Understand and Use the Accessibility Option in Windows XP

Microsoft thought that all the people should take advantage of its operating system no matter if they suffer from disabilities or other impediments. So, to ease the job for those who cannot handle the computer 100% because of some health problems, a useful option has been placed in Control Panel. It is called Accessibility Options and provides help to make the usage of the operating system more comfortable for people with the mentioned problems.

By accessing this tool, found in Control Panel, you will discover that there are 5 tabs available in accordance to the targeted domain: Keyboard, Sound, Display, Mouse and General. Now let's take a look at each one individually and see what they offer:

Keyboard tab

Under this tab you have three useful options that can make your computer work easier:

￭ StickyKeys

This option was created to help people that have difficulties in pressing multiple keys simultaneosly. If you activate this option, a little icon will be shown in the tray that will inform you that this option is activated. You will notice that when you press CTRL, SHIFT, ALT or Windows Logo key it will turn in black, this means Windows will keep in mind that you pressed the key and you can press another, instead of pressing both at the same time. Under the settings tab you can select whether you want to be noticed by sound when you hit a key or to use a shortcut (Shift) to activate or deactivate the option.

￭ FilterKeys

With this option you can reduce the repeated keys by instructing Windows to ignore the same key pressed repeatedly. When this option is activated, a small time icon is show in the system tray.

Under the settings tab you can provide the time interval between repeated keystrokes. So you can decide which keystrokes to be ignored: faster then 0.5 sec, 0.7 sec, 1.0 sec or even 2 seconds.

￭ Togglekeys

By activating this option you will hear tones when you press Caps Lock, Num Lock or Scroll Lock. The shortcut for this option is to hold down the Num Lock key for 5 seconds.

Sound tab

￭ Sound Sentry

This feature was designed for hearing impaired people. When checked, you will receive a visual notice on the screen (flashing the active caption bar, flashing the active window or flashing desktop) whenever the computer makes a sound.

￭ Showsounds

This option will instruct the programs that deliver sound and speech to display captions.

Display tab

This tab delivers 2 options: High Contrast, which instructs Windows to display fonts and colors designed for easy reading (very helpful for people with eye problems) and Cursor options, which lets you set the cursor blinking rate and the cursor width (fast blinking and narrow width makes the cursor irreparably on the screen)

Mouse tab

Only one option is available under this tab. It will let you control the mouse pointer with the numeric keypad on your keyboard.

You may consider these options useless, but in some situations they are practical and moreover they can be a God help for people with disabilities.