brianhartgen's blog

All the below features without exception have been suggested by users of J-Say.

The command, Select a Program, has been changed. The purpose of this command is to bring into view a list of programs you have running. This has been changed significantly to reduce the spoken output as you are navigating the list. Use the commands, Move Down, and, Move Up, to navigate the list. The command, Confirm That, will switch to the desired program.

A full complement of commands exists to control the magnification component of ZoomText Fusion. Approximately 70 percent of all our new customers are using Fusion, so it made complete sense to do this. For example, you can switch to the Fusion interface, controlling many of the visual enhancements together with magnification.

Voice commands are included to work with the new Picture Smart feature of JAWS 2019. The purpose of this feature is to scan a picture and it will return a text description to provide guidance as to what might be in it.

A new interface has been created to add words to the JAWS Dictionary, either globally or on an application by application basis. While the Dictionary Manager is accessible, this will make it quick and easy for less experienced users.

The Copy Email Address command will now respect working in corporate and Microsoft Exchange environments where the Email address may not be displayed. It is therefore easier to create J-Say Contacts.

You can now more easily get to the Default file when working in JAWS Quick Settings or the Dictionary Manager.

You can now access Paste Special by voice for Microsoft Word and Microsoft Outlook.

There are some other small improvements as well which will be fully listed as and when the next update is released. It is expected this will be on or around 15 april.

Since we produced the free JAWS scripts for the Zoom conferencing platform, we've received some very positive feedback regarding them. The free scripts are not going away and will remain available to you at any time. Moreover, if the Zoom client changes to the extent that modifications are required, they will be made to the free scripts so that at least the existing functionality still works.

However, people have requested additional features and improvements. So on 25 February, we will be launching the professional edition of the scripts. Just to answer two immediate questions which may arise: the scripts will function with JAWS Home as well as JAWS Professional. They will also function with the free version of Zoom and not just for Zoom Pro Account users.

The scripts will offer the following additional benefits above and beyond what is available currently.

Zoom alerts can be suppressed globally. This is probably the most important feature and is worth purchasing these scripts just for that. Many organisations are now using Zoom to host their meetings, and you often will hear "X has left the meeting", or, "Y has joined the meeting", together with text chat messages. Particularly for presenters this is extremely disconcerting, and when people are having group discussions and users have JAWS output through computer speakers, it is incredibly distracting to all participants. So you are able to disable these alerts irrespective of the application in which you are focused.

Even if alerts are disabled, you may still want to be notified of people who have raised their hand prior to asking a question. Such alerts can be enabled if required so you only hear about those.

A keystroke exists to give a quick summary of who has raised their hand, perhaps to ask a question.

Technical Support will be available for these scripts. The free scripts offer no facility for technical support at all.

Documentation will exist to support the new JAWS scripts. Documentation does not exist for the freely available scripts.

Doubtless as we move through 2019 we will receive more feature suggestions which will be very welcome. If you would like to place an order for the scripts so as to receive them on the release date, You can do so here.

We hope people find the new added functionality helpful in delivering (and being a part of) presentations and classes when using Zoom. If you would like to suggest any new features and improvements, feel free to write to brian@hartgenconsultancy.com.

Hi to all

A very happy new year to everyone. We hope it has started out really well for you.

We're straight back into developing products and training courses now for 2019. This message contains brief details of what is to come.

Last Call for PowerPoint Training.

This is the last week to subscribe to our PowerPoint training class. We've just got enough subscribers to run the course, and quite a few more people have expressed interest but have not subscribed yet. If you were thinking about it, please feel free to visit this page and sign up before Monday. You can find more details at
www.hartgen.org/power

J-Say Update.

A new update to our J-Say voice recognition software is now being worked on and we expect to release it in February. Without exception, we've always brought to J-Say current users several updates a year and this is the first major one since J-Say 17 came along. It will include improved support for the Dragon Correction Box, and also a full complement of commands to control the magnification element of ZoomText fusion which people have been asking for. Many organisations particularly in America are moving over to Fusion now and the voice commands will complement the functionality nicely.

Leasey.

The next update to Leasey will be with users during the first quarter of the year. People seemed pleased with the Christmas update and some major feature suggestions have come our way, so those will be worked on first.

Tek Talk from Accessible World.

Finally, we're very pleased to let people know that we are the subject of next week's Tek Talk from Accessible World at
www.accessibleworld.org.

