Mobility and dexterity accessibility

- So much has changed about the way people physically control technology in recent years. It's not just keyboard and mouse, although they are certainly the predominant input methods. As businesses around the world implement bringing your own device policies and work is increasingly done in the cloud with great security features to protect information, this opens up great opportunities for people with disabilities to choose hardware and input methods that optimize their input. What makes a great experience? How many input methods do you use with your tech? I'm surrounded by technology. I get access to all sorts of devices in my daily life. Let's think about this for a minute. I use my phone with touch, with voice, with hardware button sequences. I use my headset, it has buttons and key sequences and the lift mechanism to mute. I use my tablet with touch onscreen keyboard and with inking. I use my laptop with keyboard, track pad, mouse, touchscreen, voice, and by extension, I could use joysticks or use my number pad as a mouse and even I control which has supported in mainstream PCs nowadays. But even though we have choice, there are still features and settings that can support people with physical disabilities. Presenting as limb disabilities, arthritis, carpal tunnel syndrome, hemiplegia, muscular dystrophies and spinal cord injury. I want to start with typing and text inputs. There are a number of methods to personalize the typing experience. First, is word prediction. This is not just for onscreen keyboards, nowadays you can also get the keyboard use, turn on text suggestions and autocorrect in your typing settings and measure how many keystrokes you save. Next is sticky keys and filter keys. These settings have been around for decades allowing for 100 typing and ignoring accidental double pressing of the keys. This is tremor control. Next, we have dictation. This has really improved over the last few years. System wide dictation is available on most modern personal computers. If I press windows key H anywhere on my PC, I can type into any text box, on the web, in a search bar, on a sticky note, on a to do list. If you combine this with some really intelligent auto correct or intelligent web search, accuracy is just not as critical. So you really don't lose any functionality. It really is the time to revisit this technology. Finally, there's full dictation in office products and by extension audio transcription in word. You can punctuate fully and edit a document with voice commands. Let's try it. Hey Jennie, let's reschedule today's meeting for next week, period. New line, speak soon, period. Next let's move to the keyboard. For many people, the main challenge is actually moving from mouse to keyboard or vice versa. If you use a joystick, it's often easier to utilize an onscreen keyboard rather than lift across to a physical keyboard. Likewise, if you rest nicely on your keyboard you don't want to have to move to a physical mouse. I have two tips here. First look out for keyboard shortcuts. In office products, hit your Alt key and look all the keyboard shortcuts eliminate, learn the ones you use the most. Try this, press Alt + H + D. You're now dictating an office 365 and you press Alt + H + D, to stop. How easy is that? Find the settings that you use the most and commit your keystrokes to memory. Next, use your number pad as a mouse. If you don't have a large keyboard, say, use a laptop, then you can buy a really low cost plugin and place alongside your existing keyboard or buy a full keyboard that meets your needs. Finally, I want to show you something magic in PowerPoint. Let's create a beautiful slide in seconds with a feature created by our engineers working with colleagues with physical disability. Look at PowerPoint designer. This speeds up slide creation for everyone but it was created to deliver an equitable experience. For some, this whole process would have been exhausting or just too much effort. Now everyone creates these great looking slides in seconds. So there you have it. Take some time to think about all the different ways you can control modern technology and check out some of the features for yourself.