05 JAWS User Interface

This learning Module is entitled the JAWS for Windows User Interface. This lesson introduces you to several menu options within the JAWS application window.  For example, we will learn how to control how much information JAWS provides you with, as well as how to control voice options such as rate and pitch.

JAWS, like most programs in Windows, can be accessed in a number of ways.  For the time being however, we won't concern ourselves with the various ways of moving between programs in Windows, selecting items from the Start Menu, or accessing the Taskbar.  All of these topics will be covered in a later lesson called, "An Introduction to Windows."  For now, we need a quick and reliable way to access the JAWS program, or, in Windows terminology, bring JAWS into focus.  Luckily, there is a built-in command in JAWS that allows us to do precisely that.  The key combination is INSERT+J.

Press INSERT+J.

JAWS.

This keystroke should land you in the JAWS main application window regardless of what other programs are running.  Note:  later in these training tapes we will discuss the way JAWS responds if you choose to Run JAWS from the System Tray.  For now, we will be using JAWS as it installs by default, which is in a typical Window with a Title Bar and a Menu Bar.  While you will discover several shortcuts as you go through these lessons, understand that virtually any function or feature that you would like to access in JAWS may be accessed from within the menu system.

But first, what is a menu?  A menu is what gives you control over a program in Windows.  An individual menu, much like a menu listing foods at a restaurant, will list various actions that can be taken.  Most programs have several different menu choices, which allows for better organization of commands.  For example, a file menu would contain commands related to using files, an edit menu would contain all the edit commands, and so on.  Finally, since each program on your computer is designed to accomplish or assist you in completing a different task, it is likely that the menus in each program you use will be different.

Let’s take a look at some of these menu options.  Typically, programs list menus that are available in a menu bar, running from left to right on the second row from the top of the program window.  We can access the menu bar by pressing the ALT key, which I'll do now.

Menu bar, Options. To navigate, press LEFT or RIGHT ARROW, ALT+O. 
As you heard, JAWS gave us quite a bit of information.  JAWS told us we are on the menu bar, that the menu item we're on is called options, that we could move with our LEFT and RIGHT ARROW keys, and then a key was announced, ALT+O.  JAWS is letting us know that this individual menu can be activated by pressing ALT+O.  The Options menu allows us to change basic, voice, and Braille options.  It also allows us to exit JAWS, should we wish to stop all speech.  I'll press the RIGHT ARROW now, and the next menu will be announced.

Utilities, ALT+U.

The Utilities menu is used to customize various JAWS settings.  Let's say, for example, that a word you're reading isn't being pronounced correctly.  One of this menu's options is the JAWS Dictionary Manager, which would allow you to correct this mispronunciation.  For now, let's continue to our next menu by pressing the RIGHT ARROW.
Language, ALT+L.

As you might suspect, this menu allows us to change JAWS' various language options, and it can also be used to switch between different speech synthesizers.  For now, I'll press RIGHT ARROW again.

Help, ALT+H.

The Help menu.  We’ll be going into some detail on using Help with JAWS for Windows later.  I’ll press right arrow again, and you'll notice that JAWS says nothing. This is the application control menu, which JAWS does not speak.  However, if I were to DOWN ARROW here, I would activate the associated pull down menu.  In fact, if I had pressed the DOWN ARROW over any of the previous menus, I would've heard the first choice of that menu.  I’m going to press RIGHT ARROW one more time.

Options, Alt+O.

And now we're back at the beginning of the menu bar, where we began.  From here, you could do one of three things to activate this menu.  As I just said, you could press the DOWN ARROW.  You could, as JAWS has alerted us, also press ALT+O if you had not already pressed the ALT key.  ALT+O moves to and opens the Options menu.  Pressing ALT alone moves you to the menu bar and places you on the first word in the menu, which is Options, but does not open the menus.  Since we are already on the menu bar, I'm going to press ENTER now to open the Options menu.

ENTER. Menu active, basics dot dot dot. To move through options, press UP or DOWN ARROW, B.

JAWS tells us that we have activated a menu, that we're over the choice known as Basics, and then says something interesting.  Whenever JAWS says, "dot dot dot," it means that activating or pressing ENTER over this option will open a dialog box. So, what is a dialog box?  A dialog box is a way of exchanging information with the computer.  As the name suggests, this box will let us hold a two-way conversation, of sorts, with our computer.  Actually, it’s much more like filling out a form than having a conversation with someone, but consider your conversation partner.  It’s a computer.

