thank you, Mike, this is very helpful. Russ -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Mike & Barbara Sent: Monday, October 31, 2011 6:49 PM To: Jaws-Users List Subject: [JAWS-Users] The Virtual Ribbon Menu Feature - New in JAWS 12
The Virtual Ribbon Menu Feature - New in JAWS 12 Introduction The ribbon is a new style of menu available in many new applications being released today. Ribbons first appeared in Office 2007 programs, but are now becoming more common in other applications tailored for the WindowsR 7 operating system. Ribbons create an accessibility challenge due to inconsistent navigation between various groups and items. For example, the lower ribbon contains groups of icons, sometimes arranged in several rows. When you press the ARROW keys to move between items in a group, you can skip items if there is a row above or below the one you are on. When pressing the ARROW keys or TAB, no indication is given when focus leaves one group and enters another. You cannot use first letter navigation in the ribbons, because pressing keys might activate ribbon key tips. Finally, because of a group's layout, you do not know if you should navigate up, down, left, or right to select an item. The new virtual ribbon menu feature in JAWSR screen reading software provides predictable navigation, lets you see everything in the ribbon, and offers consistency when navigating with the ARROW keys. For example, each group on the lower ribbon is treated as a submenu. Once you open the group submenu, you can press DOWN ARROW to move through all of the items within that group. When you reach the bottom of the items in that group, focus wraps back to the top item, and vice versa. You can also use first letter navigation in the virtual ribbon menu. Here are a few keystrokes to help you get started using the virtual ribbon menu: . Move from one ribbon tab to another, ALT to move to the first tab, then LEFT or RIGHT ARROW. JAWS reads the name of the tab as you move to it. . Move from an upper ribbon tab to the lower ribbon groups, DOWN ARROW or ENTER. JAWS announces and treats the lower ribbon groups as if they were submenus. . Open a ribbon group submenu, RIGHT ARROW or ENTER. . Navigate the items within each submenu, UP or DOWN ARROW, or first letter navigation. . Close a submenu, LEFT ARROW or ESC. . Move from the lower ribbon back to the upper ribbon, ESC. NOTE: One nice feature of the JAWS virtual ribbon menu is that when you activate an item and focus returns to the document or application you are working on, JAWS remembers where you just were on the ribbon. If you press ALT again, instead of having to go back to the upper ribbon and find your place again, JAWS goes right back to where it was previously, in the same group, and on the exact same control you were last on. I'll demonstrate all of these things to you, and you can practice along with me in just a few minutes. Also, just a reminder, whenever you want to pause the audio of this DAISY book, just press CTRL+P. When you are ready to resume, press CTRL+P again. Remember, you can leave the DAISY book in the background and use this keystroke to play or pause the audio while working on your practice documents in the foreground. When FSReader DAISY player is open, even in the background, use this keystroke to toggle the audio on and off. If you need to print something while FSReader is open, just go to the File menu and choose Print. Using the JAWS Virtual Ribbon Menu as Opposed to the Microsoft Ribbon - Some Differences The virtual ribbon menus feature allows for ribbon navigation using standard menu type commands such as scrolling with the arrow keys and first letter navigation. While virtual ribbon menus are enabled with JAWS, the built-in key tips and accelerator keys that appear visually on the ribbon and on the buttons are disabled. For example, to insert a bookmark in MicrosoftR Word, here are the steps for both scenarios, one using the ribbon, and the second one using JAWS virtual ribbon menus: Using Microsoft Word Key Tips: . Using the built-in keyboard access in Microsoft Word, you would first press ALT+N to move to the Insert tab of the ribbon. . Next, you press the letter K, the Microsoft key tip to activate the bookmark button. Using JAWS Virtual Ribbon Menus: . In order to activate the button using the virtual ribbon menus you first press ALT+N to move to the Insert tab of the ribbon. . Next, you would press DOWN ARROW or ENTER to go to the lower ribbon. . Once on the lower ribbon, you would press L to move to the Links submenu, using first letter navigation. The submenu opens, and focus is on the Hyperlink button. . Finally, you press B for Bookmark. The nice thing about this is that these keystrokes are easy to remember, because it is first letter navigation. If you are comfortable using the Microsoft