ability. ability into printer, ability bbs, ability helpline, ability research and developmet, ability web design, the ability web site, ability research, ability cd rom, ability.org, help4u publishing, ability publishing kits and cookbooks.

Ability Into Print

It's Details

Ability Into Print was formed in the 1990's after the then Bishop of Gloucester in the UK recommended me to a local company to undertake it's charity requests for help with DTP.

What it does

Ability Into Print offered a desk top publishing services to charities and groups to undertake the designing of master copy’s of DTP so they could have printed leaflets, newsletters, booklets, posters etc.

· It also offers a confidential fax service; individuals, other groups and charities,

· It offers a fax on demand information service,

· It offers a journey route planning service for individuals, groups and charities.

· It also offers to recycle old computers and their parts.

What Equipment

· One internal electivity meter so I can work out the cost of electivity the project uses.

· One dedicated BT telephone line.

· The fax runs on a stand-alone machine that I have reprogrammed the firmware offers many functions that the end use is not told about.

· The computer firm given me some computer components and I added these to a to the system I had built myself I was also given a scanner, DTP software and two printers as well enough paper to last many years.

How is it funded?

The essential point has to be that as I have no personal funds to support this project if it is to work it has to fulfil these basic fundaments:

1. I give my time free,

2. The insulation of the telephone line and running cost are covered by the computer firm after this point I make just enough to cover running cost,

3. To send a fax is 50p to revise a fax is 50p,

4. To have a master document done will cost you Ł5.00

5. To have a personal route planed printed and post to Ł2.00

6. To have a personal route planed and to have it fax cost Ł2.50

7. To have a personal route planed and to E-Mail costs Ł2.50,

8. Ability into print will recycles working computer to other groups thus giving me a source of parts for this project.

The Personnel

I am Ability Into Print I undertake all design and layout work.

The courses I undertook to gain the knowledge I needed which where taken by online Learning

· City & Guild in Computer Literacy.

· Diploma in Foundation Course in Computer Appreciation.

· DTP Course.

Ability BBS

What it does

· Ability BBS is a Bulletin Board Service were users can send and receive E-mail, chat rooms, get information, download files etc and make use of its help service.

· Ability BBS has now been ported over to the Internet.

· Ability BBS has also been posted over to CD to run offline.

What Equipment

· Ability BBS is runs a network of 5 computer systems, a main BBS server, a mail server, a CD server a database server and a workstation that were built designed and programmed myself from old computer parts I have been given.

· I using bespoke software for the devolvement of the main BBS and database programmes.

· The BBS is ran an auxiliary hurter work group of BT telephone lines.

How is it funded?

· I give my time free and so do the users who send their programs to be added to the site.

· Ability BBS auxiliary hurter work group of telephone lines and all running cost to a fixed level are met by Lionshare Computer servers Ltd

The Personnel

· I am Ability BBS sysop, programmer, network engineer and we have a band of helps around the world to send Ability BBS news and information.

The courses I undertook to gain the knowledge I needed

· Networking Essentials: Terminology

· Networking Essentials: Standards

· Networking Essentials: Planning a Topology

· Networking Essentials: Planning Connections

· Networking Essentials: Implementation

· Networking Essentials: Troubleshooting

· Diploma in Pascal Programming

· COBOL Programming

· A+ Certification: Computer Introduction

· A+ Certification: The System Board

· A+ Certification: Connecting Peripherals

· A+ Certification: Operating Systems

· A+ Certification: MS-DOS

· A+ Certification: Windows 3.x and 95

· A+ Certification: Disk Drives

· A+ Certification: Monitors

· A+ Certification: Modems

· A+ Certification: Printers

· A+ Certification: Networks

· A+ Certification: Troubleshooting

· A+ Certification: Maintenance Tasks

The Ability Web

It's Details

· The Ability’s web Sites www.ability.org.uk and www.ability.org were set-up after thousands of requests to offer disabled web users an Internet platform.

· These now has given access to millions of users with a disability, or with limited abilities or skills, but while still being able to maintain or increase the site's attractiveness to all its users.

· Thus all in a format that will help overcome most problems faced by the disabled user and making it incredibly simple to be transparently connected to the relevant sites around the world.

What it does

· It is offers a disability friendly web sites.

· The Ability's Web Site offering it users a powerful search engine and has an A- Z indexed system of all it’s thousands of pages around the world.

