brianhartgen's blog

I was asked some time ago if I would be willing to create a blog post containing some useful pointers to ensure JAWS is more responsive and easier to access alongside Microsoft Outlook 2010. This post attempts to briefly do that.

I have to say before continuing that none of the below items are essential to configure. Using my Windows7 64 bit machine with Outlook 2010, JAWS is very responsive in all areas of the program without any adjustments being made at all. However, according to some email lists there are people who have had some problems and so you may like to take account of the following.

Configuration

1. Disable the Reading Pane, ALT+V, then P, then N, then O.
2. Disable the To-Do Bar, ALT+F2.
3. Disable "Show in Groups", ALT+V then Tab through to Arrangement and press Enter. Press Up arrow and if JAWS says "Show in Groups Checked", press Enter to uncheck it. This procedure should be carried out on each mailbox you have.
4. Disable Protected View:
   1. Launch Microsoft Word.
   2. Press ALT+F then T, then T repeatedly until Trust Centre is located.
   3. Do not press Enter, but Tab through until you reach Trust Centre Settings, then press Enter.
   4. Press the letter P to reach Protected View.
   5. Press Tab repeatedly and uncheck the boxes in this dialog.
   6. Press Space Bar on the "OK" Button.

Note that this latter procedure of working in the Trust Centre should be carried out at your own risk as this is a security feature. However, while potentially the "Enable Editing" option could be activated with the keyboard on every attachment you open, some people may find this approach easier since if this is not done JAWS is unable to read documents you open, such as those generated with Microsoft word, in Protected View.

Using the Virtual Ribbon

When exploring the menus (or the Ribbon Bar), you may find it easier to use the JAWS Virtual Ribbon. This presents all the Ribbon Bar items found in Outlook 2010 in a vertical list. You can simply arrow down to the item you wish to access and press Enter. This is useful as otherwise you may miss items on the ribbon bar and this presents them to you in a logical order so you can systematically work through them.

How to enable the Virtual Ribbon will vary depending upon the version of JAWS you have. However, try to follow these steps:

1. With your Inbox in focus, press Insert+V to access the Quick Settings (or Adjust JAWS Options dialog).
2. If focus lands in an Edit Field, press Tab.
3. Press V for Virtual Ribbon and if JAWS says this is unchecked, press Space Bar to check it.
4. Press Enter to save the settings.

Additional Options in Quick settings or Adjust JAWS Options

There are a number of options in the Quick Settings (or Adjust JAWS Options) dialog which may improve the reading experience when working with a considerable amount of email. Here are some to consider. Again, press Insert+V, and if focus lands in an Edit Field press Tab to reach the Tree View. All options can be enabled or disabled by pressing the Space Bar. Press Enter when you have completed making the changes so as to exit the dialog. Note that alongside each option, which you can reach by pressing Tab from the Tree View, a Help Window exists so as to give you more information about the selected choice. Press Shift+Tab to return to the Tree View.

• InformationBarMessagesAnnouncement. While the Information Bar does contain useful data, (which if this option is enabled is automatically spoken by JAWS as and when it appears on screen), you may find it distracting. For example, when you open a message JAWS will announce when you have forwarded it or replied to it. Disable this option to silence the output.
• Message Header Field With Message Announcement. This is one you will probably want to disable. As you open a message, JAWS will speak the header information, such as the author and subject. If you process a lot of email this can slow you down. As we will see later, there are other ways of getting the information if you really want it.
• Message Type Announcement. A small group of us have asked for this feature for some time so as to disable it and it is now available in JAWS 14. As you open a message, JAWS will not speak the message type, such as whether it was composed in HTML or Plain Text.
• Link Count Announcement. If this is disabled, and a message is opened, JAWS will not announce how many links are in the message. However, of course this does not prevent you from accessing them with the use of the Arrow keys or Insert+F7.
• Messages Automatically Read. If this is enabled, JAWS will begin reading the message automatically if it is opened. If you use a Braille display particularly, you may care to have this option disabled.

As a summary, if you disable most of these options, but have Messages Automatically Read Checked, as you open each message you will not hear any extraneous output but JAWS will begin reading the message automatically.

It is also worth noting that JAWS 14 has an additional option entitled Use Virtual Cursor for ReadOnly Messages which is enabled by default. This places the message in a virtual environment in order that Tables and HTML content can be more easily read and understood.

