Resources

All resources listed are accessible to the blind and visually impaired. If you do not see something you think should be here please let me know. The same goes if you feel something should not be listed here. Each resource category is indicated with a heading for quick browsing. Screen reader users can use H to navigate to each category, then arrow down or just press the letter I to jump from one listing to the next.

This resource list is blessed with unique intent. So, grab some coffee, or pizza and your drink of choice and enjoy. If you are looking for general access technology news, then check out the above link. These are curated news articles from around the web.

 

General/Miscellaneous

  • Assistive Software Knowledgebase for Computers and Mobile Devices: The Assistive Software Knowledgebase will be a tool that employees with disabilities, employers, and rehabilitation professionals can use to make informed choices about selecting, acquiring and using assistive software.  The site will include searchable information about features, usage tips, compatibility, and user experiences with a variety of software (e.g., screen readers or scheduling apps).
  • BVI Workforce Innovation Access Technology and Blog: The BVI Workforce Innovation Center has developed a guide comprised of a sampling of accessible technologies they have used that have real, meaningful value for people who experience vision loss.
  • Hadley.edu: The mission of Hadley is to create personalized learning opportunities that empower adults with vision loss or blindness to thrive – at home, at work, and in their communities.
  • Tom’s Tek Stop | Product Reviews, Experiences, and Technical Insights from Thomas J. Hesley
  • Improve Internet Accessibility for Individuals with Impaired Vision
    MyVision.org has recently published a guide on internet accessibility for the blind and impaired, that covers topics such as:
    – What are web content accessibility guidelines?
    – What vision conditions can cause people to struggle using the internet?
    – Tips for easier internet browsing
    – Accessories that can help those with low vision
    – Why it matters, and more.

 

Games

  • net: Audiogames, as opposed to video games are computer games whose main output is sound rather than graphics. This site exists as a community portal for all things to do with audiogames. Here you will find news, articles, an active community forum and our database of over 700 titles on platforms from Microsoft Windows to iOS. If you’ve not played an audiogame before, strap on some headphones, try one for yourself and hear the difference!
  • A Hero’s Call: Experience exploration and adventure like never before! In the premier title from Out of Sight Games, you are a traveler thrust into a world of possibilities when you find the city of Farhaven under attack by a mysterious enemy. Along with a small band of allies, you must explore the surrounding lands, discover the identity of your enigmatic foe, and save Farhaven from certain conquest. Do you have what it takes to answer a hero’s call? Listen to a preview of a Hero’s Call.
  • RSGames: Welcome to RS Games! Since 2009, RS Games has developed online board, card, and dice games that are accessible to the blind and visually impaired. Over 20 games are currently available including Monopoly, Uno, Blackjack, Yahtzee, Farkle, and Cards Against Humanity. see a full list of RSGames.

NVDA Resources

  • Download NVDA: You will always find the latest version here if you don’t already have NVDA.
  • NVDA User Guide: You will always find the latest NVDA user guide here.
  • Add-Ons for NVDA: If you want to enhance NVDA with add-ons that have been developed you will want to browse through this section.

Freedom Scientific

  • Download JAWS, Fusion, or ZoomText via the above links.
  • Synthesizers: high-quality voices for Freedom Scientific products can be found here.
  • Focus Firmware: The latest drivers for the Focus Braille displays can be found here.
  • Other Hardware: Here you will find hardware drivers for cameras, keyboards, and other Freedom Scientific products.
  • Documentation: Manuals for ZoomText, Fusion, and JAWS can be found here.
  • Training: if you are looking for training topics for specific areas for Freedom Scientific Products this is where you should start browsing.

Microsoft

Google

Apple

  • Apple Accessibility: Mac, iPhone, iPad, and Watch accessibility. Learn about accessibility features such as magnifier, VoiceOver, Zoom, Back Tap, headphone accommodations, Live listen, and more.
  • How to contact Apple Accessibility: Provide feedback to Apple about accessibility, or schedule an appointment. You can also chat, or call them directly.
  • AppleVis.com: AppleVis is the leading online resource for blind and low vision users of Apple’s range of Mac computers, the iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Apple TV, and iPod touch.

