Email Signatures - Outlook 2010 – JAWS

Creating a New Email Signature

Creating a signature in Outlook is one of those frustrating exercises that crops up now and again - one of those tasks you never complete regularly enough to maintain perfect recall of each step every time. So, in this post, I'm going to step through how I approach creating a new email signature in Outlook 2010 using JAWS V16. As with all my step through work, the process here may need a bit of tweaking on your part to allow for differences in Office and JAWS versions. Also, you probably use different JAWS hotkeys and methods to me anyway – which is great I might add – because the reality is that there are always 2 or 3 ways to achieve the same thing. Anyway, with all that in mind, let's get to it...

Creating a Quick Email Signature in Outlook 2010

1. Launch MS Outlook 2010 and navigate to the File tab using ALT F.
2. DOWN ARROW to the Options item in the menu and use ENTER or activate it directly using the hotkey of: T.
3. DOWN ARROW to the Mail item in the Outlook Options dialog box then TAB to the Signatures button (or use ALT N). Activate this button to open the Signatures and Stationery dialog box.
4. First, TAB around this dialog box to get a feel for the options there then, when you have finished exploring, locate the New button (ALT N) and activate it. This will launch the New Signature dialog box which will prompt you for a name for your new signature. Type one in (for example: formal work, internal only, informal and so on) then use the ENTER key.
5. Focus will still be on the New button so TAB all the way round to the Font Face combo box.
6. By default this will be set to something like Calibri but feel free to change this to something else. In fact, if you are making a work signature, you'll probably have to select one of the corporate fonts installed in your company. I tend to go for plain old Arial which is our standard font inside RNIB. Anyway, complete this field by either typing in what you need or by using ALT DOWN ARROW to expand the list and choosing from there. When you've picked your font, move on with TAB.
7. Now this form can have some peculiar behaviour and it's down to Microsoft making this toolbar different from the rest of the dialog box. So, if you find yourself getting confused, just TAB around the fields again and refocus.
8. Focus on the font face dialog box and change this to whatever is required before using TAB to move on again.
9. Keep using TAB until you have focus on an unlabelled edit or input area. JAWS may well read some odd information about this field and if you are in any doubt, TAB your way to the hyperlink button and then TAB once - this is the field you need to be in.
10. Now type in your signature exactly as you want it to appear at the foot of your email. A simple formal work signature for example might be as follows:

Harry Blender
Chrome Holdings Incorporated
http://www.CHI.com
0883 7823910
* Twitter and LinkedIn links here etc*

11. Signatures conform to a less is more approach so don't go overboard. Include the important contact details and anything else of particular importance and generally try to keep it to around 5 or 6 lines of text. When you are done, check the text and ensure that the lines of text are correctly formatted and spelled.
12. When you have finished, use ALT S to save your signature.
13. Although focus will be on the OK button you may want to TAB back around the options and check them. In particular, the New Messages: combo box can be set to point to one of your current email signatures. Doing so means that every time you create a new message the chosen signature is already present in the main edit window of the email. Of course, if you want to manually choose what signature is included when you send an email then you need to ensure the New Messages combo box is set to none.
14. When you have finished checking, TAB to the OK button and activate it with SPACEBAR. Focus will return to the Outlook Options dialog box so once again move to the OK button and activate it with the SPACEBAR.

Now you need to test out your new signature.

Applying the New Signature

1. Create a new email message and type in some example text.
2. Ensure the cursor is left in an appropriate position as this is where your chosen signature will be inserted into the email.
3. Use the keystroke sequence of ALT N, A, S to move focus to a small menu that contains the names of your signature files.
4. ARROW UP or DOWN the menu to focus on the appropriate signature and use ENTER to insert it in the email.
5. Check the text of the chosen signature and remove any extra blank lines - that's it!

So that's it for email signatures - at least for now...!

Acrobat Reader - JAWS - PDF - Accessibility

Checking PDF Accessibility with Acrobat Reader

Introduction

Not all PDF files are equal in terms of accessibility but, thankfully, the days of opening a PDF file to be greeted with complete silence are (mostly) gone. But, while there is now ample opportunity for creating more accessible fields it shouldn't come as too much of a surprise to learn that it is still possible to create a PDF file that is somewhat less than stellar on the accessibility front.

