Please respond directly to: h.l.petrie@herts.ac.uk or s.morley@herts.ac.uk Dear All, I am writing from the Sensory Disabilities Research Unit, in the Psychology Division, of the University of Hertfordshire, UK. We are part of a European project working on access programs for blind users to graphical user interfaces, namely Microsoft Windows and X-Windows. Some of you may already have heard of it, it's the GUIB project, funded by the TIDE Program (Technology Initiative for Disabled and Elderly People) of the European Commission. The work being conducted at our University is particularly concerned with the evaluation of potential access systems, and in developing appropriate training materials. These training materials are not just to teach users about the access program itself, but also to teach the underlying Windows concepts which it may require. The latter point is, of course, quite contentious - how much should the access program "hide" the spatial metaphor used by the interface in presenting information to sighted users? We would be very interested in hearing about your experiences with training in access to GUIs which you may have taken part in, or developed yourselves, and how it tackles this issue. For example, is the training simply on the access program with any windows information subsumed in the functionality of the program, or does it introduce windows concepts separately, and how important do you consider this distinction to be? We look forward to hearing your views, Many thanks for your help, Dr Helen Petrie Sarah Morley h.l.petrie@herts.ac.uk s.morley@herts.ac.uk Research Officer, Graphical User Interfaces for the Blind, Sensory Disbilities Research Unit, Psychology Division, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, Herts, AL10 9AB. UK. Phone: 0707 284 629 Fax and answerphone: 0707 285 059