Gabrielle Gardner | CD 315 | Adaptive Technology Project

Adaptive (or assistive) technology has come about in order to help people with special needs better utilize computers and other “high-tech” gadgets.

ZoomText is a software that magnifies a normal computer screen, with the option of synchronized speech, for those with low vision.

“Low Vision” applies to those who cannot acquire normal vision even with correctional lenses. The etiologies of low vision range from genetic to environmental.

Just like a magnifying glass increases your view of a piece of paper, ZoomText enlarges the content of your computer screen up to 36 times the normal resolution…

FOR EXAMPLE:A 12-point Franklin font sentence could be difficult to read for someone with low vision.

Doubling the size to 24-point,

tripling it to 36-point,

and enlarging to 48-point makes a noticeable difference for all eyes.

“Italicize”

Support for newer programs such as Windows Vista, Office 2007, Mozilla Firefox, and Adobe Acrobat Reader

xFont technology that preserves the integrity of the text when zoomed in to high levels

Human Quality Speech that reads webpages, documents, and e-mails aloud just by scrolling the text or hovering the mouse over text

Customizable settings for colors, fonts, and cursors

450 MHz Pentium® III processor or equivalent1.5 GHz for Windows Vista

One of the following operating systems:Windows Vista (32 bit OS only)Windows XP (32 bit OS only)Windows 2000

Internet Explorer 5.0 or later

Minimum 256 MB RAM (Minimum 1 GB required for Windows Vista)

Minimum 25 MB free hard disk space

Sound card

For a single-user program, the ZoomText Magnifier/Reader is $595.

For a multi-user license, prices start at $2395.

If a user already owns this program and would like to take it to other locations, a ZoomText USB is available. It contains the licensed product and allows the user to “plug and play” this application on up to three computers. Pricing begins at $100.

http://www.aisquared.com/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_vision Dick, B. (1997). Software review - zoomtext xtra:

Integrating screen magnification and synthesized speech. Information Technologies and Disabilities, 4, 33-35. Retrieved October 20, 2008, from http://people.rit.edu/easi/itd/itdv04n3/article4.htm