March 2016 - Blind-sysadmins - lists.hodgsonfamily.org

Facebook groups
by Jad Wauthier 03 Jun '17

03 Jun '17

I have created two Facebook groups. the first is Tech Makers. My objective with this group is to provide a convenient medium for people who are technology creators to discuss relevant topics and get feedback from peers. I hope that anyone who is interested in collaborating about tech topics will join and add others who might be interested in participating. The other group is Project Connect. the goal for this group is to provide a convenient medium for developers, admins, and others to discuss and share ideas about their projects. Sometimes, you have a project you are excited about, but you don't know how to get others on board with it. Other times, you might want some side project to work on, but you're not sure of what things other people are doing. I hope that people will join this group and share their ideas and possibly connect with others. -- Jad Wauthier | Problem Solver Phone: 512.290.3494 Fax: 512.367.5925 It's all in the perception.

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speech friendly PST recovery tools
by Iaen Cordell 28 Mar '16

28 Mar '16

G'day list, I am after any recommendations on Microsoft outlook PST recovery tools, I have tried the tools built in to office and yes they are speech friendly they can not repair the damaged outlook 2003 PST files I have from an upset customer. Google offers up many results for this type of application but, as most of them are not try before you buy I do not want to take the risk. all help would be appreciated. cheers IC Iaen Cordell: Mobile: 0412600466. Email: ianc(a)optusnet.com.au

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win7 system stuck in a boot loop
by David Mehler 26 Mar '16

26 Mar '16

Hello, I've got a win7 system that had a problem reported to me. When checking it it is in a boot loop. It's a gigabyte board if that matters, uefi bios. I am wondering if there's a way to get it to boot last known good configuration, via a setable boot flag? I've got an external drive enclosure I can put it into, take it to another box, and work, so I can set anything there. This machine by default is not set up to boot from USB drives, and I do not have sighted eyes on hand to get it so, so booting off my thumb drive is out. I'd appreciate any suggestions, with one item, I can not reformat this machine currently. Thanks. Dave.

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win7 system stuck in a boot loop
by David Mehler 26 Mar '16

26 Mar '16

Hello, I've got a win7 system that had a problem reported to me. When checking it it is in a boot loop. It's a gigabyte board if that matters, uefi bios. I am wondering if there's a way to get it to boot last known good configuration, via a setable boot flag? I've got an external drive enclosure I can put it into, take it to another box, and work, so I can set anything there. This machine by default is not set up to boot from USB drives, and I do not have sighted eyes on hand to get it so, so booting off my thumb drive is out. I'd appreciate any suggestions, with one item, I can not reformat this machine currently. Thanks. Dave.

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Introductions
by Gianugo Rabellino 25 Mar '16

25 Mar '16

I had just subscribed to this list and I thought I'd quickly introduce myself. My name is Gianugo Rabellino, and I am the newly minted director of accessibility for Microsoft's Cloud+Enterprise division. My responsibility roughly spans all the server side product lineup from Microsoft (Windows Server, Azure, System Center, SQL Server, Power BI...) as well as our developer tools (Visual Studio, VS Code, .NET and more). As I'm ramping up and learning a lot about a11y, I found this list and I thought it would be useful for me to subscribe and at the same time offer to this group to be a Microsoft point of contact on top of our official channels. While I'm directly responsible for the Cloud+Enterprise lineup, I'm also part of a larger accessibility team across Microsoft, so I'd be more than happy to connect to relevant colleagues if you have questions or issues about other Microsoft products. My background in the past 25 years has been in open source, and as such I'm very passionate about having discussions in the open and interacting transparently with the communities I'm working with. To that extent, I am currently attending CSUN and I would love the opportunity to meet with anyone on this group who happens to be in San Diego these days. Please don't hesitate to contact me and we will certainly find a time. And if you're not at CSUN, feel free to reach out all the same, on this list or privately: I would really appreciate an opportunity to learn more and work together. Looking forward to our future conversations, -- Gianugo Rabellino

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Re: [Blind-sysadmins] Introductions
by Ryan Shugart 24 Mar '16

