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The Idea Place Posts

Unlock Windows Efficiency with PowerToys Run

Published November 13, 2024 by Kelly Ford

Sometimes you make a handy discovery that makes you wonder why you did not know about it long before. I just had that happen with PowerToys Run, one of the toys included in the full suite of items in the electronic toybox known as Windows PowerToys.

PowerToys are a set of utilities that allow you to customize different aspects of Windows and offer functionality that is not directly built in. You can learn more in general and find details on installation in a handy Microsoft Learn article.

I installed the most recent version of PowerToys because I had read about something new known as Advanced Paste. That is not the discovery though.

After installing PowerToys, I used one of my more common shortcuts in Windows Alt+Space to bring up the system menu for an application. That menu is where you find entries including restore, close and the one I often use, Maximize. My web browsing windows in particular often get sized quite small and with responsive design much of the content I’m expecting has disappeared so maximizing the browser window is necessary.

Imagine my surprise when instead of what I was expecting, my screen reader communicated, “query, edit.”

It turns out this is the default shortcut for the aforementioned PowerToys Run. In short, this is like having a command line to do everything from choosing between open windows on your computer to performing quick calculations, file, and web searches, browsing the Windows registry and more.

Using PowerToys run

Using PowerToys Run is fairly straight forward. Press Alt+Space, enter some text and arrow through the results. You can start your text with various text characters to direct PowerToys Run what you want to do. The full list of text to use here is detailed in a Microsoft Learn article.

Some examples I am finding I have already incorporated into my daily use include:

  • <, that is the less than symbol: Window Walker, to browse through all the open windows on your computer. Start pressing down arrow after entering the less than character, or add part of the window name and then down arrow to shorten the list.
  • $, that is the dollar sign character: Windows Settings to, as you would expect, browse through all the different settings for Windows. As with Window Walker, just start pressing down arrow after entering the dollar sign, or add some of the text from the setting you want and then press down arrow. In either case, when you reach the item you want, press enter and that settings page will open.
  • =, that’s the equals sign: Calculator for performing calculations. Just enter your calculation and the result will be displayed. If, as I do, you are using a screen reader, the fastest way I have found to read the result is to press down arrow after entering my calculation. Note that you do not need to press enter after you have input your calculation. Also, again if using a screen reader, if you are comfortable with advanced screen reading techniques such as the JAWS Touch Cursor, NVDA Object Navigation or Narrator navigation commands, the result of the calculation and more can be read with these techniques. Last, after your result is displayed, you can press enter on the result and have it put on the Windows Clipboard.
  • !!, that is two presses of the exclamation mark key: History, quickly browse through your history with PowerToys Run with presses of down arrow.

Some Notes

PowerToys Run documentation indicates you can change the default shortcut for launching from Alt+Space.

According to PowerToys documentation, pressing tab is supposed to move you through search results and any buttons or context menus that exist. I am not finding anything being communicated by multiple screen readers as of now when using Tab. I still need to figure out if this is a case of the key simply not working or items taking focus not being communicated properly.

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Accessible Entertainment in the Air

Published September 19, 2024 by Kelly Ford

Flying home from a recent vacation, I had a first for myself. I independently used the in-flight entertainment system to track my flight, listen to music, and watch a movie with audio descriptions. I even played a bit of trivia for a bit. How fun!

I’m not sure when United Airlines added accessibility to their in-flight technology, but it was available on the return flights of my trip. The system used TalkBack and a two-finger triple-tap to start the screen reader. There was a video offered to show you how to use the system. I was in the proverbial cheap seats, so I used just the touch screen option for control. Apparently, premium seats get physical buttons in the arm of the seat as well.

Aside from the map showing you flight progress and some games, I found all the other experiences worked well with TalkBack. Those that didn’t were indicated by a message talking about not being available with TalkBack. In the case of the flight map, the alternative to tracking flight distance, elevation, and such did work with TalkBack. I do wish that display had a compass option as well, but the experience just worked, so what more can you ask for when it comes to accessibility? Picking my own movie, having audio descriptions, and being able to check on my flight independently was pretty sweet!

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Command Customization in Mac OS 15 with VoiceOver

Published August 13, 2024 by Kelly Ford

One of the larger changes I’ve encountered in the Mac OS 15 betas is not immediately obvious unless you know to hunt for it. The VoiceOver Commanders item within VoiceOver Settings has been replaced with an item named Commands. But this is far more than just the renaming of the same old controls.

