Accessibility

The Accessibility section of the Start menu (All Programs, Accessories, Accessibility) includes several tools to ease, simplify, improve, or enable computer interaction for those users who are visually, audibly, or mobility impaired. These tools are in addition to the system settings available through the Accessibility Options applet in the Control Panel.

The Accessibility wizard is a great tool to help you quickly configure the system so it is at its most beneficial to you, no matter what disability affects you. This wizard walks you step-by-step through a decision making tree to determine fonts, screen size, colors, sounds, mouse actions, keyboard responsiveness, and so on. The results from this wizard make changes to the environment. These are the same changes you could manually adjust through the Accessibility Options applet in the Control Panel.

The Magnifier is a desktop looking glass that magnifies portions of the display by two times or more. When launched, a view window is created at the top of the desktop. The Magnifier can follow the mouse cursor, or focus on keyboard activities for text editing. This tool is a must for those with a slight visual impairment who need just a bit of magnification to read displayed text.

The Narrator is a text-to-speech program design to aid computer usage for the visually impaired. The Narrator will read aloud English text from most programs. Just highlight the text and then press Ctrl+Shift+Spacebar. It can also be set to read screen events (that is, read everything on the active window) and typed characters. The voice is the same controlled through the Speech applet. It's a bit coarse, but you can understand it.

The On-Screen Keyboard is just that, a point-and-click keyboard. It is designed to aid those with mobility impairments whose computer control is restricted to a joystick-type mouse. With just a mouse, the On-Screen Keyboard can be used to "type" out text or perform key-sequences.

The Utility Manager is used to manage the three accessibility tools (Magnifier, Narrator, and On-Screen Keyboard). These tools can be set to launch at login, at desktop lock, or when Utility Manager is launched.

These tools provide basic functionality for those with visual or mobility impairments. However, Microsoft warns that these tools should only be used as stop-gap measures. Those needing consistent aid in interacting with their computers should employ a dedicated specialty solution. Microsoft maintains a Web site with information on accessibility solutions at http://www.microsoft.com/enable/.