Speaker 1:

Hi, my name's Jarrod and I'm a member of the Digital Support Team.

Speaker 2:

Hi, I'm Joe. I'm from Disability Inclusion.

Speaker 1:

And in this video, we're going to be looking at our Windows PC and some of the accessibility options that are available to us.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, there's some great features built into our Windows devices that so many of our teachers and students are using. And so many of those accessibility features can benefit all students in the classroom, but can really be personalised to support some students with disability. And some of those features really can help students access their learning and the curriculum, help them communicate with each other, can help them to demonstrate their understanding as well and what they know. So some powerful features built in.

Speaker 1:

And there's so many that people probably aren't aware of, so we'll jump in now and we'll have a look at some of those options that are available to us. So on the screen here, we're going to jump into the accessibility settings, and there's two ways we're going to do it. The first way is to click here on the search bar and just type in settings. When I click here, it's going to bring up all the settings for our Windows PC, but I'm specifically looking for the accessibility options that you can see here.

Now, these Accessibility options are broken into three categories. You've got the Vision accommodations we can make. The next one, you've got some of the Hearing options that are available to us. And then finally, interaction and the way that we interact with this device, depending on the needs of our students. So we're going to jump in and have a look at some of these, but before we do, as I said, there was a second way of bringing up these options, particularly if you want to just be able to turn them on and off really quick. So there is a keyboard shortcut, which was the Windows key and the letter U, and that brings us straight into the accessibility options. That's really good for toggling on and off.

And the first one I want to look at is this one, Mouse, pointer and touch. So when I click here, it's going to take us to those options, and we have so many available to us here. The first one is Size. Depending on the needs of your students, you might need a really big mouse. I find this really helps in the classroom regardless, but you've also then got options to go, maybe you just want a plain black cursor with a white outline. Do we want a high contrast one? As you can see, as you hover over, you get that differentiation or do you like a nice bold colour?

And I also like being able to change these based on maybe what the background is. If it's particularly yellow, choose something that's a bit contrasting to that. I just have mine on blue because I like that one.

Speaker 2:

What's nice is, you can really personalise that because some of our students may have colourblindness or low vision, things like that, where they really need to pick the right colour or the right contrast to make sure they can see what they're doing and be able to navigate around the screen.

Speaker 1:

Nice, yeah.

Speaker 2:

And the teacher will be able to do that on their screen as well, will help students to see where the teacher is on the screen as well.

Speaker 1:

The more visual you can make your mouse, I think the better for everybody. So I'm going to click back now on accessibility, and we're going to have a look at another option here. And this one is going to be also around that sort of theme of colour, around Colour filters. So I'm going to click on that. And we've got a bunch of options. At the moment, my Colour filters are turned off, so I can just simply hit, Toggle it on. And then we have a range of choices that we can choose, but also adjust. So you might can go with a very grey scale look. There's this one called grayscale inverted or even just what we call straight up inversion. This one's really good for that contrast.

But perhaps if red and green is something you need more or less of, you can turn the colour boost up and down. Let me just scroll up a bit because it looks a bit nicer. You can turn the intensity down or up and you can really customise it to meet the needs of the student. Is there any particular ones here that relate to anything or is it just personal choice do you think?

Speaker 2:

I think there's a bit of personal choice for students. They can pick what they like. But for some students with colourblindness, for example, they might have very specific needs around what colours they can and can't see. So it's about working with the student and their support network to find out what is those specific things they need and then going in and playing around with those settings and finding out what's going to work best for them.

Speaker 1:

I really like that. It's not one-size-fits-all, but you can adjust to suit. I think that's a really important call out. I'll toggle that off for now, just while we go and explore one or two more options. So let's turn off Colour filters. Actually, just before we leave Colour filters, there is some overall themes rather than just adjust the colours. I am going to click here on Themes. And here you've got some overarching larger themes. I could choose this one where it changes some of the colours, but also the picture. But you think contrast themes are quite good too?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I love the contrast themes. They're a quick way just to change everything on the screen to whether it's that white on black or black on white, and quickly change a contrast to suit the student's needs there again.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely. So yeah, just find what works for you. So jumping back to our accessibility options, the second last one we're going to talk about here is the Magnifier. This is a nice, quick, easy one for our students that have a visual requirement where we can really zoom in on the screen. Again, one of these ones that kind of helps everybody. There is a keyboard shortcut for this, which is the Windows key on your keyboard and the plus button, and it brings up our magnifier tool. And we're sitting here at 100%, and if we hit the little plus, we can zoom in at 100% at a time. Just as we push our mouse around the screen, it lets us sort of navigate some of those other spaces. If you find yourself getting lost at any time and you can't find where on the screen, that toolbar was, just the Windows key and the minus this time, let's just zoom back out.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. What I love about this one, obviously a student on their own device could have those magnification settings built in, but a teacher who's demonstrating something for the class could bring that up as well, really zoom in on something in particular that they want the students to focus on. So another great tool that could benefit all students really.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, absolutely. So that magnifies the whole screen. In some other apps, if you hold the control key and press plus, kind of just zooms in a little bit to make fonts and stuff bigger. So lots of quick ways of improving the visualisation of that. And then lastly, we will just touch on, I think, voice commands. The computer can respond to some voice commands to turn on and off for a few other features like that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. This is a great one for students who might have difficulty using a mouse or navigating their device, but they do have good use of their speech and articulation. So you can use commands to open certain things on your device to help you navigate to different places. Yeah, just another way for students to be able to access what they need on their device. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely. So this one we find under the Speech heading in interaction. And this first option here lets us toggle on that Voice access. This generally works nicer in a quieter space, but with me turning that on, we'll get a little bar up here at the top of the screen, and it'll probably, when it does turn on, it'll go into what we call sleep mode, which it says now at the top of the screen. So I'm just going to click on the little microphone and then it may respond to a few voice commands.

