davidsaccess.com » Accessibility Tricks

Operating system accessibility features

David — Wed, 04 May 2005 13:21:45 +0000

I am often surprised at how few people are aware of the accessibility features that are built-in to modern operating systems. I thought it would be useful to put them all in one place.

There is also a book I edited: Accessibility for Everybody: Understanding the Section 508 Accessibility Requirements (you can get a full TOC from http://www.apress.com/book/bookDisplay.html?bID=167)

Tiger has an on-screen keyboard

David — Sat, 30 Apr 2005 15:26:24 +0000

I installed Tiger this morning, and I think I have found my first accessibility nugget (at least I have never seen any mention of it on Apple’s Accessibility page.

In the “International” preference pane, on the “Input” tab, there is an option for “keyboard viewer”. This look and acts as an on-screen keyboard. I am pretty sure this is new to 10.4.

Update: It turns out that I was dead wrong about this on many fronts. It is not an on-screen keyboard because the modifier keys (shift, cmd, control, option) do not “stay down” when pressed. And it was in Panther. Duh.

Thanks to my friend David Niemeijer of Assistiveware for setting me straight.

Google Mail has keyboard shortcuts

David — Wed, 23 Jun 2004 17:45:38 +0000

I just signed up for a Gmail account (never thought I would succumb to the fad–crazed marketing frenzy), but I was pleasantly surprised to find a keyboard shortcut feature clearly labeled.

Keyboard shortcuts save you time by allowing you to explore Gmail quickly without taking your hands off the keyboard to use the mouse. These shortcuts also make it easier for you to navigate through Gmail’s features, like Conversation View, which allows you to see all of your messages stacked neatly on top of each other, like a deck of cards.

Did they do this merely for 508/ ccessibility compliance? I highly doubt it.

Open-source voice input

David — Tue, 08 Jun 2004 18:33:43 +0000

Although it’s only in Alpha, the announcement of Sphinx-4, an open-source voice input application looks promising

Sphinx-4 is a state-of-the-art, speaker-independent, continuous speech recognition system written entirely in the Java programming language. Because it is written entirely in the Java,Sphinx-4 can run on a variety of platforms without requiring anyspecial compilation or changes. We’ve tested Sphinx-4 on the following platforms with success: the Solaris 9 Operating System on the SPARC platform, Mac OS X 10.3.3, RedHat 9.0, Fedora Core 1, Microsoft Windows XP, and Microsoft Windows 2000.

Check it out at: http://cmusphinx.sourceforge.net/sphinx4

iTunes — my assistive technology

David — Wed, 02 Jun 2004 20:29:30 +0000

I talked about this a few years ago in an article I co-authored with Richard Wanderman and Monika Koethnig: Digital Independence, bur I think it is so cool that it warrants repeating.

iTunes is a major piece of assistive technology for me. I don’t do well with handling CDs. I used to have a 200 disk CD changer, but there was no way to quickly and easily play a particular CD or song. But, with iTunes, I have “ripped” all of my CDs and now have them on my hard drive.

Combine that with the iTunes music store and and streaming radio, and my stereo has been relegated to being a pair of powered speakers for my computer..

Repurposing Microsoft Office’s autocorrect feature

David — Thu, 27 May 2004 20:21:01 +0000

Starting with Office ‘97 (I think), Microsoft introduced a feature called autocorrect — a realtime spellchecker that automatically corrects common misspellings and other typos that touch typists often make — like “teh” instead of “the” and things like that.

But, since it is so easy to add to the list, I have created whole list of abbreviations — a homegrown shorthand if you will — that are “corrected” transparently, with no special software. Some of them are:

t “corrected” to the
ot “corrected” to of the
fr “corrected” to from
bec “corrected” to because
…many more

Mouseless Googling

David — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Ran across instrucstions on Google Labs that documents how to navigate its search results completely via keyboard. You must have javascript on, though

Natural Language Search Solution for Users with Disabilities

David — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Agassa Net Technologies, Inc. has deployed a new, natural language search portal to multiple online federal government Web sites in response to the difficulties faced by people with disabilities accessing online government resources. Agassa is a provider of IT/Web accessibility solutions to government agencies. Visitors to the Information Technology Technical Assistance & Training Center’s (ITTATC) Web site can use this new search tool, powered by iPhrase Technologies, Inc., a provider of self-service search and navigation software for mission critical applications.

The new Accessible Technology Knowledgebase (ATKB) incorporates information contained in the following disability-focused Web sites: DisabilityInfo.gov (www.disabilityinfo.gov); Section508.gov (www.section508.gov); AssistiveTech.net (www.assistivetech.net); ITTATC.org ( www.ittatc.org); and AccessIT (www.washington.edu/accessit).

The new ATKB search solution provides the following benefits to the user: compliance with Section 508, the Access Board’s Electronic and Information Technology Accessibility Standards; enables the searching of all five federal Web sites and databases with one query; automatic ranking by relevance; permits the asking of questions in plain English language; provides guidance with helpful hints to improve the outcome; and returns answers to the immediate questions being asked and anticipates how best to refine your search even further, then provides possible next steps guiding the user to related resources, products and services. Partners in the ATKB project include Agassa Net Technologies, iPhrase Technologies, IDEAL Group, NCR Corporation, and ITTATC.