AI Generated Transcript
Well, hello everyone and welcome to Basics with BITS for June 14th, 2025. My name is Brad Snyder. I am the Presentations Coordinator for BITS. BITS is Blind Information Technology Specialist. We are special interest affiliate of the American Council of the Blind. If you’d like more information about BITS or to become a member, please visit our website at bits-acb.org. To find out more information about BITS, or to become a member, please visit our website bits-acb.org. You can find out l about us. and as I said, there’s a link there to become a member if you choose to do so. If you’re sitting on the fence and still wondering about it, you are welcome to join our announcements only email list. We have post announcements about our presentations, announcements about our Bits Friday and Saturday night chats that we do each week, and sometimes occasional other emails. It blank email to bits, that’s bits-announce+subscribe@groups.io. And with those announcements out of the way, let me introduce our presenter for this afternoon, Marci Doody. And Marci is going to talk about accessing your Gmail email via your web browser. So take it away, Marci. Thank you, Brad. And thank you, Cindy, for hosting for us and Nikki for streaming for us. What I want to let you know from the very beginning, anytime you use any program on a web browser, that web browser has to be maximized. And there are two ways to maximize a window. Of course you can press Windows key plus up arrow or you could press, so if Windows key up arrow brings up the snap dialog, you could also press alt with space. You’re going to bring up what is called a system menu and then you could either arrow to maximize and press enter or you could use the shortcut X and that will maximize your window. So please be sure that sometimes when JAWS isn’t working correctly in different places that your windows are maximized. And again, that’s Windows plus up arrow or Alt space, then arrow down to the maximize option and press enter, or use the shortcut key X and you’re out of that system menu. The next thing I want you to know is there are two types of commands used in Gmail. The first one is JAWS Internet commands, and then there are the native Gmail commands. These native Gmail commands have to be enabled for us to use them. So for us to turn those on, we need to find the settings of Gmail. So the way that I found them is to, so we’re in mail.google.com. We are signed into our accounts and we have not enabled those shortcuts yet. So to enable those shortcuts, what we want to do is we want to bring up a list of buttons. Now, if our screen reader doesn’t have the list of buttons, JAWS does. So you can use control, JAWS key B, bring up that list of buttons and what you want to locate is the Settings button. So if our screen reader doesn’t have the list of buttons to be brought up, you can press the letter B or use your screen reader’s Find command until you find the Settings button. That Settings button is the one that you need to locate and activate. Once you’ve located the Settings button, you’ll press the Tab key until you locate the See All Settings button. You want to activate that. then you want to use your screen readers find command and look for the word conversation. This first choice of the word conversation allows you to see how many messages are displayed on a page. So you can choose from 10, you can choose from 5, 10, 20, or 30. And this is how many email messages or email conversations you’ll see on the current page. Okay, then you can do a find for the next occurrence of conversation with JAWS as an F3. And when you find this instance of conversation, this will let you see if you want to see the conversations in threads, or if you want to see the conversations as individual messages. That’s what I have selected to see the conversations as individual messaging. So those are the two things that I have set up. Then what you want to do is the reason why we were here in the first place. You want to find the enable hotkeys or enable keyboard shortcuts. So do a find for the word shortcuts and make sure that that option is turned on. Once those Google shortcuts are enabled, you can now use the Gmail commands. Then what you want to do is bring up that list of buttons again with Control-Jaws-Key-B. When you bring up that list of buttons, you want to locate and activate the Save button. You can press the letter S. That will quickly let you locate that Save button. Then you want to activate it and you want to make sure that your settings are saved. Once those settings are saved for conversations in the way you want to see them, and those shortcut keys are turned on, you can now use those Gmail shortcuts in email. So what I want to remind you is that there are two sets of commands that we’re going to use in Gmail. You’re going to use the JAWS native internet commands and you’re also going to use the gmail commands. So there is a way that you can switch between using those gmail commands and the native gmail commands or the JAWS internet commands and the native