Hi, For me the most accessible way of testing is by using Exam Collection with a visual test simulator. These systems are accessible with screen readers, but they are questionable as they are derived from brain dumps with past questions from exams etc and are technically not legal. I have to say however that without these resources I wouldn't have been able to pass the exam as all the other resources were inaccessible to me. The way I used this was to go through the test paper, noting down issues with it that I had or where I wasn't sure of an answer, then do my own research. There were a couple of questions where I didn't agree with the answers on the test paper, where I did more research and backed up my own hunch. One of these questions actually came up in one of the papers that I was in, and I decided to go with my hunch rather than what the test paper said was the answer, but not sure if it was correct or not. I don't agree with using this method but like I said it was the only one available to me. Thanks. Andrew. ________________________________________ From: Blind-sysadmins [blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] on behalf of Barry Toner [barry@tonermail.co.uk] Sent: 20 August 2015 16:41 To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] Microsoft training question Hi, I've seen Test King papers but from what I understand they are frowned upon by allot of test centres as these are past papers and in some cases leaked versions of current papers. The idea behind Test King isnt' to learn but rather to brain dump the information. Measureup offered simulated tests in either a real exam mode or a learning mode. Cheers for the suggestion though. Barry Barry Toner "To leave the world a bit better; to know that one life has breathed easier because of you. This is to have succeeded" ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson -----Original Message----- From: Blind-sysadmins [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of vincent@vanitallie.net Sent: 17 August 2015 14:55 To: blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] Microsoft training question HI barry, Back in the day around the 2003 server time, testking offered questions in pdf format. I've found them very easy to use at that time. Wonder if testking still provides pdfs. Remember buying a subscribtion with my wholegroup who was attending the course. On 2015-08-17 14:32, Barry Toner wrote:
Hi,
Just to jump in on this thread has any found a good mock exam testing site? I loved www.measureup.com but it's went all nasty Silverlight and I can't even set an account up on it now. I can kinda get intot eh Silverlight with NVDA but it's just not happening. I loved it because I could purchase past paper questions and take the tests online and it would even give you the option of get the answers with explanations.
Cheers, Barry.
Barry Toner "To leave the world a bit better; to know that one life has breathed easier because of you. This is to have succeeded" ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
-----Original Message----- From: Blind-sysadmins [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Ryan Shugart Sent: 16 August 2015 20:14 To: david.thomas@davidthetechguy.com; Blind sysadmins list Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] Microsoft training question
Thanks everyone. I think there may be a difference between these kind of courses at a college/university as apposed to one of the official Microsoft training centers. I had asked about getting a copy of the VM images to run on my laptop back at New Horizons, and was told in no uncertain terms that that would not happen due to the fact that those images were running on a server farm very far away and the people at the local center had no access to them. My guess is that since these courses are Microsoft official curriculum that Microsoft maintains the VM images and is very careful as to who gets them, for licensing reasons, which may be another reason I’m running into too much trouble. That being said, I still believe that setting up a special local environment for me would be a reasonable accommodation if they’re unwilling to do anything else. Dealing with the instructor who is several states away could be another issue, I agree with others on here that that’s an inefficient method for instruction, but its more and more just where things are headed unfortunately. I guess its cheaper for the training centers to do it that way. My concerns there are if whatever software is used to interact with the remote instructor isn’t accessible I’ll obviously not be able to participate in the course. It might be reasonable to have the training center use something like Skype instead, I don’t really know. The other concern is obviously these instructors are teaching to a sighted, mouse-using class. With an instructor locally in the room watching me, that can be worked around, I know keyboard navigation well, but with some of the newer applications in Windows, Microsoft doesn’t follow their own rules so sighted eyes and hands come in handy. So I don’t know, its really turning into a dilemma. I really don’t want to go down the special training center for a blind person route, but I kind of feel like things are starting to be pushed that way unless we can come up with something. Ryan
On Aug 15, 2015, at 8:56 PM, David Thomas <david.thomas@davidthetechguy.com> wrote:
Hello, What I have done in this situation was explained to the teachers in the college that I can't use the remote access methods they are using, and if they could either give me the VHDs, VHDXs, or vmdk files. They usually are happy to do that. This has been the best solution, and the teachers really don't seem to mind.
