Dear AccessWorld readers,

It has been a busy, action-packed time at AccessWorld and throughout AFB! We just wrapped up with the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) and the Assistive Technology Industry Association Conference (ATIA), and we are now turning full force into the California State University at Northridge Conference (CSUN), which is being held in Anaheim, California for its second year. Look for CSUN conference wrap-up articles in our April issue. AccessWorld is also very proud to, once again, sponsor Blind Bargains’ podcasts from the CSUN exhibit hall.

As the COVID-19 virus impacts our country and dominates the news, the access technology and blindness industries are being impacted as well. The COVID-19 outbreak has prompted many to cancel plans to attend national gatherings and conferences, CSUN 2020 included. We wish CSUN conference organizers and attendees the best in this unprecedented situation, and we will do our best to bring important conference product updates and information to our readers.

Additionally, in response to the COVID-19 virus, after careful consideration and out of an abundance of caution, the American Foundation for the Blind decided to:

• Cancel the in-person elements of the AFB Leadership Conference scheduled for March 25-27, 2020
• Postpone the Helen Keller Achievement Awards Gala until 2021
• Reschedule the Blind Leaders Development Program kickoff within 6 months

Kirk Adams, President and CEO of AFB said:

These are extraordinary circumstances, and the health and safety of our staff, supporters, attendees, and the general public is of the utmost concern. In our role as good stewards and good citizens, AFB is committed to doing all we can to ensure the safety of the public at large as well as those we serve. This decision was not made lightly, and we regret this missed opportunity to connect with AFB Leadership conference attendees in person.

We hope to see all of you next year, in good health, for the 2021 AFB Leadership Conference, as we reconvene at the Hyatt Regency Crystal City, April 14-16, for our centennial celebration, where we will also honor this year’s Helen Keller Achievement Award honorees.

Sincerely,

Lee Huffman

AccessWorld Editor-in-Chief

American Foundation for the Blind

March 2020 Table of Contents

Deborah Kendrick

When I was getting the mail one day, there were the usual couple of manila envelopes, typically holding brailled versions of bank and credit card statements, and one small padded enveloped that grabbed 100 percent of my attention immediately. The reason? There was braille on the outside of the package. Beautiful braille. Perfect braille. I shifted the rest of the mail to my other arm in order to read it.

"Mystic Access," said that braille label, along with an email address and phone number. Somewhat absurdly, I found myself almost wistful that I hadn’t ordered more from Mystic Access, that I didn’t have another package on the way to me with beautiful braille on its outside surface.

Mystic Access: The Company

Good things come in little packages, the song lyric goes, and Mystic Access is, as a company, a very small package with just two staff members, Chris Grabowski and Kim Loftis. Even so, they are rapidly becoming that proverbial big fish in the small pond of technological products and training for people with visual impairments. They succeed because they understand what customers want and what will bring them back.

Maybe you want to work, but aren't attracted to typical workplaces like corporations or universities. Mystic Access is a picture of how two people solved this challenge for themselves. Both self-proclaimed introverts, Grabowski and Loftis not only created their own path to employment, they created the employment itself.

Grabowski lives in Buffalo, NY and Loftis lives in Burnsville, NC. They live hundreds of miles apart, in entirely different geographical environments, but they work together every day, teaching, creating products, and strategizing for their company’s future.

Mystic Access: The Products

Mystic Access has found success, in part, by developing and offering a range of products.

Tutorials

Grabowski and Loftis estimate that about half their time is spent developing audio tutorials. They have formed partnerships with companies like HumanWare, Dolphin, and BlindShell, to write and record audio tutorials for products like the BrailleNote Touch Plus (reviewed in this issue), the Victor Reader Stream, Dolphin Guide Connect and, most recently, BlindShell. If you own one of those products, you are already familiar with the work of Mystic Access, as the voice of Loftis or Grabowski has patiently taught and reviewed with you the features of your technology.

On the Mystic Access website, built and maintained by the company’s own two staff members, both of whom are totally blind, you will find tutorials for a plethora of specialized and mainstream products. Would you like to learn more about voice assistants like Google Home and Amazon’s Alexa? Are you interested in the basic function of an Android smartphone or tablet? Maybe you would like someone to metaphorically hold your hand through the process of moving from one screen reader to another. Have you wondered about products like Roku, Chromebooks, or the little robotic Roomba that can sweep your floor? Loftis and Grabowski love playing with all of these products, breaking down what they discover into manageable modules, and zipping it up as a single recording. All tutorials have DAISY mark-up, so you can navigate easily from one end to the other with your portable book player or an app on your phone. Speaking of apps, they develop tutorials for plenty of those as well!

Physical Hardware

Mystic Access sells a variety of physical hardware, too. If they find a speaker or headset or other piece of technology that interests them, they add it to the product catalog and make it available to their customers. The added Mystic Access bonus feature, of course, is that every product comes with an accompanying audio tutorial. What fun is a new speaker, after all, if you don’t know how to turn it on and use it and the manual is in print? Last year, they partnered with Barry Scheur of Guidelights and Gadgets and have now added some of those products, including a portable power bank for charging on the go, bone conduction headphones, and more. Each of these products, of course, was immediately fine-tuned with a customized tutorial, designed by Mystic Access to accompany each hardware purchase.

Classes and Podcasts and More, Oh My!

Grabowski began distributing podcasts about access technology back in 2007. In 2013, Kim joined him in the virtual recording studio, and Mystic Access was soon officially formed. Today, there are some 200 podcasts available for download from the website, with more coming regularly to your podcast catcher of choice. Although you can’t usually tell from the corny titles (such as "Would you Like a Candy Bar?” or “I Call It the Everything Bag”), the podcasts are a mix of new products the company is selling, new services or products the two have encountered, or announcements of upcoming classes. The classes are a mix of free and paid training. The free sessions, held monthly January through November, run the technological gamut from streaming TV services and audio description to fun sites for conducting your holiday shopping. All become free downloads, so are on the site to be enjoyed by anyone who comes there to browse. Then there are the in-depth online trainings, also on a variety of technological subjects that are held on the Zoom platform. You can join the class with your computer or smartphone or simply by making a call from your landline. Some classes last three weeks and some are longer, but all, when finished, are edited and packaged as a product that can be purchased at any time. If you participate in a class, you get that zipped-up product as a bonus for having paid for the class itself.

Mystic Access: The People

Chris Grabowski and Kim Loftis are two people who are totally blind and who love sharing the journey of using technology with other blind people, and who love making it easy and fun for those who may not be so technologically inclined. The irony is that, in both cases, things didn’t start out that way.

I interviewed Grabowski and Loftis separately and it interested me that each of them described early interactions with technology in the same way. “I came into it kicking and screaming,” was Loftis's’s amused reflection, and Grabowski, similarly, told me of the teacher in high school who tried, in vain, to interest him in computers.

Clearly, each somehow overcame that early disdain. Turns out that the turning point, albeit in schools that were hundreds of miles apart, happened similarly for each.

The teacher for the visually impaired in Grabowski's Buffalo high school showed him the new Braille ‘n Speak one day. She didn’t know how to use it, but she told him to take it home and see if he could figure it out. “It was really a pivotal moment for me,” he recalls, because with the device came a recorded cassette. The calm and encouraging voice of Fred Gissoni, the blind pioneer who was a consummate teacher and distributor of knowledge, introduced that little Braille ‘n Speak to a teenager who hated computers. For the first time, Grabowski could learn all about a product on his own, without anyone else in the room. He learned it and loved it!

