Windows 98 Companion - Accessibility

Accessibility Options

Windows tries to offer features that can help people who have difficulties accessing the system. These are designed to help both children and visually impaired people. When you open this preference program, you will find a set of tabs that control different aspects. Each tab is broken down into individual parts and may have a button to open another dialog.

The Accessibility Options cover the main areas where the operating system interacts with the user - through the keyboard, mouse and screen. It does have some support for additional input devices that may be attached, but this is not the primary purpose of this Control Panel. New accessibility features in the browser In addition to the functions offered by this Control Panel, Windows now offers a host of other accessibility features. IE4 allows style sheets so you can force HTML pages to appear in a way that you find easier to read and of course you can increase the font size used in it to display pages in the View\Fonts menu. Additionally there are two options in the Advanced tab of the Internet Options dialog opened from the View menu (IE4.01) that allow you to move the system caret with the focus and to make sure that the Alt tag text (caption) for an image is always displayed instead of only by hovering over images.

Windows 98 also supplies a new Accessibility Wizard that changes options other than those available in this Control Panel and includes a Magnifier for viewing a part of the screen at high zoom in a top portion of the screen.

	Keyboard The Keyboard tab contains settings that change the way the keyboard works. You can Use Sticky Keys so that you only have to press keys like Shift once and release in order to make the next letter press a capital, rather than having to hold the Shift key down as you type. FilterKeys will try and filter out incorrect multiple key presses by reducing the repeat speed, so that holding a key down does not repeat the letter as quickly as normal. See also Keyboard ToggleKeys simply adds a sound event to certain key presses like Caps Lock so you get an audible warning that it has been activated. See also Sounds Each of these options has a Settings button which allows you to customise the options further to enhance its usefulness, or simply to fit with personal preference, such as whether to beep when a key is pressed to indicate acceptance.
	Sound The sound tab allows you to change Windows in order to show visual warnings whenever an audio warning is generated by the system, like a Delete warning. You can modify the type of visual warning - border flash or screen flash, etc - that will be generated through the Settings button. The ShowSounds option tells compatible programs to display captions whenever they make a sound or play a speech sample.
	Display The Display tab allows you to change the screen colours to a scheme designed for easy reading. The Settings button allows you to choose the colour scheme to be used. See also Desktop Themes, Display
	Mouse If you cannot operate a mouse or other pointing device then the MouseKeys option under the mouse tab allows you to control the pointer using the numeric keypad instead. The speed of the pointer can be adjusted in the Settings. See also Mouse
	General The General tab controls the Accessibility features as a whole. For example you can set the system so that the Accessibility features are only temporarily enabled and the system reverts back after a given period. You can generate warnings when features are turned on and off and you can also set the system to allow it to take alternative input from specialised devices attached to the Serial port. The Settings button sets up the baud rate and Comms port to be used.

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