So here I'm going to, "open Microsoft Edge." And there we go, Microsoft Edge has opened up for us. And there are a number of commands that work better in this programme. So just Google what those lists are and it'll take you to some suggestions in making this tool work a little bit better for you.

Speaker 2:

And a reminder, you got to do bit by bit because otherwise you'll see that the text coming up on screen, and it won't make sense. So you've got to do a command at a time, I would suggest, and turn it off and back on each time.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. That's a really good call out because as I said, I've turned it back on now and it's trying to enact everything we say and we might not get great results from that. So yeah, toggle it on and off as needed. So that's just a couple of the accessibility options available to us. There are lots built into the device as well as all the other programmes, but as far as your Windows computer goes, just remember that the Windows key in the letter U, bring up those accessibility options and customise it to suit your needs.

If you'd like to find more resources in this space, feel free to navigate over to the T4L... We'll start off at the Education website, and we are going to the Teaching and Learning tab. Under that we're looking for Technology for Learning. Scroll down a little bit and under Resources, and Professional Learning, we are going to find a whole section here around Inclusive and Assistive Technology. And then we just choose the type of option that we're looking for depending on the device or the environment that you're working in.

In this case today, this will probably be under the Microsoft tab where we have a whole range of short videos that can help you around some of these accessibility options. And we've got some of these dropdown menus too, which will let you launch out into a few other spaces to explore what is at your disposal in this space. And at the bottom of the screen here, there's a few links here out to Microsoft's own accessibility resources and training to help improve your understanding of all things Windows and accessibility.

Speaker 2:

That's fantastic. Really excited for people to jump in, test out some of those features and see what you can start implementing in the classroom tomorrow.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Fantastic. Good luck.

Speaker 2:

Thanks a lot.

Speaker 1:

Hi, my name's Jarrod. I'm a member of the Digital Support Team.

Speaker 2:

And I'm Joe. I'm from Disability Inclusion.

Speaker 1:

And in this video, we're going to have a look at some of the accessibility features built into the Microsoft 365 platform.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, there's some incredible features that are built in that our students and teachers are using every day, but they might not be aware of some of the amazing things that are there.

There's some features that are great for all students and teachers in the classroom, but some things that can be personalised a bit further for students with disability, help them access the curriculum, help them show what they can do. So yeah, excited to have a look at a couple of those today.

Speaker 1:

Let's jump in. So we are going to focus just on two of the Microsoft 365 apps, but the good thing is that these accessibility options are usually available in all the different platforms, and some have other additional features that aren't here. But the first one we're going to look at is here in Microsoft PowerPoint.

The cool feature that we are going to look at is showing automated subtitles. So if you're doing any sort of presentation to your class, under the Slide Show tab, there is an option here to tick that says Always Use Subtitle. So when we go into presentation mode, everything that we say will be shown on the screen.

You can also choose under the settings, a few different options. Do you want the words to be overlaid on the slide or do you want them to be separate? You'll see that in a moment. Do you want them to be at the top? Do you want them to be at the bottom? You choose based on the needs of your student.

And there are some options here around the language as well. So you could choose what language you're going to speak it in, and you can also choose what language the words will appear at the bottom. Let's set it to English for now. And then I'm going to hit go. And then everything that we say in the delivery of our lesson will automatically appear on the screen, and that's going to help students across the board, I think.

Speaker 2:

Fantastic tool for all students. You can support literacy needs as well, but obviously our students who are deaf or hard of hearing will have immediate access on the screen. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

And there was a few scenarios you spoke about to me around the language, if you are a language teacher?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's a great tool. If you're a language teacher speaking French to your class, for example, you can have that captioned in English. So that's helping the students understand and learn the language as you go as well.

Speaker 1:

100%. Yeah, definitely. So yeah, whether you're someone learning the language or you're the teacher trying to teach the language, lots of choices there. Also, here within PowerPoint for screen reader software, there's a little way that we can adjust what's happening on the screen.