This is always a great pleasure to do, and will take place on Monday at 8 PM US Eastern time. We'll talk about many of the features of our products released last year together with our training courses. There will be plenty of opportunity to ask questions as well. It would be wonderful if you were part of it.

We'll be in touch with more news soon and have a great January!

Hi to all

Very close to Christmas, a new Leasey update is available. This will need to be downloaded from our website and installed over the top of the existing version due to the additional files involved.

Before I get to what has changed in this update, please bare in mind that we are very close to Christmas now. We are closed as of tomorrow, 21 December. During that time, technical support is given on a limited basis with the most urgent queries being dealt with as an absolute priority. If you think you may have problems installing the update, you may want to wait until the new year. I do not believe this update is absolutely critical to have.
Any bug reports will be attended to in the new year.

If you previously have been provided with a manual activation file, be sure you know where it is located first before you go ahead and install the new update, so that you can apply it after the event.

The new version is available at
www.hartgen.org/leaseydemo

Note that links to the previous release are also included in the event that anyone needs to drop back to an older version.

We would like to wish everyone a merry Christmas and new year and thank you for your support of our company during 2018!

Changes.

Progress Bars are generally given in percentage terms to advise a user of the progress of an event which is taking place in Windows. This could be the installation of a program, but it could also be the downloading of a file from the internet, or perhaps copying a large folder from one storage location to another.

JAWS does give a good indicator as to the percentage of most progress bars. However, Leasey does have a sound scheme, (activated by pressing the Leasey Key then letter O). This has three states: Off, which means speech only. Sounds On, which is self-explanatory, and Sounds with Speech, where you hear both the sounds and the speech; a tutorial mode if you will. The Sounds Scheme allows sounds to represent specific events rather than speech output, for example when a web page loads or when text is being highlighted or selected.

Assuming the Sounds Scheme is enabled, you will hear tones which represent 5 percent increments, with the lowest tone representing 5 percent and the highest 100 percent.
During other percentage increments, you will hear a soft tick sound. While we could have just stopped at the 20 tones, we wanted users to know that progress was occurring at the other percentage points in a discrete way. For example, if a large video file is being copied from an iPhone to a computer, this can take several minutes. The tick sounds will indicate that things are progressing, but if there is a pause in the tick sounds, this should let you know that no further progress is being made.

Naturally, we want users to learn what the sounds represent, so there is a tutorial mode which plays the tones from lowest to highest, together with the soft tick. This is activated by pressing Leasey Key then Windows+P.

Two further notes. There is a setting within JAWS to change the frequency of the progress indicator reports. This is honoured by the Sounds Scheme.

Secondly, in the case of downloading files using Google Chrome, there is no progress bar as such. But with Leasey, you will hear a sound to indicate that a file is downloading, and there is also a mechanism by which you can ascertain the amount of a file which has been downloaded together with the total size of the potential download. This is activated by pressing Leasey Key then Windows+P.

This release of Leasey will also allow you to move to the first or last instance of most web page elements. JAWS already contains the ability to move to the next or previous instance of an element, but to improve productivity, it may be helpful to move to the first and last of these.

For example, when you browse to a new web page, it is likely that JAWS will attempt to set focus to the start of the non-linked text. This means that if you wish to reach the first instance of a Heading or other element, you need to press Control+Home to move to the top of the page, and then press letter H. To say again, you can very quickly move to the first Heading with a keystroke using the new version of Leasey.
Press the Left Bracket key, next to letter P, followed by a quick navigation key such as H, to move to the first instance of an element.
Press the Right Bracket Key, followed by a quick navigation key, to move to the last instance of an element.

In Microsoft Word, there are now keystrokes to move to the first, last, next or previous spelling or grammatical error, even if the Quick Navigation keys are not enabled. This will assist in moving through a document to check spelling.
These are:
Next spelling error, alt+Semicolon.
Previous spelling error, alt+apostrophe.
First spelling error, alt+colon.
Last spelling error, alt+At sign.
Next Grammatical error, alt+Left Bracket.
Previous Grammatical error, alt+Right Bracket.
First Grammatical error, alt+Left Brace Bracket.
Last Grammatical error, alt+Right Brace Bracket.

When the keystrokes are pressed to shut down or restart the computer, a message is spoken advising this is going to take place.

In iTunes, new keystrokes have been added to skip forward and back through an item which is playing, such as a music track. These ensure that the response is far quicker and more reliable.
Press F12 to skip forward and F11 to skip back.

