AI Generated Transcript
The opinions expressed on ACB Media are those of the content creator and should not be assumed to reflect product endorsements or the views of the American Council of the Blind, its elected officials, or its staff. Well, good afternoon everyone and welcome to another presentation of Basics with Bits here on the ACB Community. My name is Brad Snyder. I am the Presentations Committee Chairperson for BITS. I’d like to remind everyone, BITS is a special interest affiliate of the American Council of the Blind. We are blind information technology specialists. To learn more about BITS or become a member if you’re interested, please visit our website at bits, that’s bits-acb.org, or to go directly to the membership portal, you can go to join bits, that’s joinbits.org. We also have available in announcements only email lists that you can join. This is open to both members and non-members. to join, it is bits-announce+subscribe@groups.io to join this list. You send a blank email to bits-announce+subscribe@groups.io. And so with all those preliminaries out of the way, let me introduce our presenter for today. We have Debbie Armstrong, who’s going to talk about using Windows Narrator when your primary screen reader stops and leaves you in silence. Debbie, take it away. Hello, everyone. I want to make sure y’all can hear me okay. Brad, can you hear me? Just fine. Okay. And I’ve told Brad I’m wearing my favorite Bluetooth headset because even though its audio quality is a little lower than my nice microphone, it means I can stretch and move around. I’m going to be talking to you till about half past and then we’re going to take questions. Usually I talk to you for the whole 45 minutes and only allow 15 minutes for questions. Because so much of today is based on troubleshooting, I want to give you more time to get your questions asked. I also want to remind you that eventually recordings do show up on ACB Communities podcast. I just looked and the recordings of the last few sessions are up there. So they do eventually get around to posting them. A lot of people like to listen to recordings of this stuff later because sometimes it’s kind of hard to follow along or they’re telling a friend about it. And so I do want you to know that it’s all done by volunteers. And sometimes it takes them a little while to get those recordings posted, but they do eventually show up. We have been focusing on Windows here in Basics with Bits because there is such a nice iPhone class that is the first and third Saturday of the month, the basic iPhone class. So if your problem is with your iDevice, do check that out. There’s also the wonderful unmute presence that Michael Babcock and his friends assist with on Tuesday mornings. So that’s another place you can get your questions answered. And we here with Basics with Bits are on the second and fourth Saturday of the month at noon Pacific and three Eastern. Wanted to say that right away in case you have people in your ACB chapter who are new to Windows and are really getting stuck. Because Basics with Bits is our hope that we can offer more free training to our brothers and sisters in ACB who may be really struggling with trying to use Windows. So often you get a Windows computer and you get like three hours of training and they expect you to be able to do everything with it. You cannot. All right. So that’s my introduction. Today what I’d like to do is focus on what happens when your screen reader dies. And I will be sharing my screen in a minute. But before I do that, I’d like to talk to you about the things that happen when your computer stops talking. Because lots of times your computer hasn’t really stopped talking. Okay, so first of all, if you’re working and your computer has stopped talking, take your hands off the keyboard, pull away from the computer and wait for, I don’t know, 10 seconds. Because sometimes the computer’s just busy doing something and JAWS has not had a chance to put its R in and start speaking. So such is the nature of multitasking. You know, Windows especially is doing 20,000 things at the same time. There are lots of background tasks running that you don’t even know about. And if one of those background tasks takes over and starts really working the computer, JAWS or NVDA may simply not be talking for a little bit while that task is doing its processing. So, you know, sighted people don’t have a screen that suddenly goes dark. But we experience this all the time. Our speech may not say something for a while. And so my first rule when it stops talking is just to back away and give it a minute to recover. Now, let’s suppose you’ve given it those 10, 15 seconds and it’s still not talking. Well, the first thing you want to do is try to read your title bar. Insert T with NVDA, insert T with JAWS. Or if you have a caps lock key, it’s the caps lock with T. And that will at least tell you where you are and if your screen reader is still active. So if you do that and it doesn’t say anything, for example, if it says, you know, that it cannot find the focus, then you know that it’s a little confused because there’s some application that’s running in the foreground that is not able to talk. Or maybe you are not focused on anything. Lots of times if another thing grabs your focus, like a dialogue box or a splash screen, I’m going to talk about splash screens in just a minute. If something grabs your focus and then it goes away, you’re kind of left in limbo. You’re not focused on anything. And that’s true for sighted people as well. Until they move their mouse or press a key, they’re not focused anywhere. Windows is working. The