The Mini Token Blog

The latter developed in part by Knopper who has a visual impairment. Experimental approaches in sensory substitution are beginning to provide access to arbitrary live views from a camera.

Web browsers, word processors, icons and windows and email programs are just some of the applications used successfully by screen reader users. Only a small fraction of this population, when compared to the sighted community, have Internet access.

Later versions of Microsoft Windows include an Accessibility Wizard and Magnifier for those with partial vision, and Microsoft Narrator, a simple screen reader. The rest have some vision, from light perception alone to relatively good acuity. There are also open source screen readers, such as the Linux Screen Reader for GNOME and NonVisual Desktop Access for Windows.

Screen readers can be assumed to be able to access all display content that is not intrinsically inaccessible.

The movement towards greater web accessibility is opening a far wider number of websites to adaptive technology, making the web a more inviting place for visually impaired surfers. Linux distributions for the blind include Oralux and Adriane Knoppix. Therefore, using a screen reader is, according to some users, considerably more difficult than using a GUI and many applications have specific problems resulting from the nature of the application. A persons choice of screen reader is dictated by many factors, including platform and the role of organizations like charities, schools, and employers.

Comming year Anthony Loeff nonprofit volunteer is writing about screen readers for people suffering from blindness Almost 14 percent of those deemed legally blind, by any measure, have no vision. The open source GNOME desktop environment long included Gnopernicus and now includes Orca. Screen reader choice is contentious: differing priorities and strong preferences are common. This interpretation is then represented to the user with text-to-speech, sound icons, or a braille output. The primary audience for such applications is those who have difficulty reading because of learning disabilities or language barriers. The Macintosh OS also comes with a built-in screen reader, called VoiceOver. The console-based Oralux Linux distribution ships with three screen-reading environments: Emacspeak, Yasr and Speakup. While Apple Mac OS X includes VoiceOver, a more feature-rich screen reader. Most legally blind people 60 percent do not use computers. A screen reader is a software application that attempts to identify and interpret what is being displayed on the screen. Indeed functionality remains limited compared to equivalent desktop applications, the major benefit is to increase the accessibility of said websites. Access technology such as screen readers and Screen magnifiers enable the blind to use mainstream computer applications. Recent versions of Microsoft Windows come with the rather basic Narrator. Screen readers are a form of assistive technology potentially useful to people who are blind, visually impaired, or learning disabled, often in combination with other AT such as screen magnifiers. More and more, screen readers are being bundled with operating system distributions.

Microsoft Business Solutions CRM is web-based CRM application, deploying all the spectrum of recent Microsoft technologies. We’ll try to analyze different needs and implementation scenarios attributed to specific industries and business types, based on our experience.

First we would like to emphasize the increasing role of in-house IT department in the strategic decision making. Looking back to the history - it is probably fair to say that initial CRM applications market issues, such as low successful implementations percentage could be attributed to traditional Sales style of those years - selling to the top, when charismatic salesperson was trying to jump over the head of IT people and press business owner or top executive guy. Microsoft in our opinion never used this technique and it’s CRM implementation is not possible (except when you host it in hosting centers) without everyday IT department involvement. MS CRM works in concert with MS Exchange, Windows Active Directory, SQL Server, BizTalk (integration with Great Plains and in the close future Navision). Utilizing this broad spectrum of Microsoft servers and technologies leads to easy Microsoft CRM acceptance and adoption by IT department (usually the one, having several MS certified professionals and DB administrators). Microsoft oriented IT group easily understands Microsoft CRM setup, tuning, customization, integration and initial data import.

It is not a secret that rational way to implement new computer business system lays in the method of evolution, suggesting intelligent integration with existing legacy systems and step-by-step old pieces replacement. Microsoft CRM fits to this approach - it has open to anyone MS CRM SDK and experienced C# or VB.Net programmer should be capable to program the integration or interface to other system.

We are giving you typical setup and integration scenarios, attributed to specific industries below

1. Freight Forwarding / Transportation. Companies in this industry usually already have efficient cargo delivering tracking system. MS CRM links several systems into one and plays the role of the initial order entry and customer order status requests with the interface into above mentioned cargo tracking application. You should program such an interface with MS CRM SDK and ADO.Net programming

2. Distribution and Wholesale. Multiple companies have legacy ASP or JSP web sites with new or existing customers order entry logic. Typical need is transferring these orders to Microsoft CRM in the form of activity, placed in the order taker on duty queue. You can solve this with multiple techniques. Consider HTTP handler, called from ASP/JSP legacy application, reading MS CRM user credentials from INI file and thus penetrating into MS CRM, where you in turn use MS CRM SDK constructions.

