In my quest to move all my activities to the Mac one of the first items that needed to be handled was an accessible Twitter client. Although I am not a power user the number of people that I follow on Twitter has crossed the three thousand mark. THis means that there is a need for a precise filtering mechanism that permits one to take a Twitter stream of over Twenty Thousand tweets a day and quickly glean the high priority Tweets.
I chose Vienna version 2.3.4.
THis solution is totally accessible with VoiceOver and permits one to specify the RSS entries for each person that I wish to filter. Once the RSS entry has been added to the list to follow one can group various RSS entries into smart search folders which facilitates grouping of tweets by category.
THe coolest thing about this solution is that one can actually see the web based twitter post and respond to it directly within Vienna
January, 2010
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Using Vienna as an Accessible Twitter Client
Monday, January 18th, 2010Palm Pilot Replacement
Tuesday, January 12th, 2010I remember in the late 90′s buying a Palm Pilot for my wife because it was the latest thing out there for organizing one’s life! Organizing is a very general term and definitely means that the Palm Pilot could claim to be a general device. the razor blade concept was just as true for Palm at that time as for the razor manufactures. I thing we spent more on replacement pens for that Palm in the first year than the entire cost of the Palm and accessories. WIth the IPhone we now have a device that is one thousand times more powerful than the original Palm. And to think that it is totally accessible to the BLind
is absolutely awesome!!!
Guest Post From Monica Willyard
Tuesday, January 5th, 2010Hi. My name is Monica, and I’m doing some work for Kevin to give his blog some great new social media features. Since I have to publish a post to make sure everything is working well, I want to tell you something about Kevin that he’ll never tell you himself. 
Kevin is a fair businessman, and he’s also a person who educates his business associates. He doesn’t seem to do it deliberately. He just shares his knowledge and problem-solving strategies while he works. He says he shares his knowledge because it helps people grow, and it’s the right thing to do on a business level too. I have learned more from him in the past year than from most of the classes I took in college and trade school.
Though my company’s telecommunications needs were small and not profitable to him, he took time to explain options as if I were someone important from a big, profitable corporation. He showed me how to save money, explained terms I didn’t understand, and taught me how to ask better questions when looking at office equipment.
When I have worked with him on several projects, he has dared me to stretch, to try something in a different way or learn a new skill. Kevin has also shared books, articles, and ideas that have helped me grow. Kevin also taught me how to get the most from Outlook and the iPhone’s productivity tools that make my life easier.
So, since I had to post here, I want to let Kevin and his readers know how much I appreciate his time and what I’ve learned. If everyone treated their customers and colleagues this way, this world would be a better place with empowered people working in so many creative ways. Thanks Kevin.
Accessible Productivity And Spell Check On The Mac
Monday, January 18th, 2010Moving to the Mac with VoiceOver from Microsoft WIndows and JAWS was a great organizing exercise for me. I took a look at my daily tasks and realized that I spent the majority of my computer time in the following programs.
EMail was handled by Microsoft Outlook 2003.
COntact management, calendar maintenance task management, and note taking was also handled by Outlook 2003.
I used the Miranda instant messaging client for AOL, Yahoo, and MSN messaging.
ALthough Internet explorer had kept me connected to the internet for years I had recently within the last year moved entirely to FireFox.
I used Adobe Acrobat accessible reader to read PDF files.
I used Microsoft Word to create and edit documents.
I used Microsoft Excel to manipulate spreadsheets. I used Notepad to dig into those pesky text, configuration and batch files.
Amazingly the key common denominator in the above programs centers around Microsoft with a sprinkle of Adobe and open source thrown in.
WHen I moved to the Mac I was amazed to find that the core productivity tasks of mail, task management, internet browsing, calendaring contact management, instant message chat, PDF reading, and document processing are directly integrated into the Mac. and require no additional software.
So in one swoop I realized that all I needed to do was turn on the Mac and enable VoiceOver with CMD-F5 and 90% of my productivity tools were built in.
THis is an incredible simplification.
It doesn’t stop there. SPell checking is real-time and spelling issues are corrected and flagged and realtime while one types in the same manner in all the applications.
Calendaring, email, and contact management (known as (address book) are tightly integrated and provide much more flexibility than the outlook programs I had previously used.
THis is a huge advantage for those of us who have gotten used to the Spaghetti of scripts, screen readers, version compatibility issues, plugins and all the rest of the glue that holds the Windows screen reader environment together.
WHat experiences have you had Please share!!
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Tags: Accessibility, Apple, applications, editing, Mac, productivity, spelling, VoiceOver