The On-Screen Keyboard & Text Readers

The On-Screen Keyboard:

The On-Screen Keyboard is something that can be used to help alot of people that have disabilities. It makes it easier because you can either use a mouse to click the letters or keys on the screen with the cursor to type text instead of using a keyboard. The other way is to have a touch screen monitor/T.V where the user can use there fingers to tap the keys on keyboard to type text.

The image above shows me using the On-Screen Keyboard to write text in paint. it also shows where I went to open the keyboard to start using it. First, you will go to the bottom left of your screen and there should be a start button as you can see on the image it is the windows symbol. After clicking the "Start" button you then click "all programs" and then find "accessories" and click that after clicking that you can find more options available for you to chose, you then find and click the "ease of access" folder which will show a few tools that can help but to get the "On-Screen Keyboard" you click the one that says "On-Screen Keyboard" then one you have done that it will pop up on the screen for the user to user either way they want.

Text Readers:

Text readers are very helpful as they read everything on the computers screen out aloud to the user so if someone has difficulties reading or have lost their vision then they can use this to know what people have sent them in or on websites e.g: Email's, internet search etc.... There are quite a few screen readers available and the one i will be showing you comes with Microsoft Windows which is called Microsoft Narrator.

The Screenshot above shows the Microsoft Narrator that I talked about above the image. As you can see there are settings that you can change with the voice like how load you want the narrator to read the things out, how fast you want them to read it out and what pitch you want it in, which ever the user prefers. To access this software you would just need to go to "Start" then click "all programs" this will then show alot of options and programs but you want to find "Accessories" click that then find "Ease of Access" where you will find the program called "Narrator". To control the narrator you need to use certain short cuts on you keyboard, the following link will have information on the software and all the short cuts with descriptions on what they do. http://windows.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows-vista/choose-which-text-narrator-reads-aloud