3. Pension Funds and Financial institutions. Considering conservative decision making - there is often the requirement of clear and complete audit to verify past decision making. MS CRM plays this role by automatic logging all the documentation and especially all the incoming and outgoing emails to/from clients. You need MS CRM Exchange connector customization

4. Large Enterprises. You can frequently see different kinds of corporate policies, requiring using such applications as Oracle e-Business Suite, or Lotus Domino document workflow and email server. In the first case you need heterogeneous database integration with MS CRM, he second case can be resolved with combining MS CRM SDK and Java Agents programming (from the side of Lotus Notes/Domino).

Happy implementing! We are always here: 1-866-528-0577, 1-630-961-5918, help@albaspectrum.com

Andrew Karasev is Chief Technology Officer in Alba Spectrum Technologies ( http://www.albaspectrum.com )- USA nationwide Microsoft CRM, Microsoft Great Plains customization company, serving clients in Illinois, California, Colorado, Texas, New York, Arizona, Georgia, Florida, Canada, UK, Australia and having locations in multiple states and internationally

Microsoft Excel is one of the most important applications that you can ever learn in your working career, the reason I say that is that over 90% of businesses use Microsoft Excel on a day-to-day basis so not knowing Microsoft Excel can really put you on the outer. One of the greatest challenges we have in working with Microsoft Excel is the cell addresses. The use of the column naming standard from A to Z then AA to IV is really ingenious but it really does cause a lot of problems for people using large spreadsheet. Just imagine trying to remember what every single cell does in a spreadsheet that has over 20,000 cells.

Well if you think that’s hard, just try imaging one … there must be an easier way.

Absolutely there is and it involves naming your cells in a worksheet. So what does naming involve, well essentially naming a cell involves giving a cell address such as AA543 a normal name like Interest Rate or Total Amount. The cool part about giving cells a name is that you can actually refer to the name in formulas rather than the cell address. Naming a cell makes life so much easier in Microsoft Excel simply because as humans we are able to relate to more descriptive names like Interest Rate or Total Amount than we can with a standard cell however there is some very strict rules we must follow.

Rule #1 - Names Must Not Exceed 255 Characters

The first rule that we must follow is that when you are naming a cell, the cell name must not exceed 255 characters. There is another aspect of this that you should also be aware of and that is if the name exceeds 253 characters then the name will not show up in the Name box on the formula toolbar. In reality though you want to follow this rule of thumb, in that your names should not exceed 30 characters, generally we try to limit them between 10 and 20 characters because anymore than that and your formulas and functions can be too difficult to fault find.

Rule #2 - Cell Names Are Not Allowed To Contain Spaces

Cell Names in Microsoft Excel must not have spaces. There are two ways that are considered acceptable in overcoming this problem. One way is to distinguish unique words in a name by placing the letter at the start of each word in Capitals such as -

TrialBalance

An alternative way of naming a cell is to use the underscore such as -

Trial_Balance

Either technique is quite acceptable. You may find though that using underscores in Names where you have used borders that it may be difficult to distinguish the underscore from a border. In this particular case it would be better to use the first naming standard.

Rule #3 - Microsoft Excel Does Not Distinguish Between a Capital Letter and a Lower Case One

Microsoft Excel Cell Names are not case sensitive which means that a capital C is exactly the same as a lower case c and this is one of the reasons why we utilise the first naming standard in Rule #2.

Rule #4 - Cell Names Must Be Unique and Must Not Resemble a Number, Cell Address Or Reserve Word

Microsoft Excel is very strict in that you cannot have the following in cell names -

- No Spaces in Cell Names
- No Mathematical Symbols such as + - * / < > &
- Names cannot resemble a number, cell address or reserved word
A reserved word is a text used for functions and formulas. For example you cannot call a cell by the name SUM as it is already used in the function SUM.

Rule #5 - Cell Names May Only Contain The Following Characters

When naming cells you may only use the following characters -

- Letter Characters From A to Z
- Number Characters from 0 to 9
- Non-Uniform Characters such as . _ ?

Rule #6 - A Cell Name must start with a Letter, Backslash ( ) or an Underscore ( _ )

Whilst you can use numbers and non-uniform characters such as a decimal and question mark all cell names must start with a Letter, Backslash ( ) or an Underscore ( _ )

So, How do we give a cell a name?

The simplest way to name a cell is to first select the cell, then once you have selected the cell simply click in the Name Box on the formula bar, type the name you wish to use and then press the Enter Key. What you will notice is that each time you click on the cell with the cell name, Microsoft Excel will substitute the cell address for the name you gave the cell.

Naming cells is a really useful skill to learn especially when you are starting to create complex spreadsheets as it is very easy to forget which cell address contains each piece of data. Naming cells means that it will be easier for you to write your formulas that refer to the cells with the right information.