“I ate that thing up,” he says. “When I took it back to school, I knew everything about it.” That was 1989.

Although Loftis was only 11 years old when she had her similarly enlightening moment, for her it was the Braille ‘n Speak 640, a sibling of that original Braille ‘n Speak, that captured her heart.

She carried it everywhere, wrote stories and poems in it, and like Chris, knew everything there was to know about using this remarkable device.

Eventually, each of them would come to appreciate and value computers The both fell in love with the original BrailleNote, introduced by HumanWare in 2000. They came to that product, however, by completely different paths.

He’s Chris

Now in his late 40s, Grabowski remembers that he always had difficulty seeing when he was young, but could read the large print in his schoolbooks and read the smaller print under his CCTV. Then, one day near the end of his fourth grade year, the book on his desk that had appeared perfectly clear only a day ago, was now impossible for him to see. The substitute teacher thought he was playing a prank, but his parents had him at the hospital the next day.

Glaucoma was the explanation and braille lessons would soon begin. By the time he was out of school and working, Grabowski was totally blind.

As a senior in high school, Grabowski worked as a paid intern for a Buffalo assistive technology center. He had held summer jobs there before, and would continue in that job, teaching and testing technology products, for another 15 years.

In 2006, an opportunity he still considers serendipitous and magical came his way. At the university of Buffalo where he was teaching others to use technology, it was in the natural course of events that Grabowskie would become acquainted with the HumanWare BrailleNote. He wasn’t and still isn’t much of a braille reader. What captivated him was the Sendero GPS. Long before GPS receivers were in every car in America, Sendero and HumanWare put them in the hands of blind people. Chris was completely smitten and was soon participating in the Sendero adventures called Way Fun. Arriving in San Francisco for the first time, Grabowski was asked by Sendero CEO Mike May to meet and escort three other blind people from the airport to a train and yet another train to join the rest of the Way Fun group in the city. A new city, a new experience, but thrilled by the challenge, Chris led the party with style on what he would later recognize as his job interview. He left the University of Buffalo and worked for Sendero for the next seven years. There was plenty of travel to interesting destinations, but most of his time was spent providing technical support to Sendero customers. He loved the mix of routine and adventure.

In 2013, when iPhones were overshadowing the allure of GPS on BrailleNotes, Chris and Sendero regretfully parted ways.

Mystic Access was launched by then, but Chris says he really didn’t do much with it until 2015.

His first tutorials were for Sense Navigation and the Sendero Maps, logical progressions from the GPS-related work he had been doing. He did tech support for GW Micro and other assistive technology companies for a time on a contract basis and was following conversations on various access technology related email lists.

She’s Kim

For Kim Loftis, braille was a key element in her world for as long as she can remember. Born three months early and weighing in at a whopping 1 pound, 10 ounces, Loftis's parents felt fortunate that all of the possible outcomes of the excessive oxygen their baby received never materialized. Their daughter was completely blind, but she had no other disabilities. She was a feisty, healthy kid. Like Grabowski, Loftis attended public school, where she was actively involved in everything from theater productions and marching band to hanging out with other smart kids in her academically gifted class and creative writing society.

Her mom learned enough braille to help her daughter learn to read, and Loftis remembers as early as age three finding braille labels on everything important to her, starting with her toy piano.

She read her textbooks, when possible, in braille, and used braille music some of the time for her lessons in piano and trombone. At her small college, not far from home, she majored first in music, then extended her time for a psychology degree, thinking that might lead to employment. But attending so much more school started to seem daunting so she opted instead to set up business as a life coach for a while.

When she was ready in her mid-twenties to get out of her parents’ home, she had a house waiting. Her grandfather had given her a little house when she was only a teenager and, although she rented it out for a while, Loftis ultimately made it her home.

Although she never pursued a career in music or theater, you can hear that early training in her teaching and encouragement on the Mystic Access tutorials. You can also hear remnants of her life coaching days as she gently cheerleads her students through difficult concepts.

Grabowski and Loftis met online when Loftis was looking to buy a second-hand braille embosser. One thing led to another and one day, Grabowski asked her what she thought of developing a tutorial for the Victor Reader Stream.

They both clearly recall that her initial reaction was, “Why?” She had figured out how to use the device easily enough. But when she discovered that a tutorial wasn't available, the two gave the project a try.

They introduced the news of that Victor Stream tutorial on a Tek Talk teleconference program in May 2015, and the two have been full steam ahead with Mystic Access ever since.

That first tutorial was such a success that HumanWare approached them to develop a tutorial for the first BrailleNote Touch. From there it was the Brailliant BI-14 and the Touch Plus. Other companies soon followed. Most recently, they completed a tutorial for the BlindShell mobile phone, which will be distributed for free to every BlindShell customer.

While Mystic Access has not made Grabowski and Loftis wealthy yet, they are doing well and constantly developing new ideas. They have written books together for National Braille Press, have provided group and one-on-one training throughout the blind and low vision community, and keep those entertaining podcasts and monthly free online sessions coming.

Lessons Learned and Next Steps

Grabowski and Loftis both use much of the technology they teach and talk about. Grabowski says his daily companions include Google Home and Amazon Echo, his iPhone, his PC, and many other devices including several in the home automation arena. He uses his voice to turn on the lights or lock the doors and he installs all these tools and toys himself. Loftis says her iPhone and BrailleNote Touch Plus are her constant companions, and she spends as much time as she can making music on her favorite keyboard. Lots of other tools and toys, including Apple Watch, her laptop, and some voice assistants keep things in her little rural cottage lively.

They both love what they do and look forward to growth.

Grabowski advises others interested in building their own employment to develop their brand and build or have someone build a website. Sometimes, as Loftis puts it, there’s too much time on the hamster wheel, working nonstop, so it’s important to remember to take time for fun and pleasure. Grabowski expressed similar sentiments, saying, “It’s important to know when to shut it all off and just read or get together with a few good friends."

Eventually, they hope to have more members on the Mystic Access team, but for now, they are just loving sharing what they know, encouraging others on the technological journey. The company motto is “Where the Magic is in Learning." Grabowski and Loftis have found their personal employment magic and are assisting countless other blind people to have fun while learning.

Loftis says it is just so gratifying to know that they are creating materials that are actually going out into the world and benefitting people. It is, after all, those little touches, knowing what customers really want—like a braille label on a merchandise package—that makes a business work.

Find out more about Mystic Access, download information and podcasts, or browse products at the Mystic Access website, or call 716-543-3323, or write Chris@mysticaccess.com or Kim@mysticaccess.com.

This article is made possible in part by generous funding from the James H. and Alice Teubert Charitable Trust, Huntington, West Virginia.

Comment on this article.

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• An Interview with Kelly Egan, Customer Relations Manager for the Sprint Corporation by Deborah Kendrick

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• Petr Kucheryavyy, Senior Manager, Accessibility, Charter Communications

March 2020 Table of Contents

Janet Ingber

Ramona Rice is a very outspoken disability rights advocate who lives in Utah near her children and grandchildren. “I am always banter-teasing with a smile on my face. I am most joyous with my Golden Retriever, Stormy, at my side,” she says. Rice has a condition called Usher Syndrome type 2.

According to the National Eye Institute:

Children with type 2 Usher syndrome are born with moderate to severe hearing loss but normal balance. Although the severity of hearing loss varies, most children with type 2 Usher syndrome can communicate orally and benefit from hearing aids. RP (retinitis pigmentosa) is usually diagnosed during late adolescence in people with type 2 Usher syndrome.

