Background Reader - Zoomtext V10 - Keyboard

Using the Background Reader in Zoomtext V10

During a recent coaching session one of the subject areas I covered was the Background Reader in Zoomtext. This feature is a fairly new addition in Zoomtext and it is one that I've been guilty of overlooking - probably because I'm not great at trying to do two individual things at once! But if you can get over that particular hurdle you might find that this feature is actually pretty useful at certain times.

You can find the icon for the Background Reader (the headphones icon button) in the Tools page in the main user interface (CONTROL SHIFT U) or, alternatively, via the main Tools menu (ALT T). What does this feature actually do? Well, it allows you to read text while you are working on something else at the same time - hence the name "background" reader. So, if you are often faced with the scenario of having a lot of information to read, at the same time as you need to complete other work, this could be the feature of your dreams!

Launching the Background Reader

The Background Reader feature is used in one of two ways:

• To read text copied to the Windows clipboard, use CAPSLOCK C.
• To read any currently selected text, use CAPSLOCK S.

Personally, I rarely use the clipboard reading option. In fact, I only use that approach if I want to remind myself or double-check the information I have stored in the clipboard to begin with. Of much more interest to me is reading the text I have selected so, to give you an idea of how I work with this feature, let's run through an example.

Reading Selected Text in the BG Reader

Here's the scenario, one of my colleagues has just emailed me a Word document and needs a response as soon as possible but I also have some routine spreadsheet administration that also needs to be done straight away. My solution is to read the document using the Background Reader which allows me to carry on working in my spreadsheet. Let me run through the steps here:

1. I open the document to be read in MS Word and press CONTROL A to select all the text in it.
2. I use the keystroke of CAPSLOCK S to launch the background reader and the reading starts. The Background reader toolbar will also appear.

3. Now I ALT TAB back to Excel and carry on with my spreadsheet work as before. Meanwhile, the text in Word continues to be spoken back to me in the background.
4. When necessary, I pause the reading at any time using the Pause/Play command of CAPSLOCK ENTER.
5. When the text is finished, I press CAPSLOCK ESCAPE to close the background reader.

Keystrokes to Control the Background Reader

I hope the above example has put you in the mood to experiment a bit with this feature! As you might expect, there are a few more hotkeys you can use to achieve specific actions and I have included a full list of relevant keys at the foot of this paragraph. My own personal view is that you'll only need a few keystrokes because, if you are having to concentrate that much on the reading itself, it makes more sense to stop whatever you are doing and concentrate solely on reading your text. That said, explore the options and come up with your own approaches. Have fun!

List of Keystrokes and their Function in the Background Reader

Hotkey	Action
Capslock C	Reads text copied into the Windows Clipboard
Capslock S	Reads text selected in the current document
Capslock Enter	A toggle keystroke that pauses and plays the text reading.
Capslock Backspace	Restarts the text reading from the beginning.
Capslock Escape	Quits the Background reader mode.
Capslock T	Puts focus on the Background reader toolbar. Useful if you are more of a mouse user.
Capslock Spacebar	Reads the current sentence.
Capslock Right Arrow	Reads the next sentence.
Capslock Left Arrow	Reads the previous sentence.
Control Capslock Spacebar	Reads the current word.
Control Capslock Right Arrow	Reads the next word.
Control Capslock Left Arrow	Reads the previous word.

Outlook 2007 - Go to a Date - Keyboard

Navigating Dates in the Outlook 2007 Diary

BANG...! That's it, I'm back in the blog zone after a bit of time off to recharge the batteries. And what better way to kick things off than with some little titbits in how to make working with the Go to a Date dialog box in Outlook 2007 a bit funkier. Let's go through it.

Move to the Outlook 2007 Calendar

First, let's move to the Calendar in Outlook 2007, you can do this in any of the following ways from your Inbox:

• Press CONTROL 2 to move there directly.
• Press CONTROL Y then DOWN ARROW to Calendar and press the ENTER key.
• Press ALT G to open the Go menu. DOWN ARROW to Calendar and press ENTER.

Switch between Calendar Views

Now that you have focus in your Calendar, you need to check what view you are in. In Outlook 2007, this is how:

1. Press ALT V to open the View menu.
2. DOWN ARROW to the Current View menu item and access the submenu by pressing RIGHT ARROW or the ENTER key.
3. In the Current View submenu, highlight the DAY/WEEK/MONTH option and press ENTER to confirm this choice.
4. Now return to the Current View menu and DOWN ARROW to the Day View option. Press the ENTER key to activate this. Alternatively, you can use several standard keystrokes to switch immediately between Day, Week, Working Week and Month View. The keys are:
• ALT CONTROL 1: Day view
• ALT CONTROL 2: Work Week view
• ALT CONTROL 3: Week view
• ALT CONTROL 4: Month view

