Victor is right about all the fancy stuff for the sighted on laptops that get in the way for us blind folks. I have disabled the virtual sound as well as the touch pad.
Sunny Day Maria Campbell [EMAIL PROTECTED] "DON'T TELL GOD HOW BIG YOUR STORM IS, TELL YOUR STORM HOW BIG OUR GOD IS." Author Unknown ----- Original Message ----- From: Victor Gouveia To: [email protected] Sent: Tuesday, May 08, 2007 10:51 AM Subject: [JAWS-Users] Re: new laptop with a few quirks Hi Siobhan, Just some things I thought about reading your various messages to the list. What kind of screen to you have on it? Is it a TFT active matrix display, or an LCD? The reason I ask is that some laptop screen produce static, and so when you close the lid, it will occasionally interfere with the smooth running of the touch pad. The other thing I'm wondering is if you have a touch pad, or a track ball, or a touch stick to control your mouse? I find that a great number of my focus issues for Jaws on my laptops are due to the mouse being too sensitive, and so, when I run my hand over it, it picks up the heat of my fingers and voila, the window I was working with suddenly looses focus and I have to alt+tab over to the window I was working with. When I bought this new laptop, I thought it was so cool. It had a 15 inch wide screen display, a full size keyboard, with out the number pad, which is the way I wanted it, by the way, and hot buttons running up and down the sides of it that would give me full control of any DVD's I played on this puppy. Until I found out that the track point mouse, and touch pad, have a feature for sighted people that would become the bane of my existence. Basically, not only is it heat activated, the sides have scroll capabilities, and touch capabilities, as well. So, what does this mean to the average blind person? Try typing with fat hands on the home row, and not touching the touch pad, or any part of it. I guarantee you, that on a laptop, it can't be done. Grin. Anyway, it might be that your graphical user interfaces, like your mouse touch pad and the like, are getting in the way of your access technology. The other thing is that your laptop might have some perks designed for the sighted user that may be running in the background. These can also get in the way of certain focus issues. You might want to get a copy of your laptop's user's manual, read it through and see if there are things that are on by default, things that you may want to disable so that it isn't taking focus away from the virtual viewer. Another thing that I do, and this is because I've been around computers for a long time, I go through the control panel and see what's in there, and look through the items in there to see if there are some things that I don't recognize. Just to give you a quick example, this new laptop has a feature called Virtual sound, that comes on by default fresh out of the box. Essentially, what happens is when ever some type of media file is played, whether video or sound, the computers speakers suddenly double in size and you feel like you're in a high definition stereo sound system and theatre. Great if you're listening to music or movies all the time, but when the slightest sound, like a window opening or an error sound comes on, suddenly Jaws sounds like he's falling down a hole, or yelling from the other side of a concert hall. Suffice it to say, he sounds really stupid when ever this virtual sound feature is active, so I have to disable it when I'm not listening to any music, movies or what ever. Like I said, it's the little things and perks for the sighted user that suppose to impress them, but ends up getting in the way of the assistive technology that bothers us. Anyway, what ever the problem is, I hope you find it soon, and you can enjoy that sweet laptop. Victor --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Visit the JAWS Users List home page at: http://www.jaws-users.com Address for the list archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/jaws-users-list%40googlegroups.com/ To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Use the following form in order to contact the management team http://www.jaws-users.com/managers.php -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