The various tabs for the different commanders such as Numpad and Trackpad have been replaced with check boxes to turn control on or off with each of those items as well as the Option key. Again none of this is new, just a bit of a different way to turn things on or off.

However, move past all those check boxes and you’ll find the new and powerful ability to customize VoiceOver commands. First off is a set of radio buttons to choose if you want to control VoiceOver with Built-In commands or Custom commands. Choose built-in and VoiceOver works the way it always has. Pick Custom commands and that’s where the power for customization appears.

An edit button becomes enabled and activating that you can customize more than 350 VoiceOver commands.

For each command the customization options are wide-ranging. You can capture a keyboard command, assign a trackpad gesture, assign a numpad command, assign a QuickNav gesture and an option key command.

Choices within the dialog allow you to filter the command list by the areas you’d expect including tables, text, information and the remaining VoiceOver command areas that appear when you bring up the VoiceOver command list. You can also filter based on the different command types, such as trackpad, numpad, assigned commands, unassigned commands, commands that are not able to be changed and more.

Using all of this is quite straight forward and a welcome enhancement for VoiceOver.

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Using Rufus to Install Windows 11 on Unsupported Hardware

Published August 11, 2024 by Kelly Ford

If you are not comfortable tinkering with your OS install and potential consequences, please ignore the rest of this post.

I have a range of computers I use, several of which do not meet the official hardware requirements to run Windows 11. Most notably, they either do not support what is known as Secure Boot and or do not have a TPM 2.0 chip. Every few months I see another mainstream publication write an article about how to install Windows 11 on such hardware. These all basically say the same thing, go set a few registry keys and run Windows setup. Sometimes this has worked for me and sometimes not.

Recently I tried what has proven for me to be the most reliable and easiest option here. This involves using an open-source program called Rufus to create a bootable USB drive. Note, even though you are creating a bootable drive, you do not have to boot off the drive. You simply need to run the setup off the created drive.

Rufus can be downloaded from https://rufus.ie/en/

Take note, use the download links within the table of product versions. The other download links are for different ads on the site as near as I can tell.

The author of Rufus has an extensive FAQ on Rufus at https://github.com/pbatard/rufus/wiki/FAQ.

In addition to downloading Rufus, you’ll want to download an ISO file. Windows 11 ISO files can be downloaded from https://www.microsoft.com/software-download/windows11

Locate the heading that says, “Download Windows 11 Disk Image (ISO) for x64 devices” and then download the ISO file.

Once you have these two downloads, run Rufus, ensure you’ve selected a USB drive and the ISO file from within Rufus and choose to start. Another dialog will come up with various setup options including a check box to bypass the Windows 11 hardware requirements. This is checked by default. Start the USB creation process at this point.

Once your USB drive is created, open it from within Windows and run Setup. Again, you should not need to boot off the USB drive. Finish setup and your OS will be updated.

Within Rufus as I mentioned you can select an ISO file. Although it isn’t announced as a split button, the select button here does support that functionality. Instead of pressing space or enter, press Alt+Down arrow and you can choose between select and download. If you do not have an ISO file, arrow down to download and press enter. You’ll return to the same button but this time it will be named download. Now press space or enter.

You are then given choices for Windows version, edition, and language. Each of these are separate selections where you pick from a list, choose continue and advance to the next choice. Eventually you reach the standard file save as dialog.

Note, although this process will update your computer to a released Windows 11 version, if you try and take actions such as joining the Insider program, the hardware checks for those installs will still fail. Additionally, the process of creating a bootable USB drive from a Windows Insider ISO is not supported by Rufus. You can create the drive, but it too will fail hardware checks. The Rufus FAQ clearly says insider ISOs are not supported.

As far as I can tell, if you put your machine into this sort of a state, Windows updates for security and such appear to download properly. I suspect when the next official OS release happens, that install will not work and you’ll need to update through another Rufus-created bootable USB.

Finally, although I’ve outlined using Rufus for Windows 11, it supports creation of more than just a bootable Windows USB drive. You can explore other options from within the program.

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The Text of The Section 508 Refresh Act of 2024

Published August 6, 2024 by Kelly Ford

In late July, Senator Bob Casey introduced the Section 508 Refresh Act of 2024. The text of the law has not been published online as far as I can find. The senator’s office sent me a PDF of the proposed legislation and I’m sharing it here with their permission.