Broadly speaking there are two types of PDF, one which is image based and the other which is based on an existing document such as a Word document. But how do you know which is which straight from the off? How can you tell if a PDF you have is an accessible one? Or, at the very least, one that gives you a fighting chance of getting some quality feedback out of it?

Checking in Acrobat Reader

The main software used to work and manipulate PDF files is now called Adobe Acrobat DC (the DC standing for Document Cloud) but this is an expensive route unless you are continually working with PDFs. However, if you are one of the lucky souls who uses this software then great because you can open your PDF in the application and use the "Accessibility Checker" to report on the quality of the file. The "full report" is especially useful and will give you a complete breakdown of all of the elements in your PDF and whether they pass the accessibility checks.

However, most of us don't have the full Acrobat software, instead we run with the free to download Acrobat Reader. After all, we're only interested in being able to read the file in the first place and, if you are using a screenreader like JAWS, then there is some specific JAWS support built-in for that application.

What is not common knowledge is that there are some tips and checks that you can use in Acrobat Reader to check your PDF file. For example, if you are a mouse user, can you drag your mouse pointer over the PDF text to highlight it line by line? If so, then it is proper electronic text in the page. This means that your screenreader using colleague might just stand a chance of reading something but, if your mouse pointer creates an area selection, then it's likely you have an image only PDF. And, in this case, you are instantly in the realm of using OCR - and that's a future blog post by the way...

A good keystroke to get used to in Acrobat Reader is CONTROL D as this opens the Properties multi-tab dialog box where you can check more advanced information on the file. Open any PDF file you have on your PC in Acrobat Reader and use CONTROL D to launch the Properties dialog box. (Alternatively, open the File menu, ARROW DOWN to Properties and activate with ENTER.) With the Properties multi-tab dialog box open, check the following areas:

1. In the Description page, locate the "PDF Producer" setting. Ideally, the PDF Producer setting will indicate recent versions of MS Word or LibreOffice or something similar – if it mentions the word "image" or "scan" then beware. For example, I have an old PDF file that is a scan of a magazine article I enjoyed reading. I created this PDF using an old scan to PDF plugin so , while I can read it visually, I can't access it at all with a screenreader. The only option with something like this is to convert the file to text through OCR.
2. Also in the Description page, locate the "Tagged PDF" details, which will either be a "No" or a "Yes" value. Bear in mind that a "No" does not necessarily mean that a screenreader won't read the text in the file but it is an indication that it won't read it all correctly. Having said this, a tagged file doesn't mean that the text is guaranteed to be spoken in the right order either although if the setting is "Yes" you should find that the text-reading is generally more flowing and logical. The bottom line is, you are really after a "Yes" here.
3. Use CONTROL TAB to move to the Security page and locate the Content Copying for Accessibility setting. This should be set to "Allowed" - if it is set to "Not Allowed" then this may indicate that the current security settings of the file will prohibit some assistive technology from accessing the information in it. Once upon a time, the over-zealous nature of a lot of PDF security virtually guaranteed accessibility problems and a straight to OCR route. Those were the days...!

So, from the Properties dialog box you can get a pretty good indication of the likely issues and state of the current PDF file before you read it. Ideally, with an accessible PDF file, you will have all of these basic settings in place.

Using Read Out Loud

While checking the basic details is all well and good the absolute acid test is to use some text to speech and read the file. Acrobat Reader actually has its own built-in text to speech called Read Out Loud. Activate it in the following way:

1. Open the View menu in Acrobat Reader.
2. UP ARROW to the Read Out Loud item, then RIGHT ARROW or ENTER to move to the submenu.
3. In the submenu, choose the top item of Activate Read Out Loud and use the ENTER key to launch.
4. Alternatively, use the shortcut of CONTROL SHIFT Y to activate Read Out Loud directly.

With Read Out Loud active, you can control the speech in the following way:

• Stop reading: CONTROL SHIFT E
• Read the current page only: CONTROL SHIFT V
• Read to the end of the current document: CONTROL SHIFT B
• Pause reading: CONTROL SHIFT C

While Read Out Loud is handy, especially for sighted PDF creators who may not have direct access to a full blown screenreader, a TTS tool is no substitute for the latter. In my opinion, the best way of tackling the accessibility and the nuances of how text flows in a PDF file with speech, is to ask a few screenreader users if they wouldn't mind reading it. And while you are doing this, how about seeing if a few magnification users can read your PDF file at a higher level of magnification? Doing this will give you far greater insights into how well your design communicates across a more diverse readership. And isn't that what it's all about..?

