Helpful Hints When Using MS Word with JAWS 37

 

If your standard and formatting toolbars share one row, and you go to the more buttons button, then select the button for Insert Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet, when you press ESC to leave this item, JAWS will not report your current focus. Use INSERT+UP ARROW to confirm focus.

 

Screen Sensitive Help

Screen Sensitive Help (INSERT+F1) gives you information about your document, including the number of tables, the number of fields, and the document protection type. Screen Sensitive Help tells you about the Header/Footer pane, the Footnote/Endnote pane, the Comments pane, page number locations, multiple text columns and margin settings. Also, the document summary is spoken after information about the current cell or form field. When Form fields have the focus, INSERT+F1 gives Screen Sensitive Help appropriate to the Form field. Screen Sensitive Help reports the number of objects in the drawing and text layers, then tells you how to convert objects to text layer objects so JAWS can detect them. JAWS also now announces the width and height in points of the current table cell. INSERT+F, when pressed twice, gives insertion point information and not paragraph and outline information. Screen Sensitive Help alerts the user if Extended Selection Mode is on.

 

Position Information

Position Information is a Verbosity Option set in the JAWS Configuration Manager. At the Advanced level it is typically turned off. For Word this setting is turned on. Position Information is useful when working in tables. When your cursor moves to a new row or column you are informed. To turn this feature off, activate the JAWS Configuration Manager while working in Word.  Select Verbosity Options from the Set Options menu.  Press the TAB key to move to the Advanced Preferences button. Press ENTER on that button, and you can check or uncheck any of these checkboxes, including the one for Position Information.

 

New Features from JAWS 3.5

JAWS 3.5 added unparalleled support for Microsoft Word 2000/97/95. The enhanced features are described below:

Forms Support:

JAWS supports forms in Microsoft Word Documents such as those used in Office situations. As you TAB around protected forms, the form field prompt, form field type, and content are spoken. Keystrokes have also been added to focus you on the first form field in the document (CTRL+INSERT+HOME) and list all the fields in a document and allow you to select and focus on the chosen field (CTRL+SHIFT+L).

link See Notes about Form Fields near the bottom of this topic.

 

Verbosity Dialog Support

Adjust JAWS Verbosity dialog additions:

The following additions to the Adjust JAWS Verbosity Dialog in Microsoft Word were added:

 

Style Changes: Detects and announces document style changes as you navigate a document. Document styles are set from the Format Menu, Styles option.

 

Field Detection: Detects and announces fields as you navigate a document, fields include Form Fields and Toolbox controls as well as all other kinds of fields.

 

Comment, Footnote and Endnote detection: The user can have JAWS detect and automatically read footnotes, endnotes and comments without moving the cursor from the reference point in the document. You can also bring up a list of the Comments and move the cursor to the portion of text relating to the selected comment. To reread the comment referenced at the cursor, use ALT+SHIFT+APOSTROPHE, and to list all comments and focus on the text relating to the selected comment, use CTRL+SHIFT+APOSTROPHE. To reread the referenced footnote or endnote, use ALT+SHIFT+E.

 

Table Detection: JAWS can detect when you move into, out of, and within a table (from row to row or column to column) and will even warn you when you TAB into the last cell. This detection is enhanced to also detect nested tables. You can also use CTRL+SHIFT+T to list all tables in the document and be placed in the first cell (or form field if the document is protected) of the selected table. The list shows each table and its dimensions.

 

Special JAWS keystrokes allow you to easily read tables. For more information see link Using JAWS to Navigate Tables.

 

Table Title Reading: Allows the setting up and automatic reading of row/column titles in a table, even when not visible. The settings are:

Read No Titles (default)

Read Column Titles

Read Row Titles and Read Both Titles

Use the Adjust JAWS Verbosity Dialog options for setting the row and column to be used for titles.

To reread a column title, use ALT+SHIFT+C and to reread a row title, use ALT+SHIFT+R.