Hopefully, a problem has been corrected in the Skype 8 access so as to move to the history list in Text Chat when a group conversation is in progress.

Other improvements include keyboard responsiveness in many areas and copying files and folders using LeaseyTags.

Introduction.

Put simply, Microsoft PowerPoint is a way of creating and delivering presentations so as to communicate your ideas in dynamic and visually compelling ways. In most cases, when a slideshow presentation is delivered to an audience, its purpose is to supplement the subject matter you are talking about.

If you have a story to tell, or an important message to get across, PowerPoint can help you communicate it in a number of ways. Your presentations can contain text, graphics, sound, movies and other types of information. Each presentation can be displayed on the computer to an audience and each slide can be set to move on in different ways:- either automatically after a set period of time, or manually by the presenter. PowerPoint can be a good way of showing information to a group of people as it can give structure to the presentation, make the subject more interesting and allow photos, videos etc to be used within it.

What should be immediately obvious from the above paragraphs however is that PowerPoint is visually demanding. However as blind people, particularly when in education or employment, we need to be in a position where we can create PowerPoint presentations. We might be able to communicate our message by speaking effectively, but in today's world of multi-media presentations, we have to be at the forefront of delivering more dynamically challenging content too. By the end of our latest training course, "You've Got the Power", we hope you will be able to do just that.

Course Objectives.

Due to their being a good deal of terminology associated with creating PowerPoint presentations, on this occasion we will not list each and every topic the training course is expected to cover. However, we do want to outline several core objectives the course hopes to fulfil.

• Customising PowerPoint for optimum accessibility.
• Orientation of the PowerPoint screens and using the Ribbon to good effect.
• Creating a PowerPoint presentation. This would include learning about title, sub-title and content placeholders, and inserting pictures, audio, video and images into slides, bulleted lists, adjusting font size and style, adjusting foreground and background colours, applying alternative text to images.
• Working with PowerPoint in an accessible way. Moving between, and in and out of, objects. The JAWS vocabulary for describing objects. Determining if text overflows the object. JAWS keystrokes for PowerPoint.
• Editing existing slides: Navigating through slides, rearranging slides, inserting additional slides, deleting slides, changing the size of slides.
• Applying an image as a background.
• Working with tables in presentations.
• Delivering a presentation to the audience. Slideshow view, moving through slides manually and at prescribed intervals.
• Adding public and private Speaker's Notes.
• Creating accessible PowerPoint presentations.
• Creating hand-outs for your audience.
• The differences between PowerPoint access in JAWS 2019 and earlier.
• Effective use of JAWS Picture Smart.

While this training course teaches you how to use PowerPoint in an accessible way, it goes much further. As blind people, one of the things we must do is to ensure the quality of our presentation is delivered in a way which is equal to those delivered by sighted colleagues. The last thing we would want is for people to "have to make allowances" because we have little or no vision. Furthermore, there is a more urgent need for our presentations to be very effective to prove that we are on an equal footing.
Therefore, a discussion will take place concerning:

• How to ensure you can refer to your notes without disturbing the visual focus. You want the audience attention to be on what you are saying and your awesome content. You would not want to see, for example, focus moving into a word processor for you to check your notes.
• How to read notes for each slide on a Braille display without moving focus away from the slideshow.
• How to hear your notes discretely if you are not a Braille reader.
• Summarising your points pertaining to the subject matter effectively.

Lastly, if you purchase the training course, you will be provided with specially written JAWS script files. These will allow you to work with your presentations in an accessible way together with providing many shortcut keys which are not available to you at the current time. For example, a special mode has been created for Braille users so that you can access notes for each slide without disturbing visual focus.

Who is the Course For?

The training course is for anyone who wishes to learn how to create presentations from the outset. In order to participate in the training course, you will need JAWS for Windows version 2018 or 2019. You will also need access to Microsoft PowerPoint 2016 or 2019, which is part of Office 2016 or 365.

If I Purchase the Course, What Will I Receive?

The course will give to you:

• An audio recording of each of the five lessons in MP3 format. This can be played as many times as necessary to reinforce topics which have been covered.
• Brief text documentation comprising a list of keystrokes to reinforce topics covered in the lesson and also a full description of field captions for modifying pictures.
• The JAWS scripts mentioned above.
• Access to an Email list to ask questions.

Costing.

The cost of the course is £50 which is currently 62 US dollars.