Additional information is available on the National Eye Institute’s website.

Rice says, “I should have been diagnosed around 12 years old, but wasn’t until I was 38, with retinitis pigmentosa, then at 42 with Usher Syndrome type 2.” She currently has about five degrees of tunnel vision in both eyes. Rice’s children were in their teens when she was diagnosed; she always chose to communicate verbally with them and never used sign language.

When asked whether her hearing has gotten worse over the years, she explained:

Yes and no. No, it really hasn’t deteriorated but with the loss of my vision, it affected my hearing. For example, I read lips all my life and would make sounds of the words in my head as I read lips. As my vision worsened, I couldn’t read lips. Therefore, I couldn’t make out the words’ sound in my head. So with a newly advanced hearing technology, Oticon, I am able to hear very well but only through the Bluetooth to my hearing aids from devices like the phone, computer, TV, and radio. But to use the Oticon microphone to listen to people —it’s terrible without bass in it—it’s hard for me to make out their words.

Childhood

While growing up, Rice had many friends in the deaf community and communicated with them via sign language. She was verbal with family but had a speech impediment. In 8th grade, Rice moved to a new city. There was no one to sign with so she went to speech therapy. She says, “I made new friends but it wasn’t the same like with my deaf friends. In high school, from loneliness, I ran track and field and did well.” She is still in touch with her track coach.

In college, Rice had difficulties. She explained, “Due to my then-unknown condition of Usher Syndrome type 2, I struggled in colleges without any adaptive technologies or assistance available. I attended Utah Community College in an Applied Technology program. I attended several more colleges to obtain a degree but without any available resources, I was short-changed. I applaud all deafblind students completing their career goals with the help of available resources provided for them.”

Employment

Rice had her first job at age 12. Her employment history includes working at a nursing home, as a physical therapy aide, and as an executive secretary. Rice worked for a retail company for 7 years. She describes the position this way: “There were three departments in one company. I was asked by District and Regional Managers to help them with inventory loss, auditing, etc.”

Her last job was as an assistant vice president at a bank. Her responsibilities were sales, service, and operations. By 2002, her vision had deteriorated and she was making too many mistakes. That is when she stopped working and applied for SSDI. She says her position at the bank was her favorite job.

Technology

In 2002, Rice got her first piece of assistive technology: ZoomText. As AccessWorld readers most likely know, ZoomText is a screen magnifier from Vispero which enlarges what is on the screen. She uses it now, but she did not originally want to use the program.

Currently, she uses ZoomText with her Windows laptop. With her Apple products (iPhone, iPad, and iMac), she uses Zoom and VoiceOver. She explains, “Being deafblind— I never know which senses will be a challenge for me on any given day. So I use ZoomText and VoiceOver.”

After Working

Her vision loss might have affected her work, but it did not affect her spirit. She says, “To this day, I miss working and interacting with the public. So, I turned my passion towards nonprofit work to assist people and animals.” She continues:

Before I share my work, there is a backstory to why I do what I do these days. Being born hard of hearing, and without any support system from my family or schools that I attended, I would work two or three times harder than anyone else— just so I could feel that I was in their "league" as a normal child than as a "deaf and dumb"child. Fast forward:I am a firm believer in using my multi-tasking skills and more to help as many people and animals as I could.

Rice works on more than one project at a time, planning four months ahead. She lists five children's books, a proclamation for US military veterans, an anthology book, and assisting Freedom Fidos with a business plan as current projects.

This past year, Rice developed Non-Profit Advocacy in order to collaborate with different non-profit organizations. The purpose is to create awareness and increase fundraising for them. “It is not a registered/filed non-profit organization," she explains, "because I work in many states for different non-profit organizations.”

This year, she asked Governor Kemp of Georgia to proclaim Service Dogs for Veterans Awareness Week on behalf of Freedom Fidos’ work to help veterans receive a working service dog.

With the help of veteran leaders, Rice wants to convince every state to proclaim/declare a Service Dogs for Veterans Awareness Week. She wants businesses to be aware of the importance of giving access to our military heroes and their working dogs. “My goal is to get as many veteran leaders in each state to collaborate with me to create a declaration/proclamation and ask for their state governor to support and sign the document. Each state has a rule whether they rather declare temporarily or proclaim permanently.”

Rice’s many accomplishments include:

1. Created a book, Walk in My Shoes: An Anthology on Usher Syndrome. Proceeds donated to Usher Syndrome Coalition. This work is a compilation of true stories from various contributors.
2. Created a book, Walk in My Paws - An Anthology: Working Service Dogs, to support Freedom Fidos. Also a compilation of true stories from various contributors, including from this author. All proceeds go to Freedom Fidos.
3. Sanderson Deaf Center. Rice assisted with their building upgrades, ASL program, and more.
4. Created the Deaf-blind Advocacy of Utah committee. “I worked closely with Utah deafblind specialists to locate many deafblind individuals to receive appropriate resources,” Rice explains.
5. Planned a 2-day training conference in Park City, Utah, for the Utah Council for the Blind.

Rice is particularly proud of being able to collaborate with many non-profit organizations to create awareness around a range of disabilities and "to fight for access rights in transportation, housing, businesses, and hospitals for working service dogs and their handlers." Rice has no plans to slow down, saying:

I am who I am because of my past and present. I feel that as a deafblind person, I must do more to even be on the same wavelength mentally, physically, and socially with people who are not disabled. It sounds ridiculous, I know. So everything I have done— I still feel very unfulfilled. That is why I am constantly looking to do more. Stupid, I know. I should do R and R at my age.

Books

Walk in My Paws is currently available in regular print, large print, and Kindle from Amazon It is currently in production for NLS Bard.

Walk in My Shoes is available from NLS BARD and regular and large print and Kindle from Amazon.

This article is made possible in part by generous funding from the James H. and Alice Teubert Charitable Trust, Huntington, West Virginia.

Comment on this article.

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• An Interview with Michael Hingson, CEO of the Do More Foundation by Deborah Kendrick

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March 2020 Table of Contents

Bill Holton

These days we are devoting an increasing amount of screen time to our smartphones and tablets. But for many of us, the good old fashioned desktop or notebook computer still plays an integral part in our accessible, connected lifestyle. We may use iPhone apps to check social media and to shop, but for many of us, riding a keyboard is still the best way to create and edit documents or surf the Web. With that in mind, in this review we’ll focus on the latter of these tasks: accessible Web browsing.

To surf the Web on a Windows PC you’ll need a browser. The most popular option is the Chrome browser from Google, and in this article we’ll take a look at a new e-offering, Get Cracking with Chrome for Windows, from Dean Martineau, author of Flying Blind’s must-read Top Tech Tidbits newsletter.

What You Get

This is Martineau’s second offering. We reviewed Martineau's first offering, Windows Keyboard Power User Guide in the October 2019 issue of AccessWorld. We use the term “offering” because it is available not just as an eBook, and not just as an audio tutorial, but as either or both.

After all, we all have our preferred learning styles. Some of us like to follow along with an audio presentation or demonstration. Others prefer to delve into written text, either via speech or going hands-on with braille. So as with the previous tutorial, Get Cracking with Chrome for Windows is available in both a 15,000-word MS Word document, and as a three-hour-plus audio MP3 presentation that follows the text chapter by chapter with demonstrations and a few asides. There is also a combo pack that includes both.

