Jim, Others here can address your JAWS questions far more accurately and quickly than I can. I just want to touch on your decision to go to Windows 10.
If I may ask, what version of Windows are you using now? Regardless of your answer to that question, I would strongly suggest that you not move to Windows 10 for a few months yet. I have been involved with Windows 10 since the preview period when I joined the Insiders Program. I am writing to you right now from a machine running Windows 10, upgraded from 8.1, but there is no doubt that Windows 10 is still a work in progress. There have been more than a few issues that have cropped up secondary to the new "you will apply every Windows Update" mechanism among others. I don't think a jump into Windows 10 is a good idea for anyone, yet, who isn't a "tech geek" who's pretty darned proficient with troubleshooting and dealing with "late beta" software. When you add assistive technology into the mix the potential for disaster goes way up. Once the next major update, code named Redstone I think, comes out in the spring I'd feel a lot more comfortable about recommending that an AT user think about making the transition. Even then, I would tell anyone who's on a version of Windows earlier than Windows 8 that they are going to be in for a big shock. Windows 7 was the last version of Windows that, from the perspective of the user interface, followed a progressive narrative flow from each earlier version of Windows into the next. Windows 8 was a tectonic shift in the user interface, so much so that I advised any of my sighted clients that they should definitely only purchase a touch screen enabled machine to work with it, since it was so geared toward acting "like a smartphone" with regard to activating apps and the like. Windows 10 is a wedding of things we've always known from Windows, like the Start menu, and elements of the new Metro/tile based interface. Even the new Start menu is displayed as a collection of tiles, not as the vertical column of programs as it had been in all versions of Windows prior to 8. I would be fascinated to hear how any early adopters of the "bleeding edge" version of Windows 10 that we've had since July who are also AT users are finding working with it. I personally love Windows 10, but I was also prepared for all the bumps that I knew would come when Microsoft rolls out any new version of Windows, and many people simply are not (and, really, should not have to be, either). I've been on this ride many times since I started my first career in information technology all the way back in 1985. Brian