You cannot read column titles if a table is non-uniform i.e., rows have different numbers of columns.

 

Set Row Titles Column: This allows you to choose the column where row titles are stored. If you do not set this, JAWS assumes column 1.

Set Column titles row: This allows you to specify which row contains column titles. If you do not specify this row, JAWS assumes row 1.

Clear Title Definitions: This resets the row and column title definitions to the default and turns off title reading.

 

Borders and Pictures: JAWS can now detect borders around text, paragraphs and sections and can describe the border’s line style, thickness, color and art style. ALT+SHIFT+B will describe the border around the text containing the cursor. JAWS will also detect inline objects. These are objects in the text layer. Usually objects such as Word Art objects reside in the Drawing layer. This means they can be anchored to a point but may appear anywhere on the page. Such objects can be converted to inline objects, i.e. placed inline in the text so they can be detected as you navigate. You can convert Word Art objects to inline objects and thus have JAWS read the Alternative Text tag (Word 2000). To convert all Drawing Layer objects to Text Layer objects use ALT+CTRL+SHIFT+C. You can list all inline objects in a document and place the insertion point adjacent to the chosen object by using CTRL+SHIFT+O.

Language Detection: This exciting feature means that as you navigate or read text in a document containing multiple languages, and if you are using Eloquence, JAWS will automatically switch languages appropriately. If you are not using Eloquence, the synthesizer in use will still alert you to the language change by speaking the language name in the Message Voice before the text in that language. SayLine, SaySentence and SayParagraph all honor Language switching. It is advised to have all language modules that you intend to use installed for Microsoft Word before using this feature.

Note:  If your system does not have language files installed, you will be prompted to put the Word CD in the drive. Once you have installed the language files, you will not receive this prompt again.

In order to have Word change to Language Detection you must complete the following steps:

1.       Select text in the document.

2.       Go to Tools, Language, Set Language.

3.       Select the language and click on the Detect Language Automatically check box.

4.       You can also select the check box that says Do not check spelling or grammar.

5.       Select the OK button.

 

Page Breaks and Tab Position: JAWS can automatically say your new tab position in the correct unit of measure, and also when you cross page boundaries. As you press TAB, JAWS will tell you the distance from the left edge of the page to your new cursor position. When you ARROW or PAGE DOWN (or up) crossing page boundaries, JAWS will tell you the page number of the new page. The SayCursorPosition script ALT+DELETE will also tell you the distance from the left and top edges of your page in the default unit of measure used by Word (PCCursor only).

 

Detect Context with JAWS/Invisible Cursor: Not only can you detect all of the above with the PC cursor but this setting will also allow the detection to work with the JAWS or Invisible cursors (Word 2000 only).

 

Tools Menu Support

This section briefly outlines the features implemented in JAWS to enhance support for Microsoft Word 97 and 2000 tools. To access these items press ALT+T to open the tools menu, and then open the appropriate dialog.

 

Spelling Error/Grammatical Error Detection: JAWS can automatically detect and report spelling and grammatical errors and even tell you how many errors are on the current line. You can bring up a list of the spelling or grammatical errors and move your cursor to the selected error. To enable this feature you must enable Check Spelling as you Type and/or Check Grammar as you Type from the Tools/Options Multi-page Dialog (Check Spelling Page). When Check Spelling as you Type is enabled, JAWS will alert you (by saying Misspelled Word) when you move on to a misspelled word. If Check Grammar as you Type is enabled, JAWS will tell you when you move into and out of the text marked as a grammatical error. You can list all spelling errors and move your cursor to the selected error by using CTRL+SHIFT+E. You can list all grammatical errors and move your cursor to the selected grammatical error by using CTRL+SHIFT+G. When either of these features is enabled, arrowing onto a line or doing a SayLine on a line with errors will read the line followed by announcing the number of errors (by saying X errors on line).

