This reminds me again the cold reply that I received a few months ago from
Oracle Cop. In order to protect the copyrights of the Oracle menu and
training matterial, all the these publications on CD-ROM are in PDF files
which is 100% not accessable to any speech package.  After I had told the
Oracle company about my needs for those matterials, they just gave me a
simple answer "no, we discussed about this; I am sorry that we can't let
read them."

While many authors donate their books to Recording for the Blind and some
braille printing agencies, Oracle even refuses to sell me a book in the
format accessable to a speech synthesor as those books have already been
available on CD for the sighted readers.

I think the society should complaint about that.

Ren

On Sun, 16 Aug 1998, Kelly Pierce wrote:

> I am pleased to find that Sara Morely, who developed the excellent
> windows and windows 95 explained tutorials has been recognized for her
> good work.
>
> kelly
>
>
>       Stevie Wonder, SAP spotlight applications for disabled
>                           (InfoWorld)
>
> Stevie Wonder, SAP spotlight applications for disabled
>
> By Marc Ferranti
> InfoWorld Electric
>
> Posted at 6:56 AM PT, Aug 14, 1998
> NEW YORK -- It's hard to just say no to Stevie Wonder. After
> all, the blind musician is one of the great pop icons of the
> last three decades, and as an inspirational speaker for the
> young and disabled and an activist for the African-American
> community he has a certain moral force.
>
> So two years ago when he asked to speak to SAP America's Chief
> Executive Officer Paul Wahl about an idea he had, the company
> said yes.
>
> The germ of that idea turned into the SAP/Stevie Wonder Vision
> Awards program -- which just capped its first year with a gala
> celebration and concert by Wonder here Wednesday night --
> spotlighting computer technology that helps the blind and the
> visually impaired with access in the workplace.
>
> The program also comes at a time when SAP, a developer of
> enterprise resource planning (ERP) technology, is trying to take
> its traditional image as a company whose products are difficult
> to work with, and turn it around. ERP technology covers a range
> of business management, accounting, logistics, and human
> resource applications.
>
> More than 200 award applicants from 12 countries participated in
> the awards program Wednesday night, which gave out a total of
> $500,000 to winners in a variety of categories, including the
> Product of the Year -- a new version of the Kurzweil reader
> system that lets vision-impaired and blind people scan documents
> into a scanner, which then converts the text into speech output.
>
> Technology from finalists, shown at the awards ceremony, covers
> a broad range of enabling devices, from a mouse that lets blind
> people "feel" the icons on a graphical user interface to Windows
> training material for the blind.
>
> Corporate use of these tools is not just charity -- visually
> impaired and blind people can be a great asset to any workforce,
> according to Wahl.
>
> "We now have blind people [at SAP], some of them are
> programmers, and we are delighted to see how quickly they become
> a very talented work force to build applications," Wahl said.
> "Some of them are even going into the research side to build a
> very complex, innovative search engine for information for
> business that can be used by blind people."
>
> For blind people, the graphical user technology that almost all
> new applications use doesn't do much good, Wahl noted. The
> awards program was founded to encourage the development of
> software and hardware that lets visually impaired and blind
> people -- of which there are about 170 million in the world --
> take advantage of contemporary advances in technology.
>
> The plan for the program was hatched two years ago when SAP
> asked Wonder to play at a user group conference.
>
> "I was very happy to be asked to be part of their celebration
> .. and I said I'm fine doing the concert and performance, but
> what I want to do is get together with the president and talk
> about an idea I had," Wonder said.
>
> As it turned out, the idea to set up a program to encourage
> enabling technology for the blind had a special interest for
> Wahl, whose daughter Carolin is blind and works at SAP AG in
> Germany.
>
> "The common vision of Stevie Wonder and SAP is that we want to
> take the workforce of blind people and make it available for
> many companies around the world," Wahl said.
>
> Wonder, an avid user of technology in his work as a musician,
> was one of the product testers in the program.
>
> The awards program Wednesday night spotlighted finalists
> including:
>
> Kurzweil Educational Systems, whose Kurzweil 1000 took the
> Product of the Year award. The program is a PC-based reading
> tool that converts print into speech. Features include text
> editing, white-on-black scanning, and text enhancement for
> people with low vision. For pricing and other information, the
> company can be reached in Waltham, Mass., at
> http://www.kurzweiledu.com.
>
> GW Micro, whose product line includes the Sounding Board, a
> speech synthesizer that offers capitalization alert, format
> alert, fast forward, and rewind. The company is in Fort Wayne,
> Ind., at http://www.gwmicro.com.
>
> Sarah Morley, who took the Pioneer of the Year award for her
> work on Windows training materials for the blind and visually
> impaired. The material explains Windows 95 features and concepts
> from a non-visual point of view, and are available in print,
> diskette, Braille, and cassette formats. Information on Morley's
> materials can be obtained at the Export Department, Royal
> National Institute for the Blind in Peterborough, United
> Kingdom, or from Morley's Web site at http://www.winguide.co.uk.
>
> Control Advancements, which puts out the VRM Virtual Reality
> Mouse, which gives users tactile feedback, allowing them to feel
> their way around a Windows 95 graphical user interface. The
> company can be reached in Kitchener, Ontario, at
> http://www.controladv.com.
>
> F.H. Papenmeier GmbH & Co., whose products include the Braillex
> 2D Screen, a display and accompanying keyboard that incorporates
> the use of the Braille raised-dot reading technique to let blind
> people "read" Windows and OS/2 interfaces. In Germany the
> company can be contacted in Schwerte; in the United States,
> contact Sighted Electronics Inc. at http://www.sighted.com.
>
> SAP America Inc., in Philadelphia, can be reached at
> http://www.sap.com. Its parent company, SAP AG, in Walldorf,
> Germany, can be reached at http://www.sap-ag.de.
>
> Marc Ferranti is the New York bureau chief for the IDG News
> Service, an InfoWorld affiliate.
>
> Related articles:
>
> "SAP to list on New York Stock Exchange"
>
>                 Go to the Week's Top News Stories
>
>   Please direct your comments to InfoWorld Deputy News Editor,
>                           Carolyn April
>
>           Copyright (c) 1998 InfoWorld Media Group Inc.
>
>             InfoWorld Electric is a member of IDG.net
>
>
> VICUG-L ARCHIVES     http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/vicug-l.html
> INDEX of VICUGS                http://trfn.clpgh.org/vipace/vicug/vicugs.html
> SUBSCRIPTION FORM     http://trfn.clpgh.org/vipace/vicug/subscribe.html
>
>
>




VICUG-L ARCHIVES     http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/vicug-l.html