You can put self-contained games into places such as your documents folder and create a desktop icon. You could also pin the .exe file to the task bar and launch it with Windows 1 through 0. This means you can alunch up to 10 applications using hot keys. You could also install Classic Shell and pin programs to the classic start menu. I never liked the start screen or the supposedly new and improved start menu in Windows 10.

As for using SAPI mobile voices, I believe you can tweak the registry to enable them to be used with the main SAPI engine. I'm not sure what those are at the moment. Someone more knowledgeable than me will have to help you.

I hope this information helps. I haven't really been a Windows user since I switched to a Mac in 2013. However, Microsoft is peaking my interest with their new commitment to accessibility.

You may be able to pin items to the start list by opening the context menu and choosing pin to start. Still, I'd recommend using Classic Shell. I don't like how the menu is arranged as a hybrid start menu/start screen.

Are you serious about 32 bit SAPI voices not working? Does it give you an error and fail to install? If you can't select the voice as your default voice, you need to access the 32 bit speech control panel. In the run dialogue, type "c:\windows\syswow64\speech\speechux\sapi.cpl" without the quotes. This should launch the speech settings where you can select the default voice. If I didn't get that syntax exactly correct, you can navigate to that folder using File Explorer and launch the sapi.cpl file manually. You may have to reboot after saving your changes. I know this works in Windows 7. If Microsoft completely did away with that supportin 64 bit versions of 10, that is truly sad.

That path which was posted which takes you to the 32 bit Sappi control panel does indeed work in Windows 10. I just used it myself a few days ago to switch my default voice to Eloquence.

As for creating icons on your desktop so that you can access games and such, that's definitely possible. Extract the folder of the game, such as Crazy Party, wherever you like. It really doesn't matter where you put the folder, as long as you don't move it once your shortcut has been created. Once the files have been extracted, highlight the executable file for the game, then hit your applications key, or shift f10 if you're on a laptop or otherwise weird keyboard that doesn't contain an applications key. Scroll through the menu until you see the send to submenu, then open that and go ddown to desktop (create shortcut.) Hit enter on that, and you've got a perfectly functioning shortcut, just like in previous versions of Windows. I think what might be tripping you up there is that you were unsure how to access the send to menu using the ribbon, which, in my opinion, is the stupidest invention Microsoft has come up with. I have it disabled, but luckily, many essential functions are available right from your context menu, so you shouldn't need to mess with the ribbon much. Of course, there are also many ways to add things to the context menu to make it more useful, and the ribbon can be disabled too, but that's way beyond the scope of your question, so I'll stop there.

Well, you could technically create a shortcut to a manual or whatever you want on the desktop using the same method I outlined above. Most installers do give you the oppurtunity to create a desktop shortcut for the program itself, but not the readme, in fact the Spoonbill games are the only ones I've ever seen that automatically dump their manuals on your desktop. I personally find this disconcerting, and delete them as soon as possible, but I can see how it would be convenient.

@Chris, thanks again, the sapi thing has worked fine and I've now got my voice back, hurrah!

@turtlepower, I wouldn't want the manuals on the desktop either, but if this stupid convention of windows continues with annoying start menus, maybe developers should start doing that more often to save people having to traul the program folders themselves.
I have had experience of the desktop on windows 7, since I setup my lady's machine to use it, but again it just seems a rather clunky way around as compared to say the way on Xp I could just install say vipmud, then have a gma games\vipmud folder with all the right shortcuts in it, and the desktop icon just as a quick way of running the program itself.

@Zersiax, Yes I've got the run dialgoue working and have used it for finding windows components like wordpad that aren't particularly obvious, but I'll confess it's not my favourite way of accessing things, especially  games since I tend to be a demon for subfolders, heck, even on Ios I try to keep one page per set of things and use folders per developer, though I do wish Ios supported multilple nested folders for it's aps, though that's another debate.

Hmmm, well we'll see what happens when I have several different things installed, I can always mess about later.

For a more pratical question, I'm having issues with winamp. Winamp itself installs fine, but when I  install game music plugins, it goes wonkey and refuses to load  correctly for some reason.
I like winamp for being a clean interface,  where I can just turn it on and play things, however I have a huge collection of music from snesmusic.org, and the old zophar's domain site in lots of whacky formats.
any suggestions appreciated.

At least now I hav Daniel installed I can go on with mudding .

Hmm ...can you be a bit more specific? Do you get error messages or some such?
I tend to use VLC for whacky formats, but not sure if you would like its interface much ...ever played with foobar? A lot of people seem to like it ...

Hmmm, nothing specific, winamp literally just fails to start when I hit the desktop icon o or attempt to play stuff with it.
Vlc I am actually going to install anyway, since  even on my Xp machine I was using it to play dvds, I didn't know it played weerd format s.

I'll have to see how it represents now playing information, at least it misses off all that library    recommendedcrap.
In

Btw, I also had a quick poke at the Alexa ap, and yes, it's %100 fine with Supernova. A shame really they did such a bad job on Ios, still now  at least I've found oe good thing the ecco can do, ---- pretend to be the sorting hat from Harry Potter I didn't have  a particularly extensive look at the skills I admit, that one just stood out to me for some reason .

@Dark Yes, you can use Microsoft George with 32 bit apps, though it requires a few registry edits. First, go in to the 32 bit registry by accessing the run dialog and typing "c:\windows\syswow64\regedit.exe" without the quotes yes, the 32 and 64 bit registries are different. Then, import this registry file in to the 32 bit registry to get George working.

Hello,
Well my first suggestion would be to replace the native windows 10 start menu with classic shell as it is the equivalent of windows 7's start menu, fairly simple, and it is not sluggish like the start menu in windows 10. What's more, start menu in win 10 is very complicated for a beginner as most of us are used to a traditional start menu where you access items by pressing up/down and left/right arrows, whereas in windows 10 you should in addition press tab to move to another category.
The other suggestion is to change from Winamp to any other media player, including windows media player, VLC, foobar 2000, or media player classic. All these that I'm mentioning here are very accessible with the most popular screen readers, including Narrator. I started using Foobar 2000, but the reason I stopped using it is because it doesn't have based shortcuts for playback control. I created all the shortcuts I needed for that purpose, but some of them interfered with JAWS, so I went with Windows media player. Some of you might laugh at my choice, but I find it a quite good media player. It opens up quite fast and has a lot of options.

VLC has built-in shortcuts and you don't need to set them up yourself.

There are actually more, for example, M to mute, N to go to the next track, P to go to the previous track, ctrl+right arrow/left arrow to skip forward/backward, same as alt+right or left arrow and Shift+left/right arrow.
Also, left bracket to decrease the spead of the track, and right bracket to increase it. Press equals to normalise the spead of the track currently playing. What's more, the volume can be changed by pressing ctrl+up/down arrow.