Main Menu And Main Menu Live On Demand - ACB Radio

Main Menu and Main Menu Live - The Technology Shows

Main Menu and Main Menu Live are ACB Radio Mainstream's regular look at technology from a blindness perspective. They carry technology news, interviews, reviews and hints from blind people around the world.

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For the latest on Main Menu, including the most recent archives, visit the new Main Menu website".

Main Menu Live is currently between series.

2008

16 July 2008

Coming up on this week's Main Menu Live, we bring you two hours of brand new content. In the first hour, Marc Mulcahy from LevelStar tells us all about the Icon accessible pocket mobile manager and portable notetaker. We welcome your questions by e-mail prior to the broadcast, or by way of calls and MSN (Windows Live Messenger) chats during the show. In the second hour, we bring you our panel of experts to discuss all things technology from a blindness perspective with emphasis on the recently concluded summer conventions. On this show, Jeff and I will be joined by Don Barrett, Randy Knapp, Debbie Hazelton and Caroline Congdon. Jeff and I would also like to let all of you know that this episode represents our final appearances as host and co-host of Main Menu. We're all going to connect and have a great time, so this is the show you will not want to miss!

25 June 2008

Coming up on this week's Main Menu Live, we dedicate the two hour episode to talk all about Window-Eyes 7.0. Doug and Aaron from GW Micro will be with us as well as many beta testers from the Window-Eyes private beta team. We will discuss the product and the many scripts that will be available on GW Micro's Scripting Central web site. We had Doug and Aaron on Main Menu in the past and it is time to bring them back to discuss the product and to get feedback from private beta users and scripters on the new version. Jamal Mazrui has written a significant amount
of scripts for the 7.0 product and he will be here to talk about the many things he has developed. I will discuss the newest refinements to the Winamp scripts that will be available including features that could replace the ACB Radio Tuner for Winamp users that use Window-Eyes as well as much improved access to the Auto-Tagging capabilities of Winamp. Aaron and Doug will talk all about the GW Toolkit scripting library, the AutoComplete
script, the progress indicator script, the VirtualView script, the Weather or Not script, and much much more. As of this writing, we are happy to report that Window-Eyes 7.0 Public Beta 1 is available.

18 June 2008

Coming up on this week's Main Menu, our first hour is prerecorded and our second hour is live! In the first hour, Shane Jackson from the Blind World Podcast interviews a panel of experts discussing their experience with accessible cell phones. In the second hour, Mike Calvo, Matt Campbell and Ricky Enger from Serotek tell us all about the accessible digital lifestyle, the Summer Sizzle promotion and the upcoming release of System Access 3.0.

4 June 2008

This week's Main Menu is all about downloading and listening to music on your computer. Presented by two music enthusiasts, Brian Hartgen and Anna Dresner, this programme demonstrates some of the ways in which you can access music services and software with a screen-reader. First, you will hear about J-Tunes version 3.2 from T&T Consultancy, which links the JAWS screen-reader with the iTunes music management system from Apple. You will learn how to install and use the J-Tunes product including listening to on-line radio stations, subscribing to Podcasts, purchasing tracks and albums from the iTunes Music Store and much more. You will also hear about purchasing and managing content from Amazon's MP3 store, EMusic and Napster. Find out how to use your screen-reader with these services. The discussion surrounding these services is not restricted to JAWS usage.

28 May 2008

Coming up on an exciting two hour live program, we hear from a panel of technology industry experts all about CAPTCHA (visual verification) and other forms of visual authentication, accessibility challenges to existing visual verification systems, the balance between human rights and security, existing solutions
for providing reasonable accomodations to visual authentication and emerging accessibility solutions. We are proud to introduce an impressive panel of experts and their primary areas of focus:

Matt May from the Adobe Systems Accessibility Team will discuss his 2005 W3C note on the inaccessibility of CAPTCHA.
Luis von Ahn from ReCAPTCHA at Carnegie Mellon University will describe their accessible solution.
Steve Dispensa from PhoneFactor will tell us all about an innovative, telephone based two-factor authentication system.

The accessibility of CAPTCHA (visual verification schemes on the web) and other similar forms of visual authentication is a topic of utmost importance to the blind, visually impaired and others with print reading disabilities. Real, universally accessible solutions are going to require significant amounts of effort, good will and out-of-the-box thinking. We encourage active participation by the blind community, members on all sides of the issue from the mainstream technology industry and those sighted people who care about what happens to us.

21 May 2008

Coming up on an action packed one hour Main Menu:

We hear from AccessWatch with a brief review of Applian's Replay A/V recording software.
Chris Grabowski demonstrates and reviews Active To-Do List from Beiley Software.
Cory Martin demonstrates and explains the use of The Onion Router (TOR) for anonymous web surfing and Internet access.
Johanna Särkinen tells us all about Baum's new Pronto accessible PDA.

14 May 2008

Coming up on this week's Main Menu, our first hour is prerecorded and our second hour is live! During the first hour, Rick Harmon tells us all about what is new in GoldWave 5.22 and the available updated JAWS scripts for that sound editing software. Darrell Shandrow demonstrates the accessible Handy Address Book from Beiley Software. In the second hour, it's all wide open forum with our panel of experts: Darrell Shandrow, Jeff Bishop, Rick Harmon, Cory Martin and Kevin Jones. Feel free to contact us using e-mail, MSN (Windows Live) Messenger or by phone with your burning technology questions from a blindness perspective.

7 May 2008

Coming up on this week's Main Menu, we have a two hour recorded presentation from T&T Consultancy. They will be giving Main Menu an exclusive first preview of the many new features within the upcoming release of J-Say Pro version 6.1. While in many cases J-Say provides the ability to control a computer by voice, people who can use JAWS with the keyboard will also find the demonstration contains some innovative and exciting new ways in which a computer can
be used in this release. The J-Say segment will form most of the presentation as there are so many new features to explain and demonstrate. They will also focus upon Say-MAGic, which is a product soon to be released enabling low vision users to work with the computer using the human voice. Finally, J-Tunes version 3.2 will be demonstrated, linking JAWS for Windows together with iTunes.

30 April 2008

Coming up on a one hour live show, we hear from AccessWatch about the latest JAWS 9.0 update, then Darcy Burnard, Holly Anderson and Shane Jackson bring us up to date on the latest happenings
with the Apple Mac platform.

16 April 2008

Coming up this week on a one hour prerecorded Main Menu, we hear from LevelStar, ITEX, Bookshare and Ultracane. This concludes our 2008 CSUN coverage.
We thank Marlaina for her efforts this year.

9 April 2008

Coming up this week on a two hour Main Menu Live, we bring you discussion and product updates from the recently completed CSUN 2008 assistive technology conference. In the first hour, Jamal Mazrui, Mika Pyyhkala and Pratik Patel join us to discuss their impressions and takeaways from CSUN 2008. In the second hour, Dave Williams updates us all on the latest from Dolphin on Hal, Supernova and the rest of the company's product line.

2 April 2008

This week on a two hour prerecorded Main Menu, we bring you the first two items from the recently concluded CSUN 2008 conference provided by Marlaina.
First, GW Micro demonstrates the new features in the updated BrailleSense note taker. Second, a research team from Arizona State University tells us all
about an independent shopping project.

26 March 2008

This week on a two hour Main Menu, we bring you a prerecorded presentation from the 2008 CSUN conference entitled Dueling Operating Systems, where blind users are given tasks to accomplish on Linux, the Macintosh OS and Windows using a screen reader of their choice. The outcomes of the tasks are judged. We would like to invite you to read Pratik Patel's blog article entitled A Public Apology for Mac Goof for his commentary regarding this presentation.

19 March 2008

This week on a one hour Main Menu Live, we hear from Susan Mazrui with AT&T Wireless all about the company's accessibility initiatives for delivering screen readers and smartphones into the hands of blind and visually impaired customers.

12 March 2008

This week, we bring to you two hours of new prerecorded content while our roving correspondents are busily working away at the CSUN conference to bring
you additional exciting announcements and reports in the very near future. The LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired presented a Reading Machines Seminar discussing electronic devices that give the blind and visually impaired access to print documents by means of magnification or Optical Character Recognition. We bring this program to you, which was first broadcast live on ACB Radio World.

5 March 2008

This week on Main Menu, we hear from Doug Geoffray and Aaron Smith from GW Micro all about the exciting new upcoming Window-Eyes version 7.0. This release offers many new features, most notably its new scripting capabilities. Doug and Aaron come on to Main Menu and discuss
with all of you all of this new exciting technology. In addition, we will have a very special announcement about some future presentations on Main Menu for those that are interested in learning scripting. Come find out more about this exciting new release and get your questions answered.

27 February 2008

In the first hour, we are honored to hear from Jim Fruchterman, Benetech's President and CEO, talking with us all about Bookshare, NIMAC and other projects from a blindness perspective. In the second hour, Darcy and Holly join
us to discuss Apple's new MacBook Air laptop computer from an accessibility point of view.

20 February 2007

This week on Main Menu, we have a two hour live programme where we will be discussing products and services from T&T Consultancy Ltd in both the United Kingdom and Australia, together with Next Generation Technologies Inc from
North America. The companies will be discussing with us:

The latest version of J-Say Pro which links together JAWS for Windows V9.0 and dragon NaturallySpeaking Professional V9.5. This includes access by voice and speech feedback with Windows Vista and Office 2007.
The companies will reveal exclusively to Main Menu the many new upcoming features of J-Tunes version 3.2, providing access through JAWS to the iTunes music management program.
SayMagic is a brand new product which will be demonstrated at the forthcoming cSUN conference and exhibition, linking together the Magic screen magnification program with Dragon NaturallySpeaking Professional.
The two companies will discuss the launch of T&T Consultancy PTY in Australia, the relocation of T&T Consultancy Ltd in the UK to new office premises, plans for cSUN 2008 and the J-Say training class which takes place just prior to cSUN.

13 February 2007

This week, we deliver two hours of brand new live content. In the first hour, Earle Harrison from Handy Tech North America and Jim Gashel from KNFB Reading Technology present and discuss with us all about the new K-NFB Mobile Reader. You will also be able to hear a short demonstration of the KNFB Reader Mobile conducted by Earle Harrison especially for the on-demand and podcast delivery of this show. If you listened to the live show, you will also want to listen to this recording to catch the demonstration. In the second hour, Gerry Chevalier from HumanWare and Mike Calvo from Serotek tell us all about the new features in the upcoming VictorReader Stream and its integration with the System Access Mobile Network. A demonstration of this integration by Matt Campbell is also included in this on-demand and podcast version of Main Menu.

6 February 2008

This week we present a special 2 hour Main Menu Live all about things
learned at the ATIA conference in Florida. J.J. Meddaugh and Matt McCubbin from BlindBargains attended the conference and we will be reviewing the conference with them. Here is what you will hear among other things:

Doug Geoffray from GW Micro announced Window-Eyes 7.0 with the major new feature being scripting. In addition to playing an interview about this exciting new enhancement for Window-Eyes, we provide a demonstration of Window-Eyes 7.0 working inside of Winamp with scripts that enhance its capabilities that will be available when Window-Eyes 7.0 releases.
AIR (standing for Accessibility is a Right). We talk with everyone about this new foundation and now free screen reader.
Serotek talked all about The Accessible Digital Lifestyle and made some major announcements.
The new KNFB Mobile Reader that runs on a cell phone is out and we talk all about its capabilities. We will have much more to say about this on a future episode of Main Menu soon as well.
We will talk about Optelec, HumanWare, Code Factory, Freedom Scientific
and more.

30 January 2008

This week, we bring you a special one hour Main Menu Live. Get answers to your blindness technology questions from our panel of experts. Caroline Congdon, Don Barrett and Rick Harmon will be joining us for this live show.

16 January 2008

This week, on a two hour Main Menu, Dean Martineau explains the use of the laptop keyboard layout and provides some useful keyboard shortcuts for Microsoft Office 2007 and Windows Vista. Darrell Shandrow presents part 1 of a demonstration of the ID Mate OMNI accessible bar code scanner from Envision America.

9 January 2008

In the first hour of Main Menu, Darcy and Holly demonstrate accessible audio production on the Apple Macintosh platform. In the second hour of Main Menu Live, Darcy and Holly join us to discuss further the accessibility of audio production and many other applications on the Mac.

2007

19 December 2007

Happy holidays from all of us at Main Menu! We first hear from Jamie Pauls from Access Watch. He tells us about a review of Nod32 version 3.0 found on the Access Watch web site. Next we hear from Kelly Sapergia with a review of Sarah And The Castle Of
Witchcraft And Wizardry from PCS Games.

12 December 2007

Darcy and Holly will update us on their experiences with the accessibility of Apple's Mac OS 10.5 Leopard after running it regularly for the past month.

5 December 2007

During the first hour on Main Menu, Raul Gallegos from GW Micro demonstrates the new GPS navigation product for the BrailleSense. During the second hour on Main Menu Live, Raul takes your questions regarding this exciting new product, as well as those regarding the rest of the company's product lines.

28 November 2007

During the first hour we will hear from Stephen Guerra from Independent Living Aids about the Nano PDA Organizer and the TapMemo PDA Organizer. In the second hour we bring Stephen on live to talk with all of us about some new products and updates to existing products.

21 November 2007

First of all, for those living in the United States, Happy Thanks Giving. This week we have two hours of live content. We first bring on to Main Menu Live Earle Harrison and Kelly Dunn from Handy Tech North America. We will talk about what Handy Tech North America is and what services they provide, an overview of the Handy Tech Braille displays and what features they provide and last but not least the brand-new Mobile Speak Smart Phone 2.0 release. Next we bring on Gerry Chevalier from Humanware and Don Barrett. Version 1.1 of the Victor Reader Stream firmware is out and Gerry, Don and myself talk all about the new features. Probably the most exciting thing for this release is the new Audible support. Gerry, Don and myself will be ready to answer any stream questions you may have whether you are a current customer
or are interested in the newest features.

14 November 2007

This week on Main Menu, stay up to date with Newsbriefs thanks to Matthew Horspool. Jamie Pauls comes in with another AccessWatch Review; this one covers
the Stamp ID3 Tag Editor. Finally, the ViTech Podcast covers RSS readers, podcasting and computer networking.

7 November 2007

We have a brand new two hour Main Menu Live for you all this week! Kevin Reeves demonstrates the accessible installation of MacOS 10.5 Leopard from a blindness perspective using VoiceOver. Join our panel of experts (Darcy Burnard, Darrell Shandrow, Jeff Bishop, John Gunn, Kevin Reeves and Holly Anderson) as we discuss the new Apple Macintosh OS 10.5 Leopard operating
system from a blind perspective. Visit our blog and Twitter page for additional information from this show.

24 October 2007

We have a brand new Main Menu and Main Menu Live for you all this week! During the first hour on Main Menu, Dean Martineau of Top Dot Enterprises demonstrates Jamal Mazrui's FileDir accessible file management utility. During the second hour of Main Menu Live, join our panel of experts (Jeff Bishop, Darrell Shandrow, Don Barrett, Rick Harmon and Steve Bauer) for an exciting discussion of GoldWave, Studio Recorder, Sound Forge, Total Recorder and possibly other audio editing software applications. If you are a blind or visually impaired audio engineer, podcaster or otherwise are involved with digital audio production in either a hobby or professional capacity, you're sure to learn something new by listening to and participating in this show.

10 October 2007

This week on Main Menu, Jamie Pauls delivers yet another great AccessWatch review. This time, he discusses the Smart Computing mainstream technology magazine. Matthew Horspool brings us three interviews from the 2007 Sight Village assistive Technology conference held in the U.K. on July 17, 18 and 19. The featured companies are Caretech, Dolphin Computer Access and Solutions Radio. Finally, Aedan Staddon from the VITech Podcast talks with us all about various file transfer protocol (FTP) clients and servers.

3 October 2007

This week we bring to you two hours of Main Menu Live! Darrell Shandrow, Jeff Bishop, Randy Knapp, Ray Bronk and Rick Harmon discuss building computers and maintaining PC hardware from a blind perspective. Randy, Ray and Rick bring us their particular insights, techniques, tips and tricks from their years of experience building and fixing computers. While many blind technology users may not consider hardware work to be a good, safe idea for the blind to undertake, our panel of experts will explain how it can be accomplished almost without need of sighted assistance for most tasks.

26 September 2007

During the first hour of Main Menu, Darrell Shandrow demonstrates the Blogger blogging platform from Google and the Bloglines web based RSS feed aggregator and reader from Ask.com. Learn how you can quickly and easily make yourself known on the web by way of the blogosphere and keep track of your favorite blogs, podcasts and all web sites that provide syndicated content by way of Atom or RSS feeds. During the second hour of Main Menu Live, join us as we discuss all things RSS, including feed readers, aggregators, podcatching software and more. If you have always wondered what this RSS thing is all about, now is your chance to call or write with your questions.

