Triple-click Home

Listen to Triple-click Home Episode 27: Will You Be My Family?

This month, guest host Allison Hartley joins the Triple-click Home team to discuss the top news stories of the week. In addition to the news, Alena Roberts talks with Tom Green of Somethin’ Else, makers of Papa Sangre, Papa Sangre II and The Nightjar. As always, we include your feedback in the show.

mailbag

From Jenine Stanley:

So, I’m excited about the usability of the MicroWave audio editor for the Mac. I am stuck though on a couple concepts that don’t seem to be covered by the very well done manual. Where might I go to find more info about using this audio editor with Voice Over?

I’m particularly interested in the keyboard commands for selecting text. Everything else looks dandy but that one has me stumped.

Another from Jenine:

Loved the last show, as always but was thinking as I transition to the Mac, that it might be good to have a segment of your show that looks at the practical side of using Apple products. Here’s how it might go.

Let’s say we choose a task, like creating, editing and reading documents. Then we talk about the programs available, which we use and why, and how they might differ for someone coming from the Windows environment. I know you guys sometimes do this anyway but a more structured look might be helpful.

I, for example, am about to take on Pages. I can open a document to read or edit and see the places for headers, footers and body text but then can’t seem to get much further. I know there’s something I’m missing but just don’t know what it is.

Alena does a great job of pointing out things like Text Edit and the 1-page issue which is hugely helpful. Let’s have more of that.

I’m just glad I can finally understand what you all and David Woodbridge are talking about when it comes to Mac OS stuff now. I usually tuned out if it wasn’t IOS.

Keep up the good work.

Finally from Jenine:

I’m testing out a borrowed Macbook Pro and am down to only two major elements keeping me from the switch. I have to test it with my printer, but I see no issues there.

The Macbook is dated 2012 and is running Mavrix latest version.

I currently scan documents using Acrobat Pro for my scanning needs on my Windows7 desktop. Besides Docuscan Plus, are there other programs that work with the Mac?

References I saw on Applevis were no longer available in the app store.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

From Chris Nusbaum:

Hello to the Triple Click Home Team,

As always I very much enjoyed Episode 26 of the podcast. There was a lot of good information and commentary provided and the interview with Shannon Reese was enlightening. You and the whole gang at SPN provide a wonderful service to the blind community and I am very appreciative of it.

I would like to make a few comments and ask a question in response to some of the topics discussed in the most recent podcast. Firstly, I agree with and relate to the frustrations which Jamie and Buddy expressed about the Learning Ally app. The lack of a rewind/fast forward feature does make it inefficient and annoying; indeed, I find it makes reading my textbook take much more time than it should. If I am answering a question which requires information that is at the bottom of a page, I have to listen to everything on the page to get that information.
If I miss what I need once, I have to listen to the entire page yet again. After Jamie suggested this workaround, I downloaded the textbook onto my Victor Reader Stream and am finding that it is much better. Now there is some news on this subject which I would like to share. I called Learning Ally tech support today for an unrelated matter, but also told them about the issues mentioned above with the iOS app. The tech support specialist told me that they had heard this from many users and were adding a 10-second rewind/fast forward feature in the next app update.
The rep did not have a definite release date for the app update, as it is still in the testing stages. She assured me, however, that this improvement can be expected in the near future. This is definitely a sign of progress.

Now onto my question. There was discussion during the podcast about Twitterrific and, more generally, apps which are not compatible with iOS 7. I used and enjoyed Twitterrific on my old iPhone 4S running iOS 6. However, I found that it was not working very well at all when I updated to iOS 7. It would take a long time to load and the app would often crash altogether before it even loaded, kicking me back out to the home screen. I ended up switching from Twitterrific to TweetList when I was asked to handle the live tweeting of the NFB of Maryland convention, partly because of my lack of success with Twitterrific and partly because I found TweetList to work better with multiple accounts. I realize that this was on an iPhone 4s, which did not work very well with iOS 7 anyway. However, I now have an iPhone 5C. So, have you found Twitterrific to work better on the newer iPhone models? Does it load any faster or have better responsiveness with the new iPhones as compared to the 4S? If so, perhaps I will redownload Twitterrific on my 5C and see how it works. I look forward to hearing your feedback on this. Thanks for all you do; keep up the great work.

Blog comment from Jan Blüher:

Hello Triple Click Home Team,

I wondered why Alena cannot see the weather info in notification center although others can, and started a little search. It seems that the location services have to be enabled for the Weather app to make this happen: Settings; Privacy; Location Services. Maybe you try this.

Keep on going with the podcast. It’s a very nice show. I like it.

