Sunday, July 17th, 2016

Accessibility Options

Each of these devices had so many,and such a variety,of accessibility options.I found the videos went by very quickly (especially on the iPad!), so I focused on recording the various options available to each device. Overall, I liked the PC laptop best only because it gave a personalized option, having users reply to a series of questions about their vision, hearing, physical mobility, etc., and creating a "personal profile" of accessibility-option recommendations. However, the Android tablet or iPad would be more portable, and therefore better for many users.   

1. Android

Wow,this one was great. I admit to being a fan of Android devices, since that's the kind of phone I have. I particularly was impressed by these features: 

 "Hands-free" option

- Speech recognition,offline as well as online

- Text-to-speech; can control for speed at which text is spoken, language, as well as listen to examples to choose the right option for the user
- Talkback function to help blind or vision-impaired users

- Magnify the parts of the screen that you focus on (ie text,images . . .)

- Large text option

-High contrast text

-Spoken passwords (instead of typed)

There were a million other good ones. I originally made huge lists for each device, but that seemed a little boring to read over, so I shortened them to record only my top favourites (of course, these are my personal choices; other people will prefer other options).

2. Chromebook

Top ten: 

- Large-mouse cursor

- High-contrast mode for screen

- "Chromevox" spoken feedback

- Screen magnifier

- Tap-dragging

- Automatic click when pointer stops moving (can set delay before click)

- On-screen keyboard

- "Clarospeech" text-to-speech reader

- "CoWriter Universal"word prediction

- Colour-blind accessibility extension

- "Crux Light" distills web articles to their essences

- Dyslexic extension (changes font on page to dyslexic-accessible)

- "FreshEyes" accessibility for colour-blind people

I was especially impressed by the extensions for users with dyslexia, because I don't think I've seen those anywhere else. 

3. iPad iO59

Where do I even begin? First of all, I had to keep pausing the video just to jot down the various features! SO much! This is truly a great device for accessibility and I wish we could get one to all of our students. I loved the touch-accommodation feature (I think that kind of personalisation is so useful), as well as the Siri feature -- which I knew about but had never actually seen before! Very cool.

4. Mac laptop

I liked quite a few of the options here as well. Principally, I thought these features were great:

- Zoom/control how to access zoom (ie by moving cursor or tapping buttons). Also zoom on specific elements rather than full screen ("picture-in-picture")

- Voice over (with training/tutorial built-in)

- Speech, Braille, Text, and Announcements all given as options (ie speaking instructions to begin a task) Can choose voice/speaker options.

- Speak webpages aloud

- Audio effects such as muting or allowing sound effects; also, flashing the scree when an audio alert occurs. 

- Video descriptions can be turned on to provide a spoken description of content in media

- Can change speed of double-clicking for mouse (I NEED THIS ONE!)

- Can allow mouse to be controlled by keys on keyboard

- Dictation Commands (edit text and interact with computer by speaking to it)

5. PC laptop

I have a PC,so this was great for me to see. Loved these ones:

- Option to use text or visual alternatives for sounds

- Text captions for speech

- Change the colour and/or size of the mouse 

- Speech recognition function (Honestly, I need to set this up on my own laptop!)

- Can select from a series of statements about visual (or other physical/motor/cognitive) capabilities (such as "Images and text on TV are difficult to see even if I'm wearing glasses"), and then get recommendations to make your computer easier to use for you personally.

Favourite feature: the personalisation for the individual user's needs.