built-in keyboard commands, it may be best to leave the virtual ribbon menu feature off. The majority of people however have not memorized many of the Microsoft access keys for programs using the ribbon and thus will not lose any functionality by enabling the feature. Turning the Virtual Ribbon Menu On and Off By default the virtual ribbon menu setting in JAWS 12 is turned off. This means that JAWS 12 behaves as in prior versions when interacting with the ribbons. You can enable virtual ribbon menus using the JAWS Startup Wizard or Settings Center. The JAWS Startup Wizard The JAWS Startup Wizard runs the first time you start JAWS after it has been installed, or by activating the Startup Wizard item in the Help menu. The virtual ribbon menus check box is located on the third page of the wizard. When the check box is checked, the virtual ribbon menus are active. JAWS Settings Center Perform the following steps to use JAWS Settings Center to enable or disable Virtual Ribbon Menus: 1. First, press INSERT+F2 to activate the Run JAWS Managers list. 2. Press the letter S until you land on the settings center item and press ENTER to activate it. The settings center dialog box opens with the cursor in the search edit box. 3. Press CTRL+SHIFT+D to activate the default settings. 4. Type the word "ribbon" (without the quotes). 5. Press the DOWN ARROW to move through the list of search results until you land on the Use Virtual Ribbon Menu check box. 6. Press the SPACE BAR to check or uncheck the box. 7. Press TAB to move to the OK button, and activate it with the SPACEBAR. If you haven't already enabled virtual ribbon menus, go ahead and do so before continuing with the practice section that comes up next. If necessary, pause the audio of this DAISY book by pressing CTRL+P. When you are ready to resume, press CTRL+P again. Remember, you can leave the DAISY book in the background and use this keystroke to play and pause the audio. CTRL+P does not access the print dialog box when FSReader DAISY player is open. Using WordPad in Windows 7 for Practice EXERCISE: Open WordPad in Windows 7 on your computer and follow along with the instructor to explore the virtual ribbon menu feature in JAWS 12 or later. NOTE: If you do not have Windows 7 and the ribbon version of WordPad you can still learn to use the Virtual Ribbon Menus in Word 2007 or 2010 in Windows Vista or Windows XP. The instructions below will work the same there; it is just that you will hear different results. For example, in Word 2010 there is a File tab, as well as tabs for Home, Insert, Page Layout, References, Mailings, Review, and more depending on how you have customized Word. The lower ribbon of the Home tab contains a Clipboard, Font, Paragraph, Styles, and Editing group. So even though you may not hear exactly the same thing if you are using an Office 2007 or Office 2010 product, every concept should be the same. Just pause the audio and practice the techniques I'll show you, realizing you will have even more to explore and practice with in Office than WordPad. Overview of the Virtual Ribbon Structure with JAWS in WordPad I'm going to open the start menu and type WordPad. There it is. I'll press ENTER to open it. Go ahead and open WordPad on your computer as well. I always like to go through an overview of what the window looks like for each program. WordPad in Windows 7 has the following items on the screen, going from the top to bottom: . The title bar at the top of the screen, which has the minimize, restore, and close buttons on the right side, and the system icon on the far left side. The system icon is used to open the menus to minimize, restore, move the program window, and so on. Just to the right of the system icon is the Quick Access Toolbar, or QAT, pronounced cat. . On row two of the screen is the upper tabs of the ribbon. From left to right they are the Application Menu, basically the same as the File menu, then Home and View tabs. It's pretty simple compared to programs like Word, ExcelR, and PowerPointR. . On what basically would be rows three through six is the lower ribbon. The lower ribbon contains buttons, edit boxes, and other controls arranged in groups. . The next line below the lower ribbon contains a ruler bar. . The main application window for WordPad is next, and at the bottom row of the screen is a typical status bar. Let's do a little bit of exploring together. 1. First, press ALT to move to the Home tab of the WordPad screen. JAWS announced virtual ribbons, home tab. 2. Next, press LEFT ARROW. There's the first tab. In programs like Word 2010 and Excel 2010, this is called the File tab. Here JAWS announces application menu drop down grid. It's basically the same as the File menu was in earlier versions of WordPad. We'll look at it more in a minute. 