TechnAbility Exchange

Where Technology and Ability Enhance Each Other

A Support Service provided by Tom Dekker

A+-Certified Access Technology Consultant

f/t Blind and Reading-Disabled

Welcome!  Please note that as of December 2000, this page is in the process of being seriously revised!  If you click on a link to send me email and notice it going to dekker@concentric.net, this address no longer exists.  My correct address is tdekker@consultant.com.  Though I'm working as fast as I can to get the page updated, I'm also in the midst of preparing for relocation back to Toronto from Houston on December 18.  Then, from January 4 thru 14, I'll be in Los Angeles at the Southern California Conservatory of Music for training with the latest in accessible music production technologies.  With all of this going on, it will probably be toward the end of January before this site is all ready for the new year, so please bear with me it's much appreciated!  I've also been busy preparing for the A+ computer technician certification exams, which I passed on November 30.

And now, back to our regularly scheduled programming:

 

In a nutshell, this page deals with the Sight Substitution products that my students/clients  and I prefer.  These include screen readers, OCR-based text-to-speech systems, speech and braille note-takers, braille embossers/translators/displays.

There's also a good starter collection of education, training and electronic text resources and I've just updated the section on digital audio recording and making music with your computer, since more blind folks are getting into that sort of thing these days.

This page is named TechnAbility, after my first access technology venture, founded at Toronto in 1982 to support the good old tape-based VersaBraille.

What I learned from that point forward was that peer-support networking is a most essential tool, especially for people who don't have access to the printed word or visually oriented environments. In other words, technology is only as good as the ability to use it effectively, and that ability increases when people network and learn from each other. On this page, you will find a lot of resources to facilitate such networking processes.

I was a co-founder of VITA (Visually Impaired for Technological Advancement), a computer user group which thrived in Toronto during the '80's. During my five years in NYC ('93 to '98), I also founded VICUG-NYC (Visually Impaired Computer Users Group) NYC, which is still boogying along last I checked.  If you want to check out what's going on nationally,

click here for the national VICUG mailing list.

I hope you find this page useful and I very much look forward to your suggestions and comments.

Table of Contents

 

click here to send me email

This site is a proud member of The Blind Ring. - Follow this link to join the ring.

Also, from this page, you may:

Web Access Symbol (for people with disabilities)

Web Access Symbol (for people with disabilities)

Bobby Approved for accessibility to people with disabilities
as well as compatibility with various browsers

W3C References on Web Accessibility

W3C References on Web Accessibility

Home Page Author Blind Entrepreneurs Text Resources Displays/Translators
Internet Making Music National Orgs Note Takers
Screen Readers Text Readers Computer User Groups Windows Training

© Copyright 1999 by Tom Dekker
Access Technology Consultant for the Blind and Reading Disabled
Houston, Texas, USA
Telephone: (281) 988-8982
Fax: (281) 530-1740
Email: tdekker@consultant.com

Thanks to Phil Hart, for adding aesthetics for the "Vision-Dependent"

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