24 Mar '16

Darragh: You summed up my thoughts rather nicely as well. I use Powershell and other command line tools every day and would be lost without them. However, sometimes there’s something specific I want to do and looking it up can be a little time consuming, in terms that I know I can do it through the GUI quicker than it takes for me to look up the proper syntax on Google and putting it into effect. I also think some of MS’s Powershell implementations are more geared towards scripting than day to day “I just want to ditch the GUI and do things this way.” Again correct me if I’m wrong. I think Exchange and the AD are actually pretty good for just taking care of day to day tasks from a command line interface, Darragh’s example aside. The SCCM Powershell interface, however, is not. Its really hard to get a simple answer to a simple question through it that even with the inaccessible GUI I can find relatively quickly, such as, for example, designing WQL queries when you don’t know exactly what class you want to query against. The WQL designer in SCCM is actually really nice, I can go through, select everything in the dropdown, then review and tweak what I want in the query editor. I wonder, has anyone developed any Windows Server training materials specifically from the standpoint of Powershell? I’m not talking about learning Powershell itself, but something like taking the Mastering Windows Server 2012R2 books, and replacing everything they do with the GUI with Powershell exclusively. I wonder if that would help some of us get more comfortable with ditching the GUI completely. I saw an Exchange book once that was trying to move in that direction, it still talked about the Exchange 2013 GUI but put a lot more emphasis on Powershell than I’d ever seen before, making sure almost every example had a Powershell equivalent. It was really cool to see but I haven’t seen much outside of Exchange go quite that far yet. Ryan -----Original Message----- From: Blind-sysadmins <blind-sysadmins-bounces(a)lists.hodgsonfamily.org> on behalf of Darragh Ó Héiligh <d(a)digitaldarragh.com> Reply-To: Blind sysadmins list <blind-sysadmins(a)lists.hodgsonfamily.org> Date: Thursday, March 24, 2016 at 4:54 PM To: Blind sysadmins list <blind-sysadmins(a)lists.hodgsonfamily.org> Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] Introductions >Hello Gianugo, > >I'm delighted that you are a member of this list. > >I've worked in various sys admin roles for about ten years now on systems ranging from 20 servers to 600 servers with infrastructures that must be available 24/7 365 days a year. > >These systems have ranged from all physical to a mash of virtual based on Hyper-V, eSXI and even Xen. > >I've worked on SCCM, SCOM, Exchange, Sharepoint, sQL, DFS, Azure, Office365 and of course active directory. > >The main thing I have noticed, and I'm more than happy to be corrected is that as a sys admin, it's often impossible to specialize on a technology when your responsibilities are so diverse. Therefore, if I was working in Exchange all day I'd probably have no problem using the Powershell CLI for exchange for example. However, At 9AM I could be working in SCCM. At 10AM, I could be working on DFS. At 10:30 I could be working on Azure. Exploring these systems is primarily made easy using the UI. The CLI is generally great for automating batches of jobs or large scale role outs but I don't find it great for getting information at a glance. > >For example. I set up a forwarding mailbox last week for a project. I hate forwarding mailboxes but it's a messy short term solution to a temporary problem. I go into exchange, expand the server by hitting right arrow, I press m for mail boxes and all the mailboxes are there. I start typing the first few letters of the mailbox name and because I've customized Jaws, the screen reader that I use, I get important information about that mailbox quickly and accurately. So last Monday for example, I noticed that the mailbox had grown by 600MB over the weekend. I wasn't necessarily looking for that. The information was exposed to me through the UI. > >In the CLI I'd need to know that I was looking for this information. > >Sorry if this isn't particularly clear. I need to give this some more thought and come back to you with a more comprehensive answer but it might get some discussion going. > >I love powershell and CLI environments. I started with Dos in 1993, I played around with Red hat in 1998. I've been a user of CLI's since I started with technology. I really see the benefit of doing everything or almost everything using powershell. If I'm missing something in my assessment of the benefits or draw backs of powershell then I'm all ears. > >I hope this conversation continues. >Again, I'm also delighted that you are on this list. It is by far the best list out there that will give you an idea of the areas blind system administrators work within and the challenges that we are faced with. I know that everyone will be very happy to work with you. > >Regards > > > >Darragh Ó Héiligh > > >-----Original Message----- >From: Blind-sysadmins [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Gianugo Rabellino >Sent: Thursday 24 March 2016 02:16 >To: Blind sysadmins list <blind-sysadmins(a)lists.hodgsonfamily.org> >Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] Introductions > >Thanks Andrew for the warm welcome, and thanks for your context on devops. Indeed I believe that devops can be a great opportunity: I have to confess my undying love for command line interfaces and scripts rather than GUIs, so no surprise here. > >Something I'd be keen to know, in fact, is whether there is something we could or should do on the command line front to make it more accessible and usable. Note that