Making Windows Vista and computing more accessible to everyone!

Aspects often forgotten in the heat of “cool stuff”, Sucurity, stabolity, etc. How can people with disabilities, older people. Last year we had a speaker on one of our company meetings in The Netherlands who is blind. He explained how important it is people who design websites and software in general take a “disability angle” in their design and build.

Dr. Crounse and his guests discuss the surprising incidence of permanent and temporary disabilities and then demonstrate some of the accessibility tools available in Windows Vista. See how the Ease of Access Center can be used to customize a user’s experience to meet their needs and abilities; watch how the Narrator accessibility feature can be used to navigate applications; and learn about other features in Windows Vista designed for people with visual disabilities.

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Link to Making Windows Vista and computing more accessible to everyone!

In one of my posts back in August of this year, I quoted the decision of Massachusetts to not go with Open Office or some other stripped down version of Office for this type of functionality:

…Last year, Massachusetts caught international attention for its decision to standardize by January 2007 on ODF, a document format standard not supported in Microsoft Office.

The move was criticized by disability-rights groups, which complained that going to ODF-compliant products, such as the open-source OpenOffice suite, would not adequately address their needs. In general, Microsoft Office has better assistive technologies, such as screen enlargers …