine back to the main operating system. These are not insurmountable problems and at one point I used VM Work Station with success for several years. In general VM Player is free for individual use while Work Station requires you purchase the software.
Both VM Player and VM Work Station have native support for audio. This means that with the ability starting in Windows 10 to use Microsoft’s Narrator during operating system install, in most cases it is possible to create a virtual machine completely independently.
Whether you use VM Player or Work Station, two important keyboard commands to know are CTRL+g to put keyboard focus into a virtual machine and CTRL+Alt to put keyboard focus back to your host or main machine operating system. In my experience, it has been helpful to press the Control key a couple times alone after using the CTRL+Alt combination to avoid modifier keys seemingly locked when switching back to your host machine.
Oracle’s Virtual Box has been an interesting experience. . The machine management and settings areas of the program are very mixed when used with screen readers. Some items work quite well, such as menus for working with individual machines, while others, such as the experience to modify hotkeys in the program and other machine settings, work poorly at best. Additionally, I’ve found keyboard access when using up and down arrows in a list of virtual machines sometimes jumps out of this list. I’ve taken to ensuring I give each virtual machine a name starting with a unique letter because I know once I am in the list of machines, I can press that letter and ensure I move focus to a specific machine.
As with the VMware products, VirtualBox has support for audio natively. This means that again, fully independent creation and configuration of a virtual machine running Windows 10 is possible.
By default VirtualBox uses the right, and only the right, Control key as what it calls the Host key. Use that key to toggle keyboard access between the virtual machine and your main computer. Use CTRL+Home to access a menu of options related to the running virtual machine and use CTRL+t to take a snapshot of the virtual machine.
VirtualBox also has extensive command line support. Chapter 8 of the user manual has all the details and I find myself largely using this option to work with my virtual machines when using VirtualBox.
VirtualBox has a licensing model that supports both personal use for free and business/enterprise use at a cost. Oracle’s licensing pages have more information.
As mentioned earlier, details here are largely based on a Windows environment. Similar solutions exist on other computing environments, often from the same companies mentioned here. Even on Windows, you are not limited to running just a Windows virtual machine. In fact that is one of the benefits of using virtualization technology.
Virtual machines can be a handy enhancement to a computing environment. There is a bit of learning, especially for the first machine you create and use. Once you’ve crossed that knowledge bridge, creating multiple machines becomes largely as easy as repeating what has been successful in the past.
One CommentI’m someone who enjoys long form journalism and there’s obviously quite the supply online. In fact, there is so much content at times that sifting through it all can be daunting.
One resource I’ve found that has consistently delivered an excellent selection of reading material is called The Sunday Long Read. The two individuals behind the weekly collection do a stellar job at finding interesting material to read.
Sign up on the web site and each Sunday you will receive an email with links to several articles to enjoy. It is that simple and I’m sharing it here because the weekly mail is one I have come to look forward to receiving and thought blog readers might as well.
Leave a CommentAfter several years of using MovableType to run my blog, I’ve decided to kick the electronic tires as it were on a different blogging platform. WordPress seems to offer more of the functionality and ease of use I’m looking for with the level of blogging I do.
Reading through blog archives, I also realize my blogging has really fallen off in the past couple years. Watch for that to change in the new year. As a media consumer I tend to prefer longer writing versus the short bursts of content offered by areas like Twitter and Facebook. These are great mediums for finding such material so I don’t see myself departing from those arenas. But I want to get back into more content creation again.
I’m obviously new to WordPress so if anyone has tips on best practices around accessibility or spam protection in comments feel free to let me know.
The WordPress platform seems to work well with screen readers. The biggest challenge I’ve had is with areas such as adding and removing widgets that seems to require one to drag and drop. So far I’ve had to use advanced screen reader functionality or sighted assistance for these functions.
Leave a CommentFor anyone who likes to try the latest and greatest in software, a beta of Windows 7 is now available. full details with instructions on how to download and more are at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows7.
Whether you try the beta or not, there are at least two excellent resources for learning what’s happening with Windows 7 from people at Microsoft. The Engineering Windows 7 blog and The Windows Blog are resources where extensive info about how Windows7 is evolving is posted.
I’ve used the Windows 7 beta successfully with several screen readers including JAWS, Window-Eyes, System Access, and NVDA. Your mileage may very but I would suggest you run the newest versions of these programs if you do try the beta.
Leave a CommentI read a lot of news coverage but rarely do I read the same article appearing in two different media sources when one is just a reprint of the other. Today I happened to read two versions of an article talking about the impending execution of Saddam Hussein. The original appeared in the Los Angeles Times and the reprint in the Seattle Times.
Sad that the news media does not agree on even two facts that are clearly verifiable. Check out this paragraph from the article and note how the two versions differ on the number of codefendants and the number receiving death sentences.
The Los Angeles Times version:
Hussein was sentenced Nov. 5 to hang for crimes against humanity in connection with the killing of 148 men and boys from the Shiite Muslim town of Dujayl
after an attempt there to assassinate him in 1982. Two of his seven codefendants also received death sentences.
The Seattle Times version:
Leave a CommentSaddam was sentenced Nov. 5 for crimes against humanity in connection with the killing of about 100 men and boys from the Shiite town of Dujail who were suspected of attempting to assassinate him in 1982. Three of his six codefendants also received death sentences.
The daily flood of advertising promising to get you a bigger house, lower your mortgage payment or otherwise basically give you free money astounds me. I counted tonight and in 30 minutes of radio and television I was offered no fewer than 10 different opportunities to lower my mortgage, get cash back and the rest of the wild schemes the mortgage industry has come up with to keep the housing shell game going.
The LA Times has a good example of what a problem many of these quirky mortgages can be. One can only wonder if folks will stop and realize that at some point the shell game does come to an end.
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