Vista accessibility

We explore how Vista’s Access Center makes Windows more user friendly

Teenage gaming heroes apart, few of us are perfect when it comes to dexterity, sight and hearing.

In 2003, Microsoft commissioned Forrester Research to ‘measure the market’ for accessibility technology and present findings about computer users who could benefit from it.

The results were surprising. One quarter had a visual impairment, nearly the same percentage had dexterity difficulties, and one fifth had hearing problems.

All in all, Forrester found that nearly two thirds of the survey sample would be likely to benefit from accessibility technology in one way or another. The real eye-opener was that the survey sample consisted entirely of 18- to 64-year-olds. You don’t need to be a market analyst to realise that accessibility is even more important for young children and the elderly.

Windows has had accessibility features since version 95, and even before that there was a separate ‘Access pack’ available for Windows 3, so many of the utilities and features we’ll be looking at here are not new.

However, Vista sees several improvements ­ - particularly in the way accessibility functions are organised - ­ and one new killer feature.

For a start, there has been a change of emphasis. Although XP has a little-known option to turn on ‘Sticky Keys’ at the Welcome screen by pressing the Shift key five times, Vista is far less arcane - ­ there’s a button on the Welcome screen giving access to all the main accessibility utilities. Once logged in, these utilities, formerly tucked away in a submenu of Accessories, have been combined with the Control Panel Accessibility options in the new ‘Ease of Access centre’. So let’s take a tour.

Ease of access
The former wheelchair icon ­ - which probably put off many people - has been subtly redesigned with input/output arrows. There’s also far more available here than in XP ­ - many features and options were previously available in Windows b ut involved tortuous trips through the outposts of the Control Panel.

One new feature is that Vista will optionally read or scan the first section of the Ease of Access window - ­ the focus will toggle around the controls to turn on the Narrator, the on-screen keyboard, the Magnifier or set up the high-contrast mode. All the user has to do is press the spacebar when the desired item is in focus.

The Magnifier is much the same as in XP, but with a few more docking options. By default, the magnified area sits at the top of the screen, and can be set to follow the keyboard and mouse focus. Apart from reading small print, it’s also very useful for performing delicate pixel-level tasks such as cropping screenshots or other images.

The Narrator reads Taskbar items, title and toolbars in applications and other controls and - ­ if you’re lucky - ­ text.

You can adjust the pitch, speed and volume of the voice, and also have it say each keystroke you make. All this was available in Windows 2000 and XP, but Vista’s Narrator sees a few changes.

The main improvement is to the voice itself. Microsoft Anna is the new voice of Vista and a distinct improvement over XP’s Sam, though Anna’s phrasing of sentences can still be. A bit. Idiosyncratic. But she copes well with phrases such as ‘St. Georges St.’.

There’s also a new set of keyboard shortcuts - ­ Insert & F4 to F8 will read from the current word to the whole document. This works fine in Notepad - ­ in fact, selecting text in Notepad automatically hands it to Anna to read. But in Internet Explorer or Microsoft Office 2007 all you will hear is the contents of menus, dialogues and links. All efforts to get it to read text resulted in ‘empty line’, ‘empty paragraph’ or ‘empty document’. If you jump through enough customisation hoops in Excel 2007 you can regain the 2003 option to ‘Speak Cells’, but Word 2007 is, literally, unspeakable. This seems a remarkably poor effort on Microsoft’s part at co-ordinating its two flagship products.

The On-Screen Keyboard (OSK) is little changed from XP, so we won’t dwell on it for long. Basically, you select characters by either hovering or clicking with the mouse, but there’s an alternative; using the spacebar or an external device, such as a joystick. The OSK cycles first through entire rows, then individual characters in each row, and you use the spacebar (or other hardware) to select.

Setting up high-contrast mode involves nothing more than enabling a keystroke combination. Having done this Alt & Shift & Print screen will toggle between the normal Vista display settings and a white-text-on-black display with the Windows Classic title and toolbars.

Beneath these four basic utilities are seven more task links, ranging from ‘Using the computer without a display’ to ‘Make it easier to focus on tasks’. If you’re not sure where to start, then there’s an entry for that, too. ‘Get recommendations...’ takes you through a five-stage questionnaire, covering eyesight, dexterity, hearing, speech and concentration. Having completed this you will see a list of options covering all the categories listed below, with the relevant ones already selected. You are free to modify the selections before applying or saving them as a set.

It’s worth exploring the individual items, as there is a lot here that can be useful. Most of it isn’t new, but the Ease of Access centre encompasses a lot of relevant options and settings that have hitherto been scattered wide - ­ and often buried deep ­ in Control Panel. For example, it has long been possible to change the DPI setting, which governs the size of all screen fonts, if you knew just where to dig in Display Settings. The Vista Ease of Access centre makes this - ­ well - ­ easily accessible, though it still requires a reboot. Similarly, if you look under ‘Make the mouse easier to use’, you’ll find options that formerly took three separate trips.

