Techability is an Assistive Technology service provided by Natspec and The Karten Trust. They have produced a great selection of videos that combine to provide an excellent set of resources that explains how to use the built in options in a wide range of technologies to make using them simpler and easier. All users can benefit from knowing how to use these simple productivity hacks.

The resources are hosted on the Excellence Gateway. It seems that despite a significant overhaul of a few years ago, this site is still difficult to navigate. For some reason the resources are only linked to in a downloadable pdf poster. It is an interactive poster, with options to access each theme via a QR code or links. There is no other way of accessing the content from this Excellence Gateway page.

The resources are a series of well constructed, short videos that provide simple focused information that is easy to access.

Themes

• †Great Apps – has three videos highlighting easy to use features on both android and iOS devices.
  • using audio and location for messages in WhatsApp
  • reading text and handwriting on android devices
  • reading text and handwriting on iOS devices (iPhone and iPad)
• My Phone – six videos showing:
  • Speak don’t type – using the microphone to dictate content on your phone. This is a great resource.
  • Hearing messages read out loud,
  • Making text clearer,
  • Making everything larger,
  • shortcuts for messages, (I had no idea that this worked!)
  • using the magnifier on the iphone – so many people will find this helpful!
• Reading – four videos showing:
  • How to make your iPhone or iPad speak selected text,
  • How to make your Android phone or tablet speak content out loud,
  • Using the Learning Tools in Microsoft Office 365,
  • Having text read out on a Mac computer.
• Writing – two video showing:
  • speech recognition on a PC or a Mac,
  • using word prediction on a PC or Mac. This doesn’t work on my laptop – and I have Office 365.
• Using the web
  • Zoom in on the web,
  • Read out text from web pages,
  • Making web pages easier to read – everyone needs to know how to do this – especially for those really annoying pages covered in ads (hello local newpapers!)

Whether you have a disability or not some of these suggestions will certainly make your life easier. I have already added some shortcuts to my phone – inlcuding my address as suggested on the video. Using the magnifier on the iphone has to be helpful for anyone who might need text magnified – me trying to read the tiny text on those orange rail tickets.

Finally, if you haven’t used the reading option on the web before, I strongly suggest that you do. With this feature, it’s not so much that you need to know how to do it, but that it’s even there. Go on give it a go – you’ll find it so much easier.