-----Original Message----- From: Blind-sysadmins [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Sean Murphy Sent: Sunday, August 16, 2015 8:44 AM To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] Microsoft training question
Hi all,
Isn’t this a form of discrimination If you are paying good money to do a course and they provide the equipment to the students. Then you should be able to receive the same level of access to the software and training manual. How this is achieved is up to the company. You shouldn’t have to provide the same software to perform the training. Providing your own Assistive Technology is different.
Is it possible a breach of the 508 rehab act?
I am also thinking of the new up coming blind admin’s who haven’t the experience or access to the older method of providing training with dedicated server’s in the class room. They might not have the same skill level as other’s on this list. Hence will fail in achieving their end goal in becoming a system admin in Windows if they come across these type’s of barriers.
Sean
On 16 Aug 2015, at 2:53 am, Ryan Shugart <rshugart@ryanshugart.com> wrote:
Thanks everyone. As far as bringing your own machine and running the resources yourself, how does that work as far as setup goes? The labs for the Microsoft courses usually require the machines be built at a specific way (AKA a specific domain set up in a certain way) and some of the more advanced ones even have multiple machines at different states to demonstrate different product features or to duplicate a specific situation you’re supposed to troubleshoot. I think MS gives the pre-configured virtual machines to the training center, but I don’t think that I as a student could get access to them, and I would think that duplicating the configs would be pretty time consuming? Ryan
On Aug 14, 2015, at 8:53 PM, Kelly Prescott <kprescott@coolip.net> wrote:
The college I am studying at does something like this, and in a word, ease of deployment and config. They never have to setup or reconfig machines as each new instantiated lab has the correct setup. Also, they don't need compute resources on-site as most of the load can be remote. so they might have thin clients deployed all over, and only one server farm to supply the entire network. This doesn't help us, but There are ways to work around it. I do something similar to what you do. I have a beefy laptop that runs vmware and I can run virtual machines in that, and that is how I handle it. This does not fix all problems, but it does help and most people will listen to reason when you ask to use your own resources. kp
On Sat, 15 Aug 2015, David Thomas wrote:
Hello, I have found that the way training companies are doing it now is really unproductive. What I do is have a set of machines all pre-configured (10 of them), and then import them on Hyper-V. I don't use the system they use, and they mainly seem fine with it. I don't understand the reasoning for this new system. It doesn't really represent industry, or anything of that sort.
-----Original Message----- From: Blind-sysadmins [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Mika Pyyhkala Sent: Saturday, August 15, 2015 12:13 AM To: 'Blind sysadmins list' Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] Microsoft training question
We have struggled with the same thing here in the Boston area. I remember when New Horizons used to offer courses with actual server software running on the local boxes. This is defenetly a problematic trend.
-Mika @pyyhkala -----Original Message----- From: Blind-sysadmins [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Ryan Shugart Sent: Thursday, August 13, 2015 8:08 PM To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: [Blind-sysadmins] Microsoft training question
Hi everyone: I was scheduled to take an advanced Windows Server 2012R2 course from a local Microsoft training center in a few weeks, but it looks like that may have ran into some problems. The training center used to be very traditional with these courses, a local instructor and for labs they had a workstation in front of you with a few Hyper-V virtual machines. With a little Window-Eyes tweaking it went very well. But now, half the time the instructors are remote, and they have some strange way of running the labs off a central server that doesn’t use traditional remote desktop. I went through this before with New Horizons in my area, and even after showing them how to make accommodations for me, they just didn’t want to talk about it or even consider it. So I went to this other place and now that they’ve been bought out they’re starting to do the same thing. So, I’m wondering if anyone has a good experience with a training center they’d be willing to pass on? I’m all about technical books and setting up test labs yourself, but sometimes there’s still a good place for a good vendor training course. Thanks. Ryan _______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org https://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins
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