applications are working. The screen reader is working. But if it says lost focus or it doesn’t say anything meaningful when you do the insert T, it may very well simply not know where you are on the screen because you’re not anywhere on the screen. Just like if you step out of your house, you’re in your house, you’re out of your house, or you’re in your doorway. But there may be some point where you’re kind of halfway in between those two things. One foot inside your house, one foot outside. And you can only be in one place in windows. You have two feet. So one can be inside your house and one can be outside your house. But windows, you can only be in one place. And so if you’re between places, it’s kind of like you’re in some sort of time warp or wormhole. And it will say lost focus. So don’t let that throw you. Your screen reader is working, but you just have to do Alt-Tab or Windows-M or Windows-D so you get back to some known location. And then do Insert-T, and it should tell you you’re on your desktop, you’re in Zoom, you’re in your web browser. wherever you are. So that is your first thing to do. Now, let us suppose that you did that insert and it didn’t say anything. And let’s suppose you have a document that you don’t want to lose. I’ve had that happen before. I’ve been typing away for an hour. I haven’t saved it because I’m busy And my screen reader dies. And I’ve tried several keystrokes and it doesn’t say anything. Now, I have one little trick. And that is that I have put an MP3 file on my desktop. And the reason I did that is so I can find out if I still have sound. Because I don’t know if my sound card died or if my screen reader died. And I have named it X-Music. And the reason I did that is so that all I have to do is Windows M to go to my desktop and type in X, and I will start hearing the MP3 playing. And that will let me know that at least my sound works. Because sometimes another thing that can happen, especially with some off-brand sound cards or even like with this little headset I’m wearing. I dropped something once with my little headset and I bent down and I accidentally hit the headset on the edge of the desk and it turned the volume all the way down. So I thought my screen reader had died. But in fact, I had accidentally turned the volume down. And so my sound was working great. I just didn’t have volume high enough for me to hear it. And so that can happen with your PC, too. And so if you put an MP3 file on your desktop or in a location you can get to with just a couple of keystrokes, you can also quickly find out, is the problem my sound card? Is my volume turned down? Or is it that my screen reader has died? Because, in fact, when I had done that and killed my headset or killed my headset volume, I hadn’t lost my screen reader, hadn’t lost my sound. I had just lost my volume. Okay. So now I’m going to go ahead and share my screen and we’re going to pretend that my JAWS dies. So I had trouble sharing my screen last time. So I discovered that they had changed the interface on Zoom. And I’m going to explain what I’m doing. When I do Alt S to share screen, it says hide layouts and options. And that can be expanded or collapsed. It is expanded. So I’m going to tap to advanced. Just one second. And I have to pick share sound. I’m going to play my whole screen. I decided not to share just the sound, but to share my whole screen. I am going to be playing that MP3 to show you how that works. And I thought people might want to see that. Okay. So let’s make sure you can hear JAWS. Can you hear JAWS? It’s going very fast. I hear this too fast. It’s okay. It’s okay that it’s going fast because we don’t really need to hear it because it’s going to crash. We’re going to pretend to crash. Okay. So it’s okay that it’s going fast. Now I’m going to exit JAWS, but we’re going to pretend that JAWS just died. Okay. So goodbye. There is no JAWS. There is no speech now. And first thing I’m going to do, pretending that JAWS crashed, is I did Windows M. And Windows M minimizes all my applications and goes to my desktop. And I’m going to try playing my MP3 flat. Now you should be able to hear Duran Duran. Okay, so we’re going to shut up Duran Duran, because I don’t think we need to hear Hungry Like the Wolf today. But the reason I have this MP3 on my desktop is I’ve now confirmed that my audio works. Now, JAWS is dead, but my audio works. So that’s very reassuring. So now I’m going to run Narrator. And to do that, I’m going to do Control-Windows-Enter. Now, if you’re on Windows 10, I believe it is still Control-Enter. And I don’t know about Windows 8, but in Windows 7, you’re going to get Anna. And I should have looked it up because I still had a Windows 7 computer in my office. But maybe next time when I’m here in August, I’ll be able to tell you how to get it in Windows 7. Xmusic.mp3 window. Okay, so we’re looking at the music player now. And that’s nice. Xmusic.mp3 window. And I did insert T or caps lock T to tell me where I am. And we’re going to make the video, the window, the music player go away. F desktop list, xmusic.mp3, 12 of 25. And we are on my desktop now. Now my JAWS has died, but I have a JAWS shortcut on my desk. So my first goal is just to try to run it again. J, JAWS 2024, 13 of 25, selected on. So I’m going to press enter and we’ll try to run it again. And we’ll see. U. If JAWS runs again or if JAWS is died. Expand screen share preview button. Now we have two screen readers. Mute. Currently unmuted. F1. Audio settings. Split button. So you can hear we’ve got the fast JAWS running and we have the slower narrator. And if I check our time here. 12.15 