JAWS Reading Keys

A final note is to alert you to the JAWS Header Reading Keys. As you open each message, you can press ALT+1 through to 0 to read important header information. Press the keystroke twice quickly to set focus to the desired field if you wish.

• ALT+1 will read who the message is from.
• ALT+2 reads the date the mesage was sent.
• ALT+3 reads the data in the "To" field.
• ALT+4 reads the data in the "CC" field.
• ALT+5 reads the data in the "Subject" field.

Summary

I hope you have found the above useful. Don't forget that you can always press:

• Insert+H to get a list of the JAWS keystrokes relative to Outlook;
• Insert+F1 to gain Context Sensitive Help;
• Insert+W for a list of keystrokes native to Outlook.

Anyone who has followed me on internet radio over the years will have heard from 2009 onwards a high pitched character I created to help produce promos and jingles, usually to promote the shows of other people rather than my own. These would usually consist of him singing, rather than me, as you won't hear me singing using my natural voice in a promo!

That character became Bert, and inadvertently became a leprechaun of all things. Yes, a leprechaun who was brought up in London with east-end parents. Not ideal, but lets go with it!

I didn't necessarily think he would become more than that character, but my partner L had other ideas. She was going to broaden out the language on his Twitter stream to give him a more rounded appeal with an endearing personality, write a blog for him, a journal which has been read by thousands of people and she would write the scripts for his audio drama podcasts which again seem to be very popular.

But this blog entry isn't about all of that which is covered elsewhere. It's about something which I tried to organise for L which seems really to have paid off.

What is amazing to me is L's visual imagination together with her graphical description of imagery. Like me, she is unable to see, so it is very difficult to know where it all comes from. But she wanted to conceptualise in a visual form what Bert the lep would be like. I would not have the first idea of how to go about this, but she did, and I guess writing his journal helped in that respect. L completely and independently designed a concept of what Bert would look like, including his ears, nose, eyes and size.

When the artist Scott Clarke drew him and made pictures which could be put on the wall and on the website, everyone who saw him was amazed at the way he looked and found it difficult to believe that he was drawn based entirely on L's ideas. Apparently he is so so good to look at.

But I wanted to go a stage further and give L something that she could appreciate for herself. How was I going to do that? How could I convey to her in a tactile way the image she had created? That was going to be difficult. A tactile diagram on paper which could easily be destroyed or marred in some way just wasn't going to cut it.

Then I sat down and thought about it carefully. L is into dolls in a big way. How about a doll which would resemble Bert in terms of weight, size and appearance? Again, quite a challenging task because I know almost nothing about the subject.

I heard about "reborn artists" who love creating life-like babies. But where to find one who would take on the challenge of constructing a leprechaun who looks human to a large extent and who is 32 inches tall?

Having carried out some research on the internet, I called one such artist who felt she could not take this on. But then I struck lucky. Elaine Colbert is one of the most respected reborn artists in the country, and while she said she had never constructed any doll of Bert's height and weight before, she was prepared to give it a go.

The project took over six months to complete. But Elaine had the pictures of bert available to her in addition to feedback from L herself concerning how she felt he should look. A tremendous amount of hard work must have gone into designing Bert, the life-size lep. His skin is smooth to the touch, very realistic and his hair took in itself a week to prepare. His little pointy ears also feel wonderful. Bert will last a long time. What amazes me is how an artist can create something like this based upon a picture, and have it look like the character but in a life-size form! That is real talent that I completely respect.

As you can tell, Bert looks just like his picture and he is so "life-like". People who have visited us over this festive period do a "double take" as they think there is a little boy sitting in the room, but of course, it isn't. You can see some pictures by clicking on the links below. These are pictures of Bert, the doll, rather than the pictures originally produced by Scott Clarke, the artist.

• Bert in our festive living room
• Bert with us on the sofa
• Bert on Lulu's lap
• Bert leaning on Lulu's shoulder

The end result is that L seems completely thrilled with Bert which makes the whole thing very worthwhile and I am delighted she has him. I wasn't able to go to collect Bert with L, but she clearly had a fun day out and is delighted to be able to hold a character she herself has created.

