Tech Tips

Contents

iPhone Apps

There are lots of great apps for accessibility

  • Camera App and Magnifier App: My daughter uses one or other of these apps on her phone all the time. She can use them to read airport signage, or to read a menu.
  • Oko: Reads the crosswalk signal and tells you “Walk” or “Don’t Walk” and gives you a countdown when there is one on the crossing signal. (It also has navigation features but my daughter hasn’t tried those yet. Currently only for iOS.)
  • Transit: Great for navigating public transportation. (Also available on Android.)
  • Seeing AI: Can help describe the world from pictures. (Also available on Android.)
  • Be My Eyes: A human volunteer on your phone who can help you match outfits, find your Uber, or anything else. (Also available on Android.)
  • Desmos Scientific Calculator: Better on a big screen (iPad or laptop). We haven’t gotten here yet, but apparently this can be approved for use on standardized tests like the SAT.

Computer Accessibility

  • Monitors
    • Size: My daughter likes two large monitors best. She has tried two 32-inch monitors, which is good, but finds two 24-inch monitors are also fine. (I got hooked on the big ones, and now I always use two 32-inch monitors.)
    • Brightness: It is important to have an easy way to turn down brightness, whether by a shortcut key on a laptop, a button on an external monitor, or another approach. If the controls on your external monitors are lousy, the Monitorian app for Windows in the Microsoft App Store makes it easy to adjust brightness for multiple monitors at once.
    • Monitor Arms: For good posture, bring the monitors to the face, not the other way around. These single or double-monitor arms from Amazon Basics are great. (With two monitors, using two single monitor arms is more flexible and supports larger monitors. For two 24-inch monitors, the double monitor arm is fine; for two 32-inch monitors, you need two single monitor arms.)
Monitor Arm
Monitor Arm
  • Brand: My daughter has been pleased with Windows machines (including touchscreen laptops that can fold inside out into a tablet form factor) and Mac Books but has had no success with school Chromebooks.
  • Display Settings
    • Color Inversion and Grayscale: My daughter loves to have the colors inverted. On her Macbook and iPhone, she can turn on Apple’s dark mode and things work well most of the time. Some apps (like Google Docs) are stubborn however, and don’t support Apple’s dark mode. In this case, she finds it helpful to invert the colors for the display. The Mac shortcut is Control+Option+Command+8. Windows dark mode is even less helpful, so she usually works with inverted colors when on Windows. The Windows shortcut is CTRL-WIN-C (once enabled in accessibility settings). For iPad and iPhone you can customize triple click of the side button to invert colors (or use the Shortcuts app to create custom shortcuts for Siri to run that change multiple display settings at once, such as color inversion and grayscale at the same time).
    • Magnification: This is essential but my daughter has always found using the built in magnifier apps to be cumbersome. On Windows laptops she loves pinch zooming directly on the touch screen. On Macbooks she loves pinch zooming with the touch pad. I think she needs to get more efficient on the desktop where there is no pinch zooming. (On windows “CTRL +” or “CTRL -” will adjust zoom within a Chrome browser window and “WIN +” or “WIN-ESC” will turn the Windows magnifier on and off.)
    • More Accessibility Settings: Windows and Apple both have lots of accessibility settings to explore. My daughter always sets fonts sizes to be larger, the cursor to be larger, and sometimes has found other features to be helpful too. Explore!
  • Laptop and Tablet Stands: Laptop screens are always mounted behind the keyboard, not conveniently on monitor arms. A laptop stand can be a big help for posture. My daughter uses this one in school. This tablet stand from IKEA has been great for her iPad.