this is no excuse to delay or underperform in providing accessible web and GUI interfaces: I consider that an absolute minimum bar that needs to be applied across the board with no exceptions, and I trust we will get there. > >At the same time though, and all things being equal, I wonder if you and others in this community have a preference given the choice of a GUI interface or a console/command line environment to perform typical system administration tasks. In both cases, it would be very helpful for me to understand what are the gaps and where we can work to make the system administration experience more productive from an accessibility point of view. > >Thanks again for taking the time to write this, and likewise I'm looking forward to future engagements with this list. > >Gianugo > >-----Original Message----- >From: Blind-sysadmins [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Andrew Hodgson >Sent: Wednesday, March 23, 2016 3:20 PM >To: Blind sysadmins list <blind-sysadmins(a)lists.hodgsonfamily.org> >Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] Introductions > >Hi Gianugo, > >Welcome to this group. I am really pleased to see someone from Microsoft join the group, and hope you won't be bombarded with lots of people asking you for access tips or to vent issues with Microsoft products. > >I am the group owner, and I came into the sysadmin world with a Linux intro at home, followed by a swift Windows conversion when I joined a company. I have mainly found the Microsoft products really usable with speech, and in fact chose Windows because my sighted friends using Linux were mainly using GUIs, which were in most cases non-standard and the access to those was very sketchy. I am a fan of the remote administration tools, so rather than remoting onto a server and getting the job done, I prefer accessing the server remotely via a remote access protocol (RSAT tools are a very good example of this working well). PowerShell remoting is another way this works well. > >Recently I have joined a DevOps team and whilst we are using the Windows stack, the senior guys of the team mainly have a Linux background, and so it is quite a challenge to fit in some of the technologies in a Windows stack. It is getting a lot easier now, and I find the concept of defining stacks using code really helpful as someone with limited vision, because I just write the code, and can see the end product, which includes infrastructure diagrams etc. Not fully there yet, but we're getting closer. > >I manage Office365 tenants for a few organisations (mainly charities that have donations from Microsoft), and I have found the recent console slightly behind in access to its older brother. This may just be because I am new to the new console, and in fact that is one thing which needs to be made clear: Sometimes there isn't an access issue, but because everything has moved round from where it was, it can take a long time for screen reader users to catch up. I tend to use PowerShell to do most of the work these days, illuminating the need for a console altogether, but it may be something to look at. > >Looking forward to future discussions with you on the list, Best, Andrew. > >-----Original Message----- >From: Blind-sysadmins [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Gianugo Rabellino >Sent: 23 March 2016 18:28 >To: blind-sysadmins(a)lists.hodgsonfamily.org >Subject: [Blind-sysadmins] Introductions > >I had just subscribed to this list and I thought I'd quickly introduce myself. My name is Gianugo Rabellino, and I am the newly minted director of accessibility for Microsoft's Cloud+Enterprise division. My responsibility roughly spans all the server side product lineup from Microsoft (Windows Server, Azure, System Center, SQL Server, Power BI...) as well as our developer tools (Visual Studio, VS Code, .NET and more). > >As I'm ramping up and learning a lot about a11y, I found this list and I thought it would be useful for me to subscribe and at the same time offer to this group to be a Microsoft point of contact on top of our official channels. While I'm directly responsible for the Cloud+Enterprise lineup, I'm also part of a larger accessibility team across Microsoft, so I'd be more than happy to connect to relevant colleagues if you have questions or issues about other Microsoft products. > >My background in the past 25 years has been in open source, and as such I'm very passionate about having discussions in the open and interacting transparently with the communities I'm working with. To that extent, I am currently attending CSUN and I would love the opportunity to meet with anyone on this group who happens to be in San Diego these days. Please don't hesitate to contact me and we will certainly find a time. And if you're not at CSUN, feel free to reach out all the same, on this list or privately: I would really appreciate an opportunity to learn more and work together. > >Looking forward to our future conversations, > >-- >Gianugo Rabellino > >_______________________________________________ >Blind-sysadmins mailing list >Blind-sysadmins(a)lists.hodgsonfamily.org >https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3a%2f%2flists.hodg… > >_______________________________________________ >Blind-sysadmins mailing list >Blind-sysadmins(a)lists.hodgsonfamily.org >https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3a%2f%2flists.hodg… > >_______________________________________________ >Blind-sysadmins mailing list >Blind-sysadmins(a)lists.hodgsonfamily.org >https://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins > >_______________________________________________ >Blind-sysadmins mailing list >Blind-sysadmins(a)lists.hodgsonfamily.org >https://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

