After making some changes to the layout and interface of the Access Tools menu, it has now been distributed for beta testing. The new design makes the menu much more stable and prevents some of the early problems that were occurring when resizing the text.

Additional features have been added such as the ability to change the titles of applications and documents with the use of the right hand mouse button once the pointer is over the individual item and also to resize dialog boxes and increase text sizes, change colours etc  with keyboard commands.  The help file has the short cut key commands and software applications can be added to the menu via the folders found on the pen drive.

The underlying code has remained relatively constant, and has so far been able to create the application list in the menu with very few problems. This stability has allowed a longer period of time to be spent on refining the interface and improving the accessibility features of the application, which initial tests have shown to work well.

The possibility of a Mac alternative will be investigated in the next few days, along with an in depth look at what portable accessibility tools are available for the Mac.

In the meantime, development will continue on the Windows version in response to any issues that are raised during the beta period, to ensure that the final version provides the best possible experience to all users.

Access Tools Menu showing the list of Accessibility Tools and Applications that are on this USB drive.