Evaluative Comment for social life
As my Uncle has a visual impairment it would be really hard for him if he didn’t have the speech recognition system to help him use the computer. He has now been training the computer recognise his voice better for about 10 years. This technology is very important to my uncle as this helps him to chat to family and friends with the headset or microphone through an instant messaging service like msn messenger. This technology also helps him writing emails and letters socially to other people because he has a lot of difficulties finding keys on a keyboard and he can’t see the mouse cursor sometimes. The problem he has with this service is that sometimes when my Uncle makes a mistake saying the word he wants, he will have to use the keyboard and correct it, although normally this technology achieves quite a lot of success for him to input words correctly.
Personal Life
Magnifier and speech recognition system
My uncle uses the computer for his personal life because he sometimes likes to browse the internet in his spare time and sometimes plays online games. He particularly uses the magnifier for his personal life. The magnifier creates a separate window that displays a magnified portion. It also allows my uncle to change the colour scheme of the magnification window for easier visibility. The font size of the magnification can also be changed in a way that suits him. The magnifier also comes free with any operating system so people who are less fortunate can own one. He also uses his speech recognition system for his personal life as this also helps him browse the internet much comfortably and he can communicate with the person his playing an online game with.
Evaluative comment on personal life
The magnifier plays a huge part in my uncle’s personal life and the magnifier has met the need of my uncle. This technology has helped him for 6 years now and without this technology he will not be able to browse the internet and see what it says on the web pages and it would be very hard for him to have fun using his computer. With this technology he sometimes resizes the magnification depending on how small the font of the writing is. He sometimes also changes the colour to a much more readable colour. My uncle also likes using this technology because it stops him from straining his eyes to look at every word. He normally uses the speech recognition system with this technology as it helps him browse the internet with no stress. Without the speech recognition system for his personal life he would have to keep on pressing buttons on his keyboard which would take twice the time.
Professional
Screen Readers and special keyboard
My Uncle uses a screen reader for his professional life because this technology reads the document for him. A screen reader is a software programs that provide support for a wide range of abilities ranging from physically handicapped to blind people and people with a visual impairment. The screen reading technology that my Uncle uses is called windows eyes. This technology is useful for my Uncle because this screen reader supports over 50 speech synthesizers and 40 Braille displays, which means that it won’t be too complicating for him to use. This technology is also allows him to use special key command on the keyboard. My uncle also uses special keyboard commands that were created by the screen reader. For example, most screen readers offer a keystroke to read the information in the title bar or in the status bar, which means that it would be much easier for my uncle to navigate as he sometimes uses the speech recognition system with this. He also uses a special keyboard which is good because with this keyboard he is able to see the keyboard keys much bigger and bolder because the keyboard is bigger.
Evaluative comments
The magnifier plays a big part in my uncle’s professional life because without the screen reader it would be very hard for him to read important business letters and documents he writes. This is also good because he might need to check what he has typed out and wants to see if there are any errors in the document. The screen reader also meets the needs of my uncle because he can use it on the Internet to help him navigate and to help him check sites for his job. He has now has the screen reader for about 10 years, which means he is used to using a screen reader. The only disadvantage of having a screen reader is that sometimes the screen reader can muddle up the text because the screen reader reads the text in rows and not in columns. The special keyboard meets the needs of my uncle because it helps him see the keyboard much better as the keys are twice the size of a normal keyboard. It also helps him see clearly what letter or number he is pressing because the letters are in bold.