12 September 2007

During the first hour of Main Menu, Neal Ewers demonstrates the Zoom H2 digital audio recorder and Rick Harmon presents the SkRead utility for automatically announcing various Skype events. During the second hour of Main Menu Live, join our panel of blind bloggers as we discuss participation in the blogosphere from an accessibility perspective. Nickie Coby will talk about Live Journal, Jeff Bishop will inform us all about Community Server and Darrell Shandrow will cover Blogger. If you have been reading blogs for quite some time and would like to learn more about how you, too, can become part of the action, this is your time to ask the experts!

5 September 2007

This week, we cap off the celebration of ACB Radio Interactive's seventh birthday with an inside look at Internet radio broadcasting! During the first hour of Main Menu, Darrell Shandrow explains the operation of the Station Playlist Studio Internet broadcasting software and provides a demonstration of the package in action. During the second hour of Main Menu Live, join our panel of ACB Radio Interactive staff as we discuss everything that goes into broadcasting a complete live show. We will also be glad to take your questions regarding ACB Radio Interactive and Internet radio broadcasting through our usual MSN (Windows Live) Messenger and telephone channels.

29 August 2007

This week, during the first hour of Main Menu, we hear a demonstration from Brian Hartgen of T&T Consultancy covering the company's new J-Vist product delivering support for the speech recognition component of Windows Vista to JAWS users. Immediately after Brian's presentation, we hear a demonstration
of System Access working with voice input on Windows Vista from Matt Campbell of Serotek. During the second hour of Main Menu Live, join our panel of experts (Jeff Bishop, Darrell Shandrow, Don Barrett, Randy Knapp and Rick Harmon) and get answers to all of your burning technology questions!

22 August 2007

This week on Main Menu, we bring you Rick Harmon's demonstration of the accessible CallBurner Skype call recording software by Netralia.

15 August 2007

This week on Main Menu and Main Menu Live, we focus on Humanware's Victor Reader Stream.Â In the first hour, we hear an in-depth review of the Victor Reader Stream.Â In the second hour we bring on Gerry Chevalier from Humanware live to talk to all of us about the Victor Reader Stream. This will give you an opportunity to find out the latest information all about this new portable device.

27 June 2007

This week on Main Menu and Main Menu Live we focus on organization with a Calendar, Windows Vista speech recognition, portability in traveling with GPS and assistive technology techniques for being more efficient. In the first half hour of Main Menu we hear from Brian Hartgen from T&T Consultancy Limited. For those of you who are JAWS users and who are using Office 2007 you will be especially interested in this. Brian will be announcing here on Main Menu a set of scripts that will be available for purchase at Sight Village 2007 giving complete access to the Outlook 2007 Calendar. In addition, Brian will talk about a low cost JAWS script solution to Windows Vista's speech recognition interface. He will spend a bit of time demonstrating this functionality as well. In the next half hour on Main Menu we will hear from Earle Harrison all about the new Way Finder Access GPS Navigation solution recently made available for Mobile Speak Symbian phone customers. When we visit a web site or open a document, we do much more than simply listen to the entire text as it is spoken aloud. During the second hour on Main Menu Live, Don Barrett and Karen McCall will talk with us all about the efficiency and productivity related aspects of using screen readers and other assistive technology. When a web page opens, what techniques do you employ to quickly access only the information you need? This is your chance to learn from the pros and share techniques of your own.

20 June 2007

Next we hear from Steve Bauer, a familiar voice to many who listen to all of the streams here at ACB Radio. We bring Steve on to talk all things radio, that being commercial radio and HD radio. Steve works for a commercial radio station and we ask him to talk about the issues he faces from a blindness perspective in that area of his work. Buckle your seatbelt everyone as we race Into the second hour on Main Menu Live. We will talk with Che Martin from Blind Adrenaline Simulations. This is a new accessible game software company and they are just about ready to
launch an exciting new game for everyone called Rail Racer. This is both a single and multi-player game that is soon launching. Come listen as we interview Che all about the game, his career, what the development process is like in developing the game and much more, including your phone calls.

13 June 2007

This week on Main Menu Live, we present two hours of live content. In the first hour we bring on Jamal Mazrui. Jamal has created numerous freeware applications like Textpal, PDF2TXT, FileDir and many more. We will talk with Jamal all about these individual applications and you will be able to call in and ask any questions you may have about them. We will also talk about the landscape of programming using current screen reader technologies. Links to all of Jamal's documentation and programs are as follows:

Layout by Code .net documentation in a zip file

In the last hour of Main Menu Live we bring on representatives from Serotek Corporation. Mike Calvo and Matt Campbell join us to make a major announcement from Serotek about a new technology coming from them. The Main Menu production team has gotten a sneak peak at this new technology and we assure you it is something not to miss.

6 June 2007 (high quality stereo)

This week on Main Menu, we hear from Bill McCann of Dancing Dots about accessible solutions for notating and recording music and audio. Their Lime Aloud and GOODFEEL products let you create musical scores in print and in braille. their CakeTalking scripts and tutorial provides access to CakeWalk SONAR for users of the JAWS screen reader. During the second hour of Main Menu Live, Bill joins us to discuss CakeTalking and other Dancing Dots products. Feel free to call or chat with us on MSN / Windows Live Messenger all about music and technology from a blindness perspective.

6 June 2007 (standard mono quality)

30 May 2007

This week on Main Menu, Rick Harmon from the Blind Geek Zone web site reviews the use of welcome center, ease of access center, media center, backup and
restore center and speech recognition on Windows Vista with JAWS for Windows Public Beta 2. During the second hour of Main Menu Live, we hear an AccessWatch review of TypeAbility version 2.1.1. After that, it is all open phones with our panel of blind technology experts: Jeff Bishop, Darrell Shandrow, Don Barrett, Randy Knapp and Rick Harmon. Feel free to call into the show or send a MSN / Windows Live Message about any topic related to technology from a blindness perspective.

16 May 2007

This week on Main Menu, Rick Harmon from the Blind Geek Zone web site reviews the use of gadgets and Ready Boost on Windows Vista with JAWS for Windows Public Beta 2. Darrell and Karen Shandrow from the Blind Access Journal demonstrate the use of Serotek's Remote Incident Manager, a potentially revolutionary new technology that allows blind technicians to gain access to and remotely administer Windows computers belonging to end-users even when no screen reader has been installed. During the second hour of Main Menu Live, we bring on Mike Calvo, CEO of Serotek, to talk with us all about FreedomBox, Remote Access Manager, Remote Incident Manager and System Access. Mike will also be taking your questions about his innovative technology. This is a show you most certainly do not want to miss!

9 May 2007

This week on Main Menu we hear again from Rick Harmon from the Blind Geek Zone web site. He reviews for us JAWS for Windows Public Beta 2 on Windows VISTA. During the second hour of Main Menu Live we bring on Raul Gallegos from GW Micro. Raul recently joined the GW Micro staff and he joins us to talk all things Voice Sense, new Braille displays and updates concerning Window-Eyes 6.1.

2 May 2007

This week we return to coverage of the Mac. Gordon Smith joins us to talk all things machine virtualization. It is possible to run multiple operating systems on the Mac and switch between them. Come hear how this is done. On the second hour of Main Menu Live we bring Gordon Smith on to talk to all of us about the Mac. We will ask him about the current state of applications running on the Mac and more questions on virtualization. You will also have an opportunity to call in and ask any questions pertaining to the Mac, Tiger, VoiceOver and machine virtualization.

25 April 2007

This week on the first hour of Main Menu, we hear from Chris Gray, President of the American Council of the Blind and Bay Area Digital, all about a new accessible glucometer under development. We start with a demonstration of the glucometer recorded with Chris Gray, Jeff Bishop and Marlaina Lieberg at the 2007 CSUN conference. After the demonstration, Chris will come on the show live to answer all your questions. During the second hour, we bring on Karen McCall to talk with us all about accessible PDF, Office 2007 and tablet PC's.

18 April 2007

This week on Main Menu we hear from Dave Williams from Dolphin. He will talk to us all about the new version of Smart Hal for Smart Phone devices. Before we bring on our guest live, we will again hear from Jamie Pauls from Access Watch all about adding RSS feeds to Internet Explorer 7.0. During the second hour, we bring Dave Williams on to take your questions all about all of Dolphin's product line. At CSUN this year they made some announcements concerning their Vista release and we find out more about that along with the rest of the Dolphin product line.

11 April 2007

This week we bring on Earle Harrison from Handy Tech North America. During the first hour we present:

Earle brings us a Mobile Speak Smart Phone Demo from Code Factories product line.
Earle then talks with us about new advances with Handy Tech Braille displays and Handy Tech North America's role as Exclusive Master distributor for Handy Tech Products in the U.S. and Canada.

Then in the next hour we open up the phone lines for you to call in and ask any questions you may have concerning all of the products that Handy Tech sells. One of the things we want to explore is the difference between Symbian and Smart Phone technology. Why would you want one over the other? What phones and versions of Smart Phone technology are supported? We explore this, your calls and much more this week on Main Menu Live. We will also hear from Access Watch all about Nod32.

3 April 2007

This week on Main Menu Live we present iTunes on the Mac. With the recent announcement of more accessibility for Mac users to use Voice Over with iTunes, we wanted you to hear more about it from a Mac user's perspective. John Gunn presents to us initial findings using iTunes with Voice Over on the Mac. Next we hear from RJ Cooper all about Thunder on a stick. This is a low cost screen reading alternative for those that may not be able to afford the more expensive products. After RJ's presentation we bring him on Main Menu Live to talk with us and you can call in and ask your own questions of RJ. Darrell and I will do a brief tech round up for the week. We have news about a JAWS update that is now available, the new PodNova podcatching desktop client, and much more.

28 March 2007

This week, we present two hours of Main Menu Live. Join Jeff Bishop, Darrell Shandrow, Randy Knapp, Don Barrett and possibly additional guests as we talk about the announcements, exhibits, presentations and other happenings at the just-concluded CSUN conference all from a blindness perspective.

14 March 2007

This week we bring you someone who has tended to be very popular when he comes on, that being LARRY SKUTCHAN from the American Printing House for the Blind. Here are the items we will cover: Icon Braille+, Book Port II, Book Wizard Producer, The Verbal View series of tutorials and a Money Talks Update.

7 March 2007

This week on Main Menu we hear all about a brand-new free open source screen reader called NonVisual Desktop Access. During the first hour on Main Menu we hear from the developer of NonVisual Desktop Access, Michael Curran. He gives us a demonstration of NVDA. During the second hour on Main Menu Live we bring Michael Curran on to talk with us further all about his screen reader. Have you ever wanted to find out what makes a screen reader work? What are the future plans for NVDA? We learn all of this and more on Main Menu Live.

28 February 2007

Have you ever wanted to push the keyboard away from your desk and simply use your voice to control your computer? Wouldn't it be nice to be like a doctor and simply dictate your email messages, letters and other work using your voice? The possibilities are here. This week on Main Menu we talk all about the new release of J-Say Professional Version 5.0 from T&T Consultancy. Brian Hartgen joins us in the first hour and gives us a demonstration of some of the new features of J-Say Professional 5.0. In the second hour of Main Menu Live we bring on Terry Clasper from T&T Consultancy and Sue Martin from the Veterans Administration. Terry is one of the developers of J-Say Professional and Sue is a trainer and user of J-Say Professional. We will talk to them more about J-Say Professional. One of the things we want to explore is whether or not they will support the new Vista speech recognition features. Most importantly though, you will be able to talk to our guests on Main Menu Live.

21 February 2007 (high quality stream/stereo)

This week we discuss all things Olympus. In the first hour on Main Menu we will hear from Neal Ewers all about the Olympus DS-50 digital voice recorder. This new recorder has talking menus and he explores this new recorder from Olympus in depth. During the second hour on Main Menu Live we bring together a panel of experts for you to interact with. We will have Neal Ewers, Randy Knapp and Don Barrett. All of us have the Olympus DS-50 digital voice recorder and we will be discussing it during that hour. If you have questions about it or any recording questions, give us a call. In addition, Don, Randy and Neal are all musicians. We will talk about music keyboards a bit and Randy will share a story about working with a very famous blind musician in his music studio.

21 February 2007 (low quality stream)

14 February 2007

In the first pre-recorded hour of Main Menu we here from Steve Bauer all about a HD radio from Radio Shack. Next we hear from Darrell Shandrow all about a Talking Timer. To complete the first hour we bring you the first part of a presentation from Sky Taylor all about tIRC (MIRC with special scripts that interface with JAWS, Window-Eyes, Eloquence and other speech technologies). During the second hour we come on live with Darrell Shandrow (a co-producer for Main Menu Live) and Bill Dettering from Applian, the makers of Replay-AV, Replay-Converter, Replay-Music and more. Think of Replay-AV as TiVo for audio. We will talk with Bill all about the new features found in Replay-AV version 8.0 and the very inexpensive Replay-Converter product as well. One of the features of Replay-AV is the supporting of TV tuner cards. We will ask Bill to describe that interface to us. During the second hour we will also hear from Jamie Pauls from Access Watch all about American Printing House's Money Talks product.

7 February 2007

This week we bring you another two hour show. In the first hour we bring you a pre-recorded presentation from Dean Martineau and Stephen Baum from the Sound Computing Magazine produced by Dean Martineau. Dean interviews Stephen Baum from Kurzweil Educational Systems all about Version 11 of K1000. During the second hour we come on live with Darrell Shandrow (a co-producer for Main Menu Live), Paul Henrichsen from Kurzweil Educational Systems and Jamie Pauls from Access Watch. We will talk all things K1000, Access Watch and more. We will bring you some Vista updates from the prior week as well.

31 January 2007

This is it folks! The week that Microsoft and many in the world have been waiting for! It is Windows Vista launch week and we cover it this week in a very special 3 hour edition of Main Menu Live! As a very dear friend said, VISTA may stand for "Visual, information, spoken to all". Come and find out if this is indeed the case with the first two screen reader companies to publicly support Vista and Microsoft Corporation as we present all things Windows Vista! Darrell Shandrow (a co-host for Main Menu Live) and myself will be bringing you this very special Main Menu Live. Our guests will include:

Daniel Hubbell from Microsoft's Accessibility Technology Group will be joining us to tell us all about Vista.
Jamie Pauls from Access Watch brings us another mini product review of Rhapsody 4.0 as we prepare for one of our guests to bring them on live.
We may be hearing from Dolphin all about Hal for Vista. This is still in progress and if we can not bring it to you this week we will have it on an upcoming edition of Main Menu Live.
Mike Calvo and Matt Campbell from Serotek will be joining us to talk all about System Access and Windows Vista. Serotek has already announced support for Windows Vista and we ask Mike and Matt all about the experience of using Vista with System Access. In addition, we will talk all about ScriptSure with System Access.
This past week at ATIA, GW Micro announced that they will be shipping a public beta of Window-Eyes 6.1 for Windows Vista and other operating systems. We bring Doug Geoffray on Main Menu Live to talk to us all about Windows Vista. What will Window-Eyes users expect to see with this new operating system?

As you can see, it will be a jam packed show full of great news. Should you go out and buy Windows Vista? Wait a day or so and listen to this very special Main Menu Live before making your decision.

24 January 2007

This week begins a new era for Main Menu. We begin our interactive portion during the second hour of Main Menu starting this week. First of all, what is coming up in the first hour:

We first hear from Stephen Guerra from Independent Living Aids to talk to us all about the Dora the Explorer Interactive Talking Crayons. This is a very innovative product to assist parents in engaging with their young children who may be blind or who may have low vision.
We next hear from Marc Mulcahy with a very in-depth review of the Icon from Levelstar.
During the second hour we open the phones and bring Marc and Stephen on to Main Menu Live to talk with all of you. You will be able to call in and ask either of our guests questions.Â In addition, we will have three panel experts on the show with us to answer any technical questions you may have. Randy Knapp will talk about serial ATA external drives and Don Barrett will discuss with us some interesting things about File Dir and TextPal among others from Jamal.Â Both gentlemen have very technical expertise in the assistive technology industry and in computer technology as well.
During Main Menu Live, we will also be presenting the Access Watch Review of the week. This will be a 1 or two minute segment each week with a short review from the Access Watch web site.Â This week we hear all about Windows One Care Live from Microsoft.

17 January 2007

Peter from IRTI presents part two of his presentation on DAISY and we play a podcast by Mark on Blind Cool Tech about the new Icon from Level Star.

10 January 2007

Second part of Chris Hofstader's presentation and first part of the DAISY presentation with Peter from IRTI.

3 January 2007

Conclusion of Dave Williams presentation from Dolphin. Then we start a two part presentation with Chris Hofstader all about how JAWS was built. Freedom Scientific's new FSCast is also announced.

2006

27 December 2006
20 December 2006
13 December 2006
8 November 2006
25 October 2006
18 October 2006
11 October 2006
4 October 2006
27 September 2006
20 September 2006

13 September 2006

6 September 2006
23 August 2006
16 August 2006
9 August 2006

This week on Main Menu we hear from Adobe from the Information Access committee meeting at the ACB 2006 convention.

2 August 2006
19 July 2006

This week we present Microsoft Corporation all about the upcoming Windows Vista operating system from a presentation from the ACB 2006 convention from the BITS affiliate of ACB.

