The article below is from a main-stream computer e-magazine: Windows 7 News, published by Sunbelt Software. at the end is a request for those who use assistive technology to go on to their forums and tell them about it. Making Windows 7 More Accessible The first computer operating systems and software applications were designed by and for people who had no physical disabilities, and consequently those who were blind, had amputations or paralysis, suffered from neuromuscular diseases or were otherwise disabled often had great difficulty using computers. The software assumed that the user could see and react to what was on the screen, type and use a mouse and, to a lesser extent, hear and react to sounds. For millions of people, those assumptions don't apply. The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) brought the plight of the disabled to the attention of the business world. It prohibits discrimination based on disability and, among other things, requires employers to provide "reasonable accommodations" to qualified workers to help them do their jobs with physical limitations. The Act also includes rules governing physical access requirements for public entities and public transportation providers, and commercial facilities open to the public, as well as requirements for telecommunications providers. You can read more about the ADA here: http://www.win7news.net/WTDFB4/100902-ada <http://www.win7news.net/WTDFB4/100902-ada> Over the two decades since its passage, the tech industry has begun to recognize the needs of the disabled and both software and hardware makers have stepped up efforts to provide accessibility features and devices that make it easier for those with physical limitations to operate computers. Hardware vendors make alternative input devices such as Braille keyboards and notetakers, single handed keyboards, stick keyboards that can be operated with the mouth or head, and even input devices that can be controlled by a foot, an eyeblink, or breath. Check some of them out here: http://www.win7news.net/WTDFB4/100902-gawds <http://www.win7news.net/WTDFB4/100902-gawds> Touch screens have become increasingly popular for portable devices such as smart phones, tablets and laptops. There are also touch screen monitors available for desktop systems, and some disabled persons, such as those with Parkinson's or other diseases that impair motor skills, may find them easier to operate than using a mouse or trackball. On the other hand, touch screens are not user friendly to those with visual limitations, but there are overlays that can be used to make them more accessible, and many of today's popular touch devices allow you to enable speech output to assist visually impaired users. http://www.win7news.net/WTDFB4/100902-uitrends <http://www.win7news.net/WTDFB4/100902-uitrends> Microsoft has been working on the accessibility problem for many years. Back in 1997, they created an initiative called Microsoft Active Accessibility (MSAA), that defined a standard for Windows applications so they could communicate important information to accessibility devices. The drawback was that the software companies making the applications had to revise their applications to make them accessible. What Microsoft does have control over is the operating system, and they have been building more accessibility features into each new version of the OS since 1992, when the company created the first full-time staff position dedicated to accessibility issues. The Access Pack for Windows added accessibility features to Windows 3.x. These included many of the features that we still see in Windows today, such as StickyKeys, MouseKeys and ToggleKeys. http://www.win7news.net/WTDFB4/100902-mssupport <http://www.win7news.net/WTDFB4/100902-mssupport> Over the years, Microsoft has received a number of awards from various organizations for their commitment to accessibility, and they have awarded grants to expand technology access to people with disabilities. You can read a history of Microsoft's activities in the accessibility area, from 1988 to the present, here: http://www.win7news.net/WTDFB4/100902-mshistory <http://www.win7news.net/WTDFB4/100902-mshistory> Windows 7 and Office 2010 both include improvements to the accessibility features, as well as carrying forward features that have been in Windows for a long time. Let's take a look at some of ways Windows 7 can be made more accessible. The Ease of Access Center gathers the accessibility settings in one centralized location. You access it via Control Panel or the keyboard shortcut WIN + U. The Magnifier and Narrator, along with the On-screen Keyboard and High Contrast settings, are at the top of the main pane and easy to get to. The audio (text to speech) feature is automatically turned on for this screen, so that it will read the main options to you as soon as you open it. You can configure, with the provided checkboxes, whether you want this section read aloud every time. For those who can't see (or can't read), the Narrator can be turned on manually or configured to run whenever you log onto Windows. It reads the screen text aloud and describes what's happening