General Navigation in the Day View Calendar

Before I concentrate on the Go to a Date dialog box specifically, let's run through a few of the general keys to get you moving around the Day View screen:

• DOWN ARROW: Moves to the next time slot for the current day. By default, this will be a 30 minute segment, but is customisable.
• UP ARROW: Moves to the previous time slot for the current day. As previous, this is a 30 minute segment by default.
• RIGHT ARROW: Moves to the next day.
• LEFT ARROW: Moves to the previous day.
• CONTROL HOME: Focuses the highlight on the first 30 minute time segment for the current day.
• CONTROL END: Focuses the highlight on the last 30 minute time segment for the current day.
• TAB: Moves the PC cursor around all the focusable objects - such as your appointments - for the current day.

Launch and Apply the Go to a Date Feature

The great beauty of the Day View interface is that, via the Go to a Date function, you can go to any day, month, year and so on directly. You can also work with it in some funky ways - very helpful when you are using a screenreader for example. Let's go through some of the possibilities:

1. In your Calendar press CONTROL G to launch the Go to a Date dialog box.

2. Now you have the option of typing in a specific date, this can be in a shortened form or something more formal, followed by a press of the ENTER key to confirm the action and move to the date specified. Here are some basic examples of this standard approach...
• 25 April 2015: Outlook goes to the specific date.
• 25: Outlook assumes you want to go to the 25th of the current month in the current year.
• 25/7: Outlook assumes you want to go to the 25th of July in the current year.
3. What is not commonly known is that this feature will also accept some text instructions, let's run through some of these now:
• Today: Logically, enough this points the calendar at today!
• Tomorrow: No prizes for guessing what happens here.
• Yesterday: No prizes for getting this one right either!
• Next Week: Moves the calendar to a week today.
• Last Week: Moves the calendar to a week before today.
• Next Month: Moves the calendar a month ahead.
• Last month: Moves the calendar a month back.
• Next Year: Moves the calendar a year ahead.
• Last Year: Moves the calendar a year back.
• Next : Moves the calendar to the next specific day.
• Last : Moves the calendar to the last specific day.
4. Alongside the text instruction you can also go for a more number driven approach, try inputting the following:
• 22 days: Move 22 days ahead.
• 22 days ago: Move back 22 days.
• 3 weeks: Move forward 3 weeks.
• 3 weeks ago: Move back 3 weeks.
5. You can even mix the two up, try these examples out:
• today + 36 days: Go to 36 days from today.
• tomorrow + 2 days: Go to 2 days from tomorrow.
• next month + 2 weeks: Go to next month and two weeks time.
• Christmas + 3 weeks + 3 days: Ah, now you're just showing off - pretty good though!

So there you go - I hope these little tips will make moving around in the Outlook 2007 Day View diary feel like a lot less of a hassle. Have fun!

Custom Summary - Excel 2007 - JAWS V15

Creating and Using a JAWS Custom Summary in Excel 2007

As promised, I am still in my Excel and JAWS zone and today I'd like to talk a little bit about creating a JAWS custom summary for a particular worksheet. What is a custom summary? Well, it's a way of creating a short list of particular pieces of relevant information you need to access and read. For example, imagine a massive spreadsheet full of data where you only need to check a handful of the cells. The manual approach here will have you going to each cell to check out the values, but if you create a custom summary containing those specific cells then you can read that in one go instead. With the right material this can save you a significant amount of time.

To begin with though I need some data to work with so I have created the following table in Excel, although you can open up an existing worksheet and use that if you wish.

Example Data for the Custom Summary Exercise

Items	January	February	March
Pens	185	175	180
Crayons	155	135	185
Erasers	85	90	65
Pencils	205	195	210
Pencils	205	195	210
Rulers	45	50	30
Sharpeners	35	40	25
Cases	20	25	15

Now that we have some data, let's get to grips with creating a custom summary.

Creating a JAWS Custom Summary in Excel 2007

The JAWS Custom Summary consists of a bunch of custom labelled items read out in order. In this example, I am going to create a custom summary containing the grand totals for each of the three months in my table of data. After all, I'm interested only in the totals most of the time, not so much interested in each value that makes the total figures.

1. To begin with, locate the first cell to be marked. Remember that, by default, the order in which you label the cells is the order they are spoken.
2. In my case the first total is in cell B9 so, when I have focus on the relevant cell, I use the keystroke of INSERT CONTROL TAB to launch the Custom Label dialog box for the current worksheet.