5 July 2006
2 July 2006
28 June 2006
25 June 2006
21 June 2006
14 June 2006This week we bring you a presentation on the Edirol R09. Due to the nature of this presentation, we are offering a stereo version of the stream for this weeks Main Menu.7 June 2006
31 May 2006
17 May 2006
10 May 2006
We first hear from Mike Calvo all about System Access Version 2.0 and the Key to Freedom.
We then hear a brief interview with Roger Smith from the American Printing House for the Blind all about the K Sonar.
3 May 2006
This week we bring you another presentation from the CSUN 2006 conference from the Sendero Group. Michael May and Charles LaPierre discuss "Seamless Outdoor/Indoor Navigation For Blind And Visually Impaired Individuals".
From the CSUN web site:
Sendero Group, pioneer of accessible Global Positioning Systems (GPS) for outdoor navigation, explores the indoor navigation frontier.
26 April 2006
This week we have two presentations:
* Stephen Guerra from Independent Living Aids talks to us all about the Milestone 311, a recently released accessible MP3 player and digital recorder.
* Chris Grabowski demonstrates to us the newly released GPS 3.5 from Sendero.
19 April 2006
This week we present a two hour menu with presentations from the CSUN 2006 technology conference.
We first hear from Freedom Scientific all about JAWS for Windows 7.0, 7.1 and even some sneak previews on what is to come in version 8.0.
We then hear from IBM, Freedom Scientific and the Mozilla Foundation on Firefox. Glen Gordon from Freedom Scientific walks us through many of the features that JAWS provides with Firefox including its use of dynamic HTML.
12 April 2006
We have another two hour Main Menu this week with focus on GW Micro presentations plus a very exciting announcement. Here is the line up:
* What is new with Window-Eyes 5.5 and the up and coming 6.0 release.
* Switching from JAWS to Window-Eyes. GW Micro tells you all about the JAWS keyboard layout they now have at their site.
* GW Micro released the Small-Talk Ultra. We let you hear all about this exciting portable computer.
* We have very exciting news on the Google front and their implementation of audio CAPTCHA. We give you the latest information and demonstrate the creation of a Google Account using audio CAPTCHA.
5 April 2006
This week we present two 1 hour presentations from Microsoft recorded at CSUN 2006:
* We first play a segment all about Windows Vista. What are the new accessibility improvements in this new operating system coming out for the consumer in 2007? Tune in and find out.
* We then hear all about Office 2007 including a guest from GW Micro to show how Window-Eyes is working with Office 2007.
29 March 2006
We start are CSUN coverage on Main Menu this week. In the next few weeks we will be bringing you shows from: The AFB, Dolphin, Microsoft, IBM and the Mozilla Foundation, Yahoo, GW Micro, Freedom Scientific and more. We start with Dolphin for this week:
It's really quite simple, Pocket Hal is a complete screen reading solution for mainstream PDAs and main stream PDA applications. Tune-in to this 1-hour feature on Pocket Hal and learn more on this weeks Main Menu.
22 March 2006

Do you want to track the happenings at the CSUN 2006 conference? We discuss the newly created ACB Radio Blog and tell you how you can contact us while we are at CSUN. The ACB Radio Blog is located at:
http://www.acbradio.org/blog
And its RSS feed is at:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/acbradio
You can email=mainmenu@acbradio.org me at: email=mainmenu@acbradio.org]mainmenu@acbradio.org/email]
Or Marlaina at: email=marlaina@acbradio.org]marlaina@acbradio.org/email]
Keep these email addresses handy if you have any questions for us hile we are at CSUN 2006.
The ACB BITS Affiliate President Rob Hubbard past away on March 15 of this year. We do a tribute to him on Main Menu this week.
Google recently released the Google Desktop Search version 3.0. What is the Google Desktop Search? We discuss its features, show you how to configure it optimally for a screen reader and we walk you through some basic Google Desktop searches.

15 March 2006
This week, we continue with part 2 of the Nero presentation by Rick Harmon.
8 March 2006
Coming up on Main Menu this week we start a two week series on Nero 6.6 brought to us by Rick Harmon. We start with an overview of Nero and walk you through many of the basics and we end up covering DVD creation and some of Nero's more advanced features as we progress.
22 February 2006
1 February 2006
This week we bring you a number of interviews from the 2006 ATIA conference.
We apologize for some of the audio quality of these presentations as they were recorded live from the exhibit floor.
25 January 2006
Coming up on this weeks Main Menu:
* We hear from Darrell Shandrow from the Blind Access Journal:
url=http://www.blindaccessjournal.com]http://www.blindaccessjournal.com/url]
All about the use of CAPTCHA on Google's web site. We discuss the current petition being circulated around the internet currently found at:
url=http://www.blindwebaccess.com]http://www.blindwebaccess.com/url]
Darrell tells us what CAPTCHA is, what other web sites have done to work around the use of CAPTCHA and what we can do as a community to try and get Google to change their current implementation.
* We next hear a review of Trek 2000 from GMA Games:
url=http://www.gmagames.com]http://www.gmagames.com/url]
We also hear all about the Audio Games web site found at:
url=http://www.audiogames.net]http://www.audiogames.net/url]
18 January 2006
Coming up on this two hour edition of Main Menu we take an extended look at Freedom Box System Access. We have discussed this product in the past but we haven't really put it through its paces. Matt Campbell (FBSA's main
developer) takes us through many Windows and Microsoft Office applications utilizing FBSA.
11 January 2006
This week on Main Menu we discuss using email lists. We describe how to find them, how to subscribe to them, and how to set up message rules in Outlook Express to manage the mailing lists. That is what we have for this week on Main Menu.

2005

21 December 2005
This week on Main Menu we bring you Jonathan Mosen from Humanware to discuss the new Keysoft version 7 product coming out in mid January.
14 December 2005
7 December 2005
This week we have a two hour Main Menu where we present:
Nuance comes to talk with us about their new product called Zooms, a screen magnification application for your mobile phone. They also bring us news on the newly released Talks version 2.5.
We then hear from Triumphonic on their new M-PAC product. M-PAC bundles the Pocket PC platform with Bluetooth technology and the recently introduced Mobile Speak for Pocket PC speech software from Code Factory.
Finally, we begin a two part review of Scott Rutkowski reviewing mobile pocket on his HP device (which we will complete on next weeks Main Menu).
23 November 2005
This week is all about computer safety and security. First a discussion about safe computer practices to keep things clean and secure. The second half will be a demonstration of Grisoft's free version of their AVG anti virus software.
16 November 2005
This week, Dalphin Systems introduces us to Pocket HAL.
9 November 2005
We listen this week to A session from the ACB convention in Las Vegas concerning the latest updated information about cell phone accessibility.
26 October 2005
This week Terry Clasper and Brian Hartgen of T-and-T Consultancy introduce us to J-Say Pro 3.0.
19 October 2005
This week, we are shown Jaws version 7 from Freedom Scientific.
12 October 2005
GW Micro just released Window-Eyes 5.5 public beta 2 so we go over the release notes for it. We then hear from Darcy and Holly from the Darcy and Holly Show podcast reviewing the book curior. then we finish up with a demo of a computer game called X Hour.
5 October 2005
We first hear about the new Jaws for Windows version 7.0 just released by Freedom Scientific this month. We also hear from Sean Randall who demonstrates Free Download Manager from freedownloadmanager.org
28 September 2005
We have yet another BITS session where we hear from a "Technical Evangelist" from Microsoft discussing MS' commitmentss to accessibility and "Long Horn," now formally called Windows Vista.
21 September 2005
We finish up This year's BITS presentation including the anual luncheon for the organization.
14 September 2005
We now have an opportunity to use an alternative web browser, Mozilla Firefox, made accessible through the use of Window-Eyes 5.5 beta 1 now publically available. We hear a demonstration of Firefox and learn of its many advantages.
7 September 2005
We hear all about the Iriver 799T on this weeks episode of Main Menu. This portable mp3 player/recorder is one of the most popular mp3 players for blind users for both listening to mp3s and for doing podcasts.
31 August 2005
We continue with more vendor presentations from the Blind Information Technology Specialests (BITS) Vendor show case held at the ACB national convention in Las Vegas.
24 August 2005
This week we hear all about the newly released Kurzweil 1000 Version 10. This will be one you surely don't want to miss.
17 August 2005
We hear four vendors at the BITS "Battle of the Titans" offer dedetailed product pitches. They are GW Micro, Humanware, Freedom Scientific, and Optalight.
10 August 2005
We continue with part two of Darrell Shandrow's presentation on the Pac Mate and Street Talk Destinator.
3 August 2005
Darrell Shandrow, from the Blind Access Journal, begins a two part presentation on the Pac mate and a new product, Street Talk Destinator.
27 July 2005
First we hear from Mike Calvo about the major announcement made at Sight Village and we also get a Freedom Box update.
We then hear from 5 exhibitors from Sight Village. These are: Dolphin
Systems, Visionaid Technology, Cragside Technology, Dancing Dots, and Choice Technology.
20 July 2005
We have two things for you:
1. We complete a series from Darrell Shandrow on making the Pac Mate and your cell phone along with a wireless modem work together.
2. We get an update from Brian Hartgen on his work with making Itunes 4.9 with JAWS for Windows more accessible. Some exciting developments have been made from last weeks review.
13 July 2005
This week on a two hour Main Menu:
We hear from Brian Hartgen on his new JAWS for Windows scripts for Itunes 4.9.
This is followed by an interview with Woody Anna Dresner about her new book on the Ipod Shuffle from National Braille Press.
We then hear from Darrell Shandrow on two topics. First he updates us on Google's accessibility commitment to eliminate the accessible verification issue (CAPTCHA) for blind computer users.
We then start a series on interfacing your Pac Mate with your cell phone and wireless modem to gain access to the internet.
Finally, it is Harry Potter week this week and we update you on two sources for the newly released book coming out on July 16.
29 June 2005
Just hours ago, Humanware announced the latest addition to their BrailleNote and VoiceNote range of products, the all new mPower. This is likely to be one of the most talked about products at the various assistive technology exhibitions next month.
Tune in to Main Menu to hear about the enhanced: connectivity, storage and media features found on the mPower as we talk with Humanware's Blindness Product Marketing Manager Jonathan Mosen. Following the interview Jonathan will take us on a whistle stop tour of the new mPower features.
22 June 2005
We hear exherpts from Jeff Bishop's "Desert Skies" podcast. He is one of many blind podcasters these days.
15 June 2005
We have a two hour program this week where we hear the opening portion of the Ocusource virtual conference, the first of its kind.
8 June 2005
We talk with Pat Price, past officer of ACB and learn how she feels about the importance of technology and blind people. We also discuss her involvement with the upcoming Ocusource conference.
1 June 2005
We revisit a controversial paper presented at this year's CSUN conference. According to some, the paper entitled, "PACMate BrailleNote Comparison" was anything but. We first remind ourselves with the substance of the presentation.
This is then immediately followed with an interview with Jonathan Mosen the Blindness Product Marketing Manager with Humanware, who have recently put out a response to this paper in which Humanware raise a number of key concerns.
Finally, we hear about Access Watch a web site which apparently offers news and reviews of assistive technologies from a blindness perspective. Sound familiar?
25 May 2005
We take a look at one of the newer Simbian Series 60 handsets from Nokia. The 6630, which will be released in the US as the 6638 later in the year. We explore the pros and the cons of what Nokia describe as being a portable office and a modern rich-media machine.
18 May 2005
This week we learn about synergies between Talking Communities and
Ocusource, a new online resource which aims to bring consumers, agencies and the assistive technology industry together.
We hear about TC Conference which is the next generation iVocalise client.
Finally, we pick up where we left off with part 2 of our demonstration of Voice Over, a new screen access tool from Apple.
11 May 2005
This may turn out to be one of the most significant developments of the year for blind computer users. Apple have recently released OSX 10.4 which includes Voice Over, a screen access tool for users of the Apple Mac.
We talk with Jerry Halatyn from new York who is an experienced professional Mac user and beta tester of the software. Jerry tells us about Voice Over, how it works, and why for the first time in years, the blind community may want to seriously consider Apple as a genuinely accessible alternative.
Following the interview, Jerry takes us on a whistle stop tour around OSX 10.4 and for the first time on ACB Radio, Voice Over.
4 May 2005
We speak with Steve Bennett the European Director of Sales with olphin
Computer Access. Steve tells us about the Dolphin Pen, a new way for users of Dolphin software to take their screen access software with them as they go, and use it on any Windows 2000 or XP machine.
A number of you have asked us this week how you go about receiving the new ACB Radio podcasts. We will take you through clearly step by step and tell you what you need to do in order to have the latest ACB Radio shows ready for you to listen to on your desk top or portable MP3 player.
27 April 2005
This week's program is completely devoted to podcasting and a look at Live Journal.
20 April 2005
We talk to Leon Gilbert about his experiences with assistive technology training, and the voluntary work Leon provides to the blind community including his myriad blind news services.
We then demonstrate Accessible RSS, a quick and easy way to keep up with news from your favourite web sites.
13 April 2005
Description will be available soon.
6 April 2005
We take a retrospective look back at the past 5 years of Main Menu programs. Here are just a few things you will hear on this weeks Main Menu: a special surprise you will not want to miss, Singing Dectalks, a brief review of screen reader technology over the past few years, games we have reviewed on Main Menu, and much much more.
30 March 2005
An interview with Jonathan Mosen from Humanware about the latest on the BrailleNote.
We See TV, the described video service behind the narration for Blind
Justice currently running on ABC.
Finally, part 2 of the JFW 6.1 presentation. Recorded with generous
permission from Freedom Scientific.
23 March 2005
Description will be available soon.
9 March 2005
Description will be available soon.
2 March 2005
Description will be available soon.
23 February 2005
Description will be available soon.
16 February 2005
This week Main Menu talks with the Huge Print Press.
9 February 2005
We demonstrate Blogging with blogger.com.
26 January 2005
From the wBU General Assembly Christopher Friend, Special Projects Consultant with Sight Savers International, introduces Helen Brasier who speaks on behalf of the International Federation of Libraries Associations and Steven King who sits on the board of the daisy consortium. We hear about Daisy for All projects in India and Asia and Dick Tucker tells us about the work of the Force Foundation. Finally, We hear about plans for Vision 2005 which is aming to be the largest conference ever held on blindness.
19 January 2005
Happy new year to everyone in Main Menu land. This week Main Menu tours the exhibit hall at the Sixth General Assembly of the World Blind Union. We speak with: Sensory Solutions from South Africa, Handitech from Germany, Tagarno from Denmark, Arora Information Technology from Australia, Development technology workshop based in Cambodia, Caretec from Austria and finally Bengala Branca from Brazil.

2004

22 December 2004
Just before Main Menu take our regular break for xmas and the new year, we spend some time listening to and participating in a fascinating descussion held at the conclusion of the ICAN conference which proceeded the WBU General Assembly in South Africa.

15 December 2004
Martin Roberts finds out what is new with Dolphin computer Access when he visits their offices at Technology House in worcester in the UK.

1 December 2004
Main Menu talk with GW Micro about the release of public beta 1 of version 5 of the Window-Eyes screen reader.

24 November 2004
Main Menu profiles Robert Leblonde and the Asistive Technology Centre in California.

17 November 2004
Part 2 of our interview with Steven Baum of KES.

10 November 2004
Part 1 of our interview with Steven Baum of KES.

27 October 2004
This week Main Menu features a recent Tuesday Topics descussion on the Tech Act.

13 October 2004
This week we catch up with Mr George Buys and learn about his various Talking communities.

6 October 2004
Following a couple of announcements from the A.T. industry we hear part 2 of our interview with the editors of Audyssey Magazine.

29 September 2004
This week we feature part 1 of an interview with the editors of the popular blind gamers Audyssey Magazine. also this week we hear part two of a demonstration of the Ten Pin Bowling game.

22 September 2004
We conclude our look at Winamp 5 and hear part 1 of a demonstration of the Ten Pin Bowling game.

15 September 2004

8 September 2004
We look at configuring the Winamp version 5 media player. This is followed by another of Raul's accessible game reviews.

25 August 2004
Back at last month's ACB Convention we join the ACB Radio Interactive team with a selection of interviews from the convention exhibit hall.

18 August 2004
This week we return to Sight Village and the launch of the Ultra Cane plus Freedom Scientific's JAWS 5.1 presentation.

11 August 2004
We take a break from the exhibitions to hear a demonstration by Grant Hardy of 0Spam - a service for bannishing spam from your inbox. Raul is also along to demonstrate the Pipe 2 game.

4 August 2004
This week we return to the BITS showcase at the ACB convention, our coverage this week features: an exciting announcement about the return of Window-Bridge, Bender Consulting Services, Alva, Henter Math, HandyTech, Beyond Sight and View Plus. That's followed by the BrailleNote User Group session from the ACB Convention.

28 July 2004
This week we catch up with Sight Village, the UK's largest exhibition of asistive technology products and services for the blind, we feature interviews with: Bugcom makers of the world's first mobile phone screen reader, Computer Room Services tell us about the Wave Finder, Dolphin Oceanic, Cobolt, Tieman, Talking Newspapers UK and Choice Technology who are making low-cost screen access solutions a reality.

