Options that customize the display of information

Example:  Changing text and background colour, font, and font size, sound volume, speed, to suit the user's needs.

CAST Explanation

Simple Accessibility Hints|ATMac online site hosts several easy-to-understand tutorials for customizing visual and auditory options for the Mac.  Many of these options are found in the System Preferences under the Apple Menu.

Many options for customizing visual and auditory options for Windows are found under START/Settings/Control Panel.  See Accessibility Options, Mouse, Display, Sounds and Audio Devices, and Speech.

Accessibar allows many adjustments to the Firefox browser which allow the user to change fonts, background colour, and spacing on web pages.

Readability and TidyRead are free browser add-ons that allow you to reduce visual clutter and distractions on certain kinds of web pages.  When the page is cleaned up it can be brought into Kurzweil using the KESI virtual printer.  And the screenreader JAWS for Windows can read the cleaned up page!

MS Word includes options for highlighting text, changing font, font size, font style, text, and background colour, zooming in or out on a particular page, and adding colour to improve the appearance and readability of tables.

Kurzweil includes options for highlighting and customizing the size of text, voice and reading speed, tracking options, and zoom features.

The SMARTBoard includes many options for customizing the appearance of a page including text, background, and size of objects displayed.

Big Calculator is a free large format downloadable calculator for Windows.

Options that provide alternatives for auditory information

Example:  Using visuals, providing closed-captioning or a text copy of the same information.

CAST Explanation

Here are some downloadable resources to help locate Photos and Clip Art, Videos, and Webcams.

Lecture is an auditory presentation that disappears once it has been delivered, creating problems for students with attendance, attention, processing and memory problems.  The Capture Feature on the SMARTBoard can be used to record a presentation to provide a lasting record for students who are absent or need to review the material presented.  The SMARTBoard contains many visuals in the gallery that can be used to provide background information and illustrate concepts. 

Two brilliant high school chemistry teachers have completely switched the traditional paradigm of lecturing at school and having students complete problem sets as homework.  Students now watch the Vodcasts of Chemistry lectures for homework and work on problem sets at school with the help of two qualified teachers.  Providing this audio/visual version of their lecture enables students to replay parts of the lecture they didn't understand and might have missed in the traditional lecture situation.  Did I mention their class average in grade 11 chem is now 87%. 

Science Up Close is a set of instructional videos that allows users to customize their options for perception. These include accessiblity options such as auditory support and/or closed captioning. 

At the dotSUB website, you can add subtitles to a video you created or browse subtitled videos uploaded by others.  The subtitles can also be translated to other languages.

0ptions that provide alternatives for visual information

Example:  Providing a text or auditory version of the same information.

CAST Explanation

Here are some downloadable resources to help locate Music and Sounds, Podcasts and Vodcasts, and E-Text, E-Books, and Audio Books.

Did you know that you can add Voice Comments to MS Word?

In addition to its reading options, Kurzweil provides the ability to add Voice Notes and also to convert a text to an audio file.  Kurzweil can also be set to read its own menu items and dialogue boxes.

The SMARTBoard gallery contains many audio files which can be used to add background knowledge and illustrate concepts.  For example, the audio clips of musical instruments could be used to enhance a music lesson.

Soundsnap contains many free sound effects which can be added to presentations to provide background information or enhance the emotional impact.

Volunteers at Librivox have produced many quality recordings of classic public domain literature.

 Viddler is a free site that allows you to upload a video and add auditory comments that could draw attention to key points.

Free screen capture utilizies such as Jing and Flowgram allow you to create narrated tours of websites or create how-to tutorials for tech you are using.

Ira Socol describes many free text-to-speech tools that will transform a visual text into its auditory equivalent.

Thunder is a free screen reader for the visually impaired.