Narrator Magnification Tool for visual impaired users

Narrator Magnification Tool for visual impaired users

Hi, I have created a tool to assist my colleague in doing his work. His eyesight is very poor and needs to zoom up to 8 times to read a text. I decided to create an application to assist him in doing his work.

The application I created consist of two parts:
-Zoom and invert the desktop color
-Simple speech Speech Synthesizer to read out text of the selected item.


Problems with windows accessibility

Magnifier
-No shortcut key

Narrator
-Reads too much information, causing confusion and information overload.
-No shortcut key


My solution is to create a zooming application that can read out selected item (Combination of Sound and Visual). My preliminary study suggested that this software can speed up users respond for more than 2 times.

My approach in designing this software:
-Using p/invoke to call windows magnification API (there are already code written in C# for Magnification)
-Create a Layered,Invisible,Click-able through window, Example
-Using windows UI automation to detect focused/selected control
-SpeechSynthesizer class to implement Narrator
-RegisterHotKey to register shortcut keys.


Currently this software is under testing mode. It will only work on windows with Aero theme turned on. There is no customization for its setting yet. All setting are hardcoded inside the application. The next release will have adjustable setting and will work on windows without Aero theme applied.

Shortcut keys:

            F1 + Control -zoom out
            F2 + Control -zoom in
            F3 + Control -zoom 8 times
            F12 + Control -Exit
            1 + Control -Hide/show magnifier
            2 + Control -Stop speech engine
            Enter + Alt -Read selected text inside editcontrol
            C + Alt -Read text inside clipboard

Download demo here **Aero theme need to be turned on before running