- Blind-sysadmins - lists.hodgsonfamily.org

Roundcube webmail
by David Mehler 30 Oct '15

30 Oct '15

Hello, Has anyone used Roundcube webmail with a screen reader, Jaws, Window Eyes, or NVDA? If so, how well did you get it going on top of your existing email setup? Thanks. Dave.

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the future of System Center Configuration Manager
by Ryan Shugart 28 Oct '15

28 Oct '15

This blog post has been making the rounds on the SCCM lists and thought I’d share for the other blind people who use SCCM: http://blogs.technet.com/b/configmgrteam/archive/2015/10/27/system-center-c… This actually makes me kind of nervous, Microsoft’s accessibility history with this product hasn’t exactly been stellar. We use SCCM 2012R2 today, and thanks to some Window-Eyes scripts I can get around and all parts read, but its very very clunky and I wouldn’t call myself fast by any means. We recently upgraded to 2012R2 SP1 CU1, and that actually broke all the scripts and we had to rush to get them fixed. So I’m holding off on this upgrade for as long as I can. However, to be able to manage any OS beyond Windows 10 Enterprise LTSB (including the non LTSB builds of Windows 10) we’ll have to upgrade eventually. On top of that, assuming I can get new scripts written, if Microsoft can upgrade this guy whenever they want, those scripts may not be for much. I’m meeting with our TAM and some PMs on the SCCM team Friday to talk about my concerns, I have little hope of anything happening, Microsoft already said accessibility will not be a part of the next release, but hey. Just wanted to let any other blind admins know about this if they hadn’t seen the posts already. Ryan

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Automated deployment of Windows: which tool is best?
by Katherine Moss 28 Oct '15

28 Oct '15

Hey all, Was running through my available options and I've discovered a few ways to spin up VMs including automating the Windows install. For Windows automated installation, for the moment I've got a couple of LTI prospects going with all user input screens skipped (per the rules in the .ini file on the properties of the deployment share in MDT). Is that a good way to deploy Windows automatically as a blind person? Is there an easier tool you'd recommend (I say screw Winstaller for that piece of crap never worked anyway, and due to the fact that MDT integrated smoothly with SCCM when that becomes our automation tool). And then for the deployment of roles and settings (MDT can integrate PowerShell scripts into the task sequences, so should I run a DSC setup afterwards, or should I include the setup within the task sequence itself?) How are you guys handling this situation? (for the first server, unfortunately because I just want her up, I had to get a template off of a sighted friend of mine).

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Cisco Net Academy
by Andrew Hodgson 28 Oct '15

28 Oct '15

Hi, Reading the recent tweets that a VI specialist college in the UK has started running the Cisco courses. I emailed them at the beginning of the year enquiring how they worked and whether they were doing anything about the actual exams, and got the usual story that they were doing the academy study but not the full exams. I was intrigued to read the tweets yesterday regarding one of the students winning a paid work placement with Cisco. Now just to be really clear, I couldn’t be more happier for this guy, and I fully believe he deserves it. However, I am now wondering if and how this could benefit other blind people who are looking for jobs in this area, and have done the same courses/tests etc. in the past, and are still looking for employment in the area, or for those people who have failed to get the exams in the past through lack of access. Andrew.

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Could the DevOps movement be our saviour?
by Andrew Hodgson 28 Oct '15

28 Oct '15

Hi, Over the last few months I have been working in the UK as a DevOps engineer for a large retail company in the UK. This is my first real DevOps job, but started to get into it before then. I am really excited about the opportunities this could bring to some blind sysadmins who are open enough to change their working practises a bit. Let’s talk about the initial stages I went through. I was given an Amazon Web Services (AWS) account on day 1 to work with some build automation servers. Now, this website is sort of ok for confident screen readers to use, but it’s not efficient. In the DevOps world, that isn’t a problem, because you aren’t really expected to use the website to manage the objects in AWS; you manage everything with the AWS API and plug-ins for various tools such as PowerShell, Linux etc. So now if I want to view AWS instances, I can use PowerShell, or mainly I use Chef’s knife commands to get and manage the instances etc. I can start, stop, deploy and manage instances with a single command. I can also script this if I want. Moving onto configuration management, instead of running lots of GUI tasks or going on a server and running loads of commands, documenting all those steps and configuration into a large document that nobody reads, and is possibly inaccurate, if we use a configuration manager like Chef to do the work for us, then we don’t need to go on the servers at all. Instead of RDPing into a server, configuring IIS, etc., I can write a Chef recipe that will do all this for me, and apply dev practises to this, such as storing the recipe in a version control system, so we all have a definitive knowledge of which is the latest version of the file. Why bother writing a recipe that actually goes through installing IIS, when I can just go and pick up an IIS recipe that someone has already written and is validated by the rest of the Chef community; programmers have been doing this for years. In case anyone thinks that this is too hard, here is an example Chef recipe that sets up a base in IIS for a website: # Cookbook Name:: My-Website # Recipe:: default # Install IIS and the ASP.Net 4.5 module to serve pages. include_recipe 'iis::mod_aspnet45' #Remove the default site as we want our new site to be served from the root. include_recipe 'iis::remove_default_site' # Create the website storage folder. directory 'D:/Websites/MySite do recursive true action :create end #Create application pool for the site. iis_pool 'MySitePool' do runtime_version "4.0" action [:add,:start] end #Create the actual site that runs from the root of the URL. iis_site 'MySite' do path 'D:/Websites/Ranging' application_pool "RangingPool" action [:add,:start] end I know I am only a beginner, and there is a lot of progress to be made certainly in Windows and the DevOps world, but I think people should be really excited about the benefits this technology could offer blind people. Thanks. Andrew.