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Re: [Blind-sysadmins] Introductions
by Ryan Shugart 23 Mar '16

23 Mar '16

Hi Andrew: Just as an FYI on Office 365, I noticed that myself with my own ryanshugart.com tenant and reported it to the edad(a)microsoft.com address earlier this week. I think in this case its a mixture of access issues and training as there are several buttons with no alt tags on the main home page of the new admin portal, as well as some items that Window-Eyes is not reporting as clickable/links, although they actually are clickable/a link. In these cases you can press enter and access the function so is it an accessibility issue? Well I think yes and no, you can do the function but you shouldn’t have to play hunt and peck to see what works and what doesn’t either. In my case the old portal is still available, and MS has told me they won’t be retiring it until known accessibility issues have been debt with. Like you though I mainly use Powershell or sometimes the IOS app so its not a big issue. My tenant only has one user (me) for now though so that probably makes a big difference in what my needs are. Ryan -----Original Message----- From: Blind-sysadmins <blind-sysadmins-bounces(a)lists.hodgsonfamily.org> on behalf of Andrew Hodgson <andrew(a)hodgsonfamily.org> Reply-To: Blind sysadmins list <blind-sysadmins(a)lists.hodgsonfamily.org> Date: Wednesday, March 23, 2016 at 4:20 PM To: Blind sysadmins list <blind-sysadmins(a)lists.hodgsonfamily.org> Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] Introductions >Hi Gianugo, > >Welcome to this group. I am really pleased to see someone from Microsoft join the group, and hope you won't be bombarded with lots of people asking you for access tips or to vent issues with Microsoft products. > >I am the group owner, and I came into the sysadmin world with a Linux intro at home, followed by a swift Windows conversion when I joined a company. I have mainly found the Microsoft products really usable with speech, and in fact chose Windows because my sighted friends using Linux were mainly using GUIs, which were in most cases non-standard and the access to those was very sketchy. I am a fan of the remote administration tools, so rather than remoting onto a server and getting the job done, I prefer accessing the server remotely via a remote access protocol (RSAT tools are a very good example of this working well). PowerShell remoting is another way this works well. > >Recently I have joined a DevOps team and whilst we are using the Windows stack, the senior guys of the team mainly have a Linux background, and so it is quite a challenge to fit in some of the technologies in a Windows stack. It is getting a lot easier now, and I find the concept of defining stacks using code really helpful as someone with limited vision, because I just write the code, and can see the end product, which includes infrastructure diagrams etc. Not fully there yet, but we're getting closer. > >I manage Office365 tenants for a few organisations (mainly charities that have donations from Microsoft), and I have found the recent console slightly behind in access to its older brother. This may just be because I am new to the new console, and in fact that is one thing which needs to be made clear: Sometimes there isn't an access issue, but because everything has moved round from where it was, it can take a long time for screen reader users to catch up. I tend to use PowerShell to do most of the work these days, illuminating the need for a console altogether, but it may be something to look at. > >Looking forward to future discussions with you on the list, >Best, >Andrew. > >-----Original Message----- >From: Blind-sysadmins [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Gianugo Rabellino >Sent: 23 March 2016 18:28 >To: blind-sysadmins(a)lists.hodgsonfamily.org >Subject: [Blind-sysadmins] Introductions > >I had just subscribed to this list and I thought I'd quickly introduce myself. My name is Gianugo Rabellino, and I am the newly minted director of accessibility for Microsoft's Cloud+Enterprise division. My responsibility roughly spans all the server side product lineup from Microsoft (Windows Server, Azure, System Center, SQL Server, Power BI...) as well as our developer tools (Visual Studio, VS Code, .NET and more). > >As I'm ramping up and learning a lot about a11y, I found this list and I thought it would be useful for me to subscribe and at the same time offer to this group to be a Microsoft point of contact on top of our official channels. While I'm directly responsible for the Cloud+Enterprise lineup, I'm also part of a larger accessibility team across Microsoft, so I'd be more than happy to connect to relevant colleagues if you have questions or issues about other Microsoft products. > >My background in the past 25 years has been in open source, and as such I'm very passionate about having discussions in the open and interacting transparently with the communities I'm working with. To that extent, I am currently attending CSUN and I would love the opportunity to meet with anyone on this group who happens to be in San Diego these days. Please don't hesitate to contact me and we will certainly find a time. And if you're not at CSUN, feel free to reach out all the same, on this list or privately: I would really appreciate an opportunity to learn more and work together. > >Looking forward to our future conversations, > >-- >Gianugo Rabellino > >_______________________________________________ >Blind-sysadmins mailing list >Blind-sysadmins(a)lists.hodgsonfamily.org >https://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins > >_______________________________________________ >Blind-sysadmins mailing list >Blind-sysadmins(a)lists.hodgsonfamily.org >https://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