If you use the StationPlaylist scripts for JAWS, either version 4.33 or 5.0, ideally there is a procedure you should work through in order that you can take advantage of the latest improvements in the December JAWS 14.0 Hotfix.

The scripts make modifications to the JAWS 14.0 default files. If you do not work through this procedure, you will be using older default files and so there is a good chance that you will not benefit from some of the improvements available in the hotfix.

• Select the Windows Start Menu.
• Select All Programs or Programs.
• Select JAWS 14.
• Select Explore JAWS.
• Select Explore My Settings.
• This will bring focus to a folder containing a number of files. Press the Down Arrow key until JAWS announces a file named starting with the word "Default". All files with a "Default" prefix (with the exception of "Default.JCF"), should be deleted, such as "Default.JSB". Note that also you will find files with a prefix of "Default_FS". These too should be deleted.
• When the files are deleted, press ALT+F4 to close down the list view window and return focus to the Windows Desktop.
• Update to the JAWS 14.0 Hotfix from the Freedom Scientific website.
• When the computer restarts following the installation procedure, download and install the scripts for StationPlaylist Studio from this website. The installer will make the necessary modifications to JAWS.
• Should the installer for JAWS 14.0 fail to run, which happens in occasional circumstances, you should follow the directions for adding a line to the Default files as described in the StationPlaylist scripts documentation.

If you have already updated to the December hotfix, just work through the above steps anyway without, of course, reinstalling the December JAWS update.

If there are any questions, please do let me know.

I've been incredibly lucky recently as my partner L has just bought for me an Apple iPad 2. I had heard a lot about them, and I often work in large offices where people are around me showing off their iPads and talking about them. When this happened recently, I felt I really wanted one and, as I say, I was lucky enough to have it purchased for me.

The question I've been asked is, as a blind person, what advantages will there be over having an iPhone 4S, which I also have?

I do a lot of travelling each week and so I wanted to lessen the number of things I have to carry around not related to the work I do. The iPad would give me, hopefully, a longer battery life than the iPhone, together with a better quality speaker for listening to music or books as I am a prolific reader. Because of the battery life,, I could also manage all my email and talk to people on Twitter, Facebook and Skype if I had access to a wireless internet connection. This issue of the length of battery life seems to have been confirmed as I am already getting more time from it than I do the iPhone.

The iPad really is a mini computer. It delivers no background sound at all and I have found using it a real pleasure. I am comfortable using Safari to manage our web content on Team-FM, together with the rest of the above. I have also been introduced to iBooks, which if you don't know gives us as visually impaired people acccess to a huge range of books including the latest best-sellers, and this is going to be excellent. There's such a wide variety!

But, I hear you say, you can do a lot of this on the iPhone, so what else is there?

The most obvious advantage is the physical dimensions of the iPad as against the phone. The iPad of course is much larger in size. This means that typing text is far easier I think on the iPad. I have a bluetooth keyboard, (which I will write about in a moment), but because of the placement of the characters on the iPad it is much more like a QWERTY keyboard than can be accommodated on the iPhone. The physical resemblance is very similar. I have now become far more confident in terms of the placement of items on the iPad including the keyboard. This means for example if I want to send a tweet or a Facebook post, I can easily do that on the iPad's keyboard without the need for Flexi or the bluetooth keyboard, just using the one device. I like that a lot.

The other advantage relates to webpage layout. I can appreciate and conceptualise tables on web pages far easier on the iPad because of the greater space which is available.

So to the keyboard. I did purchase a case for the iPad with a keyboard incorporated. But I didn't like the feel of it. The iPad is such a well-made piece of hardware and I wanted a good case to go with it. This case with integrated keyboard just wasn't suitable. The keyboard could only be charged using a USB cable connected to a computer, added to which I felt uncomfortable in terms of the way the iPad fitted into the case.

Eventually, I got a conventional leather case for the iPad which accommodates it very well and I am very pleased with that.

So in summary, I am very pleased with the iPad and I know I am going to gain a great deal of use from it. I haven't used Facetime on it yet, but I have tested the built-in microphone using Skype's test calling service and it seemed of a good standard. It is important to note that Siri does not exist on the iPad, which is fine as I rarely use it.