Quick Search - Filter - MS Outlook 2010

Filtering with Quick Search in Outlook 2010 using JAWS

3..2..1.. and I’m back in the room! It’s been quiet on my blog for a while (thank you project work) but now it’s time to get back to serious blog business in 2016. And what better way to kickstart things again than with a few tips and tricks on searching in Outlook 2010, specifically filtering using the Quick Search field in Outlook.

Way back in a post from January 2015 I covered the basic quick search option in Outlook 2007 that we all know and love. In that article I outlined the basic ability of the Quick Search feature to find emails with specific keywords either per folder or across all folders. Now that I have upgraded recently to Outlook 2010, I’m going to demonstrate some of the additional searching options – using Start Menu Live Search techniques – that you can use for more controlled mailbox searching.

Now, the options that I am going to go through here are my own particular favourites, biased very much towards the way I work in Outlook. So I encourage you to take this information and explore some different ways to search through your Outlook data - and if you find anything really useful you want to share please leave a comment. Okay, let’s go through some steps.

Search a Date Range in Sent Items

It never fails to surprise me how much effort goes into organising - or attempting to organise - incoming mail while outgoing mail simply languishes in an increasingly massive and untidy pile. The techniques here will work in spite of this, helping you find particular emails between a specific period of time for example:

1. Move to your Sent Items folder.
2. Use CONTROL E to move focus to the Quick Search edit field.
3. Type in: Sent: DD/MM/YYYY .. DD/MM/YYYY. (For example: Sent: 01/01/2016 .. 10/01/2016 or Sent: 10/01/2015 .. 14/03/2015)
4. With JAWS, an easy way to check if your filter is giving you roughly appropriate results is to read the number of items in the Status Bar for the current window. Use the JAWS keystroke of INSERT PAGE DOWN to achieve this.
5. If your filter is not working, check your syntax. It should be: Sent colon, first date in standard format, space, dot dot, space, second date in standard format.
6. When the filter is applied correctly, move to your list of emails using the TAB key and navigate in the usual way using the UP and DOWN ARROW KEYS.
7. When you have finished, clear your search filter by using CONTROL E then TAB to the Close Search button. Use SPACEBAR to activate.

Filtering in Text Fields with AND, NOT and OR

Using a similar approach, it is easy to find emails that contain key words in specific columns. Try the following:

1. Move to an email folder that contains the Subject column, such as Inbox or Sent Items.
2. Use CONTROL E to move focus to the Quick Search edit field.
3. Type Subject: followed by an open bracket (Subject colon open bracket) then type your first search word.
4. After you have typed in your first word, leave a space, then decide on what you need to do next. Choose whether you:-
   • Need to search for a string of words, in which case you’ll need to use the AND function.
   • Need to search for specific words that are not necessarily related, in which case you need to use the OR function.
   • Need to search for a word which is not specifically associated with another word, in which case you need to use the NOT function.
5. Type the appropriate function in upper case, followed by another space and then include your next search word. Repeat these steps as necessary.
6. With the filter finally in place, navigate your list of results in the usual way.

A bit more involved this one, so here are some real world examples. Just substitute your own search words:

• Subject:(braille AND magnification) – This will return email results that have the words braille and magnification in the subject line.
• Subject:(braille NOT magnification) – This will return email results that have the word braille, but only those that do not contain the word magnification.
• Subject:(braille OR magnification) – This will return email results that have either of the words braille or magnification in the subject line.
• Subject:(braille AND magnification AND speech NOT OCR)- This will return email results that have the words braille, magnification, speech in the subject line unless the subject line also contains OCR.

NOTE: If you need to search for a text string in a specific order then you need to use double quotes. For example: Subject:"One Upon A Time" or Subject:"Training Summary and feedback".

