Charles Ely, Assistive Technology Adviser for the South Lakes Society for the Blind in Kendal, responded to one of my answers (below) with some practical advice in a letter he acknowledged would be too long to print. Fortunately the blog has no shortage of space, so here it is. JS
I'd just like to add a few comments to your "Easier reading" reply (24/08/06). In no particular order...
To alter text size in IE and Firefox (and lots of other programs including MS Word), hold down the Ctrl key and use the mouse wheel. This saves going through menus that you have difficulty in seeing.
A really good way of getting web page font style, size and colour to suit an individual is to create your own style sheet and use it for all web pages, this can be done in most browsers. You can go some way to creating your ideal style sheet using the OneFormat web site, but you may want to create something more closely tailored to your own needs. Of course some badly designed pages will not work well, so you need the ability to change back to the site's own style sheet. To avoid going through barely visible menus to do this, the process can be automated using windows scripts.
Many screen readers and talking browsers are not quick-fixes, they need to be learnt. Jaws, for instance, is a wonderful program (probably the best) for people with no sight, but would anyone that can cope with large text really want to use it? I doubt it. Incidently, if you do use Jaws, stick to IE - there are scripts available to make it work with Firefox, but it does work best with IE. If you need a screen reader, whichever one you use, if the web page has been badly constructed (and there are plenty that have), you don't stand a chance.
I think The Guide (from Software Express) deserves a mention. This program makes computer use for visually impaired novices amazingly easy, but if you want to do anything more than the basics, it is not for you.
You mentioned the Windows magnifier, which works but is really not very good. Much better commercial alternatives are available (Zoomtext and Lunar). But if you don't want to spend £300 for a magnifier, try iZoom. This is an open-source (Free!) magnifier, not wonderful, but much better than the Windows one.
Toodle pip
Charles Ely