21 July 2004
This week we hear from the Blind Information Technology Specialists (BITS) vender showcase including presentations from: Duxbury Systems, Optelec, PulseData Humanware, GW Micro, Visuaide, Kurzweil Educational Systems, Recordings for the blind and Dyslexic, A-Squared, Freedom Scientific and Talking solutions.

30 June 2004
We talk with Jonathan Mosen of PulseData International who have a series of fascinating new product announcements.

23 June 2004
This week we review the scary new title from Bavisoft.

9 June 2004
Main Menu talks with Simon Philips of the Bioptic Driving Network about Bioptics and the BDN's forthcoming conference.

2 June 2004
Tagline is a flexible telephone call management system which may be of particular use for people who are blind. Also this week we hear about the release of version 2 of Freedom Box.

26 May 2004
Chris Cant tells us about the ACcessible Friends Network, followed by a demonstration of the accessible Treasure Hunt Game.

19 May 2004
we talk about the upcoming Windows XP Service Pack 2.

12 May 2004
Main Menu goes out and about in Scotland to road test a Talking GPS.

5 May 2004
This week we feature an extended interview to the Dolphin Computer Access European Director of Sails.

21 April 2004
From CSUN we hear a demonstration of J Say- a speech-in speech-out solution.

14 April 2004
As many people are enjoying Easter Holidays, we take a break from out CSUN coverage and hear a demonstration of GMA Tank Comandor. This is followed by a discussion of lossless digital audio compression.

7 April 2004
We hear about The IRIS (Internet Radio from Talking Solutions, and pickup where we left off from the JAWS 5 presentation from CSUN>

31 March 2004
Continuing with ACB Radio's CSUN coverage: we hear about the up-coming Window-Eyes 5 from GW Micro and about Jfw 5 from Freedom Scientific.

24 March 2004
Continuing with ACB Radio's CSUN coverage:

Brad Davis is the Vice President of Hardware Management for Freedom
Scientific. Brad joins us to tell us about the new BX400 and QX400 versions
of the Pacmate.

We hear from the BrailleNote Product Marketing Manager Jonathan Mosen on
Keysoft 5.1 and the future of the BrailleNote line.

Eric Damery from Freedom Scientific is along to tell us what's new with JAWS
for Windows as well as looking ahead to JFW version 5.1.

Finally this week, we hear briefly from the K1000 Product Manager about
K1000 Version 8.

17 March 2004
Direct from CSUN Marlaina Lieberg briefly speaks with the CEO of Next Generation Technologies about an exciting new product they have coming to market. Stay tuned to Main Menu in future weeks and keep an eye on the lists for further developments regarding ACB Radio's special reports from CSUN.

The subject of accessible cell phones is a topic which has been on the minds of many lately. Rob Hubbard quite literally "Talks" us through the features of the Nokia 3650 cellular phone.

2003

10 December 2003

To conclude the current Main Menu series, we take a look back at the year in this special half hour programme

3 December 2003

We are joined by Martin Roberts, assistive technology guru and beta tester, for a casual look back at the year in screen reading.

Raul Gallegos demonstrates the advantages to using IMAP rather than POP3 for accessing email.
Finally this week, we fondly remember Main MEnu contributor Henry Brugsch who is sadly no longer with us.

26 November 2003

Michael Lang joins us to demonstrate the ps2000 digital recorder. As a footnote to our series on streaming audio heard earlier in the year, Chris scarstad AKA Toonhead is back to tell us about the SAM Encoders from Spacial Audio. Remember MS DOS? Don Ball does, and Don's along to talk about a useful DOS utility DOS Image.

12 November 2003

With Thanks giving and Christmas just around the corner, this week on Main Menu we let our hair down by demonstrating two exciting games from
BSC Games.
ACB Radio's very own Jammin Jerry demonstrates Troopanum 2, and we hear Chris Scarstad's review of the Hunter Game.

5 November 2003

This week Main Menu catches up with the Technology show case from last month's CCB convention.
Our coverage includes demonstrations of: the Aviva from Talking Solutions, the Braillenote from
Pulsedata and the Pacmate from Freedom Scientific.

29 October 2003

Carlos Taylor concludes his 3-part series looking at Window-Eyes version 4.5.

Brian Hartgen demonstrates Key to Freedom from Serotek.

15 October 2003

On a shorter programme this week - Carlos Taylor continues his 3-part series exploring the new features of Window-Eyes Version 4.5.

DJC demonstrates the APC Personal edition power supply.

8 October 2003

Following the recent release of Window-Eyes version 4.5, Main Menu offers
listeners another chance to hear an interview with GW Micro's Doug Geofray recorded
shortly after CSUN earlier this year. Doug talks about the new 4.5 features
and hints at what lies ahead for Window-Eyes.

Carlos Taylor picks up the Window-Eyes 4.5 story by demonstrating some of
the new Window-Eyes features in a little more detail.

Also on Main Menu this week. Paul Merrell shares some thoughts about screen
magnification software.

Finally, Michael Lang reviews the IHP-100 hard disk based MP3 player from
iRiver

1 October 2003

We start this week by talking networks. We briefly describe how one goes
about setting up a home network and briefly discuss the Netgear DG814 ADSL
gateway before going on to hear about wireless networking.

The file sharing debate entered new territory recently when the RIAA filed
claims against 261 individuals including a 12 year old girl. We hear from
ACB Radio listeners in an open forum discussion hosted by Mike Lauf a couple
of weeks ago in the
OurPlace chat portal
on the ACB Radio web site.

From programme 107, we hear a demonstration of the Bscan utility for use
with the popular Cuecat barcode reader.

Finally, also from programme 107 we
learn about Austrailia's Telstra home communicate pre-pay service.

24 September 2003

Dean Martineau concludes his 2 part series looking at third party tool bars for Windows, in
particular the
Google Toolbar.

Cory Martin demonstrates and reviews
OmniPage 12 Pro.

17 September 2003

We hear part 2 of our look at Easyreader, a software Daisy book reader from the Dolphin Group.

Dean Martineau begins a short series on Tool bars. Dean starts by demonstrating
Dave's Quick Search Desk Bar, a nifty little utility for
searching the web directly from your Windows taskbar.

Finally, djc reviews accessible Suit Yourself.

10 September 2003

We hear part one of our look at
Easy Reader, software which allows one to listen to and navigate Daisy books on the PC.

John Gunn concludes his series about the Outlook 2000 calendar.

Finally, we demonstrate
Skype, a new and exciting voice over IP application.

3 September 2003

DJC introduces us to a couple of encryption tools.

John Gunn continues his series about the Outlook 2000 calendar.

Finally, Raul Gallegos demonstrates dynaman, a game from
ESP Soft Works.

20 August 2003

Following the recent Blaster Worm outbreak, we start with an important
reminder about anti-virus software, fire walls and Windows update.

DJC tells us about the ACB Open taking place later this month, at All In
Play.

Do you have many files which you would like to rename all at once? Noel
Romey has the solution, the Bulk Renamer Utility.

Finally, John Gunn starts a series exploring the Microsoft Outlook Calendar.

13 August 2003

In a slightly shorter Main Menu this week, configuring your computer, maze
games for the PC and utilities for the Braille Lite.

We start an occasional series looking at ways to optemize the performance of
Windows. This week we demonstrate Startup Control Panel written by Mike
Lin, "a nifty control panel applet that allows you to easily configure which
programs run when your computer starts.

If you need to get away from it all, DJC has the ideal solution. Why not
get lost in a maze? Sounds frustrating, but they tell us it's fun. Listen
to DJC's reviews of a couple of maze games and decide for yourself.

Finally, Graham Hardy talks about two useful utilities he has developed for
the Braille Lite.

6 August 2003

We hear part two of the Blind Information Technology Specialists (BITS)
vender showcase recorded at last month's ACB convention in Pittsburgh.
Presentations come from: Braille translation software manufacturer Duxbury
Systems, Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic, VisuAide makers of the Victor
Trekker, Kurzweil Educational Systems, the much talked about Talking
Solutions, Alva Access Group, VoiceMate manufacturer Parrot, Reprotronics
and All In Play (formally known as Z Form).

Also from convention, Doug Hunsinger of ACB Radio Interactive catches up
with three of the exhibitors from the ACB convention exhibit hall. These
include: GuideLine HandGuide an infrared mobility aid, IVS accessible voting
machine and WGBH descriptive video.

30 July 2003

We conclude our Sight Village 2003 coverage with a Braille Note presentation
from Marlaina Lieberg of Pulse Data Humanware. Marlaina demonstrates some
of the new features we can expect in Keysoft version 5.

Blind Information Technology Specialist (BITS) is the new name for Visually
Impaired Data Processors International (VIDPI). We bring you coverage of
the BITS vender showcase sessions from this year's ACB convention. This
weeks coverage features Ron Miller and Dave Wilkinson of Freedom Scientific
who tell us about Packmate, the note taker designed around pocket PC
applications. For those of you who missed him last week we also hear
briefly from Eric Dammery, of Freedom Scientific, on version 5 of JAWS.
Amongst others at this BITS vender showcase, AFB, Doug Geoffray of GW Micro,
Bookshare, Larry Louis of Pulse Data Humanware, Dancing Dots and more.

23 July 2003
This week on Main Menu,
Freedom Scientific
unveiled JAWS For Windows version 5 to the world last week at the
Sight Village exhibition
held in the UK. JAWS 5 is slated for public beta next month, however Main Menu listeners can get a sneak preview of what lies ahead. We here a presentation from Eric Dammery of
Freedom Scientific
who talks us through what's new with JAWS.

Also at Sight Village, we talk to
Brian Hartgen
of T&T Consultancy. Brian, who is no stranger to long-time ACB Radio listeners, tells us about an affordable voice-recognition solution designed to work with JAWS.

Finally, we hear from Steve Nutt of
Computer Room services
who tells us about various products including how to get Braille access from a mobile phone.

2 July 2003

On Main Menu this week, Ted Henter is back in the software business, with his
new company, Henter Math. We speak with
him about their first product, Virtual pencil.

Michael Barber from the Iowa Department for the Blind's Project
Assist speaks with us about a new distance learning programme allowing blind
people to become certified Microsoft Office Specialists.

Jim Layton of the Radio Information Service in Bellville Illinois speaks with
Jim Fruchterman of Benetech about Bookshare.org.

DJC tells us about ID3 tags in Mp3 files
and why you should use them.

And Jamie Pauls tells us about Pressplay,
a legal way of downloading copyrighted music over the Internet.

25 June 2003

On Main Menu this week, we update you with the latest news in our News Briefs
section.

We hear about the new MPO, the
Mobile Phone organiser with a 20 cell Braille display, note taking and agenda
capabilities, and a GPRS capable tri-band cell phone.

We hear about Cepstral, a company producing
digitised speech solutions, and demonstrate one of their SAPI 5 capable voices.

Sean Randal shows
us the Ventrilo voice chat server.

And DJC shows us how to add more power
to our instant messenger of choice using the Smart
Butler programme.

18
June 2003

This week on Main Menu, we update you with the latest technology news in our
News Briefs section.

Do you wish you were a good touch typist or do you know someone who wants to
learn? Kelly Sapergia provides a comprehensive
demonstration of the Talking Typing Teacher
package.

11 June 2003

On Main Menu this week, we update the latest technology news in our News Briefs
section.

Marc Mulcahy concludes his series on
the GNOME graphical user environment for Unix-based operating systems.

Raul Gallegos shows us the handheld
bopit game, available widely from toy stores in the US.

Edward Alonzo reviews Clock
Sound.

And Mike Calvo demonstrates the VIP
1000 talking thermostat.

4 June 2003
This week on Main Menu, we update you with the latest technology news in our
News Briefs section.

Imagine being able to turn on your cell phone, and without any additional gadgets,
have it speak to you, allow you to send and receive text messages, add phone
book entries, look at your missed calls, and get caller ID info from incoming
calls. With the new Mobile Accessibility
software, and a phone running the increasingly popular Symbian phone operating
system, it's all possible. We talk with a company representative about the product
and listen to a presentation that demonstrates the software.

We demonstrate the Nokia 6610 mobile phone. This tri-band GSM phone has polyphonic
ring tones, an FM radio and a hands free speaker phone. And when connected to
a PC, you can do text messaging, add and edit phone book entries, and, with
the aid of additional software, configure just about every option on the phone.

And Sean Randall reviews
the MIRC Winamp plug-in, allowing IRC users
to see what you're playing in your Winamp.

28 May 2003

This week on Main Menu, News Briefs gives you the latest in technology news.

We speak with Samuel Adler of Visuaide in
Canada about their Trekker GPS package that runs on a standard PDA, and their
range of DAISY reader products.

We then demonstrate one of Visuaide's products, Victor Reader Soft, for reading
DAISY books on your PC.

And Don Ball reviews the HP PSC 1210
scanner, printer and copier.

21 May 2003

This week on Main Menu, News Briefs brings you the latest technology news.

Marc Mulcahy continues his popular series
on the Gnome graphical user environment for Unix-based operating systems.

Radio is the primary means of information and entertainment for many blind
people. While the Digital Audio Broadcasting system used in Europe and being
rolled out to other countries offers a major expansion of listening options,
it also poses challenges for blind people as the face of radio changes. We speak
with Ian Mcrae in London about the pros and cons of Digital Audio Broadcasting.

And Michael Lang reviews the Sony MZB-100 Minidisc recorder.

14 May 2003

This week on Main Menu, Marc Mulcahy continues
his series on the Gnome graphical user environment for Unix-based operating
systems.

And Noel Romey tells us all about XM
Satellite Radio, showcasing a new receiver that gives you complete access
to XM on your PC.

7 May 2003

This week on Main Menu, we update the latest technology news in our News Briefs
section.

We review Studio Recorder, an accessible,
powerful audio editor for spoken word material.

Have you had one too many "this programme has performed an illegal operation
and will be shut down" message? Marc
Mulcahy begins a series on the Gnome open
source graphic user environment, that is shaping up to provide a real alternative
to Windows for blind people.

And Chris G reviews the Accenda
talking remote control.

30 April 2003
This week on Main Menu, we update you with the latest technology news in our
News Briefs section.

The rest of the show is devoted to an interview with Dr Greg Vanderheiden of
the Trace Research Centre at the University
of Wisconsin. Greg has his finger right on the pulse of the latest technological
developments. As we become increasingly concerned about losing access to everyday
appliances, and the amount of time it's taking for us to get good cell phone
access, could the breakthrough be just around the corner? We'll hear, as part
of this interview, about work that is now almost complete on an international
standard protocol that will allow a single device to talk to all other devices
in your home. There's much more in this fascinating discussion.

23 April 2003

This week on Main Menu, we update you with the latest technology news in our
News Briefs section.

We take another look at the new IVocalize voice chat system, as Earle
Zwicker looks at the system primarily from the perspective of administering
your own server.

And we talk with a true blindness technology pioneer, Jim Bliss, who has been
involved with blindness technology for over 40 years. His company, J
Bliss Imaging Systems, develops stand-alone software applications to meet
the needs of low vision users.

16
April 2003
This week on Main Menu, we update you with the latest technology news in our
News Briefs section.

Window-eyes 4.5 was being shown off by GW
Micro at the CSUN technology conference, and represents a major unfreezing
of the Window-eyes feature set. We speak with Doug Geoffray of GW Micro about
what's going to be in this new release.

Eric Dammery of Freedom Scientific
joins us to talk about JAWS 4.51, and we see what we can tease out of him
regarding JAWS 5.0, due for release in around August.

Raul Gallegos reviews Windows Simon
says.

And DJC takes a look at Add
Aware version 6, a programme designed to keep your system free of spyware.

9 April 2003
This week on Main Menu, we update you with the latest technology news in our
News Briefs section.

With the increased interest in current affairs due to the Iraq conflict, DJC
reviews the MSNBC News Alert programme
which brings news right to your desk top.

Dan Eickmeier reviews Pal
Talk, a programme allowing you to communicate in text and voice with people
around the world.

Matthew Bullis introduces us
to a cool new gadget, the Griffin
Power Mate.

If you have the bandwidth and are interested in broadcasting on the Internet,
you may like to try setting up your own Shoutcast
server. We show you how.

And Nick G discusses MIRC-Speech,
allowing you to use JAWS with the MIRC Internet Relay Chat client.

2 April 2003

On Main Menu this week, we update you with the latest technology news in our
News Briefs section.

Chris Skarstad reviews the Hunter
game from BSCGames.com.

Kelly Sapergia demonstrates the Packman
talks game, an accessible version of one of the most popular games in the
world.

And DJC concludes his series on Norton
System Works.

26
March 2003
This week on Main Menu, we update you with the latest technology news in our
News Briefs section.

We speak with Mike Calvo about the latest developments with Freedom
Box, including the new web interface which means you can use the service
with just a web browser.

Michael Killian reviews two free games,
Guess the Number and Shell
Shock.

DJC continues his tutorial on Norton
System Works.