As with Martineau’s previous work, I was offered access to both formats. I doubled up on the first two chapters, using JAWS to review the text and then my iPhone to listen. After that I alternated back and forth. The learning experience was more or less equivalent using either format, however if there was something I wished to reread, or a minor point I wanted to refer back to, I found the Word document easier to search and navigate.

What You Learn

I feel it’s necessary to begin this section by describing what you will not learn in this tutorial. The author presumes a working knowledge of your screen reader of choice. As such, he does not detail the use of quick navigation keys or other screen reader browsing capabilities, other than the NVDA commands he uses to demonstrate browser features in the audio tutorial. For detailed screen reader help you will have to wait for the second book in his Web Browsing Instruction series, tentatively entitled Web Browsing with JAWS.

So, if not primarily for beginning access users, at whom, exactly, is this book aimed? The potential audience is threefold. First, and perhaps the largest, is the population of screen reader users who have been using access technology so long they still default to IE and are reluctant to change—despite all the warnings that the browser is outdated and insecure. Many of these warnings come from Microsoft itself. The second potential audience for this book is users of Firefox and other minority-share browsers who have discovered that a single browser isn’t enough. Sometimes pages and other Web features that do not render accessibly using one browser display much more effectively with another. Here, Martineau is absolutely correct when he opines that for best access, the sight impaired computer user needs to learn at least two screen readers and be able to operate at least two different browsers.

Last, but certainly not least, are those who wish to take a deep dive into their current browser of choice and discover new features or new ways to use the ones they already know, and perhaps learn a trick or two that can save them time or enable them to accomplish new tasks.

You can check out the *Get Cracking with Chrome for Windows Table Of Contents on the Tech for the Blind website. You will find a fairly standard list of topics to be discussed, including:

• Laying some Groundwork
• Launching and Closing Chrome
• The Menu, the Toolbar and the Context Menus
• Privacy Settings

At first glance these topics seem rather pedestrian and rudimentary. However they encompass a great deal of more-advanced topics. In fact, I fear the author has done himself a disservice by not including subheadings in his Table of Contents. Let's take a look at just a few of the advanced topics you'll learn about in this tutorial.

In-Browser Navigation

You probably already know the standard way to navigate from page to page, and from tab to tab. But how many times do you find yourself wanting to return to your immediately previous tab, only to wind up in a loop of CTRL or Alt-Tab? Martineau shows how, with just a bit of planning, you can hotkey navigate to any open page you wish, or toggle easily back and forth between your current and previous tab.

Tired of returning to that search results page to check out the next item? It’s easy to open multiple pages from the search, or any other page, and then navigate your way through them. Here, Martineau also explains the difference between opening a new page, a new tab, and a new window. Separate windows can be quite handy, if, say, you are working on two different projects. You can even save the collection of tabs so they can be reopened the next time you launch Chrome. And if you accidently close a tab or window, Martineau has you covered on this, too. You can easily reopen that page after pressing Alt + F4.

Searching

Most of us think there’s nothing easier than conducting a Web search. Simply plug your terms into Google and press Enter. But what if you would prefer not to use Google, a browser that tracks and compiles all of your search data? Or maybe you’d just like to test out a different search engine, such as DuckDuckGo, which does not track your search data.

Have you ever heard of DuckDuckGo’s “!” “Bang/exclamation” search operator? The service has a long and growing list of search codes for different sites, such as Amazon, Yahoo News, Bookshare, and even Google. Martineau demonstrates how you can use these codes to perform a quick search limited to data from a single source. You can even create and save a search that will automatically return to a website and repeat a search with a different subject. For example, he takes you through the steps necessary to create an easy-to-run search that will reach out to Bookshare, search for books with your choice of key words in the annotation, and then present the list in the order of their copyright dates.

Google Reader View

Mac and Firefox for Windows users are probably already familiar with Reader View. When invoked, this feature removes a lot of the extraneous links and other data that make reading some webpages a genuine pain. Google’s version of this feature is called “Toggle Distilled Page,” and Martineau devotes a brief chapter to its setup and use. Unfortunately this feature seems to have gone temporarily missing. When I inquired about this I was told: “While the 'Toggle distill page contents' option isn't available in Chrome version 78 or 79, it is available in the Chrome Dev browser (version 80 and 81). If you don't want to wait for those versions to release you can download the Chrome Dev browser here."

In the meantime, Martineau describes how to use a Google extension called Mercury Reader to get you through this rough patch. He also introduces the reader to several other extensions, and describes how to locate, install and configure keyboard shortcuts for them.

Recommendations

New screen reader users may feel more than a little intimidated trying to follow along. For them I would recommend a tutorial about browsing with a screen reader, such as “Using the Google Chrome Browser with JAWS or NVDA" from the National Council for the Blind Ireland. You may also choose to wait for Martineau’s next book, which, judging by the brief interval between the release of this and his last tutorial, may already be available if you are reading this article via the AccessWorld archives.

Those who wish to learn to use a second browser, or who would like to move from IE to Chrome, will find a wealth of useful information in this book. The material covered in both Word and audio formats is largely the same, so choose your format and “get cracking with Chrome.”

Where to Buy

Get Cracking with Chrome for Windows, by Dean Martineau, is available from Tech for the Blind in two formats:

• MS Word Edition: $15
• Interactive MP3 Edition: $15
• Combo Pack containing both editions: $25

This article is made possible in part by generous funding from the James H. and Alice Teubert Charitable Trust, Huntington, West Virginia.

Comment on this article.

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• Book Review: Windows Keyboard Power User Guide, by Dean Martineau by Bill Holton
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March 2020 Table of Contents

Steve Kelley

Sometimes the world of low vision seems like it's full of gadgets you need to keep handy to get the job done, whatever the job happens to be. You might need to carry a tablet or notebook computer, a handheld video magnifier for small print on paper, a monocular if you’re going to a lecture or need distance viewing. Whether you’re working, going to school, or just doing a little work at home, all those gadgets can add up. What if all that functionality came in one portable package—wouldn’t that be great?

The MATT Connect portable video magnifier is a solid contender for that all-in-one, truly portable, low vision device you’ve been dreaming about. The MATT Connect partners, HumanWare and the American Printing House for the Blind (APH), took the HumanWare Connect 12, and added some APH software in order to make it a portable video magnifier hybrid that combines productivity apps, video magnification with text-to- speech, and ready access to Android apps.

Out of the box, the MATT Connect is a 12- inch Android tablet paired with a very sturdy stand that folds flat with the tablet in it. The stand has a handle on it and is easily carried in the folded stand. A camera for distance viewing connects to the stand with a gooseneck arm so it can be moved wherever you need to point it for distance viewing. A sturdy carrying case, and the USB cables needed for the tablet and camera, complete the package.

The Android tablet that powers the MATT Connect is HumanWare’s model Prodigy Connect 12 running Android Marshmallow. The tablet offers 3.9 gigs of storage and weighs 1.4 pounds without the stand. When mounted in the stand, the right side of the tablet has, from back to front, a micro-SD card slot, a USB-C port, a recharge port, a micro-HDMI port, a headphone jack, and a speaker. A second speaker is located on the left side of the tablet near the front corner. On the front right corner are, left to right, the volume down and up rocker and the power button.

The docking stand unfolds to support the Connect 12 tablet to make a portable video magnifier. With the stand open, the tablet may be positioned parallel to the base of the stand or tilted for more comfortable viewing. The base of the stand is polished and provides a good surface for positioning any kind of reading material beneath the tablet’s camera.

