Windows 8 to enhance aids for impaired users

Microsoft is working on enhancements to make its upcoming flagship operating system Windows 8 easily accessible for people with visual, hearing and mobility impairments. Jennifer Norberg, lead program manager for Microsoft’s Human Interaction Platform team, said they want to help impaired users experience Windows 8 Metro apps the same way as “normal” people. “About 15 percent of the world’s population has a disability. In the United States alone, 49.6 million people have a disability and 45 million in Europe. When it comes to interacting with computers, these disabilities affect individuals in a number of ways,” Norberg said in a blog post. She said visual impairments include color vision deficiency, low-vision and blindness – all of which may impact the individual’s ability to see content displayed on the screen. Mobility impairments include arthritis, cerebral palsy, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, and paraplegia, which affect using the keyboard and/or mouse to interact with the PC. Hearing impairments include conditions ranging from mild hearing loss to total deafness, and impact the individual’s ability to experience audio content generated by the computer. Cognitive impairments impact an individual’s learning and language skills, the ability to comprehend words, and difficulty with memory, solving problems, or perceiving sensory information. She said their accessibility goals in Windows 8 include:

With Windows 8, Norberg said that while Microsoft will continue to improve these ATs, it will also provide a rich platform and ecosystem where AT vendors can thrive. She said Narrator has new configuration options in Windows 8 that allow a user to select a voice, change the speed at which it speaks, create customizable commands, and specify some other aspects of Narrator’s behavior. “Right out-of-the-box with a new Windows 8 tablet, you will be able to press the Windows logo key and Volume Up to launch Narrator and walk through the setup of your machine. Whether you’re blind, have low vision, or are fully sighted, you’ll be able to start experiencing a Windows 8 tablet from the moment you get it,” she said. The improved Narrator will also keep up with the Internet Explorer 10 browser in helping a user explore text on a webpage, and help a user interact with a control like a hyperlink. Metro style Norberg said Windows 8’s Metro style UI is a new experience for Windows, and offers an opportunity to present accessibility settings in a new way. “This opportunity allowed us to simplify and optimize the key settings that people with disabilities depend on to manage their experience,” she said. She said these include a new way to toggle settings for high contrast, which is easier to discover and simpler to apply. “We also made it easier to adjust the size of UI elements to be bigger, and take care of the DPI scaling settings for you, so you don’t have to manage it manually. We think simplifying these settings will help a large set of users,” she said. Norberg also noted developers now have an incredible opportunity to improve the accessibility ecosystem by creating and selling apps that meet a baseline of accessibility. She said developers need not to learn new technologies to make their apps accessible since Microsoft will rely on existing standards such as HTML5 to reduce the learning curve. Also, project templates on Visual Studio Express include code that is accessibility-ready. “This means that you can immediately use it with a screen reader (Narrator), it is fully usable with a keyboard, it works well in High Contrast mode, and it is visually accessible for text contrast and color. This gives the developer a great starting point towards building an accessible app,” she said. Accessibility filter Users will be able to set an accessibility filter in the Windows Store that will allow them to discover the apps that have been declared accessible by the developer. Also, users can provide comments and ratings to help each other find the apps that are most accessible, and to help the developer understand how well they did in making their apps accessible. Magnifier Norberg said Windows 8’s Magnifier has been optimized for touch-enabled devices. She said plus (+) and minus (-) buttons in the corners allow you to zoom in or out. Also, she said there is now built-in support for multi-touch zoom using these same borders. Moving two fingers closer together or farther apart on the border allows you to quickly change the zoom level, she said. Magnifier also has a preview feature that shows you exactly where you are in the context of the entire screen. It can be activated by tapping with a thumb or finger on opposite borders at the same time. — LBG, GMA News