Accessibility

The developers have put considerable efforts in incorporating accessibility features in the software commonly referred to as  Windows Live messenger.

Menu items are fully accessible using both keyboard short-cuts and mouse as shown below.

Font properties are customisable by setting properties such as colour and size. However users can only modify their own font attributes and are unable to do it for the ones they are communicating with. The font properties window is show below:

Backgrounds can also be set to match by users but contrast adjustment is not available.

The use of both animating pop-ups and customisable sound alerts make it possible for visually impaired and deaf people to benefit from this instant messaging software. The different options available for input and output makes Windows Live Messenger accessible to a wide range of disabled people. Normal text input through keyboard can be used by people having difficulties to speak. An option is provided to use handwriting via a mouse or graphic tablets which proves useful to those not comfortable with keyboards.This is shown in the picture below:

 Voice calling allows people with disabilities such as motor-related and blindness to communicate with ease through microphone. The video option proves very useful for those that can only use sign-language.Both scenarios are shown in the screenshots below:

Usability

Using the application is intuitive and very rarely do users require the use of documentation to start using  Windows Live Messenger. Contacts can be listed in user-defined groups and in accordance to their online/off-line status indicated by green and grey colours. This can be an issue for people having difficulty distinguishing colours. A search facility enables searching contacts and another one for web searching. The former increases users' efficiency when they have to find a particular contact. A problem though is the short-cut icon used to add a new contact, it is so small that it requires considerable effort to be located .Double-clicks are used to launch a conversation window with a particular contact and the focus is automatically set to the typing area. The conversation logging system helps users remember about the last conversation they had with someone and as a bonus, a small part of the past conversation together with a link to view full past conversation is already included when a fresh chat window is open. Personalised nicknames can be added to everyone in the contact list to facilitate remembering who is who. To that goal, display pictures also helps a lot. There are some instances where messages are not delivered for no particular reasons and users are left in the dark as to why message delivery has failed. Animated advertising banners are quite disturbing to users specially those suffering from seizures but cannot be turned off. Overall, users are fairly satisfied with Windows Live Messenger according to informal interviews we performed.All these can be seen in the screen-shot provided below:

Assistive Technologies

Using Live Messenger alone by a visually impaired person can be quite challenging if the one to whom he/she is communicating with, is unaware of his/her state. And according to Lynn Schneider, the software is very helpful for blind people who however have to use screen reader software. This raises an issue of compatibility between the screen reader and Live Messenger. The most common one being used is JAWS.