Visually Impaired Medical Transcriptionist Appreciates MSN Messenger

Lynn Schneider works at a hospital as a medical transcriptionist. Her employer hasn't installed MSN® Messenger Service yet, but that isn't stopping her. She's so excited about instant messaging that she started a user group. Like any other user group they discuss problems, share experiences and just have fun. Members of Lynn's user group are now all skilled MSN Messengers. But that's not the entire story. Lynn and members of her user group are blind.

As Lynn tells it (her letter is included below), MSN Messenger Service has helped with some of the feelings of isolation sometimes experienced by individuals who are blind. With MSN Messenger Service she can always find somebody who can relate to the problems she faces at home and on the job. When she needs an urgent solution to a problem she can look through her contacts and pick out the person who could best help. MSN Messenger Service also helps her keep her long-distance bills down.

After being frustrated with the lack of accessibility of other instant messaging programs or their lack of compatibility with her screen reader, Lynn found MSN Messenger Service. Compatibility with a screenreader is no easy accomplishment. MSN Messenger Service is a product for everyone.

Letter from Lynn

My name is Lynn Schneider. I am totally blind and am the moderator of an E-mail discussion list called access2im, which is a forum on Egroups to discuss the use of instant messaging programs by the blind and visually impaired.

In the past month or so, MSN Instant Messenger has taken the blind Internet community by storm with its simplicity and accessibility to the special screen reading software we use to access our computers. Many of us have been discouraged about the difficulties we have faced trying to use some of the other popular instant messaging programs. Someone posted a message to one of the lists encouraging everyone to try MSN Messenger. I downloaded it initially for the telephony features, but then a friend of mine sent me an instant message one afternoon and I was amazed at how easy it was to use MSN with my screen-reading program.

I can't think of one part of the program that is not accessible, although we're all trying to think of a way that we can have the incoming messages read automatically, including the messages that come up on the task bar when contacts come on-line. This may be something we can handle by changing some settings or coming up with scripts in the screen-reading applications.

They say that instant messaging will be increasingly used in the business community in the years to come. If MSN Messenger stays as accessible as it is now, blind employees will be ready to use instant messaging as a part of their jobs the way their sighted coworkers do.

I know that we always write to complain about inaccessible features of programs, but on behalf of myself and the blind community, I want to take this opportunity to write and thank Microsoft for releasing such a powerful and accessible instant messaging client. We all appreciate it very much.

Lynn K. Schneider