Amazon

  • Amazon Accessibility: Discover paths to accessibility with Amazon products
  • Alexa Accessibility: Alexa continues to open possibilities and new ways to experience the world. Alexa’s accessibility features are helping people be more connected, more entertained, and more independent.
  • Fire TV Accessibility:  Amazon Fire TV offers accessibility features such as closed captions, the VoiceView screen reader, a screen magnifier, Text Banner, and high contrast text to support access by customers who are deaf, hard of hearing, blind, and or have low vision. This allows customers to enjoy movies, TV shows, music, apps, and more.
  • Fire Tablets Accessibility: Fire tablets come with new and improved accessibility tools so that all customers can enjoy their books, movies, apps, and more.
  • Kindle Accessibility: Kindle is working hard to build experiences that delight all our customers with disabilities, by delivering devices and reading applications which work with assistive technology, features that support a variety of reading needs, tools that enable anyone to become a Kindle author, and more than 12 million screen reader supported books.
  • Amazon Prime Videos with Audio Description: This is a list of TV shows and movies that contain an audio description track.

WordPress Accessibility for Themes and Plugins

Need to start or improve a website. The following WP resources will give you a lot to think about.

  • WordPress Accessibility: This is the official accessibility page for WordPress itself.
  • WordPress Accessibility-ready themes: These themes have been checked by the Theme Review Team to ensure that these themes pass their basic accessibility requirements.
  • WordPress Accessibility Handbook: shares the best practices for web accessibility, a list of accessibility tools, the testing we do to improve WordPress, themes, and plugins, and how to get involved in WordPress accessibility.

WordPress Themes

  • Bstone Theme: Everything is customizable that you need to give your site a unique and custom look. Change your site colors, choose from different header styles, layouts, site widths and more!
  • Business One Page Theme: A free creative one-page theme for WordPress that can be used for any business to create beautiful, clean and professional websites with fully responsive capabilities. The design allows you to include various sections like testimonials, portfolio, services, team, etc. to beautifully showcase your business through your website.
  • WEBMAN Design Disabilities friendly WordPress themes: These themes are inclusive, disabilities friendly, and barrierless, so you can reach anyone in the world. Have fun around here and grab a goodie for your next project!
  • OverView, a free WordPress theme rich in features: A minimalist yet colorful Gutenberg ready responsive theme, OverView delivers a one-page browsing experience: all posts can be dynamically shown one by one on the OverView Display -available as page templates- by clicking on simple navigation buttons, helping engagement with your content.
  • Aaron Theme By Carolina Nymark: Aaron is a responsive and accessible theme. Features includes a Call to action and front page Highlights that will grab your visitors attention and help you feature different parts of your website. The theme has two optional menus (including a social menu), logo upload, six page templates and three widget areas that will hold any number of widgets. Do you want to run Aaron on a company website rather than a blog? No problem just hide the meta, the sidebars, and turn off your comments.
  • Nevertheless Theme By David Chandra Purnama: Simple responsive classic theme with color options, 3 layout options, custom header, logo, custom CSS, social-links navigation menu, and more…
  • Catch Themes: Premium Responsive WordPress Themes with advanced functionality and awesome support. Simple, Clean and Lightweight Responsive WordPress Themes.
  • AccessPress Themes: All sorts of free WordPress themes that can be used for a wide range of purpose and niches.
  • Compete Themes: Download a minimalist, mobile-friendly, and easy-to-customize theme
  • Outreach Pro Theme by StudioPress: A church is one of the most information intensive organizations. Don’t let your message get lost. Outreach gives you the framework you want, so you can give your people the message they need.
  • OceanWP theme By oceanwp: OceanWP is the perfect theme for your project. Lightweight and highly extendable, it will enable you to create almost any type of website such a blog, portfolio, business website and WooCommerce storefront with a beautiful & professional design. Very fast, responsive, RTL & translation ready, best SEO practices, unique WooCommerce features to increase conversion and much more. You can even edit the settings on tablet & mobile, so your site looks good on every device.