Main Carousel

It takes the Connect 12 about 30 seconds to initialize the Prodigi software that runs over the Android operating system. Once initialized, the “Main Carousel,” or menu, opens on the screen with the “Magnifier” menu icon in the center of the screen. The Main Carousel is a series of nine icons with a large print label beneath each. Swiping a finger left or right on the screen centers the different menu items on the screen. Touching the icon opens the app it represents. Other top level icons include: Calculator; Books; Distance; Notes; APH; Magnifier; Gallery; Settings; and Help.

The Main Carousel with its large- print icons simplifies the standard Android applications and makes a great user interface for the newcomer to assistive technology, or someone intimidated by a greater number of menu options. Prodigi allows you to limit the features available, by choosing Basic, Standard, or Advanced. From the Settings icon, choose the first menu item, User Interface, and select one of the three settings. In the Basic interface, the MATT Connect functions as a video magnifier, with contrast, color modes, and magnification to enhance the image. The Standard mode includes video magnification and enables both optical character recognition (OCR) and saving images to the Gallery. At this interface level documents can be read with text to speech in one of two voices, the female voice Heather, or the male voice Ryan. It is only in the Advanced user interface that you can go back and forth between the Prodigi interface and the Android operating system.

The User Interface menu is also where adjustments can be made to the appearance of the Prodigi system. The sans serif font size throughout the Prodigi menus appears unchangeable at 5M. In the User Interface menu, other features may be changed, such as Screen Brightness, Colors, Locator Color, and System Language. The Colors selection offers 17 color combinations for text and background colors. The Locator is a single line rectangle that highlights a menu item, and can be changed to any one of seven high- contrast colors. It’s worth noting that the Locator seems to be positioned centrally across the screen. The Locator does not move, the menu items are moved by dragging a finger up or down across the screen into and out of the Locator. As these settings are changed, the display changes as well, so it is easy to select the appearance that works best for you.

Text-to-speech is off by default, but can be turned on from the Settings menu. Select the Audio menu to find the toggle. Speech Rate is also located in the Audio menu along with several other audio settings. There are four settings in Speech Rate, ranging from Slow to Very Fast. The two voices for text- to- speech are not listed in the Audio settings, but rather in About, the last item in the Settings menu. Both Ryan and Heather are listed in the Voices menu, but Ryan seems only available to read text from documents.

Magnifier

The Magnifier app, like the other Prodigi apps, is opened by touching or tapping the icon. A context- specific menu appears across the bottom of the display, called Banner Buttons. Unlike the Main Carousel, the context menu icons do not have large- print labels, but the button icons are intuitive. It’s worth noting that these buttons are not read by the Prodigi text-to-speech.

From the Magnifier menu, an up arrow button and down arrow button will increase or decrease the magnification of a document placed beneath the camera. At the highest magnification, a 7- letter word in newspaper print will fill the screen. At this level of magnification, however, there is some pixelation, although this doesn’t appear until the very highest magnification levels. Lower magnification levels are very sharp. Opening the Magnifier Settings button reveals color and contrast settings, brightness, focus, and more Magnification app settings. The contrast and color settings enable both positive and negative contrast with 17 different color combinations, so there is a wide range of viewing options. To read the document with text-to-speech, select the camera button from the Magnifier menu. A picture is taken of the document, and processed within seconds. The Banner Buttons at the bottom of the screen change with a Play/Pause button in the center of the menu options. Pressing Play starts text-to-speech reading with words highlighted on the screen as they are read. Text automatically scrolls from bottom to top as it is read. Magnification can be increased or decreased, color and contrast changed as need, and the voice settings can be changed by opening the Settings button.

When using the camera to process OCR, an 8.5-inch by 11-inch document can be completely processed by placing the document beneath the tablet sideways, or in landscape mode, with lowest magnification, or in “full page” mode. Taking a picture of the document magnified will process only that portion of the document being viewed, so it is important to reduce the magnification to process a full page of text.

Gallery

Once a picture is taken of a document, it can be saved in the Gallery, which is also found in the Main Carousel. Once the camera processes an image, the Banner Buttons include a Save icon, just to the left of the Play/Pause icon. The Save button looks like a floppy disk with a pen on it. Touch Save and the processed document is saved to the Gallery.

Saved documents can be opened by selecting the Gallery from the Main Carousel. Documents can be edited using the Edit menu, which appears as an icon of a pen with a squiggly line beneath it. The Edit submenu includes highlighting, drawing or text tools, and a color palette. Selecting the text icon, a “T,” will not immediately produce a keyboard. A long press on the screen brings up the on-screen keyboard. Some users may want to pair an external keyboard for text input, because the virtual keyboard letters are in high contrast, but small. There is also a microphone icon for speech dictation. Text-to-speech needs to be off when dictating because the speech playback of dictated words is added to the dictation! All edits are automatically saved to the Gallery when pressing the Back button.

Distance Viewing

One of the most innovative features of the MATT Connect is the WiFi wide-angle Kodak camera that comes with the unit. The camera is rechargeable via USB, and mounts on a sturdy flexible arm so it can be easily moved in nearly any direction. With the tablet’s WiFi turned on, the camera connects to the tablet’s WIFI as soon as the camera is turned on. Choosing Distance from the Main Carousel enables the view through this external camera. Like the Magnifier view, magnification may be increased or decreased as needed, positive or negative contrast added, and foreground and background colors changed. An image of the distance view can also be captured and saved to the Gallery. In Distance View, a carrot appears on the left side of the display, which enables a split-screen view, perfect for situations that require both a view of a distant lecture or whiteboard and a document in the Magnifier window at the same time. Touching either of the split-screen views opens that view to full screen, so it’s easy to alternate between views.

Notes

The Notes app is a convenient way to type a note or use a finger or stylus to write a note freehand on the screen. Select the Notes icon from the Main Carousel and a list of saved notes appears. Select the “+” button in the upper right corner of the screen to open a menu with “Create new note,” as the first menu item. The new note display opens with the same set of Banner Buttons that appears in the Gallery editing screen. Just press the button with the pen and squiggly line to open the editing tools: text, freehand, or highlight,

Notes can be managed and deleted from the list of notes by long-pressing a note to bring up an Action Menu. From this menu, notes can be shared by email, Dropbox, or Google Drive as PDF documents or JPG files, and can be renamed and organized into Categories.

Calculator

The Calculator app offers three modes: Standard, Scientific, and Graphing. Calculator Mode is the first menu item the list on the Calculator Setting menu. When the Scientific mode is selected, scientific features are displayed when the key showing a left and right arrow, beneath the “2” button, is pressed. This same key in the Graphing Mode appears beneath the “1” key and provides additional functions for graphing. Solutions are plotted on a graph with increased or decreased magnification available from the Banner Buttons below the graph.

Books

Books is a dedicated Bookshare app where books and periodicals can be downloaded and read. The Bookshare username and password are input in the Settings menu for the initial login. Books can be searched for by title or author, or browsed alphabetically or by category. Downloaded books and periodicals are stored in “My Library,” the first menu item in the Settings menu.

