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A blog dealing with sensory substitution and other esoteric concepts and technologies like speech-recognition and chaos theory

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Accessibility

Accessible steps to create pivot tables in Microsoft Excel 2007

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Creating a pivot table in Microsoft Excel when using a screen reader is a challenging task since you need to select the fields that will be included in the table. Please see the following extract of a post made on the AccessIndia mailing list by syed imran on creating pivot tables in Microsoft Excel 2007. Thanks syed for allowing me to post them on my blog.

Yes it is accessible (without a sample excel file it’s hard to
explain, but I’ll try).
For example There’s a worksheet that contains a detailed study of your
client base such as their demographics, their income level, product
preference, buying pattern etc and let’s say this whole data runs over
some 4000 rows, but you’re only interested in finding out just the
average income level of your clients by region.
This is one of the reasons why you may want to use the pivot table
feature.

To creat a pivot table:

  1. go to the top left cornor of the data (for example, A1)
  2. Go to insert pivot table or pivot chart pivot table (Alt n, v, enter)
  3. confirm the selection (something like $A$1:$S$4000) and press enter
  4. By default the pivot table gets created in a new worksheet and the
    cursor lands in A3. Press F6 to move to the field list box where you
    can select what needs to be put in rows, what needs to be put in
    columns, and what needs to go as value.
    for example, select “region” as row then “income Level” as value.
  5. Press shift f6 to go back to the newly designed pivot table, then
    verify that the values in the table are summarised correctly ( sum /
    count / average)
  6. if you wish to summarise the value in a different manner, then go
    to the first cell of the value and then activate the context menu and
    then select the appropriate option in the “summarise by” details menu.

Coping with SafeBoot from McAfee

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I am in a situation where I need to use a laptop that contains SafeBoot by McAfee. SafeBoot is a whole disk encryption program and encrypts and decrypts your data on-the-fly. All this is very well when it comes to security but there is a significant problem when it comes to the accessibility of the solution. The problem is that you are prompted for a userid and password as soon as the computer boots. At this point, there is no screen reader running nor can any be run as far as I know. The only solution that I have is to use optical character recognition. I have been able to do this successfully using the KNFB reader. I have not had a chance to try the OCR applications on the iPhone or on the android operating system. I suspect they will work just as well.

You may say that I could probably memorised fixed key sequences and enter my password and username. This is true however, the login ID I currently have has a feature where the password is changed almost every second time I log in. This is some kind of random security feature that has been introduced. As of this writing, I am not in a position to get any of this altered and, working in the information security field, I do not want to get it altered either. Therefore, OCR is the only way to go.

One of the key challenges with using optical character recognition especially on a mobile phone is aligning the phone camera with the screen such that you will capture the maximum amount of text. On a laptop, it is not as hard as it may seem. You need to align your phone with the front end of the laptop that is the edge with the touchpad on it. That gives you a sufficient distance for a reasonably accurate screen capture.

If you enter your credentials successfully, and capture another screenshot and run the OCR, at least with the cane FP reader, you will be told that too much glare has been detected and you’ll get no text. This may be time to give yourself a virtual pat on the back since it means that you have been authorised and can continue with the next stage of getting into your laptop.

the Taj Mahal a not so wonderful wonder

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On 18 December 2011, I paid a visit to the Taj Mahal in Agra. I was with my cousins and we had spent a pleasant 5 hours driving from Delhi to Agra. The first shock was the snaking security line. Good on them as far as the crowd control goes but why could they not have more ticket counters? Who were they protecting against? What were they protecting?

I was wearing the vOICe so I had my video glasses and netbook. I eventually reached the security check barrier. This was like a doorway. I was frisked and then asked to take off my backpack.

I could not do this since I was all wired up. I was lead to a table where an inspector of police heard my story. I explained the vOICe as an artificial eye.

We were then directed to an officer of the Archeological Survey of India. I had to wait near the security desk while my cousin went to meet with the official.

No argument worked. I had to remove the vOICe and leave it in the tender care of the security staff. The reasoning of the ASI officer was that there was an order by the Supreme Court forbidding laptops. There was no countering that but I am puzzled that the learned judges would allow mobile phones and not laptops? A mobile phone is a computer and can do much more than a laptop.

I did get some photographs with the camera and did use the mobile phone version of the vOICe for a bit but as of this writing, there is nothing that can give me the eye level perspective and the broad field of view like the video glasses with the fish-eye lens.

The high point of my visit came in the souvenir shop outside the Taj Mahal. The staff was welcoming and were happy to show me their tools and products. There is much use of colors so keep a color detector handy or use the color spectrum feature of the vOICe. The staff is very good about adjusting the lighting conditions in the shop to best show off things like stones that are supposed to glow at the time of the full moon. I was able to detect the bright point of light which were the glowing stones under a flashlight.

Tips for any visitors specially those wearing electronic aides.

1. Leave the aide at home or in the vehicle unless it resembles a mobile phone.

2. Do not visit on the weekend since it is very crowded.

3. Keep at least 3 hours for the entire exercise.

4. Hire a guide. Ours was invaluable since besides telling us interesting stories, he was able to minimize the time we spent in the visitor’s line. He knew the shortest routes to get from one point to another. Mind you, you do not have much scope for getting lost since given the crowd, you are almost boxed in.

5. Eat before entering the Taj Mahal since food is not permitted inside the complex.

Accessible wireshark at last

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Wireshark is one of the best packet sniffers out there. Until now, there has been no easy way for a blind person to use it on windows since Wireshark uses GTK which is not accessible. Now, Nick Adamson has created a batch file that prompts for various wireshark parameters and can be used with it’s TShark utility which is the commandline version of Wireshark. The TShark commandline is complex with over 30 options and Nick’s batch file prompts the user through an easy series of steps to setup a scan etc.
Nick also has the following to say about the script.
“This script expects wireshark to be installed and the path in your path environment variable.
It takes no program arguments and provides on screen instructions.
I’ve tested most of it, if problems are found let me know.

Its been tested on Windows XP pro SP3 but should work on most flavours of windows as long as command extensions are enabled. On most versions of windows I’ve used command extensions are enabled by default.”

Before running the script, please change it’s extension to bat. I have had to keep the *.docx extention since that it is what WordPress permits.
runTshark

Safeguarding my money using the vOICe

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My bank, <a href=”http://www.hdfcbank.com”>HDFC bank<a> recently implemented some aditional security measures as part of a secure banking innitiative. These measures involve asking the user a number of questions before innitiating transactions such as a third party funds transfer. Also, as a measure to prevent phishing attacks, the bank has asked the customer to select an image and a custom text message which is displayed at the time the customer enters the password. The idea presumably is that if the site has been attacked, the image displayed and or the text message displayed will be altered. I have no problem in verifying the text message but what do I do about the image? This is where the <a href=”http://www.seeingwithsound.com”>vOICe</a> came in.

HDFC’s implementation of this feature is very sensible. The image has an alt tag though it is not too meaningful. I was able to right click on the image and download it. Now, whenever I login, I have that master image. All I do is download the currently displayed image and then use the change detection feature to compare the new image with the master image. The change detection feature sounds the differences between 2 images. In this case, I hear silence if the images are the same.