· It gives the users information and providing hundreds of thousands of links covering most subjects on the Internet.

· On-line Chat Rooms.

· Internet Pen Pals.

· Message Boards.

· Free Classified.

· The Graffiti Wall.

· Music Jukebox.

· Requests and Feedback.

· Java online games.

· Recipes for one.

· Diet Plans.

· BMI Calculator.

· Body Fat Calculator.

· Calories Burner Calculator.

What Equipment

· Currently the Ability web sites use off site web space.

· Two ISDN links plus four telephone lines support the web sites.

· The Web sites are develop with windows 2000, windows advance server 2000, Visual studio 6, C+, java, XML, CGI, FrontPage 2000.

· The Development server built by me from old parts is now a P11 400 with dual processors, per2 internal raid, 6 x SCSI 9 gig hard drives, ISDN TA, plus dual network cards.

· It runs by own software for managing the Internet.

How is it funded?

· Currently the Ability web sites received free of charge their web space.

· All other cost are now covered form the sales of 120 tittles I have written to support these projects.

The Personnel

· I am the sites only worker undertake all job from writing the code to run the system to writing the music to place at our online jukebox.

The courses I undertook to gain the knowledge I needed

· Object-Oriented Analysis & Design: Intro

· Object-Oriented Analysis & Design: System

· Windows 2000 Basics: Client

· Windows 2000 Basics: Server

· Windows 2000 Professional: Installation

· Windows 2000 Professional Remote Installations and Upgrades

· Windows 2000 Professional: Administering Resources

· Windows 2000 Professional Administering Shared Resources

· Windows 2000 Professional: Managing Disks

· Windows 2000 Professional: Managing Hardware

· XML: Viewing and Understanding XML

· XML: Creating a Basic Document

· XML: Building DTDs & Checking Documents

XML: Entities
XML: The Document Object Model

· XML: CSS and XSL Style Sheets

· Office 2000: Getting Started

· Office 2000: Editing Text and Printing

· Office 2000: Text and Document Formats

· Office 2000: Introduction to Word

· Office 2000: Introduction to Excel

· Office 2000: Introduction to Outlook

· Office 2000: Introduction to PowerPoint

· Office 2000: Introduction to Access

· Visual InterDev: Learning the Basics

· Visual InterDev: Using HTML

· Visual InterDev: Dynamic Content

· Visual InterDev: Objects and Databases

· Visual InterDev: Database Interaction

· Visual InterDev: Active Server Pages

· Visual InterDev: Controls and Scripts

· Visual InterDev: Testing and Debugging

· Visual InterDev: Management and Design

· CGI/Perl: Getting Familiar with Forms

· CGI/Perl: Building Programs

· CGI/Perl: Web Applications

· CGI/Perl: Interacting with Databases

· FrontPage 2000: Creating Web Sites

· FrontPage 2000: Building Pages

· FrontPage 2000: Working with Images

· FrontPage 2000: Adding Spark to Your Site

The Diet/Cook Books

The diet was originally developed for my wife Christine who at that time weighed 22.7 stone with a dress size of 32 plus.

By Christine following the Diets Plan she managed to reduce her weight to 10. 7 stone with a dress size of 10 to 12, in only 12 months and has now maintained her new weight for over 2 years.

After being stopped persistently, when out shopping with his wife and having to explain how she lost so much weight.

I have now written and had published 10 diet books based on these diet plans and 10 cookbooks (50% of the sale price goes to Ability and it is this that now covers all its running cost)

The courses I undertook to gain the knowledge I needed

· Women’s Stress Practitioner Diploma & Membership to the Association of Stress Management (A.S.M)

· Advanced Psychotherapy Diploma

· Diploma in Sports Therapy

· Vegetarian and Vegan Nutrition Consultant Diploma

· Integrated Therapeutic Counselling Diploma

· BSYA Diploma in Nutritional Therapy (N. Th.)

· BSYA Diploma in Weight Consultancy (W.T.)

· BSYA Diploma in BSY Herbalism (Herb.).

· BSYA Diploma in Natural Health Practice Management (NHM).

· Professional Therapeutic Counselling Diploma

Over the last 12 years the press of world from the UK Financial Times to the New York Times has written about the Ability projects. Although I take with a pinch of salt what they say about me as long as it get others to “see the ability not the disability” I am always happy.

I have put a few of these cutting online if you wish to see them at www.ability.org/news-cuttings.htm