The reading interface is very much like that for reading from the Magnification menu described earlier. Once a title is selected, the Settings menu on the Banner Buttons includes Speech, Font Size, Color, and Contrast, and several other settings specifically for reading. The Font Size includes eight settings, from Small to Maximum, in either Bold, or Regular style. In addition to these settings, the Banner Buttons include the “+” or “-“ to increase or decrease magnification. With the font size set to Maximum, and the magnification at the highest level, the display shows two lines of 16M text, or about 12 letters per line. When Play/Pause is selected, the text scrolls from bottom to top and is highlighted as the words are read. For the visual reader with low vision, this is really a very versatile reading interface with lots of viewing options.

APH Toolbox

Books is not the only reading app on the MATT Connect. Open the APH icon from the Main Carousel to find fourteen additional apps, including BARD Mobile, Learning Ally, and Amazon Kindle. All of the applications in this menu appear to open from the Android operating system. Several of the apps, including BARD, open in portrait mode, which requires turning the whole device to a portrait orientation, or using the app sideways! If the tablet is being used alone, without the stand, this is not a problem, but if it is secured in the stand, this is clumsy. Note that there is a rotation control app detailed in the Manufacturer Comments that will allow a user to rotate the orientation of an app. Apps preloaded in the APH menu, include:

• Nearby Explorer Online
• Lockdown Pro
• Dropbox
• Word
• Excel
• Powerpoint
• Interpreter
• Snap Type
• Splashtop Classroom
• WordWall
• Ball Tapper

Fortunately, the productivity apps all opened in landscape orientation. In the Settings menu for the APH Toolbox app, other apps may be included (such as Chrome and Sound Recorder among others). To simplify, you can remove the default apps from the menu list, to keep it simpler, if desired. For the user accustomed to the Prodigi system navigation used elsewhere from the Main Carousel, opening and closing apps from the Android Home and Back buttons on the bottom of the display may be a bit confusing at first. Before magnification or text-to-speech can be used on the apps that open from the APH menu, these accessibility options need to be turned on from the Android Settings menu.

Help

The last menu item from the Main Carousel is the Help icon. Two menu items are available from Help, YouTube Tutorials, and Feedback. Feedback is a contact form asking users about their experience with the MATT Connect. YouTube Tutorials contains two menu items, MATT Connect, and Webinars. Both menu items open a channel of APH YouTube from the Android system. The tutorials are comprehensive, but navigating into the Android operating system to find help may not be the intuitive for the new user. It’s a disappointment not to find, at the very least, a digital copy of the Getting Started Guide, or the MATT Connect User Guide. A large-print copy comes with the MATT Connect, and it seems an oversight not to include this in either the Help menu, or as one of the Notes files. The MATT Connect User Guide is available to download from the APH website.

The Bottom Line

The MATT Connect is an innovative all-in-one portable device that combines great video magnifier flexibility with serious productivity features. Although APH clearly developed the MATT Connect with students in mind, it’s easy to see that these same features are just as useful in a work or leisure setting. The Distance View camera, for example, is certainly perfect for a classroom, and just as great for identifying birds at an outdoor feeder, or for working on a craft project that requires magnification from a flexible camera. Moving in and out of the Prodigi and Android operating systems may be challenging for the newcomer, but Prodigi menus are stable and pretty consistent throughout, so this is something the new user can learn quickly. At $2,995.00, the MATT Connect has the features of a desktop video magnifier, plus many more productivity features, in a more portable unit. The MATT Connect is certainly near the top of the list for that portable all-in-one that many of us have been looking for.

Manufacturer’s Comments

The American Printing House for the Blind (APH) would like to thank AccessWorld for reviewing the MAT Connect and providing the article for our comments.

We would like AccessWorld readers to know that in the APH Toolbox there is a Screen Rotation Control app that can be added to the list of apps in the toolbox that rotates the app’s screen orientation. For example, BARD mobile opens in portrait view. Select the Screen Rotation Control app, press the landscape option,  then open the BARD application again and it will open in landscape view. This allows the option of keeping the tablet in the stand. To help prevent damage to the tablet, there is an option to lock the tablet in place securely to the stand.  Using the included screw and mini screwdriver, you have the option to screw the tablet in place or simply do not assemble the screw, to have the option of removing the tablet as needed. APH offers a skills checklist on our website. This checklist is available for instructors to use with students learning to use the MATT Connect. It is updated when new features and updates are released, to help teachers show student progress as they learn new  features of the device.

The smart tablet magnifier is a tool we feel particularly excited about watching evolve at APH, because we know how important it is for employability that the technology skills of students grow. While they are using the MATT Connect as a tool to magnify schoolwork, students are also learning valuable tech skills, and improving on them every day. We’ve seen even 5- and 6-year old’s work in the advanced mode of the device.

APH recently conducted a multi-month study of how students are using MATT Connect in their schoolwork and teachers in their classroom and shared that with teachers and access technologists in a workshop, to think through the design of the next generation smart tablet magnifier. APH is thinking ahead to the needs of the student and user of the future, and until that new device is developed, the MATT Connect will continue to receive software upgrades about twice a year to stay relevant and useful.

This article is made possible in part by generous funding from the James H. and Alice Teubert Charitable Trust, Huntington, West Virginia.

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March 2020 Table of Contents

Deborah Kendrick

In the November 2000 issue of AccessWorld (yes, you read that correctly), Jay Leventhal and I evaluated an astonishing new product from a company called HumanWare: The First Accessible Windows-Based Notetaker: A Review of the Braille Note. At the time there was only one notetaking product on the market that offered both speech and braille and this new kid on the block brought a whole new sparkle to the genre. HumanWare has introduced several new iterations of that early BrailleNote in the 20 years since, some dazzling, others not so much. With its rollout of the BrailleNote Touch Plus last year, I wanted to know if this new product, Google approved and multi-featured, compared in any way to the promise and reliability of that first smashing success two decades ago.

Comparing Then and Now

The new BrailleNote Touch Plus is similar in shape and size to its predecessor. Both weigh about two pounds, and the dimensions of the new product,9.5 inches by 6.3 inches, are quite similar to that very first machine. Both use the same case to house either an 18- or 32-cell refreshable braille display, and both offer touch cursors above each cell in either model. There is a Perkins-style keyboard and those popular BrailleNote thumb keys on the front edge of the device. For those not familiar, these four thumb keys are used for moving forward and back while reading text, scrolling through menus, and for countless commands and controls when used in conjunction with other keys and buttons on the Touch Plus. The original BrailleNote boasted connectivity now obsolete and probably not even recognizable to AccessWorld readers younger than 30: serial and parallel interfaces, a PCMCIA slot, and the wow factor of an internal dial-up modem! While quaint and quirky today, those features, particularly the built-in modem, were impressive traits when the BrailleNote began shipping in June 2000.

Today’s BrailleNote Touch Plus has, arguably, the best connectivity and onboard storage options of any product of its kind currently on the market. In addition to the popular USB-C port for charging (USB-C is the connector that can be inserted in either orientation), the Touch Plus also boasts ports for USB flash drives, SD cards, and an HDMI port. Of course, the new HumanWare product also offers features not yet available back in 2000, such as WiFi and Bluetooth, so that you can connect it to the Internet, your email, or your printer without ever inserting a cable.

In addition to the ergonomically friendly thumb keys on the front edge, the Touch Plus has three additional keys dedicated to navigating swiftly back to a main menu, to recently visited applications, or efficient access to contextual help.

The feature that sets the BrailleNote Touch Plus apart from that first generation BrailleNote, as well as its current competitors, is the dazzling addition of a fully interactive touch screen tablet beneath the braille keyboard.