gmail commands. And what you want to do there is use the virtual PC cursor activated with JAWS key Z. When your virtual PC cursor is turned off, your Gmail commands are working. When your virtual PC cursor is turned on, then your JAWS commands are working. And then you can read your messages. But things like composing an email or things like replying to an email or forwarding an email, moving an email, deleting an email. Those are all things we do with the virtual cursor turned off. So again, JAWS Key Z toggles you between turning the virtual PC cursor off and on. So JAWS Key Z is a very important command that you’re going to use in Gmail. And I’m going to share my screen and show you what it’s like to work with Gmail and the web. Inbox-paging Marci at gmail.com. So I created this email address just for this presentation. It’s patientmercy at gmail.com. So when I press G-I, it’s a Google command, I have to have my virtual cursor turned on. So let’s have it off. Then I can press G-I. None selected. And I have no messages selected, but I can simply use my up and down arrows to show you the messages that appear in my inbox. Now, just recently, a very famous blind podcaster told about how to podcast being blind. So I had registered for that seminar, and they recently sent out the recordings for that seminar. So if I press down arrow. Unread, Zimnick, Kennedy, Zoom link and reminder for today’s How to Create a Podcast as a Blind Person seminar, June 11th. Hello, so. So there is the first message and then. National Federation. Unread, Zimnick. Unread, Zimnick, Kennedy, Zoom recording of the How to Create a Podcast as a Blind Person seminar and chat transcription has attachment, June 12th. Hello. So just using your up and down arrows after pressing GI, with the virtual cursor turned off, you can read your messages, any messages that you have received in the inbox. Now let’s say that I want to compose a message. What I do, the Gmail command is to compose a message. So if you think compose, you’ll press the letter C. So when I press the letter C, Compose colon new message dialog, new message region, 2, search field. So there is your 2 field. I can type the email address that I want to write to. Please make sure that it’s typed in correctly because if an email address is typed in incorrectly, it would not be delivered or it could go to someone else. So I’m going to type basics with bits, B-A-S-I-C-S-W-I-T-H-B-I-T-S at G-M-A-I-L dot C-O-M. Basics with bits at gmail.co extended select list box. Not selected basics. So it’s there. The M is there. Josh just spoke basics with bits at gmail.co. So then I’m going to press the tab key. Compose colon new message dialogue. New message region. To search field extended. So I’m going to press tab again. Subject edit. Now, if I wanted to add a CC field, I could press Control-Shift-C. If I wanted to add the BCC field, I could press Control-Shift-B. So those are native Gmail commands that you can add if you want to add the CC or BCC fields. So my subject here is going to be, I want to know how to read the current line with JAWS and with NVDA. So my subject is going to be reading the current line. So how do I, R-E-A-D, the, the, and then C-U-R-R-E-N-T-L-I-N, question mark. Subject edit, how do I read the current line? Okay, and then I’m going to tab to the message body. Message body edit. And I’m going to say I am using both JAWS and N-V-D-A. How or H. What a the to be the. Okay, so I am using both JAWS and NVDA. What are the commands to read the current line? Okay, so I’ve composed my message. I’m happy with it. And here I can use native screen reading commands. I can hit control home to go to the top. I am using both. And I can go character by character using the right arrow space a m space u s i n g i can go word with the control and both jaws and NVDA okay so i can use my regular commands now if i’m happy with my message i am using both jaws and NVDA what are the commands to read the current grammar line grammar options press tab to access okay so as you can see google told me that current line is it doesn’t think that sounds good grammar wise okay so if i’m happy with my message i can just send it by pressing control enter cancel undo message sent undo view message i have the opportunity to undo the sent message if i want to but i don’t want to so i can just press control enter and that sends my message. So the next thing that I want to show you is how to mark messages for deletion or actually message sent view message see there’s the message that said that now my message has been sent message sent I’m gonna press GI again to go to the top of my inbox main region primary tab panel eight columns unread Zimnick Kennedy zoom recording of the how to to create a podcast as a blind and I want this recording so I’m going to forward it to myself okay so what I’m going to do now is press enter to open the message main region zoom recording of List with one items Zimnik, Kennedy K. Zimnik And then I’m going to read my current blank And I’m going to, it’s put me in a field where I can now type the