Video: Dolphin Guide online demonstration - Part 1 of 3

An introduction to Dolphin Guide software, see just how easy it is to use. This part looks at emailing.

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Read the transcript of video: Dolphin Guide online demonstration - Part 1 of 3

Hello and welcome to this online demonstration of Guide.

In the next 10 minutes I'm going to show you just how easy it is to use Guide to send e-mails, write letters, surf the Internet, keep appointments in a calendar, and scan and read magazines or other printed material. Guide does much more than this, but I'll keep it to just these five features to start with.

So what is Guide?

Guide is a software package that allows anyone, of any ability to use a computer, without having to know any of the technical details about that computer. Guide is an all-in-one software package, so you can achieve many tasks without having to learn or switch between a host of different programmes. Guide includes features specifically designed for blind and partially sighted users, which include magnification, speech and full colour customisation. Guide runs on just about any Microsoft PC, including Windows 98 and Windows XP. Guide also acts as a protective shield between you and the computer, making sure you cannot accidentally press a button that loses all your work or breaks the computer.

Before I start the actual Guide demonstration, I'll say a few words about options you have when purchasing Guide. Guide can be purchased as a software CD to be installed on your computer, or it can be purchased as a package including a new PC, flat screen monitor, printer and scanner, all set up and ready to go.

Guide's normal configuration is to automatically start when you turn on your computer, so straight away you'll see the Guide main menu. Guide has clear and uncluttered screens, which means we can then use the magnification to increase or decrease the size of text on any screen and make full use of the available screen size. The Guide voice will tell me both what to do, and feeds back everything I select and every key I press.

Guide comes with both male and female voices in a range of dialects, including British English, American English, Australian English, French, Spanish, Dutch, German and many others.

Sending an email

I'll now use the up and down arrow keys on my keyboard to explore Guide's main menu.

Before we go and send an e-mail, I'll just mention about the help system in Guide. On every screen you can press the F1 key on your keyboard to show a help page specifically for that screen. The help can be both spoken out and magnified. Press escape to close the help page.

We can now pick a task from the main menu by either; pressing the corresponding number or simply "arrowing" to that option and pressing the enter key, so I'll use the up and down arrow keys to go to the e-mail option. I'll start by writing a new e-mail so I'll select option three. The person I want to send this e-mail to is already in my address book, so I'll select option two. I can use the down arrow to go through my list and find the address I want then press enter to continue. I'll type my subject and then press enter to continue. Then I can type my e-mail message, and again press enter to continue. I can now pick an action for this e-mail, I can send it, spell-check it, or save it and carry on working on the e-mail tomorrow. I have now sent the e-mail and Guide has sent us back to the e-mail menu.

Now let's have a look at retrieving our new e-mails that may be waiting for us. I'll press number one to retrieve our e-mails. Two new e-mails have arrived, and they are at the top of our list. I'm going to read the second one that came in, and I press enter to read it. I'll return now back to the e-mail menu.

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