Windows Narrator is an accessibility tool that make it easier for blind or partially sighted users to use Windows.

It reads out loud what’s on screen, using a computer-generated voice. This means it can cope with any word it finds, but the downside is that the quality of the voice is less impressive than the sampled speech we’re familiar with from sat-nav systems and other gadgets.

Narrator can tell the user what options are available in the active window, menu or dialogue box; it can announce characters as they are typed, and it works with many of the tools built into Windows, including Wordpad, Internet Explorer and the Start menu. In practice, it also works with many other programs, although Microsoft makes no promises on this front.

Click here to find out how to use Microsoft Narrator.