I’m told the bill text should show up as S.4766 at https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/4766/text?s=8&r=16 but that there can be a backlog for legislation to show up here.

In an election year I don’t know how much traction a bill like this is going to receive but some of the accountability requirements proposed are stronger than I’ve seen before.

Section 7 of the legislation outlines the procurement process requirements. They include:

  • 30 days for an agency to report a violation of Section 508 from the time they are notified.
  • Mandatory civil penalties for delivering technology that violates Section 508 that is not less than 3 percent of the contract value.
  • A requirement that Section 508 defects be addressed within six months of being reported or the vendor faces termination of the entire contract.

There is much more in the legislation and I’m sure policy and legal experts will have more analysis in the coming months. This though is long overdue legislation in my opinion.

Any factual errors in this posting about requirements are my error. I’ve made every attempt to summarize what I’ve read correctly but please review the actual document.

If you are reading this document with a screen reader, I’ve found it reads more accurately in the full Adobe software then the PDF interpretations in Edge or Chrome.

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The Good and Bad of Accessibility in Two Minutes with the Olympics

Published July 27, 2024 by Kelly Ford

Tuning into a bit of the Olympics this morning, within two minutes the reality of accessibility in 2024 is on display. Audio description for a channel showing multiple sports is impressive but the schedule view of the Olympics iOS app not so much. The progress is appreciated here but the gaps are still far too many.

NBC has taken a page from the NFL’s Red Zone and introduced a channel called Olympic Gold Zone. It provides whip-around coverage of events and live audio description of a two-box split screen for two sports mixing between live commentary is impressive as an example.

The Gold Zone channel is part of the coverage available on the Peacock streaming service. Scott Hanson of NFL Red Zone fame is one of the channel hosts. Coverage runs for 10 hours a day, starting at 6A central.

Downloading the Olympics iOS app and choosing schedule though, shows accessibility that would not make it to the metal round. My experience with VoiceOver was a jumble of words, untagged images and more. I had no success understanding the actual schedule.

Back to the Gold Zone, the live audio description is excellent. As you’d expect, you get details that are just not included in the standard TV broadcast. Player reactions, details about the stadiums, surroundings for events in the city and more. And all of that is mixed in with both the Gold Zone host and announcing from the sports. It will be a fun two weeks of athletic competition.

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Audio Ducking Enhancements in iOS 18

Published July 21, 2024 by Kelly Ford

If you use a screen reader, the concept of audio ducking is likely not new to you. For those unfamiliar with the term, it refers to a concept where any audio outside of a screen reader’s speech is lowered automatically when a screen reader is communicating.

Apple has made some changes in this area that for me have been quite positive. You can now adjust both when audio ducking is applied and have greater control over the level of ducking. This is done with settings changes for both audio ducking and volume in iOS 18.

To make these adjustments, ensure that both volume and audio ducking are items you have added to the VoiceOver rotor. Then use those options as described here.

Previously audio ducking was strictly an on/off choice. In iOS 18, on has been replaced with two choices. You can now have audio ducking set to always or only when speaking. This leaves you with a total of three settings, off, only when speaking and always.

The ability to adjust the amount of ducking is a bit more subtle to discover. In fact, originally when I discovered the option to adjust volume to percentages above 100%, I thought it was a bug. Setting a volume of greater than 100% was not producing any detectable change for me and in fact it seemed odd to be able to set volume to more than 100%.

The way this all works together is that setting a volume of greater than 100% is actually lowering the volume of audio when ducking but controlling the amount of ducking applied. For example, when setting a volume of 105%, the audio that is ducked, is ducked by 5% from the original volume. Likewise, set a volume of 150% and audio when ducked, and audio is half of the original volume.

The ability to adjust the amount of ducking is a welcome enhancement. Depending on the source audio, the amount you want it lowered to still be audible but not impact screen reader speech can vary greatly. The result here is like having a specific volume control for the ducked audio.

Again to use these features, ensure that both volume and audio ducking are added to the VoiceOver rotor. Go into Settings:Accessibility:VoiceOver:Rotor and select those options along with anything else you want to use.

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If You Tag, I Will Read

Published June 22, 2024 by Kelly Ford

In my experience, a fundamental disconnect exists between accessibility and the investing world when it comes to a statement that is blasted all over every investment web site when you are about to invest. You will read the statement that you should carefully read the prospectus before making any investment. Good luck with that as in my experience these documents are rarely, if ever, properly tagged for accessibility.