3. With the Custom Label dialog box, press the TAB key to move to the Add button and press SPACEBAR to activate.
4. A small Add dialog box will launch, so type in an appropriate name as your custom label. In my own example, I have typed January Total as that seems the shortest and most descriptive name that will make sense when JAWS reads the summary back. After confirming this with the OK button, focus moves back to the Custom Label dialog box.
5. Now that you have at least one custom label set up, many of the button options that may have been previously unavailable should now be available. So, explore this dialog box again by pressing the TAB key to move through the options. When you have done this, TAB to the OK button and press SPACEBAR to confirm.
6. Now you need to repeat the whole process for the next cell you require in your summary. In my own example, I refocus on cell C9 in my spreadsheet - the total cell for February - and once more press INSERT CONTROL TAB to relaunch my Custom Summary for Sheet 1 dialog box. As before, I activate the Add dialog box via the Add button and this time type in the name February Total. After this, I continue to repeat the process until all of the cells are part of the Custom Label list.
7. When you have added all of the required cells, check your list of custom labels. Remember the order of the items in the list is the order in which JAWS reads them in the custom summary. If you feel that you need to reorder some of the labels, then select the particular item in the list and use the Move Up (ALT U) and the Move Down (ALT D) buttons and/or hotkeys. Keep pressing these options as necessary until the selected custom label is in the correct position in the overall list.
8. When you have checked and reordered your list (if necessary) you are pretty much done. TAB to the OK button for the final time and press the SPACEBAR to confirm.
9. A quick check to make sure your custom list is ready to rock can be done using the JAWS context help system, press INSERT F1 for a context help summary when you are back in your worksheet - you should hear a mention near the top confirming that the current worksheet has a custom summary. If you hear this, you're done!

Reading a JAWS Custom Summary in Excel 2007

When you have created your summary it is now available at any time for you to read. There are two main methods for reading the summary and I'll cover both now:

Using the Manager List

1. Press INSERT F2 to launch the list of JAWS Managers.
2. ARROW DOWN or press letter V to focus on the View Custom Summary option and press ENTER.
3. The custom summary will now open in the virtual viewer and JAWS will begin to read automatically - use the ARROW KEYS as normal to control the speech. Notice how links are included in the summary, these allow you to move directly to that specific cell in the spreadsheet if necessary.
4. When you have finished reading the summary, press the ESCAPE key to close the virtual viewer.

Using a Direct Keystroke

1. An alternative to the above route is to use the direct keystroke - and what a keystroke it is! You can launch the custom summary window directly using INSERT CONTROL SHIFT and TAB.

And there we go! Creating a custom summary is a useful thing to do if you often have to make sense of the same big worksheets over and over again. If you create a summary once then it will always point to those specific cell locations, so instead of going to each of those cells in the sheet - with all the key presses to accompany that going back and forth - you can just create a summary and read that in one go. Even if the values change that's no problem because the summary works dynamically, it's based on the cell references not the cell values at the time you create the label.

To wrap up this particular post, I have created a small table containing the hotkeys for each of the functions in the main Custom Label dialog box. All that is left for you is to carry on having fun experimenting with custom summaries in Excel!

Hotkeys for Functions in the Custom Label Dialog Box

Button Label	Keystroke	Function
Add	ALT A	Launches the Name dialog box to create a new custom label.
Change Name	ALT C	Also launches the Name dialog box, enabling you to change the label for the currently selected label in your list.
Move Up	ALT U	Moves the currently selected label in the list up one space.
Move Down	ALT D	Moves the currently selected label in the list down one space.
Remove	ALT R	Removes the currently selected custom label in the list.
Remove All	ALT L	Removes all of the custom labels in the list.

Inserting Columns and Rows - Excel 2007 - JAWS V15

Launching the Insert Dialog Box in Excel 2007 Directly

Danger! Danger! I feel a bit of an Excel flavour for my next couple of posts! So, to kick us off, here is a nifty little keystroke for what is a common task: inserting new rows and columns.

Let's set the scene, you're navigating through a bunch of data in Excel and to be able to squeeze some new data in, you're going to have to insert either a new blank column or row, or just shift the existing data into an adjacent column column or row. But.. where was that ribbon option again? Or was it somewhere in the applications or context menu...?

If you want to be really slick, you don't head to the ribbon. You use the hotkey of CONTROL NUMBERPAD PLUS or, alternatively, CONTROL SHIFT EQUALS.

When you use this keystroke, focus will move to the newly launched Insert dialog box. From there, you have the following four options arranged vertically in a series of radio buttons.

Insert Dialog Box Options

Option	Keystroke	Explanation
Shift Cells Right	ALT I	Moves the current cell (or a selected range of cells) right, leaving the current cell(s) empty.
Shift Cells Down	ALT D	Moves the current cell (or a selected range of cells) down, leaving the current cell(s) empty.
Entire Row	ALT R	Inserts a whole new row at the current cursor position.
Entire Column	ALT C	Inserts a whole new column at the current cursor position.

There you go, now you can insert columns and rows or shift data around at a snap - all thanks to the crafty hotkey of CONTROL PLUS.