William.Wilson@f89.n129.z1.fidonet.org (William Wilson) (03/28/91)
Index Number: 14503
[This is from the Blink Talk Conference]
WS> Now, why didn't you call me, you did not have to be that
WS> lost. I was available then?
Walter,
Yes, and I have to say something here, and most definately it is
not to insult Fred. On the contrary, I respect you very much for
helping out your friend Fred. However....
It has been my experience that the sighted person who is able to
teach a speech program beyond the very rudimentary beginning point is a
rare individual indeed! I admit, there are some, and for sure, I would
love to have Doug Geoffray tutoring me in the intricacies of Vocal-Eyes,
or Eric showing me how to use Tinytalk (I didn't cap the second T Eric!)
but given a wink with much less intimate knowledge of how a speech
program works than one of these guys, meaning basically someone who
doesn't use one by need, there appears to me to be a difficult bridge
that needs to be crossed. I just am not sure that it is as simple as
most sighted people would think to determine what information we need
from our synthesizers, and I've noticed this time and time again!
Sure, I realize that at the point George is at now, most anyone
with a little computer knowledge and a lot of patience can be a
tremendous help to him, but if he is at all like me in my beginning
days, it won't be long till he indeed needs someone who uses speech
daily, and out of necessity, to help him learn his Jaws program! We
ain't talking a long time here either, cause at least so far as I am
concerned, you got to learn the speech program fairly well in order to
make the learning of all the other applications possible.
WS> There are ways to configure jaws to make it easier to get
WS> around on various programs.
Just don't do too much configuring for him Walter, cause that's one
mistake I've made in the past. You make things too slick for a new
user, they tend to take things for granted, and then when things go
wrong, you'll have to back track and teach them how to do it themselves
anyways! Getting people up and running with their desired
applications is of course important, but so many times I've done this
and then at a future date had to painstakingly show them how to
reconfigure their speech program so it would work as it always did, or
so they thought!
Now then Walter, I suspect more than a couple of the winks here are
going to say I'm all wet, but won't it be nice to be arguing with them
rather than amungst ourselves! <grin>
Willie
... Like a bat out of Bellevue!
--
Uucp: ..!{decvax,oliveb}!bunker!hcap!hnews!129!89!William.Wilson
Internet: William.Wilson@f89.n129.z1.fidonet.org