Visual Impairment

Internet pioneer Tim Berners Lee

Internet pioneer Sir Tim Berners Lee visiting Kenya Society for the Blind

Back in 2010/11 I was on a Voluntary Service Overseas placement as Assistive Technology Trainer with the Kenya Society for the Blind in Nairobi. Besides having a great time and meeting some fantastic people I now have experience of training folk on a range of screen reader and magnification software and creating accessible learning material. Here is an article that I wrote for 'e-quality' a newsletter produced by the Scotland North and East Regional support Centre of JISC that promotes accessible and inclusive e-learning, while I was there.

Specalised software from commercial companies can be very expensive, freeware or open source alternatives for MS Windows that I can recommend is NVDA A screen reader (go to the downloads page to get the NVDA keyboard commands in landscape format)


If you want portable versions of these programs then get them from the (UK Joint Information Systems Council) Access Apps site.

If you would prefer an accessible Linux alternative to MS Windows you can install Ubuntu with the Orca screen reader but there are some performance problems with standard Ubuntu and I would suggest that you try out Knoppix or the Ubuntu based Vinux instead.

Vinux logo

Free or commercial is up to you, choose either and I can help to meet your training needs.

If your UK organisation provides any information or services to the public then you fall under the scope of the

Disablity Discrimination Act

I can advise on how to produce accessible web sites and publications in various formats including large print and Daisy Talking Book (DTB).

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FREE GUIDES!

Visimpscot has produced a range of learning materials and guides that can be downloaded from here https://www.dropbox.com/sh/u8uqmrmi21b1h6x/AACqKsFuk7zhlEJOxeThPqDga?dl=0

Digital Skills with NVDA. This guide concentrates on delivering basic digital skills using the NVDA screen reader for MS Windows. It is available now!

  • A guide to working with visually impaired adults and made it available for download. Note despite my efforts there are some unresolved copyright issues so do read the warning at the front. There is also a SCORM 1.2 elearning package based on it that can be imported straight into a LMS (Learning Management System) such as Moodle

  • Some reminder sheets for NVDA screen reader keyboard commands.

  • Comprehensive guides on using MS Excel and Word, Open Office / Libre Office Calc and Writer from the keyboard without any mouse commands (need to be deployed on a web server or a copy of Moodle).

Some people use keyboard commands instead of a computer mouse or other pointing device because they cannot, or have difficulty seeing the screen. Other people use keyboard commands, at least some of the time because the find it faster

and more convenient, especially experienced touch typists who would break their rhythm by taking a hand off the keys.

The popular MS Excel and Word programs as well as the alternatives LibreOffice or OpenOffice Calc and Writer have comprehensive sets of keyboard commands although finding out what they all are is not easy. To solve this problem Visimpscot (my IT training business name)has prepared four guides that can be freely downloaded from http://tinyurl.com/visimpscot and distributed to anyone who needs them (they are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License). If you modify the guides, acknowledge the source and use the same Creative Commons license.


Creative Commons License