Alternatively, anyone can purchase the course by sending an Email to jaws@hartgen.org, whereupon a fully accessible electronic invoice will be sent to you which can be paid through PayPal or any major credit or debit card. Orders can also be placed by telephone:

If you would like to read the views from participants of our previous courses, please Visit our Training area.

Conclusion.

While for best effect we would always recommend that your presentations are checked by a sighted person to achieve the highest quality, there is a lot that you can do to construct them effectively in order that visual input is minimal. You certainly have a lot of control when delivering the presentation to your packed audience. Learn how to take control of this visually demanding application so that your boss can say, "Yes, You've Got the Power!"

Hi to all

Believe it or not, Leasey is approaching her fourth birthday. This time of year in that regard is something we generally do not think much about. But time has certainly flown by quickly. We devised the concept of Leasey early in 2014, spent six months licking her into shape, and she was officially ready on 8 December 2014. There was a point when we thought she would not hit the streets, but that story is for another time.

We're so glad that many people are still benefiting from, and enjoying, working with Leasey. We have a new release coming your way quite soon. It will be released on week beginning 17 December, and certainly before the 20th as that is when we close our business for the Christmas holidays this year.

So, what can you expect in this release?

Progress Bar Indicator Sounds.

It was suggested to us through our Leasey public Email list that it would be good if JAWS could play sounds to indicate the status of a progress bar. These are generally given in percentage terms to advise a user of the progress of an event which is taking place in Windows. This could be the installation of a program, but it could also be the downloading of a file from the internet, or perhaps copying a large folder from one storage location to another.

JAWS does give a good indicator as to the percentage of most progress bars. However, Leasey does have a sound scheme, (activated by pressing the Leasey Key then letter O). This has three states: Off, which means speech only. Sounds On, which is self-explanatory, and Sounds with Speech, where you hear both the sounds and the speech; a tutorial mode if you will. The Sounds Scheme allows sounds to represent specific events rather than speech output, for example when a web page loads or when text is being highlighted or selected.

We thought long and hard about the best way of implementing sounds to indicate progress events. It would have been simplicity itself to produce computer generated tones to represent percentages 1 to 100; child's play in fact. But not only can this be overwhelming for some people, but also it doesn't accurately let the user know the precise percentage point reached. For example, if we were to do that, and played a person the tone which represented 47 percent, there is no certainty that he or she could identify its true value. So here is how our first version of this feature works.

Assuming the Sounds Scheme is enabled, you will hear tones which represent 5 percent increments, with the lowest tone representing 5 percent and the highest 100 percent. These are professionally recorded sounds as we hope you would expect from our company.

During other percentage increments, you will hear a soft tick sound. While we could have just stopped at the 20 tones, we wanted users to know that progress was occurring at the other percentage points in a discrete way. For example, if a large video file is being copied from an iPhone to a computer, this can take several minutes. The tick sounds will indicate that things are progressing, but if there is a pause in the tick sounds, this should let you know that no further progress is being made.

Naturally, we want users to learn what the sounds represent, so there is a tutorial mode which plays the tones from lowest to highest, together with the soft tick.

Two further notes. There is a setting within JAWS to change the frequency of the progress indicator reports. This is honoured by the Sounds Scheme.

Secondly, in the case of downloading files using Google Chrome, there is no progress bar as such. But with Leasey, you will hear a sound to indicate that a file is downloading, and there is also a mechanism by which you can ascertain the amount of a file which has been downloaded together with the total size of the potential download.

Moving to Web Page Elements Quickly.

The next release of Leasey will also allow you to move to the first or last instance of most web page elements. JAWS already contains the ability to move to the next or previous instance of an element, but to improve productivity, it may be helpful to move to the first and last of these.

For example, when you browse to a new web page, it is likely that JAWS will attempt to set focus to the start of the non-linked text. This means that if you wish to reach the first instance of a Heading or other element, you need to press Control+Home to move to the top of the page, and then press letter H. To say again, you can very quickly move to the first Heading with a keystroke using the new version of Leasey.

Other Improvements.

In Microsoft Word, there are now keystrokes to move to the first, last, next or previous spelling or grammatical error, even if the Quick Navigation keys are not enabled. This will assist in moving through a document to check spelling.

When the keystrokes are pressed to shut down or restart the computer, a message is spoken advising this is going to take place.

In iTunes, new keystrokes have been added to skip forward and back through an item which is playing, such as a music track. These ensure that the response is far quicker and more reliable.

