Accessible MSN (Microsoft News) for Communicator 5

Getting Started

Requirements – there are no special requirements to use MSN.
Language and Region selection – MSN selects app language and content automatically. You can change the language and region at any time.
To change the selections the first time you use MSN – click Accessible MSN from your Home Page, click Info => Change MSN Language. A table of the available languages will appear. After selecting a language, you will be able to select a country.
You are now ready to use MSN. Select Continue to MSN to start using the app.

Home Page

Scroll Through Ads / Skip Ads – toggle between scrolling through and skipping ads. Button caption changes accordingly.
Menu – go to MSN menu.
Select Category – open a screen allowing you to select an article category.
Up, Down, Previous and Next arrows – select the next article in the direction of the arrow (skipping ads if Skip Ads is on).
Read Title – read the title of the selected article aloud.
Open Article – open the selected article. Buttons on the opened page depends on the content of the article (video, pictures gallery, “regular” article…)
Slider left and Slider right – These buttons appear only if the selected item has a “slider” – usually the top left item on the page. Allows you to browse the content of the slider, while skipping ads.

MSN Menu

First Article – takes you to the top left article on the page.
Last Article – takes you to the last article on the page (the last article in the browser cash).
Change MSN Language – change MSN language and region settings.
Utilities – recover / reopen MSN, close windows you do not need, close pop-up messages, zoom in or zoom out,…
Options – change the computer volume, turn auto-read of titles on and off, turn auto-read of articles on or off, toggle text enlargement, go to additional advanced MSN options (text enlargement factor, max words for auto-read).
Exit (Communicator Home Page) – exit Accessible MSN

MSN Category Selection

In this page you can select the category of articles you want to browse.

Dwell Select – click to enable selection using eye gaze. This will highlight the buttons with category names, and make them dwell-enabled.
Pause Dwell – click to disable selection using eye gaze.
More – click to see more categories. This button is always highlighted (dwell enabled).

MSN Reading Enabled Status

When you open an article with plain text, you can click the Reading Enabled / Regular Scrolling button, to toggle between the two modes:

In Reading Enabled mode, click up or down to highlight the next section of text. Clicking Read, will read the content of this section aloud.
Regular Scrolling will exit reading mode.
In both Regular and Reading modes, when a video or gallery in an article is selected, clicking Video or Gallery opens a page controlling the selected video or gallery.

Frequently Asked Questions

At the top of my screen, there is an area where articles are changing all the time. Can I browse these articles?

Yes. Once this object is selected, the Slider buttons will appear. You can use these buttons to browse the items in that area.

Sometimes I am browsing articles, and it seems like the app skips some of them (and jumps to the next one). Can I change it?

This will be the case if you are in the Skip Ads mode. Click the Scroll Through Ads button if you want to change it.

I clicked Open Article, and it brought me to a screen that allows me to scroll up and down and read the article. On this screen I see a Video button and a Gallery button. What do these buttons do?

If the article contains a video, or a pictures gallery, these buttons will allow you to control these items. When scrolling, if a video or a picture gallery is highlighted, click the appropriate button to control the highlighted item.

I clicked Open Article, and it brought me to a screen that allows me to scroll up and down and read the article. On this screen I see a button that says Reading Enabled. After clicking it, it changes to Regular Scrolling. What does this button do?

When in Reading Enabled mode, scrolling will highlight the article, paragraph by paragraph. If you click Read, Communicator 5 will read the highlighted paragraph for you.