Using accessibility technologies to help patients with disabilities - Access

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Using accessibility technologies to help patients with disabilities

Applies to: Microsoft Office Access 2003, Excel 2003, FrontPage 2003, InfoPath 2003, Outlook 2003, PowerPoint 2003, Publisher 2003, Word 2003

Physicians and other healthcare professionals are using accessibility technologies to treat patients with disabilities. You can use these technologies to communicate with patients at hospitals and clinics, as well as remotely. In addition to treating patients with disabilities, you can introduce your patients to accessibility technologies so that they can use these technologies to overcome some of the obstacles in their daily lives.

In this practice, Dr. Bill Crounse, the Microsoft global healthcare industry manager, provides some inspiring examples of how accessibility features in Microsoft Windows XP, Microsoft Office 2003, and compatible accessibility programs from Microsoft partners — such as Dragon NaturallySpeaking (from ScanSoft) and iCommunicator (from Teltronics) — can improve your communications with patients who have hearing impairments, vision limitations, or other physical disabilities.

In addition, through the articles included in this practice, you can learn how to install and train speech recognition engines in Microsoft Office Word 2003, upgrade to a more robust speech recognition engine when necessary, and use Microsoft Narrator for text-to-speech conversion.

The following information can help you introduce your patients with disabilities to these accessibility technologies and can help them reap the benefits.

Opening doors: Accessibility through new technology (Article)
In his "Housecalls for healthcare professionals" column, Dr. Bill Crounse writes about the innovative technologies being used to help people with disabilities.
Office 2003 accessibility resources (Article)
Read about the accessibility features available in Office 2003.
Using Narrator (Training)
Learn how to use Narrator in Windows XP to convert text to speech.
Install and train speech recognition (Article)
See how to install speech recognition, which is available in all Office programs. After it is installed, you can train the computer to recognize how you speak.
Change speech recognition engines (Article)
See how to change speech recognition engines so you can dictate in another language or to use a third-party engine.

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