* About the Screen Reader Check program *
This program is copyright 2017 Tom Kingston – all rights reserved.
See the included License.txt file for details.
Email: [email protected]
Windows has an internal setting that tells it if a screen reader is
running. Our screen
readers turn this on when we load them and off when we close them.
Windows uses it to make
some changes that help our screen readers work better. It is also
available for other programs to
check when they launch and make themselves more accessible as well.
The problem comes into play when something goes wrong with our screen
reader, such
as it stops talking but it’s not actually hung or crashed, which is the
case for me when Internet
Explorer throws an error. In my case I’m running Window-Eyes. So I load
NVDA to see what’s
going on. Sometimes this alone reopens the flow of speech from
Window-Eyes. If not closing
the error message with NVDA always brings Window-Eyes back to life. My
understanding is
that the same thing happens with JAWS.
Next I unload NVDA and continue on my merry way. But closing NVDA turns
off the
screen reader setting in Windows even though I’m still running a screen
reader. This is not the
fault of NVDA or exclusive to it. Any screen reader will do the same.
This is where this program
comes into play.
In order to turn the screen reader setting back on we would have to
unload our screen
reader and reload it. And in order to do that and insure the best result
we would have to close all
open programs, close our screen reader, reload it, and then reopen those
programs and do
whatever is necessary, e.g. load files, to get back to work. This is
because our screen readers
need to see some programs load in order to configure themselves to work
correctly with those
programs.
The Screen Reader Check program allows you to reset the screen reader
setting without
having to close and reopen your programs and screen reader. You can run
this program and it
will first check to see if the screen reader setting is on or off. If
it’s on the program will simply
notify you of this and close when you press the Ok button. If not it
will attempt to turn the screen
reader setting back on and then broadcast a system message to tell all
open windows that a
screen reader is running. It will then notify you that this was done and
close when you press the
Ok button.
The ScreenReaderCheck.zip file will extract a ScreenReaderCheck folder.
That folder
includes License.txt, ReadMe.txt (this file), and SRC.exe. Simply unzip
it into a folder of your
choice. You may then wish to place SRC.exe in a more convenient place
for quicker access.
I gave the program a short name to make it easy to run from the run
dialog. Just press
Windows+R and enter drive:\path\src.exe. for example, if you place it in
the root of your C-drive
you would just enter C:\SRC.exe.
You may also wish to open the context menu (Application key or
Shift+F10) on SRC.exe
in the folder you extracted it to and use “Send to” to send a shortcut
to your desktop. Within the
properties of that shortcut file, accessed through the context menu or
Alt-Enter, you can assign a
shortcut hot key to it.
If you have any comments or inquiries please email me at
[email protected]
Below is a link to the ScreenReaderCheck.zip file.
After downloading the file select it, open the context menu, P Properties,
tab to the Unblock check box and check it.
This will prevent you from having to go through the Windows security
dialog in order to run SRC.exe.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ugpweuw5igmmg8q/ScreenReaderCheck.zip?dl=1
Hope it's helpful.
Tom
_______________________________________________
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