Windows 7 features

Windows Speech Recognition now works better—and with more programs. So instead of using the keyboard, you can just tell your computer what to do. Start an e-mail by speaking the recipient's name, surf the web without a keyboard, or dictate your documents.

Windows Speech Recognition responds to your voice.

Magnifier

Magnifier is a help to people with low vision, but everyone will appreciate its ability to enlarge hard-to-see text and pictures. Full-screen mode magnifies the entire desktop, and lens mode zooms in on particular areas. Inside the Magnifier window, you can click buttons and input text as you normally would.

Magnifier zooms in on your desktop.

On-Screen Keyboard

On-Screen Keyboard lets you "keyboard without a keyboard," with a choice of several different input methods: clicking mode, hovering mode, and scanning mode. With Windows Touch and the right hardware, you can also input text by tapping directly on the screen. And word prediction speeds things up: type the first few letters of a word, and Windows will finish it for you.

Text prediction in On-Screen Keyboard is not included in Windows 7 Home Basic.

On-Screen Keyboard has a variety of text input choices.

Narrator and visual notifications

Windows 7 can read on-screen text aloud and describe some events (like error messages), helping you use your computer without the display. With Audio Description, you can hear a narration of what's happening in a video. Windows can also replace sound alerts with visual cues like a screen flash, so system alerts are noticeable even when they're not heard.

Note: Narrator is not available in all languages, so if the steps below don't work, Narrator is not available for your language.