TypeAbility is a program that teaches the entire computer keyboard in 99 user-friendly lessons. By the end of the lessons, the student will have mastered all the letters, numbers, punctuation, as well as navigation and editing in dialogs and text documents. TypeAbility is great fun for all ages!
JAWS:
TypeAbility 4.3 for JAWS, relys on speech provided by either the screen reader JAWS, or the magnification program MAGic. If you wish to run TypeAbility along with JAWS, you can use either a full version of JAWS, or the free JAWS demo.
ZOOMTEXT:
The screen magnification ZoomText has been combined with JAWS in a new product named Fusion. Fusion use Zoomtext for magnification and JAWS for speech. TypeAbility will work perfectly with Fusion.
MAGic:
The screen magnification program MAGic, comes in 2 flavors: one without speech, and one with speech. So, if you wish to run TypeAbility along with MAGic, you have 2 choices to get speech while running MAGic:
- Use the MAGic version that has speech
- Use the version of MAGic that doesn't have speech, but at the same time run either the full version of JAWS, or the free demo version of JAWS.
Learning how to startup, run, choose lessons and tasks, and how to close TypeAbility is very simple. After a few lessons with an assistant, a blind non-typing child will be able to use the program independently. TypeAbility is fun and appropriate for students of all ages.
There are User Preferences that allow TypeAbility to conform to each students needs. However, there are not such a bewildering number of esoteric options that learning how to use TypeAbility would be a mystery and chore. It's a cinch!
Even though TypeAbility is very simple to use, it is both the most advanced typing program for the blind on the market, and the most fun to use.
Please call for multiple-license and upgrade pricing
Why is TypeAbility becoming the #1 choice for more and more schools in the nation?
Clear and Entertaining
TypeAbility speaks clear and easy to understand instructions for everything the student needs to know. Since TypeAbility has a very large and delightful number of ways of saying things it has a personality. So the student feels that he is being addressed personally.
From the moment TypeAbility opens, TypeAbility stays with the student, never leaving the student to wonder what to do next.
Each lesson and task is described very clearly. For instance, if the task is to type a word, the word will be spoken, then spelled, and then put into the context of a sentence or two so that there's no doubt whatsoever what the word is. These contextual sentences are either educational, or humorous, thus providing another level of education and entertainment for the student. At the end of each lesson, TypeAbility tells a joke. Students love this, and they can make TypeAbility repeat that joke as many times as they wish.
Simplicity
To run TypeAbility, only a few hotkeys are necessary - Function keys F1 through F6, and F11 and F12:
F1: TypeAbility will remind the user exactly what they should be typing
F2: Starts the next lesson
F3: Opens a list of the 98 lessons from which the student can choose from. If you're in Teacher's Mode, opens a list of Keyboarding Exercises the teacher has created
F4: Opens a list box containing many Dictation exercises covering every conceivable typing challenge. Pick one, and TypeAbility will dictate to the student just as if dictating to a secretary. When the dictation is finished and the student is done typing, the student's accuracy and speed are reported. If you're in Teacher's Mode, opens a list of Dictation Exercises the teacher has created
F5: Starts an entertaining Accuracy/Speed game for the current task the student is typing
F6: Opens a list box containing many Academic Quizzes that can be run either as a practice test, where you get 4 tries and 4 increasingly detailed hints to get the right answer, or as a real test where you get one try per question
F11: Toggles between TypeAbility Mode and Teacher's Mode
F12: Opens the Student's progress report
User Preferences
The student can configure TypeAbility by pressing Control + U. This opens the User Preference dialog. It contains a list of several preferences, among them:
- The rate at which TypeAbility speaks
- Whether or not TypeAbility tells a joke at the end of each lesson
- Whether the student is an adult or not. This influences the way the student is addressed, and the type of humor provided
- Whether you're a 2 handed or 1 handed typist
- Whether you want to use Braille Input rather than the QWERTY Keyboard