WordPress Plugins

  • WP RSS Aggregator – Automatic and Powerful Content Aggregation and Curation: I use this to get news and other hand-picked content from various sources around the web.
  • Jetpack: A swiss army knife for WordPress. There is something you can use for sure! Customize your homepage, blog posts, sidebars, and widgets — all without touching any code.
  • Jetpack CRM – Clients, Invoices, Leads, & Billing for WordPress: A client manager for WordPress. With a Client Portal for customers to view quotes, invoices, transactions, and files.
  • WP AutoTerms: Privacy Policy Generator, Terms & Conditions Generator, Cookie Notice Banner: helps you with a wide range of legal requirements your WordPress website might be required to keep up with, such as the CCPA or the GDPR law or Amazon Associates requirement to have a disclosure for affiliate links.
  • Simple Membership By smp7, wp.insider: A flexible, well-supported, and easy-to-use WordPress membership plugin for offering free and premium content from your WordPress site. The simple membership plugin lets you protect your posts and pages so only your members can view the protected content.
  • Paid Memberships Pro By Stranger Studios: PMP gives you all the tools you need to start, manage, and grow your membership site. The plugin is designed for premium content sites, clubs/associations, subscription products, newsletters and more. Users can select a membership level, complete checkout, and immediately become members of your site. You decide what content your member can access. Members can log in, view payments, update billing info, or cancel their account directly on your site. SIMPLE TO SET UP, DEEPLY CUSTOMIZABLE
  • WP eCommerce: Whether you’re hoping to sell digital downloads, physical inventory, or subscriptions and memberships – with WP eCommerce, you’re only minutes away from your next sale.
  • Contact Forms 7: Contact Form 7 can manage multiple contact forms, plus you can customize the form and the mail contents flexibly with simple markup. The form supports Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and so on.
  • Contact Form 7: Accessible Defaults: This plug-in replaces the default template that Contact Form 7 automatically generates with an accessible equivalent of that form and adds a suite of additional basic form types that you can choose from to model your new forms.
  • Crafty Social Buttons: This plugin adds a set of social buttons to your website, and includes craft-related social sites like Ravelry, Etsy, Craftsy and Pinterest as well as other major social networks, including WhatsApp. Support for sharing to WhatsApp is also provided on mobile devices. You can choose from nine different button styles to match your theme. You can have the share buttons automatically added to the top or bottom of each post, and can position the link buttons using either a widget, a shortcode or a template action hook.
  • WP Hide Post by scriptburn.com: This plugin excels in giving you full control over the visibility of your post. By default, any post you add to your WordPress blog will become the topmost post, and will show up immediately on the front page in the first position, and similarly in category/tag/archive pages. Sometimes, you want to create a “low-profile” addition to your blog that doesn’t belong on the front page, or maybe you don’t want it to show up anywhere else in your blog except when you explicitly link to it. This plugin allows you to create such “hidden gems”.
  • User Submitted Posts By Jeff Starr: adds a frontend form via template tag or shortcode that enables your visitors to submit posts and upload images. Just add the following shortcode to any Post, Page, or Widget: [user-submitted-posts] That’s all there is to it! Your site now can accept user generated content. Everything is super easy to customize via the Plugin Settings page.
  • PowerPress Podcasting plugin by Blubrry: Publish and manage your podcast right from your WordPress website. Developed by podcasters for podcasters (Blubrry Podcasting), PowerPress features options supported by the top podcasting apps and directories, including Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music and more. Best of all, it integrates with Blubrry’s hosting and statistics, providing convenient features such as easy uploads available only to Blubrry customers. Don’t worry though, we work with any hosting provider.
  • Podcast Player – Your Podcasting Companion By vedathemes: provides an easy way to show and play your podcast episodes using podcasting feed URL. It is a must have plugin for your podcast website. Give your listeners an easy access to all your episodes from any page or even from all the pages of your website.
  • Compact WP Audio Player HTML5 + Flash hybrid based WordPress plugin which can be used to embed an mp3 audio file on your WordPress post or page using a shortcode. The audio player is cute and compact and will play on all major browsers.:
  • Cue by Audiothemes.com: Cue gives you the ability to easily create stylish playlists and display them anywhere on your site using a widget, shortcode or template tag. Upload new audio files, reuse existing files in your media library, or even link to remote sources.