And Adam Macleod reviews Secure
CRT, a secure accessible Telnet application for connecting with remote servers

19 March 2003

On Main Menu this week, Audio-Tips.com
has something big to reveal, something that will change the way many of
us chat on the Net, and learn via e-learning. The announcement is being made
first on main Menu.

Larry Lewis of Pulse Data International is along to tell us about Keysoft version
5.0, the next version of the software that drives the BrailleNote
family of products.

And DJC continues his review of Norton
System Works, this time looking at DiskDoctor and WinDoctor.

12
March 2003

This week on Main Menu, we update you with the latest technology news in our
News Briefs Section.

Brian Hartgen demonstrates the JSay scripts,
a low cost solution for access to Dragon Naturally speaking.

DJC brings us part two of his look at
Norton System Works, this time looking at Norton Antivirus.

Chris G takes us on a tour of
the highly accessible ITI Simon 3 Security System.

And Tim Cumings introduces us to the
Sony ECMF8 electret condenser microphone, great for people on a budget who want
good sound from their recordings.

5
March 2003

On Main Menu this week, join us for the second and final part of our PAC Mate
review. This week we'll look at synchronising data between your PC and the PAC
Mate, working with the Calendar, tasks and notes, using publicly available applications
such as MSN messenger and Windows Media Player, and a lot more.

26
February 2003

This week on Main Menu, the entire show is devoted to part one of our comprehensive
review of the PAC Mate. PAC Mate
is Freedom Scientific's new line of portable computers running Pocket PC applications
under Windows CE. Much anticipated and long awaited, we'll take the time to
really put the PAC Mate through its paces so you can be informed about how it
works.

19
February 2003

On Main Menu this week, we update you with the latest technology news in our
news briefs section.

Tim Cumings reviews a couple of microphones
ideal for using when recording with minidisk recorders.

Matthew Bullis reviews the Reovolt
SP250 CD MP3 player with FM radio.

Marvin Rush introduces us to XM Satellite
Radio, demonstrating the receiver he has and showing us the breadth of content
available.

And DJC begins a series on Norton System
Works.

12
February 2003

This week on Main Menu, Chuck Atkins of the Central Ohio Radio Information
service looks at the Braille Note GPS software. The global positioning system
can be used by blind people to assist with travel. We tell you more this week.

If you broadcast on the Internet or LPFM, have a large music collection that
you want to be played in style, or you would like a programme that could switch
Internet radio stations for you according to pre-defined instructions, you won't
want to miss our review of a remarkable new programme called Station
Playlist Studio. Those familiar with broadcasting terms will be astounded
to hear that this package boasts 48 cart machines.

5
February 2003
This week on Main Menu, we update you with the latest news in our news Briefs
section.

DJC is along to speak with Alan Maynard
and Liam Ervin, two new game developers who have both written new
releases in the accessible games field.

And Kevin Reeves brings us part
two of his series that looks at working with Pro Tools on the Apple Macintosh.
But you don't need to be an audiophile to enjoy this instalment. In preparation
for the Pro Tools demonstrations, Kevin gives us a tour of how the Apple Mac
operating system works.

29 January 2003

On Main Menu this week, we update you with the latest news in our News Briefs
section.

We've spent many hours on Main Menu looking at our computers talking to us.
This week, we'll discuss talking back to our computers. We discuss working with
Dragon naturally Speaking. Just how good is it, and what are the various ways
in which a blind person can use it. We'll speak with Terry Clasper of T
and T Consultancy in the UK, who are the distributors in that part of the
world of the Jawbone Interface System,
a bridge between Dragon naturally Speaking and JAWS. We'll also hear from Brian
Hartgen, who is producing a tutorial on the use of Dragon Naturally Speaking
with jawbone. Then, Brian will give us a demonstration of how it all works in
practice.

Do you wish you had better control over all the functions of your VCR? Michael
Killian demonstrates the talking VCR remote control from Cobolt
Systems.

22
January 2003

This week on Main Menu, we'll update you with the latest technology news in
our News Briefs section.

At last, Main Menu brings you some coverage of the Apple Macintosh. Kevin
Reeves begins a series on using the Pro Tools audio suite, used in many
professional recording studios, with Outspoken for the Macintosh. Part 1 contains
a commentary on audio production as well as a full description of the Macintosh's
physical makeup.

Many people haven't explored the control over one's e-mail that can be gained
by using e-mail filters. It isn't necessary, for example, to have a list's name
in the subject to know where the e-mail is coming from or make a filter. Randy
Formenti provides a detailed tutorial on controlling your e-mail using filters
in Outlook Express.

2002

18 December
2002

This week on Main Menu, Mike Calvo introduces
us to a cellphone that is at last truly accessible. Send and receive text messages,
configure the phone, and use the phone book with the help of Eloquence speech.
The TalkX software is for the Nokia
9290, which is much more than just a cellphone, offering PDA functionality.

Optacon users will tell you that nothing substitutes for being able to feel
the printed page. A German company has developed the VideoTIM,
a device that brings the tactile presentation of the printed page into the 21st
century. We speak to its developers.

Many blind people enjoyed the Road Runner, a small device with Doubletalk speech
that enabled you to take books and other documents on the road. Now, the Book
Courier enhances those functions, and adds an accessible portable MP3 player
as well.

And Michael Lang discusses and demonstrates the Iriver IMP150 ChromeX MP3 player,
in particular a special feature included in the firmware for blind users. This
item may also be of interest to SonicBlue Riovolt users, as the firmware is
similar.

11 December
2002

This week on Main Menu, we talk about, and demonstrate Viawind,
a suite of self-voicing Windows applications for file management, reading files
and editing documents.

Doug Geofray joins us to talk about Window-eyes 4.21, and drops a few hints
about what's to come from GW Micro next
year.

Dean Martineau offers us some
Notetab Niceties.

And Tom Dimeo demonstrates Wintrans,
a Windows-based interface to NFBTrans.

4
December 2002

This week on Main Menu, we'll update you with the latest technology news in
our News Briefs section.

Macromedia have released yet another product that aims to improve access for
the disabled. This time, it's an update to Macromedia Director, used to develop
a lot of the software for kiosks, ATMs and other such stand-alone devices.

Tony Baechler reviews the Winlame
MP3 encoder.

Matthew Bullis plays two games
from SoundSupport.net.

And courtesy of Radio New Zealand, we play the recent item about Jonathan Mosen
featured on their Digital Life
programme, that talks extensively about ACB Radio.

27 November
2002

This week on Main Menu, we'll update you with the latest technology news in
our News Briefs Section.

Jennine Stanley brings us a couple of interviews from the exhibits at the ACB
of Ohio Convention.

We discuss and review Net Echo,
a way of accessing the Internet via the telephone.

And Jim Layton of the Radio Information Service in Bellville Illinois speaks
with representatives of Pulse Data about some of their products.

20 November
2002

This week on Main Menu, we'll update you with the latest technology news in
our News Briefs section.

We introduce you to Just Vanilla,
a service which provides filtering technology that aims to make inaccessible
sites more accessible and less bandwidth intensive.

DJC reviews the World
Time programme.

And Tony Baechler reviews the easy
to use Npop e-mail client.

13 November
2002

This week on Main Menu, we'll update you with the latest news in our News Briefs
section.

Have you ever had someone design a web site for you only to accidentally break
the look and feel when trying to make a simple change? Have you ever designed
a web site for a friend only to find they have to keep coming back to you to
make tiny changes? If you fit into either of these categories, you may find
the new Macromedia Contribute solves
your problems. We speak with Bob Regan of Macromedia about this new tool, and
demonstrate how it works.

And Jeff Bishop shows you how to gain
real control over Windows XP with Tweak-UI.

6 November 2002

This week on main Menu, Michael Lange
introduces us to the remarkable Plextalk
PTR-1. This highly portable unit records and plays DAISY CDs, MP3 CDs and
audio CDs, as well as featuring support for a wide range of memory technologies.

We hear about Frank Audiodata, a German
assistive technology company that offers a range of interesting products, and
is about to unveil a new world wide service for the blind that could make life
a lot easier when there isn't a pair of eyes around.

And DJC revisits the improved Weather
Aloud software.

30 October 2002

This week on Main Menu, we update you with the latest news in our News Briefs
section.

The Portable Print Reading Device, or P2RD for short, promises access to print almost anywhere. We talk about what
this device is promising to deliver.

DJC reviews the
Talking E-mail programme.

Now that those of us with modern screen readers can access Macromedia Flash,
Matthew Bullis reviews two flash
games from sonokids.com.

And we continue our occasional series on broadcasting using the Shoutcast
technology, this time we discuss using techniques to give your station that
really professional sound.

23 October 2002

This week on Main Menu, we update you with the latest technology news in our
news Briefs section.

Does the Americans with Disabilities Act apply to the World Wide Web? Bob
Gumson has started legal proceedings against South West Airlines and American
Airlines to try and prove that it does. We speak with Bob about a case which may
go all the way to the Supreme Court.

Brian hartgen shows us the benefits of
voice chatting on-line.

And Justin Daubenmire concludes
his series on Day By Day professional.

16 October 2002

This week on Main Menu, we'll update you with the latest technology news in
our News Briefs section.

We talk about and demonstrate the products of
Voice Web Solutions, a company
committed to extensive navigation of documents with your voice using the PC or
the telephone.

Kelly Sapergia demonstrates Alien
Outback, another exciting new game from
ESP Softworks.

Tony Baechler shows us
7-Zip, for easy handling of .zip files.

And Justin Daubenmire continues
his series on Day By Day Professional, the comprehensive personal organiser
designed with the blind in mind.

9 October 2002

This week on Main Menu, we update you with the latest in technology news in
our News Briefs Section.

We review Mail Washer, a programme
that finds SPAM on your e-mail account before you download it, and helps you to
kill it in a way that reduces the SPAM you receive over time.

DJC reviews
Metris, a musical Tetris game.

And Justin Daubenmire begins a series on his
Day by Day Professional programme.

2 October 2002

This week on Main Menu, we update you with the latest technology news in our
News Briefs section.

Kelly Sapergia reviews the Monkey
business game from ESP Soft Works.

Edward Alonzo reviews the
MP3 Clipper programme, allowing you to
divide an mp3 file into tracks.

And Igor Gueths reviews TNT, an AOL
Instant Messenger Client for Linux.

25
September 2002

On Main Menu this week, we update you with the latest technology news in our
news Briefs section.

Brian Hartgen demonstrates some of his
scripts for JAWS for Windows.

Tom Dimeo shows us how to work with
the free NFBTrans programme in Windows.

Dean Martineau of Sound Computing
Magazine shows us various methods of selecting text in Microsoft Word.

And we continue our occasional series on broadcasting via the Internet using
the Shoutcast technology.

18
September 2002

Main Menu has an audio focus this week.

As usual however, we first update you with the latest news in our news briefs
section.

Bob Kanish explains Audio
Environments in the SoundBlaster live card, and how to use them.

Randy Formenti demonstrates Total
Recorder Professional version 4.0.

And Matthew Bullis shows us how
to get vinyl records onto your hard disk.

11
September 2002

On Main Menu this week, we'll update you with the latest news in our News
Briefs section.

Kurzweil Educational Systems have
released version 7.0 of Kurzweil 1000. Stephen Baum joins us to tell us about
the many new features.

Randy Formenti tells us about a
programme he wrote, Bscan, which works with the Radio shack Quecat bar code
scanner.

And Dane Trethowan shows Australian
listeners how to keep tabs on all your home phone costs thanks to Telstra Home
Communicate Prepay.

4
September 2002

ON Main Menu this week, Pulse Data International has released the hardware
and software upgrade to its BrailleNote line of products. It's network aware,
has a better modem, offers additional functionality, and surfs the Web. We put
it through its paces.

And Randy Formenti reviews the free,
powerful NFBTrans
programme, that translates to, and back translates from, Braille.

28 August 2002

On Main Menu this week, we'll update you with the latest news in our News Briefs
section.

Dolphin have released version 5.1
of their range of screen access products for Windows. We speak with Steve Bennett
of Dolphin UK to hear what's new.

Pulse Data Humanware has a new way of
offering training and advice relating to its line of products. Marlaina Lieberg
tells us all about it.

And in honour of ACB Radio Interactive's second birthday on 2 September, we
begin a series on how to broadcast over the Internet using Shoutcast.

21 August 2002

This week on Main Menu, we update you with the latest news in our news briefs
section.

If you're about to retire your dial-up modem to wherever dial-up modems
retire, you may want to give that a second thought when you hear this week's
review of Talking Caller ID, a
programme which not only lets you hear who's calling, but lets you play messages
to callers based on who they are.

And Brian Hartgen reviews Any Time
Deluxe.

14 August 2002

This week on Main Menu, keep up-to-date with the latest technology
developments in our News Briefs section.

Brian Hartgen has a new tutorial that
will help you make the most of Window-eyes. He joins us to discuss it.

We look at some of the exciting new features in the
Freedom Box.

And we conclude our coverage of the VIDPI
Showcase of Technology Vendors.

7 August 2002

This week on Main Menu, we'll update you with the latest technology news in
our News Briefs section.

We speak with Lee Hamilton, who as of 1 August is the CEO of Freedom
Scientific. We talk a little about his background, ask about the health of
Freedom Scientific and discuss his vision for the future.

DJC speaks with
Steve Wolf about the future of US-based
Internet radio thanks to the Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel ruling.

Tom Dimeo has his PC clock keeping
good time with
NISTTime. He shows us how it works.

Integrate CD ripping right into your operating system with a
replacement
CDFS driver. Matthew Bullis
shows us how.

And we continue with vendor presentations from the
VIDPI Technology Vendors' Showcase.

31 July 2002

This week on Main Menu, we lift the lid on
JAWS for Windows 4.5, which if
the development cycle stays on track could be released in public beta form next
week. We speak with Eric Dammery of Freedom Scientific about what's new and
improved, and then we demonstrate some of the new features.

There are so many books out there on the Internet, but where exactly do you
find them? Anna Dresner reveals the secrets of finding and downloading books on
the Internet in a new book just published by
National Braille Press.

David Harvey shows us how to keep our computers current with the web-based
CatchUp service.

And we continue with presentations from the
VIDPI Technology Vendors Showcase.

24
July 2002

On Main Menu this week, we'll update you with the latest technology news in
our news Briefs section.

It's our one hundredth show this week, so we'll celebrate by hearing some
congratulatory contributions from listeners and reviewers as we look back on 200
hours of technology programming from a blindness perspective.

A new book has been published by Microsoft Press, "Accessible Technology in
Today's Business, Case Studies for Success", that aims to enthuse employers
about the benefits to them of accessible technology. We speak with one of its
authors.

Tom Dimeo concludes his review of Nero Burning ROM.

And we continue with our post-convention coverage, featuring more from the
VIDPI Showcase of Technology Vendors.

17 July 2002

On Main Menu this week, Tom Dimeo concludes his review of the Nero Burning ROM software.

Jean-Claude Provost demonstrates his home automation system.

And we begin looking at some of the technology on display at the recent ACB
Convention, with the first in a series of vendor presentations from VIDPI, the
computer-related affiliate of ACB.

26 June 2002

On Main Menu this week, we review Open Book version 6, the first version to
be written by Freedom Scientific.

Chris Skarstad reviews the Pipe
game from BlindSoftware.com.

Mary Emerson offers some
Windows maintenance tips. (mm984.mp3)

And Tom Dimeo begins a review of Nero
Burning ROM. (mm985.mp3)

19 June 2002

On this week's Main Menu, we speak with Jim Misener of Beyond
Sight about Lap Talk, a Windows XP-based 1 GHZ Lap top computer that's
designed for the blind, so has no screen.

There's been a lot going on, and there is a lot coming up, with the Braille
Note family of products. Larry Lewis of Pulse Data International tells us
about all the new features, including a demonstration of the Braille Note's new
web browser.

Do you want to purchase products overseas but get confused when doing the
currency conversion? DJC reviews a handy currency
conversion tool.

12 June 2002

This week on Main Menu, we'll update you with the latest technology news in
our news Briefs section.

We talk about, and demonstrate, the UK Audio
Network, a web site that can be used completely independent of any access
software.

Ken Burgess is back to review the
rest of the Sonic Foundry Noise Reduction suite.

DJC reviews Funk
in the Trunk, an MP3 Player from BlindSoftware.com.

And we speak with Ross Levies about the micro-broadcasting seen in New
Zealand, and we demonstrate a programme he wrote to help him with his station. Station
Playlist will schedule music and other files, as well as even schedule the
playing of Internet radio stations at specific times.

5 June 2002

On Main Menu this week, catch up with the latest technology news in our News
Briefs section.

We're joined by Jim Snowbarger, the
Snowman, who tells us about all his scripts for JAWS for Windows. We also
talk about some of the trials and tribulations of script development.

DJC speaks with Paul Silver from ZForm
about the company, and demonstrates their new poker game.

And Mary Emerson reviews the
US Robotics Soundquik Wireless Audio Access Device.

29 May 2002

This week on Main Menu, catch up on the latest technology news with our News
Briefs section.

We hear about RRIS, an ISP with blind
tech support reps specifically for blind customers.

Mary Emerson reviews a
powerful registry cleaner called Regvac,
and a back-up programme called Double
Image.