After giving us some guidance of how to move around inside this menu, JAWS also says the access key "B."  Access keys are the underlined keys that are part of each menu item.  You press these keys to move directly to a control or an item in a menu.  So, what this means is that, from anywhere inside the Options menu, pressing the letter "B" would take us into the Basics dialog box.

I’m going to quickly down arrow through the other items in this pull down menu, until I come back to Basics, just to give you an idea of what other menu items there are in our Options pull down menu.

Voices sub menu, V.  Braille dot dot dot, L.  Exit, ALT+F4, X.  Basics dot dot dot, B.  Notice that if you continue to press DOWN ARROW you will eventually wrap back to the top item in a pull-down menu.  The same is true if you press UP ARROW when a pull-down menu is open, you will eventually end up back where you started.

And here we are, back at Basics.  Now, let’s stop arrowing up and down inside of this menu, and instead start looking at some of these dialog boxes.  I am going to press ENTER to open the Basics dialog box.  Press ENTER.

Leaving menus. Basic settings dialog. Tutor messages, announce menu and control help, radio button checked, two of three. To change the selection, press UP or DOWN ARROW.  

We are now inside the basic settings dialog box.  First, before exploring the options available to us, it is important to understand that dialog boxes work differently than most other parts of Windows.  Remember when I said that using a dialog box was much like filling out a form?  This is important to keep in mind, because whenever JAWS announces that you've entered a dialog the following rules will always apply: to move forward, one control at a time, press TAB.  To move backward, one control at a time, press SHIFT+TAB.  Pressing ENTER will close the dialog box, and save your changes.  Pressing ESCAPE will also close the dialog box, but will not save your changes.

When we first activated this dialog, we heard we were on the option called "tutor messages," and then that we were on a radio button labeled "announce menu and control help."  Tutor messages, first of all, provide us with navigation tips.  So when JAWS says, "To change the selection, press UP or DOWN ARROW," as it did when we entered this dialog box, that's a tutor message.  JAWS also provided us with a tutor message when we were investigating the menu bar.  The message was, "To navigate, press LEFT or RIGHT ARROW."  This choice of radio buttons allows us to turn these messages off, give custom messages only, or leave the tutor messages turned on.  
How do we know what options are available?  Well, there are three ways of listing choices inside of dialog boxes.  They are combo boxes, list boxes, and radio buttons.  For the most part, the names aren't important, just recognize that whenever you hear that you are in a group of radio buttons you can use your up and down arrows to navigate through the list of choices.  Radio buttons also provide you with a description of how many items are in a list and which one you're over, which explains the phrase "Announce menu and control help, radio button checked, two of three."  JAWS is telling you that you are in a list containing three items, and your focus is currently on the second item.  To hear the other items in this list, press the UP or DOWN ARROW.

When I press DOWN ARROW here you will hear JAWS say:

Tutor messages, announce custom messages only, radio button checked, three of three.

Now, we're on the last choice in the list, which would allow you to only hear custom messages.  Press UP ARROW twice and you will hear JAWS say:

Tutor messages, turn off menu and control help, radio button checked, one of three.  

Let's go ahead and press the DOWN ARROW once, since we want to leave tutor messages turned on.

Did you notice the tutor message being announced when we moved through this list?  This confirms to us that, once again, tutor messages are active.

Press TAB, and we'll examine the next option in this dialog.

TAB.  Access keys, speak all, radio button checked, two of four.  To change the selection, press UP or DOWN ARROW.  

Now we're in a list containing four options, and the second choice, "speak all," is currently selected.  Access keys provide hints for faster navigation in menus and dialogs.  So, when we're over the Options menu, and JAWS says "ALT+O," that would be an example of an access key.  The first of these four options would allow you to turn access keys completely off, the second choice which we currently have selected turns them on in both menus and dialogs, option three only turns access keys on in menus, and choice four only turns them on in dialogs.  Once again, this choice could be changed by using your UP and DOWN ARROW keys.  I'm going to leave this option unchanged however, and press the TAB key.

TAB.  Automatically start JAWS, check box checked. To clear check mark, press SPACEBAR. ALT+A.

Do you remember the choice we made to have JAWS start speaking before any other program in Windows?  Well, here is that same choice.  This choice introduces a new dialog box control called a check box.  Basically, check boxes allow us to turn an option on or off.  When an option is checked, it is turned on.  Conversely, when unchecked, it is turned off.  So, if I pressed the SPACEBAR at this point, JAWS would not automatically start speaking when the computer was turned on.  Since I want to leave this option unchanged, I'm NOT going to press the SPACEBAR.

