By Carlos Soto
Among recent advancements in Section 508 technologies, the most impressive have been those that allow disabled users to efficiently interact with a PC with minimal setup or expense.
In the past, the specially designed software or hardware could be difficult to learn or use, cumbersome to setup and expensive. Furthermore, most 508 technologies did not allow people with disabilities to use computers as effectively as nondisabled users.
But as we've seen in the Government Computer News Lab, less expensive solutions are now available from a multitude of vendors. These solutions incorporate software and hardware that is much easier for people with disabilities to navigate.
Perhaps the most impressive leaps are with dictation software. Older versions of Dragon Naturally Speaking by ScanSoft Corp. of Peabody, Mass., used to require long installs and long setups. Dictation software in general used to require at least 15 to 20 hours of training for the software to learn your voice.
These time-intensive processes usually required the user to read aloud for weeks and, at best, would reach an accuracy rating of 70 to 80 percent. At least that's as high as we ever got it -- until now.
Dragon Naturally Speaking 7.0, the latest from ScanSoft, takes minutes to install and only minutes of training to achieve an accuracy level that took hours with the older versions.
Also, Naturally Speaking can execute commands as well as accept dictation into a word processor. A half hour after installing the program, I was able to command the software to open Microsoft Word, maximize or minimize the window and begin writing.
The tough part with using this software is getting used to the new lingo. For example, I dictated the phrase, "I work at Government Computer News," and it knew to capitalize "Government" and "News," but not "computer." In the past this could have been a problem, but now that software is capable of accepting the command "cap that" to capitalize "Computer" in the phrase.
Likewise users have to get used to saying "click," followed by a command every time they want the software to perform an action a mouse would perform. They also must say "press" and then the desired command for an action that a keyboard would be used for.
For example, after my sentence, "I work at Government Computer News," I would select all and say "press delete," to erase the sentence and then say "click close," to terminate the program.
Dragon Naturally Speaking is priced at $199 for a full new version or $99 for an upgrade.
Hardware alternatives to software such as Dragon Naturally Speaking have their advantages and disadvantages. Although no software is usually needed, the install is faster, and no training is usually needed.
Such is the case with the Half-QWERTY keyboard by Matias Corp. of Ontario.
The Half-QWERTY keyboard lets a single-handed user convert a regular desktop keyboard into one that uses half of the buttons by placing two characters on every key.
To activate the half-keyboard option, a user pushes a ? button on the far right of the device. Once this is initiated, a user navigates from one character on a button to another by holding down the space bar.
In this configuration, the "w" and "o" are on the same button. Therefore, if I wanted to type "word" using one hand, I would type "w," hold down the space bar and the w key would become an "o." Then I would finish with the regular "r" and "d."
As you can imagine, it takes a little time to get used to. Although a user can never type as quickly in this half mode, Matias believes one could reach speeds of 60 words per minute with practice.
The Half-QWERTY keyboard is priced at $595 and is compatible with both Windows and Mac machines and needs no software to set up.
Carlos Soto, an associate editor and technology reviewer with Government Computer News, can be reached at csoto@postnewsweektech.com.
