Accessibility for People with Disabilities
Accessibility for People with Disabilities |
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Cognitive disabilities include developmental disabilities, such as Down syndrome; learning disabilities, such as dyslexia, language unfamiliarity, illiteracy, attention deficit disorder, and memory loss; and perceptual difficulties, such as slow response time. In addition to third-party assistive devices, for example, voice input utilities, some Windows built-in features can be especially helpful to people with cognitive disabilities. Examples are the IntelliSense® features, such as AutoCorrect, AutoComplete, and Automatic Spell Checking.
You can customize AutoComplete to include only the information that users need. For some users, these features facilitate their work considerably. However, for other users, with some features—such as AutoComplete or certain sound schemes—it is advantageous for users with cognitive disabilities to clear, rather than to select these options. Such features can cause distractions, especially if the user is working with a text-to-speech utility.
Several Windows 2000 accessibility features found in the Accessibility Wizard or Control Panel can be useful to people with cognitive disabilities. Users who are familiar with Windows NT version 4.0 or earlier need to know that special keyboard filters have been rearranged in Windows 2000. Both the Accessibility Wizard and Control Panel now allow users to adjust keyboard response time to ignore accidental pressing of keys and slow response time.
Keyboard options useful to people with cognitive disabilities are hot keys and other keyboard shortcuts. Additionally, the following features are also useful to people with cognitive disabilities: Narrator; Active Desktop; system status icons that show which features are activated; and sound options found in the Accessibility Wizard and Control Panel. Also, sound schemes can help draw attention to, or provide additional feedback for, tasks as the user does them.
Users with language-related difficulties might find Microsoft Synchronized Accessible Media Interchange (SAMI) useful to better understand speech through text captions. This Windows 2000 feature is described in the section "Options for Users with Hearing Impairments" later in this appendix.