email address of the person that I want to forward it to. So I’m going to forward it to myself. Mar extent Not selected Marci dot smiles at And that’s where I want to send it. So then I can put, I can tag Main region list with one items message body edit and i can type something to myself like please remember to download these recordings okay and i can read my current line please remember to download these recordings okay and then again i can send it with control enter set cancel undo again i have the opportunity to undo the message but i don’t want to i just want to forward it to myself and to remember to download these recordings. So that’s how we forward a message. If we wanted to reply to a message, we don’t have the email address in there at all. Because when we reply to a message, the message is going to go back to the person that sent it to us. So when we reply, the command is R. So we’ll open the message. We’ll press the letter R. And then we are placed in the message body. No need to put that email address in there because the message is going back to the person that sent us the message. So you can press R and then you’re in the message body and you can type the message and press control enter. So control enter will send it to that person. If you want to mark messages for deletion, so I can press GI again to stay at the inbox. Zoom recording of the how to create a pod. I can press the letter X to mark my messages. Selected, unread, mail delivery and then I can press down arrow. Unread. See what I mean about getting those emails to the right, typing the email address correctly. So then I can press X. Selected, unread, Zimnick, Kennedy. And then when I’m ready to delete the messages after they’ve been marked, I can press shift and the number three or the pound sign or the hashtag sign. So then when I press shift and three, National Federation, you’re registered. Those messages are deleted. So I registered for a other seminars from that other organization. And that’s what you see in the email right now. So now let’s read a message. If you want to read a message, you’re going to press enter on the message that you want to read. Conversation opened one read message. And then you’re going to turn on the virtual cursor. So you’re going to press JAWS key Z. On. And it’s now on. And then you can press the number three. National Federation of the Blind Access at NFB.org heading. And that takes you to the message and you can now read it using your regular JAWS commands. You can use insert down arrow. You can use down arrow if you want to read it line by line. You can use any commands that you want to use that will help you navigate around a web page because that is exactly what this is now. It’s just a web page with your virtual cursor turned on. So again, if you want to go back to Gmail messages You can press JAWS key Z, off, and then you can press the letter U. Main region, primary tab panel, eight columns and four rows, national. And that takes me to the message where I was. So you don’t have to go to the top of the inbox. If you want to go to the top of the inbox, you press GI, and that is a Google command. So that virtual cursor has to be turned off. But if you want to return to the message where you were, just pressing the letter U will get you right to that message. You can do different things like, say you want to go to different labels. If you use your left arrow from your inbox, you can see all of the labels that are available to you. Navigation region, labels. And this is called the navigation region. And labels in Gmail are just another way to save folders. So if I hit my down arrow. Starred link to activate press enter. There are my starred messages. Snoozed link to activate. Here are my snoozed messages. If I want to put a message up on top of my inbox, I can use the snooze. Sent link. Here are my sent items. Drafts link to activate press enter. Here are my drafts. So if I want to go to any of these labels, I can just hit enter and the messages in that label are showing up. Again, remember your virtual PC cursor has to be turned off. Important link to access your important label. Your all-male label is here. All different things. And there are shortcuts to get to all of these labels. and there are keyboard shortcuts to find the different things that you need to do in Gmail. If you’re going to type the slash, the slash is the way you access the search, not the keyboard shortcut. So if I want to search for something like a term like maybe podcast or something that I’m looking for or a sender that has sent me email, then I can type the search. Gmail will show me all of the search results that come back after I’ve typed the particular word. So slash is the way that you search for different emails. I wish I had more emails here to show you than those from the ones that I registered for the seminars. But when you type slash, you type a term and then you search for that particular term in your emails. And that’s exactly how you would search for something. I’m going to go back to my inbox. Inbox-pagingMarciatgmail.com-gmail. Main