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Computer Technology Center
Basic Evaluation Course
This two-week course is designed for blind or visually impaired individuals who have little or even no knowledge regarding how to use a computer. This course covers a period of two weeks for four days for each week.
Requirements:
A minimum typing speed of 12 words per minute is required, as this course does assume knowledge of the placement of the letter and numeric keys on a typewriter or computer keyboard.
Course Outline
What is Windows?
You hear everyone using the term and we all know that many computers are running this mysterious operating system referred to as Windows, but what is it and why do so many people use it? We start out by explaining what it is, why it's actually called Windows and the advantages of using it for both blind and sighted users.
The Keyboard
Computer keyboards have the same letters and numbers that we all remember from the days of using typewriters, but there are extra keys which we need to know in order to effectively use a computer, such as the control key, alt key, function keys, etc. We explain what they are and where to find them.
Booting Up
What exactly happens after you press the "on" button of the computer? We talk about what you see on the screen and/or what you'll hear if you're using speech output software, such as JAWS for Windows. We explain the desktop and how to navigate it.
Menus
They're not just found in restaurants; computers are full of menus. We talk about what a menu is and how to open and read items found in the Start Menu, perhaps the most important menu found in windows.
Altering the Voice
Some want to hear things read slow, whereas others like it a bit more rapid! Speech users will surely want the voice tailored to their personal preferences. We'll show them how to change the volume, pitch and speed of the screen reader's voice so things are read to them in a way that sounds comfortable.
Reading and Writing
This is what every computer user is going to want to do with their computer if they do nothing else with it, and so we'll talk about how to open a document and do some writing! Students will learn how to read through their documents by lines, words and letters. We'll cover how to read through a document continuously as well as how to save them to disk.
The Computer Technology Center uses the latest assistive technology products in its classroom. For speech users, we use JAWS for Windows from Freedom Scientific and Window-eyes from GW Micro. Users who need magnification software have access to Zoomtext from AI Squared.
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