Скачать или смотреть The AT Social Hub: Screen Reading Made Easy!

The AT Social Hub is back with another exciting session driven by your tech experiences!

This week, the 2 Stuart's will be taking a look at alternative screen reading software to make your life a whole lot easier when using your laptop or PC.

It is not difficult for a sighted person to imagine how being blind or visually impaired could make using a computer difficult. Just close your eyes and you will instantly experience that even processing text is impossible – or impossible without additional software at least. Now a range of software is available that can help to make using a computer an easier, more enjoyable and more productive experience for blind or visually impaired users.

A screen reader is an essential piece of software for a blind or visually impaired person. Simply put, a screen reader transmits whatever text is displayed on the computer screen into a form that a visually impaired user can process. While the most basic screen readers will not help blind users navigate a computer, those with additional features can give people with visual impairment much more independence.

Apple VoiceOver includes options to magnify, keyboard control and verbal descriptions in English to describe what is happening on screen. It also reads aloud file content as well as web pages, E-mail messages and word processing files whilst providing a relatively accurate narrative of the user’s workspace. This covers a wide array of keyboard commands that enable user navigation of the Mac OS X interface.

Windows Narrator is included with every copy of Microsoft Windows, providing a measure of access to Windows without the need to install additional software as long as the computer in use includes a sound card and speakers or headphone. Windows 2000 was the first Microsoft operating system released with some degree of accessibility for the blind built in, permitting a blind person to walk up to any such computer and make some use of it immediately.