3. Press RIGHT ARROW now to move past the Home tab to the View tab. When focus moves to the View tab, the lower ribbon changes to show the controls, again in groups, that have to do with different things that apply to viewing documents. The groups there are Zoom to zoom in and out, Show or Hide (for the ruler and status bar), and Settings for things like word wrap and measurement units. 4. If you keep going to the right you find a Help button, then focus wraps around to the first tab, which I'm going to call the File tab going forward in this lesson. When focus goes to the Help button or the File tab, the lower ribbon does not change. Activating the File tab opens a drop-down menu. 5. Press RIGHT or LEFT ARROW again until you move back to the Home tab. Next, we'll look at how to access some of the items in the lower ribbon of the Home tab. 1. Press DOWN ARROW. Focus moves to the Clipboard group on the lower ribbon. Visually, there is a highlight rectangle around this group that JAWS has put on the screen. JAWS says lower ribbon, clipboard submenu. 2. Press DOWN ARROW again and notice you hear the other groups as you continue. There's the Font submenu, the Paragraph submenu, the Insert submenu, and the Editing submenu. Finally, focus wraps back to the Clipboard submenu. I'm not going to spend time on the items here in the Clipboard group, since most of us use CTRL+V to paste, but there is also a cut and a copy button there. 3. Press DOWN ARROW to move to the Font group. JAWS says font submenu. 4. Press RIGHT ARROW to open the Font submenu. JAWS says font family, edit combo, Calibri. This is where you change the font when you want to. 5. For now, just press DOWN ARROW again, just as if you were going through an open submenu in a normal program. JAWS says font size, edit combo, 11. The current font size is 11 point. Again, you can change this here, but for now, go ahead and press DOWN ARROW again to explore all the items here. You'll find about 10 other buttons. Eventually focus wraps back to the font name, Calibri. Isn't this great?! JAWS takes all the controls within the Font group and puts them into a nice, tidy vertical menu. It makes it very easy to find all the controls. First Letter Navigation between Ribbon Groups You also have the ability to navigate by using first letter from one group to another. NOTE: The rule of thumb for first letter navigation in menus is if there is only one item beginning with that letter, it gets activated and focus leaves the menus. If it is a submenu, the new menu opens and focus is placed on the first item in the group. If there are multiple items that begin with the same letter, pressing that letter cycles between them and you press ENTER to activate the one you wish. Let's explore how first letter navigation works in moving from one ribbon group to another. 1. First, press ESC a couple of times to make sure you are not in the ribbon. 2. Next, press ALT by itself to move to the Home tab of the ribbon in WordPad. 3. Press RIGHT ARROW to move to the View tab. 4. Press DOWN ARROW and let's explore the three groups that are here with the arrow keys first. The first group is the Zoom group. JAWS said Zoom submenu. 5. Press DOWN ARROW again. There's the Show or Hide group. 6. Press DOWN ARROW again. There's the Settings group. 7. Press DOWN ARROW again. Focus moves back to the Zoom submenu. So, here on the View tab there are three groups on the lower ribbon. If you press Z, don't do it just yet, focus would move to the Zoom submenu and open it, and focus would be placed on the first item in that group. If you press S, since there are two items that begin with that letter here, focus simply switches between the two. You need to press ENTER to open either of these submenus. Let's practice this now. 1. Press S a few times to cycle between the Show or Hide group and the Settings group. 2. Now, say that you want to go into the Show or Hide group. Press S until you are on that submenu, and then press ENTER to go into that group. Focus is on the first item in that group, the Ruler check box. Remember, the ruler is located on the screen between the bottom of the ribbon and the top of the document area. So here is where you can turn this on or off. I'm going to leave it alone for now. 3. Press DOWN ARROW a few times to look at the other items in the Show or Hide group. There are only two items here. 4. Press ESC to move back out of this group and back to the prior level. You're back at the submenu level, or the group level, on the lower ribbon. 5. Now, press Z. What happens? Since there was only one item at this level that began with the letter Z, the Zoom group, the Zoom submenu opened and focus is on the first item within that group, the Zoom In button. 6. Press DOWN ARROW a few times to look at the other items in the Zoom group. There are three items here. 7. OK, press ESC to move back out of this group and back to the prior level. 