Here are some examples of accessibility aids that can help make using your computer easier.
Keyboard stickers
Keyboard stickers can be stuck onto individual keys on the computer keyboard. The lettering on the stickers is large and printed in a bold typeface and in a range of different colour combinations. A set of stickers costs from £7.
Keyboards
There are a number of large print keyboards and large button keyboards available. Large print keyboards use standard sized keys, but the characters printed on each key are larger. They come in a variety of colour combinations and prices start from £23.99
Large button keyboards are keyboard on which the keys are bigger, making the keyboard itself larger, and not including the number keypad. These are not recommended if you plan to learn to touch-type. The Startaboard high contrast keyboard is designed primarily for use in schools and does not have the top row of function keys.
Magnifying filter screens
Magnifying filter screens (fresnel lens) are plastic sheets that can be placed in front of the computer screen, and offer small levels of magnification. These lenses can also help to reduce the amount of glare from a computer screen due to an anti-reflective coating. Available in a range of sizes to suit different monitors; 15, 17 and 19 inches.
Monitor screens
Increasing the size of screen text or using screen magnification software means less can be fitted onto the screen. One option to get more text on the screen is to increase its size. You can specify a larger monitor when you buy a computer, or add one later. Screen sizes of 19 inch or 21 inch are now considered standard, and you can buy monitors of up to 32 inches in many shops.
Older monitors used Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) technology similar to televisions, and are heavy and large with curved screens. Newer monitors include Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) and Thin-Film Transistor (TFT) technology, which give less flicker than the CRT models, are often larger, and are flat.
Monitors vary vastly in price depending on their size. Large monitors are widely available from high street retailers.
Braille displays
An electronic braille display is a tactile device that is placed under a conventional computer keyboard and enables the user to read the contents of the computer screen by touch in braille. They are also known as paperless, soft or refreshable braille displays and vary in size from 12 to 80 braille cells.
Each cell has 6 or 8 pins made of metal or nylon, which are electronically controlled to move up and down, to display a braille version of characters that appear on the computer screen. Braille displays are driven by a screen reader, as described on the Software for computers page. The seventh and eighth dots can show additional information like formatting or the location of the cursor.
Above each cell is a touch cursor which can be used to move the cursor to that location.This means you can be reading some text, notice a spelling mistake, and move the cursor to the mistake before moving your hands to the keyboard to correct it.
The displays have additional controls which can be used to move around the screen, reading whichever part you wish, and this reduces the need to keep switching back and forth between the display (for reading) and the keyboard (for everything else).
Braille can provide layout information more efficiently and using a braille display is described by users as being more accurate. A spelling mistake, for example, is often more obvious on a braille display than hearing mispronunciation amongst a lot of speech. It is sometimes said that speech is for speed and braille is for accuracy. For many people braille is their natural way of working, and is an essential medium for deafblind people.
Braille displays are very expensive. One example is the Seika which, at £1350 excluding VAT, is relatively cheap for a 40-cell display!