SeroSpectives: This Month in Tech for February

Listen to SeroSpectives: This Month in Tech for February

About Our Guests

Rick Harmon is currently working with Fedora Outlier, and manages various email lists related to blindness and technology. He also runs the Blind Geek Zone website and Podcast. Since their launch in 2006, the site and podcast have served as portals to hundreds of free tutorials and demonstrations for the blind community. While he did the majority of these, he has selected high-quality submissions by others for tinclusion as well. In 2007, Rick began offering paid training and support services, both in person in his local area, and by phone.

Jeanine Lineback hails from the great state of Texas, where she obtained a bachelor’s degree from the University of Texas at Austin. She is a certified Access Technology Trainer, and holds certifications in HTML and CISCO Information Technology Essentials.

She began her career at the University of Texas at Austin, as an Adaptive Technology specialist. She was the technology Coordinator at the Colorado Center for the blind in the 90’s. She owned her own company, Computer Concepts Plus, where she contracted with vocational rehabilitation as an assistive technology trainer, wrote JAWS scripts for private companies and did some SQL database programming. Over the years, she has worked for several private assistive technology vendors, providing training and tech support services. Until recently, Jeanine was a technology and career guidance instructor at the Criss Cole Rehabilitation Center, which is the residential vocational rehabilitation center in Texas.

Jeanine decided to return to entrepeneuership and in January of 2013, she began her own company, TekSolutions, a division of Lineback Enterprises Inc. Lineback Enterprises Inc. is a consulting and training company. The focus of the TekSoulutions division is to provide high quality assistive technology training, usability/accessibility testing services and educating the world about what blind people do in their everyday lives with technology. The company motto is, “Technology and people are our passion!”

When not working or taking an online course, Jeanine enjoys reading or watching science fiction, playing music with friends, swimming and outdoor activities. She was married in 2011 and lives in Austin, Texas. You may contact her via email, Twitter, Facebook and on LinkedIn.

Joshua Loya works as an Access Technology Specialist at the San Diego campus of Braille Institute of America. He is also an assistant instructor at the Guardian Academy of Martial Arts in Spring Valley, California. Despite being completely blind since 1996, he has earned 2^nd degree black belts in Guardian Jujutsu, Guardian Karate, and Guardian Kobujutsu. He also holds a green belt in Guardian Kempo, the advanced program offered by the Guardian Academy, and is one of only three students to be given Guardian Kempo rank under the new system rules. Joshua has also worked as an assistive technology trainer and consultant for blindness specific and mainstream organizations.

Learn more about Joshua by visiting his website or following him on Twitter.

General Computing

Screen-Less Mobile Computers: Talking Changes Everything

Study: Facebook fatigue — it’s real

New timeline for Microsoft to move millions from MSN Messager to Skype

Seeking your opinion: should Serotek Start a newsletter?

Mobile Tech

iOS 6.1 brings back bug that gives anyone access to your contacts, photos

iTunes U crosses 1 billion downloads—have you used it?

Samsung struggles to block iPhone function for the blind

Navigation and Travel

ANNOUNCING: APH’s Nearby Explorer Android app, a GPS-enabled app for the blind.