If anyone has any questions about the iPad, please do let me know. But as a final thought, with the iPad being so readily available, it is very difficult these days to justify the cost of specialist "note-taking" devices, particularly if the user only requires speech output. If you purchase an iPad, possibly a bluetooth keyboard and some suitable apps, you have everything at your disposal many such devices have offered in the past, and a great deal more!

Here are some brief notes I've just written for the JAWS Scripting Mailing List regarding iTunes 11 accessibility.
To repeat, these notes are brief and do not contain step-by-step procedures.

I've found iTunes 11 is all quite accessible with jaws without scripting, although some minor scripting would be nice.

While F6 does focus upon some different elements of the program quickly, Tab is your friend here. Tabbing eventually will take you to Buttons, such as Music. Press Space on that to reveal a tree view in terms of the kind of music to select.

There are also more radio buttons than before which you can tab to. Do not use up and down arrows in radio Buttons. Tab to the one you want and hit space, such as Playlists, whereupon a further tree view will be revealed, following which a Playlist can be selected.

It would be nice if you could have quick keys in jaws, such as R to take you to the next radio button, S for the next piece of static text, and so on. Very scriptable if needed.

Pressing ALT may well deploy the menu bar, but jaws does not read this. You can arrow left and right along it however and press down arrow to enter the required menu item.

Alternatively, shortcuts can be used, such as ALT+F for File, ALT+V for View.

When navigating the Store, it is quite laggy when you get into it even on my new PC with 8 GB of RAM. However, once you are in, it is fine. When you enter a new Store page however, refresh the screen with Insert+Escape as the jaws virtual buffer does not seem to be updating. I will log this with Freedom Scientific.

There is also a Show Menus Button you can Tab to and hit Space, whereupon some additional menu items are revealed. This is a Context Menu.

But all in all, while things may be a little different in terms of layout, it is definitely not unusable.

Any questions, do let me know.

Hi everyone

An update to the StationPlaylist scripts for JAWS is now available with the following changes.

Reworked the output on the Options/Folder Locations dialog.

Changed the way that focus is now set to Studio from any location. Studio no longer needs to be displayed in the system tray for this to work.

Added a keystroke, grave accent then F2, to automatically set focus to the Sam encoder window, if you use it. Again, this is global.

To update, go to
www.hartgen.org/studio

The best way is to download the zipped archive and extract its contents to the settings/ENU folder of the version of jaws you are using. Go to the start menu, all programs, jaws X, explore jaws, explore my settings, where X is the version number.

Alternatively you can use the installer on the same page.

Please note that jaws versions 11 through to 14 are supported.

I was very pleased that so many of you read my blog entry relating to producing audio with both Sonar and Sound Forge. I wanted to provide you with some small updates.

I mentioned in that post that I didn't think it was possible to mix speech with music using Sonar, and have the music fade down during the spoken audio and rise again when it had concluded. This is in fact possible.

I received some good instruction from the MidiMag mailing list and particularly from Chris Bell who runs his own recording studio, so he obviously is very familiar with this kind of work.

The process is more complicated than Sound Forge in that you have to patch a compressor into the track containing the music and then refine the levels of it in accordance with how far you want the music to dip down. But it can certainly be achieved.

However, we have found that Sonar really comes into its own when you want to create projects with multiple sounds and to be able to adjust them in terms of volume, and to perform other events on them such as fading and equalisation on individual items rather than the whole mix. If you have for example 14 different segments you wish to mix, and you did all that in a single track editor and one of them wasn't to your liking, there is a good chance you would have to create the mix again. Sonar isn't like that. You can adjust the one item. It's really cool.

In response to the "Mix Paste" dialog not being as accessible in Sound Forge 9 and 10, a few people have suggested using Studio Recorder from A P H We do have a licence for this software, and it certainly does do that job very well. I've never really been comfortable with it however as a full audio editor. It doesn't contain any effects or noise reduction capability, which to be fair you would not expect because it is designed for recording speech-based talking books.

The other important difference is that you cannot have the elapsed and total time output to the speech synthesiser in an intuitive way. That information is located on the Status Bar, and while it is true that pressing S will output the details, it consists of a string of figures, and is not in the format "2 minutes 3 seconds" for example. In addition, you cannot isolate the elapsed and total times as separate units, and I feel those things are important to know quickly. But it's a good basic audio editor.

