The Braille is not printed on paper but is produced electronically with tiny little pegs or pins which pop up on a grid, which you then touch. You would need a device known as a Braille display, which is a separate device that produces Braille. What about Braille? Can you use Braille to read what’s on a computer screen?Ī. There are programs to facilitate this as well, such as MAGic from Freedom Scientific or Zoomtext, also from Freedom Scientific. What about making text and pictures larger or easier to see?Ī. We can also access Web browsers like Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox Microsoft Edge and Google chrome to read Web pages. Screen readers can access email programs such as Microsoft Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird and others to compose and read email. What about reading material from the Internet?Ī. This allows a blind person to not only hear what’s on the screen but it also allows for editing as well. By using the arrow keys on your keyboard, you can review anything on the screen character by character, word by word, line by line, sentence by sentence and even paragraph by paragraph. Can these programs help you to review what’s already on the screen?Ī. These programs can read each character you type, read just one word at a time as you type or they can be totally silent. They can also speak what you type on the keyboard so you’ll know if you’ve made any mistakes. OK, so these screen readers read what appears on the screen? Is that all they do?Ī. I think we’re closer to voices sounding more like Hal from “2001: A Space Odyssey” rather than the robots from science fiction shows from the 1960’s. Actually, most of the synthetic voices used today are very pleasant and some of them sound remarkably human. Does the voice sound like a robot, like the one from “Lost in Space?”Ī. A screen reader does just what its name implies: it reads what is on the screen using artificial speech and the voice is heard from the computer’s speakers. There are several ways in which this is done.įirst, you need a program on your computer known as a screen reader. OK, so how *does* a blind person use a computer, anyway?Ī. If your question isn’t answered, feel free to email me and I’ll add it to this page. I’d like to answer some general questions I often receive from people who want to know how such a thing is possible. If you’re curious about this topic, this page was written for you. Some people are curious but are a bit nervous about asking the question. When I tell them that I test software, many of them are understandably curious and ask questions about how a blind person could use a computer, smartphone or tablet. Throughout my day, both at work as well as going to and from work, a lot of people ask me about the type of work that I do.
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