8. Press ESC one more time to go back to the upper tabs of the ribbon. 9. Finally, press ESC once more to exit the ribbon and put focus back in the document. First Letter Navigation in the Lower Ribbon Groups We are going to look at the items on the Home tab in the Font group for this exercise. I will show you how to use first letter navigation to get things done quickly in the lower ribbon. 1. Press ALT to move to the upper tabs of the ribbon in WordPad. 2. Press LEFT or RIGHT ARROW to move focus to the Home tab, if necessary. 3. Press DOWN ARROW until you find the Font group. JAWS says Font submenu. 4. Press RIGHT ARROW to open the Font submenu. Focus is on the item Calibri in the font submenu. 5. Earlier, when we moved through the controls here, you probably heard there was a bold button. Press B now. Focus moves back to the document, and the bold button is now pressed. You could also just press CTRL+B but I wanted to show you how to use first letter navigation in the virtual ribbon menu. Let's look at this again. 6. Press ALT by itself. Notice how focus returns right back to the same spot on the ribbon, on the Bold button? JAWS said bold button pressed. This is fantastic! Without JAWS running, focus would have gone back to the Home tab and to move here you would either have to press TAB about eight times or DOWN ARROW twice to the Font group and open the submenu again. The way JAWS remembers where you were in the ribbon is a great feature! 7. Next, press I. Focus moves back to the document, and the italic button has now been pressed. So if you type something right now it would be both bold and italic. But, let's look at one more thing here with first letter navigation. 8. Press ALT to go back to the ribbon. JAWS says italic button pressed. Again, you are placed right back where you left off in the lower ribbon. 9. Now press the letter S. JAWS announces the strike through button. But it did not activate it. Why? Because there are other items here that begin with the letter S as well. Press S several times to cycle through them. You should hear subscript, superscript, and shrink font buttons in addition to the strike through button. When there are multiple items that begin with the same letter, press ENTER on the one you want to activate and focus returns to the document area. 10. For now, if you did not press ENTER on any of the items that began with the letter S, just press ESC a couple of times to get out of the ribbon and put focus back in the document. Let's work through another example together: 1. What if you want to insert a picture, or insert the date and time into a document? First press ALT to move to the Home tab of the ribbon. 2. Now, press DOWN ARROW to move to the Insert submenu, and RIGHT ARROW to open it. 3. Navigate through the submenu by pressing UP or DOWN ARROW first. Listen to what is there and notice that two items start with the letter P, one starts with the letter D, and one starts with the letter I. Therefore, to insert the date and time you would only need to press D once, the date and time dialog box opens with a choice of formats for the date and time that you can insert into the document at the cursor location. However, to insert a picture you will have to press P to move to the word Picture followed by ENTER. 4. For the moment, just press ESC a few times to get out of the ribbon and put focus back in the document. Edit Boxes and Edit Combo Boxes Using the Virtual Ribbon Menu Let's now look at how to change the font and the point size in the virtual ribbon menu. 1. Press ALT to move back to the ribbon. Focus is on the tabs in the upper ribbon. 2. If necessary, press LEFT and RIGHT ARROW to move to the Home tab. 3. Press DOWN ARROW to move to the Font submenu, and press RIGHT ARROW to open it. 4. Focus is on Calibri in the menus. Notice that focus does not go into edit mode on this or the point size edit combo boxes. When using the virtual ribbon menus in JAWS, in order to change an edit box value, you need to go into forms mode. 5. Press ENTER on Calibri to go into forms mode. I heard the sound that indicates forms mode is on. 6. Now press DOWN ARROW or UP ARROW and notice that the focus moves through the various font choices available. When you want to change to another font, just press ENTER when you find the one you want. Forms mode goes off and focus returns to the document. The font is now changed to the new one in the document. NOTE: For check boxes in the ribbon, use the SPACEBAR to toggle the selection. For split buttons, often SPACEBAR will perform one action and ENTER will perform another. This depends on the actual button, so you will sometimes need to experiment. Using the Quick Access Toolbar with the Virtual Ribbon Menu What is the Quick Access Toolbar, QAT? The