Hopefully, a problem has been corrected in the Skype 8 access so as to move to the history list in Text Chat when a group conversation is in progress.

Other improvements include keyboard responsiveness in many areas and copying files and folders using LeaseyTags.

We do have some more features in the works, but time is now running short and Christmas is drawing near. But Leasey users will have all of the above very soon. We hope you continue to enjoy using Leasey!

Several weeks ago, we were asked if a training course could be created to teach people how to use Microsoft PowerPoint with JAWS. People not only wanted to learn how to prepare visually appealing PowerPoint presentations, (including adding graphical images), but also how to add music or sound to them, run the presentations as slide shows and add or review Speakers Notes.

This training course has now been researched and it is possible this could be produced in January of 2019. Teaching this subject however is very high risk in a number of areas.

As blind people managing our small company, we will need to ensure that visual assistance is obtained so as to include visually appealing graphics of the required dimensions. But most importantly, it is our view that the support currently provided in terms of screen-reading with PowerPoint from Office 365 is simply not sufficient for what we need to do. Conveying this subject in easy to understand terms was always going to be tricky, but to do so when the access you will receive in this area has shortcomings is even more problematic.

A basic example would be accessing the Speakers Notes. These are notes or reminders to you, the person delivering the presentation, as to what you can say above and beyond what is stated in the slide the audience is viewing. There used to be a keystroke which would allow focus to be set to that area of the screen. This is no longer possible. Moreover, if you are using a Braille display, how are you going to read those notes without disturbing visual focus away from the application? A mechanism for listening to those notes also needs to be found. There are also a large number of other inaccessible areas which need some attention.

To that end, as with all our training courses, we would need please a commitment from anyone interested to make the project viable. This would allow for the delivery of the training course together with bringing the existing JAWS support up-to-date.
We have had a small number of people expressing an interest in this subject so far, but whether it goes ahead really does boil down to what kind of commitment we do receive.

The training course would be delivered over a four-hour period in January of 2019. It would include details of many aspects of creating presentations in an accessible way, identifying (as far as possible) whether the presentations were visually acceptable, navigating through slides, working with visual themes, using tables and bulleted lists, editing presentations, delivering your presentation to an audience, and more. A full course outline would be presented if the training course goes ahead.

If you would like to purchase this training course, please write to brian@hartgenconsultancy.com. We will then send to you an invoice for payment. Assuming we have enough committed people to make the course viable, then we will present the details formally on our website with a full course outline. The cost would be £50 which is currently $62. We would ideally need to hear from you by 7 December 2018 because that will give sufficient time for the JAWS scripting work to go ahead prior to the commencement of the training course in 2019.

If we do not receive a sufficient response, unfortunately we cannot take this project further because there are many hours of work ahead even before a training course of this magnitude can start to be prepared.

We very much look forward to hearing from anyone interested in what could be an interesting venture.

Hi to everyone!

There is so much happening surrounding our products and the new JAWS 2019 update I felt it better to put it all in one place so you knew what to expect and when.
There is a lot of detail here, so I've divided it into Headings with appropriate links to information.

Don't forget that if you want to catch up with all the new features in JAWS 2019, we have an ideal opportunity to do that in our latest training course scheduled for 7 November. You can find out all the details here but it's a good chance to bring people up to speed. I would encourage you to get onto that if you can.

According to Vispero in yesterday's FSOpenLine, JAWS 2019 is expected to be released either on Tuesday 30 October or a little sooner. Because we have to plan events, we are going for Tuesday as the starting point.

So here is the schedule.

30 October.

On Tuesday 30 October, we will release Leasey Advanced and Total Package for use with JAWS 2019 and earlier. The beta testers will get the final build of this today so we're definitely on track with this one. Also on the same day, a LeaseyBite should be produced detailing how to install Leasey into your new JAWS version and how to bring your settings across from the previous one.

31 October.

On Wednesday 31 October, we will release the StationPlaylist Scripts for JAWS 2019 and earlier. This set of scripts will function with the StationPlaylist suite of products 5.30 and 5.31.

There are a small number of new features, including the ability to find out how much time has elapsed in a recorded show, and a new mode for Braille users. Modifications have also been made to the scripts for the SPL Encoder.

Celebrate on 5 November!

On Monday 5 November, there's a double celebration! We will be releasing the first version of J-Say 17. This will ensure that Dragon NaturallySpeaking Professional Individual users can take advantage of the functionality in JAWS 2019 through complete hands-free voice commands.