However, there is another JAWS feature I wish to introduce at this point.  Throughout the JAWS User Interface, helpful hints are provided on the bottom line of your screen.  This line is commonly referred to as a status line.  As we activate menus or TAB through dialog boxes, the status line is constantly updated to give us feedback about our current location.  This line can be read by pressing INSERT+NUM PAD 3.  I will press this key now.

When checked, JAWS will be loaded when the computer starts.

This status line is an excellent way to quickly confirm the option that you're on, and also that an item has the meaning you believe it does.

There are three other major options in this dialog box, and we'll quickly go through what each of them means.  I'm pressing TAB.

TAB.  Run JAWS from system tray, check box not checked. To check, press SPACEBAR, ALT+S.

This option allows JAWS to be run in the background, and not listed as one of Windows' active programs on the Taskbar, or when moving between programs.  When turned on, the only way of accessing the JAWS User Interface is by pressing INSERT+J.  This option will make more sense when we cover navigating between programs later in this tutorial.  For now, it is currently turned off, and we will leave it unchanged.  Turning this option on does not affect JAWS, and is a matter of personal preference.  Now I’ll press TAB again.

TAB.  Show virtual viewer on screen, check box checked. To clear check mark, press SPACEBAR, ALT+W.

To find out a bit more about this option, let's use the INSERT+NUM PAD 3 command to read our status line.

When checked, INSERT+F1 messages will be visible on the screen.

What JAWS is telling us here is that, besides the INSERT+NUM PAD 3 status line help, there is also a more detailed help system available which is accessed by the command INSERT+F1.  This check box is allowing us to choose whether these extended help messages will be displayed on the screen when this command is used.  Teachers or users who are unfamiliar with JAWS might find these on-screen messages instructive, whereas more experienced JAWS users might prefer to only have the INSERT+F1 help spoken.  We'll demonstrate how to use this JAWS help system in another section of this tutorial, so let's leave this item checked, and TAB to the next dialog box option.

TAB.  Use keyboard layout colon combo box desktop, two of four. To change the selection, use the arrow keys, ALT+L.

First, notice that a different dialog box control that was mentioned earlier is being used here to present our list of choices.  Our keyboard layout choice is determined by use of a combo box, not a radio button.  However, as was also mentioned earlier, we use this control in the same way.  

But, you're asking, what does keyboard layout mean?  Keep in mind that JAWS can be used on a variety of different computers.  For example, you might be using a laptop or portable computer instead of a desktop PC.  In this case, you wouldn't use the same commands as on a desktop computer because a laptop's keyboard is usually much smaller.  The UP ARROW will take you to the choice “Classic Laptop”. Press DOWN ARROW a few times to tell JAWS that you are using a laptop keyboard.  Also, JAWS might not be the only adaptive or specially designed program for the blind or visually impaired running on the computer.  The next choice in this list, MAGic 6.2, defines a keyboard layout that works best when both JAWS and the MAGic screen enlargement program are running in tandem. Make sure that for this tutorial you change this back to “DESKTOP”.

Right now, we'll leave this option unchanged, and TAB to our next dialog box control.
TAB. Windows System Parameters. Pressing this button will take you into a group of checkboxes that will customize how JAWS behaves with certain items within the Operating System (i.e. Windows). For now, let’s leave this one alone and press TAB to move to the next control.

TAB.  OK button, to activate, press SPACEBAR, ALT+O.

Ah, so here we have found yet another type of dialog box control, called a button.  As JAWS told us, we can use the SPACEBAR or ALT+O to activate or push this button.  Just for practice, let's use the INSERT+NUM PAD 3 command to discover just what the OK button does.

Save changes and close dialog.

And there you have it.  This button is what we push when we want to save our work.  Remember when we first opened this dialog box and I told you that pressing ENTER would also save your work?  That's because, in most dialog boxes, the OK button gets selected when you are over some other choice and press the ENTER key.  This allows a user to change an option at the beginning of a dialog, and simply save their work by pressing ENTER, instead of tabbing forward to the OK button, and pressing the SPACEBAR.

Oh, just one other thing.  When you're over a button, it is safer for you to press the SPACEBAR rather than the ENTER key.  Press TAB, and we'll land on another button.

TAB.  Cancel button, to activate, press the SPACEBAR, ALT+C.

Once again, going back to what I said earlier, this is the button that gets chosen when we press the ESCAPE key.  Here, of course, it would also be chosen if we press the SPACEBAR, ALT+C, or the ENTER key.

There's just one more button in this dialog box.  Press TAB again.

TAB. Register button. To activate, press SPACEBAR, ALT+G.

