Windows Low Vision: Accessing the Keyboard

I'm Vikki Vaughan and today we'll explore tools for customizing keyboard settings on our computer.

Have you ever been typing along and discover you've accidentally hit the Caps Lock key. If you're like me, you think it would have been nice to have some type of warning before I discovered this halfway down the page. Thankfully Windows has an option that lets us customize our keyboard settings so it gives us this type of warning. With these features turned on we'll always know when our Caps Lock is activated. We find these tools in Windows Ease of Access, our one-stop-shop for accessibility options.

Let's use the keyboard shortcut, Windows and the letter U, to jump right into the Ease of Access tab. We do that by holding down the Windows key and then we tap and release the letter U.

A handy tip, think of the word usable. Since the options we're talking about make our computer more usable, this will help us remember our shortcut.

On the left side of our screen, under settings, we find a list of customizing tools. This list is grouped into categories related to disability and our keyboard tools can be found under the interaction heading. When we choose keyboard on the left side, various controls related to our keyboard, up here on the right side.

Many controls on this page make typing easier for people with limited fine motor skills. Now we won't cover them in depth today, but we'll focus on controls that are especially helpful to users with low vision.

Let's have a look at a control that is particularly useful. The toggle keys control make a sound whenever we press the Caps Lock, Num Lock or Scroll Lock keys. We activate this control by selecting it with our mouse or by pressing the space bar. Let's select it and then try it out.

I'll open a word document, type in a few letters and then accidentally press my Caps Lock key. We heard a tone when I pressed the Caps Lock key and now we'll listen for different tone when I press it again to deactivate Caps Lock.

Below the toggle control, we see a check box. When checked, it lets us use a shortcut command to activate the toggle control.

The keyboard command to activate toggle keys is press and hold the Num Lock key for five seconds. If you're like me and using a keyboard without a number pad, on a laptop for example, you'll not have a Num Lock or Scroll Lock key. The keyboard command doesn't work for us because we don't have the necessary key.

Our next control, filter keys, is intended for users who might have trouble with hand tremors. This option ignores brief or repeated keystrokes.

Let's scroll down to our next toggle control. It lets us change how our keyboard shortcuts work. When activated, the system will underline the menu access or shortcut key when they're available. By pairing the access key with the Alt key, we can jump to a specific menu item and select it.

Our final group of controls has check boxes. The first one shows a warning message when using a keyboard command to activate sticky keys, toggle keys or filter keys. The last control makes a sound when turning on any of these options.

Today we looked at keyboard controls in Windows Ease of Access. These tools let us customize our computer to meet our personal preferences.

I'm Vikki Vaughan and I thank you for joining me today as we looked at keyboard settings in Windows.