when error messages appear. Narrator is a pretty basic text reader. There are third party screen readers that can work better for certain purposes, but some are expensive. JAWS (Job Access With Speech) is one of the most popular, but the standard version costs $895. NaturalReader (which can also convert written text documents to MP3 or WAV files for your portable player), is more affordable, at $99.50 for the professional version. If you'll need a reader for all of your computing activity, you'll probably want to buy a commercial product. However, the built in Narrator can get the job done when visually limited folks need to use a public computer or a friend's computer that doesn't have the third party software installed. Windows 7 also includes the Audio Description feature that can d escribe what's going on in videos (when a description has been included in the video file). Here's an interesting article on how the blind experience the Internet: http://www.win7news.net/WTDFB4/100902-gizmodo <http://www.win7news.net/WTDFB4/100902-gizmodo> With the baby boomer generation aging, we now have a large number of computer users who can see, but cannot see well. Older eyes may need some magnification to read text and see fine detail on the screen. The Magnifier has been improved in Windows 7, making navigation faster. It now includes both a lens mode and a full screen mode in addition to the docked mode; I prefer the full screen mode. You can also change the lens size if you're using lens mode. Note that you can use only docked mode if you don't have Aero. You can configure the Magnifier to follow the mouse pointer, the keyboard focus or the text insertion point and set how much the view changes when zooming in or out. If you need more help seeing the display, you can turn on color inversion in the Magnifier, which will change a white page with black text into a black screen with white text, or vice versa. This can be especially helpful with web pages that use a dark background and light text. I've heard many people complain about such pages, and most didn't know that they could use this Magnifier option to make them more readable. You can also permanently set a high contrast display, make the text and icons permanently bigger, turn off animations and adjust the transparency settings, to make things easier to see. In some cases, Windows can even remove background images. Check out the "Make the computer easier to see" section in the accessibility options and play around with the settings. Another new feature in Windows 7 is the ability to resize the onscreen keyboard to make it easier to see, by simply dragging the same way you resize windows. The onscreen keyboard also includes the text prediction feature. When you type a few letters, you'll see several suggestions at the top of the keyboard for the most common words that begin with those letters, and you can select the right word with just one click instead of having to type out the rest of the letters. If you can't type at all, you can use the voice command and dictation features to control the computer and input text with your voice. Speech recognition in Windows 7 still isn't perfect, but it is better than in previous versions of Windows, and requires less training time. You might also want to change the color and size of the mouse pointer to make it easier to see. Now you can do that within the Ease of Access Center, instead of having to hunt down that option in the mouse's Properties. If you can't hear, you can set Windows to display a visual warning instead of a sound notification. You can choose to flash the active caption bar, flash the active window, or flash the entire desktop, and you can turn on text captions for spoken dialog in instances where that's available. All this is in addition to the old familiar StickyKeys (which allows you press key combinations one key at a time), ToggleKeys (which sounds a tone to alert you if you accidentally press CAPS LOCK, NUM LOCK or SCROLL LOCK keys), FilterKeys (which tells Windows to ignore or slow down brief or repeated keystrokes, and MouseKeys (which lets you use the numeric keypad to move the mouse pointer around the screen). Finally, for those who have learning disabilities such as dyslexia or attention deficit disorder, Microsoft has published a Guide to help you reduce visual and auditory distractions and use assistive technology to make it easier to use the computer. You can find it here: http://www.win7news.net/WTDFB4/100902-learningguides <http://www.win7news.net/WTDFB4/100902-learningguides> Tell us what you think. Do you use the accessibility features in Windows, or do you know someone who does? How well do they work for you? What would you change or add? How about third party assistive software and hardware devices? Which have you found to be most - and least - helpful? Should Microsoft continue to add accessibility features to Windows, or do you consider this "bloatware" that should be a separate, optional add-on? Let us know your opinions and experiences by participating in our forum at http://www.win7news.net/WTDFB4/100902-win7forum <http://www.win7news.net/WTDFB4/100902-win7forum>