This button allows you to register your JAWS for Windows software if you haven’t already done so.   It is very important to register JAWS, since doing so entitles you to receive product updates, technical support, and customer service from Freedom Scientific.  Registering JAWS will be demonstrated in another part of this tutorial.  For now, press TAB one last time.

TAB. Tutor messages, announce menu and control help, radio button checked, two of three. To change the selection, press UP or DOWN ARROW.  

Here we are, back at the beginning of our dialog box.  From here, let's press ENTER, and close the basic settings dialog.

ENTER. Jaws.

At this point, you've learned most of the commands you'll need to use JAWS in any Windows program.  To review, we talked about Windows concepts such as menu bars, menus, dialog boxes, and dialog box controls like radio buttons and check boxes.  We also learned about several JAWS options available for customizing speech such as tutor messages, access keys, and the status line command.

If you like, stop the tape, and practice using some of the features we've already discussed.  When you return, we'll look at the Voices sub menu under Options.

Welcome back.  As promised, we're now going to examine the Voices sub menu inside the Options menu.  The dialog we'll examine allows us to change voice settings such as rate, pitch, capitalization indicators, and so forth.  From the main JAWS screen, press Alt+O, DOWN ARROW to Voices, and press ENTER.

ALT+O. Menu active, options, basics, dot dot dot. To move through items, press UP or DOWN ARROW, B. 
Voices sub menu, V.
ENTER. Global adjustment, dot dot dot, G.

We are now in a sub menu that gives us two choices.  Our first choice is global adjustment, and the second choice is individual voice adjustment.  Global adjustment is useful for making universal changes to all of the voices JAWS uses.  For example, if you wanted JAWS to speak more quickly no matter which voice was being used.  Individual voice adjustment gives you control over each of JAWS' four voices.  These four voices are PC Cursor, JAWS Cursor, Keyboard, and Tutor or Message voice.  I won't go through each of these choices, but instead will quickly examine the global adjustment dialog by pressing ENTER.

ENTER. Leaving menus, global voice settings dialog. Modify default, radio button checked, one of two. To change the selection, press UP or DOWN ARROW.

At this point, JAWS is asking us whether to change the default setting, this being the setting it uses when speech begins, or whether we'd like to change speech settings for a particular program.  The program shown here is the program that was last being used when we activated the JAWS User Interface.  For now, we'll leave this set to default, and press TAB to move to the next control.

TAB. Rate colon 95, left right slider, 50%. To increase or decrease, use the arrow keys.

Pressing UP or DOWN ARROW, and PAGE DOWN or PAGE UP, changes how fast JAWS speaks as you navigate or type.  I'll press TAB again.

TAB. Punctuation colon combo box, most, three of four. To change the selection, use the arrow keys, ALT+U.

This setting determines how much punctuation is used as you read or type.  The choices are none, some, most, and all.  I'm pressing TAB again to move to the next control.
Next control is “Set volume using system volume control”.
Normally, when you encounter an edit field in a dialog box, the computer is expecting you to type in some sort of information.  In this case however, JAWS is simply giving you the message that your synthesizer's volume should be adjusted elsewhere.  We'll cover changing a synthesizer's volume in "An Introduction to Windows," and you can also stop the tape here and press INSERT+F1 for more information, but for now, I’m going to press TAB once again.

Ok, now I'll continue to the next choice by pressing TAB.

** Spell Rate Decrement. When you hold down INSERT and press NUM PAD 5 twice quickly to spell a word, the word is spelled at a rate of speech slower than the normal speech rate. This setting determines the extent to which the speech rate decreases from normal.

TAB. Uppercase pitch increment colon edit, 20. Type in text, ALT+I.
This number tells JAWS how much to increase the pitch of the voice when you arrow across or type capital letters.  This is an edit field that will allow you to enter information.  Obviously, the higher the number you enter, the higher JAWS' voice will be.


If we press TAB again, we will encounter the OK button for this dialog box.  For now, let’s not do this, as you may have accidentally changed your voices, so let’s press ESCAPE to get out of this dialog box and none of our changes will be saved.  For practical purposes, the only things most people change in the Global settings here are the voice rate and perhaps the punctuation.  If you wish to make changes to your other voices, choose the Individual Voice Adjustment menu item.

ESCAPE. Jaws.

Although there are a few more options here in the JAWS User Interface, our next two lessons will concentrate on using JAWS' built-in help with INSERT+F1, and then on how to use the more traditional system help.  Eventually, after familiarizing you with Windows and a bit of word processing in HJ Pad, this tutorial will return to the JAWS User Interface to discuss the various JAWS managers.

End of the JAWS for Windows User Interface.



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05 JAWS User Interface