Listen Up: New Accessibility Features Released in Visible Body Suite

Posted on 12/1/23 by Sarah Boudreau

Accessibility features make it easier for more users—including disabled users—to learn and teach with Visible Body Suite. By increasing the number of ways users can engage with VB Suite, Visible Body is making the app easier to use and accessible to more people. 

Today on the blog, we’re going to introduce VB Suite’s new Listen button and Flashcard keyboard commands, as well as highlight other accessibility features!

Listen button 

The new Listen button uses text to speech technology to read aloud definitions, common conditions, and preset view information in VB Suite! 

You can find the Listen button in the info box. Click on the talking head icon above the definition, common condition, or preset view text, and listen as your computer or mobile device reads the text aloud. 

listen-button-click2-gif

The Listen button in VB Suite. 

This feature is the first step towards Visible Body’s goal of comprehensive screen reader support. 

Flashcard keyboard commands

Flashcards Decks are a popular study tool in Visible Body Suite, and now users can engage with Flashcards using keyboard commands!

In addition to clicking to flip the card, clicking on the thumbs up or thumbs down icons to indicate if you’ve memorized the card, and clicking on the menu icon, users can now use keyboard commands. 

  • The space bar will flip the card
  • The X key will mark the card as memorized
  • The Z key will mark the card as not yet memorized 
  • The escape key will return you to the menu

pig-muscle-flashcard

Flashcard in VB Suite. 

Other accessibility features

The Listen button and Flashcard keyboard controls are far from the only accessibility features in VB Suite. Let’s take a quick look at five others!

Model keyboard controls

We talked about Flashcard keyboard controls, but did you know that you can manipulate VB Suite’s 3D models using keyboard controls as well? Let’s go over a couple. 

  • The W, A, S, and D keys pan the camera in the selected direction
  • The arrow keys rotate the camera
  • When a structure is selected, click the H key to hide or dissect away the structure or the F key to fade the structure
  • Number keys 1-6 will set the camera to a predefined view
    • 1 for anterior
    • 2 for posterior
    • 3 for right
    • 4 for left
    • 5 for superior
    • 6 for inferior

To view all of the controls, including more keyboard shortcuts, check out this diagram. 

Background color 

In the settings menu, you can set VB Suite’s background to black, white, or gray. You can change the background color for better visibility or use “dark mode” to reduce eye strain

Font size

Also in the settings menu, you can adjust font size to make text easier to read. 

Closed captioning

Instructors and students love VB Suite’s bite-sized animations! Every animation is available with closed captioning—simply click the CC button under the scrub bar. 

mitral-valve-prolapse-gif

GIF from mitral valve prolapse animation in VB Suite.
 

Language access

VB Suite is available in English, Simplified Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, and Spanish. You can swap between languages in the settings menu. 

One important note: the Listen button relies on the language settings for the entire computer or mobile device, not the VB Suite language settings, to select the language and voice of the synthetic reader. 

Read more 

The Visible Body Blog is full of ideas and inspiration for instruction. Here are some more blog posts you may enjoy:

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