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…
Leave a CommentThe Idea Place Posts
I enjoy sports but often find myself wanting more details than even the best play-by-play announcer can provide. I find myself wondering if technology could help in the situation. I’ll start by taking football as an example. As most fans of the sport with know you have 22 players on the field at any given time. It would be simply impossible for any announcer to describe the location of all 22 players, let alone what…
Leave a CommentWhen you want to assist someone else with a computer problem on Windows, there are a range of connection options. Some, such as an actual phone call, are easy to establish but difficult to use for this sort of a situation. Others, like Quick Assist, offer the best of all worlds in most cases where establishing the connection is easy and the access you have on the remote computer works quite well. However, Quick Assist…
One CommentSince writing about using virtual machines with a screen reader, I’ve expanded my personal computing environment to include more Macintosh use. As a result, I wanted to offer a few comments on using VMWare Fusion on the Mac. Bill Holton’s excellent article on running Windows on a Mac was an invaluable start for me here. From that article my biggest issue to resolve was how to address use of the Caps Lock key. I took…
Leave a CommentDespite installing as I understand it pretty much all the WordPress security you can, my blog has been hacked multiple times. It reached the point that Google was claiming my site was a security threat. As a result, I’ve opted for now to try a new name with the same old content and hopefully more frequently added new content. I also like the new name better anyway. I like the idea of putting thoughts and…
Leave a CommentAs much as I’m sure anyone familiar with web accessibility doesn’t need yet another example of why alt text matters, as a consumer of web content I certainly am impacted when it is missing. For anyone exploring cutting the cord, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has a handy resource to show you what digital television stations you can receive in your area with an antenna. Navigate to https://www.fcc.gov/media/engineering/dtvmaps and enter an address, city and…
One CommentI’m a big fan of public libraries and the wide range of resources they make available. As a child making stops to my local bookmobile or summer afternoons spent at “Story Time Tree” to hear a fun adventure were two of my favorite activities. As an adult, I make frequent use of the eBook services, databases and other resources libraries make available. OverDrive is as far as I know the largest player in making eBooks…
One CommentAlthough it took a structured negotiation and settlement, at one point MLB seemed like it was turning the corner on improving and sustaining accessibility. Sadly that time seems to have passed, much like a favorite star of yesterday. Most recently, MLB added a simple game to their AT Bat app with a bracket challenge to pick winners in the upcoming Home Run Derby. The problem is for accessibility purposes, MLB used “Player Name” as the…
2 CommentsThere are times when the continued lack of accessibility in basic tasks gets old. Today I wanted to see if my local Staples store carried a product so conducted a product search. Between all the instances of “icon”and “product tile large” on the resulting page, I have absolutely no idea if the product I was searching for is actually available. I could write all about web accessibility standards or why it is important to make your…
Leave a CommentA friend recently invited me to play a scrabble-like online game called Jamble on a service called ItsYourTurn.com (IYT). The service is far from a model of accessibility and I’m hopeful the company will respond to my contact about improving the basic accessibility of the site. Until that happens, I wanted to share some tips and a dictionary file I’ve created for the JAWS screen reader because it does make the game quite playable in…
Leave a Comment