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Introductions
by Gianugo Rabellino 23 Mar '16

23 Mar '16

I had just subscribed to this list and I thought I'd quickly introduce myself. My name is Gianugo Rabellino, and I am the newly minted director of accessibility for Microsoft's Cloud+Enterprise division. My responsibility roughly spans all the server side product lineup from Microsoft (Windows Server, Azure, System Center, SQL Server, Power BI...) as well as our developer tools (Visual Studio, VS Code, .NET and more). As I'm ramping up and learning a lot about a11y, I found this list and I thought it would be useful for me to subscribe and at the same time offer to this group to be a Microsoft point of contact on top of our official channels. While I'm directly responsible for the Cloud+Enterprise lineup, I'm also part of a larger accessibility team across Microsoft, so I'd be more than happy to connect to relevant colleagues if you have questions or issues about other Microsoft products. My background in the past 25 years has been in open source, and as such I'm very passionate about having discussions in the open and interacting transparently with the communities I'm working with. To that extent, I am currently attending CSUN and I would love the opportunity to meet with anyone on this group who happens to be in San Diego these days. Please don't hesitate to contact me and we will certainly find a time. And if you're not at CSUN, feel free to reach out all the same, on this list or privately: I would really appreciate an opportunity to learn more and work together. Looking forward to our future conversations, -- Gianugo Rabellino

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fwd: [VanDyke Software] Beta 5 for SecureCRT, SecureFX, and ClientPack 8.0 Now Available ??? Release Candidates for 8.0 Official
by Chris Nestrud 22 Mar '16

22 Mar '16

If you use Secure CRT to connect to remote systems, it may be worth checking out this beta and submitting any accessibility-related feedback. I intend to do so soon. Chris ----- Forwarded message from VanDyke Software <support(a)vandyke.com> ----- Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2016 16:47:21 +0000 From: VanDyke Software <support(a)vandyke.com> To: ccn(a)chrisnestrud.com Subject: [VanDyke Software] Beta 5 for SecureCRT, SecureFX, and ClientPack 8.0 Now Available ??? Release Candidates for 8.0 Official VanDyke Software has posted a new item, 'Beta 5 for SecureCRT, SecureFX, and ClientPack 8.0 Now Available ??? Release Candidates for 8.0 Official' The Beta 5 releases of SecureCRT 8.0, SecureFX 8.0, and VanDyke ClientPack 8.0 are now available for download. Beta 5 is the release candidate for the 8.0 Official release. You still have time to send us your feedback and requests before the official release.?? Send questions, requests, or bug reports to support(a)vandyke.com. SecureCRT 8.0 (beta) and SecureFX 8.0 [...] You may view the latest post at https://whatsnew.vandyke.com/2016/03/beta-5-for-securecrt-securefx-and-clie… You received this email because you asked to be notified when new updates are posted. Best regards, VanDyke Software support(a)vandyke.com ----- End forwarded message -----

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new Office 365 admin portal
by Ryan Shugart 17 Mar '16

17 Mar '16

Hi: I know several of us on here have Office 365 tenants either for our personal domain or businesses. I just wanted to give you the heads up that the new Office 365 admin portal Microsoft is rolling out has some major accessibility issues, most buttons have no alt tags, and I think screen readers don't identify most of the clickable items. I know Window-Eyes 9.4 doesn't. I've not explored too far with this because at this point you can still switch back to the classic admin portal, which is quirky but accessible. I've already reported the issues to edad(a)microsoft.com, and have been told bugs are being filed so hopefully this will be resolved soon. Obviously this isn't a show stopper as there are plenty of other ways to get to most admin functions, the IOS app still works, and there's always Powershell which is my preferred method. Ryan

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