ACB Radio Schedule Available for any Time Zone
By Judy Wilkinson (jwilkins@panix.com)
ACB Radio International (ACBRI, http://www.acbradio.org) provides programming of interest to blind people around the world. Sponsored by the U.S.'s American Council of the Blind, this service is directed and run by Jonathan Mosen of New Zealand. While this service is of particular interest to people with visual impairments, much here will appeal to people with disabilities from any nation.
You must be able to "play" audio files. The ACB web site has everything you'll need: links to download any of the 3 major players:RealAudio, Winamp or Windows Multimedia, and you can customize player and program capabilities to meet your own needs.
The program Main Menu (available in 70 countries according to Mosen) showcases the latest computer issues.
Each weekly program begins with brief news notes on developing computer-related issues. Often tutorials and demonstrations are included. Recent programs have covered topics such as:
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a continuing tutorial on Windows Fundamentals;
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Demonstration of a cell phone (the Samsung Sch m105) which also plays mp3 files;
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net-by-phone allowing email and web search via voice input.
Many ACB Radio programs are archived in the "On Demand" section, so you can retrieve and play them at your own convenience.
The site also contains a number of links to text news services (CNN, the BBC) with international appeal.
In a recent update Mosen announced:
"You can now see the ACB Radio Interactive schedule in your own time zone! Here's how it works. When you choose the schedule page, if you have a JAVA capable browser, we attempt to work out the time difference between you and Universal time. If your clock is set correctly, and you have JAVAscript enabled, this will work most of the time. If it doesn't, there is a simple form you can complete that lets you specify the country you are in, whether you are currently on daylight time or not, whether you want the schedule in 12 or 24 hour format, whether you want short or long descriptions of the shows, and more. We hope this will make it much easier for you to know when your favorite ACBRI show is on."
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