Donald Maclean's List: Accessibility Tools

Accessibility, tools, advice on e-learning and e-inclusion issues. Excellent practitioner reference site.

The JISC TechDis Service aims to be the leading educational advisory service, working across the UK, in the fields of accessibility and inclusion.
Huge resource with a wide array of accessibility and inclusion tools, materials and guidance.

EduApps is an initiative developed by the JISC Regional Support Centre Scotland North & East and consists of four different collections of incredibly useful software:

AccessApps provides a range of solutions to support writing, reading and planning, as well as sensory, cognitive and physical difficulties.
TeachApps is a collection of software specifically designed for teachers or lecturers.
LearnApps, as its name implies, is specifically designed for learners. All learners or students can benefit from LearnApps.
MyStudyBar is our new kid on the block, providing a suite of apps to support literacy.

This guide from Microsoft provides information about accessibility and accessible technology to help educators worldwide ensure that all students have equal access to learning with technology. Microsoft supports the personalized learning vision by providing technology that is accessible to every student-regardless of ability. For educators new to accessibility and working with students with disabilities, accessibility can seem overwhelming. To help educators teach students with all types of abilities, you will find specific information about each type of impairment and accessible technology solutions.

How can you ensure your Word and PDF documents are accessible? Creating Accessible Word 2007 and PDF documents is an easy-to-follow step-by-step guide which will keep you on the right track. Although the Guide is designed for delegates attending a workshop it can also be used as a standalone resource, e.g., as an introductory resource for those who are new to Word 2007.

With this little tool you can either enter RGB (Red-Green-Blue) values, HSB (Hue-Saturation-Brightness) numbers or a hexadecimal code for a color, to find its closest match of a named color and its corresponding hue. It is also possible to just use the sliders to see how color hues are changing. The list of colors comprises 1640 different color names extracted from several sources on the web.

DesktopZoom is a free-to-download screen magnifier that offers many of the features found on some of the higher-end commercial magnification programs.\nAs well as being portable (it can be run from a USB pendrive), the latest version of DesktopZoom offers full-screen magnification with basic font smoothing, a range of large mouse pointers, colour inversion and text-to-speech.

"Specialist expertise in communication and assistive technology for children who \nhave speech, communication and/or writing difficulties."

Founded in October 2006, Overstream is a consumer media company that provides services for users to customize and enhance their online video experience. Although millions of videos are currently being shared on the Internet, so far one thing has been lacking: users cannot modify the presentation of the videos without modifying the videos themselves. Overstream technology rises up to the challenge by enabling additional partially transparent dynamic content layers to be displayed over any live streaming content.
Our service is designed for users who want to easily customize and enhance their videos, express their thoughts and ideas about existing videos, or simply engage in novel ways of sharing videos online.

MyStudyBar is a tool which helps overcome problems that students commonly experience with studying, reading and writing. The tool consists of a set of portable open source and freeware applications, assembled into one convenient package. Easy to install, simple to use, handy and effective, MyStudyBar provides comprehensive learning support at the desktop, where it is needed. And if this is not already attractive enough, a further eye-catching feature of MyStudyBar is that it is completely FREE to download and free to use.