p.m. Saturday, July 27, 2024. That’s the narrator voice because it supersedes JAWS. JAWS. So once the first screen reader that is running is grabbing the keyboard. So you notice JAWS, even though I did insert F12, JAWS is not telling me the time. But JAWS is telling me things accessing because narrator has grabbed the keyboard. I’m going to try to make jobs go away. I don’t know if I’ll be successful. Not a narrator command. Yep. And I did insert F4 and narrator is not a narrator command because it has first dibs on the keyboard. So that’s also something important to remember. You need to make narrator go away before you’re going to be able to use your screen reader again. And I just did that by pressing control, Windows, enter. And like I said, it used to be control, enter. So if you have an older version of Windows, you’re going to probably do it with control, enter. Okay, so let’s see if I still have JAWS. I do, I still have JAWS. And now I should be able to use all my JAWS keystrokes. Let’s see, I’m going to do insert F12. And hey, I got my JAWS back. It’s happy. Okay, let’s try the same thing with NVDA. Now I’m going to pretend my JAWS crashed. Okay, so goodbye. All right, my JAWS has crashed. We know my sound works. I’m not going to run through all of that, but I’m going to try to run NVDA and hopefully that will work. And NVDA is always a little slower, but we have a bit of a problem here because NVDA has run, but it is not talking to my Bluetooth headset. So I don’t know if you’re going to hear the sound on NVDA. We will find out. Yeah, it’s talking to my default sound court. So that’s another thing that can happen. Your screen reader, if you have more than one sound device, your screen reader may think it’s talking to something different. It may not realize that it’s supposed to be talking to the sound device you are using. And this is true with laptops as well. You know, in desktops, you may have different sound cards. There are people like Larry Gassman, I think, who have about five sound cards. But normal folks who are not Larry Gassman also have multiple sound devices. For example, when I plug in my headphones, just wired headphones, Windows thinks that’s another sound device. And JAWS thinks it’s another sound device. And NVDA thinks it’s another sound device. And Narrator thinks it’s another sound device. And that’s because in the modern world, the jack is electronic. It’s not mechanical. So there’s software that knows you plugged in something. In fact, the Max Audio Pro from Realtek will often ask you, what have you plugged in? But even so, if you have something other than Realtek, you’ll find that when you plug in headset, all of a sudden, even if it’s a wired headset, it is a different audio device. And certainly that’s also true with USB headsets. So you’ll find all the time that Windows will think it’s stuck into your headset. I mean, your screen reader will think it’s stuck in your headset when it’s stuck into your sound card. Like this is what happened with me now. NVA is stuck into my sound card. My default Realtek sound card built into my laptop, not my Bluetooth headset that I’m wearing to talk to you all. So I’m going to make narrator come back because now I have a slight problem. And I actually do have a real problem now because NVDA is not a narrator command. Oh, come on. Not paying attention to my keystrokes. But I think NVDA is going to just hang out in the background and talk to the wrong device. So it shouldn’t cause a problem. Now let me show you a few other things about narrator. Many people gripe that narrator is very primitive, but that’s because they know the keystrokes for their screen reader, JAWS or NVDA. And they don’t know the keystrokes for narrator. But there’s one keystroke in narrator you really should learn. And that is the caps lock with a space. And that puts narrator into scan mode. And I’m going to actually pull up Windows settings to demonstrate scan mode. So I’m going to do Windows I. Settings window, search box, find a setting, edit, find a setting. Okay, so we’re in the settings screen. And to get to that, I did Windows I. And now this keystroke I want you to know about, scan mode. Cap lock space. And all you hear is a little sound when scan mode is on. And a sound when scan mode is off. When scan mode is on, you are interacting with what’s basically the touch cursor in JAWS. Even if you don’t have a touch screen, there’s still a touch cursor living in the software windows, which is kind of nice because I don’t have a touch screen on this laptop, but I can navigate with my touch cursor using JAWS, using NVA, or using Narrator. And so when I’m in scan mode, if I hit the arrow keys, I’m moving around as if I were using a virtual cursor in JAWS or as if I were browse mode in NBK. Scan mode is like the virtual cursor browse mode, and it lets me move around the screen. Or like if you go back a ways, it’s like the old review mode in the DOS screen readers. Anyway, so I can move around in the settings app without pressing tab and without changing where my focus is. That’s really important. So in scan mode, you can see what’s there. And you know what? If you get an error message, you’re going to be so happy with scan mode because you won’t have to try to get there with tab or with the arrows as long as you turn scan mode on with caps lock space. It’s a toggle, remember? So when you turn it on, you can now read your error message. Let me move around the settings window a little bit. I’m going to go down. System 1 of 11, level 1. Bluetooth and devices. Network and internet. 