OK Google

That first BrailleNote and the models that followed were built on a Windows CE platform. The BrailleNote Touch Plus is a Google-certified, Android-based product. In an attractive merging of old and new approaches, the Touch Plus retains most of the Keysoft applications that will be familiar to longtime BrailleNote customers. The familiar word processor and planner (Keyword and KeyPlan) along with others in that original Keysoft suite (introduced before even that first BrailleNote was launched 20 years ago) are still here. Alongside them now, however, are all things Google. Google’s voice assist and the Google Play store are at your fingertips, along with all and any of the apps you might install on any Android product.

Although the Perkins-style keyboard is like an old familiar friend, flip it up and you'll find is the physical feature that makes the Touch Plus stand out: the tablet. You can interact with this tablet as people with visual impairments do with other touch screens, using a combination of gestures, swipes and taps to navigate the screen and execute commands. You can also type braille directly and silently on the glass, eliminating the need for the traditional braille keyboard altogether.

Test Drive

The first thing I noticed when using the BrailleNote Touch Plus is its astonishing speed! Unpacking and getting started, with the guidance of a quick start sheet and the built-in tutorial, was a total breeze. In less than an hour of having opened the box, I was on my wireless network, had set up my email, and was perusing the various Keysoft applications. The text of the user’s guide and the built-in tutorial are available at any time, as is contextual help from within any application. In addition, every unit ships with a comprehensive audio tutorial developed by Mystic Access. The BrailleNote line of products have always been strongly intuitive to use for braille users. The feel of the braille display, the positioning of the thumb keys, and the logic behind so many commands through the Keysoft suite of applications have always provided a positive user experience. But HumanWare’s products, like others in the blindness field, were falling behind with regard to ease and efficiency of connectivity. Taking notes and writing documents are features that have never gone away. But keeping notes and writing documents are simply not enough in today’s environment to warrant carrying another piece of equipment. At work, school, and play, we need quick access to the Internet, to email, and to thousands of applications. Blind people who use braille have long needed a single device that can meet a multitude of connectivity needs in the fashion of a smartphone or tablet, but with high-quality speech and braille. The BrailleNote Touch Plus may be that device. It allows you to write a document, read and write email, do Web searches (by accessing Chrome or using your voice to ask the Google voice assistant), and enjoy a Netflix movie, YouTube video, or album from your music collection, all on the same device. The Touch Plus allows you to set up to ten language profiles, using different languages and/or voices for each if desired and, of course, choose your preferred braille grade for each given situation.

This certainly isn’t the first device that made it possible to read a book in braille and listen to a movie on the same platform, but it is the first one with a built-in visual display for sharing those video experiences. You can turn the visual display off, if you choose, or even keep it hidden beneath the braille keyboard. You can also do all of your typing and manipulating of applications with the tablet alone, always with instant braille access under your fingers.

By the way, I’m usually not a huge fan of typing braille on glass surfaces, preferring the old-school familiarity of physical keys. That said, the Touch Braille application on the Touch Plus required the smallest learning curve of any onscreen braille application I’ve tried. Just place your ten fingers on the glass, wait for the vibration, and begin typing. It was that easy. My first test drive displayed in braille exactly as I intended.

Final Analysis

HumanWare has made two dramatic entrances in the field of blindness technology: the first BrailleNote in 2000 and the Victor Reader Stream a few years later. Now, with the BrailleNote Touch Plus, the company has introduced yet another outstanding product. With high-quality speech and braille, you can write documents, do scientific calculations, handle all your social media, watch YouTube clips and binge on Netflix series. You can lean back and ask the Google assistant for the weather forecast or the definition of osmosis. You can share everything you do with a sighted colleague, right there on your own device, or plug in a larger screen to its HDMI port if you want to share with a crowd. You can put on headphones and enjoy your favorite tracks in stereo while reading or writing and, of course, download countless favorite apps from the Google Play store. With the 20th anniversary of that first amazing product approaching, HumanWare has again brought a uniquely robust, yet intuitive product into the arena of blindness technology.

If you want to see a direct comparison between the BrailleNote Touch Plus and its competitor the Braille Sense Polaris, see this article by Jamie Pauls in the July 2019 issue of AccessWorld.

Product Information

Product: BrailleNote Touch Plus

Manufacturer: HumanWare

Email: info@humanWare.com

Phone: 800-722-3393

Price: 32-cell model; $5,695.00; 18-cell model, $4,195.00

This article is made possible in part by generous funding from the James H. and Alice Teubert Charitable Trust, Huntington, West Virginia.

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March 2020 Table of Contents

Jamie Pauls

Starting with my very first article for AccessWorld, I have reviewed a number of games for the magazine. I like to talk about newly released games that are trending in the blind community and that are especially interesting to me. Although I'm not the most prolific gamer around, I have enjoyed various titles going back to the mid-90s and even earlier. I thought it might be fun to dig back into the archives a bit and, over the next several months, review some PC-based games from the past that I have especially enjoyed playing and that you can still obtain.

The first game in the series stretches the definition of the term "vintage" a bit, because it hasn't been all that many months since its developer, Liam Ervin, has updated it. The game has been around since 2005, however, and it's still possible to play the game in its original form (more about that in a moment). Because elements of the original game exist, and because it has been around for a few years now, I decided to include Super Egg Hunt Plus in this series.

Readers of my recent AccessWorld review of The Great Toy Robbery by Liam Erven of LWorks will know that I am a fan of his work. The things that drew me to Erven's work in The Great Toy Robbery—humor, a whimsical, inner-child approach, and a simple but engaging plot—apply to Super Egg Hunt Plus as well.

Obtaining and Installing Super Egg Hunt Plus

Super Egg Hunt Plus can be purchased from either LWorks or AT Guys for $15. Upon purchase, you will receive registration info for the game. The process of installing and registering the game is quite straightforward. You can use the speech output from your screen reader during installation, but Erven talks you through the process as well. Once things are set up, you will not need to have your screen reader running as the game is self voicing.

Playing Super Egg Hunt Plus

Both the game commands and the plot are simple. You move around a grid with your Up, Down, Right and Left Arrow keys, picking up beeping Easter eggs. Collect as many eggs as you can within a certain time limit, by simply centering the beeping eggs in your stereo field and moving over them. Avoid Mr. McChicken, who doesn't like you stealing his eggs. The chicken will peck you if he can, causing you to move randomly elsewhere on the grid and lose your remaining game-play time as well. Collect clocks to add play time to your round, and boost your speed by collecting a certain number of eggs in a given time. Clocks freeze the chicken—or chickens, in some game modes—and you can even kill those pesky birds if conditions are just right.

Super Egg Hunt Plus has 13 game-play modes that are unlocked as you advance. In addition to the various modes, you can collect 92 trophies. Some of these trophies are what one might expect, such as beating your highest score in a game or collecting a certain number of eggs in total, but others, such as beating the high score of one of the game's beta testers, are not so obvious.

In Classic mode, which is available by itself for free, you simply move around the grid and pick up as many eggs as possible in three minutes. Eggs that are behind you beep at a lower pitch than those ahead of you. As you move around with the Arrow keys, it sounds like you are walking through straw or tall grass. The music is fun and the text-to-speech voice that gives you periodic encouragement is a nice touch. At the end of a round you're told what your score is for that round, and if you have achieved a new high score. You can post your new high score to an online scoreboard and you are told if your score made it to the top-ten list.

Normal Mode provides nice outdoor sounds with chirping birds in the background. In this mode, you are introduced to elements that you will find throughout the game including chickens, clocks, boost mode, etc.

