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A few years ago, a good friend of mine, Joe Steinkamp, came to me with an idea. What if we put a few people together and record a show talking all about Android. At the time, I thought he was a bit crazy since after all, the number of blind users on an Android device was likely somewhere close to 0. Even if a few of us could successfully fill an hour talking about Google's fledgling operating system, who would actually listen? It was this willingness to think outside of the box that drove the popularity of the SeroTalk Podcast Network.

Blind Bargains extends its sympathy to the family and friends of Fred Gissoni, who retired from the American Printing House for the Blind in 2011 after 23 years of service.

Fred L. Gissoni was 84 years old and lived in the Crescent Hill area of Louisville, Kentucky. Fred contributed 60 years of service to people who are blind and visually impaired. Fred was known across the United States and around the world for his brilliant intellect, inventiveness, and impish sense of humor. He was born in New Jersey. Blind since birth, he did not, as he told it, go to one of the five widely renowned schools for the blind in that area, but rather, to a resource room in a public school, first in Garfield, NJ, and later in Hackensack. He was interested in amateur radio at age six or seven, and that marked the beginning of a lifelong passion for all things technical. He passed away Sunday, September 21, 2014.

In 1956, Fred took a job with a subsection of Kentucky's Department of Education. His boss was the legendary Tim Cranmer. Gissoni and Cranmer learned the abacus together, and Gissoni wrote detailed instructions for its use. That book, Using the Cranmer Abacus, is still available from the American Printing House, as is the abacus itself. Fred also wrote and taught a course on use of the abacus for the Hadley School for the Blind.

In terms of the technology blind people are using today, what stands out most notably in the work of Fred Gissoni would probably be the development of the Pocketbraille and Portabraille, collaborations of Fred Gissoni and Wayne Thompson, while the two were colleagues at the Kentucky Department for the Blind.

The Pocketbraille was built to be housed in a videocassette box (one for a VHS cassette, which was state-of-the-art in the mid 1980s.) One could enter data from a Perkins-style keyboard and hear it spoken through speech. When Fred learned of a braille display manufacturer in Italy, the project grew into a refreshable braille device called Portabraille. The Kentucky Department made only 12 Portabraille units -- two of which enabled blind people to retain their jobs. Rather than making a profit from the machines themselves, Gissoni and Thompson sold the detailed instructions for building the device for $5. Deane Blazie's interest in those plans, led to the birth of the Braille 'n Speak.

Fred was particularly proud of the Janus Slate, the double-sided interline braille slate that holds a three-by-five index card for brailling on both sides. When asked about the name of this product, he said, Well, Janus was the Roman God of portals. But I like to tell people that he was the Roman God of braille, and since we didn't actually have braille for several hundred more years, he didn't have much to do. That is vintage Fred Gissoni banter.

Other inventions he developed for APH were also small items including a pocket braille calendar and a gadget he called FoldRite, which simplified folding an 8-1/2 by 11 sheet of paper into thirds. When asked about his accomplishments, one of the things he mentioned his introducing Larry Skutchan to APH.

Fred always used an abacus and was never without a slate and stylus. Batteries die and chips fail, he said simply. On the Fred's Head web site, APH refers to him as a legend. He shared his tips, techniques, knowledge, genius, and generous spirit with blind people everywhere for more than 80 years. Fred's world of knowledge eventually became what is now the Fred's Head from APH blog.

Chec out a 2009 interview with Fred from Deborah Kendrick in AFB's AccessWorld.

A memorial service is being planned for the near future. In lieu of flowers, contributions are requested to American Printing House for the Blind, UCHM for food, or the Crescent Hill United Methodist Church. See more and sign his guest book at: http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/louisville/obituary.aspx?n=fred-l-gissoni&pid=172536773&fhid=10680#sthash.DC1xF6rC.dpuf.

We read with excitement of a new service from Openlibrary.org which aims to offer accessible DAISY titles to the blind, low-vision, and print-disabled communities. While services like Bookshare have provided a library of thousands of titles in electronic format for the past decade, the new offering has the potential to put the necessity for accessible books in the forefront of many who may not have realized the need previously. While the site has potential, it will need to expand greatly to become relevant. Luckily, a donation drive is helping to jumpstart the collection.

Today, BrailleNote mPower users and the public at large received their first view of Humanware’s new breed of PDA devices. While many are quick to discount the Apex as overpriced, outdated, and meaningless, we can’t hardly blame Humanware for the new release. And while users are quick to scoff at the price, the machine brings some welcome competition to the blindness-specific PDA market which I’m glad to see.

One of the biggest challenges faced by a blind traveler is obtaining a concept of their surroundings. The availability of Braille maps has been rare if not nonexistent. Thanks to a partnership between the Tactile Map Automated Production (TMAP) Project and the San Francisco Lighthouse, one can now obtain hard copy maps for any address in the United States for a small fee. After seeing the results for an area near our home, we were quite impressed.

Well, the day has finally arrived. It's been an unprecedented 14 months since the release of any version of Window-Eyes, and now users around the world will get to decide if the wait was worth it.
Follow the link to read the entire article.

A new kind of checking generic valium 5mg has been introduced that provides unlimited refunds
of surcharges from automatic teller machines, allowing blind people to use any talking
ATM free without fee or extra charges. Kelly Pierce explains how to do it and which banks offer this very useful service.

These days, blind computer users are gaining more and more options for free access to technology. But in our latest article, we discuss some of the reasons that one should consider paying for a screen reader compared with downloading one for free.

Much has been written about the inaccessibility of some of the legal services for downloading music. But in the latest in our series of articles, we discuss the ease of use of Amazon's new MP3 offering. The service offers pure MP3 downloads with no DRM restrictions for 99 cents a track or less. Select the link on this post to read our article.

Searching for the absolute best deal for an item is not
as hard as you might think. In the latest of our series of articles, we detail some
of the methods we use to find the bargains that are posted to the site.

The advancement of accessible
cell phones has sparked a lot of interest in the blind community. We've written an
introduction to cell phone access for new and advanced users alike. Read it to learn
more, or send it to a friend who is curious about how a blind person can use a cell
phone.

We've written a detailed explanation on how to get around the sell an item form on
EBay. Selling on EBay is actually a relatively simple process, and this guide will
hopefully help in simplifying it.