region. So I hit the escape key to come out of my search, and then I pressed GI. None selected. And I have no messages selected. So do I have any questions, Cindy? Yes, you do. Okay, you have three hands. Belle, go ahead and unmute. Hi, Belle. Hi, Marci. What can I totally confuse for you? Snooze. What is a snooze? I still don’t understand the snooze business. So this news folder lets you put a message off, say, if you don’t want to work on it for a couple of days. Then you can put that message in this news folder, and then in a couple of days, it will show up at the top of your inbox. Is it in Outlook, too? I think in Outlook, it’s called a flag. Oh, okay. I think in Outlook, you can flag something and set it to work on on a particular date. Okay, well, I’m headed toward Google Mail. It’s a goal of mine. So thanks so much. If you have questions, please give us, you know, an email at basicswithbits because I’m happy to help you. Thank you. Gmail is fun. Yes. Hi, LaDawn. Hi. Is there a spell checker in there? So spell checker kind of happens automatically. As you notice, when I typed my email that said current line, it will catch spell checking. And then you can go in and fix it because it’ll say spelling error. And when it says spelling error, how do you find the correct thing or do you have to put it in your cell? So you have to go back word by word until you find that particular spelling error. How do you find the replacement? I don’t know if the application key brings up those replacements. That’s something I’m going to have to look up because I’m not sure. Okay. Thank you. You’re so much helpful. I wonder if you had it printed out of your demonstration today. So I know that once it’s podcasted, we can turn it into transcript. I have a program that turns it into audio. Oh, okay. Thank you very much. You’re welcome. Hey, Janine. Hi, Janine. Hello. After you mark an email, how do you delete that email again? It’s shift and the number three or the pound sign. Shift and pound. Okay. The hashtag shift and three. That makes the pound sign. Okay. Got it. Thank you. Hey, Diana. Hi. Hi. How do you create a new label a la folder and move a message to that folder? Great question. So remember when I said if you’re in your inbox and you hit your left arrow? Navigation region, labels, inbox link. So if you come down from here. Drafts link, chat, scheduled, spam link, trash link, category, manage label, create new label link. To activate, press enter. Do you see that create new label link? You’d press enter here. New label modal dialog. Please enter a new label name, colon, nest label under colon, nest label under colon. So the first thing it asks you is for that new label’s name. All right. I’m going to call my label friends, F-R-I-E-N-D-S, and read my current line. Please enter a new label name, colon, edit friends. Okay. Then if I press tab. Nest label under colon checkbox, not check. It’s going to ask me if I want to nest the label under, and I don’t want to let nest the label under anything. If I did. That would be like a subfolder. Exactly. Okay. So I don’t want to nest the label under anything. I want to have it right here with my inbox, outbox, star, things like that. So I don’t want to nest it. So I’m going to leave that checkbox unchecked. Nest label under colon combo box. To change the selection, use the error cancel button. Create button. To activate. Create button. You need to press enter. Navigation region. Labels. Create new label link. To activate, press enter. the label quote friends quote was created see all right now i’m going to know how to move it yeah i’m going to hit gi main region primary tab panel eight columns and i’m going to move So again, my PC cursor is turned off because these are Gmail commands. So I can move to menu and then I can type the name of the label that I want to move it to. So I can type “friends” or I can type “fun”, a label that I created a little while ago. Leaving menus, move to button menu, press space to activate the menu, then navigate with arrow keys. Conversation moved to quote, fun quote, undo. And it’s done. Okay, great. So there’s no keyboard command to actually immediately go to where you can create a new label. You have to go on the left-hand side and then go all the way down. That’s the way I know how to do it is to go to the left-hand side and then go down to create new labels. If there is a keyboard command, I don’t know it yet. That’s okay. At least we’ve got one way to get there. So thank you. And as fast as you can hit that down arrow, that’s as fast as you can get to that create new label. That’s true. That’s true. Thank you. You’re welcome. I wanted to keep it basic. So I wanted to teach you how to forward an email, how to reply to an email, how to compose an email, how to get to the labels like I was at. podcast how to mark those emails for deletion so again you would use the letter x mark those emails how to create a label i knew that was something that you would need to want you know that you would need to do because it’s really good to keep your