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Could the DevOps movement be our saviour?
by Andrew Hodgson 27 Oct '15

27 Oct '15

Hi, Over the last few months I have been working in the UK as a DevOps engineer for a large retail company in the UK. This is my first real DevOps job, but started to get into it before then. I am really excited about the opportunities this could bring to some blind sysadmins who are open enough to change their working practises a bit. Let’s talk about the initial stages I went through. I was given an Amazon Web Services (AWS) account on day 1 to work with some build automation servers. Now, this website is sort of ok for confident screen readers to use, but it’s not efficient. In the DevOps world, that isn’t a problem, because you aren’t really expected to use the website to manage the objects in AWS; you manage everything with the AWS API and plug-ins for various tools such as PowerShell, Linux etc. So now if I want to view AWS instances, I can use PowerShell, or mainly I use Chef’s knife commands to get and manage the instances etc. I can start, stop, deploy and manage instances with a single command. I can also script this if I want. Moving onto configuration management, instead of running lots of GUI tasks or going on a server and running loads of commands, documenting all those steps and configuration into a large document that nobody reads, and is possibly inaccurate, if we use a configuration manager like Chef to do the work for us, then we don’t need to go on the servers at all. Instead of RDPing into a server, configuring IIS, etc., I can write a Chef recipe that will do all this for me, and apply dev practises to this, such as storing the recipe in a version control system, so we all have a definitive knowledge of which is the latest version of the file. Why bother writing a recipe that actually goes through installing IIS, when I can just go and pick up an IIS recipe that someone has already written and is validated by the rest of the Chef community; programmers have been doing this for years. In case anyone thinks that this is too hard, here is an example Chef recipe that sets up a base in IIS for a website: # Cookbook Name:: My-Website # Recipe:: default # Install IIS and the ASP.Net 4.5 module to serve pages. include_recipe 'iis::mod_aspnet45' #Remove the default site as we want our new site to be served from the root. include_recipe 'iis::remove_default_site' # Create the website storage folder. directory 'D:/Websites/MySite do recursive true action :create end #Create application pool for the site. iis_pool 'MySitePool' do runtime_version "4.0" action [:add,:start] end #Create the actual site that runs from the root of the URL. iis_site 'MySite' do path 'D:/Websites/Ranging' application_pool "RangingPool" action [:add,:start] end I know I am only a beginner, and there is a lot of progress to be made certainly in Windows and the DevOps world, but I think people should be really excited about the benefits this technology could offer blind people. Thanks. Andrew.

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Spinrite drive utility
by Troy Hergert 23 Oct '15

23 Oct '15

Has anyone utilized the Spinrite drive check and repair utility? I heard about it from a Security Now podcast and wondered if it has been used by a screen reader user.

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Cisco Net Academy
by Andrew Hodgson 23 Oct '15

23 Oct '15

Hi, Reading the recent tweets that a VI specialist college in the UK has started running the Cisco courses. I emailed them at the beginning of the year enquiring how they worked and whether they were doing anything about the actual exams, and got the usual story that they were doing the academy study but not the full exams. I was intrigued to read the tweets yesterday regarding one of the students winning a paid work placement with Cisco. Now just to be really clear, I couldn’t be more happier for this guy, and I fully believe he deserves it. However, I am now wondering if and how this could benefit other blind people who are looking for jobs in this area, and have done the same courses/tests etc. in the past, and are still looking for employment in the area, or for those people who have failed to get the exams in the past through lack of access. Andrew.

1 0

Spinrite drive utility
by Troy Hergert 22 Oct '15

22 Oct '15

Has anyone utilized the Spinrite drive check and repair utility? I heard about it from a Security Now podcast and wondered if it has been used by a screen reader user.

1 0

A question for those on the list to answer:
by Angel 21 Oct '15

21 Oct '15

If colleges and Universities are finding it difficult, or impossible to meet the demands of advocates for legislative change to make their academic services satisfactory for their challenged students, (see the accompanying link) and if this fact is published for all who care to do so to read. How can we expect potential employers of the blind to assume we blind employees won't present to them an undue burden on their already strained resources. When they could just as easily hire an unchallenged individual to do the same job? Is it any wonder so many of us blind people are unemployed. The potential employer is just overwhelmed by assumed obstacles which may appear to him to be insurmountable. Given a choice between hiring a blind or a sighted candidate, what would provide the incentive for a potential employer to hire a blind employee above one with sight. For whom no particular accommodations would have to be met? https://www.nfbcal.org/pipermail/brl-monitor/2014/000033.html **The nice thing about being a celebrity is that if you bore people they think it's their fault.** Henry Kissinger

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