Sarah's knowledge and skills in the use of technology have been built over 20 years. Having begun her university studies by diving into the use of a PC with text-to-speech software and no training available, and having learned new operating systems over the years, she is sensitive to the needs of users as well as to the disorientation that can occur during the first weeks as a person learns to use a new system.
Sarah taught herself HTML in 1995 in order to create her own web site. Her experience with HTML authoring and her skills as a writer led to an opportunity to work with Freedom Scientific in 2002 and 2003 as a technical writer and usability tester. During this time she became adept at learning new software quickly. She also had the opportunity to convert her home studio from cassette recording equipment to computer, utilizing Cakewalk software.
Later university took Sarah into the world of biblical languages; and she customized her screen reader so that she could read ancient Greek and Hebrew on her braille display. She provided information about Greek character mapping to Duxbury Systems and assisted in beta testing new features of the Duxbury Braille Translator relating to use of multiple languages. Transcription of print to braille in classical and Koine Greek is possible in the latest version of the Duxbury Braille Translator. During this time she assisted several users of the Logos Libronix software who were blind in learning to use the software. She will present a paper with a colleague entitled "Using Technology to Meet the Needs of Biblical Scholars Who Are Blind" at the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in November, 2011.