  • WTI Like Post: This is a plugin for adding like (thumbs up) and unlike (thumbs down) functionality for posts/pages. On admin end along with handful of configuration settings, it will show a list of most liked posts/pages. You can reset the settings to default and the like/unlike counts for all/selected posts/pages as well. It comes with two widgets, one to display the most liked posts/pages for a given time range and another to show recently liked posts.
  • Social Media Follow Buttons Bar This is a bar with a set of icons for the popular social media networks which are linked directly to your profile. I.e., clicking the Facebook icon will take the user to your Facebook page, clicking the Twitter icon will take them to your Twitter page. Unlike the other plugins, this plugin creates a live bar. The bar automatically adapts to the width of the block where it is placed. If the buttons do not fit to the one line, then they will be placed on multiple lines. So, they can be arranged horizontally or vertically, in one line or in a few, and all of this is done automatically. This plugin gives you finer control over buttons. You can configure them on the plugin’s settings page. You can choose the size of icons, choose open link in current tab or in new, and etc. Also, you can have the social media follow buttons automatically added to the bottom of all Posts and/or Pages, or position them manually using either a widget, shortcode or template action hook.
  • AddToAny Share Buttons: Helping people share your posts and pages to any service. Services include Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Reddit, WeChat, and over 100 more sharing and social media sites & apps.
  • WordPress-popular-posts: WordPress Popular Posts is a highly customizable widget that displays your most popular posts.
  • WP-Polls: This plugin is extremely customizable via templates and CSS styles and there are tons of options for you to choose from to ensure that WP-Polls runs the way you wanted. It now supports multiple selection of answers.
  • Yop Poll: you can create polls to include both single or multiple answers, work with a wide variety of options and settings to decide how you wish to sort your poll information, how to manage the results, what details to display and what to keep private, whether you want to view the total votes or the total voters, to set vote permissions or block voters etc.
  • WP Social Sharing by Arjun Jain  : Adds very attractive responsive social share buttons of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Xing, Reddit and Pinterest to WordPress posts, page, media or any custom post type. This is a very lightweight and simple social sharing plugin. This plugin provides options whether you want to include plugin CSS/JS or not.
  • Akismet Spam Protection: Checks your comments and contact form submissions against our global database of spam to prevent your site from publishing malicious content. You can review the comment spam it catches on your blog’s “Comments” admin screen.
  • Wordfence Security – Firewall & Malware Scan: includes an endpoint firewall and malware scanner that were built from the ground up to protect WordPress. Our Threat Defense Feed arms Wordfence with the newest firewall rules, malware signatures and malicious IP addresses it needs to keep your website safe. Rounded out by 2FA and a suite of additional features, Wordfence is the most comprehensive WordPress security solution available.
  • WP Mail SMTP by WPForms: Fixes your email deliverability by reconfiguring WordPress to use a proper SMTP provider when sending emails.
  • Rainmaker Form: Rainmaker makes the process of creating forms and collecting customer data extremely simple. It’s a free WordPress plugin that gives you readymade high converting forms that can be displayed anywhere on your WordPress website using a simple shortcode.
  • Email Subscribers: This is a complete newsletter plugin that lets you collect leads, send automated new blog post notification emails, create & send broadcasts and also manage them all in one single place.
  • Newsletters by Tribulant: A full-featured WordPress newsletter plugin created for WordPress which fulfils all subscribers, emails, marketing and newsletter related needs for both personal and business environments.
  • Temporary Login Without Password: Using the “Temporary Login Without Password” plugin you can create a self-expiring account for someone and give them a special link with which they can login to your WordPress without needing a username and password.
  • Advanced Random Posts Widget: This plugin will enable a custom, flexible and advanced random posts. It allows you to display a list of random posts via shortcode or widget with thumbnail, excerpt and post date, also you can display it from all or specific or multiple taxonomy.
  • Ultimate FAQ – WordPress FAQ Plugin by Etoile Web Design  : With this plugin you can easily create FAQs and add them to your WordPress site using a Gutenberg block or shortcode. It makes use of a custom post type and integrates seamlessly into any site.
  • Strong Testimonials: In just a few steps, you will be collecting and publishing your testimonials or reviews. Beginners and pros alike will appreciate the wealth of flexible features refined over 4 years from user feedback and requests.
