Accessibility
What is Accessibility?
More About Accessibility
Useful online resources available:
Accessibility is often used to describe the removal of
barriers for people with disabilities. Through the use of assistive technologies they can have access to software like screen readers, speech recognition and tools that help them gain access.
There are useful accessibility tools already included in Windows, as well as popular applications like Word, PowerPoint and Adobe Acrobat. For example, there is an on screen keyboard and magnifier built into the Windows operating system along with screen tips and the ability to have high contrast colour scheme settings.
Popular formats used widely like Microsoft Word, PDFs and PowerPoint presentations have accessiblity benefits built in already.
For example, any PDF document can be made to automatically scroll or change the font and background colour as well as adding bookmarks for quicker navigation.
Below are helpful links to the JISC TechDis resources providing the "accessibility essentials" for each of the widely used document formats:
Web Accessibility
Websites conform to accessiblity guidlines as outlined by the Web Accessilibty Initiative to give access for all disabilities. As such the visual presentation of text, colour, layout and navigation on sites should be considered when designing with accessibility in mind.
An example of good accessibility is using alternative text descriptions for images which would help text to speech software for the visual impaired and providing options for changing the size of the text or changing the colour scheme to a high contrast one would contribute to giving access to all.
Here are a list of useful resources for web accessibiity in particular and further information can be gained from the Web Accessilibty Initiative.
Assistive Technology
There are a wide range of technologies that support different disabilities. Text to speech tools help those with visual impairments access Word documents. An example of this is ReadTheWords.com which provides a variety of automated voices to read text.
Technologies can be combined to give accessibility benefits such as the use of QR codes which generate a visual code which in turn can be used by an iPhone to display the textual content . This can then be used by text to speech software on the iPhone to provide audio.
You can download and install free QR reading software for your phone here.
AccessApps
AccessApps is a suite of about 60 free and open source Windows software provided by JISC TechDis which runs from a portable USB stick. These include tools such as screen contrast changers, magnifiers, sound and image editing software, etc.
Accessibility Pack
If you have a need for any of the accessibility applications please contact us to get a USB stick with all the software pre-loaded.
