disabilities

Facebook is heavily distracting with pictures and games--add in chat messages and you'll be spending more time on the site than you originally intended. This is usually because every time someone sends you a message, an alert sound plays to notify you of its presence. Not only that, but the title bar of your browser will start displaying that they have messaged you. Here are three quick steps to turning off the alert sound, or disabling chat completely if you choose to do so:

Step 1: Login to your Facebook account.

Step 2: Locate your chat window. … Read more

The caps lock key is a blessing and a curse built into the same button. More often than not, it finds itself active in situations it shouldn't be. If you're looking for a permanent solution to eliminating thiS KIND OF PROBLEM, follow these five steps:

Editors' note: This How To involves editing your computer's registry. The registry plays an important role in how your computer operates, and messing around haphazardly can lead to severe problems in the future. Tread carefully.

Step 1: Open the Registry Editor from the Start Menu by typing "regedit" from the … Read more

YouTube captions help to make the service accessible to all types of users. With that in mind, if you want to add auto-captioning (based on speech) to every video you load, you can. Or if you want to disable all types of captioning, you can do that too. Follow these quick steps to find out how to get to these settings:

Step 1: Log in to YouTube so you can access your personal settings.

Step 2: Click your username in the top right to open a small menu, and then choose Settings.

Step 3: Choose "Playback Setup" from … Read more

Google Chrome's built-in PDF viewer can make opening PDFs super quick. Unfortunately, you don't have access to all of the same tools you can use in apps like Adobe Reader. So how can you choose to download or open PDFs in standalone apps rather than the browser window? It's a quick fix if you follow these steps:

Step 1: Open Chrome and type "about:plugins" into the omnibox at the top.

Step 2: Scroll down and find Chrome PDF Viewer.

Step 3: Click the "Disable" link to prevent PDFs from loading within Chrome.… Read more

Netflix has been sued by the National Association of the Deaf for failing to offer closed-captioning on enough of its streaming content.

In a lawsuit (PDF) filed Thursday in U.S. District Court for the district of Massachusetts, the NAD alleges that Netflix is in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act by not providing captions for most of its "Watch Instantly" streamed movies and TV shows.

Pointing to the approximately 36 million Americans who are deaf or hard of hearing, the National Association of the Deaf says that it and members of the deaf community have already … Read more

Opinions vary on whether Google Instant is a time-saver or very distracting. I hear Ross Perot's Texan twang--"Can I finish? Can I finish?"--each time Google anxiously starts returning search results as soon as I enter the first letter into the search bar. Thankfully, there is a way to turn off this feature, and the hardest part about it is knowing where to look.… Read more

Programs like automatic update checkers and "helper" apps create Windows services that on startup whether you use them or not. You can manage Windows services from the Windows Task Manager or Microsoft Management Console, but it can be tedious to turn services on and off that way. Mz Services Manager is a free tool that builds on Windows' native services management capabilities with custom services profiles. You can create special gaming profiles, or a home theater profile, or custom profiles optimized for specific software or processes, then save them and load them almost instantly.

Mz Services Manager's … Read more

A 25-year-old St. Louis Cardinals fan with cerebral palsy has inspired a new game mode in the upcoming MLB 11: The Show.

According to ESPN, Hans Smith wrote to Sony's San Diego game studio, the title's developer, a few years ago to talk about his love for baseball and the video game. The letter prompted the studio to add Smith as a playable character in MLB 10: The Show, and his continued ties with the development team spurred it to create a new game mode in its upcoming release that makes it easier for gamers with disabilities to play.

ESPN said the mode is named after Smith's organization, the Association for Disabled Virtual Athletes. Rather than require gamers to press several different buttons to control players, the new mode offers single-press functionality for everything from throwing a runner out to batting. The game's AI takes care of running after the ball and other activities that might require multiple buttons.… Read more

With the rise of HTML5 vying for video supremacy on the Web, workarounds for disabling Flash Player continue to pop up, allowing users to get a smoother, faster video-viewing experience online.

John Gruber (Daring Fireball) provides a great tip for disabling Flash Player in Safari (edited by crarko on macosxhints.com), which forces Web sites to serve HTML5 videos (when available). Keep in mind that not all sites that serve videos have an HTML5 version. If you apply this hack, you may lose some functionality.

Another possible side effect of this process is sites that think your browser is Mobile … Read more