As a final note, for users of StationPlaylist Studio, I am in the process of updating the JAWS scripts for that to improve the reading of some labels in the "Options" dialog so it is a little clearer to the user as to what particular sliders and controls are meant to be used for. So I would think they will come along within the next week.

I've always enjoyed the songs which were well-known by singer-songwriter Dean Friedman. Many of us know of the 1978 top 10 hit "Lucky Stars", and his song "Lydia" has always been a particular favourite of mine. So when L discovered through his website and Twitter feed that Dean was going to be doing a UK tour this year, and that one of the venues would be in Cardiff, we were both very keen to go to see him. L was more familiar with his music than I, but that did not stop me wanting to go. So, quite a few months ago, we booked the tickets.

The concert took place this last Sunday 28 October and our trip did not get off to the most promising of starts.

The venue was in an arts centre called "The Gate" in an area of Cardiff we had not been to before. However, we did all the ground work, got the address and post code, the phone number, gave the taxi company plenty of notice of the location together with the time we wanted to go.

The driver arrived with no idea of where we were headed or how to get there. He did not have SatNav in his car either. However, after some talking with the taxi company who helped out, we were on our way.

A few minutes before arriving, we got caught in a traffic jam. The driver described it and then asked, "well, what would you do in this situation? Shall we wait or try and find an alternative route? Do you know of one?" Yeh right, of course we do. As I pointed out to him, he is the expert, this is what we were paying him for!

Enough of the journey.

All the concert venues I have visited before have been large stadiums accommodating thousands of people. This was completely different, but suited the occasion very well. It was a room in a small arts centre which made the gathering a little more intimate. We were fortunate enough to sit right in the front row and so we knew he was only a few feet in front of us.

The people in the arts centre were very helpful and not only showed us to our seats but also assisted us in the interval to get drinks. But again, the ground work had already been laid by us in advance.

Dean came on stage just after 7.30. He is 57 years old and you would have thought that maybe his age could be detected in his voice. Far from it. From the very first number, it was obvious that his voice was extremely strong and he was going to have no difficulty at all in singing what he had to offer with tremendous enthusiasm.

What was also brought home to me immediately was that Dean is an extremely talented multi-instrumentalist. He was the only one on stage: no backing, noone to assist with the instrumentation. He played piano, guitar and mandolin, with each instrument taking its own turn during the concert. I understand that he also plays harmonica as well. I felt he was a very talented musician. I could tell from the way he was playing piano particularly, (especially in songs such as "Lydia"), the passion and love he has for his music. That really did come across to me very intensely.

What made the evening even more enjoyable for me was the fact that I was quite unfamiliar with some of his album tracks. So I was able to hear some of these for the first time. All the lyrics are well-written and usually have a very clear message. But some are also very funny, such as "Death to the Neighbours". In between the songs, Dean was talking to us and he is a bit of a comedian on the quiet. For example, after the first song, he said that he wanted us to be silent for a while to pay tribute to the BBC service Cefax which had recently stopped transmitting.

We thoroughly enjoyed the evening. Dean was on stage for just short of two hours. We were lucky afterwards to meet him. He is an extremely nice guy. I remember when we were setting up our internet radio station Team-FM, he was gracious enough to record some ID's for us we could use between songs.

To celebrate Dean and his music, we stopped at McDonald's to get some food as it was quite late. (One of Dean's singles was called "McDonald's Girl" and he told us a little about that during the concert).

I hope people have enjoyed reading this. I would definitely pay to see Dean Friedman in concert again. If you want to keep updated with his music and pictures, you can go here:
http://www.deanfriedman.com/

But there is one note I would like to end on.

There is one song he sang fairly early on into the concert I had not heard before and it really struck a chord with me. I am sure many of us have been in this situation before in our lives, whether we would like to admit it or not. I certainly have. Here are some of the lyrics to one of Dean's songs, reproduced here with his permission.

"I see your favourite picture’s no longer on the wall,
I couldn’t help but notice all your luggage in the hall.
Before you head off on your way
There’s one thing I’d like to say:

I’m not sorry to see you go,
Don’t bother to stay in touch.
There’s one thing you ought to know, sweet darlin’,
I never really liked you all that much!

Now don’t think this failed relationship’s a reflection of your worth,
It’s just you come from where you do and I come from earth!
Maybe the only reason for this little glitch
Is the fact that you’re a stupid bitch.

