Blog 8: Accessibility Features in Chromebooks

Chromebooks are the most popular device type in education and currently hold a market share of about 60%(Foley, 2018).

Naturally, the ChromeOS has many accessibility features that enable countless students with various disabilities to use Chromebooks for educational purposes.

This blog post is a quick overview of accessibility features available in ChromeOS ‎70.0.3538.76.

1. ChromeVox – Text-to-Speech

ChromeVox is a screen reader for visually impaired users. When turned on, it reads window titles, tabs, and the content of the open pages.

It has a multitude of features that the users can customize to fit their desired experience. The user can change the language, voice, reading speed, and use keyboard shortcuts for most basic operations.

3. Magnifier

A magnifier zooms in a part of the screen for the users with visual disabilities. It can either be used as a panel with the magnified content in the upper part of the screen (see screenshot below), or to magnify the entire screen. A user can choose the level of magnification (2x, 4x, 8x, etc.)

4. Text size customization

This feature allows users to customize text size across all applications and websites in a given Chromebook.

5. Sticky Keys

Keyboard shortcuts are a handy way to quickly achieve a specific task on any computer using just the keyboard and Chromebooks have plenty of shortcuts.

Sticky keys feature is made for the users who are unable to press several keyboard buttons at the same time, as keyboard shortcuts usually work.

This feature allows the users to press the keys in a succession in order to achieve the same result than as if the keys were pressed together.

6. On-screen keyboard

This feature allows users to use the mouse to use the keyboard. It can help users who are unable to use a keyboard due to disabilities

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7. Dictation (speech-to-text)

The dictation feature can be very useful to the users who have difficulties using a keyboard to type the text. It allows a user to just speak and the program will recognize the spoken words and put them into text format. This feature is available in many different languages in ChromeOS.

8. Highlight the object with keyboard focus and highlight the text caret

This feature can be useful to users with visual and/or cognitive disabilities. It focuses the user’s attention on the typing area or the text care

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9. Automatically click the mouse when the mouse stops

This feature will automatically click the left mouse button after the mouse stops, for example, for 2 seconds (the time is adjustable). This can be useful for the users who can move the mouse but are unable to press the mouse butto

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10. Large cursor mouse

This feature makes the mouse cursor very big for the users with visual impairments to see it better.

11. Highlight the mouse when moving

Similar to the previous feature, this feature helps the users with visual impairments to see the mouse better.

12. Play the same audio through all speakers (mono)

Turning on this feature will play the same audio track from both left and right audio channels. It can be useful for the users who have hearing only in one ear.

References:

Foley, M. J. (2018). Windows PCs gain share in K-12 in the US, but Chromebooks still dominate. Retrieved November 17, 2018, from https://www.zdnet.com/article/windows-pcs-gain-share-in-k-12-in-the-u-s-but-chromebooks-still-dominate/