Computability I.W. a part of the IW PC User Group

CO-ORDINATOR: 527208; OUTREACH: 521566; TECHNICAL: 291673; FIELD: 883642

RESOURCES: Roger Skidmore, 47 Quay Street, NEWPORT, IW, PO30 5BA. Tel: 01983 822900

computabilityiw(at)tesco.net www.computability-iw.org.uk

Report of Computability Activity for the year 2003/2004

This has been a fairly quiet year for Computability with a total of 17 cases added to the list of clients and 34 donations of equipment. My garage had been getting increasingly cluttered so I have recently pruned out the stock of 486's and VGA monitors in order to refine and make available the stock we now carry. This comprises about 20 monitors, all SVGA, and about as many PC's with a specification varying from P100 to P350. Slightly fewer printers comprising mostly bubblejet and laser. There is the usual selection of odds and ends culled from discarded machines.

The personnel principally involved are Helen Edom, our secretary person, John (Buzz) Austin who having retired now divides his time between the CAB and Computability, Cliff Maidment and myself. We no longer style ourselves as having a chairperson, myself being "Resources Co-ordinator".

The client list represents a wide range of disability, disability tending to be multifactorial by its nature and more prevalent with age. Success similarly tends to be very variable, ranging from disappointment to life changing.

We are working on a Computability "cover disk" which will be a sort of "doctor's bag" of disability software, mostly free or shareware. The elements of this are already available on www.computability-iw.org.uk and will be enhanced in due course.

Clients tend to divide between those who can benefit from an ordinary suite of software on a fairly modest machine and those who require specialised software which can be anything from simple magnification or voice software to very expensive software requiring hardware we are unable to supply. We are also looking at some forms of specialised, adaptive or adapted hardware.

Mostly we bridge the gap for clients who have no savings or cannot afford to risk what they do have on an uncertain financial adventure in the provision of basic hardware, and where possible provide either very basic introductory tuition or more often ensure the provision of tuition. This can be either through neighbours and friends or government sponsored courses (a list of which is available on our website).

Our website (www.computability-iw.org.uk) provides a full and comprehensive resource for those interested in the provision of disability services. Where the site itself fails, its list of links to other disability related organisation is prodigious.

During the forthcoming year we intend to resume marketing of our services through leaflets to various social outlets, and provision of promotional articles to various socially oriented organisations.

We make a point of not running any accounts, dealing only as we do in hardware, expertise and goodwill. Most of the personnel contribute from their own pockets as necessary, with the occasional willingly fulfilled request to the parent committee. We do subscribe to the AbilityNet magazine and copies of thiis can be available from Buzz