Making Windows Accessible

Making Microsoft Windows Accessible in Your School

Ten quick solutions to implement this summer...

1.       Shortcut to Accessibility Settings on your desktop
This is often “locked down” on school computers when it should be open to all.

a.       Create a desktop shortcut to the “Ease of Access Center” and allow your students to adjust their computers to their personal requirements, from cursor and keyboard response to alternative alerts.

b.      If students have individual log-ins their chosen settings will be retained for their use. If not the computer will re-set to the default settings with each new log-in.

2.     Shortcut to Speech Recognition on your desktop
Windows7 (and Windows Vista) have the finest Speech Recognition/Voice Dictation/Voice Control system available built in, all you have to do is make it available to students. There is significant evidence that students who struggle with writing can benefit from using Speech Recognition to get their ideas down quickly, and students with dexterity issues will benefit as well.

a.       This must work with individual student log-ins so that a student’s voice profile will be saved.

b.      Students will need to train the computer to their voice, you have to assist some students by whispering the training scripts to them, as their reading may not be accurate enough.

3.       Install the "MITS" accessible version of the Firefox Web Browser

a.       Firefox provides free accessibility options which are either not available or only available at great cost on other web browsers. In addition, most network administrators world-wide find that Firefox offers increased security from intrusive malware. It is completely free and has proven itself safe. Firefox 4 has already been installed over 200 million times this year alone.

b.      The Michigan Integrated Technology Supports has crafted a custom set of “add-ons” which make Firefox accessible. The primary set can be found at
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/collections/ira-socol/mits2009/
This set adds many features which provide access to web browsing across the disability spectrum, including the FoxVox Text-To-Speech application.
You may also want to add:
FireVox http://www.firevox.clcworld.net/ which offers full blind access when installed
as well as
AnyDaisy https://launchpad.net/daisyextension the Bookshare-designed DAISY reader add-on for Firefox.

4.       Install Balabolka, a free Text Reading System
Balabolka is a new, free, Text-To-Speech system which reads with word-by-word highlighting (an important tool for building sightword recognition. http://www.cross-plus-a.com/balabolka.htm
There are hundreds of options and it is very easy to use with media player type controls.

5.       Install WordTalk if you use Microsoft Word
WordTalk is free software developed in the United Kingdom which turns Microsoft Word into a Talking Word Processor, with word-by-word highlighting. http://www.wordtalk.org.uk/Home/
An “add-in” toolbar allows students to listen to books pasted into Word or their own writing.

6.       Use the Ghotit online spell-check system
Designed for “dyslexics” and English-Language Learners, Ghotit.com offers an entire new level of spellchecking support. http://www.ghotit.com/home.shtml
Words are defined, and Ghotit allows spelling to be “way off.” (There are school network versions with teacher tools available.)

7.       Install PowerTalk for use with Microsoft PowerPoint
PowerTalk is a free program developed in the United Kingdom which makes Microsoft PowerPoint accessible, as it speaks the text on the slides. http://fullmeasure.co.uk/powertalk/

a.       You may want to have your staff review the advice offered in Creating Accessible Presentations. http://fullmeasure.co.uk/powertalk/#creatingpresentations

8.       Install GraphCalc, the free Windows graphing calculator
For over 15 years students have been using GraphCalc to make math more accessible. GraphCalc puts a full-featured graphing calculator right on the desktop, and allows students to record every step of their work, every part of every equation, and every graph they make, and transfer that (via copy/paste) into homework, classwork, quizzes, and exams (you can paste in Word Docs, Open Office docs, or Google Docs). http://www.graphcalc.com/

a.       SpeedCrunch http://www.speedcrunch.org/en_US/index.html is a simpler on-screen calculator, also free, and offers your students options based in their individual needs.

b.      The online talking calculator from PBS Kids http://pbskids.org/cyberchase/games/calculator/index.html offers another level of accessibility, and can easily be “bookmarked” in your school’s Firefox installation.

9.       Install AMIS, DAISY Playback Software
For use with Bookshare’s (free to schools for qualified students) books. http://www.daisy.org/projects/amis

10.   Install Click-N-Type, the free, adaptable, on-screen keyboard
Click-N-Type is a fully customizable on-screen keyboard for those with limited dexterity and other needs. You can change the size, the key layout, it can speak back what is typed (in many languages), it can change letter-forms when the shift-key is pressed, and it works perfectly in scanning/switch mode. http://www.lakefolks.org/cnt/

11. - Ira Socol

This Century

As we finish the last year of the first decade of this century, it is time to take stock of your school. What century is it when students walk through your door?

(Let's not argue the 2000/2001 thing for century start - of course there was a "year zero." Did we simply jump from 1 BC to 1 AD in twelve months? No. That is not the way the history, or the math, works.)

In today's New York Times Week in Review there is an article about our online digital tools ability to begin recreating the best of education - the Oxford Don, one-on-one approach which predates the industrial processing mode which defines education in the US today. "21st-century technology carries the potential to nudge mainstream education back toward the 16th-century vision of one-to-one tutoring," the article says, in other words, after 400 years of believing in a single technology for education - the fixed, unchanging, impossible to personalize Gutenberg book - we now have technologies to restore humanism and individuality to education - but this time - on a mass scale.

But that is probably not the educational world your students live in. They function each day in a poorly designed factory with inflexible subject divisions, inflexible time periods, and inflexible grade-level-expectations which insist that all learners are moving through all interests - and all skill development - at the same rate. They sit in classrooms which make them uncomfortable, which discourage collaboration, which create and exaggerate "disabilities," which usually prohibit preferred learning tools, and they wait for bells to sound.

