Brilliant Staircase Design Stores Extra Energy to Make It Easier to Climb Later. Do you deliberately avoid visiting friends who live in multi- story buildings without an elevator? No one would fault you—having to climb even just a single flight of stairs is like being forced to workout against your will. But thanks to engineers at Georgia Tech and Emory University, stairs might one day do all the hard work for you. In a paper published today in the journal PLOS ONE, that team details their energy- recycling stairs, which store energy when you descend, and then release it to make the ascent easier on the way back up.

You probably don’t stop to think about it while you race down a flight of stairs, but your body expends a considerable amount of energy in the process to prevent you from falling. It’s usually wasted energy, but these energy- recycling stairs take advantage of those forces using a spring- loaded mechanism that compresses each step and locks it down as you descend. This leaves every step charged with potential energy once you’ve hit the bottom. When you go to climb back up, pressure sensors on each tread release the locking mechanism on the step below it, turning that stored potential energy into kinetic energy that helps lift a climber’s leg as the spring- powered step raises again.

As the stairs compress on your descent, the engineers have calculated they save around 2. And on the way back up, the energy- recycling stairs make it around 3.

The stair’s unique mechanisms can be retrofitted to existing steps, so the technology isn’t only for new buildings, necessarily. Kaspersky Antivirus Reviews. And installing them would be cheaper, and require less space, than an escalator or elevator.

There’s no word on when this technology will be commercialized, but anyone living in an elevator- less building will certainly be hoping it’s as soon as possible.

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NVDA 2. 01. 7. 2 User Guide. Table of Contents. Introduction. Non. Visual Desktop Access (NVDA) is a free and open source screen reader for the Microsoft Windows operating system.

General Features. NVDA allows blind and vision impaired people to access and interact with the Windows operating system and many third party applications. Internationalization. It is important that people anywhere in the world, no matter what language they speak, get equal access to technology. Speech Synthesizer Support. Apart from providing its messages and interface in several languages, NVDA can also enable the user to read content in any language, as long as they have a speech synthesizer that can speak that language. Braille support. For users that own a refreshable braille display, NVDA can output its information in Braille.

Licence and Copyright. NVDA is copyright 2. NVDA contributors. System Requirements. Operating Systems: all 3.

Navigating with the System Caret. When an object that allows navigation and/or editing of text is focused, you can move through the text using the system caret.

Home of the Chromium Open Source Project. ShowAccessibilityOptionsInSystemTrayMenu Show accessibility options in system tray menu. If you’re away from home and in need of WiFi, now Facebook can help you find it. Originally only available in a few countries, the social network’s “Find WiFi. This page describes the new features and improvements available in JAWS 18. Download JAWS; JAWS 18 Enhancements, for a complete list of enhancements made in this. There’s no doubt that if we’re going to stop or even slow down climate change, we have to get our collective shit together. But collective action starts with.

Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8. Windows 1. 0 (including Server operating Systems). For Windows XP 3. NVDA requires Service Pack 2 or higher. Getting and Setting Up NVDA. If you have not yet got a copy of NVDA, you can download it from www. Portable and Temporary Copy Restrictions.

Apart from the inability to automatically start during and/or after log- on, the portable and temporary copies of NVDA also have the following restrictions. The inability to interact with applications running with administrative privileges, unless of course NVDA itself has been run also with these privileges (not recommended). Installing NVDA. If installing NVDA directly from the NVDA download package, press the Install NVDA button. Start at Windows Logon.

This option allows you to choose whether or not NVDA should automatically start while on the Windows Logon screen, before you have entered a password. Create Desktop Shortcut (ctrl+alt+n). This option allows you to choose whether or not NVDA should create a shortcut on the desktop to start NVDA. Copy Portable Configuration to Current User Account. This option allows you to choose whether or not NVDA should copy the user configuration from the currently running NVDA into the configuration for the currently logged on user, for the installed copy of NVDA. Creating a Portable Copy. If creating a portable copy directly from the NVDA download package, simply press the Create Portable Copy button.

Getting started with NVDA4. Launching NVDA. If you have installed NVDA with the installer, then starting NVDA is as simple as either pressing control+alt+n, or choosing NVDA from the NVDA menu under Programs on the Start Menu. Please wait.. About NVDA keyboard commands. The NVDA Modifier Key. Most NVDA- specific keyboard commands consist of pressing a particular key called the NVDA modifier key in conjunction with one or more other keys.

Keyboard Layouts. NVDA currently comes with two sets of key commands (known as keyboard layouts): the desktop layout and the laptop layout.