3 of 11, level 1. Now, that is the same as if I were to arrow in settings with scan mode off. E, T, W, O, R, K. I’m doing a left. Right arrow. Empercend. Space. I, N, T, E, R. So I can’t do that in settings if scan mode is off. Let’s do that. I’m going to turn scan mode off. I’m going to go down to network and internet. Personalization for network and internet, 3 of 11 level. But if I right and left arrow when scan mode is off, my focus is on network and internet, and I can’t spell that. The only way I can spell something is if scan mode is on. E T W O R. Okay. But Scanlo does not keep me from using regular keystrokes. So I’m going to press enter to go to network and internet. Network and internet. Network and internet. Three of 11 level one selected. And I’m going to tab. Network and internet breadcrumb bar item heading level one. Network hero control list group properties for wifi Bob and Debbie button. And Bob and Debbie is our Wi-Fi that I’m connected to right now. Data usage for Wi-Fi, Bob and Debbie, 29.76 GB from the last 30 days, button. Now let’s suppose this is a cell connection. It’s not. But let’s suppose that went by a little bit fast. I can turn scan mode on. And I can read that data usage slower. Usage. Data. Usage 4, WI, hyphen, phi, opening parenthesis, Bob, Empress, Debbie, 29.76, GB. So that makes it really nice to be able to read an error message in detail. I’m going to turn scan mode off. So when scan mode is on, keystrokes like tab and stuff work as expected. But of course, your arrows are for reviewing text. So that’s all they’re going to do. They’re not going to usually move your focus. Okay, so I’m going to make the settings go away. I want to check my time again. Yeah, I’ve got five more minutes before you’re going to get to ask questions. I just want to show you the narrator settings a little bit. If I do insert or caps lock in. Whoops. How come that didn’t work? No main landmark. Yeah. One button. Well, I’m going to go into settings and do it. Settings window. Settings window. Search box. Find a setting. I’m going to type narrator. A-R-T-R. Suggestions. Narrator audio output device. One of six. Selected. That’s where you could change your sound card. Change narrator capitalization reading. Two of six. Move the text cursor with the narrator cursor while reading. Three of six. Sync narrator cursor and system focus, 4 of 6. Have the narrator cursor follow the mouse, 5 of 6. Show all results, 6 of 6. Selected. And I want to show all results down so you can see all the settings. Search box. Find us. Narrator audio output device group, 1 of 25. Back button. Deborah Armstrong, WEE at J. System, 1 of 11, level 1. Whoops. Deb G. Back button. Narrator audio output. Change narrator capitalization. Move the text cursor with the narrator. Sync narrator cursor. Have the narrator show narrator. Use online services with narrator group. Let narrator read and interact with the screen when using the mouse group. Have narrator be more efficient in Outlook. Experimental group. Custom narrator keyboard layout group. 10 of 20. Narrator home group. 11 of 25. More button. Narrator key group. 12 of 25. Narrator voice speed group. 13 of 25. Use a braille display with narrator group. 14 of 25. Sync narrator settings on this device group. 15 of 25. Narrator group, 16 of 20. Hear words as you type group, 17 of 25. Choose how touch keyboard keys are pressed when narrator is on group, 18 of 20. Context level for buttons and controls group, 19 of 25. Read advanced details on buttons and other controls group, 20 of 20. Hear function keys as you type group, 20 of 20. Hear shift, alt, and other modifier keys. Hear arrow, tab, and other. Hear caps lock, number lock. Play sounds instead of announcements for common actions group. So you can see Narrator’s not as primitive as many people think. It’s got tons of settings. And if I go into each of these and tab around, I get all sorts of other stuff. So I’m not trying to make you a Narrator wizard. I just want you to know that if you would spend a little bit of time with Narrator and some of these settings, you can feel pretty efficient with it if you get to the point where your primary screen reader has died on you. or you don’t have a JAWS license, for example, or your license expired, or the screen reader’s just not working on your computer. I’m going to show you one more thing with Narrator, and then I’ll go ahead and take questions. I’m going to close this window. And then I’m going to call up my C drive. Run dialog. Open A colon C. Shell folder view pane. Items view list. Enter table items view. 18 by 4, vcompat.dll, one of eight. And you notice it’s very chatty, but you can turn some of this chattiness off. But one of the things that you may find is that you have had a screen reader crash on you, but you don’t want to reboot your computer because you need to find out if a file you were working with got saved, or you need to locate your shortcut for JAWS to run. it again or something. So you’re going to have to be able to use Windows Explorer. And I’m going to go up to the top here. I’m going to go to my users group. I’m going to press enter. I’m going to go to me, which is Armstrong Deborah. I’m going to press enter. I’m going to go to documents. And now I’m in my documents folder and I can see if the files I’m hoping are there are there. SBCB General Membership Meeting Minutes, June 15, 2024.docs to SBCB General Membership Meeting Minutes, June 15, 2024.rtf, Debbie’s Costco Audiogram 7-17-2023.pdf, copy 23-160, 23-106, transfer PC interview questions.docs, midterm study.docs, 8 of 18. So you can see I’m able to look at my documents folder. I’m able to make sure that documents that I