Windows 7: The most accessible Windows yet?

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Windows 7 will be with us in just a few weeks and it's generally accepted that the new operating system is good news for end users and IT departments, whether they opted for Vista or not.

However, the latest Windows could also bring benefits for some more specific groups of IT users: people with visual or hearing impairments, those with impaired mobility, or those with dyslexia, cognitive impairments or learning difficulties.

Given that the Disability Rights Commission estimates that this might cover up to 13 per cent of the UK workforce is, this could be another good reason for IT departments and individual users to upgrade.

Accessibility tools

Of course, accessibility tools are nothing new. Windows has been improving access for users with disabilities since the release of the Active Accessibility SDK for Windows 95 in 1997.

Windows 98 was the first version to bring more advanced features into the core OS, most notable a screen magnifier for people with visual impairments, while Windows XP added a simple text-to-speech utility, Narrator, plus an on-screen keyboard.

Even Vista bought some improvements, adding native speech recognition and reorganising everything into one Ease of Access Center control panel.

However, Windows is still far from an all-in solution for users with disabilities.

Many still need third-party applications to make the operating system work for them, particularly in the workplace. For example, most blind users still have to rely on screen-readers like Jaws, HAL and WindowsEyes, which convert text into speech or provide audible descriptions of elements on the screen.

Meanwhile, most visually impaired users opt for third-party magnifiers like WinZoom, MAGic or Lunar over the built-in Windows option. When these products can cost upwards of £600, this represents a major expense, whether for them or for their employers.

Windows 7, then, offers Microsoft a real opportunity to cut down on the cost of computing for users with disabilities.

This hasn't passed Redmond by. Microsoft claims that it now regards accessibility as equal to performance or reliability as a metric by which Windows should be judged, while Michael Bernstein, development lead on the User Interface Platform team has described how his team "wanted to make Windows 7 the most accessible operating system that Microsoft has ever produced."

Features overhauled

Cheap promises, or real improvements? Well, for a start, two major accessibility features have had a complete overhaul.

The Magnifier was always a useful tool, but many visually impaired users found it counter-intuitive. While the Magnifier magnified the area around the pointer, following it around the desktop, the actual magnified display was fixed to the top of the screen. This was fine for reading text, but it could also make it hard to see exactly where you were looking.

The new Magnifier offers two additional, more useful views - a full-screen option which enables the user to zoom in and out of the desktop, the image scrolling as necessary, and a virtual lens where the display follows the pointer as it travels around.

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