Historically people have had to wait a few weeks for this to be available after a new JAWS release. But on this occasion, we've made the decision to at least provide compatibility straight away for JAWS 2019 and add features at a later date. Updating to the latest JAWS release is important, which is why Vispero have created their new Home program where a user can pay on an annual basis for a JAWS Home licence. We think a lot of people are going to take advantage of this, as it is the most cost effective way of moving up to the latest release of JAWS if you have fallen behind over the years. This is why we are providing our new JAWS training course, and ensuring all our products are compatible as quickly as possible.

Our beta testers have been working hard to ensure everything is working with JAWS 2019, and although for a number of reasons this has taken longer than we envisaged, we are now almost ready. The new J-Say 17 will also contain a set of scripts and voice commands for Skype version 8, with which some of our users are already familiar.

Also on 5 November, we will be releasing J-Say version 1.0 in German!

We have partnered with TFA Technik Für Alle GmbH, who have particular expertise in supplying, supporting and training people in the use of Dragon NaturallySpeaking. We will post more details at the appropriate time. I will say however that this has been an enormous undertaking on the part of two companies to ensure that all the voice commands, JAWS functionality and documentation are translated into German and are working as they should be.

We are extremely proud to work with TFA Technik Für Alle GmbH to bring voice input/output technology to the people of Germany. We've always said that we will only localise a product if we're absolutely confident that the documentation is of a good standard and that people are going to get the best level of support, imperative for people who are blind and who may have additional disabilities. I firmly believe we have that partnership in place.

What Else is New?

Our Zoom Conferencing scripts have been updated yesterday. Feel free to get the latest build! You will also find that our training course for Skype version 8, together with the Skype scripts for JAWS, are now available to purchase as a package. You can find out more information here.
With Skype ersion 7 being retired very soon, again this is an ideal way to learn how to make the transition to the new update. Our training sessions conducted live were I think very thorough in giving people a good grounding in how it works, and the scripts we have provided as part of it considerably enhance the experience.

Finally, we have a small number of people who would like us to deliver a training course in the use of Microsoft PowerPoint. If you are interested in this, do let us know. We do not have enough people at the moment for the course to be viable, so do contact us if appropriate.

Have a good weekend and thank you for using our products!

Introduction.

Now is your chance to get some high quality training on some of the latest features within the screen-reader JAWS for Windows which have been introduced over the past two years. This follows on from our previous popular training course Catching Up with JAWS. Ideal for JAWS users, Trainers, Consultants and anyone interested in the screen-reader!

If you are a person who chooses to upgrade your copy of JAWS on a regular basis, or maybe you've skipped an upgrade or two and you are about to update your computer to JAWS for Windows version 2019, chances are that you may not have had time to get to grips with the latest features the screen-reader offers. While JAWS does contain excellent documentation, there's nothing like someone sitting down with you to explain how many of these new features work.

That's why at Hartgen Consultancy, we've created a short course to enable you to get your JAWS knowledge up-to-date. The course focuses upon the new features included with JAWS versions 2018 and 2019 which you may have missed out on.

With the new annual subscription to JAWS now available starting in the US, (designed to make it easier for people to obtain JAWS or to jump up to the latest release), it's a good chance to get your knowledge updated. Not only that, this training course is ideally suited to users of Zoomtext Fusion too.

Purchasing JAWS is a significant investment, so it is important that you make the most of what you've paid for and that you are taught by someone who fully understands all aspects of using it. You may also be an access technology Trainer, or an I T Lecturer in a College who has a basic awareness of how JAWS works but again is not up to speed with the latest enhancements.

What You Will Learn.

This course is in one session lasting 90 minutes. It is designed for anyone who already understands how to use many functions of JAWS but who would like to gain a greater skill level with the latest features. The features are demonstrated with real world examples so that they make sense.

Topics include:

• New enhancements to the JAWS Startup Wizard.
• JAWS version number change.
• How is JAWS working with Microsoft Edge? What you can do and what you can't do.
• The power of JAWS OCR. How it works with scanners, cameras and files.
• JAWS support for Skype version 8.
• Enhancements within Windows10 and Microsoft Office 2016/365.
• Faster startup time.
• Notification of Spelling Errors in Microsoft applications. How to work with them and disable them.
• Speak character phonetically after pause during character navigation, similar to how VoiceOver functions on an iDevice. How to vary the reporting speed and disable it.
• Audio Ducking in Windows10.
• Catching up with Braille. How has the Braille support changed over time?
• Using JAWS 2019 on the ElBraille.
• Other Tips and Tricks which are hidden away just waiting to be found.