want to know are here are. And I don’t need my primary screen reader JAWS or NVDA to accomplish that. So what I’m going to do is I’m going to make narrator go away so we won’t have a lot of yammering. And I am ready to take the questions. Midterm study.docs properties dialogue. Read only. Exiting narrator. Good boy. okay i’m ready for questions all right let’s see what we got you guys can raise your hands and and we don’t need to push his hand raise michael go ahead can you guys hear me now oh yeah yep i was uh i’m using narrator uh and it gave me some different feedback than what I was expecting. So that’s something you got to get used to. A really great presentation. Really appreciated this, Debbie. I did not realize that about scan mode. And I to spell that. Um, one thing that I wanted to add to your, uh, demonstration with jaws that I just discovered earlier this week with narrator was if you, if you know that jaws is hung up and narrator comes up, but you still don’t have speech. Um, if you press the caps lock key in the number three, that’s the equivalent on the number row. That’s the equivalency of the past key through. And then you can do JAWS key space F4, and that will typically restart JAWS and has saved me a couple of times with getting JAWS access. And the last thing that I’ll throw in is apparently they made a change. It is no longer caps lock in to get to the narrator settings. That’s for next landmark. It is now control windows in just so you know. Yeah, sorry. I, like I said, it’s not my primary screen reader and I’m not an access technology trainers. I don’t train every day. I will say that when I’m on YouTube, I often do that insert 3K to pause because that bypasses a JAWS key and hits the K, which is the YouTube key for a pause. And I had forgotten all about that when I was presenting, but there’s a reason I’m not an access technology trainer. Thank you for this presentation. As I said, I learned more about about scan mode than I ever knew. So now I know it can spell. Oh, yeah. And like I said, it’s a lot more powerful than people think. And I’ll give you an advanced keystroke that is extremely cool. So if you’re working with a developer, and they need to know what a screen reader can read, Because, you know, basically JAWS and NVDA also can only read certain things. It will make everything disappear that they can see, but you cannot. Okay, next question. I think that’s it for hands. Nope, no more hands right now. Well, I’m going to take a little slurp of coffee here. And I’m going to talk about a couple of other things you can try. Penny Moss, just raise your hand. This is Marcia. I couldn’t find my, I couldn’t get my question, my hands up. All right, go ahead, Marcia. Okay. And then we’ll go to Penny. Thanks, Brad. Could you talk a little bit, because I’m new to this, I don’t understand narrator and NVDA, because I’ve got JAWS and Fusion and Zoom. Are they both on my, I don’t have to download? Okay, so let me do some terminology here. Okay. So the word Zoom is used for way too many things because I think when they market software, they like to use the word Zoom. So Zoom is the teleconferencing software we’re using now. But there’s also Zoom for your iPhone, iPad, and Mac, and that’s magnification. Yes. There is also Zoom text for your PC, which is magnification. there is fusion which is a combination of jaws and zoom text for your pc yes and there is jaws job access with speech that’s what jaws stands for and of course jaws is one of the main screen it’s not already on the key it’s not no it is not but it can be you have to download it and then word grovelly voice the voices have gotten better with each iteration of narrator and just as voiceover is built into the Mac, narrator is built into Windows operating system. Hopefully that answers your question. Thank you. I’m going to go to Carla Hayes. hello hello carla no um i’m in my natural state today confusion that’s okay there’s fusion and then there’s confusion right now i understand this but um i think it was mike or something just just said a minute ago that um there was another well there was two questions i had i was trying to write him and i missed him um that the um the um narrator he stroke has changed it’s no longer uh space bar our caps lock and it changed to something else that was for the settings that was for the settings so i want to write that one down and then he said something about another way to um to get jaws talking that um and i was trying to i just missed it so those two things if you okay i know that um i’m i’m having um a senior moment It’s not insert F3. Insert F3 is HTML features, but insert three, your regular number row three, or caps lock three, and that will pass the next keystroke through. In other words, suppose you have a JAWS keystroke, and you don’t want JAWS to use it. You want Windows to see it. For example, when you’re on YouTube, if you press K, it pauses YouTube. If you’re sighted or if you’re not using a screen reader. But if you’re using a screen reader, JAWS uses K for landmarks. So if you hit K when you’re on YouTube, JAWS is going to try to find a landmark. So if you want to pass that keystroke through to YouTube or Windows or whatever, In other words, you want JAWS to ignore the next key press. You will do insert three, and then you will do that next key press, and JAWS will go ahead and ignore the next key press you do. And I find that a very handy thing. And like Michael was saying, if you needed to access a JAWS keystroke while narrator was running, you would be able to do insert three and then hit that keystroke. And hopefully that would work. He was also