National Disability Employment Awareness Month: Making It Work – How I Do My Job With A Motor Skill Disability

Working with a motor skill-related disability is not as difficult as it may seem, especially with the help of the assistive technologytools that I use. I have limited use of my hands, so I use typing splints. This allows me to poke at keys one at a time, which can be tedious and slow, as you can imagine. This is why I use a combination of Sticky Keys and speech recognition softwareto assist me in completing some of my tasks as the Senior Accessibility Specialist at WeCo.

Sticky keys is an accessibility feature to help Windows users with physical disabilities. It serializes keystrokes instead of pressing multiple keys at a time. When the sticky keys feature is enabled, the Alt, Control, Shift, and Windows keys become “sticky,” meaning that you can press one of those keys, release it, and then press the other key you want to use. I also use my keyboard’s Tab key for work. I use this key when I’m researching a client’s website or software product. This helps me to determine if a client’s website or software product can be accessed via a keyboard.

Speech recognition software is another tool I use to help me with my workload. Just like sticky keys and my keyboard, speech recognition software helps me determine how accessible the product or website is for those people living with a motor skill-related disabilityusing this type of software. It is also a big help when I have to do a lot of dictating or typing, such as I am for this blog.

Another device I started using this past year is the Window Surface tablet. Like most phones and newer laptops, it has a touch screen, which makes my work much easier with the use of a stylus. I can easily look at a client’s product or website just by touching the screen. It also helps me see what their website or product looks like on a mobile device like my tablet. This is important as more companies are concerned how their website or product displays and functions on various mobile devices because more people are using them today.

Read more posts in this months series National Disability Employment and Blindness Awareness Month found in WeCo’s IT Accessibility Information Blog.

Come visit our community on LinkedIn: Disability Employment Connection (DEC)!