Macro Express can be used to automate redundant tasks. This can be especially beneficial for people with certain disabilities or illnesses.

Customers have long been using Macro Express to ease computing tasks for those with full or partial blindness. Macros are used to integrate and automate interactions with screen reader programs such as Jaws, Window Eyes and other resources for the visually impaired. They also are used to overcome difficulties using mainstream applications with screen reader programs.

Caregivers are writing macros to assist those with certain impaired motor skills such as cerebral palsy. A single macro activation can accomplish the multiple steps needed to perform what normally requires many separate and individual keystrokes, mouse movements and clicks. This saves these patients untold time and effort and can allow them better use of their computer and broaden access to the wide world of the Internet.

Customer Miguel G. shared his story about how Macro Express has reduced his repetitive stress pain. Carpel Tunnel Syndrome (CTS) is a motor and sensory disturbance of the median nerve caused by repetitive actions. By reducing or eliminating many repetitive actions, those suffering from repetitive stress injuries, such as CTS, can heal without having to give up using their computer.

Alan Cantor shares another way that Macro Express Pro can be used to improve the quality of life for people with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), aka Lou Gehrig’s Disease, and similar conditions. He says, “ALS is a progressive degenerative disease that attacks nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord. The result is muscle weakness and atrophy, and eventually, death. As the disease progresses, people lose the ability to talk. ALS affects the body and not the mind, individuals become ‘locked in’ — they think and feel but cannot communicate.”

Alan Cantor and his associates are using Macro Express, along with a program to record sounds, to “bank the voices of people before the disease progresses so that they can communicate, using their actual voices, after they lose the ability to talk.” Individual words are recorded and saved as wav files. “Shortkey activated macros [are created] to play back the files. A user types words, and each word is enunciated after pressing a suffix key. This works because people with ALS usually lose the ability to talk long before they lose the ability to operate a keyboard.”

Find out more about Alan Cantor and the work he is doing by visiting the Cantor Access Inc. website.