talking about, you know, JAWS has insert space four, which will sort of restart JAWS. You know, your computer has shut down and has restart. So that that is a layered keystroke. And that will tell JAWS to go away and come right back. So I hope I didn’t confuse you more. That last part you did. So you can pass through if your narrator’s playing and you do insert num three, it will pass it through the JAWS, right? Right. But if you’re both there, right, both screen readers are there. But you said something about to restart JAWS that you hit insert. Yeah, so if you do insert space, it’s a layered keystroke. And if you do four, whoops, why is that not working? So is this after insert number? Sorry, my hand knows what to do, my mouth does not. So you hit insert space and then you hit F4. JAWS goes away and then it’ll come right back. Restart. It restarts. Just like you can reboot your computer or reboot your Braille display without having to shut down. You do reboot and it reboots. This is the same thing. It restarts JAWS. So it’s insert space. Insert space. Then F4. Right. So when you F4, I misspoke. When you do insert space, you’re doing a JAWS layered keystroke. You know, a ways back, JAWS ran out of keystrokes. I mean, it has so many features, right? So it ran out of keystrokes. So they added this concept of a layer. And a layer means that now you have a whole bunch of regular keystrokes that now can belong to JAWS. So when you do insert space, you go into this layered mode. And then the next keystroke you get is for JAWS. So like insert space P is picture smart and insert space O is OCR. Well, insert space F4, function key F4, tells JAWS to go away and come right back. Oh, okay. So insert space. I know the layered thing. Then F4, it’ll tell JAWS to stop and then come back or go away. Come back. Right. So if JAWS has like frozen on you, but it still is responding to the keyboard, which does happen, by the way, then you will be able to get JAWS back. If JAWS has totally died on you, well, it’s not even going to see its layered keystroke. But, you know, there are many times where it’s only sort of half died, right? Like right now, JAWS decided it wasn’t going to talk to my Bluetooth headset anymore. And so even though I’ve run it, I’m going to need to set the sound card back to my Bluetooth headset. And then I’m going to, you know, do the insert space F4 to tell it to come right back. And hopefully it will be seeing my Bluetooth headset. But it’s using my speaker, so we can cope with that. Next question. Okay, next let’s check in with Penny one more time. See if she has her hand up. And then we’ll go to Angela after Penny. Penny, are you there? Okay, let’s go to Angela. Okay, good afternoon. I just first of all want to say thank you very much for this information. Because my jaws, when I work from home, and my jaws will sometimes stop. So that gives me a few more ideas as far as, first of all, just give it about 15 seconds. And then what you can also do is see where your focus is, which is insert T. So thank you for those tips. And also my next question is, now what is the podcast? Let’s say I want to go back and listen to this or look at some other things that you all have presented in bits. This is my first time coming to this meeting. What is that name? What is that podcast? It’s the ACB Media Community Podcast. And we’ve had so many questions about it. I think I’m going to have to do a training on it. But if you go to acbmedia.org and you select podcasts, there’s a whole bunch of many of them are very ACB specific, you know, like the Braille Forum and the convention. But if you keep looking for ACB Community and go in there, you can find anything that was an ACB community call that the volunteers have been able to edit and post up on the website. And so you can also use your podcast app or whatever to subscribe to the ACB media, ACB community podcast. And I do not know the name of it at the moment. Like I said, I will, I think I’m going to have to do a presentation on this, which means I would need to be prepared. Right now, I’m just kind of talking off the cuff. But if I was able to prepare, I’d be able to give you the exact names for things. Okay, but you did say acbmedia.org, right? Right. acbmedia.org. That’s the central location for every podcast that ACB does. Okay. Thank you very much. You’re welcome. Next question. Let’s go to Elizabeth. Elizabeth, Go ahead and unmute. Hey, this is Elizabeth Aldworth. I remember you with the Apple IIc. So hello to you. And we know what we’ve all done. And you are brilliant. And you continue to be brilliant. So thank you for doing this. I believe we can also get these access to the podcast, the recordings, by using the ACB Link app for those of you who have that on your iPhone. So that’s another way of going. And this is the Bits podcast. And I think they’re calling it Beginning Something or Other. So it’s probably going to be simple enough to find. You could subscribe to it directly as a podcast. But I think you can use ACB link and go to the podcast choices on there and get to it that way, Deborah, if I’m correct. You are correct. And like I said, I just forgot about it because I had not put any sort of presentation on this. I just want to thank you for being brilliant and for teaching effectively for, I don’t even know how many years we’ve all known each other since the early eighties. So thank you. Thank you. And thank you for supporting Braille Together when it was a very new Braille Together in March of 2021, when we started up because we really appreciated that. Thanks much. Thank you. Thank you. Well, that’s really