Look familiar? Listen, that's not the 21st Century, it is not even the 20th Century. That is a system developed in and created for a 19th Century vision of "Social Darwinism." It is a system based in the supposed needs of the Prussian Empire for industrial workers and compliant soldiers. All the "tools" in use in this "typical" school - age-based grades, discrete subjects, bells signifying periods, the same book in all the students' hands, the chalkboard, the group instruction, the standardized test, were all created between 1800 and 1890 in an attempt to socially engineer society for the second industrial revolution. To 'de-Catholic' British and American society, to build a compliance with industrial shift timetables, to train compliance to authority, and to create failure for most, in order to ensure success for the elite.

And you probably work in a school, or send your children to a school, that is still working toward this bizarre set of goals, while actually arguing over the usefulness of "twenty first century skills."

Change we can believe in

We're not going to change your school overnight. But there are things you can insist on today.

If your school does not have one-to-one computing and wireless networking, insist that students have access to their own devices, and begin collecting used mobile phones and laptops which can be lent to students who lack them.

If your school uses filtering software insist that it block only pornography, not social networking. Students need access to global mentors, and learn to use them.

If your school computers do not use Firefox for web browsing, insist that they install this accessible software with accessibility features - Click-Speak, gTranslate, Dictionary Look-Up, foreign language dictionaries, dictionary switcher, and mapping tools on every computer. A good case can be made that Internet Explorer only schools violate Sections 504 and 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (as amended) by failing to make information and communication equally available to all students, and you can suggest that parents, and students, begin to file complaints.

If your school assigns one book to all students, without accessible versions being made available, you can insist that this stop immediately. Your school must belong to Bookshare (free), the Accessible Book Collection (just $49 annually), and must routinely utilize Project Gutenberg, LibriVox, the University of Virginia Library, and other sources to provide accessible texts to all students who need them - or want them.

If your school does not embrace project-based learning, including cross-curricular projects good for credits in multiple subjects, insist that they do. Students function best when their own interests are engaged, and engagement does not come the same way to any two different students.

If your school library is not an open, accessible space, a path to information-on-demand, it is failing to help students prepare for their future, insist that this change immediately.

And if your school is wasting excessive time on 19th Century skills - including handwriting and no-look keyboarding - insist that they stop tomorrow. Students will be far better served by learning effective texting skills than learning how to sign greeting cards or how to copy text into computers - when their own voice can do that.

Those are, of course, just a few suggestions. But the key is that we must stop debating which century we are in, and start functioning as if the time is now.

- Ira Socol

Click-Speak is Back!

A quick post to say that Click-Speak is back! It now works with Firefox 3.
http://clickspeak.clcworld.net/downloads.html
Now you can upgrade.

Regular post below...

Firefox 3: Not Yet

Just an alert. Firefox 3, the widely anticipated new version of the world's most accessible browser, will not work with the key components which make Firefox accessible. Notably Click-Speak and Accessibar will vanish if Firefox 3 is installed.

Here's hoping we get updates soon for these critical software packages. Until then, there's nothing wrong with Firefox 2. Stick with it.

- Ira Socol

The Drool Room by Ira David Socol, a novel in stories that has - as at least one focus - life within "Special Education in America" - is now available from the River Foyle Press through lulu.com

US $16.00 on Amazon

New! Digital version available through lulu.com

Look Inside This Book

Basic Skills, Basic Bookmarking.

We often miss the simplest things. If we are to help students navigate their way through the world, it is really a good idea to show them how. But for reasons that I'm just not sure of, we usually choose not to do this.

We do not really even teach students to effectively use spellcheckers or grammar checkers. I'm constantly amazed that teachers never show struggling writers how to use Auto-Correct in Microsoft Word. We don't teach them about on-line dictionaries. We don't teach them how to evaluate information in Wikipedia. We don't teach them how to truly use Google or Google Maps. We don't teach them how to find or use the learning support tools available for Firefox. I could write posts about all of these things - and I will do that, but first I want to write about this:

We do not even teach them how to effectively use web browsers and we do not help them to know what web sites we consider important.

We don't do any of that. Instead we just complain.

Years ago... 1996 or 1997 perhaps, I set up a computer network in a high school. One of the first things that I built into the 'image' loaded to all the computers was a custom bookmark bar in Netscape. Right across the top of the browser we had links to local and major state universities, to libraries, to state and local governments, to job search sites. Also to early versions of search engines, citation machines, map programs. And to resources such as the CIA World Factbook, major newspapers, and more.

Yes, there were pages of those resources on the school library's website. Of course there were. But it was obvious from the start that the bookmarks were easier to use, more likely to be used, and thus, far more useful.

Today when I set up lab machines I line the bookmark toolbar with folders: Libraries, Job Search, Web Search, Universities, Newspapers, Maps, Research Tools, and Digital Texts. Each folder becomes a drop-down menu with a single click. Libraries brings links to local public, state, and university library homepages. Maps offers Google Maps and Mapquest, along with mass transit guides. And on and on. Users need never hunt around - the links are always right in front of them.

But usability is only one feature - teaching is another. First, we are demonstrating how to effectively individualize a browser to support what you need to do. Second, we are showing all these users what web sites we think are both important and valid.

So what's in your bookmark bar?
Google
Google Scholar
Yahoo!
Google Maps
Mapquest
New York Public Library
Library of Congress
Fordham University History Sourcebook
Your nearest university library
Project Gutenberg
The New York Times
The Guardian
The Times of London
Le Monde (and newspaper sites from around the world and in any language spoken or taught in your school)
BBC
University of Virginia E-book Library

I'm certain that you can build from this list.

- Ira Socol

The Drool Room by Ira David Socol, a novel in stories that has - as at least one focus - life within "Special Education in America" - is now available from the River Foyle Press through lulu.com

US $16.00 on Amazon

US $16.00 direct via lulu.com

Look Inside This Book