So I'm going to go across here to the Review tab, and there's a little dropdown menu here under Check Accessibility. And one of those is the Reading Order Pane, which is going to appear on the right. So depending on the order that we added things to the slide, they appear in a kind of specific order here. If I wanted to change that, if I wanted a certain thing read first, I can just select it, move it up the list. So that is what is the screen reader will read first before moving through the rest of the slide.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's a great feature to check as well. For some students who might not use a mouse, but they might use keyboard navigation, having things in the right order is really important so they can get to what they need to as well.

Speaker 1:

100%. So we're going to jump now across into Word, just to have a look at some of the features there. Now I am going to start here in the web browser. And if you typed in word.new, it's going to open you a brand-new Word document and automatically save that file to your Microsoft OneDrive, which is excellent for all kids for how quickly you can get in there without needing to go to the portal.

We're going to have a look at three quick features here, the first one being the good old Dictate button. Now yes, there's a keyboard shortcut, but we're going to use the button built into the Microsoft 365. And again, find it across all their apps.

So when I click Dictate here, it is going to type everything that I say. However, I really do like how I can give it some voice commands in regards to what I'm saying. So if I said, "Full stop, new line," and then away I go. I've got a new paragraph.

And there's about 80 different voice commands that it will respond to. You can look those up online. I do have automatic punctuation turned on, so I'm just going to press the little microphone button here to stop. If I click on this little cog, you can see that I've got auto punctuation turned on. Does a pretty good job, but I do like that I can tell it exactly what punctuation that I want. Just pause a little bit in between those, otherwise it thinks you're just speaking. There's one little caveat to this. I guess it will pick up everything in the room, right?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's right. I think with dictation, you do need a fairly quiet classroom. Sometimes students might use a headphone with the mic there, and makes it a bit more accurate. Some students as well, it takes a bit of practise getting used to it. You need to think about what you're going to say before you get it down, but it's such a game changer for students who have all this information in their head, but might have challenges with spelling, writing, typing. And they can just talk into it, get their ideas down and then they can edit things, you know?

Speaker 1:

I used to have a student in my class, wonderful storyteller, really struggled to write. So this was a method for him to produce something at the same level as the kids in the class and it really helped him.

There is another additional feature here, too. It's called Transcribe, where you can upload an audio file or have Word record what you're saying, which is under the little dropdown on Dictate. This option here that says Transcribe brings up a little panel on the right. I could upload an audio file if someone's read and recorded that into a device, or I could click start recording. And basically, everything from this point that I say will be tried to be interpreted, but I don't see the words pop up on the screen. So sometimes that can be a nice barrier reduction, I guess, but it'll also separate, it'll try and pick up who said what.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. And I think this tool's really great because for some students using dictation, you have to have that working memory. You got to think about what you're going to say and then you have to have really clear articulation as well. And that can be a challenge for some of our students, whereas this tool can record the audio, you drop the audio in there and then the teacher can listen to that and see if they've understood the lesson. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

100%. And so at this point, we did that really quick transcribe. I could click that button at the bottom. It says add to this document, and then I guess we're just training our students to edit, but a really easy way to get it across. But just remember it does record everything with all interactions in the room. So using it, but editing it is a key feature here. So that is the Transcribe button.

And lastly, while we're here, there is a Check Accessibility button. So if you as a teacher are making a resource, here under Review, there is a button here that says Check Accessibility. So I am going to click on that and it's going to open a little panel on the right, and it'll give you a little bit of a breakdown on what worked, what didn't work. This is a very short document.

So it says everything is fine from a accessibility point of view, but I do like that it also tells you it didn't like this, and this is what you might need to do. What's one of the things that it might show us?

Speaker 2:

I'm thinking things like images come up a lot and it can show you how to put in alt text, for example, on an image, but it shows you how to fix it. So I love that feature. It shows you what to do and how to fix it to make it more accessible.

Speaker 1:

100%. And lastly, just before we jump off sort of this, we're looking at Word in the online version. You can switch to the desktop version, which gives a few additional features, not too many, just a couple. But if I go to this Editing button and say Open in Desktop, it's going to open this exact document in Word on the desktop.

And there's little things, like here under View, sorry, Review, you have the Read Aloud button, which will read everything off the screen. So if you can't find something, jump to the desktop version and have a look. But as I said, these are available across all the Microsoft products. If you want to learn a little bit more about accessibility, feel free to jump across to our T4L website.

So I've just gone to the Education landing page under Teaching and Learning and Technology for learning, it'll take you to our site where under Resources, Professional Learning, and Inclusive and Assistive Technology. Choose your platform of choice. Today, we looked at Microsoft. And you can find a whole series of videos here on not just things based in the Microsoft 365 environment, but Windows as a whole.

And just use the little dropdown menus to find some of these options, or navigate all the way to the bottom of the screen to click on Microsoft's accessibility options that are available to us out there. So hopefully, you got a few ideas on how you can improve the accessibility of the Microsoft 365 workplace.

Speaker 2:

So many great options there. Jump in, give them a go. It's all trial and error, but there's some great features that can support your students in the classroom. So give them a go.

Speaker 1:

Thanks very much.