Track Changes: You can now use the Track Changes feature of Microsoft Word. JAWS can tell you the revision type and author as you navigate changes and also allows you to use the Accept or Reject changes dialog (Using ReadWordInContext, INSERT+C). You can even bring up a list of revisions, and move the cursor to the selected revision by using CTRL+SHIFT+V.

 

Other Features:

With JAWS, you can use several Word advanced features such as Mail Merge and Proofreading.

Also, many of the Toolbar items are now available, including Data Source Form, Insert Table, Insert Column, and Insert Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet.

Improved functions in tables include: SayLine in table cells when markers or other symbols are displayed on the screen, and Braille will now track in Tables using ALT+CTRL+ARROW keys.

When working in columns, pressing the DOWN ARROW one line at a time will read the columns in the appropriate order, although using the SayAll feature will read the columns across, rather than down one column and back up to the other side.

In Beginner Verbosity, JAWS will automatically select an item in List Views when using BACKSPACE or ENTER.

 

More effective searches in document text can be achieved with JAWS using Find Next, because JAWS reads the next occurrence in context.

Find Back and Forward in the Accept or Reject Changes dialog now reads the next revision and the sentence containing the revision. JAWS will also read the selected revision in context

The Spellchecker in Word will now speak the next error using added JAWS functionality.

 

Bullet Announcement: When you navigate through bulleted lists, JAWS will now always tell you when a bullet appears and the text on the current line, regardless of the bullet type.

List Hyperlinks: To list all hyperlinks in the current document and navigate to the selected target document use Insert+F8.

 

Enhanced Format Information: INSERT+F now tells you much more about the formatting of the text at the cursor. You will learn both character and paragraph level format attributes Extra information includes line spacing, list information, indent levels, and font color if different from the default. (You can also use INSERT+5 for font color information.) If you press INSERT+F twice quickly, only insertion point formatting and font information will be spoken.

Screen Sensitive Help: This is enhanced to tell you about document margins, sections, newspaper columns, fields, tables, form fields, and document panes (Comment/Footnote/Endnote/etc).

Switch Document Panes: The Word keystroke F6 has always been available to switch document panes (when a window is split into more than one pane) but now JAWS will alert you to which pane you are switching.

 

Selection Mode: F8 can be used to turn Extended Selection mode on. Subsequent presses of F8 select the current word, sentence, paragraph and document. JAWS will announce the unit being selected and the text of that unit. Other navigational keys can also be used to extend the selection. Use ESC to exit Extended Selection Mode.

 

Outline View Support

JAWS can now be used in Microsoft Word’s Outline View. Use TAB and SHIFT TAB to demote or promote paragraphs (or use the ALT+SHIFT+LEFT/RIGHT ARROW key combinations.

Note:  These combinations do their expected JAWS function of moving the cursor by the global mouse pixel setting if the PC Cursor is not active). You can also use ALT+SHIFT+1 through 7 to show headings at that level. ALT+SHIFT+A will also toggle between showing all text and headings and just headings (Desktop key map only).

 

Form Field Support

Form field support is automatically invoked when a document contains form fields and is protected with status Allow Only Form Fields. When the protection status is set to this, navigation is restricted to form fields only. JAWS will automatically read prompts for form fields in Word 2000 if:

 

• The form field is a Text Input form field and the prompt is displayed on the status line or it is either immediately to the left (terminated by a colon or question mark) or above.

 

• The form field is a Drop Down menu and the prompt is either immediately to the left (terminated by a colon or question mark) or above. You can activate a Drop Down menu by pressing ENTER.

 

• The form field is a checkbox and the label for the checkbox is immediately to the left or right of the checkbox and the prompt is either to the left of the label (or checkbox if no label to the left) (terminated by a colon or question mark,) or above. You can toggle a checkbox using the SPACEBAR.

 

• Text Input form fields will have their prompts spoken in Word 97 only if the prompt appears on the status line or either immediately to the left (terminated by a colon or question mark) or above. Other form fields will not have their prompts spoken nor be able to be activated with the PC Cursor.