Hello All, What follows is a rather philosophical question but that certainly has practical implications that the cohort will know about a lot more personally than I ever can. Hence this is the place to ask.
When I tutor on using JAWS I do not focus exclusively on JAWS and its keystrokes because JAWS hovers on top of all other Windows programs and assists in using those. My philosophy is that I want my clients to know as many, if not more, keyboard shortcuts that are universally, or very close to universally, applicable in all Windows programs. I want them to know that, in almost all cases, ALT+F opens the file menu or equivalent, followed by S saves a file, followed by A does a Save as, etc. One of my clients, with whom I had a marathon 3.25 hour tutoring session yesterday, is relatively new to using Windows Live Mail as well as using PDF XChange viewer to perform OCR on the many image PDFs that still get thrown his way. As a result, I worked him through certain tasks step-by-step and create instructions in the same format, examples of which will follow. It was only when we were conversing afterward, and he used the phrase JAWS keyboard shortcuts when talking about conventional Windows keyboard shortcuts that I thought it important that he had at least a basic understanding that keyboard shortcuts do differ in what program layer, JAWS versus a give Windows program, is responsible for the interpretation of same. I want him to understand how to apply Windows keyboard shortcuts "by extension" when he is playing around with a Windows program that's new to him. Is this a mistake to try to make this distinction? Is it unwise to not focus nearly exclusively on JAWS keyboard shortcuts for functions that also exist independently as a different Windows keyboard shortcut? I'd love to get the perspective of those who would know the pluses and minuses of leaning one way or another. What follows are a couple of examples of the step-by-step instruction sets I've created, and they look more complicated than they actually are because I try to break things down into simple single steps. Once you know what you're doing most of these tasks can be done in a few moments. I'll include the instructions for running OCR with PDF XChange Viewer because it may be helpful to some here who have decided to play with that program. All focus almost exclusively on using WIndows keyboard shortcuts for the program in question with JAWS serving the role of narrating what's happening while you do this. For some reason the copy and paste from Word for the second two sets of instructions are not carrying over the numbers, and the forum is being cranky about allowing me to edit them. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Using PDF XChange Viewer to perform OCR on any PDF you receive that is an image PDF, step-by-step: 1. Open PDF XChange Viewer from your start menu. 2. Hit ALT+F,O to bring up the file open browsing dialog. 3. Hit ALT+I to jump directly to the Look In combo box 4. Hit down arrow to get into the area that’s somewhat, but not exactly, like the tree view in Windows Explorer. 5. Hit L until you hear, “Libraries,” announced. 6. Hit TAB two times, you should hear, “Documents”. 7. Hit SPACEBAR to select the Documents library. 8. Hit ENTER to open the documents library. 9. Hit the first character of the folder or file name you’re trying to perform OCR on. Keep doing this with the first character until you hear its name announced. 10. Hit Enter to open the file or folder. If you’re dealing with a file at this step go straight to step 11. Otherwise, do the following a. If you know the file is in this folder then use the “hit the first character” technique to locate it and jump to step 11 once you have. b. If you need to drill down another folder level go back to step 9. 11. Hit ALT+O to open the file in PDF XChange Viewer. 12. Hit CTRL+SHIFT+C to open the OCR dialog box. Immediately hit ENTER to initiate the OCR processing. The length of time this takes depends on the size of the file being processed. JAWS does not read the processing status box, but will announce the file’s name with star after it when the processing completes. That’s how you’ll know it’s done. 13. Hit ALT+F,S to save the file and its OCR text into the original file itself. 14. Hit ALT+F4 to close PDF XChange Viewer. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Creating a new folder in Windows Explorer, step-by-step: 1. Open Windows Explorer and navigate to the folder location in which you wish to create the new folder. 2. Hit ALT+F,W,F to create the new folder itself. 3. Type in the name you want for the new folder you’re creating. 4. Hit ENTER to make that new name stick, and you’re done. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To find a specific e-mail message in WLM, step-by-step: 1. Hit ALT+O,FI which opens the message find submenu 2. You are presented with two choices in this submenu: Find Text and Find Message. I will cover each of these briefly. 3. Find Text presents a dialog box allows you to enter a word, words, or phrase that you know is somewhere within the message you’re trying to find. Simply enter that text and skip to step 5. 4. Find Message presents you with a dialog box with a number of possible attributes of the message you might want to search on, e.g., Subject, From, To, and others. Tab through and fill in whichever of these attributes you wish to include in the search. After you’ve filled in whichever are pertinent, go to step 5. 5. Hit ALT+I to activate the Find Now key. This will cause a dialog box to come up with the list of messages that match whatever you searched on, if any exist. These are presented very much like your inbox message list, but are composed only of messages that match the search criteria you entered. When you hear the one you’re interested in as you move through them, hit ENTER to open it.
