with People Sensory Disabilities Access Software People who are Blind o Screen reader software JAWS (www.freedomscientific.com) Window Eyes (http://www.gwmicro.com/ ) IBM Home Page Reader for web browsing only (http://www3.ibm.com/able/solution_offerings/hpr.html ) People who have low vision o Magnification software (many include voice) Zoomtext (http://www.aisquared.com/index.cfm), Magic (www.freedomscientifc.com) o Free tools: Windows XP magnifier Magnifiera display utility that makes the computer screen more readable by creating a separate window that displays a magnified portion of the screen. Narratora text-to-speech utility that reads what is displayed on the screenthe contents of the active window, menu options, or text that has been typed. o Opera browser: magnification Magnification Voice o Firefox browser: enlarge text View / Text size / Increase People who are deaf or hard of hearing o Captioned videos o Signing translation software: www.vcom3d.com
Universal Design Recommendations Convert or seek content that is in electronic format so assistive technology access tools can be used Avoid including text within graphic images; graphics may become distorted when magnified Simplify content: Complex screen layouts may be confusing when magnified or when read in a linear way with a screen reader Provide a text description for all graphic content so that it can be interpreted by a screen reader (alt text in web pages) Ensure that all software and web content can be accessed using the keyboard alone; blind users do not use a mouse Caption all videos and provide a transcript for all audio files
No-Cost Accessibility Tools
1. Microsoft Windows XP Accessibility Features http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/accessibility/default.mspx 2. Apple MAC accessibility features http://www.apple.com/accessibility/ 3. Microsoft Windows XP Language Bar: speech recognition and text-to-speech
Windows OS has the ability to "speak" any text and "recognize" spoken words and translate them into written text or commands. These functions are controlled from the bar" "language in Windows. To turn on the language bar do the following: Open Regional and Language Options in the Control Panel. (Click on Start and Control Panel). On the Languages tab, under Text services and input languages, click Details. Under Preferences, click Language Bar. Select the "Show the Language bar" on the desktop check box. To turn the Language bar off right click on the language bar and choose "close the language bar". These features are not always available in programs. They do work most of the time in the Windows operating system and most Microsoft Office products. You can control some functions of text to speech via the "Speech" icon from the control panel. In Office it is possible to launch the language bar under the tools and speech options. Text to Speech Example: To have sections of a Word document spoken, hightlight the text you wish spoken. Then, from the tools menu, select speech to start the language bar. From the language bar select speak. If you do not select a section of text to speak, the entire document will be read. Speech to Text (Speech Recognition) Example From within Word go to the tools menu and select speech to start the language bar. If you have not used the feat...