Of all the available game modes in Super Egg Hunt Plus, my favorite is ChickenCoop. I have literally spent hours playing in this mode. In ChickenCoop, the search grid is smaller, but many chickens come at you as you collect eggs. Collect five eggs in ten seconds and you'll enter boost mode for a short time. You can really collect some eggs in that state. Collect a clock while in boost mode and you can kill a chicken if you manage to occupy the same square as the chicken. There might be a trophy in it for you if you kill enough of the little critters, but that's all I'll say about that for now. In ChickenCoop mode, your footsteps go from a soft surface to a hard one as though you were indoors, and even the clucking chickens have a bit of room ambience. Thee are just a couple of the nice touches that make LWorks games stand out from the pack ... or perhaps the flock.

In Minute Rush, you collect as many eggs as you can in 60 seconds. No chickens; only a ticking clock and lots of eggs to collect.

In Survival mode, there is no time limit. Simply move around the grid collecting eggs and avoid the chicken at all costs. If he pecks you, you're done. As time progresses, the chicken eventually moves at warp speed. You will most definitely get caught in the end.

Other game modes mix things up a bit, literally and figuratively. In Mixup, eggs and clocks randomly move around the game play area, while Mixup Remix makes things randomize more frequently. Hyper Hunt causes everything to happen faster than normal.

In some modes, collecting clocks actually makes you lose time, while other modes reverse all of your movements so that the Right Arrow key moves you left, and the Left Arrow key moves you right. If that isn't enough for you, still other modes cause different combinations of previously mentioned actions to occur.

The Bottom Line

Super Egg Hunt Plus checks all the right boxes. The plot is humorous and game play is challenging without being so difficult that you'll lose interest. The ambient sounds in the game's various modes, including chirping birds when outdoors and room sounds when indoors, add dimension to the experience. The sounds required for successful game play, including eggs, chickens, clocks, and time cues are all easily distinguishable from one another. The range of game modes and trophies, make the game very replayable. I played the game regularly several years ago, but lost it during a computer crash. I have only recently begun playing it again. I started from square one (no pun intended), earning trophies and unlocking game modes. I unlocked all the game modes during my earlier game play, but I never have managed to win all the trophies. I suppose I'll just keep pecking away at the problem, so to speak.

Product Information

Game Title: Super Egg Hunt Plus Price: $15 Purchase Super Egg Hunt Plus from LWorks Alternatively, you can purchase Super Egg Hunt Plus from AT Guys.

This article is made possible in part by generous funding from the James H. and Alice Teubert Charitable Trust, Huntington, West Virginia.

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March 2020 Table of Contents

Registration is Now Open for the 2020 M-Enabling Summit

The 2020 M-Enabling Summit will take place in Washington, DC, June 22-24. The event will be hosted at the Renaissance Arlington Capital View Hotel in Arlington, Virginia.

The M-Enabling Summit is a 3- day event with opportunities to hear from leaders and innovators in accessibility, attend breakout sessions, explore the Exhibitor Showcase, and network with accessibility professionals from around the world.

A complete agenda for all 3 days of the Summit can be found on the M-Enabling Agenda webpage.

At the conclusion of the conference, IAAP will also be offering the Web Accessibility Specialist (WAS) and Certified Professional in Accessibility Core Competencies (CPACC) exams on-site. The exams will start at 2:00 pm on Wednesday, June 24. Registration and application information is now available on the IAAP's Certification Application page.

IAAP members in the private sector can take advantage of a $50 savings off the private sector registration rate using an IAAP discount code. IAAP members in the Government, Non-Profit, and Educational sectors are already eligible for special discount pricing.

Conference registration includes admission to the exhibit floor and all conference sessions, luncheons, coffee breaks, keynote presentations, and networking events, as well as the M-Enabling Summit cocktail reception on Tuesday night.

Early Bird registration ends April 30th.

Blindfold Games Creator Marty Schultz brings Gamified Learning to Visually Impaired Students with ObjectiveEd

Marty Schultz is best known for developing the Blindfold series of iOS games for people with vision loss, which includes dozens of titles from air hockey to hearts. Recently, he co-founded a company called ObjectiveEd, which produces educational games for students with low vision. A "gamified" learning tool is one that uses some aspect of a game in the methods it uses to teach. For example, for finishing quiz questions, a program may award coins that can be used to purchase real in-classroom benefits. The goal of ObjectiveEd is to bring this sort of learning to students who are blind or visually impaired.

In collaboration with researchers and educators in the blindness education field, ObjectiveEd has created games that target skills that students will need in the future. For example, one game awards students points for properly performing VoiceOver gestures.

What makes this platform unique is that there is a teacher's portal where educators can see various statistics regarding their students' use of the games, such as play frequency and success rate. In addition, the teacher can adjust the difficulty of games to keep in sync with a student's learning rate.

The company is in the process of developing new games and features so check back for further news. More information is available on the ObjectiveEd website.

HIMS Releases New, and Final, Firmware Release for its U2 Line of Braille Notetakers

HIMS recently announced the latest firmware release for the U2 lineup of braille notetakers. Please note, as the U2 lineup continues to get older the devices will lose functionality due to the operating system. As a result, this firmware release will be the last one for the U2 products.

If you own a U2 notetaker, HIMS asks that you consider taking advantage of their trade-in promotions, running now through the end of March 2020.

As part of the latest firmware, the U2 Notetakers will now include a Wiki Search, Quick Start Guide, and a Podcast Search. YouTube, Twitter, and Google Talk have been removed, and improvements have not been made to the Web browser. Microsoft email accounts cannot be accessed via IMAP.

For more information, including how to upgrade the firmware and the complete release notes, please visit the HIMS website.

Envision and Wichita State University (WSU) Announce Partnership

Envision and Wichita State University announced today that they have entered into a Collaborative Research Agreement that will guide joint projects geared toward improving the quality of life of individuals who are blind or visually impaired. The agreement covers initiatives and programs related to research grants or funding, new studies and the development of technologies or techniques that can help individuals with vision loss achieve greater independence at home and in the community.

“This is a major milestone in the ongoing relationship between Envision and WSU that will add to our community’s image of being an incubator for innovation,” said Ron Schuchard, Ph.D., FARVO, executive director of the Gigi & Carl Allen Envision Research Institute. “Coming together in this way to share resources and expertise related to blindness and visual impairment sets the stage for significant advancements in vision rehabilitation research, patient care and assistive technology with worldwide implications.”

Through the Collaborative Research Agreement, WSU personnel will have access to Envision’s experts, facilities specifically designed with the challenges of vision loss in mind and an abundant on-site population of youth and adults who are blind or visually impaired. Such access will give them a real-life perspective on the impact their projects will have on people who are blind or visually impaired Envision will benefit from utilization of WSU’s academic and research experts, student body and supporters, and its facilities to advance work conducted by: postdoctoral research fellows and scientists at the Envision Research Institute; Cathy G. Hudson Envision Child Development Center; William L. Hudson BVI Workforce Innovation Center; Bicknell Envision Vision Rehabilitation Center; and leaders of Envision Arts, support programs and public/professional education initiatives. 

“Having a resource as dynamic as Envision nearby represents a fantastic opportunity to explore factual applications of concepts and theories produced in our classrooms and labs, and provides a clear channel through which the university’s vast resources can assist Envision in its ongoing mission,” said Dennis Livesay, dean of WSU’s College of Engineering.

March 2020 Table of Contents