If I Purchase the Course, What Will I Receive?

The course will give to you:

• An audio recording of the lesson;
• A text keystroke summary to cover all topics covered in the lesson.

The audio recording is accessed through a secure area of our website which is only available to course participants.

How to Purchase.

Catching Up with JAWS is priced £30 which is approximately 42 American dollars.

Alternatively, anyone can purchase the course by sending an Email to jaws@hartgen.org, whereupon a fully accessible electronic invoice will be sent to you which can be paid through PayPal or any major credit or debit card. Orders can also be placed by telephone:

If you would like to read the views from participants of our previous courses, please Visit our Training area.
You can also download an extract from one of our previous training courses, "Don't Be Twixt, Be Tween", right here.

Conclusion.

With JAWS 2019 now released, be sure you are at the cutting edge and become familiar with everything new in this upcoming release and its predecessor. You'll be glad you did!

We're very glad to be able to bring you the next update to our product Leasey, which is free to all version 4 users. If you haven't got your hands on version 4 yet, you can upgrade here to keep up with the latest improvements. We brought you a wide range of features a few months ago which you've so far missed out on.

Please read these notes carefully. They explain the changes in the new update, things you should know about support for existing applications, how to install it, and plans for improving access to applications for the rest of the year.

New Improvements.

In brief, these are the new changes to Leasey. More information concerning them can be found in our documentation or in the LeaseyBite audio tutorials numbered 36 to 39.

Skype Version 8.

We now have excellent support for Skype version 8. This will be the version most people will be moving to very soon, so we wanted to ensure the access was as good as it could be.

Highlights include being able to read text chat messages by pressing Control+1 through to Control+0, with Control+1 announcing the most recent message. We've also included a typing indicator sound to alert you as to when someone is typing, considerable improvements when navigating Skype's primary screens, to focus the Skype window from any application so a call can be quickly answered, keystrokes to read or quickly move to Skype credit balance, Status or Mood Text, context sensitive help in many areas, and a full complement of keystrokes in our Leasey Hotkey Help so you can easily get to learn them.
This functionality was demonstrated in LeaseyBite 36.
To learn more about Skype8, please take our training course "Reach for the Skype!"

Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Word.

In Microsoft Outlook, press Insert+A from within the body of an email message so as to bring all attachments into a vertical list for easy navigation. Press Enter on an item to open it.

If you have opened a Microsoft Word document which has been sent to you in an email message, it could be in "Protected View". Press the Leasey Key followed by Control+Shift+U to unprotect it. This is helpful as JAWS is unable to read documents in "Protected View".

When undertaking a search within Microsoft Outlook, press Control+Shift+Enter to set focus to the Search Results list. Press Escape to close the list and return to your mail folder.

Please refer to LeaseyBite 39 for a demonstration of most of this functionality.

OpenTween.

We were able to hit our target and create the functionality for the OpenTween Twitter client which we wanted. Items include:

Pressing Enter to place a tweet into the JAWS Virtual Viewer allows you to read the tweet with the Arrow keys, together with its predecessor in the conversation so as to give you some context.

Pressing Control+F2 will cause JAWS to give a count of the number of mentions in the tweet, rather than reciting all of them. However, there are situations where you will want to quickly discover who has been mentioned, so press Insert+Up Arrow to find out.

Pressing ALT+F3 will enable a feature to cause JAWS to automatically announce whether an item has been retweeted and by whom. It does this before announcing the tweet information and is a very useful feature on a variety of levels.

For more information about OpenTween, please take our training course "Don't Be Twixt Be Tween!"

LeaseyConnect.

Many improvements and fixes have been made to LeaseyConnect, our Address Book for keeping track of contacts. There are no differences in terms of the original documentation, but we've made things a lot smoother and more consistent with speech prompts.
Please refer to LeaseyBite 37 for a demonstration of this functionality.

Rename and Moving of LeaseyNotes.

By customer request, we were asked if we could give you the ability to rename LeaseyNotes, (these are notes you can create anywhere), and also LeaseyCategories under which the notes are filed. In so doing, we've made it possible to rename other items, such as LeaseyAbbreviations, LeaseyCuts and more. To access this area of the product, press the Leasey Key followed by Control+R. Please refer to LeaseyBite 39 for a demonstration of this area.