Please don’t be insulted if I never wanna See ya,
It’s got nothing whatever to do with the time you gave me gonorrhoea.
I just need to make a brand new start
With a woman who actually has a heart."

(Edited lyrics from "I never really liked you all that much". You can listen to the full song by purchasing Dean's album, "Squirrels in the attic".

Unexpectedly, yesterday was a very busy day for me at home. When I get up in the morning, I do an email catchup, look at what has been happening on Twitter and that includes reading news stories on the web to keep my current affairs knowledge up-to-date.

One thing people were talking about was that a Twitter client a number of blind people use, (The Qube), wasn't sending tweets although it could receive them.

I am not going into the complexities of why that happened. That has been covered extensively elsewhere. But a great deal of the time was spent using an alternative client called Tween, which I had seen reference to in earlier weeks.

Fortunately, there were some excellent JAWS scripts around to get us started and particularly suppressed JAWS speech output when composing tweets. But I felt there needed to be some useful additions to improve the user experience, and so with the permission of the original script developer I added to his code. This involved writing scripts, (including figuring out quite a problem relating to enabling and disabling automatic messages in the System Tray and Notifications Area), and of course, testing them. It takes just as long to test scripts and provide documentation for them as it does to write them and I had several JAWS versions to test including identifying which ones would work and those which would not.

As I suspected, many people, (me included), have gone back to using the Qube now it is working. However, I will not be uninstalling Tween, nor will I be ceasing ongoing development of the Tween scripts. That was a question which came up several times yesterday. I will continue to support them, improve them and make changes to them. Yesterday was rather like a fire practice we had when in school. The fire drill is now over. If we like we can go back to how we were using Twitter before. Any Twitter client could stop functioning at any time, and it is always good to have something to revert to and to try if something stops working. I remember when I produced an audio tutorial for Windows 95 and 98 back in the late 90's I think, one of the first points I made was that Windows gives you a lot of ways of being able to do exactly the same thing, and it is always good to know of as many as possible.

Exploring and using Tween was an education for me in that it has lead me to thinking the interface may be excellent for those people using voice recognition technology. Some people simply cannot use the keyboard for many reasons and I think Tween would be ideal for them.

But that really isn't the point of this blog post.

What amazes me is the way some blind people behave towards others when particular events are discussed, and the list is growing. Most commonly, it relates to screen-readers, internet radio, Apple V. Android devices, and now, Twitter clients. I've seen on Twitter yesterday and today people being bullied about the Twitter client they are using. Some people have said for example that those wishing to exchange messages on Twitter were being disloyal to the Qube client by going to another. This is complete nonsense. If something isn't working, you go and find an alternative. For some people, Twitter is their window on the world particularly if they are alone, just as chat clients are, including audio chat rooms in which people can meet and get to know each other. The need to access services is still there so a way needs to be found to use them. To say one is being disloyal is pathetic.

This approach and atitude comes hot on the heels of a "comparison" recently distributed of the two screen-readers, JAWS and NVDA. Personally I wouldn't have said it was a true comparison of what each is capable of delivering. I remember over ten years ago a group of us delivered a Main Menu presentation comparing the functions of JAWS and Window-Eyes, and I am certain we all did that in a professional down to earth manner. I felt, in part, that this was not a comparison but a scathing attack against its developers. But again, it is excellent that people have a choice about what it is they wish to use, and in many cases, it is good to have more than one screen-reader on a computer for accomplishing different tasks, in the same way that it is helpful to have two internet browsers installed. It doesn't mean that one is better than the other, it just means that both offer different things. There's a screen-reader I can think of which I've tried, and I just don't like the way it delivers content. But I would never dream of condemning anyone for using it or telling anyone they shouldn't because it does offer good things too. Indeeed, I've heavily promoted what that product has to offer.

I've also beenin the company of people in a professional setting where some individuals have introduced remarks so as to be vicious about a particular manufacturing or software developing company, even if no reference had previously beenmade to it.

So please people. Try not to condemn others for what they use. It is their personal choice to use a product or a service which they particularly enjoy and benefit from. The most important thing is that we as blind people can effectively communicate and have access to so many services on the internet. I think we are living in fantastic enlightened times. As one of our past Prime Ministers Harold Macmillan once said, we've never had it so good.

