WINDOWS 98 EXPLAINED - Reviewed by Peter Bosher, Chair of the British
Computer Association of the Blind (1998-2001)
Published in Ability (the disability magazine of the British Computer
Society), January 2002.
When Microsoft Windows started its bid for desktop world domination
in the early nineties, it looked to many as though the end was nigh
for blind and partially sighted computer users. This happened at a
time when many new job opportunities, in general office-based work
as well as the more traditional computer-programming field, were opening
up, thanks to the relative ease with which computers could be adapted
for use with Braille, speech-synthesis or screen-magnification under
the old MS-DOS operating system. Remember MS-DOS? You typed a command,
and it said something back. This something was a text-string that
could be easily spoken or Brailled. Admittedly, much of the time,
what it said was "bad command or filename" but even that
could be understood and translated into speech or Braille. Not so
with Windows.
How on earth would a blind person be able to work in this new world
where, to delete something, you had to find the picture of the dustbin
with your mouse and click on it?
The answer to this took years to emerge, but one book, more than
any other single piece of work, broke down this apparently immovable
obstacle. That book was Sarah Morley's "Windows Concepts".
Thanks to Sarah's work in researching how a wide range of visually
impaired people were able to work effectively with these new user-interfaces
with speech and Braille, she developed a remarkable insight, and understanding
of how you perform tasks when you can't see the screen. She did this
in two ways: by describing in clear non-visual terms what was actually
happening on the screen, with the support of tactile diagrams for
those who like to have an understanding of physical lay-out, and by
explaining the functions of Windows concepts such as dialogue boxes,
radio buttons, check-boxes and so-on. Most importantly perhaps, she
gave simple and clear instructions on how to achieve these tasks from
the keyboard, eliminating the genuine difficulty presented by that
wretched mouse.
Windows Concepts was followed by Windows 95 Explained, which had
to reflect the significant changes from the original, extremely clunky
windows 3.x, to the slicker, less accident-prone and generally more
intuitive interface of Windows 95. That book built on the strengths
of the original and has been the bible for PC trainers of visually
impaired people. The value of Dr Morley's work was recognised when
she was awarded the SAP Stevie Wonder Vision Pioneer prize in 1998.
So, what of Windows 98 Explained? Why have I devoted the major part
of this review to the first two books? Well simply because this one
is, and declares itself to be, an update, or supplement, rather than
a new stand-alone book.
If you are familiar with using Windows 95 without the screen, and
you now have to update to Windows 98, then you will find this extremely
helpful because it describes simply and clearly what the differences
are, and how to re-configure your system so that it works optimally
with speech, Braille or screen magnification. If you are coming to
this as a Windows virgin, then you need to start with Windows 95 Explained,
and then read the 98 book to get fully up-to-speed.
This short book contains a wealth of subtle but important changes
which will make life far more productive: how to get rid of visual
clutter by turning off the Active Desktop, how to have your folders
and files listed in an understandable way rather than having to navigate
a table of unknown layout, how to create shortcut keys, far easier
incidentally than it was with Windows 95, how to use the built-in
screen magnifier and adapted mouse-pointers, together with the functional
changes from 95, such as the important Find and Help applications.
There is also a useful section on how to have several configurations
(user profiles) on the same machine, so that if a visually impaired
person is sharing the machine with a sighted family, it can behave
one way with speech, and another without.
In short, the good Dr Morley has done it again! This is a modest
but essential addition to the collection of anybody who needs to understand
for themselves, or teach visually impaired people how to use a PC.
Similar works for the very latest flavours of Windows, Millennium
and XP, are in that productive pipeline
Windows 98 Explained: an overview for blind and visually impaired
users, by Dr Sarah Morley with Anna Dresner, is available in print,
Braille, tape or disk, and published in the UK by RNIB, Bakewell Road,
Peterborough, PE2 6WS, Tel 08457 023 153.
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