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Tutorials

Welcome to the tutorials page. This contains recordings for various tutorials I've been asked to produce over the years. Simply activate a link to play the file or use the "save target as" option in your browser via the link context menu to save the file to your computer.

Audacity basic tutorial

This is a short demo explaining how to do a few basic recording tasks in Audacity using a screen reader. I'm by no means an expert, so this isn't comprehensive.

Creating TTS Skits

This describes how I make text-to-speech skits. If you wish to download voices such as Microsoft Sam, please consult the downloads page.

VoiceView demonstration on touch screen Echo devices

This is a short demonstration of using the VoiceView screen reader on Amazon Echo devices such as the Echo Show that have touch screens. This isn't comprehensive, but may be of interest to some.

Making a siren sound with the Mac Alex voice

This is a simple tutorial describing how to make a siren sound using the Apple Alex text-to-speech voice. If you prefer brief text instructions and since the quality of this file is poor, simply type awww over and over into a file. Slow the voice down to its minimum rate or speed it up to maximum, depending on how you want it to sound, and increase the pitch to maximum as well. I hope you find this as amusing as I do.

Open Broadcaster Software Tutorial

This is a simple tutorial discussing how to configure OBS for basic recording and/or live streaming to YouTube. As far as I know, there isn't a way for a blind person to independently configure video sources, so this focuses on audio only content.

Using Account Linking in Open Broadcaster

This explains how to link a YouTube account to the program.

Uploading Audio Files to YouTube

This tutorial describes how to use an online service to convert an MP3 file to an MP4 file that YouTube will accept.

Purchasing content on Itch.io

This short tutorial describes how to purchase content from Itch.io using a screen reader.

Purchasing Voices from Harposoftware

This tutorial describes how to purchase voices from the Harpo website.

NVDA Remote tutorial

This tutorial describes how to use the free NVDA Remote NVDA add-onto control other computers running the NVDA screen reader.

Using VMware Fusion Player on Intel Macs

This demonstrates how to create a virtual machine using VMware Fusion Player for Intel-based Macs. The process should be similar for the new Apple Silicon ARM Macs, except you'll want to run ARM compatible operating systems instead.

Using VMware Player on Windows

This demonstrates how to use VMware Player on Windows. A newer version of Player has been released which simplifies the process of creating a Windows 11 virtual machine by automatically adding a TPM, but the process is identical.

BSC Games and Windows Defender tutorial

This demonstrates how to run the BSC games on modern versions of Windows as well as how to configure excluded folders so Windows Defender won't bother you with false positives for applications such as games coded in the BGT programming language.

Windows Defender text tutorial

For those who might want a simple textual guide for creating excluded locations in Windows Defender, follow these steps:

1. Create a folder that you wish to be excluded from Defender scans
2. Open Windows Security by entering that phrase into the start menu search box.
3. Select virus & threat protection from the list of categories.
4. Select Manage settings.
5. Select add or remove exclusions, then confirm the User Account Control prompt.
6. Select add an exclusion, then select folder.
7. Finally, browse to the folder in the file system you'd like to exclude and choose the select option. It should now appear in the list of excluded locations.