Hey guys,
my name is Tom. I'm new here to this site, but not new to world of IT.
I was born with a condition called Congenital Rubella, leaving me blind @ birth. I've been studying Computers since I was 6 years old first playing around on daddys Texas Instruments Commodore 16 back in the 70's. Man those were the days. I remember my first IBM compatible was the vic20, and sever since I've had 8088's, 286's, 386's etc etc that I slowly upgraded from.
Nowadays, my life has taken a completely different turn. Since I never had much of an issue using computers back in the MS-DOS days with the black backgrounds on white letters, computers were my "thing" back then..
but now with Windows changing everything. with ya know 2048x1024 display resolutions getting in the way of me completing CompTIA certification exams, I ended up dropping out of college and just do Computers for fun now.
I am recently married to a beautiful young lady. I'm in my early 40's she's in her late 30's, and we're both visually challenged. We met over facebook originally of all places, about 2 years ago, we were introduced by a mutual friend of ours from the blind school we both attended during different years so we had all the same friends but didn't actually meet ourselves, until this mutual friend introduced us, now its a pure match made in heaven
She's not so much a techie like I am, She's a preschool teacher for special needs & has her masters in early childhood development, while I'm unemployed almost finished a 2 year IT degree but not quite. I would have though if I hadn't have had issues taking the CompTIA exams, so my knowledge of computes is about equal to someone with a CompTIA A+ essentials, A+ IT, and network+ specialities, so I can probably be of some help here along with receiving some help myself from time to time.
Since we're both visually challenged, there are some things I can't do, like draw graphics, splice network cabling, put USB headers hook up LCD lights on motherboards, minor things really. but despite that, I built my wife and I separate computers & we have 5 computers hooked up to our home not including our iphones, ipads, Roku players, and one of those computers is a linux server I use to test out websites on that I do, so I'm quite a smart cookie when it comes to Computers but also limited to what I can do due to visual limitations.
My wife and I use 2 different screen readers to use the Computer with. She uses a product called Zoomtext from aisquared, which we both kinda like, but since my vision is a tad bit worse then hers, I prefer a different product called MAGIC from freedom scientific. Its kind of like the Jaws screen reader except its made for the sight impaired instead of the totally blind. With it we can get around webpages as fast as any sighted person. usually. I tend to have issues with government sites that have alot of links and text on 'em but for the most part we do very well.
take care see ya'll around
PS: I can type between 120-140 wpm so my posts may be lengthy. For that I applogize, but when you can type faster then you can talk, that tends to happen, but I'll try to keep things brief
my name is Tom. I'm new here to this site, but not new to world of IT.
I was born with a condition called Congenital Rubella, leaving me blind @ birth. I've been studying Computers since I was 6 years old first playing around on daddys Texas Instruments Commodore 16 back in the 70's. Man those were the days. I remember my first IBM compatible was the vic20, and sever since I've had 8088's, 286's, 386's etc etc that I slowly upgraded from.
Nowadays, my life has taken a completely different turn. Since I never had much of an issue using computers back in the MS-DOS days with the black backgrounds on white letters, computers were my "thing" back then..
but now with Windows changing everything. with ya know 2048x1024 display resolutions getting in the way of me completing CompTIA certification exams, I ended up dropping out of college and just do Computers for fun now.
I am recently married to a beautiful young lady. I'm in my early 40's she's in her late 30's, and we're both visually challenged. We met over facebook originally of all places, about 2 years ago, we were introduced by a mutual friend of ours from the blind school we both attended during different years so we had all the same friends but didn't actually meet ourselves, until this mutual friend introduced us, now its a pure match made in heaven
She's not so much a techie like I am, She's a preschool teacher for special needs & has her masters in early childhood development, while I'm unemployed almost finished a 2 year IT degree but not quite. I would have though if I hadn't have had issues taking the CompTIA exams, so my knowledge of computes is about equal to someone with a CompTIA A+ essentials, A+ IT, and network+ specialities, so I can probably be of some help here along with receiving some help myself from time to time.
Since we're both visually challenged, there are some things I can't do, like draw graphics, splice network cabling, put USB headers hook up LCD lights on motherboards, minor things really. but despite that, I built my wife and I separate computers & we have 5 computers hooked up to our home not including our iphones, ipads, Roku players, and one of those computers is a linux server I use to test out websites on that I do, so I'm quite a smart cookie when it comes to Computers but also limited to what I can do due to visual limitations.
My wife and I use 2 different screen readers to use the Computer with. She uses a product called Zoomtext from aisquared, which we both kinda like, but since my vision is a tad bit worse then hers, I prefer a different product called MAGIC from freedom scientific. Its kind of like the Jaws screen reader except its made for the sight impaired instead of the totally blind. With it we can get around webpages as fast as any sighted person. usually. I tend to have issues with government sites that have alot of links and text on 'em but for the most part we do very well.
take care see ya'll around
PS: I can type between 120-140 wpm so my posts may be lengthy. For that I applogize, but when you can type faster then you can talk, that tends to happen, but I'll try to keep things brief