Glasgow Education
ASL Technology Service
Accesssibility on the Refresh Desktop
ASL Technology has worked together with both the Educational Technology & ICT
Contract Manager & the ACCESS REFRESH Team to make it simpler for all staff and
pupils to access additional ICT support. Below is a screenshot of the desktop, as it looks
at present, with the Recycle Bin at the top left corner and, below it, five folders down
the left side of the screen.
Accessibility features on the Schools Network can all be found in this folder near the top
left corner of the desktop.
Double click on the icon to open
and you will find these items
1 Ease of Access – see page 2
2 Study Bar – see page 3
3 Ivona MiniReader- see page 3
4 Wordtalk- may not appear as a separate
folder on all desktops but a 3 page guide is
attached to this document
Updated 06/12/13
Glasgow Education
ASL Technology Service
Accesssibility on the Refresh Desktop
1.Ease
of Access Folder
Ease of Access
Ease of Access
This folder is mainly aimed at pupils with a physical, visual
or hearing impairment (VI, PI or HI). Once settings have
been made for an individual login they will open
automatically on that same PC but will need reset on other
machines.
Simply click on the shortcut and follow the instructions to
set up for individual pupil (or staff) needs. Further guidance
on this can be found at Microsoft.com
This is a useful tool for
pupils and/or staff
Magnify
Magnify
with a VI. It has three
modes and can be adjusted to suit the
needs of individuals. VI teachers will usually
advise on appropriate settings and users
are usually quick to identify the mode they
prefer.
NB: Icon can be pinned to the task bar for
easier access.
Narrator
Only use if advised by a specialist teacher e.g. VI- rarely required by
school-age students.
Really useful for pupils with a PI – allows use of mouse or
alternative devices as required.
Onscreen Keyboard
By clicking on the options button you can adjust the settings as
required. It is also possible to activate word prediction along
the top of the keyboard.
This may provide support for some learners to input text
more readily.
Speech Recognition
Only use if advised by a specialist teacher as training the computer requires
a lot of time & effort. Rarely used successfully by school-age students.
Page |2
Glasgow Education
ASL Technology Service
Accesssibility on the Refresh Desktop
2.
Study Bar
This is a collection of useful apps that can be used individually or in conjunction with others to
support a variety of needs. Most are straightforward to use but if in doubt check out the
individual Settings/ ‘Help’ menus (These can usually be accessed by right clicking on either the
application or the Icon that appears on the Task bar on opening). We recommend the first five
items on the list as being generally effective.
Orato; text reader > Copy (Ctrl+C) & can be set to read automatically- similar to
Wordtalk.
Overlay: tints the screen- good for pupils who suffer from visual stress
RapidSet: allows you to change the background & font colours
T-Bar: masks text by producing a coloured rectangle which you can move about as
required.
Vu-Bar: is a screen ruler that adapts to font size & provides a window for text
Sonar: screen magnifier that moves with the mouse pointer
Thunder; screen reader – good for pupils with a Visual Impairment (VI)
Balabolka: writing support/mp3
Win7Voice: can ignore this for now
Talking Dictionary- no translation options available as not activated
3.
Ivona Minireader
Play Button
Stop button
Choose the voice
Speed slider
Volume slider
Ivona Reader will read any text you can highlight- email, internet, document or PowerPoint (in edit
mode).
Simply select/highlight the text then click on play to listen.
The tool bar can be minimised to sit on the task bar when not in use.
**TIP – Drag bar by top left corner & avoid clicking on blue ‘Buy IvonaReader’
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Glasgow Education
ASL Technology Service
Accesssibility on the Refresh Desktop
4.Wordtalk
This does not now appear in everyone’s accessibility folder as it should open
automatically with MS Word Documents. If it doesn’t you should speak to your ICT
Coordinator and in the meantime:
In the Accessibility Folder double click on Wordtalk and a blank document will open with an
Add-Ins Tab on the menu bar.
To drop the Wordtalk ribbon click on the Add-ins tab as below
Basic Features of Wordtalk still apply- but there are now some additional options
Speak from Cursor
Speak
Paragraph
Speak
Sentence
Speak
Selection
Speak
Word
Configure
WordTalk
Stop
Speaking
About
WordTalk
Talking
Spell check
Type or paste some text into your Word Document.
Put the cursor somewhere in the text, and click W, S or P on the WordTalk toolbar to
read the word, sentence or paragraph.
There will be a short delay the first time it speaks while the voice is loaded.
You should only need to do this once as Word will remember that WordTalk is allowed
the next time you use it.
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Glasgow Education
ASL Technology Service
Accesssibility on the Refresh Desktop
Configuring WordTalk
When the Configure button
Colour, Keys & Options.
Make changes to Speech &
Colour as below
is chosen, a window appears. It now has four tabs – Speech,
To set up Keyboard
Shortcuts click the
Keys tab > tick the
Keyboard Shortcut
Box
> Save setting > OK
Under the Options tab > tick the boxes
as required to make a change > Save
setting > OK
Speech
The Speed of the voice can be
changed by dragging right/left
along the speed bar.
The Volume of the voice can be
altered by dragging right/left
along the volume bar.
Voices can be
changed by clicking
here.
NB: Don’t forget
to save your
settings
If adding a background colour to the current text being
spoken is helpful then choose the background colour
wanted and click OK.
Some colours are not particularly useful as a background as
they obscure the text more than anything else. However
blue, dark red or light gray are fine.
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GlasgGlasgow Education
ASL Technology Service
Accessibility on the Refresh Desktop
Talking Spell Check
Word has a good spell checker of its own. WordTalk uses the Word dictionaries
with a few “phonic” enhancements. WordTalk also speaks the suggestions which
can be helpful in some cases.
To use the WordTalk spell check, place the
caret in the word to be checked and then
click on the WordTalk spelling icon.
Listening to the suggestions
To listen to the suggestions, select the
word in the list that you wish to hear by
left clicking on it. The suggestion will be
spoken.
If a correct suggestion is found, select it and click Replace Spelling to correct
the word.
Listening to synonyms
Sometimes it is useful to get a list of the synonyms of a word, for example, to
clarify the meaning.
To do this, select the suggestion and
then click on the Talking Spellcheck
Icon.
Click on Find Synonym. If there are any
synonyms in the Thesaurus dictionary
they will be displayed in the synonym
box. You can listen by left clicking on
each suggestion. To choose Click on
Replace Synonym
*** The Council takes no responsibility for the installation of any software
on an individual’s home computer.
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