Introduction

The purpose of this article is to give musicians, vocalists and audio production engineers a summary of resources which are available in respect of audio recording and editing using Microsoft Windows on the PC, together with my own experiences and concerns in this field.

Software

This article will focus upon two software products, CakeWalk Sonar and Sony's Sound Forge Pro.

I have used Sound Forge for about 13 years and I have just begun to use Sonar. Sound Forge is a single track editor and producer. This means it is not multi-track software. While it is true you can easily mix sound on sound, overlaying items as you go, you cannot lay out sound with each item on its own individual track. Having said that, it is the ideal tool for audio recording, mixing, post production, editing and restoration. I've used a few audio editors in the past, but Sound Forge to my mind has always beaten them all, added to which it comes bundled with a number of remastering and audio processing effects which are incredibly useful.

Sonar on the other hand is a multi-track audio platform which allows you to undertake many audio-related tasks. Not only can you lay out items on their own individual tracks, but it is ideal for musicians, those who wish to do karaoke, or work with music and sound purely in an audio capacity. In the case of Karaoke as a basic example, you can have the music on one track and sing on another while hearing the music at the same time. If the results are not satisfactory, you can retake all or part of the song again until you have something which is to your liking. Added to this, the V Vocal editor allows for manual or automatic pitch change together with other characteristics in fine detail. Audio effects are also added, such as reverb, equalisation, normalisation, etc. Sound Forge also contains these other tools in addition to noise reduction. Both products also allow for "audio scrubbing", which enables you to hear snatches of the audio as you move through it.

Product Accessibility

In terms of accessibility to screen-readers, my focus here is JAWS for Windows because that is what I use almost exclusively. It is also the product which grabs the most attention and publicity in this area.

My feeling is at the moment that the outlook for visually impaired people is grim. If you feel that you would like the latest and greatest releases of these two professional mainstream products then I am afraid you are going to be very disappointed.

Sound Forge access is quite straightforward. An excellent set of JAWS Scripts are available written by Jim Snowbarger who began writing them for Sound Forge 4.5 (when I started to use it), and has maintained them through to version 10.0, the latest. I am often asked whether Sound Forge can be used without scripts. It can, but not nearly as efficiently and there are some dialogs which are not as accessible. For example, when undertaking fine editing, there is information you need to know quickly, such as the total file length, the elapsed position, the amount of time selected, level metres and many other components. There is also the ability to "audio scrub" in various ways, and this makes for extremely precise and smooth editing. Sound Forge offers this facility without the scripts, but it is by no means as detailed or as fast. The scripts are 30 dollars, and I think if you are investing hundreds of dollars in Sound Forge you may as well spend the other 30 and get the scripts too. It makes no sense not to do so.

There is a fundamental problem with Sound Forge 9 and 10 with its "Mix Paste" dialog which is very unfortunate because it is one of the dialogs you will use most often. Sony have made some of the controls inaccessible to JAWS and at this current point there is no solution to this. To me, this is a very critical issue. If it is possible, you may wish to consider installing Sound Forge 8 with the appropriate scripts. If you are unable to obtain version 8, I suggest purchasing 10.0, and then explain the problem to Sony and ask for a downgrade to 8.0 which they should be able to do. After my discussions with them, Sony accept there are accessibility issues with that dialog. It is not ideal, since Sound Forge 8 is not meant to be used with Windows7.

With Sonar, things are a little more complex.

There are two JAWS scripting solutions for Sonar which provide a high degree of accessibility. These are JSonar and CakeTalking for Sonar.

JSonar is an open source project developed by a dedicated group of volunteers and is consequently freely available to download and use. CakeTalking costs 289 dollars as an internet download and was developed 13 years ago by a highly accomplished JAWS script writer David Pinto and is sold by Dancing Dots, linked to above.

The bad news is that neither of these products functions with Sonar X1 or X2. X1 was released in late 2010, with X2 only recently being made available. This is not good because not only are we a couple of years behind in terms of accessibility, but Sonar 8.5 is extremely difficult to obtain, almost impossible. Dancing Dots do have some copies available (while stocks last), and CakeWalk in the United States also can supply it if asked, although it could take a while to reach you if you live outside America. As far as I know, noone yet has attempted a scripting solution for X1 or X2 which is very disappointing.

