VISUAL IMPAIRMENT SCOTLAND HOME


(last updated 26/12/2015)
Welcome to VISIMPSCOT  (Visual Impairment Scotland) I am, mostly based in Perth in Scotland but I will be in Papua New Guinea for 2016 providing IT training for the Provincial Capacity Building project run by UNDP..

 I can provide a range of services in both archaeology and computing where I specalise in helping the 'not for profit sector' and people with visual impairments or other disabilities.  If you want more information on a topic choose a link in the list of pages on the right, or at the bottom of this page. Do not forget to check out the download pages in the training and visual impairment sections. For smaller Scottish charities I can also prepare and examine receipts and payments accounts for submission to the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator

Associate member of the British Assistive Technology Association
Founder member of the Accessible Technology Coalition
BATA logo

Moderator of the Techsoup Public Computing, ICT4D, and Tech4Good community forum with
techsoup logo

Techsoup, based in California are one of the best sources of tech advice for not for profit / third sector organisations. Through a partnership with the Charity Technology Trust their software donation scheme has extended to the UK.  If you prefer watching and listening to reading check out the archive of recorded webinar sessions.

My linkedin.com  page is at http://www.linkedin.com/in/petercheer

News / Current Projects..


  • December 3rd was the  UN - backed International Day of Persons with Disabilities and this got my attention because I am in Pakistan at the moment.' In a shocking act of violence, blind protesters were badly beaten by baton-wielding police in Lahore on Wednesday, DawnNews reported.

    Protesters were staging a rally on Davis Road to advocate for their rights in view of World Disability Day, when they were were beaten by the police.'

  • There is a short article that I wrote for opensource.com about open source assistive technology software. The url address is 
    http://opensource.com/life/14/6/open-source-assistive-technology-software
    .
  • Go to the Publication Services page to read about our new publishing venture Point Size Press and download a copy of our first title The Temporary Autonomous Zone by Hakim Bey
  • Microsoft is no longer selling the popular Small Business Server, which has annoyed a lot of people. If you need an alternative to SBS look at SME Server or Zyental these Linux servers are designed with small scale set ups in mind, at Visimpscot we have experience of setting up and using both of them, look at the Small Computer Networks section..
  • ProjectLibre is the open source alternative to MS Project that is getting thousands of downloads world wide, here at Visimpscot we have a 'ProjectLibre Getting Started', a short tutorial for absolute beginners. Get it from the training downloads section.
  • We have an English translation of the French help files for the SCENARI Discovery content management program and the user guides for Scenari Opale and Scenari Optim, see the details in the Education section. 
  • Free voices for English students! I am not sure about the rest of the UK... JISC has commissioned two computer voices that are available free to all staff and learners over 16 in every publicly-funded learning provider in England should be eligible, this includes:

        Adult & Community Learning Providers
        Further Education Colleges
        Higher Education Institutions
        Offender Learning Providers
        Sixth Form Colleges
        Specialist Colleges
        UK Online Centres
        Voluntary Sector
        Work-based Learning Providers


    Visit www.jisctechdis.ac.uk/techdis/technologymatters/voices for details and info on how to register, download and install. .
  • Visimpscot has signed The Open Education Statement of Commitment Take a look and think about signing if you support  open resources, creative commons licenses too.
  • DOWNLOADSI There are two download pages. On the Visual Impairment section there is a guide to working for visually impaired adults that I have updated. There is also an introduction to some of the JISC Access Apps for visually impaired users a landscape format lists of the keyboard commands for the NVDA screen reader and a SCORM 1.2 elearning course on working for visually impaired adults that you can import into your own VLE.On the Training section there is a Java Script quiz maker and a modified set of  style sheets for Exe-learning that include support for the Power Geez Amharic font. Go to the Small Computer Networks section for a Zentyal 3 feature list and an 'Introduction to Networking With Zentyal 3'.
  • As I work with assistive technology and appreciate good science fiction I enjoyed  'Wake' by Robert J. Sawyer (the UK edition ISBN is 978 0 575 09408 6) which combines the two. It is an excellent read, you might enjoy it as well.

You can contact me by 
 email

Visimpscot is now listed in

The Voluntary Arts Scotland organisational development pool of trainers
The Open Ed web site as an extra service provider:
Disabled Workers Co-operative Find the product, service or skill you need provided by a local disabled worker. Disabled workers can register their service free  on the Disabled Workers Database.
Disability Direct
Scotland Directory Creative Commons License
Visimpscot website by Visimpscot is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at sites.google.com/site/visimpscot/.