Quick Access Toolbar is a small toolbar that has buttons for activating common tasks. Usually, the default buttons there are the Save button, the Undo button, and the Redo button, and so on. It also depends on what program you are using. These buttons can be deleted and new buttons can be added. Whatever button is the first button on the QAT can be activated by pressing ALT+1. The second button on the QAT can be accessed by pressing ALT+2, and so on. Since keyboard users typically use CTRL+S to save, CTRL+Z to undo, and CTRL+Y to redo, I usually remove these from the QAT and add buttons that I use most often in that particular application. NOTE: In an open message in OutlookR, the keystrokes ALT+1, ALT+2, and so on, perform different actions and do not access the QAT when JAWS is running. You can still access the buttons on the QAT by moving to the QAT as described in the next paragraph. When virtual ribbon menus are active, you can navigate to the Quick Access Toolbar (QAT) by moving to one of the tabs on the left side of the ribbon and pressing UP ARROW. Remember, the QAT is located on the title bar on the far left side of the screen. For example, in WordPad, Word, or Excel press ALT+H to move to the Home tab. The last time I was in the ribbon I was in the Font group, so I'm going to go back to the ribbon by pressing the ALT key, and press ESC until I get to the upper ribbon. Then once you are on the Home tab press UP ARROW once and the cursor moves to the QAT. In this case the Redo button is the last button on the QAT. Once you reach the QAT, press RIGHT or LEFT ARROW to move between the buttons there. Press DOWN ARROW to return to the ribbon or press ENTER on one of the buttons to activate it. Let's look at the QAT in WordPad together. 1. On my computer I heard JAWS announce redo button unavailable. I just did a Say Word, INSERT+NUM PAD 5, to repeat that. I have not undone anything yet in WordPad, so this button is unavailable at the moment. The help message told me that this is button three on the QAT, ALT followed by 3. 2. Press LEFT ARROW to explore the other buttons here. There is also a Customize Quick Access Toolbar button. You can use it to remove these buttons if you want to. There are some other choices there as well. However, you can add ANY button on the ribbon to the QAT, not just the few shown in the Customize Quick Access Toolbar dialog box. 3. For now, press ESC a couple of times to get out of the ribbon and return to the document area. Adding an Item to the QAT Let's say you need to use the insert date and time button a lot. Perform the following steps to add it to the QAT: 1. Press ALT+H to move to the Home tab of the ribbon. 2. Press DOWN ARROW to move to the lower ribbon. 3. Press I to move to the Insert group. The submenu opens and focus is on the Picture button. 4. Press DOWN ARROW until you find the Date and Time button in the menu. 5. Press INSERT+NUMPAD MINUS to route the JAWS cursor to the button. If you are using laptop keyboard layout, press CAPS LOCK+LEFT BRACKET to route the JAWS cursor to the button. 6. Press NUMPAD ASTERISK to perform a right mouse click. Laptop keyboard layout users press CAPS LOCK+9 on the numbers row to perform the right mouse click. 7. Use the ARROW KEYS if necessary to find the item Add to Quick Access Toolbar, and press ENTER on it. This button is now added to the QAT in the next position in line. For example, if you still have the first three buttons there, now the Date and Time button is button four. 8. Verify this and see if it works. Try pressing ALT+4 to see if the Date and Time dialog box appears. It worked on my computer. I'll press ESC to close the dialog box for now. The File Menu in WordPad Press ALT+F to open the File menu in WordPad, and then use DOWN ARROW to explore the items there. Here is where you find the following choices: . New . Open . Save . Save as . Print . Page setup . Send in e-mail . About WordPad . Exit . Also if you have opened any recent documents, they will be listed here, in the right hand column of the menu with the most recent listed first. I'm going to press ESC a couple of times to get out of the File menu and return focus to the document area. Don't forget to close WordPad when you are finished practicing with the ribbon. Conclusion The virtual ribbon menu feature of JAWS definitely makes navigating the complexities of the new ribbons from Microsoft and other software manufacturers a breeze! I'm going to be using it a lot from now on, and I hope you will also. Thanks for joining me in this DAISY book and I hope you enjoy using the new virtual ribbon menu feature in JAWS! For answers to frequently asked questions about this list visit: http://www.jaws-users.com/help/ For answers to frequently asked questions about this list visit: http://www.jaws-users.com/help/
