Hi from England

wink · Member

Hi from England

kjirsten2e · Veteran Member

Hi Jake - great to hear from you! My husband will be giving you some scoop shortly regarding software/hardware requirements, etc. Where in England are you? I visited there in 1991 and travelled through London, Bath, Warwickshire, Coventry. Bath was my favorite! Anyway... again, nice to meet you! Kjirsten2e

wink · Member

Hi kjirsten2e
You have immaculate taste *smile* I live 9 miles from Bath, it's lovely. Developers are gradually pulling down any nineteen sixties buildings and replacing them with either a Georgian design or interesting post modernist. It's a great place to go shopping. I don't know if you went to the royal crescent but when I go to the dentist I sit in the park in front of the royal crescent and eat my lunch first. It's a really nice experience and it makes the trip to the dentist a lot more pleasant. Thanks in advance for the info, my friend can't read braille and has windows XP. He has a condition called wetMD and has suffered some kind of haemorrhage to his good eye. he lives in London, Canada. I suppose it depends on exactly where you live but California is still a bit of a dream destination isn't it.

Jake

j2e · Veteran Member

Hi Jake --

Glad you found us. The software that I use is called JAWS for Windows. It's made by a company called Freedom Scientific, and can be found at:

http://www.freedomscientific.com/

I started with this software about 7 years ago. I didn't know anything about computers, and at that time, had been blind for only about 3 years. So anyway, a friend that knew PC's helped me out with loading the software. From there, I figured it out by learning the keyboard. I did this by hitting the insert key along with the #1 key. That puts the software in a mode called keyboard help. Your friend probably knows the keyboard already, though...

As far as hardware goes, I don't use anything special. I'm pretty sure that all PC's have the correct soundcards installed in them now, so you'd just need the PC, keyboard, along with some speakers, and your friend will be good to go. (BTW, I don't use a mouse)

As far as JAWS training, I know there's lots of tutorials that can be downloaded, or you can get them on CD, as well.

Good luck to your friend, and just know that he'll be able to do as much on a computer, as a fully sighted person can do.