Check out the last couple of articles, although you might be interested in the first if you're looking at having kids.
Thanks Nimer J -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Fred's Head Companion - American Printing House for the Blind Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2009 09:11:25 -0600 (CST) From: Fred's Head Companion <fredshead@xxxxxxx> Reply-To: Fred's Head Companion <fredshead@xxxxxxx> To: nimerjaber1@xxxxxxxxx Fred's Head Companion - American Printing House for the Blind <http://www.fredshead.info/> Link to Fred's Head Companion <http://www.fredshead.info/>Are You Fertile? Your Accessible Cell Phone Knows <http://feeds.feedburner.com/%7Er/FredsHeadCompanion/%7E3/511177966/are-you-fertile-your-accessible-cell.html>
Posted: 13 Jan 2009 02:57 PM CSTFor blind or visually impaired couples who are trying to start a family, you know how difficult it can be to keep up with the fertile days of the month. Looking at charts or electronic gadgets is either difficult with low vision or impossible with no vision. EggAlert! Now your accessible cell phone can tell you the best day to have sex if you're trying to get pregnant.
EggAlert is a text messaging service that will notify you when the optimum fertility day is approaching, so that you don't miss out on the perfect time for conception. The service from PDAHealthWare, Inc., calculates a woman's next ovulation time, and sends a text message to their cell phone on their day of ovulation, fertility period, and when to expect their next menstrual period.
EggAlert is available by subscription at www.EggAlert.com <http://www.EggAlert.com>.
Contraction Master
In today's world, there's a high probability that any mother-to-be will
be within reach of a computer when labor begins, so the Contraction
Master website is a genius idea. Instead of having to time contractions
yourself, you simply go to the website, click your spacebar when a
contraction begins and again when it ends, and the site lets you know
how far apart your contractions are, how long they last, and all that
other important info. And all for free. This could be a simple way for
someone with low vision to time this very important event.
Click this link to visit http://contractionmaster.com <http://contractionmaster.com>.
Software for People Who are Color Blind <http://feeds.feedburner.com/%7Er/FredsHeadCompanion/%7E3/419814552/software-for-people-who-are-color.html>
Posted: 13 Jan 2009 01:48 PM CSTA lot of devices have been created to help visually impaired computer users. But until recently, not much attention has been paid to the particular needs of one segment of that population, people who are color blind.
In its most common form, the condition makes it difficult to distinguish between reds and greens. Trouble telling blues and yellows from each other is far less common, and even more rare is complete color blindness, where everything appears in shades of black and white.
People with colorblindness can encounter trouble with Web sites or with graphics just as they can have difficulty reading traffic signals or picking out clothes that don't clash. Certain combinations of font and background colors can make the text on a Web site invisible to a colorblind person. Graphics can be impossible to decipher -- imagine trying to read a color-coded map or pie chart where some of the colors are indistinguishable from each other. Photographs can lose much of their contrast.
There is software available, though, that can help people detect the differences among colors on their computer screens. And as color graphics and displays become more complex, these programs can even assist people with color-normal vision who need help discerning shades with only subtle differences between them, such as those on a weather map.
EyePilot offers several tools to help people navigate color graphics and Web sites. One of these is a "gray" tool, which turns everything on the screen gray other than the chosen color, allowing for everything in the selected color to be seen more easily. For example, on a subway map, where lines of different colors could be difficult to follow, clicking on any one of the lines will make it stand out against a gray background. Or on a graph showing the performance of various companies' stock over a given period, with each stock represented by a line of a different color, any one of those lines can be made to stand out.
The user can control how wide the definition of a color is, so that, for instance, if a graphic uses three shades of green, the program can be set to treat each shade separately or to treat all three as one color. The user also can control how light or dark the gray is in the background when a color is selected.
EyePilot also offers a "flash" tool, which makes all instances of a given color flash as white or black when the user clicks on an area of the screen with that color.
This can be particularly useful for reading maps or charts that include a color key that tells the reader what data are represented by each color. Such keys by themselves may be of little use to a colorblind person: Consider a key to a pie chart showing the regional breakdown of a company's sales. The key might show a red dot next to "Southeast," to show that the red slice of the pie chart represents sales from that region; maybe green is used for the Midwest, and so on. That key doesn't help if the reader can't distinguish reds and greens from each other. But with eyePilot's flash tool, if the reader clicks on the color dot next to "Southeast" in the key, that color will flash in the chart. Or if the reader clicks on a portion of the chart, the corresponding color dot will flash in the key, telling the reader what that portion represents.