Finding Emails Using the Size Column

The information sometimes displayed in the Size column gives us the ability to run some neat filters via quick search. This can be useful if you are looking for an email or emails that have attachments - which is a pretty common task. Using similar techniques to what we have explored already, try out the following:

1. Move to an email folder that contains a lot of emails with attachments.
2. Use CONTROL E to move focus to the Quick Search edit field.
3. As before, what you type in next depends on what you need to do. Here are some examples:
• Size:1KB .. 10KB - find emails that have a size between 1 and 10 kilobytes.
• Size:>2MB - find emails that have a size equal to or greater than 2 megabytes.
• Size:<500KB - find emails that have a size less than 500 kilobytes.
• Size:1MB - find emails that are 1 megabyte in size.
4. With the appropriate filter in place, move to your list of results with the TAB key and navigate in the usual way.
5. When you have finished checking, use CONTROL E to move back to the Quick Search Edit Field then TAB to the clear search button and activate this with SPACEBAR.

Quick Search and Follow Up Flags

To finish the post, I'm going to walk through setting some follow up flags on emails and then using some Quick Search techniques to keep track of what I'm doing. try this:

1. In your Inbox, move to an email you need to respond to and call up the context menu with SHIFT F10 or the right hand Windows application key on your keyboard.
2. DOWN ARROW through the menu until you reach the Follow Up submenu.
3. In the Follow Up submenu, choose and apply a follow up option such as Today or Tomorrow. (For the purposes of our exercise here what you choose doesn't really matter.)
4. Now repeat the above steps for another couple of emails in the list.
5. With a few emails now flagged, use CONTROL E to go to the Quick Search edit field and type in: Flagstatus: follow.
6. If you are using JAWS, read your Status Line with INSERT PAGE DOWN - notice that your results list is now whittled away to just your flagged emails.
7. Navigate to your list of emails - which is now effectively a dynamic "to do" list - and deal with them as required.
8. When you have actioned one of the emails, remove the follow up flag status by going into the context menu again for the item and choosing either the "Clear Flag" or the "Mark Complete" option.
9. When you have finished with your flagged emails, move to the Quick Search edit field with CONTROL E and TAB to the Close Search button and activate it with the SPACEBAR.

Okay, I hope that has whetted your appetite to experiment more in the Quick Search edit field - to really get it working for you. And if you discover some other neat tricks then please let me know about them by leaving a comment.

Have fun!

Title Reading – Tables – JAWS – MS Word 2007 – Accessible Information

Accessible Tables: Automatic Title Reading with JAWS

An ever present in my workplace is making sure that everyone is doing their bit to make information more accessible. It always amazes me just how much this base theme - that not everyone does things the same way you do - feels like such a game changer in the office. But that’s the platform right there, get that in place as a baseline and the world of accessibility and usability begins to feel like a freedom and not a penalty.

When it comes to accessible documents, specifically accessible Word documents, there are some things to be mindful of – in fact, I posted a table of some of these elements in an earlier post – but there’s also a few extra bits on top of these broader elements which could be seen as going that extra mile.

In this post I’m going to walk through one of these digital garnishes, one of those additional techniques that you can embed in your existing best practice without too much extra effort.

Automatic Table Titles in MS Word

When a JAWS user encounters a table in a document, the screenreader indicates the table object and will allow the use of a bunch of hotkeys specifically for use in tables. Many users though simply ARROW KEY or TAB KEY their way through tables, gradually building up a picture of the content. To aid this navigation and understanding of the content, you can use a little known trick to automatically read out the column and/or row titles. Let’s go through how this works.

1. Open an existing Word document that contains several tables or create a new test document with a couple of tables in it. (I’ve created a test document for this purpose, with a heading and a couple of small uniform data tables.)
2. Navigate to the first table and locate the titles – if you have any of course! Assuming that you do, depending on the type of data you are displaying, you need to think about the type of titles you require and where you need to place your edit cursor to get this right. So:
• If you only have column titles, focus the cursor in the row that contains the column titles.
• If you only have row titles, focus the cursor in the column that contains the row title.
• If you have both row and column titles, focus the cursor in the specific cell where the column title row and the row title column intersect. In a typical table, this can often be the very first cell.
With the cursor placed appropriately, move to the upper ribbon with ALT and ARROW RIGHT to the Insert tab.
3. Use DOWN ARROW to move to the lower ribbon for the Insert tab then use the TAB key to move along to the Bookmark button. Activate the Bookmark feature with the SPACEBAR.
4. With focus in the Bookmark dialog box, specifically the "Bookmark Name edit combo box" (ALT B), type in the bookmark text that is appropriate for the type of titles you have in your table. So:
• For column titles only, type ColumnTitle. (Capital C Capital T, no space in between)
• For row titles only, type RowTitle. (Capital R Capital T, no space in between)
• For both row and column titles, type Title. (Capital T)
5. When you have typed in your bookmark text, use ALT A to activate the Add button. The bookmark will be confirmed and the dialog box will close.
6. With focus back in the document, navigate through the table – notice that JAWS is now speaking the titles automatically when you move to the next column or row.

