DO-IT News March 1997: All Articles

My name is Kevin Hopkins and I'm what's known as an "incomplete" paraplegic ... that is, I have a spinal cord injury (result of an auto accident when I was 16), but I have regained partial mobility. I get around with a cane and leg braces.

I loved Math when I was in high school. I'm a digital pre-press technician. If that means little to you, let me explain ... it has to do with all phases of the printing process up to the actual press run - scanning, imaging, desktop assembly, color retouching and proofing. I have been involved in the graphics trade for over 20 years, long before digital technology was around. I have also free-lanced in graphic design and photography. For the past ten years I have been working at a company that specializes in retail catalogs ... such as REI, Nordstrom, Eddie Bauer, Sharper Image, Bon Marche, etc.

My real passion is foreign language. I am fluent in French and also have studied Spanish, German and Japanese. Recently I went back to UW to finish my B.A. in French, and am now preparing for a career change -- high school teaching in foreign languages. Currently I'm enrolled in The M.Ed. program at Western Washington U's Seattle branch. Next Fall I plan to be student teaching at an area high school. I still am involved full-time with my printing job. Needless to say, I stay very busy.

I live on a 31-ft. cabin cruiser at a marina in Ballard and, on rare occasions when I have free time, I like to take it out in Puget Sound. I enjoy swimming, travel, films (especially foreign ones), and most all kinds of music.

DO-IT Scholar Jody

My name is Jodix and I live in Idaho. I am 18 years old and a senior in high school. I was born in Korea and was adopted by my family when I was 11. I was born with cerebral palsy. It only affects my lower extremities. I have eight sisters, two brothers, and two dogs named Max and Zack. After high school, I plan to attend college and eventually become a physician.

DO-IT is pleased to announce its newest grant. The U.S. Department of Education has funded a three-year project to increase the representation of students with disabilities in college-level cooperative education, internship, and other academic-relevant work experiences. Project efforts will increase opportunities for students with disabilities to build and attain workplace skills and job experiences that will lead to greater career success. We are pleased to welcome Julie Smallman to the staff to coordinate this project. She will be working with postsecondary students, staff, and faculty throughout the state of Washington and developing materials that will be distributed nationwide. We thank the U.S. Department of Education for funding this worthwhile effort.

You've heard of the DO-IT Scholars. You've heard of the DO-IT Campers. You've heard of the DO-IT Mentors. Well, watch out for the DO-IT Pals! DO-IT Pals form an electronic community of pre-college students from around the world with disabilities who support one another in their efforts to pursue college degrees and careers in science, engineering, mathematics and technology. They communicate with each other, get advice from DO-IT Mentors and participate in projects throughout the year. To become a DO-IT Pal you must:

• be a high school freshman, sophomore, junior, or senior
• have access to a computer and the Internet
• be interested in attending a 2- or 4-year college
• have interests in science, engineering, mathematics or technology
• want to communicate with and work together with other students with disabilities who have common interests

Contact the DO-IT office at for a DO-IT Pal application packet.

A resume is a road-map of the individual's professional life. It tells where the individual has been and where they are heading. Nobody said writing a resume is easy, but many of you may traveled down this road before. Career counselors argue that resumes should be updated at least every six months. Experiences (professional and educational) and skills can change in a short period of time. Above all, human resource departments nationwide are now using new technology to view and store resumes of applicants. Therefore it's worthwhile to format a resume that is scannable.

More and more companies today are using systems to help them manage the volume of resumes for their job openings. It's called "electronic applicant tracking". This new system is designed to help them save time and energy in reading and extracting information on resumes. Large companies receive hundreds of resumes for open positions. However, if the text of the resume is hard for the computer to read, much of the information in the resume does not get into the database.

To help make your resume readable by a computer database, follow some of these tips:

Format

• Use white, standard weight (20 lbs), 8 1/2 x 11 paper printed on one side only
• Laser printed original is preferred over dot matrix or other printed copy
• Do not fold or staple
• Use a standard font size of 10 to 14 points
• Good fonts are Helvetica, Courier, and Times Roman
• Avoid italics, underlines, shadows, symbols and reverse lettering
• Avoid vertical and horizontal lines, graphics, and boxes
• Avoid the two column format
• Place your name at the top of the page on its own line
• Use standard address format below the name
• List each phone number on its own line

Content

• Use enough key words (e.g., B.S., computer science, supervised) to define your skills, experience, and education
• Increase your list of key words by including specifics; for example, list the names of software you use
• Describe your experience in specific words rather than vague descriptions
• Use jargon and acronyms specific to your industry
• Avoid using pronouns (e.g, my, I, us)

The above format and content guidelines will give you a good start in assuring a scannable resume for computer systems. Resources on the Internet such as CareerMosaic (www.careermosiac.com) and counselors at Career Services and Cooperative Education offices on postsecondary campuses are also available in providing information on this topic. Once you begin this exercise, the more you will learn about this important job seeking development.

You can get lots of information about financial aid for college while you surf the Internet. I was reading the US News magazine several months ago on colleges and scholarships. It listed some URL addresses on the Internet regarding financial aid resources and scholarships. Check out these websites:

• www.ed.gov
• www.collegeboard.org
• www.studentservices.com/fastweb
• www.finaid.org

Not all questions about web browsers and web design are concerned with computer users who are blind. Many people with visual impairments also have difficulty reading the various resources one finds on the World Wide Web. Recently I was asked a series of questions in this area and I thought I'd share my responses with everyone.

1. So many of the sites are nothing but glare. Bright white with lettering that one cannot see. Is there anything one can do to correct this?

