This past Friday, the Accessibility & Usability Committee did a presentation to the rest of the CTEP group on some different types of assistive technology, all of which is available at the Lexington Outreach Library.
We started out with an activity for the group. This was to get them interested in the topic, and give them a feeling of how someone unable to use the mouse would use a computer. Everyone split into groups of 2 or 3, and tried to perform 5 basic tasks one would often do with the mouse. The catch was, they couldn't use the mouse at all. They could only use the keyboard. I think this was a great way to start the presentation because it made them think of using the computer in a whole new way.
Everyone did well though and completed all of the tasks after struggling a little in the beginning. Surprisingly though, people had trouble with different things than I thought they would. One common question was how to close a program or window. Another was how to get to desktop icons. Overall though I think it was a great activity, and I'll probably do something like this again if I ever have the chance.
After the activity, I demonstrated a few programs available at the library, and that I use every day. I showed JAWS, Magic, and Kurzweil. For more info on these programs, and others, visit my other CTEP blog at
www.jessean1.blogspot.com.
I showed how the programs worked, how they worked with programs everyone uses every day like Word and Internet Explorer, and common keyboard shortcuts I often use. I finished the presentation with a rather funny bit. I showed how Jaws can speak Brittish English. Everyone really got a kick out of that, and I admit it still amuses me after all these years.
We ended the day by talking about some quick and easy tips and tricks to make using Windows faster. There were a lot of great questions from everyone too, and I had a lot of fun. All of the hand-outs and activity sheets are available at our
Accessibility & Usability Committee section of the CTEP Message Board.