The benefit of this bookmarking scheme is that, when you save your document you also save the accessibility – this gives any JAWS user a head start with their table reading. So, it is worth remembering popping these bookmarks in when you need to.

More Than One Table in the Document?

But what if you have more than one table in your document? In this case you need to ensure that you provide unique bookmark names. Bear in mind that your JAWS bookmarks must always begin with the text outlined above to which you can add an underline (bookmarks do not contain spaces) and then add more text. You can create bookmarking schemes as necessary, take the following examples:

• RowTitle_Number_One
• ColumnTitle_Sales_Figures_10
• RowTitle_First_Table
• ColumnTitle_Page1_table

In each case make sure you use the appropriate text for your row and column titles, add an underline, then type another word in. Alternatively, you can add another couple of words, each separated with an underline. Try not to make the bookmarks too unwieldy though - keep things as straightforward as possible.

Pretty neat trick this one. And now that you know all about it, your job is to pass the information on to other users of MS Word so they can add it to their best practice information. Have fun!

FS Clipboard – JAWS - MAGic

Using the FS Clipboard - JAWS - MAGic

If you use any kind of AT software you’ll be well aware of some of the additional tricks that you can pull off to make your daily digital life that little bit easier. One of those little helpers is the FS Clipboard feature, available in both the JAWS screenreader and also MAGic, the magnification and speech software also produced by Freedom Scientific.

FS Clipboard adds a bit of spin to the normal Windows clipboard as you append rather than replace any existing content. Normally, when you select some text and use CONTROL C to copy to the clipboard, what you are copying replaces the current contents of the Windows clipboard. However, with the JAWS and MAGic FS Clipboard feature, every time you copy you add to the existing contents as opposed to replace them. Let’s go through an example.

Appending Content in the FS Clipboard

In this example, we’re going to create a list of reference numbers and then copy some of those numbers to the FS clipboard for pasting in later in a new location. I should add that if you are running JAWS or MAGic the steps are identical.

1. Open a new document in MS Word or equivalent.
2. Type in a few lines of data, something like ten should be enough. I’ve chosen to create some short references, like this: A1001, A1002, A1003 and so on.
3. Now, move to the top of the list with CONTROL HOME and select the first reference number using SHIFT with the ARROW KEYS.
4. Remember you can repeat what is currently selected using INSERT SHIFT DOWN ARROW in JAWS and MAGic. (With MAGic you may also use the MAGic key of CAPSLOCK instead of INSERT.) Additionally, if you are using JAWS, you can use INSERT SHIFT DOWN ARROW twice quickly to have your selection spoken character by character.
5. With the content selected and checked, instead of using the standard Windows keystroke of CONTROL C, use INSERT WINDOWS C to copy instead.
6. Move the cursor in your list now and choose one of the other reference numbers. Select it as before and copy to the FS Clipboard with INSERT WINDOWS C. Repeat this step another couple of times.
7. With a few entries now in the FS Clipboard, let’s check the content. Use INSERT SPACEBAR, then tap letter C (MAGic users can also use CAPSLOCK SPACEBAR instead). A virtual viewer will open and from there you can read all the text you have copied. When you have finished checking the content, use ESCAPE to close the viewer.
8. Now move the cursor to a new position and paste in the FS Clipboard contents using CONTROL V. Check that everything is as you expect it to be – you’re done.

A neat finishing touch to this FS Clipboard feature is that if you accidentally use CONTROL C instead when you are copying your data, it doesn’t wipe the FS Clipboard content immediately. JAWS or MAGic will pop a warning message box up on screen indicating that if you continue you’re going to lose the content in the FS Clipboard contents. Very nice – because if there is one keystroke that everyone knows by instinct, it’s got to be CONTROL C!