   Just because someone is able to put a page on teh web doesn't mean that they're thinking about the variety of people that may visit their site. It's not at all uncommon to run up against backgrounds with poor contrast, strange combinations of text colors, or just downright atrocious color choices. There are a few things you may be able to change on your end to help with this phenomenon.

   There are two solutions to look toward here. If you're using a screen enlargement package that allows for inverted text colors, or custom text colors, adjusting the settings should suffice. CloseView, MAGic and ZoomText all allow for color inversion, which is the simplest method of coping with those blinding white backgrounds.

   I personally don't use a screen enlarger, but I do take advantage of some of the features contained within the browser I use to make sites I visit easier on my eyes.

   My personal web browser of choice is Netscape. Within the Options-> General Preferences dialog box is a tab for "Colors." It is quite easy for me to change the settings here so that the browser will always use the same background and text color regardless of what a web site has set up. This includes overriding the sometimes confusing background images that some sites use. This is one of the main advantages of Netscape over Microsoft's Internet Explorer. IE allows the user to specify text color and background, but there's no provision to override background images.

2. Can one set his/her browser to only view in the negative image?

   It *is* possible to force Netscape to display white text on a black background. Images or graphics will still be displayed in their original colors, which isn't possible when using the inverted color options available with screen enlargers. Again, use the "Colors" dialog box within the Options->General Preferences menu item. Make sure you change the colors for text, links and followed links so that they all show up well against the background color you've chosen. Finally, make sure the "Always use Mine" button is checked for the Colors option.

3. Why does the same site look different when one uses Netscape, the AOL browser, and/or Internet Explorer? The graphics will not even be in the same place. They will appear centered with one browser and over to the left or right with another browser.

   All browsers will display a site slightly differently. Not only is this due to the fact that they're all different programs, but it's also a function of custom settings within each browser that may be slightly different. With a well-designed site where the web maintainers have truly tested their pages with a variety of browsers, the effects of using different browsers should be lessened.

   Unfortunately for now, with the "browser wars" between Netscape and Microsoft in full swing, we won't see these effects diminish any time soon as both companies continue to push features that only work with their own brand of web browser software. This sometimes means that a site may be inaccessible with a certain type of browser, or that the effects of the different HTML tags uses will be manifested in very different ways. My advice here is to politely encourage web maintainers to consider the full range of visitors to their site and suggest that they minimize or eliminate the use of browser-specific tags. Those of us who have been on the web for a while now are familiar with the "Optimized for Netscape" or "Best used with Internet Explorer" type of notices on web pages. I have found a variant of these types of notices that uses a button titled "Best Viewed with Any Browser."

   Also, keep in mind that anyone can change the font style and size that is used to display text in your browser window. Oftentimes this means that information won't always be presented in the same general area due to the resizing and positions that takes place due to different typefaces used.

4. Is there a browser most compatible with screen magnifiers?

   Not necessarily. There are so many degrees of visual impairments that it's impossible to come up with an answer to this question. Use the screen enlargement software that you're most comfortable with and make sure to learn the features to truly take advantage of what the software can do for you.

5. Is there a browser more compatible with low vision people viewing the screen with "just poor vision"?

   There's a relatively new browser called pwWebSpeak that looks to be very promising. Often thought of as a browser for people who are blind, it also is an excellent choice for people with limited vision. More information on pwWebSpeak can be found at the http://www.talkinginterfaces.org/artifacts/pwwebspeak/.

6. When constructing a Home Page, what size font should be used to approximate 14 pt or higher? Some print on the URLs are almost impossible to see because they are so small.

   Again, don't count on the web designer to make the customizations necessary for you to see the screen well. Use the font options including with most graphical browsers to set fonts style and size that is comfortable for you to read. On pages with different font sizes, take advantage of your screen reader to temporarily increase magnification to read those smaller fonts.

It's important to keep in mind that there are a lot of people out on the web designing various sites. With the large variety of HTML tools now available, it's relatively simple for anyone to get a web site up and running. What isn't simple is to create and install a site that is well designed and a pleasure to use. Think back to the days when the Macintosh computer first came out and nearly everyone who had one would use as many fonts as they could when creating a document.

Now we know that having many different typefaces in a document really makes it difficult to read. People who were creating documents needed to learn the basics of document design in order to do a good job. I think we'll see the same thing happen with web pages. Just because it's farily simple to put a web site together doesn't mean that it will be well-designed. As web users, it's our job to provide polite and specific suggestions to web managers so that we can all benefit from what this resource has to offer.

Agency

Do Something

Scope

Do Something provides small grants for young people with creative ideas to solve problems in their communities.

Deadline

March 12

Funds

Grants are up to $500 each. Do Something awards about 72 grants annually.

Eligibility

Young people, including students and beginning teachers, under the age of 30.

Areas

Applicants should show a commitment to strengthen their communities by designing projects to solve a specific community problem. Individuals should do as much as work on the project before applying as possible; concentrate on one problem, rather than trying to solve multiple problems at the same time; and serve as a possible model for others.

Recent Grants

Do Something has awarded grants to young people aged 9-28 nationwide, including grants to a 16 year-old student who organized a community service and extracurricular activity; a nine year-old for a program to identify 10 African males in the community to help them build self-esteem; and a 13 year-old who built a wheelchair access ramp onto his school's baseball field so that kids in wheelchairs could enjoy the games.

Contact

National Grants, Do Something, 423 West 55th St., 8th Floor, New York, NY 10019. Information is also available on the Internet at www.dosomething.org.