Mouse Keys
Mouse Keys provide a way of controlling the mouse pointer from the numeric keypad, with the 5 key acting as a left-click and the rest of the digits moving the pointer horizontally, vertically or diagonally. You can adjust the speed globally or use the Control and Shift keys on the fly to speed up or slow down. The + and - ­ keys simulate double or right clicks. Even if you don’t have a problem mousing, it can get you out of a spot when a mouse malfunctions. Mouse pointers ­ - formerly needing a separate trip to Control Panel, Mouse - ­ provide a quick way of making the pointer more visible.

With high-resolution screens and Vista’s rich assortment of eye-candy, it’s all too easy for anyone to lose sight of the pointer: switching to one of the large or inverting pointers increases visibility greatly. Finally, there’s the option to give a window focus by just hovering over it ­ a facility hitherto only available via TweakUI.

Keyboard improvements
Under ‘Make the keyboard easier to use’, you’ll find, once again, Mouse Keys, as well as Sticky Keys (press key combinations one at a time), Filter Keys (ignore repeated keystrokes) and Toggle Keys (make a sound when Caps lock, Num lock or Scroll lock is pressed).

One related casualty is Serial Keys, which, in previous versions of Windows provided support for alternative input devices plugged into the PC’s serial port.

Visual notifications
Soundsentry is another old-timer going back to Windows 3 days, which augments or replaces system sounds with visual cues, such as a flashing window, titlebar or desktop.

You don’t have to be hard of hearing to see the use of this ­ you may be working in an environment where a beeping PC is inappropriate but still want a ‘wake-up call’ for alerts and messages. The companion feature, Showsound, is designed to let suitable applications offer text equivalents of spoken content ­ like subtitling. Few applications, however, support this.

Talk the talk
The best, brand new feature is modestly tucked away in small letters under ‘Use the computer without a mouse or keyboard’. Speech recognition comes with all versions of Vista, and is a vast improvement on that included with Microsoft Office XP and 2003. It’s also easier ­ - and much quicker ­ - to set up, so it’s worth taking the trouble to set up the microphone correctly, work through the tutorial, and take the short training exercise.

Having done that, it just works ­ start the program and tell it to ‘Start listening’. Try saying ‘Start, All Programs, Accessories, Notepad. Start, All Programs, Games, Freecell. Switch to Notepad. The quick brown fox.’

It may take a little practice, but you should get the same results as if you’d done the launching and switching with the mouse and typed the last sentence into Notepad. It usually makes a very good job of distinguishing between commands and dictated text, but inevitably there can be ambiguity.

For instance, if you want to type the word ‘start’ rather than open the Start menu, then say ‘literal start’. If it mishears your dictation, then saying ‘correct that’ produces a numbered list of alternatives to what it thought you said. Say the number of the correction followed by OK. If you don’t see the correct text just say it again or spell it out.

There are all sorts of other clever features ­ - dictate ‘Vista’, or ‘Windows’, for example, and the words will appear in lowercase. Say ‘capitalise Vista’ and it will highlight and number all occurrences of the word in your document. Say the number, OK, and the corresponding instance will be capitalised. If you’re at a loss for words, then ‘What can I say?’ brings up the Speech Recognition Help.

There are all sorts of other ways in which this feature is impressively clever and we just don’t have room to sing its praises further. But it’s the star turn in Vista accessibility.

Alternative input devices and software
Augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) is concerned with helping people with difficulties communicate with others and with computers. This can take the form of software, hardware or a combination of the two. For an example of software there are several screen readers, all of which outperform Windows Narrator. Two popular ones are Window-Eyes (www.gwmicro.com) and Jaws (www.freedomscientific.com). Freedom Scientific also specialises in hardware for blind or low-vision computer users with a range of Braille keyboards, tactile displays and PDAs.

There’s a good range of ergonomic keyboards and mice at www.kinesis-ergo.com, including foot pedals to replace the keyboard modifier keys. You can also get foot-operated mice (www.footmouse.com), so you never have to take your hands off the keyboard.

For those unable to use a keyboard at all, Prentke Romich (www.prentrom.com) makes a range of touchscreen and head-pointing devices for children and adults. Usually, head-pointing devices work
with a video camera trained on a reflective dot worn by the user, but the Eyegaze system (www.eyegaze.com) monitors the user’s eye movement with a video camera - nothing is worn. The user ‘presses’ keys by looking at them on a control screen for a fraction of a second.