Tips & Tricks-November 2002

If you have any difficulty seeing the cursor when it's a blinking line in a document or a dialog box, you can change its characteristics. Select the Display tab. The lower portion of the screen has the cursor options. You can set the blink rate and the width of the cursor. Either can make the cursor easier to find.

Have some difficulty hearing or work in a noisy environment? You can set the volume of your system higher or you can have Windows generate a visual warning. Click the sound tab in Accessibility Options.

Click the appropriate boxes and choose the type of visual warning.

Mousing Around

Suppose your mouse stops working in the middle of a session. You can use the number key pad to move the mouse cursor if you set up the Mouse options to allow you to do so. Select Use MouseKeys, then click on Settings. If you're not planning to always use the keypad to move the mouse, set up a keyboard short cut to enable MouseKeys.

Other Tools

The Accessibility Options are not the only tools in Windows XP. From the Start Menu, go to Programs, Accessories, Accessibility. You will find some additional items. Microsoft includes disclaimers for all the utilities that indicate that these are probably solutions better provided by third party vendors, but most can be helpful in the short term.

Magnifier creates a panel on your screen that is an enlarged version of the area around your cursor. This is useful for a quick magnification of some text or a graphic, but not very easy to use on an ongoing basis.

Narrator is another interesting tool. It narrates menus and the contents of dialog boxes as well as the keystrokes you type. It is similar to the screen readers that seeing impaired users add to their systems except that it cannot read everything on the screen. When I used Internet Explorer, Narrator could read the page title, but none of the contents of the page. The narrator's voice is very robotic sounding and the dialog for setting the voice makes it appear that you can add other voices, but there is no indicator as to where you might find voices. The one used is called Microsoft Sam.

You can also place a keyboard on your desktop. The keyboard is used with the mouse or other input devices, such as a joystick, that can move the cursor. The keyboard can be set to respond to mouse clicks or hovers. The time period of the hover can be set. This might be useful if you were temporarily unable to use both hands on the keyboard.