stace-k

My boyfriend managed to find a number for them online, called them he said he hadnt finished and was always planning on coming back today to finish the job.... We'll see how that goes, not very optimistic!

The new one that's being done there is going to be a TK Maxx - saw the sign up when I drove past there yesterday!

Hi all, Today my boyfriends mum got scammed out of £480 to do some guttering and felt roof work on the house. Two men in a white van which said global fascias on it, both men wearing matching overalls with the logo on. £260 for the guttering and £220 to replace the felt roof on the bay window... Put the ladder up to start work on the guttering (which was rotten and needed doing), has done a shoddy job of the guttering its not even the same size as the houses either side of it, so not sure what's going to happen when it rains. Anyway then on to the roof, said he was going to replace the felt roof, she saw him painting something on the top of the window (thought it was adhesive for the new felt so didn't think anything of it). Next minute they're both gone, left all old guttering in the front garden, and turns out he'd just put a layer of waterproof type paint on top of the old felt and nowhere to be seen. The boyfriends mum had seen them doing work on another house up the road (or pretending to, they had a ladder up against the house after she'd seen them knocking on the door a few minutes earlier), so when they approached her for something that needed doing which was half the price (due to no scaffolding he said) she jumped at the chance as it's something that had been playing on her mind. Thinking back on it all, as soon as she had said yes, they came straight over so hadn't even done any work on the other house - could have been they had seen them go out and used their house as a prop to get other people thinking they were genuine !? Hindsight is a wonderful thing I've searched the Internet, and 'global fascias sheffield' came up as a suggested search while I was typing, but can't find anything at all online for them.... Someone else must know about this, seen them, know something about the 'company' etc. we can't have been the only ones they have done this to. And they need to be stopped before they do this to someone else. The police will be getting a call tomorrow !!

Well the thing that first attracted me to writing more about this subject was the accessibility functions on the iphone, as standard it has zoom, inverted colours and voice over... the voice over allows the user to tap anywhere on the screen, with one tap it says the name of the app or icon, then a double tap allows access to that application. using two fingers on the screen (like a scroll motion down) voice overs all of the options on the present screen, when it gets to the on you want, u just tap to get into it and stop it from saying options. I thought that this was quite good, as I was dealing with a customer who was almost blind and he loved the fact that he had a phone that he could use by himself straight from the box. However, as most apps are third party ones not made by apple, i have read that voice over doesnt work so well or at all with some apps which is disappointing. also, dragon dictation (TTS) is free to download from the app store on the iphone or ipod touch, which this particular guy found very useful. The GPS tracker that you mentioned sounds very handy, although I can imagine that the costs are an inconvenience. Do your friends use anything like the braile screen readers? I have only recently read about these and think that if they work as well as i imagine, are a great invention

Thanks Ill keep that in mind when completing my project and will definitely research those!! May I ask if you know what sort of technology your friends use, do they use windows PC's/Apple Mac's and are their built in accessibility functions any use? Also, what mobile devices do they use, and the same again, are their accessibility functions any use? (if it is not ok for you to ask your friends for me then thats fine, thanks anyway) Thanks again!

Hi Guys i am currently a final year student at Wolverhampton university completing a degree in Computing studies. For my final year dissertation, I am doing a project with the title: Investigation into accessibility technologies for the blind and visually impaired. The reason why I chose this as my project, as I work for quite a large technology company part time whilst I am in my final year, and I was talking to particular customer who had little vision out of both eyes and could only see light shapes. He was interested in a particular phone as it already had quite a lot of accessibility functions built in as standard that enabled him to use the phone straight away, functions such as voice over, zoom and then apps such as dragon dictation which were available to download for free. This fascinated me, the fact that he was able to use the phone straight away, where as years ago this wouldnt have been possible. Hence why this fascination led me to choose this project.... I will be including mobile accessibility features, and operating systems, what they offer as standard and what can be added to enable technology to be used efficiently by visual impaired people. My question to you guys is would any of you be interested in answering a couple of question regarding the technology you use at the minute and what you would like to be created/invented so that I could include the findings in my project. This will enable me to find a gap in the market and produce a design of a piece of software that could be invented that hasnt yet been. I need to talk to my supervisor to determine the exact questions, but I thought that I would put this out as a feeler to see if anyone would be interested in helping me, as if no one is interested, then there is no point in talking to my supervisor about it!! Thank you for your time, any feedback is greatly appreciated! Stacey