Screen Magnification for Office Applications

People with low vision use screen magnifiers to interact with computers. They usually need to zoom and pan with the screen magnifier using predefined keyboard and mouse actions. When using office productivity applications (e.g., word processors and spreadsheet applications), the spatially distributed arrangement of UI elements makes interaction a challenging proposition for low vision users, as they can only view a fragment of the screen at any moment. They expend significant chunks of time panning back-and-forth between application ribbons containing various commands (e.g., formatting, design, review, references, etc.) and the main edit area containing user content. In this demo, we will demonstrate MagPro, an interface augmentation to office productivity tools, that not only reduces the interaction effort of low-vision screen-magnifier users by bringing the application commands as close as possible to the users' current focus in the edit area, but also lets them easily explore these commands using simple mouse actions. Moreover, MagPro automatically synchronizes the magnifier viewport with the keyboard cursor, so that users can always see what they are typing, without having to manually adjust the magnifier focus every time the keyboard cursor goes off screen during text entry.