LeaseyAbbreviations.

The keystroke to create a LeaseyAbbreviation has now been changed from Windows+Semicolon to the Leasey Key followed by Windows+Semicolon. When a LeaseyText is created, you are advised that this is the new keystroke.

Advanced Google Search.

From within the Google component of LeaseySearch, type the letter "A", followed by Enter, to quickly access Google's Advanced Search. Please refer to LeaseyBite 39 for a demonstration of this area.

HTML Assistant.

We've added a number of improvements to the HTML Assistant, a program which guides you through the process of creating HTML code if you have no previous knowledge of it.
Moving back into the HTML Assistant places you at the last item you accessed rather than focusing at the top.
When creating a new paragraph, press the Leasey Key then Enter to create a line break.
Use the Table of Contents Builder to create Same Page links in your webpage or document. Please refer to LeaseyBite 38 for a demonstration of this area.

Items which Have been Removed.

For the time being, we have removed the Spotify support within Leasey. There was a time when we could build on the limited level of accessibility built into Spotify to give access to it. However it has now reached the point where this would take far more time than we have available. We have to focus what resources we have on providing functionality people are expecting and have asked for. We hope to return to this in the future.

Prior to compiling the final build of Leasey this time, we learned that the Column Browser in iTunes is no longer working. JAWS is unable to read out the information in the Column Browser. We hope to have a remedy for this in due course. All other areas of iTunes apart from this seem to be working normally.

Documentation.

Naturally, we have updated all our documentation to reflect the new changes, so be sure to check it for guidance on how to use them.

Moreover, we've placed additional stress on our advice to Leasey Advanced users, which is to use the Hotkey Help to learn the keystrokes for all the features, and place less reliance on the menu system. This is to your advantage. Leasey Advanced is all about accessibility to mainstream applications and to ensure you are more productive. We are teaching you to be more productive via this method.

The documentation also points out at the start of many sections whether a LeaseyBite audio tutorial is available to demonstrate the subject matter.

Updating Your Existing Version of Leasey.

Updating of Leasey this time involves downloading a full installer and running it. There is no need to uninstall your existing product.

Be sure to download the product you are authorised for, either Leasey Total Package or Leasey Advanced. If you are not sure which product you are authorised for, send an email containing your JAWS serial number to support@leaseycentral.com.

If you require assistance in installing the product, and you need a remote support call, again please send us an email so we can arrange an appointment to do this. Please be patient if this is the case as there is always a queue.

When you install the new release, you will find at the bottom of the main categories area of Leasey's Hotkey Help a new item to download the full installer package. Pressing Enter on this item will always download the latest build and ask whether you would like to install it. This was demonstrated in LeaseyBite 39.

If You Have a Problem.

With hundreds of copies of Leasey being used on different machines around the world, there will be problems which we have not foreseen. If you encounter a problem, please send information concerning your difficulty to brian@hartgenconsultancy.com.
Problems will be dealt with in the order they are received. If fixing the problem requires a Leasey update, this could take at least a week or maybe more. Please be patient while we try to reproduce the problem, fix it, send it to our beta testers, have it verified, and then provide an update. As you can see, this is a multi-step process from which we will not deviate.

Please do not alert us to problems via social media. This is not particularly helpful.

Leasey's Future.

We hope you enjoy this new release of Leasey, but we wanted to take this opportunity of outlining plans for the rest of the year which should hopefully reduce the number of questions along these lines we receive.

Development of Leasey will proceed in this order.

JAWS 2019. We expect to release a version of Leasey to be used with JAWS 2019 very soon after it is officially released. Please do not install Leasey into JAWS 2019 until you hear from us. A LeaseyBite will be produced demonstrating how to do this and how to bring all your Leasey settings across to this new version of JAWS.

LeaseyBasic. This is our human speaking interface for complete computer beginners. This works well, however there are ways in which it could be improved upon, particularly for use on the ElBraille. This is our project as we head towards the end of 2018 and will be completed by then.

Conclusion.

We hope you continue to enjoy Leasey. We're delighted with the number of people who see this product as not only a good vehicle for individuals to begin using a computer for the first time, but particularly those who wish to seriously improve efficiency and productivity when using their computers with JAWS. We look forward to completing the work outlined above and to introduce more features in 2019!