Do You Dislike Notepad? Go for EditPad Instead.
Notepad Screen Shot, 28 pt. font
Every time you bump into a file with a .txt on the end, your PC opens it up in Notepad, Microsoft’s default text editor. Though the font can be changed, the color scheme is restricted to the default Windows color scheme. In this screen shot of Notepad, you can see that I have changed Vista’s default background color from white to a light yellow. The simply reduces eye strain. The white background is too bright at the distance from which I look at the screen.
EdiPad Lite Screen Shot at 28 pt. font
A much better alternative is EditPad Lite. In addition to its features for the visually impaired, it is a much more flexible test editor. EditPad Lite allows for multiple files open simultaneously and has lots of great features for programming in languages like HTML.
EditPad Lite is a general-purpose text editor, designed to be small and compact, yet offer all the functionality you expect from a basic text editor. EditPad Lite works with Windows NT4, 98, 2000, ME, XP and Vista.
EditPad Lite's Color Preferences Panel
The main feature for the visually impaired is EditPad Lite’s customizable color scheme. Once you click on ‘Preferences‘ on the Options menu, you can easily set your color preferences on the menu that pops up. As you can see, I have set my background to black and my text color to yellow.
Configure EditPad’s appearance to your own taste and eyesight. Select the colors, font face and font size that you like. Make text cursor highly visible by selecting its size, color and blinking style. Make the mouse pointer easy to spot by choosing its shape and colors.
I suspect that the color scheme customization feature is meant to help programmers, but it is even more useful for the visually impaired who want to ease eye strain and improve contrast and readability.
To set EditPad Lite as your default text editor, so that it opens every .txt file automatically, the quickest way to do it is from within EditPad Lite. Once you click on ‘Configure File Types‘ on the Options menu, you can easily set EditPad Lite to always open and edit text files by clicking the correct buttons..
You can dowload my personal EditPad Lite Preferences file, including my font and color schemes. Once you download it, import it into EditPad Lite from the Options menu.
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Do you know if it vocalizes in screenreaders, specifically ZoomText? The native WordPress text editor won’t read for me in ZT, which means I write first in another app. I think this has to do with write/edit boxes run by java script. It seems to be unconquered territory in terms of accessibility.
I have been lazy about installing zoomtext on my new machine, so I have not tested EditPad with ZT. If you do, let me know either way. If it does not, I would like to contact the company and suggest fixing it.
I am the developer of EditPad Lite and EditPad Pro.
Our users tell us that EditPad Lite and Pro version 6.4.3 works well with the JAWS and Windows Eyes screen readers. Earlier 6.x.x releases had some issues which we fixed based on user feedback.
As a small company, we do not have the resources to test our products with all the accessibility software out there. We do try to make our products as accessible as we can.
I don’t have any information on ZoomText. If there’s anything that doesn’t work, please contact our tech support, and we’ll try to come up with a solution.
Another benefit of EditPad Lite and Pro for people with poor eyesight that Tim didn’t mention is the ability to reconfigure the text cursor. While the standard Windows cursor is a thin blinking bar, EditPad supports various shapes, colors, and blinking styles to make the cursor stand out more.
Thank you, Jan, for coming and commenting. I did not know that about the cursor and that is valuable information! I have been a big fan of Editpad for a few years now. Keep up the good work.
Thanks, Tim and Jan. Good discussion. I will have some dedicated development time between the holidays. I’ll try EditPad Lite and let you know how it sounds.