  • All in One SEO: We believe you shouldn’t have to hire a SEO expert or developer to properly setup WordPress SEO. That’s why we built AIOSEO as the most comprehensive WordPress SEO plugin and toolkit, so you can improve your website’s SEO rankings and uncover new growth opportunities in less than 10 minutes.
  • Cookie Notice: allows you to elegantly inform users that your site uses cookies and helps you comply with the EU GDPR cookie law and CCPA regulations.
  • Ultimate Reviews by Etoile Web Design  : An easy to use product review plugin that lets visitors submit reviews for different products, events or anything else. Ultimate Reviews is easy to set up and includes two smart shortcodes, one that displays your reviews and one that displays a form that your visitors can use to submit reviews.
  • Download Monitor: provides an interface for uploading and managing downloadable files (including support for multiple versions), inserting download links into posts, logging downloads and selling downloads!
  • Easy Digital downloads: Whether it is software, documents, photos, ebooks, songs, graphics, videos, or any other type of media file, Easy Digital Downloads provides a complete system for effortlessly selling your digital products.
  • : BuddyPress: Members can register on your site to create user profiles, have private conversations, make social connections, create and interact in groups, and much more. Truly a social network in a box, BuddyPress helps you build a home for your company, school, sports team, or other niche community.
  • PayPal for Digital Goods: You will create a Buy Now button on the landing page of your digital file product using the shortcode provided by this plugin. When your customers click the Buy button, an inline popup window will open for the payment. The customer will get the file download immediately after the payment.
  • Name Directory: This plugin adds name/term directories (glossaries) to your WordPress installation.
  • Events Calendar by Modern Tribe: Easily create and manage an events calendar on your website with The Events Calendar. Whether your events are in-person or virtual events, this plugin boasts professional features backed by our world-class team of developers and designers.
  • Event Organizer: adds event management that integrates well with your WordPress site. By using WordPress’ in-built ‘custom post type’, this plug-in allows you to create events that have the same functionality as posts, while adding further features that allow you to manage your events. This includes the possibility of repeating your event according to complex schedules and assign your events to venues. This can all be done through an intuitive user interface, which allows you to view your events in the familiar WordPress list or in a calendar page in the admin area.
  • Comment Luv: This plugin will visit the site of the comment author while they type their comment and retrieve their last blog posts which they can choose to include at the bottom of their comment when they click submit.
  • Easy Table of Contents: A user friendly, featured focused plugin which allows you to insert a table of contents into your posts, pages and custom post types.
  • Mammoth .docx converter: Mammoth is designed to convert .docx documents, such as those created by Microsoft Word, and convert them to HTML. Mammoth aims to produce simple and clean HTML by using semantic information in the document, and ignoring other details. For instance, Mammoth converts any paragraph with the style Heading1 to h1 elements, rather than attempting to exactly copy the styling (font, text size, color, etc.) of the heading. This allows you to paste from Word documents without the usual mess.

 

 

 

Audio Editing

  • GoldWave: Fully loaded to do everything from the simplest recording and editing to the most sophisticated audio processing, restoration, enhancements, analysis, and conversions. Over 20 years in the business. Easy to learn
  • Audacity: An easy-to-use, multi-track audio editor and recorder for Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux and other operating systems.

Video Editing

  • MACHETE: SLIM, QUICK AND EASY VIDEO EDITOR! You don’t need any special skills or advanced knowledge to edit video with Machete. The program is so intuitive and simple that you can literally start editing your multimedia files within a few minutes after downloading it! With its extremely user-friendly design, Machete is an ideal solution for quick and easy “slicing” of your multimedia files. You can delete unnecessary fragments (e.g. cut out commercials), copy, move, mix and save individual pieces. This means that Machete combines the functionality of both easy video splitter (cutter, trimmer), video joiner (for joining multimedia files with exactly the same formats) and more.
  • Avidemux: A free video editor designed for simple cutting, filtering and encoding tasks. It supports many file types, including AVI, DVD compatible MPEG files, MP4 and ASF, using a variety of codecs. Tasks can be automated using projects, job queue and powerful scripting capabilities.

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