We decided to go for CakeTalking, but here are the differences as I see them.

Apart from the very high quality access to almost all of Sonar's features, the main thing CakeTalking has going for it is its 400-page tutorial and excellent setup documentation, which you do need as there is quite a lot to do in terms of configuration. If you follow the instructions however, it does work perfectly. But the inclusion of the tutorials really did clinch it for us. While the JSonar website does have a number of small guides available, if you are a beginner particularly it's a no-brainer. You go for CakeTalking.

The drawback to the tutorial is the way in which it is formatted. It is a very large HTML document which contains no heading markup. While links are included, JAWS does not retain the position you were in when you invoke the Links List. So you read a passage, realise you want to refer back to a previous lesson, and so bring up the Links List. On a standard web page, the focus is within the point of the Links List where you stopped reading. It doesn't work like that in this document, focus is at the end of the list. So you need to go back to the top of the list and start working your way down. While I used Placemarkers to good effect, I think if you want to produce an HTML rendering of your instructions, by default it really ought to include correctly structured headings.

While JSonar does have some JAWS script-related keystrokes included, its approach is generally to allow you to use the Sonar native keystrokes. CakeTalking's approach is to develop keystrokes and strategies to allow you to get the job done quickly and easily, and if that means modifying the approach a little, so be it.

CakeTalking contains a number of dialogs which allow you to manipulate Sonar in specific ways or to invoke JAWS user preferences. JSonar uses the Adjust JAWS Options dialog instead into which their user preferences are placed, such as to enable or disable specific features, and I have to say I prefer this approach since users will already be used to using it.

CakeTalking should really be used with JAWS version 11. I've tried using it with 13, but some aspects of the interface did not function as the tutorial said they should, and also there were a number of system instability difficulties. JAWS version 11 can however be used on a Windows7 64 bit system if you have it, so apart from the inconvenience of maybe having to switch JAWS versions to use Sonar, this isn't too big a deal. JSonar can be used with JAWS versions up to and including 14.

CakeTalking provides you with a lot of additional detail about how to interact with specific controls (of which there are many), and gives you reminders of how to work within individual dialogs. I think with JSonar some help is available, but the process of obtaining it isn't quite as detailed (or as automatic) as is found in CakeTalking.

If you are a user of Braille, there is a great deal of Braille support in JSonar. They've obviously spent a lot of time on that. CakeTalking has no braille support at all that I can see. If there is, I haven't been able to get it to work.

Conclusion

In summary, if you take time to purchase the correct older versions of the mainstream software together with choosing appropriate scripting packages to go with them, you are going to get a very accessible solution to serve your audio production needs. My concern is that as blind people we are used to listening to audio and so this is an area of work where we should excel and to be able to make a living from. The fact that time is slipping by and we are getting further and further behind in terms of accessing recent software versions worries me.

It is worth noting that Sonar does not allow you (it would seem) to mix items by fading a main audio source down midway through, overlay speech, and then raise the volume again. This would be particularly helpful since the "Mix Paste" dialog in Sound Forge 9 and 10 is inaccessible. One way of overcoming this is to purchase a "Control Surface". This is a midi hardware device attached to the computer which will then allow you to assign physical faders on the device to volume levels or other aspects of Sonar. You could then manually accomplish the fades in real-time, and in fact that may even produce superior results to what Sound Forge can do because, to my mind, there is nothing like human input into fading, whether you are producing audio or even broadcasting it. If you decide to go down this route, there is an accessible application developed by Raised Bar Computing, allowing a number of midi devices to communicate with your screen-reader so as to output useful information. This application is free to download.

So, do you need both pieces of software, Sound forge and Sonar? That depends what you want to do. Within the context of my exploration into Sonar thus far, while I am very glad I have it I also really do appreciate what Sound Forge can do as well. I can see audio production jobs where both would be important. To emphasise this a little further, it is possible to send specific files you create in Sonar directly into Sound Forge without having to save them first and then open them in SF.

As a final note, you may decide that you wish to purchase some outside consultancy to help you get the most from what is very expensive software and this would be good advice to follow. Astec (the company I work for) can provide installation, configuration and training on all aspects of audio production. Please contact us for details.

If you live in the United States, please contact Dancing Dots who can provide you with details of tuition.