heartening. Let’s go to a phone number. We have a phone number that both has an area code of 317 and ends in 317. That’s you. Go ahead and unmute. Hi. Can you review the commands for opening and closing scan mode? Do you have to close scan mode? And I have a couple comments, because I’ve used Narrator on YouTube for five years. Can you tell us what your name is? Is that Pat? Yeah. Hi, Pat. I always recognize your phone number because all my relatives live in Indianapolis, and I try to go there every year. Anyway, yes, it’s Caps Lock Space, or I guess Insert Space. I’ve always used it in laptop mode. Caps Lock Space turns Scan Mode on, and it’s a toggle, so it also turns it off and gives a bloop-bloop or a bloop-bloop noise. And what was your other question about Scan Mode? Okay. Do you have to turn it off? And then I have a couple of comments. Well, you have to turn it off if you want to use a lot of Windows keyboard commands. But if you’re just tabbing, you don’t. Okay. Go ahead. Having used Narrator for five years, and I know people who work using Narrator, and it kind of annoys me a little bit when people talk about Narrator and they haven’t tried it in five years. It’s an extremely useful screen reader. For those people who just want to use Straight Narrator, if you do an E that puts you in an edit box, and if you’re doing YouTube, after you type in your search and you go to where you search, tab a couple times and you’re in your answers. For those who have access to narrator commands or magnifier commands, because people should learn that too, One can type in narrator, keystrokes, Microsoft, and you’ll get to the list of the Microsoft keystrokes, which are good keystrokes. Narrator also can be invoked when you’re using magnifier, and that can make magnifier speak, even with a magnified text. I thought I’d mention that. Yes, and lots of times where I work at a college, we start students who are losing their vision off on narrator and magnifier. which they use together. And then maybe later they’ll move over to fusion, which is a little complicated. Not everybody can afford fusion. I think we could do a tremendous amount of good. And I’m not doing this just for easy advertising. I donate to Literacy Project. But there’s a whole empty field of people we could be helping via the senior citizen centers, because that particular age group and also parents of young children who are not in school yet, those individuals are not probably going to spend money for JAWS and Fusion. That’s absolutely right. An older person is going to say, I can’t read the screen anymore. Well, they can with Narrator. I use it all the time. I could go into any library anywhere in the world, and Narrator supports other languages. You’re absolutely right. And I was going to say, too, if you have to use a computer that’s not yours, but it has got windows on it, you can use narrator or magnifier or both. So it’s just very easy, as Pat said, to get on the web and search for things. And yeah, OK, so you don’t have all your Jaws keystrokes, but you can still access library computers everywhere now. Next question. All right. Next, we have Agnes. Go ahead, Agnes. And that’s our last hand, I believe. Oops, Starry’s got her hand up. We’ll go to Starry next. I just got a comment to make. Go ahead. Another way you can access the ACB Community Podcast is on your VictorStream 2 and 3. And just, you know, add that feed to your list with add podcast feed. And then you can get the information from that. Yeah, well, I’m going to have to do a whole presentation on this because there’s so many different ways to do it. We could spend a whole hour on it. I think it’s going to be something people are going to really want to do. But I just thought I’d mention that since we were talking about options. That is a really good option to remember. And also, if you want to put an MP3 file on your desktop, I’ve never done that before. I’ve put other things on my desktop. And I didn’t know if you had covered that or not because I had to take an urgent phone call. Well, I just copied it. I just took it out of my music directory and copied it over to my desktop. Okay. Because that way I can always test to see if I have sound, even if I don’t have my screen reader. And the last comment I want to make is I always have appreciated and appreciate hearing you present because you take the time to put it, you know, you all take the time to put this stuff in as simplest of a form that you can. And, you know, and if we don’t understand and we say we don’t understand, you try to help us, you know, in a way that we do. And I do appreciate that because I’ve dealt with some people who were working in this field and they just didn’t have that knack. Well, my main job is working with learning disabled students who are sighted. So I’m used to working with people that have really struggled. And I think that helps. But it means I don’t always know my screen reader keystrokes because I mostly help invited people. Right. I get it. Well, thank you much. All right. Next, we have Starry and Debra. We’re coming up on about eight minutes to go. Excellent. Starry, are you there? We’re ready to hear your question. you’re unmuted story talk to us we don’t have anybody else i will i did promise to talk about splash screen so why don’t i do that Let me know when I have just two minutes left or if another hand is raised. So lots of applications that are basically accessible, when they first run, when you first install them or even after that, they put up this beautiful visual thing called a splash screen. It may be an advertisement for certain features. It may be help tips. Who