Sticky Keys can also be activated anywhere in Windows by pressing down the shift key five times in a row in rapid succession.įilter Keys will keep an eye out for repeated keystrokes and minimize your need to go back over what you’ve written with the backspace key, designed for anyone who might have trouble managing their hands on the keyboard or need a system that monitors for faulty keyboard commands struck too many times in a short period of time.
Great for anyone who might be sight challenged, or sausage fingers like myself who accidentally hit it when they’re trying to enter their password at the main screen. Toggle Keys will help to solve the pesky problem of never knowing whether or not Caps Lock has been activated by playing a tone every time that or the Num Lock or Scroll Lock keys are hit.
RELATED: How to Prevent the Windows Key, Alt+Tab, and Sticky Keys From Ruining Your Gaming This is perfect for anyone who has issues maintaining finger dexterity for long periods of time (arthritis patients come to mind), or just users who are too lazy to manage holding down more than a few keys at once. Sticky Keys will change your keyboard to treat any strikes of the ctrl, shift, or alt keys as a hold command, rather than a tap as it usually would.
The On-Screen Keyboard is a great tool for anyone who’s using Windows 10 on their Surface tablet, or just want to get a few words in without having to break out the bluetooth keyboard to make it happen.
The keyboard options in Ease of Access has always been one of Windows shining points, offering up a wide range of customization that will help anyone with disabilities or special needs have exactly the PC experience they want every time they boot up and log in. You can opt to change the font, the color of the text, or both at the same time if you have specific needs depending on your own vision requirements. For those who have difficulties making out the white text against moving backgrounds in Windows Media Player, this option can be a godsend that allows you to choose between any color you’d like on the Windows color palette. The closed captions section can be used to customize how any closed captions in your local media players will appear during the playback of movies or TV shows. High contrast will drastically alter the overall color scheme so that text, images, application windows and icons become easier to read for anyone who might have colorblindness, or simply want to spice things up when the old layout gets too easy on the eyes. Sticking with the concept of “making things easier”, Microsoft has opted to group all its visual accessibility features into the top three choices in the Ease of Access panel. RELATED: How Anyone Can Benefit from Windows’ Accessibility Options High Contrast This can be changed to follow only the mouse, the selection of the keyboard, or even both at the same time. New to Windows 10 is a setting which will allow you to specifically designate what gets magnified. Here you’ll find options such as turning the Magnifier on or off, inverting colors within the magnified area (again, made with designers and digital painters in mind), and a toggle which will automatically start the Magnifier tool each time you log in to your account. Magnifier is yet another of the Windows Ease of Access features designed to assist anyone who either has trouble reading their screen, or even just creative professionals wants a tool that will allow them to get a close up view of detail work in 3D modeling, Photoshop, or game design. Here in Narrator, you can switch between the two, though neither has any particular advantage over the other, and in general it’s merely a matter of personal preference.
One voice option you might not recognize from the previous version of Windows, however, is Microsoft’s Zira, who’s offered up as an alternative to the standard male orator, David.
Many of the same features first introduced in Windows 7 have carried through to 10, such as reading off the characters you type as you type them, playing audio cues when you click into new pages or applications, and reading off hints for controls and buttons which will nudge sight challenged users in the right direction based on carefully tuned prediction algorithms. For the blind or those with acute sight limitations, Narrator is a vital tool which will read off the contents of any page, window, or application your click into piece by piece, while also reciting the specific portions of those selections out loud.