The Freedom Box has recently opened
its shopping mall, allowing blind people to shop by speaking to their computer,
or by typing simple commands. We show you how it works.

And we talk with Geoff Shang about OGG Vorbis,
a format that could replace MP3 as the compression system of choice for music on
computers and portable devices.

22 May 2002

This week on Main Menu, we'll bring you the latest technology news in our
News Briefs section.

Ken Burgess introduces us to the
Sonic Foundry Noise Reduction plug-in.

We hear about the new Focus line of Braille Displays from Freedom Scientific.

Scott Rutkowski shows us how to listen to music on the web with the Rhapsody
service.

And Matthew Bullis reviews the
NTrack multi track recording software.

15 May 2002

This week on Main Menu, we'll update you with the latest in technology news
in our News Briefs section.

Sonic Foundry has released version 6.0 of its flagship sound editor, Sound
Forge. We demonstrate some of the new features.

Following last week's popular show on Audible.com, we speak with Audible's
Chief Executive Officer and founder, Donald Katz.

And George Zanon reviews the Voice-it voice recorder.

8 May 2002

On Main Menu this week, we demonstrate
and review Audible.com, offering thousands
of hours of spoken word content for streaming, downloading, and listening on the
go. Audible also has a temporary
series of free offers exclusively for Main Menu listeners.

1 May 2002

This week on Main Menu, catch up with the latest technology news in our News
Briefs section.

We hear about some more exciting accessibility announcements from macromedia,
which just may change the way you write web pages.

If those of you who've been around technology long enough miss the days of
running a bulletin board system, those day's aren't completely over. Tony
Baechler demonstrates how to run your own BBS with Synchronet,
a fully featured accessible BBS system.

And Cathy Anne
Murtha concludes her series on Internet fundamentals.

24 April 2002

This week on Main Menu, we'll bring you the latest technology news in our
News Briefs section.

We'll review and demonstrate the IMP,
the Improved Voice Diary, a talking personal organiser that fits in the palm of
your hand, and offers many organising functions, a phone book, a calculator,
timer, stopwatch and more.

And Henry Brugsch reviews two
chat programmes especially for HAM radio operators, Ilink and EQSO.

17 April 2002

On Main Menu this week, we'll keep you informed about the latest technology
news in our News Briefs section.

Monty Icenogle reviews Total
Recorder, a powerful, very inexpensive way to record all sorts of things on
your PC.

Nick Zammerali brings us up to speed with
changes to the Parrot Voice Mate that
have occurred since our major review last year.

And CathyAnne Murtha continues her Internet Fundamentals course, this time
looking at accessibility options.

10 April 2002

On Main Menu this week, we devote the show to the Real One Player, the latest
offering from Real Networks. There's a lot
that's exciting about this release, but there's at present also a lot that can
be frustrating. So we'll take you through the Real One Player, showing you a few
tips that may assist you in its use, as well as trying to give you an idea of
the power in this feature-rich programme.

And to discuss some of the issues we find in the review, we'll speak with
Richard Brownrigg, the General manager Consumer Software for Real Networks.

3 April 2002

This week on Main Menu, we'll give you the latest technology news in our News
Briefs section.

Chris Skarstad reviews the Troopanum
game from BlindSoftware.com.

DJC speaks to the author of a range of
cool programmes by Inspired Code.

CathyAnne Murtha continues
her Internet Fundamentals series, this time looking at forms on the Web.

And John Gun concludes his Cakewalk demo.

27 March 2002

On Main Menu this week, keep up-to-date with the latest assistive and general
technology news with our News Briefs section.

We lift the lid on Freedom Scientific's new line of personal digital
assistants, as Glen Gordon tells us all about the Pac Mate, a state of the art
Windows CE-based device.

We're joined by Madelyn Bryant McIntire, Director of Microsoft Accessible
Technology Group for an update about accessible technology and Microsoft. Eric
Dammery will also join us to answer some development questions about JAWS for
Windows.

Are you tired of arriving home from the supermarket with all those cans that
feel so similar? Dennis Bartlett reviews Scan a Can, software designed to deal
with this very problem.

And Cathyanne Murtha continues her series on Internet fundamentals, this time
looking at tables on the world wide web.

20 March 2002

On Main Menu this week, we'll keep you informed about the latest assistive
and general technology news in our News Briefs section.

Tony Baechler is back to conclude
his series on Telnet, this time reviewing the Tera-Term Pro Telnet client.

CathyAnne Murtha continues her
Internet Fundamentals series with a look at frames, what they are, and how to
interact with them.

And John Gunn continues his series on
Cakewalk.

13 March 2002

This week on Main Menu, we'll bring you up-to-date with the latest technology
news in our News Briefs section.

Tony Baechler continues his series
on Telnet, this time logging onto a bulletin board system, and showing you that
the BBS community is still alive and well.

John Gunn continues his series on
Cakewalk Pro Audio 9.

And Cathyann Murtha begins another
series, this time looking at Internet fundamentals. If you just kind of get by
on the net but feel like you'd like to be in more control, then this series is
for you.

6 March
2002

This week on Main Menu, we'll give you a run-down of the latest technology
news in our news briefs section.

Do you get frustrated by web sites full of Macromedia flash that render the
page inaccessible? In what is probably one of the most significant stories of
the year, we tell you all about the new Macromedia Flash Player 6 which uses
Microsoft Active Accessibility and works very well with the latest public beta
of Windoweyes from GW Micro.

Tony Baechler begins a series on the
Telnet protocol.

Do you remember the days when tag lines were popular? Joe
Norton shows us Taglinator,
a programme that lets you use taglines once again.

And John Gunn begins a series on Cakewalk
Pro-Audio 9.

27 February
2002

This week on Main Menu, the long awaited, much anticipated Freedom
Box is now available. We'll be putting the full version, with the AT&T
natural voices, through its paces.

And Michael Killian reviews the e-mail
Alibi web site.

20 February
2002

On Main Menu this week, we pay tribute to a man and an era. In fact, the man
really represented the era. Willie Wilson brought blind people together from
around the world like never before.

There are, of course, many more people who have access to computers now than
there were when the Blink Link BBS and Blink Talk Fidonet echo were in its
prime. But even those people will find fascinating the story of how we began the
long journey to hundreds of blindness e-mail lists, web sites, and ACB Radio.

13 February
2002

This week on Main Menu, join us for a comprehensive two hour
demonstration and review of the Kurzweil
1000 OCR package.

6
February 2002

On Main Menu this week, keep abreast of the latest technology news in our
News Briefs section.

Learn how to listen to MP3 audio more efficiently as Dean
Martineau of Sound Computing
Magazine reviews the Pace Maker Plug-in for Winamp.

We learn about VIP-HighStreet.com,
a way for people in the UK to be linked to main stream accessible shopping sites,
and much more.

Tom Dimeo reviews the Winmorse
programme.

We hear about Brian Hartgen's new
screen reader configuration file subscription service.

And DJC and Scott
rutkowski review the GPhone Internet
Phone programme.

30 January 2002

This week on Main Menu, we'll feature our regular update on technology news
in our Newsbriefs section.

Brian Hartgen of Infotech
Magazine reviews the Dolphin version 5
products.

We review Speak Freely, an Internet
Phone that works under Windows and Unix platforms, it's open source, accessible,
and sounding better than ever. Download
the JAWS scripts for Speak Freely here.

And Heidi Mosen reviews Alphabet Annie.

23 January 2002

This week on Main Menu, we'll update you with the latest technology news in
our News Briefs section.

It's with considerable sadness that we pay tribute to David Kostyshyn, the
founder of Synthavoice, whose death was
announced last week. We talk with Neil Jarvis of the UK about David's legacy,
which includes the first ever screen reader for Windows which laid the
foundation later built on by Synthavoice as well as other companies. David then
tells the remarkable story of Synthavoice in his own words, extracted from past
interviews.

Chris Skarstad gives us a
demonstration of the new ACB Radio Tuner, a full 32-bit application that gives
you swift and easy access to the ACB Radio channels.

Dean Martineau shows us how to
use Google to read Usenet articles. If
you're not sure what Usenet is, he'll explain that too.

And Cathyann Murtha concludes her Windows Fundamentals series with a look at
Windows Explorer.

2001

19
December 2001

On Main Menu this week, we'll give you the latest technology news in our
Newsbriefs section.

The long-awaited version 5 products from Dolphin,
including HAL, Lunar and Supernova are now out. We speak with Steve Bennett and
Adam Hodgson from Dolphin about the new features of this complete rewrite of the
screen reader.

Dean Martineau of Sound Computing Magazine
reviews Stratuspad, a great little word processor.

DJC updates us on a new release of the Church Bells programme. (mm756.mp3)

And Cathyann Murtha continues her Windows Fundamentals series, this time
looking at some of the great features tucked away in the Start Menu. (mm756.mp3)

12
December 2001

On Main Menu this week, keep up-to-date with the latest technology news in
our News Briefs section.

Your cell phone is with you pretty much wherever you go, so wouldn't it be
great if it could play MP3 files too? We review the Samsung
SCH M105, a cell phone with some awesome features we can use, and it plays
MP3 files! We'll demonstrate just how easy it is to hear Main Menu on the bus.

DJC returns to Main Menu to review Say
The Time.

And Joe Norton shows you how to make the most of your hard drive with Partition
Magic.

28 November
2001

This week on Main Menu, after our News Briefs section, Brian
Hartgen is along to take you through the process of downloading Main Menu
files and other material from ACB Radio using your standard web browser.

Are you one of those people who just needs to have the net wherever you are?
Then you may want to try Net-By-Phone,
a service allowing you to do e-mail, Usenet news and even surf the web using
your voice and a touch tone phone.

And Cathy Anne Murtha continues her series of Windows fundamentals, this time
looking at the Windows Desktop.

21 November
2001

This week on Main menu, we'll give you the latest technology news in our

News Briefs Section.

There's been a lot of talk about FTP clients lately. Chris
Skarstad

brings us a comprehensive review of two such clients, and shows you how

to use them to get your own collection of ACB Radio shows.

We give you a demonstration of the Blind Software Pulse
MP3 player.

And Cathy Anne Murtha continues her Windows Fundamentals series, this

time looking at the My Computer Utility.

14 November
2001

On Main Menu this week, after the latest technology news in our News

Briefs section, we hear about BlindSoftware.com,
a new company that

promises accessible software designed specifically with the blind in

mind.

Scott Rutkowski introduces us to the Microsoft
World Wide Radio Network,

with over one hundred channels of content.

Cory Samaha reviews the talking atomic alarm clock.

And Cathyanne Murtha of the Access Technology Institute continues her

series on Windows fundamentals.

7 November 2001

On Main Menu this week, we'll bring you a round-up of the latest

technology news in our newsbriefs section.

we'll hear about the revival of the Internet Phone Book of Blindness
resources when we speak with Scott Berry.

Matthew Bullis will review Handybits Voice
Mail, allowing you to send

voice e-mail messages over the net.

Scott Rutkowski shares some tips and tricks for Windows XP.

And Cathy-Anne Murtha returns to continue her popular series on Windows

Fundamentals.

31 October 2001

In a special 2 and a half hour edition of Main Menu this week, we talk
exclusively about Windows XP.
Is it the most significant release of Windows since 1995 as Microsoft tell us?
Who should upgrade and why? And what kind of access is your screen reader
offering?

We'll speak with Mike Lawler of GW Micro who will soon be releasing
Windoweyes Professional, Eric Dammery of Freedom Scientific who make JAWS for
Windows, and a number of blind users already running Windows XP. Tune in for
their varied perspectives, likes and dislikes.

24 October 2001
This week on Main Menu, Brian Hartgen discusses
script files for JAWS for Windows, and set files for Windoweyes. What do they
do, why are they necessary, and where can you get them.

Cathy Anne Murtha of the Access
Technology Institute continues her series on Windows basics, this time
introducing us to Microsoft Word.

All this and the latest technology news briefs on this week's Main Menu.

17 October 2001

On main Menu this week, we learn about the Chatterbox voice chat client when
we speak with George Buys of Audio-tips.com which
pioneered its use in the blind community.

We hear about the many services available from the
Talking Newspaper Association of the United Kingdom.

And we begin a series on Windows fundamentals, presented by Cathy Ann Murtha
of the Access Technology
Institute. Even if you consider yourself a Windows expert, you may be
surprised at the handy tricks and tips this series will teach you.

12 September
2001

On Main Menu this week, we'll update you with the latest technology news in
our Newsbriefs section.

Tired of your ISP's mail server? Take complete control of your own e-mail
with the accessible, affordable Internet
Anywhere E-mail server. We show you how easy it is to set up, and how you
can run mailboxes, e-mail lists, auto-responders and more, all from your own PC.

Kelly Sapergia reviews two products from Analogue-x,
including showing us the secret of how to use their software vocoder.

And we conclude our presentations from the VIDPI Seminar.

5 September
2001

On Main Menu this week, Internet
Explorer 6 is now out. We show you what's new and take you through the new
features from a blindness perspective.

We'll hear more vendor presentations from the VIDPI Convention in Des Moines,
and you can keep up to date with the latest technology news in our News Briefs
section.

29 August 2001

On Main Menu this week, tune in for the latest technology news in our
Newsbriefs section.

Jaffar Sidek shows us how to do
multi-track sound editing using Cooledit
Pro.

DJC reviews the church
bells software.

And we hear some vendor presentations from the VIDPI seminar in Des Moines.

22 August 2001

This week on Main Menu, we provide extensive coverage of JAWS for Windows
4.0. We speak with Eric Dammery of Henter-Joyce, a division of Freedom
Scientific, about all that's new in JAWS for Windows 4.0. We also demonstrate
the new user interface, the Prompt Creator, Frame Viewer and more.

Also in Main Menu, DJC reviews the Talking
Dictionary software, and the latest high tech news in our News Briefs
section.

8 August 2001.

On Main Menu this week, would you like to participate in a community of print
disabled people who share scanned books with one another? we speak with Jim
Fruchterman of Benetech about Bookshare.org and
a number of other fascinating projects on which Benetech is working.

What makes a web site accessible, and who decides? Brian Hartgen of Infotech
Magazine looks at the Tesco site that recently won an award from the Royal
National Institute for the Blind.

Jaffar Sidek concludes his look at the Sonar multitrack audio suite.

1 August 2001

On Main Menu this week, there's just one story. Recently, Freedom
Scientific began shipping its Braille Lite Millennium 40 note taker/personal
organiser. We'll spend two hours putting the unit through its paces and showing
you how it works.

25 July 2001

On Main Menu this week, join us for News Briefs which includes a fascinating
story on how the record companies may now be trying to stop you from ripping CDs
for your own personal use.

Dave Williams brings us coverage from
Sight Village, the UK's premier technology exhibition.

We continue our coverage from the exhibits at the ACB Convention, with
interviews from GW Micro and Humanware.

Shane Christenson reviews ESP Pinball, a new accessible game.

Jaffar Sidek begins a review of Sonar,
a multitrack audio production suite.

And Luis Pena shows us how to assign
hotkeys to Office 2000 applications.

18 July 2001

On Main Menu this week, following News Briefs, you'll hear a selection of
interviews from the exhibits at the ACB Convention, as well as a demonstration
of the Freedom Box from Inhouse Radio
Networks. This product, which we previewed some months ago, is now built and
ready for launch next month.

And Dick Chandler of Freedom Scientific talks about the future of technology
for the blind.

27 June 2001

On Main Menu this week,

Andrew Hodgson looks at the
Archos MP3 Jukebox

Dave Williams looks at
the Tiny Personal Firewall.

Dean martineau reviews
Macro Express, a tool for automating
repetitive computer tasks.

Steve Matzura shows us how
to find out if your computer is spying on you, with the help of Ad Aware.

And Chris Skarstad reviews
the Bopit game.

20 June 2001

On Main Menu this week, the latest technology news in our news briefs
section.

Andrew Hodgson reviews the
Pegasus Mail Client.

We speak with Jim Kitchen,
a man who has written a large number of DOS and Windows games accessible to the
blind, and they're absolutely free.

Dave Williams shows us how to
effectively sort all that e-mail we receive.

And it's almost that time of the year again. Time when those of us with
Freedom Scientific note takers update them. We speak with Alan Holst of Freedom
Scientific about what's new in the 2001 updates.

13 June 2001

On Main Menu this week, keep up to date with the latest news in our News
Briefs section.

In his Netiquette series, Dave Williams tackles
one of the biggest problems on Internet e-mail lists, too much quoting. Learn
when to quote, how much to quote, and when not to quote at all.

Are you tired of the mail service offered by your ISP? It's easier to set up
your own mail server than you might think. Chetan
Bakhru reviews the Argosoft Mail Server.

6 June 2001

On Main Menu this week, get a run-down of the latest technology news in our
Newsbriefs section.

In his series on Netiquette, Dave Williams
talks about the importance of knowing how to read and understand message
headers.

Kelly Sapergia reviews Shades of
Doom, a remarkable new game from GMA Games.

Kevin Reeves wakes up to tell as
about Sony's Dream Machine talking radio alarm clock.

