AssistiveWare Workshops

June 18 • ACCC • Register Here
Presented by: AssistiveWare Chief Technology Officer and Lead Developer David Niemeijer

Session 1: 8 a.m. - Noon
AssistiveWare’s VisioVoice, Keystrokes, and Proloquo programs

VisioVoice makes using the computer easier, more efficient and more fun to use for people with vision impairments. It has high quality voices, an easy-to-use text reader, powerful zoom, large cursors, and a fully-functional advanced virtual on-screen keyboard that allows users to type with a mouse, trackball, head pointer or other mouse emulator.

It adds multilingual support to Apple's excellent VoiceOver screen reader technology for a number of languages, as well as providing several other speech and vision related features to enhance access to Mac OS X.

Keystrokes provides word prediction and can reduce typing efforts by 50 to 70 percent. It is a fully-functional advanced virtual on-screen keyboard that allows users to type with a mouse, trackball, headpointer or other mouse emulator to type characters into any standard Macintosh application.

Proloquo is a multi-purpose, multilingual speech solution for Mac OS X that:

Provides a full-fledged communication system (AAC) for people who cannot speak
improves accessibility of Mac OS X for people with visual impairments
provides speech feedback in any application while typing for children and people with learning disabilities
can serve as a talking word processor
provides text to speech for people who prefer listening to reading
can be used as a tool to learn the pronunciation of foreign languages
provides an advanced, multilingual speech engine for our KeyStrokes® on-screen keyboard and our SwitchXS® switch access solution

Session 2: 1 - 5 p.m.
SwitchXS and Layout Kitchen applications

SwitchXS is typically used by people who have very limited limb movement. It offers full mouse and keyboard emulation by using a scanning menu. It provides nearly complete access to Mac OS X and all standard Mac applications for people who can only use one or more switches.

With each click on the switch the user selects an action, such as "move the cursor up" or "type B," from a scanning menu.

LayoutKitchen is an editor for SwitchXS scan panels. Users can use the software to create their own scan panels/keyboards to customize them to the controls and functions they need. It provides many advanced features to create highly customized panels with colored backgrounds, labels and buttons and images.

About the presenter:

David Niemeijer has over 10 years of experience developing assistive technology software in collaboration with users and assistive technology specialists, focusing on solutions for people with physical, speech and vision impairments. He also has more than 10 years of experience as an academic researcher and university lecturer and has been a presenter on assistive technology for five years..

He is the founder, Chief Technology Officer and Lead Developer of AssistiveWare.