EyePilot has a separate tool that can be used in cases where the key doesn't use bits of colors, but just names the colors. In the example above, the key might show "Red: Southeast" and "Green: Midwest." EyePilot's "name" tool displays buttons at the top of the screen with the names of different colors. So to find the Southeast sales in the chart, the user would push the "red" button at the top of the screen, and the red slice of the pie would be highlighted.
The name tool isn't limited to reading keys. The buttons can be used to find a color anywhere it appears on the screen, whether the reader is looking at a data display or shopping on a Web site. The user also can click anywhere on the screen and a box will appear telling what color is there.
The eyePilot program has one more tool: a "hue" function that changes the color scheme of whatever is on the screen. The program gives choices of color schemes, so the user can choose whichever one works best for him or her. The shifting colors are intended to make it easier to differentiate between adjacent areas that may otherwise be hard to tell apart. It can be particularly helpful for reading colored text.
Users can save and print images altered with any of the eyePilot tools.Click this link to download the Eye Pilot Software from http://colorhelper.com <http://colorhelper.com>.
There are a couple of free options that also may be helpful to people who are color blind. One is software called Visolve, which is available from Ryobi System Solutions of Japan.
Visolve sharpens the contrasts on a screen by brightening or darkening the colors that people who are color blind have trouble discerning. It can make reds brighter and greens darker, or blues brighter and yellows darker. It can also make a given color stand out by darkening all other colors on the screen. And it can draw different hatch patterns on colors to make them easier to tell apart.
Click this link to download Visolve from http://www.Ryobi-sol.co.jp/visolve/en/ <http://www.Ryobi-sol.co.jp/visolve/en/>.
Another tool is available at Vischeck.com <http://www.Vischeck.com>. Vischeck offers what it calls a "Daltonizing" program, named for the British scientist John Dalton, who was a pioneer of color blindness studies. This program, which is a free Web-based service, alters images by taking colors that are hidden to people who are color blind and moving them to a range of the color spectrum where they are visible again.
Vischeck also has a program that allows people to see any image on a screen as a person who has color blindness would see it. It's a function that could be useful to Web-site designers or to anyone who may be producing documents that will be viewed by people with color blindness.
Article Source: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06296/732311-96.stm Color Blind Web Page FilterWant to know what your website looks like to someone who is color blind? Click this link to find out: http://colorfilter.wickline.org <http://colorfilter.wickline.org>.
Find and Share Free Sound Effects and Loops with SoundSnap and SoundJay <http://feeds.feedburner.com/%7Er/FredsHeadCompanion/%7E3/511084274/find-and-share-free-sound-effects-and.html>
Posted: 13 Jan 2009 12:56 PM CSTHere's an online community that offers an invaluable free resource to anyone who wants to use sound effects or audio loops in digital projects. SoundSnap is worth checking out, whether you are creating a podcast, a presentation, a website, a science project, or a custom activity for a program like Clicker 5 or Classroom Suite. SoundSnap has literally thousands of well organized and searchable audio files available for download.
there are sixteen main headings under which the sound files are organized. You'll also see a total number of files currently available under each heading. The download interface gives you the option of listening to a clip before deciding whether or not to download. You are told the duration of the clip. You can see how many times the file has already been downloaded and how it has been rated by other users.
If you have audio files that you would like to contribute, SoundSnap would welcome them. Click this link to visit http://www.soundsnap.com <http://www.soundsnap.com>. Click this link for more sound effects from http://www.SoundJay.com <http://www.soundjay.com>.
Keep track of Your Favorite Music with FeedRevolution <http://feeds.feedburner.com/%7Er/FredsHeadCompanion/%7E3/511017578/keep-track-of-your-favorite-music-with.html>
Posted: 13 Jan 2009 11:33 AM CSTWe all like music and have a favorite artist. It doesn't matter if you're a country fan or into hard rock, you know what you like and if you're like me, you run to the CD store when a favorite artist releases something new. Here's a service that will notify you immediately when an artist releases new music.
All you have to do is furnish the names of the artists you are fond of (or import your music library from last.fm, in order to save time), submit your email address, and then create your account.
You can get updates through RSS, a variety of helpful syndication options are available. You can go for "New releases, personalized" to "All releases, not personalized", to anything in between, whatever suits your needs. You'll never miss a new CD again!
Click this link to visit http://www.feedrevolution.com <http://www.feedrevolution.com>.
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