Chris Skarstad reviews two games
by Jim Kitchen, Jim's Casino, and the Trucker Game.

And on Look at Linux, Matt Campbell shows
us the amount of excellent documentation available for Linux.

30 May 2001

On Main Menu this week, our regular News Briefs section summarises some of
the key technological developments of the past week.

Dave Williams continues his Netiquette
series, this time focussing on the importance of sending e-mail in plain text.

And Chris Meredith brings us a
comprehensive review of AOL 6.0. After the NFB
law suit withdrawal and much hype about improved accessibility, just how
accessible is AOL 6.0.

23 May 20

On Main Menu this week, we launch anew segment on which we would welcome your
feedback. news Briefs is a short summary of technology-related news. This news
is not necessarily blindness-related. We believe this new segment fills a void
that has up until now existed in Main Menus coverage of technology.

DJC reviews Weather
Bug and WNStats.

Dave Williams begins a series on
Netiquette, in particular conduct on e-mail lists.

Jonathan Mosen reviews Virtual DJ
Pro, software designed to give you radio station-like control of what music is
played when.

And in light of the outbreak of viruses on many blindness lists lately, we
bring you an updated version of our virus segment broadcast on Main Menu about a
year ago.

16 May 2001

This week on Main Menu, we show you how cost effective and simple it is for
you to own and manage your own domain name with sites like Redirection.net.

Jenine Stanley reviews the Web Publishing Wizard.

Dave Williams demonstrates Winrar, a file
compression utility.

Tandy Way tells us how to keep our Windows registries in good shape with the
Easycleaner utility.

Henry Brudge talks about the Veronica FM
transmitter, so you can hear audio from the web, your VCR, your stereo, or
even your talking book machine around your house and property.

And Matt Campbell returns with Look at Linux, playing games when he should be
studying.

9 May 2001

This week on Main Menu, we talk about Windows Shortcut keys. They can be a
quick and easy way of getting to your favourite programmes, web sites, and, with
the right tools, even Control Panel applets. We hear an article from Sound
Computing magazine about Shortcut keys, and an in-depth review of the Winkey
software from Michael Killian.

We begin a short series on taking control of your Internet services in which
we look at running server software on your own computer. This week, we look at FTP
Serv-U, software allowing you to run your very own FTP site on your PC.

And Tandy Way reviews Weather Aloud.

2 May 2001

This week on Main Menu, Shane Jackson demonstrates Eudora,
a very popular e-mail client that's full of features. You're bound to find out
some handy hints that will make your use of Eudora more pleasant and efficient.

Carlos continues his series on set files for Windoweyes.

And Matthew Bullis tells us about Depopper,
a way of removing noise from vinyl recordings when you are digitising them onto
CD.

25 April 2001

On Main Menu this week, we review IBM Home
Page Reader, a screen reader-independent means of using the Internet.

Matt Campbell concludes his HTML basics tutorial.

And Tandy Way tells us about the Error Recovery Utility.

18 April 2001

On Main Menu this week, Mike Arrigo reviews the
Franklin Language Master Talking Dictionary.

Matt Campbell continues his series on HTML basics.

Carlos looks at using Windoweyes cursoring keys.

Tandy Way discusses a procedure which could save you some considerable time
in the event that you need to restore your system.

And Chris Skarstad looks at the End it All and Dimension 4 utilities.

11 April 2001

This week marks the first anniversary of the Main Menu show. Over the last
year, we've produced 92 hours of technology-related breaking news, reviews,
tutorials and interviews. And it's all delivered to you free each week.

To mark our first anniversary, we're accepting the challenge so many of our
listeners have set before us. This is by far the most requested story we've been
asked to produce, and I must confess, the most difficult. In an extended Main
Menu, JAWS for Windows and Windoweyes
go head to head in a comparison put together by a group of blind technology
users.

The show features a panel discussion on the pros and cons of each screen
reader which is wide ranging. After that, you'll hear comprehensive comparisons
of Windoweyes and JAWS for Windows with Microsoft Word, Internet Explorer, and
Microsoft Outlook Express.

4 April 2001

On Main Menu this week, you'll hear a comprehensive review of the Voice
mate Personal Organiser from Parrot.

Carlos continues his series on set file creation for Windoweyes, this time
looking at user windows.

Matt Campbell has part two of his HTML writing tutorial.

And DJC reviews Alert Me, a programme
that will let you know whether the weather has got it together.

28 March 2001.

On Main Menu this week, Mike Arrigo reviews Easy CD Creator Platinum version
5, a complete solution for burning all kinds of data onto CD. It also offers
additional extras including a sound editor.

Michael Capelle reviews AOL Instant messenger, yet another way that you can

instant message with friends across the Internet.

In a previous Main Menu, we interviewed Ken Scott of Shellworld.
Now, Shellworld has become virtually a national ISP in North America, run by a
blind person, for the blind community. Ken Scott joins us again to tell us more.

If you've always wanted to learn how to write HTML, the language of the World
Wide Web, without the aid of any special web authoring tools, matt Campbell
begins a series on HTML writing just for you.

And Carlos continues his series on set files for Windoweyes.

21 March 2001

On Main Menu this week, we demonstrate the
Sonic Box IM Band Tuner and show you how easy it is to tune around the
Internet dial.

DJC reviews Scanrac 18, a free
programme ideal for recording onto your PC in those situations where you want
the recordings to be voice activated.

Bob Prahin shows us how easy it is to make rules in Outlook Express, so
messages from your different e-mail lists appear in different folders.

Shane Jackson reviews Easy CDDA Extractor,
considered by many to be the best CD ripper on the market today.

In his ongoing series on Windoweyes set files, Carlos continues to look at
Windoweyes dictionaries.

We discuss and demonstrate the Talking RX,
a new system designed to make it easy to identify medication and gain full
access to the instructions for taking medication.

And Matt Campbell is back with Look at Linux.

14 March 2001

This week on Main Menu, access to PDF files is about to get a whole lot
easier, thanks to work from Adobe (the
creators of PDF) and GW Micro, the makers
of Windoweyes. We speak with Rick Brown of Adobe, and Clarence Whaley of GW
Micro, about how we'll soon be reading most PDF documents just like we read a
web page, thanks to Adobe Reader 5 and Windoweyes 4.1. We'll also find out what
else is new in Windoweyes 4.1, which went into public beta this week.

Freedom Scientific finally makes an official statement about the resignations
of Ted Henter and Dean Blazie from their Vice-Presidential roles.

DJC reviews the new talking web browser from WeMedia.

Shane Jackson takes you on a tour of the Windows Control Panel and shows you
how to use its many powerful features.

Carlos continues his series on writing set files for Windoweyes, this week
taking a look at the Windoweyes dictionaries.

And Matt Campbell is back with Look at Linux.

7 March 2001

This week, the entire Main menu show is devoted to a review of the Braille
Note from Pulse Data International.

28 February 2001.

On Main Menu this week, we'll demonstrate some of the new features in Sound
Forge 5.0, the audio production tool. We'll also tell you about an
incredible introductory offer that for a limited time allows you to obtain this
industry leading software for almost a quarter of its regular price.

Shane Jackson reviews PM Mail.

And Carlos continues his Windoweyes set file tutorial.

21 February
2001

On Main Menu this week, we show you how to have your very own domain name for
your computer, even if you have a modem connection to the Net, thanks to the
fantastic new DNS2Go client from Deerfield.

Shane Jacson introduces us to RioGeo, software that makes it easy to transfer
material to your Diamond Rio MP3 player.

Would you like to send friends and family members greetings that are easy to
create and accessible? Kelly Sapergia introduces us to a cool free Talking
Greeting service that gives you full accessible control over the design
process.

Sam Troya reviews APrint Direct, a great way to keep track of files you have
on a range of media including hard drives and removable media.

And Matt Campbell continues to look at Linux.

14 February
2001

On Main Menu this week, we speak with Ted Henter. In a frank interview, Ted
talks about where he and Freedom Scientific are at, and gives his perspective on
some of the issues raised on Main Menu in recent weeks.

ACB Radio Interactive has just launched a new web ring, to allow listeners to
interact in new ways with broadcasters. The ACB Radio Interactive Ringmaster,
Jeff Harris, tells us all about it.

Are you frustrated by downloads that abort mid-way through? Kelly Sapergia
demonstrates Getright, a utility that will
manage and resume those aborted downloads.

Jamie Pauls looks at CD burning from a new user's perspective, and offers
some handy hints.

Carlos continues his series on designing set files for Windoweyes.

And Matt Campbell continues his Look at Linux.

7 February 2001

On Main Menu this week, more details emerge on what is going on at Freedom
Scientific.

We hear about HotBraille.com, which
among other things allows you to type a letter that will be mailed in Braille to
anywhere in the world.

Bulletin boards are making a bit of a come-back. Noel Romey tells us about
his NER BBS, featuring many of
the great bbs games that we blind computer veterans used to play.

Carlos continues his series on writing set files for Windoweyes.

Yogan Khandoo tells us about his new Cakewalk tutorial designed predominantly
for Windoweyes users.

And Matt Campbell takes another look at Linux.

31 January 2001

On Main Menu this week, senior players seek freedom from Freedom Scientific.
Two weeks ago, Ted Henter, Dean Blazie, and Brian Blazie ceased being employees
of Freedom Scientific. Is Freedom Scientific in crisis or is this a simple case
of repositioning of key players?

Brian hartgen tells us about his new
Microsoft Word tutorial, and gives his view as to which of the major screen
readers is the best one to use with Word.

Carlos continues his series on set file writing for Windoweyes.

DJC reviews MP3 taggers.

We continue our series on Windows Explorer.

And Matt Campbell continues to look at Linux.

24 January 2001

Main Menu returns after its summer break with a look at Connect Out Loud, the
new Internet access tool from Freedom
Scientific.

DJC reviews News Anchor.

Carlos begins a series on writing set files for Windoweyes,

and Matt Campbell takes another look at Linux.

2000

20 December
2000

This week on Main Menu, we hear about
BlindCommunity.com,
a new site that seeks to maintain an up-to-date calendar of blindness-related
Internet events.

Luis Peña reviews Easy CD Creator Deluxe 4.0.

We continue our series on Windows Explorer, and Matt Campbell continues his
look at Debbian Linux.

13 December
2000.

This week, Main Menu talks to John Wilson, who has just written a series of
cost effective keyboard manuals for commonly used applications including
commercial OCR packages.

We hear about the HAL screen reader from the users point of view, as we speak
with Dave Williams and martin Roberts, maintainers of
the
HAL Frequently Asked Questions page.

And we begin a series on working with Windows Explorer.

6 December 2000.

This week on Main Menu, we'll interview Maurice Sloan, the product manager
for Braille Note at Pulse Data International.
We'll talk about the new software update shortly to be released for Braille
Note, look at the deal for Ebook access between Microsoft and Pulse Data International,
and discuss the new Voice Note units.

We hear about Blind City, a new portal
designed to make it easier to find blindness-related resources on the Web.

Jim Snowbarger concludes his series on script writing for JAWS for Windows.

We look at the MountBatten Brailler, a new version of which has just been released
by Quantum Technology.

And Matt Campbell continues to configure Debbian Linux.

29 November
2000.

On Main Menu this week, we celebrate the first birthday of ACB Radio, which
is coming up on 1 December. We review the year just gone and the phenomenal
growth ACB Radio has experienced, and play you the original and much sought
after ACB Radio test announcement.

We hear about Web Sight UK, a new
portal giving easy access to web sites of interest to the blind and vision
impaired in the United Kingdom, and offering professionally produced audio
interviews with many of the featured organisations.

Jim Snowbarger continues his popular series on writing scripts for JAWS for
Windows.

We hear about the DIC Internet computer, which seeks to put the Internet in
the hands of blind people using Linux technology that's easy to use and
affordable.

22 November
2000.

Main Menu looks at the Freedom Box, an
ambitious, yet to be released, product from Inhouse Radio networks that hopes to
put the Internet and more in the hands of a large number of blind people.

Jim Snowbarger continues his JFW script writing tutorial.

We review Windisk, a new way to transfer files between a Windows-based PC and
a Blazie note taker.

And in Look at Linux, matt Campbell continues to install and configure
Debbian Linux.

15 November
2000.

On this week's Main Menu, Daren paskell introduces us to yet another exciting
product from
GamesForTheBlind.com.
It's Accessible Star Fight, and what's really exciting about this game is that
you can play it with opponents over the Internet.

AOL 6.0 is out, claiming to be a significant accessibility improvement. So
how accessible is it, and are there benefits in being on AOL? We speak with a
blind person who has been using AOL for three years, and beta tested the 6.0
release.

Jim Snowbarger continues his series on writing script files for JAWS for
Windows.

We feature a mini-tutorial on one of the most powerful and least understood
utilities in Windows, the Windows Volume Control.

And Matt Campbell continues his feature on the installation and configuration
of Debbian Linux.

8 November 2000.

This week on Main Menu, we hear a fascinating review from Tim Noonan of a
tiny new audio recorder from Sony that records onto memory sticks.

Brian hartgen talks about a new tutorial
he's produced that helps blind people use the Internet effectively. Having spent
a lot of time with three of the major screen reader, he's even prepared to tell
us which of them performs best and worst on the Net.

Jim Snowbarger continues his series on script writing for JAWS for Windows.

Peter Donahue tells us about the
International
Electronic Braille Library, which offers over a thousand titles for
download.

In Look at Linux, Matt Campbell begins the installation of Debbian Linux.

30 October 2000.

This week, Main Menu lifts the lid on the Blazie Millennium series from
Freedom Scientific. We speak with Allan Holst who answers all the questions many
of us have been asking about this new line of note takers. He also outlines some
other products that were on display from Blazie at Closing the Gap.

Cory Samaha reviews an outstanding programme that converts your CD collection
into digital music. CD Extractor, also
known as CDEX, of course supports MP3, but it also already supports the new
Vorbis format, which is expected by many to largely replace MP3 in the next
little while.

We show you how to automate just about any computing task imaginable with Macro
Scheduler. To demonstrate its power, we show you how it can be used to
record streams off the Internet if you're not around to hear them live.

And Jim Snowbarger continues his series on writing scripts for JAWS for
Windows.

23 October 2000.

This week, Main Menu speaks with Peter Rothman, the Chief Technical Officer
of Live365.com. Over 20,000 Internet radio
stations are run through this service. Broadcasters learned earlier in the week
that Live365 will soon be introducing audio advertising at the beginning of
streams, later to be joined by ads during the streams. We get the facts about
how this will work, why Live365 deems it necessary, and how you can opt out of
the ads. We also talk about other issues including Live365's awareness of the
blind community.

We speak with an Executive from the Voice Portal
TellMe,
which has just introduced some cool new features. You can also find out how you
can run your own service on TellMe.

John Mattioli concludes his series on Windows 2000.

Jim Snowbarger continues his JFW script writing series, and Matt Campbell
introduces us to Debbian Linux.

16 October 2000.

We take a comprehensive look at An Openbook 5.0, one of the leading optical
character recognition products designed for the blind and low vision market.
This is the first version of the product to be released by
Freedom
Scientific, and includes many new features. We'll take you through the
self-talking install, configure it for use, show you some of the new features
and spend some time demonstrating one of its most talked about and controversial
additions, the e-mail client.

We'll also hear the next instalment of Jim Snowbarger's JFW script writing
tutorial, and matt Campbell's Look at Linux shows you how to voice chat with Speak
Freely, and how to multi-task.

9 October 2000.

We hear about a new book from the
National
Braille Press that will put you in touch with people who can give you one on
one computer training.

John Matioli continues his series on Windows 2000.

Being a telephonist is a vocation that in the past has been popular for blind
people, but inaccessible telephone systems have caused increasing problems of
late. A Canadian company is determined to change all that.

We hear a review of the CCrane Recorder,
a stand-alone hard disk-based system designed to record spoken word audio.

We hear about a couple of new tutorials from Project Assist, one for
Microsoft Access, and another for intermediate users of Microsoft Word.

Jim Snowbarger continues his JAWS for Windows scripting series.

Matt Campbell shows you how to play RealAudio under Linux.

2
October 2000.

This week on Main Menu, Jim Layton of the Radio Information Service in
Belleville Illinois speaks with Scott Carlisle head of technical support and
quality control for Blazie Engineering, a
division of Freedom Scientific.

We visit two new voice portals,
Hey Anita,
and Be Vocal, that allow you to access a
whole range of information over the phone, including street directions to many
businesses.

John Mattioli begins a short series on Windows 2000, so if you're still
undecided about whether to get Millennium or 2000, this series may help.

Jim Snowbarger continues to show us how to write scripts for JAWS for
Windows.

And Matt Campbell shows us how to listen to MP3 files under Linux.

25 September
2000.

This week on main Menu, we hear about GMA
Games, a relatively new company which nevertheless has a reasonably long
history in producing games for the blind. As well as speaking to its founder,
Kelly Sapergia will demonstrate LoneWolf, a submarine simulation.

Audio-Tips.com is one of the most
popular sites in the blind community. This week, we speak with George Buys, its
founder, about how Audio-Tips came about, its Olympics initiative, and exciting
plans for expansion.

