Donna, from Derbyshire
Just a note to say thanks to Guide! I have just done
my first ever shopping on the Internet, and without any sighted help.
It felt great!
Alex, from Leicestershire
Hi, At the age of 63 I can safely say Guide has
revolutionised my life! And thanks for your excellent support over my
first year.
From Jan
My name is Jan and I am Jim's daughter. I just
thought I would contact you personally to thank you for all the help
you have given my Dad.
He is forever singing your praises and you make him feel that you are ready, willing and able to give him any help he needs despite asking what he may feel is a stupid question. You certainly make him feel that it is no trouble to you.
The support and advice my father has recieved has been above and beyond! Thank you.
David, from Wales
It's one year today since I started to use Guide.
In that year I've added 367 people to my E-mail address book, and made
contacts in 41 countries. Sending E-mails has become my main means of
communication.
I am also able to keep daily records in the Guide calendar and have numerous folders for my letters & documents. The speech software with the quack sound for telling me when I've made a spelling mistake is wonderful!
With help from the scanner and printer, excellent benefits from having a dictionary & thesaurus plus advantages from the included calculator - I really do not know how I have managed without this computer for so many years! Not forgetting the big, big resources which are now at hand with the means of being able to browse the web. Cool! I could go on, but needless to say - I'm really grateful for Guide.
How Guide has helped me by Stephen, 61 years young.
Before my wife gave me a desk top computer last summer, I was totally scared of using
computers and had resigned myself to being totally computer illiterate for the
rest of my life. I lost my sight when I was 20, and am totally blind. Since
1963, I have been unable to read my own post, having to rely on the help of
sighted family, friends and helpers. Guide has helped me gain independence. I
was attracted to Guide at the RNIB exhibition because it explained each stage
step by step and it gave me much confidence in finding my way around the
keyboard.
With Guide, I am now able to read my own post for the first time in 42 years! I am also able to access the internet which I find very interesting. I hope that other blind technophobes like me will be encouraged by my experience. Good luck and many thanks!
Anne, from Cornwall.
I am partially sighted and have great difficulty in reading, even
large print. I had previously bought a programme which reads and magnifies, to
enable me to use the computer and access the internet. However, I found this
programme incredibly difficult to use, and thought there MUST be someone out
there who can create a more user friendly programme - AND then I discovered
Guide at the Sight Village in Birmingham last year.
I love this programme - I love the tone of the speech (a voice with inflexion - not the awful computer generated voice). It is an incredibly easy programme to use, whether you are needing to create a document or letter, or access e-mails or scan and listen to a magazine or book. I hadn't read a magazine for years - but on a recent tai-chi course we were given magazines to read - this was no problem with Guide. You just scan in the pages you want to read, or all of them, and the programme will read to you. It is simply wonderful.
It has an address book that links to e-mails or letters, which is so simple to use. I just love the ease of using it all. I know I sound like an advertisement, but it is true!
The back-up from Software Express is also superb! Brilliant.
Sue, from London.
Happiness is being able to read your very first Email
without having to wait for your 8 year old son to come home from school
to help you. I've lost count of how many I.T.courses I've taken since I
acquired my laptop. Over the years a succession of cheerful,
enthusiastic and above all patient instructors have beaten a path to my
door confident that within a week, a month, a year, I would be surfing
the net, firing off Emails, downloading happy snaps of globe trotting
gap year children, as computer literate as the rest of the world. It
would take a little getting used to, they admitted, a little practice
but once I'd got the hang of the basics I'd be away, breezing along the
virtual highway of the World Wide Web like Schumacher in his Ferrari.
Dream on. I wasn't just a little slow, I was a complete klutz. The more I grappled with the mysteries of Alt and Tab and Shift, the more impenetrable they and their fellow conspirators Control, Escape and Slash became. I gave up. Who needs the Internet, I told myself. I'd learn to do something useful, like knitting.
And then someone told me about GUIDE. It's easy peasy they said, it's idiot proof, a breeze, even you could do it. And guess what, they were right.
Minutes, well ok hours, after my GUIDE trainer had gone - he'd only been here for the afternoon, I'd sent my daughter in Moscow a long more or less legible Email and before you could say Smerch, she had sent me her reply including -- wait for it --- an attachment, photos of my two small grandsons in the bath which I successfully downloaded and printed. Christmas came early this year.
The secret of GUIDE is its simplicity. Please choose your option, it says, as if you were on the phone, press 1 for Emails, 2 to write a letter, 3 to search the Web, 4 to read a book or document etc. If it had given me the option to order a Chinese takeaway I wouldn't have been surprised. Why on earth didn't anyone come up with it sooner. I could have become a nerd years ago!
Colin, from Edinburgh.
My wife and I are both registered blind, she with a very little sight and I with
none.
Guide is the first computer software I have bought that requires no instruction manual - yes, I didn't need any training at all to get started or use it's features!
Each choice you make, i.e. write letter, send email, print document, has a number 1, 2, or 3, which you simply press and it does what you ask. Everything appearing on the screen can be enlarged, spoken out, or both!
No need to launch computer programs or worry about windows! With no knowledge of computers, email or word processing, my wife was able to use all three within minutes, without any help by simply making the choices presented to her.
To a blind or partially sighted person, who is denied the use of the printed word, a computer is invaluable. Guide makes that computer accessible!!
Cyril, from Nottingham.
The guide software is very good, particularly for computer
beginners like me. I am 79 years old, so therefore getting on a bit and I have
found the software quick to learn and easy to access.
The staff at the end of the telephone have been excellent with their assistance and encouragement.
If you are thinking of computing, I would certainly recommend Guide.