the heck knows what it is? But it’s all graphics. And so when it pops up, you’ll often find that it shushes your screen reader. So you go into that application, you don’t hear anything. And then you all tab out to another application. It works fine. You go back into that application, you don’t hear anything. And boy, I’ve had so many apps that do this. And the solution usually is to press enter a few times or press escape to dismiss that graphical introduction to the application. And then usually your screen reader will start talking again. But if you don’t know about it, you’ll think, oh, my screen reader’s died. So if something like that occurs, your best tip is to do alt-tab and try to get out of it and go to another application. Make sure your screen reader’s working. Once you know that’s true, alt-tab back to the program of the splash screen. Press enter, press escape a few times. And then if you’re able to go into that program settings or configuration and uncheck the box for show splash screen on startup, and you’ll often see a checkbox for that. Because sighted people don’t want this dumb thing popping up either, right? And so if you can tell it not to show a splash screen on startup, you won’t ever have that fear that, oh, my gosh, stop talking. So I just wanted to tell you about that. let’s check with starry one more time starry are you there yes all right go ahead and then after penny’s got her hand back up again we’ll go to her so no question just quick comment as a person who uses a screen reader and magnifier i was given a computer with fusion and fusion crashed the computer like the day i got it and so i was a narrator user and i know that narrator has really come along and they even got to the point where they’re using natural voices now and they it also integrates with some microsoft programs like word it has immersive reader that uses narrator to read aloud your documents even if you don’t have a screen reader i just wanted to make that quick comment and you know just agreed totally agree totally agree narrator’s really actually pretty good any topic what’s the command to get all the narrator commands again i started to write lost it oh i started to to forget it um right before this this thing it was a search it was I can’t remember Elizabeth gave it um just can y’all go ahead go ahead Penny please okay okay uh this is a great presentation I’m a little bit confused about what the scan mode is supposed to do what what’s the function of that it is activating the touch cursor which lets you move all over the screen it’s like a review cursor So you can move around and read things. Like if you’re in settings and you’re doing a Windows update, you can read the progress of the update. You can read things that you normally can’t get to because you can’t move. You can only move your focus to places where the application lets you move your focus with your tab key usually or your arrow keys. Scan mode lets you review the screen in areas where you can’t get your focus. It’s kind of like the JAWS cursor and giving you more information. That’s right. It’s like the JAWS cursor or the JAWS touch cursor or the JAWS invisible cursor. And like in Windows now, the JAWS cursor is not that effective because Microsoft has not allowed third party programs to move the mouse around. OK. All right. Thank you. You’re welcome. Great presentation. Thank you. How much time have we got? We are clear on hands and we have we got four minutes. We have four minutes. Okay, so I do want to remind people if your computer starts talking, it could be many things. It could be your volume is down. It could be your sound card went to sleep and who the heck knows, you might have to restart your computer. It could be that you have a splash green up, so make sure that you alt tab away and try to do insert T and read the focus somewhere else. It could be a lot of things. You can always run narrator so that with control windows enter. My fingers know the keys. My words don’t. And you can use narrator to save the document that’s unsaved or copy something you need or even keep on working if you want or restart your computer. So you do have a lot of choices there. And I guess I’ll end it for today. Does anybody have that list of how to get there? What do you type in to get all the narrator? She did a search. She did others. I believe it was like Microsoft Narrator Commands, I believe. There’s a really good narrator user guide. If you search for narrator user guide using Google or Bing or whatever, you’ll find Microsoft keeps it really updated and has all the keystrokes. And also there’s Caps Lock F1, which I just tried, and it works. And it will give you a giant list of narrator keystrokes. Michael Babcock. And Capsock 1 will work as the keyboard help mode. So if you just want to mash on keys and see what they do, that’ll do. Right. And also, if you forget how to get into narrator, if you ask the A lady, she’ll give you the command. There you go. Very good. That’s cool. Lots of help, everybody. Thanks, Michael, especially. Just thank you, everyone. Well, with that, let me thank everyone for joining us today. and remind you that Basics with Bits is we do this every second and fourth Saturday at 3 o’clock p.m. Eastern. That’s noon Pacific. So our next presentation will be Saturday, August 10th. So we look forward to seeing everyone with us next time. So with that, I’m going to go ahead and close the room and say thank you, Debra. Thank you, Diane, for connecting us on ACB Media and monitoring Clubhouse for us. So we’ll see everybody next time. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Thank you.