Jim Snowbarger is back to teach us how to write JAWS for Windows scripts, and
Matt Campbell returns with Look at Linux, this time demonstrating how to set up
a sound card under Linux.

18 September
2000

For the first time in quite a long while,
Microsoft
is releasing a new consumer operating system that most screen reader users
can buy and use the day its released, if they choose to. But is upgrading to
Windows Millennium right now the right thing to do? What's new, better, and
worse in this new OS? And should you just forget Millennium and go to Windows
2000? This week on Main Menu, ACB Radio's technology show, we'll speak with
a range of people about Millennium, including a blind user who privately beta
tested Windows Millennium, Glen Gordon, Vice-President and Chief Technical officer
of Henter-Joyce, a division of Freedom Scientific,
and Aaron Smith of GW Micro.

You'll also hear an interview with the President of
Tellme,
and part two of our JFW script writing show.

10 September
2000. On this week's edition of Main Menu, we hear about
Scan
and Read, the blindness-specific OCR package to be released in the next
week that costs less than $100.

Jim Layton speaks with Scott Milner of
Evoice,
the popular telephone-based voicemail service in the US.

Jim Snowbarger begins a series taking you step by step through the writing
of JAWS for Windows scripts.

In Making Sense of your Dollars, we hear from Debbie Cook of ACB's Information
Access Committee about the Quicken resolution passed at the recent ACB National
Convention.

We hear about a talking numeric pager
designed with the blind in mind.

And we conclude Joe Norton's Slackware Linux Installation Tutorial.

3 September
2000

This week on Main Menu, we hear the remarkable story of a blind David who
took on a corporate goliath, and won. In a land mark decision that could have
world wide repercussions, Australia's Human Rights and Equal Opportunities
Commission has found that the Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games
illegally discriminated against a blind man for not making the
olympics.com
web site accessible. Not only might this story have web designers taking a
close look at their own sites, but the repercussions could be huge for IBM, the
designers of the web site and a company which claims to be committed to
accessibility. Because of the significance of this story, we take an indepth
look at it.
Be
sure to sign the on-line petition on making the olympics.com web site
accessible.

You can also hear another in the series of Making Sense of Your Dollars, and
we continue Joe Norton's Slackware Linux Tutorial.

28 August 2000.

This week on main Menu, we hear about a new distribution of Linux that
includes its own screen reader as part of the regular package.

John Mattioli continues his series on working with Quicken, making Sense of
your Dollars.

DJC tells us what a firewall is and why you need one.

Kelly Sapergia reviews the accessible chat programme from
GamesForTheBlind.com.

We hear about a new suite of office tools for the blind under development
that will be free and run under Linux.

We hear more from the VIDPI Seminar, and Joe Norton continues his Slackware
Linux tutorial.

21
August 2000

On Main Menu this week, we'll hear about
ZForm,
a company that has big plans for a multi-player, Internet-aware, strategy game
that the blind and the sighted can play together. And, amazingly, it's going to
be free.

DJC reviews Magic Spell, which among
other things allows you to hear your messages from MSN Messenger spoken
automatically.

John Mattioli is back again to help make sense of your dollars.

If you want to turn your PC into a virtual radio station with the punchy
sound and smooth mixes of the big boys, to burn those mixes onto CD or to
Shoutcast them over the Internet, and all for a very low price, then you want Otsjuke,
which we will review in-depth.

Joe Norton is along with a continuation of his excellent Slackware Linux
Tutorial.

14 August 2000.

This week on Main Menu, we hear about For
the People, a new service with many audio chat rooms and classes for blind
people.

Steve matzura provides advice on freeware backup software.

DJC is back on Main Menu. He explains his absence and in the process offers
some hints that could be of use if you too are having computer problems.

John Mattioli continues Making Sense of your Dollars, a look at using Quicken
with screen readers.

We hear more presentations from the VIDPI seminar in Louisville.

Joe Norton continues his tutorial on using
Slackware Linux with the Speak-up Screen Reader.

7
August 2000.

This week on Main Menu, we speak with Alan Holst of Blazie
Engineering, a division of Freedom Scientific, about new features in the
2000 software update for Blazie note takers. We also talk about the newest note
taker from Blazie, the Type Lite.

Steve matzura is back with another backup corner.

John Mattioli continues his series, Making Sense of your Dollars, in which
he demonstrates how Quicken can be used with a screen reader.

Cory Samaha will show us how to use Hyperterminal to transfer files to and
from a Blazie Note Taker.

We look at the Teccico interactive tutorials.

And Joe Norton begins a series on installing
Slackware Linux with the Speakup screen reader.

31 July 2000.

This week, Main Menu investigates the out of court settlement between the National
Federation of the Blind and America On-Line.
We interview Dick Chandler, President of
Freedom
Scientific. We show you more about using Quicken successfully. There is more
from the VIDPI seminar, and Matt Campbell takes another look at Linux.

24 July 2000

On Main Menu this week, if you've been frustrated by the complexity, size and
unorthodox interface of ICQ 2000, then you'll
be interested in our review of MSN Messenger
Service from Microsoft. This very speech friendly product offers free
calling to any telephone number in the US and Canada, free PC to PC voice
chatting, great instant messaging and file transfer facilities, and its very
easy to use.

Kelly Sapergia tells you about how to get your web site noticed by the search
engines.

John Mattioli continues his series on using Quicken 2000 successfully with a
screen reader.

We have more presentations from the VIDPI seminar at the ACB Convention,
where vendors showcase their latest and greatest products.

And Matt Campbell is along with another look at Linux.

17 July 2000.

This week, Main Menu takes you to the exhibit hall at the ACB Convention.
Armed with my minidisc recorder, I wandered around the exhibit hall to see what
I could see, recording all the while. This week's Main Menu is the result of
those wanderings.

While Quicken is considered by some to be inaccessible, we show you how one
blind person uses it successfully every day.

We hear the first of a series of presentations by vendors given at the VIDPI
(Visually Impaired Data Processors International) seminar in Louisville.

Matt Campbell is also along with his regular Look at Linux.

26 June 2000.

This week on Main Menu, we demonstrate
Copernic,
the most powerful and flexible tool for finding things on the Internet.

Steve Matzura has another Backup Corner, in which he looks at a couple of
pieces of shareware that will aid you in managing your backups.

Kelly Sapergia shows you how to present custom information on your web page
that changes based on the user who is viewing the page, and he demonstrates how
to add an audio intro to the site.

Scott will look at the Calypso E-mail client.

We look at interactive, speech friendly, web based role playing games.

In Look at Linux, Matt Campbell shows you how to transfer files between Linux
and either DOS or Windows.

19 June 2000.

On Main Menu this week, we speak with Jim Fruchterman about the acquisition
of the Arkenstone name and product line by Freedom Scientific. What does this
mean for the blind community, and for the renamed Benetech?

In his section on making the most of your web site, Kelly Sapergia discusses
how to get a redirect URL, to make your web page address easier to remember.
Also learn about how to add interactivity to your site with a free Guestbook.

Steve Matzura continues his series on a backup strategy, completing his
discussion on using Winzip to back up, and looking at the wonderful Windows
wegistwy, (er, registry).

Tim Cumings reviews and demonstrates
Goldwave,
a sound editor and processor for the PC.

Scott looks at FTP Voyager, which now
seems to have won the support of a large chunk of the blind community as the
best FTP client.

We look at a very small sound recorder programme called
Recall
Pro that offers voice activated recoding, and can even record directly in
MP3.

In Look at Linux, Matt Campbell looks at completing forms using the Lynx web
browser and the Speakup screen reader.

12 June 2000.

This week on Main Menu, we break the story about a major acquisition in the
blindness technology industry. We speak with Julie Howell of
the
Royal National Institute for the Blind's Digital Access Campaign. There was
considerable discussion on blindness-related e-mail lists following the RNIB's
press release criticising three popular search engines. We discuss how one makes
the distinction between poor web design and inadequate training on the part of
the blind computer user, and whether the Web Accessibility Initiative's
Guidelines are over the top and failing to keep pace with changing assistive
technology.

Steve Matzura continues his series on backing up, this week looking at making
zip archives.

Scott reviews CDRWIN, an alternative to
Easy CD Creator that now boasts MP3 support in its latest version just released.

Simply Talker 2000 and Simply Web 2000 are
two affordable access solutions for blind people. We find out about the latest
versions of the Simply products.

DJC shows us a tool that will get rid of those pesky pop-up ads one finds all
over the web.

Kelly Sapergia begins a great series on setting up your own home page on the
Web, this week looking at free web-space providers.

Matt Campbell is back with another look at Linux.

5 June 2000.

On Main Menu this week, we look at voice portals. We review three of these
services allowing you to access a wide range of information via your standard
telephone.

Many of us don't think about backing up until it's too late. This week, Steve
Matsura begins a series on backing up your precious data.

DJC will continue his extensive look at the
Winamp
software, this week showing you the power contained in its preferences.

Peter Meijer has been working for some years on the concept of seeing with
sound. This week, we show you how
the
vOICe learning edition converts images from a camera or scanner into sound.

Scott takes a look at CD Wizard, the
best way to catalogue your audio CD collection, and it plays the disks too.

We look at another disability portal,
HalfThePlanet.com.

Matt Campbell tells us about a new version of the Speakup Screen Reader for
Linux, and shows us how to customise Speakup.

29 May 2000.

When one of the world's most popular screen readers is about to come out with
a new release, that's a story to

which Main Menu will devote its time and resources.

GW Micro has promised that the next
version of its popular screen reader for

Windows, Windoweyes 4.0, will offer significant enhancements over its

already highly acclaimed version 3.1. We'll speak with Doug Geoffray of GW

Micro about what we can expect in Windoweyes 4.0, a public beta of which

will be released on 31 May. Then, we put a private beta copy, supplied for

this story, through its paces. Just how good is Windoweyes 4.0 with Internet

Explorer 5.5? What kind of functionality has been implemented in the long

awaited Braille support? What other feature improvements are there? In this

story, we'll run the programme, take you through the new options, and let

you hear the results for yourself. Tune in and be informed about how to make

the most of the public beta the moment it's available to everyone,

Windoweyes and non-Windoweyes users alike, later in the week.

This is a story you simply won't want to miss if you're a Windoweyes user, or
someone who enjoys checking out the alternatives.

This comprehensive look at Windoweyes 4.0 takes up nearly the entire two

hour show, with the exception of Matt Campbell's Look at Linux section,

which this week focuses on e-mail.

22 May 2000.

Learn about an exciting research project from
Petersen
Research that could cause the price of electronic Braille cells, such as
those used in Braille displays, to plummet.

Winamp, it's a highly accessible, powerful audio player for Windows, and it's
the player recommended by ACB Radio. DJC brings us part one of a tour of
Winamp's many features.

Tune into described movies on the Web whenever you want, and choose from an
increasing selection of content on demand with
Narrative
TV. We interview the man who's made it all possible.

Scott demonstrates HyCD, an amazing new
programme that makes turning CD music into MP3 as easy as using Windows
Explorer.

We look at Talking Signs, a
technology that could make a huge difference to our independence and
orientation.

In Look at Linux, Matt Campbell shows us how to get our modem connected to
the Internet.

15 May 2000.

On Main Menu this week, we provide some useful tips about practicing safe
computing through changing some Windows settings, installing a virus checker,
and understanding file extensions.

We've had an incredible number of people asking us for this, so this week,
we're bringing you a feature on singing Dectalks. You'll hear a number of songs
sung by Dectalk, some parodies, and interviews with a couple of masters of this
craft.

DJC reviews a number of useful utilities to make working with your PC easier.

We interview Michael Barber of the Iowa Commission for the Blind's Project Assist, which is offering a range of computer tutorials in multiple
formats.

Michael Lauf is a long with a few useful hints and tips for more efficient
use of Internet Explorer 5.

Scott is back, this week with a review of cordless headphones, perhaps to
complement that cordless keyboard he reviewed last month.

We look at some exciting new technology from the UK that could see the
availability of Braille on clothing being an everyday thing.

And Matt Campbell is back for another look at Linux.

8 May 2000.

we look at what is arguably the most ambitious Windows-based game for the
blind ever to be released, Grizzly Gulch from
Bavisoft.
We'll give you a demo of this game full of impressive stereo sound.

We talk with the developer of SETI-Search,
a speech-friendly web search tool that can be used on any operating system.

We review Cute MX, an MP3 finder,
downloader and instant messaging client all rolled into one.

Are you mourning the disappearance of shell accounts? Well a blind person has
set up a company that provides shell accounts with the blind in mind. Find out
all about Shellworld.

Whether the weather you're interested in is right outside or halfway around
the world, we show you how to keep tabs on the weather from your PC with
programmes like Tray Temp, Weather Tracker,
and Wet Socks,.

And we take another look at Linux.

1
May 2000.

ICQ, the most popular download on the
planet, has a

new release. We find out if it's still accessible, and for those of you who

have never used ICQ before, we do a quick demonstration of its basic

operation.

We review a state of the art OCR scanner from
HP that
uses the universal

serial bus system.

The dream of wearing a small computer that will tell blind people about

their environment and provide directions is closer than ever to reality.

Last week, an important alliance to realise this dream was announced between

Sendero Group and
Xybernaut.
We speak with Sendero Group President Michael
May.

We find out about products by
Biolink,
makers of the Protalk Screen Reader
for Windows 95, 98, 2000 and NT, and who will soon have a product on the
market that could change the way you listen to ACB Radio.

Products using Voice Synthesis are becoming mainstream. We review one that
can take text straight from your Windows clipboard and turn it into an MP3
file.

And we take another look at Linux.

24
April 2000.

we look at how you can hear ACB Radio, the many other stations
streaming over the Internet, and even web pages and scanned books
over any FM radio in your house. This allows you to hear ACB
Radio just like any other regular radio station without being
tied to the computer. Mike Calvo of Inhouse Radio Networks talks
about the Radio Webcaster,
and some very exciting plans they have for expanding the
product's functionality. It's a holiday weekend, so maybe you've
taken some time to unwind and play a few games. But accessible
games are still a little difficult to find. One person who's
changing all that is Robert Betz from
GamesForTheBlind.com,
who has written a number of accessible games that currently work
with JAWS for Windows. We demonstrate a couple of these games and
find out if Jonathan can beat the computer at Accessible
Battleships and whether he walks out with any money left after a
game of Accessible Blackjack. We'll also talk to Robert about
plans he has to ensure that those who don't use JFW can also play
these games.

What do love and the Windows Registry have in
common? Well both can make you laugh, make you cry, and they both
can cause unpredictable things to happen.
DJC unravels some of the
mysteries of the Windows Registry in this week's show. We'll
leave the topic of love for a future edition.

So, you have a huge
MP3 collection, but you want to take a regular audio CD of some
of those files to play in a car, a home stereo, or a diskman? No
problem. We'll hear a review of a very nice utility that makes
burning MP3 files to audio CD a breeze.
Know UK is a comprehensive
British reference service for those who need to conduct research,
and it's free to blind people thanks to the work of the
National Library for the Blind of the
UK. We find out all about this remarkable reference tool. We
delve deeper into Linux with our continuing Look at Linux series.

Main Menu 17
April 2000. We speak with Ted Henter about the purchase of
Henter-Joyce
and Blazie Engineering by Freedom Scientific.
Get the inside scoop on this new company headed by a former CEO of a medical
supplies company that has purchased two of the key players in the blindness
technology industry. So, you wanna be a radio star? Main Menu talks to Steve
Wolf of Wolf FM, Kevin Minor of TWDFM
and Michael Gorman of Mike's Mess, all
of whom are blind people running their own Internet radio stations through Live365.
Find out how it's done and just how truly easy it all is. The
Braille Note, Pulse Data International's
Windows CE-based note taker, was officially launched in New Zealand this week.
Hear a demonstration from
Marcel Oats at the press conference, in which
you'll hear about creating a document and sending it via e-mail as a Microsoft
Word attachment.
Enablelink.com is a new Internet portal for
the blind. Find out about this service and what it's offering.

DJC looks at Internet Relay Chat, and how it's just become much easier to use
under Windows thanks to a programme called
MIRC and a clever little script that has been written
for it. Matt Campbell shows us how to
install Linux on a Windows machine so that the two operating systems happily
co-exist.

Main Menu 10
April 2000. What will the Microsoft verdict, particularly any break-up of
Microsoft, mean for blind people? A group of experts discuss the Microsoft verditct
from a blindness perspective. We also hear an introduction to Linux from Matt
Campbell, a review of the Logitech Itouch keyboard from Scott Rutkowski, Stephen
Baum joins us for a look at Kurzweil 1000 5.0, and DJC looks at a talking microwave.
We also look at the trials and tribulations of being a beta tester.

2008

9 January 2008: In the first hour of Main Menu, Darcy and Holly demonstrate accessible audio production on the Apple Macintosh platform. In the second hour of Main Menu Live, Darcy and Holly join us to discuss further the accessibility of audio production and many other applications on the Mac.

Created on 2004-12-01 01:50:13 by webmaster
Updated on 2008-11-24 16:21:04 by geoff