Gmail messages organized. And that is something most definitely that we need to know how to create labels and then how to move those messages to those particular labels. How to compose a message, the letter C, type in that email address. Again, if you want to add the CC, it’s control shift C. If you want to add the BCC field, it’s control shift B. You have another hand. Go for it. Okay, Deborah. Hi, it’s Debbie Armstrong. I’m education chair for BITS. I’m going to just give Marci a little bit of a break here so she can gather her thoughts. I want to just say, especially since this is being recorded and we’re going to be listening to it later, you know, if you’ve worked with other email programs, you have folders and items get stored in folders. And many people will say, oh, this label stuff is so confusing. But in fact, the label stuff gives you a lot more flexibility. It’s a lot like what they call a hashtag. Because the idea is that you can give something multiple labels or you can search for just that label. So instead of having 70,000 different folders with, you know, coworkers, buddies, business, you know, all this other stuff. It makes it much easier to find a particular group of emails. So think of categorizing your emails. So I hope that helps. And like I said, we are in basics with bits, trying to stick with basic stuff. But we are going to have meetings in the future. So anybody who has questions that are not related to Gmail, that’s probably going to come up somewhere in basics with bits at some point. So if we want to bring up those keyboard commands, I said slash at first, and slash is what’s going to bring up that search field. I believe it’s shift slash question mark. Keyboard shortcuts. Keyboard shortcuts. Open in a new window. Vertical bar close. Open in a new window. Vertical bar close. Keyboard shortcuts. So let’s go ahead and open it in a new window. Open in a new window link. Inactive tabs get a new look. See when tabs are in. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It doesn’t matter. Eight regions, nine headings, and 20 key. Okay. So to read these keyboard shortcuts, we do need to have our virtual cursor turned on. Because we went into a new window, that virtual cursor has probably been turned on, but let’s check for sure. JAWS key Z. Off. Yeah, see, it was already turned on. Okay, so we’re going to press the letter T to go into tables. No tables. Great. All right, let’s read that. Same page link skipped to main content. Let’s use headings. Keyboard shortcuts for Gmail heading level 1. Okay. So again, that’s the question mark that brought up these keyboard shortcuts. Want to get more out of Google Apps at work or school? Link sign up for a Google Workspace trial at Save time. Compute Android to iPhone and iPad. Tab 3 of 3. Turn on keyboard shortcuts heading level 2. Some keyboard shortcuts only work if you’ve turned them on. See? That’s what I told you at the beginning of this presentation. Note colon keyboard shortcuts aren’t supported on all keyboards. List of 6 items: 1. On a computer, go to: link Gmail opens in new Shortcuts you can use heading level 2. You can use keyboard shortcuts to navigate your inbox and messages, format text, and complete actions like archiving and deleting. complete list of keyboard shortcuts, including which need to be turned on. Type, when, note, colon, keyboard, short, compo, formatting, text, button, collapsed, actions, button, collapsed, jumping, button, collapsed. So all of these keyboard shortcuts are sectioned off into, actions, button, formatting, text, button, collapsed. We can format, actions, button, collapsed. Let’s take actions. Expanded, keyboard shortcuts for Gmail-computer-Gmail, help, actions, button, expanded to note colon these shortcuts won’t work unless keyboard short Customize keyboard shortcuts heading level 2 step 1 colon turn on cut step 2 colon chain need more help Try these next steps colon head it display an accessibility heading level 2 link So I use the shift slash to get to those keyboard shortcuts and I would like to see them Grabbing to top. Keyboard shortcuts for Gmail heading level 1. Want to get more? Link. Save time navigating in Gmail by using keyboard shortcuts. So again, it’s shift slash to bring up those keyboard shortcuts. We brought them up in a new window and they will show them to us by buttons for actions, buttons for jumping, buttons for doing different things. Expanding those keyboard shortcuts. But again, that’s the question mark that brings those up. that’s truly all I wanted to tell you. I mean, the shortcuts, the search, the composing a message, replying to a message, forwarding messages, reading. If you have any questions about those things, I’m happy to answer them for you. Hi, Julie. Thank you for doing this. Can you maybe briefly talk about sending attachments? Like if you have a file or something that you want to share, well, not share, but send to someone. Absolutely. Thank you. Sending attachments is just as easy as copying and pasting with Gmail. So you can go into your file explorer, locate your