Present: Myrna Votta, Peter Altschul, Vita Zavoli, Michael Davis, Jay Leventhal, Janina Sajka, Tom Dekker, Krista Earl, Gordon Kent, Michael Mandel, Joe Fegnani, Terrea Mitchell, Vivian Yacu, David Denniston, Gregory Rosmaita, John San Fillippo, Victoria San Fillipo, and Pat Holub.
A slate for the October elections was nominated, as follows:
President: Tom Dekker
Vice-President: Janina Sajka
Secretary: Peter Altschul
Treasurer: Ruth-Ellen Simmons
Webmaster: Gregory Rosmaita
At-large Board members: Vita Zavoli and Jay Leventhal
Elections will take place during the next general meeting.
Tom Dekker described the initial meeting of the Braille-'n-Speak special-interest group (SIG). Approximately 30 persons, including students and parents, attended. Tom Leigh from Blazie described their products, and donated a t-shirt which was raffled off. The next meeting will take place on Saturday, November 1 during which integrating Blazie products with the Internet will be demonstrated.
Greg Rosmaita discussed the Microsoft Developers' Tour, at which VICUG will be exhibiting, to take place on Wednesday, September 10. The VICUG exhibit table will feature a mouseless, monitorless laptop, so that participants can experience, first-hand, the difficulties that visually-impaired people often experience while surfing the Internet. They will also discuss with Microsoft personnel how to make their software more accessible.
Gregory also announced the formation of a VICUG NYC mailing list, VIC-NYC, which is being hosted by Columbia University. Everyone who is currently on the VICUG NYC mailing list will be automatically subscribed to VIC-NYC. All others who are interested in subscribing should send their email address to Gregory Rosmaita, oedipus@hicom.net.
Gregory also indicated that Sarah Morley, the author of a variety of Windows tutorials for blind people, will be in New York during October. He has invited her, on behalf of VICUG NYC, to present during the October meeting, which is likely to be rescheduled.
Michael Mandel and Gordon Kent discussed the benefits of MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) and demonstrated how the blind/VI composer and/or musician can compose and play music using MIDI and speech synthesis. They described the use of the CakeWalk program with Windows 95, which works fairly well with speech (particularly with WindowBridge and WindowEyes). Michael Mandel stated that regrettably, Henter-Joyce, the designer of Jaws for Windows (JFW), appears disinterested in creating the necessary macros to to allow JFW to interact effectively with CakeWalk.
A cassette of this portion of this meeting will be available in the near future, and can be accessed by contacting Mike Mandel at (212) 868-0345 (phone) or via email at mandel@panix.com .
Submitted by Peter Altschul, September 25, 1997
Encoded by Gregory J. Rosmaita
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this page was created on September 26, 1997
last modified September 27, 1997