Blog comment from Chris McKnight:

I share your frustration with the touch screen controls and their inaccessibility to blind people. In particular with regard to home appliances, I agree go see them in the store for yourself and many times you can find them with raised buttons on those smooth front panels, which I was able to do with my new dishwasher and clothes washer/dryer units. I had the same problem with cooking ranges, however, where controls have no tactile buttons. My solution was to give up on any that had dynamic touch screen menu controls (like KitchenAid models), but I did buy a Kenmore model with smooth touch panel controls, but no menus to deal with. The solution? My sighted girlfriend affixed those little adhesive rubber markers right next to the buttons I needed to locate to control the oven, which I can use as landmarks to find the “buttons” I need. The bumpy markers are placed next to, and not on top of, the “buttons” because they are in fact touch sensitive, not pressure sensitive, so I didn’t wan t to obstruct the buttons from detecting my fingertips. This solution has worked for me and I’m able to independently control my new oven, no problem at all.
Great show, guys. Never miss an episode!

From Richard Applegate

If you want the weather summary to appear in your Notification Center, simply go into Setting/Notification Center and enable Today Summary.
You can disable the display of the obnoxious calendar as well.

Odds and Ends

HuffPost Tech – Why you should put down your smartphone and talk to a stranger

Time capsule containing Steve Jobs’ 1983 Apple mouse excavated

Contacting the Team

The Triple-click Home team would love to hear from you. Here is how you can get in touch with them:
Follow Alena Roberts on Twitter
Follow Buddy Brannan on Twitter
Follow John Panarese on Twitter
Follow Triple-click Home on Twitter
Thanks for listening!

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Beth

February 28th, 2014 at 22:00

This is in regard to the topic of starting sighted and blind kids on computers and other devices very early in life. I warn against this. At such a young age, I fear that many kids will mix up virtual reality with real environmental reality. I also imagine they might enjoy virtual stuff much better and thus, supervised exercise and fresh air time will continue to decline. Repetitive stress injury later in life must also be considered. I started Braille in first grade and have been a heavy Braille user ever since and, though I love Braill, I believe that this contributed to my moderate bilateral arm nerve damage, diagnosed much later in life. Also, screen readers are not extremely easy to learn and lots of very young kids may not have the intellectual or emotional tools to undertake this. My feeling is that first grade is the time to slowly start introducing tech for all kids. Another thing: Let’s stop this extreme “Hurry-up” societal mentality, which indicates that we just must stay current all the time with our tech stuff, it’s time to take a few steps back and smell the roses. Beth

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February 28th, 2014 at 22:49

There is absolutely nothing wrong with a TVI reading Braille by sight. If that’s how mine did it, my instruction was stellar and my mom learned Braille by sight and transcribed textbooks for me. Also, keep in mind that teachers will probably tell you you’re nuts, they have so much to do now and so many kids to see and they will say they do not have the time to cultivate finger reading. As for turning VoiceOver off, again, big deal, if something needs fixing, just do it and go on and, again, there is the VoiceOver learning curve, with limited time, according to teachers. Believe me, mainstream teachers complain about work load and time also. Beth

February 28th, 2014 at 23:06

Stop beating up on poor Samantha, she sounds happy, enthusiastic and expressive. I have heard her iPhone voice and it’s even better than the RealSpeak Solo Samantha on Serotek. Beth

February 28th, 2014 at 23:30

This concerns Marco’s article about switching from the Mac back to Windows. The fact that he used the Mac for so long and that he then decided to switch gave his arguments more weight, also the fact that he has been an Apple beta tester. I find interacting a silly idea, why drill down when you just have everything there on Windows? I base this on discussions and listening to many demos. Interacting keystrokes could add up, irritating nerve damage for me and others. Beth

Mat

March 11th, 2014 at 20:16

Well. Yes there are more Mac sales now then use to be, but that don’t mean these people is just using the Mac as a Mac! Lots of them are using the Mac as a dual boot machine that can run both Mac OS and Windows OS on it. Rather than spend the money on two computers people are in this economy is buying one computer to do all. So they spend the money on the Mac and get the best of both worlds with one machine. They might and in most cases is using the windows side on the Mac mostly or all the time. So this is one of the biggest reason for decline in all computers and especially windows PC’s. Also tablets have cut into the market whole lots. As well as smart phones. So I don’t think the market for Mac is growing because of the Mac OS only it is growing because of the fact you can run multiple OS on it , especially Windows! So it makes sense to just get one good computer and put multiple OS on it and use it! Especially with the extremely large hard drives they have now! JMT!