As just one example, typically deep within the multipage documents are tables of the individual investments the mutual fund or ETF holds. Yet the tables in every prospectus I’ve tried to read, more than 50 in the last few weeks, from at least 20 different companies, fail to tag tables properly.

This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to accessibility of these documents. Should we talk about the charts and graphs in the same documents?

The Securities and Exchange Commission should mandate that to sell securities in the U.S. at least, all investment materials need to be WCAG 2.1/2.2 AA conformant and give the industry one year to comply. If legislation is needed to make such a mandate enforceable, then congress should craft and enact such.

Given the number of employers who include 401K programs as part of employment, every company who offers this to employees should be holding the investing world accountable today for this.

If anyone knows of an investment company or ETF or mutual fund provider who actually does these documents correctly today, I’d love to hear about it.

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Web Accessibility Failures and a Basic Financial Task of ETF Screening

Published April 23, 2024 by Kelly Ford

What often gets lost in all the talk of accessibility, conformance, WCAG standards and more is how challenging task completion can be for an end-to-end experience. I recently celebrated another birthday and have been doing part of my overall evaluation of financial tools and services I use as a part of my financial life.

I did this back in 2017 when I moved back to Wisconsin and again in late 2022 when I changed jobs. This time the driving factor is nothing quite so dramatic but rather a departure from one financial services company that simply wasn’t making progress on some accessibility basics where I honestly thought they might be different.

I’m certainly not here to give anyone investment advice but for my purposes have been evaluating ETF screeners from several of the leading financial services companies and industry resources. I’ve yet to find one that I’d consider truly usable with a screen reader and just about everyone I tried had at some point a blocking accessibility issue.

Frankly, the interactions required here are relatively few to complete the task. Choose from various criteria for the evaluation, get a list of results to interpret the data and be able to take action on items of interest.

The disappointing thing is that most of the accessibility failures are still the same basic challenges of poorly named controls, custom web controls that fail accessibility, poorly constructed tables, charts that fail to address accessibility and more.

None of the tools I tried were completely broken. But kind of works doesn’t cut it for this kind of task. Nor does mix and match between providers to work around issues in one tool.

What is also disappointing here is that the biggest workaround for these sorts of challenges is often downloading the results for processing in Excel or another application. However, every experience I tried puts a restriction on the number of results you can download to the point that downloading the data is not a realistic option.

Unlike my previous forays into this task, a new wrinkle about being able to download the results has also emerged and was present on more than one site. By this I mean that you actually have to interact with some control to choose the type of file you want and those experiences fail web accessibility basics.

These sorts of tasks need to be models of web accessibility. I’ve long said that it is a struggle to try and accomplish a task, learn the experience and wrestle with accessibility issues all at the same time.

Add in the fact that in an area such as financial tools, it isn’t enough to be accessible. A financial tool that is very accessible but works poorly at the financial task is not helpful. Additionally, assuming there was something that stood out in this area, changing financial service providers isn’t always a straight forward option. It can be costly, has potential tax and other consequences and may not even be possible depending on the type of investment account you are trying to move.

Finally, much like healthcare, financial management is a highly personal task. Many of the last-resort strategies of asking a friend or family member to assist are not good options here.

In just about every case, the tools I’ve tried come from industry players who have ongoing accessibility efforts with people who I am sure are as dedicated to accessibility as I know I am. Given my own employment and as I wrote in my post on Ethical Accessibility I understand the challenges for everyone involved in these situations.

Several of the same companies here are listed as corporate partners for Disability:IN. Perhaps that organization needs to expand what they measure as one example.

Those more familiar with the legislative and executive processes of government may know if an agency such as the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) could adopt a requirement for any organization involved in the buying and selling of financial instruments having to meet certain accessibility criteria to conduct such business. Legal requirements tend to bring a level of clarity, for better or worse, that is otherwise hard to achieve in many organizations.

Many of these organizations already make claims of acting as a fiduciary, especially if you use their advising services. I find it hard to call this an accurate statement with the cornerstone of fiduciary responsibility to put a client’s need ahead of your own interest. Comprehensive accessibility would seem to be a must if you were serious about this.

Writing 101 would say I should close this post with some call to action or other engagement strategy. Well, there is no great close here just now beyond a call for the financial industry to step up efforts because what is happening today is broken.

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