The FS Clipboard is a useful tool that has been around for a while, so if you are using JAWS or MAGic and are often faced with moving non-contiguous data from one location to another, this is an option worth adding to the toolbox if you haven’t already.

Until next time, have fun!

Freeze Window - Zoomtext V10

Freezing a Window in Zoomtext V10

If you’ve been wondering why things have been a bit quiet round here the last few weeks it’s because I’ve been busy moving house – which is always good fun, if not always for the right reasons. Now that the dust has settled somewhat and I’m a bit more comfortable living in the remaining boxes with a paint brush in one hand, it’s time to get back to blog business.

A reader of this blog asked me recently whether the blog “is all about JAWS?” Although I indicated otherwise, upon reflection there is a fairly JAWS heavy feel to it so it’s about time I balanced things out a bit more and spread a little more love to my non-JAWS using readers. And what better way to do this than with a walkthrough of that much under-used Zoomtext function: Freeze Windows.

The Freeze Window feature works in full screen mode only and allows you to keep a section of the screen in focus while you navigate around the screen. In other words, you can drag over a bit of the Desktop and keep it in the zoom window while you are scrolling around looking at different parts of the screen. It works best with an area of the screen that is not likely to get obscured by an overlapping window and, with that in mind, let’s walk through a useful example.

Creating a New Freeze Window

Remember that this freeze window feature only works when you run Zoomtext in full screen mode. Notice that if you are in any other screen mode, such as Line or Lens or Overlay (by the way, who actually uses Overlay?) then the Freeze option will be greyed out.

Our example here is going to set a freeze window around the 24 hour clock in the system tray area at the bottom right hand corner of your Desktop. Setting a freeze window around the clock means that you can always see the time no matter what you are working in. Let’s get started:

1. With Zoomtext running, ensure that you are in full screen mode by activating the Type menu button on the Magnifier toolbar and choosing Full from the list if it is not already ticked.
2. Return to the Type menu and choose New from the Freeze submenu.

3. Notice a small icon now following the mouse pointer. Move the mouse pointer down to the bottom right of your Desktop – position the arrow so that the tip of the mouse pointer is at the bottom right of the time display.
4. Now hold the left mouse button down and drag diagonally to the top left corner of the time display. Notice how a small reverse video box will cover the area you are "dragging" over. This area will be your freeze window.
5. When you are happy that the window is right, let go of the left hand mouse button.
6. Notice some white drag handles have appeared around the border of the freeze window area, you can use these as necessary to make slight adjustments to the frozen window area. Left click and drag to move them as necessary.
7. After making any sizing adjustments, position your mouse pointer over the area you have just "frozen", hold the left mouse button down and drag the whole frozen window to another position on the screen. For example, some people like having their time display freeze window situated in the top right corner of the screen so that it doesn’t get in the way when you are working.

NOTE: It may take a few tries to get used to this, so if you need to start again just go back to the Freeze submenu and choose New to restart.

8. With the resizing and repositioning done, confirm everything using a single tap of the right hand mouse button.
9. With your new freeze window on screen, you can use the enable and disable freeze window keystroke of CONTROL SHIFT E to control the feature.

Okay, the freeze window feature is hardly going to change the world but, for specific things, it is well worth experimenting with if you are in full screen mode most or all of the time. And if you discover some great new uses for this feature then please let me know so that we can share with other readers. Until next time, have fun!

JAWS V16 Keystroke Search

Search for a Keystroke Feature in JAWS V16

Increasingly these days I find myself feeling more than a little underwhelmed as I greet the next AT software upgrade. Once upon a time I might have read through the release notes with some excitement, these days... not so much. Partly, this is due to some fairly mediocre updates - I think everyone gets a bit jaded when software updates aren't as sparkly as the hype suggests. But it's also increasingly about the downside of upgrades, being more concerned with what might get broken in the process and really thinking about whether any update is worth the risk now.

Having said all of that, I made the jump to JAWS V16 recently and, one of the new features I've been playing around with, is the JAWS command keystroke search feature. Actually, it's pretty good. Finally, a convenient way of making sense of the sheer mountain of JAWS keystrokes built into the software!