NVDA Touch Gestures. If you are running NVDA on a device with a touch screen and running Windows 8 or higher, you can also control NVDA directly via the touch screen. Exploring the Screen. The most basic action you can perform with the touch screen is to announce the control or text at any point on the screen. Touch Gestures. When NVDA commands are described later in this user guide, they may list a touch gesture which can be used to activate that command with the touch screen.

Touch Modes. As there are many more NVDA commands than possible touch gestures, NVDA has several touch modes you can switch between which make certain subsets of commands available. Input Help Mode. Many NVDA commands are mentioned throughout the rest of this user guide, but an easy way to explore all the different commands is to turn on input help. The NVDA menu. The NVDA menu allows you to control NVDA's settings, access help, save/revert your configuration, Modify speech dictionaries, access additional tools and exit NVDA. Basic NVDA commands. Name. Desktop key. Laptop key. Touch. Description. Stop speech.

Controlcontrol. 2- finger tap. Instantly stops speaking. Pause Speechshiftshiftnone. Instantly pauses speech. Pressing it again will continue speaking where it left off (if pausing is supported by the current synthesizer)NVDA Menu. NVDA+n. NVDA+n. 2- finger double tap.

Pops up the NVDA menu to allow you to access preferences, tools, help, etc. Toggle Speech Mode. NVDA+s. NVDA+snone. Toggles speech mode between speech, beeps and off. Toggle Input Help Mode. NVDA+1. NVDA+1none.

Pressing any key in this mode will report the key, and the description of any NVDA command associated with it. Quit NVDANVDA+q. NVDA+qnone. Exits NVDAPass next key through.

NVDA+f. 2NVDA+f. 2none. Tells NVDA to pass the next key press straight through to the active application, even if it is normally treated as an NVDA key command. Toggle application sleep mode on and off. NVDA+shift+s. NVDA+shift+znonesleep mode disables all NVDA commands and speech/braille output for the current application. This is most useful in applications that provide their own speech or screen reading features.

Press this command again to disable self voicing mode. Reporting System Information.

Namekey. Description. Report date/time.

NVDA+f. 12. Pressing once reports the current time, pressing twice reports the date. Report battery status. NVDA+shift+b. Reports the battery status i. Navigating with NVDA. NVDA allows you to explore and navigate the system in several ways, including both normal interaction and review. Objects. Each Application and the operating system itself consist of many objects. Navigating with the System Focus.

The system focus, also known simply as the focus, is the object which receives keys typed on the keyboard. Pressing twice will spell the information.

Report title. NVDA+t. NVDA+t. Reports the title of the currently active window.

Pressing twice will spell the information. Pressing three times will copy it to the clipboard. Read active window. NVDA+b. NVDA+breads all the controls in the currently active window (useful for dialogs)Report Status Bar.

NVDA+end. NVDA+shift+end. Reports the Status Bar if NVDA finds one. It also moves the navigator object to this location. Pressing twice will spell the information. Navigating with the System Caret.

When an object that allows navigation and/or editing of text is focused, you can move through the text using the system caret, also known as the edit cursor. Pressing twice spells the line. Pressing three times spells the line using character descriptions. Read current text selection. NVDA+Shift+up. Arrow. NVDA+shift+s. Reads any currently selected text. Next sentencealt+down.

Arrowalt+down. Arrow. Moves the caret to the next sentence and announces it. Object Navigation. Most of the time, you will work with applications using commands which move the focus and the caret. Pressing twice spells the information, and pressing 3 times copies this object's name and value to the clipboard.

Move to containing object. NVDA+numpad. 8NVDA+shift+up. Arrowflick up (object mode)Moves to the object containing the current navigator object.

Move to previous object. NVDA+numpad. 4NVDA+shift+left. Arrowflick left (object mode)Moves to the object before the current navigator object. Move to next object.

NVDA+numpad. 6NVDA+shift+right. Arrowflick right (object mode)Moves to the object after the current navigator object.

Move to first contained object. NVDA+numpad. 2NVDA+shift+down. Arrowflick down (object mode)Moves to the first object contained by the current navigator object.

Move to focus object. NVDA+numpad. Minus. NVDA+backspacenone.

Moves to the object that currently has the system focus, and also places the review cursor at the position of the System caret, if it is showing. Activate current navigator object. NVDA+numpad. Enter. NVDA+enterdouble tap. Activates the current navigator object (similar to clicking with the mouse or pressing space when it has the system focus)Move System focus or caret to current review position. NVDA+shift+numpad.