document, press control C to copy your file, come into the body of your message with Gmail, press control V and that file is attached. When you receive an attachment, it shows up as something that you can either add to drive or download to your computer. Sometimes you have to press the enter key twice when you hit that download link, but it will ask you to save it and what you want to call it and where you want to put it. But saving attachments or putting attachments in your messages is just as easy as copying and pasting. Okay, Debra, go ahead. I can share a few more tips if you have the time. Of course. But you can come back to me. Okay. Of course. What we’re seeing now more now is the concept of the web app. So more and more, if you have a job or you’re doing volunteer work somewhere, you may see apps that are a lot like Gmail that are web-based. They may be easier to use. they may be harder to use, but when you’re learning to use this, even if you get your Gmail offline or on your iPhone, learning to use this can help make you much more employable because you will be confident with web apps. The other thing to tell you about this is on most web apps, you have something like control slash to pull up the list of keyboard shortcuts, and it may be frustrating to try to read all these things while you’re in the web app, so I have a secret weapon. And what that is, is that I go through and uncollapse everything until all of the tabs are expanded. And on most websites with keyboard shortcuts, it will do that. And then once it happens, I go to the top of the list of keyboard shortcuts. And I do Control-Windows-K to create a temporary bookmark. And again, this is going to be on the recording, so you can go back and hear it. Control-Windows-K to create a temporary bookmark. Then I go down to where the keystroke list ends. I do a JAWS key space. JAWS key space, either the caps lock or the insert, to create a layered keystroke. And then I do M, and that stands for mark. It actually selects from where the bookmark starts to the end. And then I do Control-C for copy. And that copies all of the text of the keyboard shortcuts. shortcuts into my clipboard. Then I open a text file in Notepad and I paste all the keyboard shortcuts there. And now I have a text file of those shortcuts. And what I can do with it is I can put it on my iPhone. I can put it on my Braille display. I can put it on, you know, any other gizmo I have so that I can even on my Victor Reader stream. So I can have the key strokes on another device or in another window if I need them to be there. I know that’s a little be complicated, but it will be on the recording again. It’s selecting text on the web. If you help with that, I’m sure JAWS can help you with that. So when you press the buttons for the different buttons, when you expand the different buttons, then those keyboard shortcuts do show up in the table. Wrapping to top. Two columns and 26 rows. Column one, row one, action. So once we’ve expanded that button to actions keyboards, now you can see what they do. So shortcut, column two of two. And then you have the shortcut. And I am using control alt left and right arrow. So control alt left arrow. Action, column one of two. Right arrow. Shortcut, column two of two. So now I’m going to go down arrow, control alt down. Action, move focus to toolbar, row two of 26. And then my shortcut. Shortcut, comma, column two of two. Action, select conversation, row three of 26. Shortcut, X, column two of two. So that’s how we selected an email for deletion or for moving. So that’s selecting a conversation. Action, select conversation, toggle star slash rotate among superstars, row four of 26. Shortcut, S, column two of two. That’s how you would read them. So you do have those keyboard shortcuts. Once you’ve expanded the button that you want to see these shortcuts for, then they do show up in tables, and you can use the letter T to find that table. And then Control-Alt-Left Arrow will go one column to the left, Control-Alt-Right Arrow one column to the right, then Control-Alt-Down will let you go on down to the next column. Gmail on the web is fun. I’m glad we got to learn how to use it because there was a time when our computers didn’t have the Outlook client when we went to Windows 11. Now the Outlook new is getting very popular and useful. But we taught Gmail on the web and it worked out really well because you can use your Gmail anywhere as long as you can log in. Just like Debra was saying, you’re very flexible. As long as you can log into a place, you can use your Gmail there. Just remember to log off. Let me remind everyone, Basics with Bits will be off for a few weeks during convention, and we will return on July 26th. Excuse me, trying to do my calendar in my head. I was making convention last longer. It just seems to last the entire month. It doesn’t really last the whole month of July. Yes, we will be back on July 26. Deborah will be presenting. She’ll have something for us then. Thank you all for being here. Thank you. Bye. Bye. We’ll be right back. Thank you.