What is the JAWS Command Search?

Anyone who uses assistive technology such as JAWS will be all too aware of the cognitive payload involved in learning and using that software. Put simply, there's a huge amount of stuff to remember and think about. Now, while it is true that in programs such as MS Word you can fluff about a bit and get reasonable results. It's also true that when you move to a more challenging software environment, you'll soon hit the point where your JAWS experience relates directly to how much hotkey functionality you know.

This isn't just an AT thing. Over the last few years we've started to see complexity being hit in diffrerent ways. The "live" searching used in Windows and "Dash" in Ubuntu to name but two together with the rise of the voice input PA such as Siri and Cortana, are all designed to streamline the strain rather than let it spill over the edges. Even JAWS itself has dabbled with a live search style of interface, as anyone who has worked in the Settings Centre can tell you. So it comes as no suprise really that JAWS V16 finally unveils a feature designed to give you meaningful hotkey information at the point you actually require it.

But what about the old hotkey and windows key help systems? Well, the JAWS Help systems we all know and love are still there but, while they've always been and continue to be very comprehensive, they've never been particularly flexible or even friendly. Often what is required is a helping hand or quick memory aid, not a window containing a whole catalogue of hotkeys. By comparison, the new JAWS Command Search is effectively a built-in search engine for JAWS keystrokes. For example, maybe you can't recall the hotkey to list all the footnotes in the current Word document? Type in "footnote" and instantly a list of keystrokes with matching descriptions appears. Or maybe you're in Excel and can't recall the keystroke to list all the visible cells with data, once again type in "data" and "list" and you're on your way. Or what about JAWS hotkeys that relate to charts? Just type in "chart" and you're good to go.

Launching and Navigating the JAWS Command Search

I'm going to base the following walkthrough on an example I mentioned earlier - listing visible cells with data in Excel.

1. With JAWS V16 running and focus in Excel, launch the new command search with INSERT SPACEBAR then J. (Hold down INSERT then SPACEBAR - at which point you will hear a sharp clicking sound - then use letter J.)
2. JAWS will announce "Search For JAWS Commands dialog" with your specific focus in the "Search For: edit" field.
3. Now type in what you are looking for. (I'm using "data" and "list" but try out whatever you want.) As you type, a results list will appear and automatically adjust with matches relevant to your search string.
4. Use the DOWN ARROW to move the virtual cursor as you would in any webpage and read the results.

NOTE: The command search page is HTML, so you can use the usual web page navigation keys to move through the results that appear. For example, the H quick key or the number 3 key (each keystroke heading link title is level 3) both work well. Or, if you prefer, you can launch your list of headings with INSERT F6 or you can choose to navigate using the trusty list of links (INSERT F7).

5. Each entry in the results list has a title followed by a description of the hotkey and its function. For example, in my search using "data" and "list" I receive the following feedback:

List Visible Cells With Data.
Control + Shift + D
Lists cells with data visible in the active window and allows the user to move to the selected cell.

6. When you have found the information you need, either run the chosen command using the heading link or close the HTML search page using the ESCAPE key.
7. To run another search, move back up to the edit field, make sure you are in Forms Mode and type in your new search terms.

Pretty neat isn't it? Let's run with another example.

Column Titles in Excel with Command Search

Here's another approach you can take with the new command search. Not only is it great for getting the information in the first place - it can also help out with those tricky three and four finger keystrokes. Manually assigning column titles in an Excel worksheet I'm looking at you...

1. Open a new worksheet in Excel and type a column title in cell A1, B1 and C1.
2. For some added drama, enter some data in cell A2, B2 and C2.
3. Move the cursor to a cell in row one.
4. Launch the command search feature with INSERT SPACEBAR, J and type "Set Column" in the edit field.
5. DOWN ARROW to the "Set Column Titles to Row Range" heading link and use ENTER to activate the command.
6. Focus will now return to the Excel worksheet and JAWS will indicate that the headings are set.

Hey, I know - I'm lazy! But it's not a bad way to go, especially as some JAWS keystrokes of the three and four finger variety can be pretty tricky to use.

So there you go, if you've upgraded recently to JAWS V16, go into your main Office programs and give the new command search feature a spin. Until next time, have fun!