J-Say 16.0 Upgrade!

Introduction

We are very proud to bring you the anticipated release of J-Say version 16.0.

This document contains a list of the new features and improvements within J-Say 16.0.
The list of changes in the J-Say 16.0 update for June, and then May 2018, are listed first.

We strongly recommend that you consult the many sections of the updated “Learning Module” in order to discover how to use the new and existing features of J-Say. There have been a number of revisions even to sections of it with which you may have previously been familiar.

You will have been provided with the “Learning Module” documentation in Microsoft Word format. However, you can also access it through the “J-Say Configuration wizard”, or by speaking the command
“Get Help”.

It can also be found on the Windows “Start Menu”, under “All Programs”, “J-Say”, “Learning Module”.

Important Notes.

Changes to supported applications are being made all the time. At the time of writing, these programs include Skype, iTunes and Spotify. During 2018 therefore, we intend to provide J-Say users with at least two major updates throughout the year rather than one. This update for June 2018 is the second of these. It may be necessary to provide more than this but that is the minimum, so as to fix outstanding features and provide new ones. In addition, we’re already designing new features for J-Say 17, to be released at the start of 2019.

J-Say 16 is compatible with JAWS 2018 and earlier, all versions going back to 14.0. With technology changing so rapidly, including Windows itself and Microsoft Office updates, we highly recommend the use of JAWS 2018 if at all possible. But if not, we're still supporting the older releases.

If you are using Office 365 and/or Windows10, we highly recommend the use of Dragon NaturallySpeaking Professional Individual version 15.

Improvements.

Commands in Sleep Mode. This very welcome improvement is back! If using Dragon Professional Individual version 15, you can once again use commands in this mode. These include:

• Microphone On.
• Check Microphone.
• What Time is It.
• Be Quiet.
• Speak Document.
• Speak Window Title, which is a new command.

New Wake Up Sound. You will notice that the sound representing when the microphone is active has changed to be shorter, and of a different tone, to the older sound which has been used for many years.

Speak Phonetic. This command has been added to speak the phonetic representation of the current character under the cursor, such as “Alpha” to represent the letter “A”.

Table Movement. You can now say “Move Forward or Back X Tables”, such as “Move Forward 5 Tables”, to set focus more easily to the required table in a Microsoft Word document. “X” represents 1 through to 10.

Being more responsive. Due to recent internal changes to Dragon in the version 15.3 release, we have been able to take advantage of this functionality, leading to an increased level of stability and responsiveness. You are welcome to download and install Dragon 15.3 now from this page:
http://nuance.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/26894/~/information-o...

It can be installed over the top of your existing version of Dragon without compromising J-Say functionality. You will also notice that the June update to J-Say places less strain on computer resources, especially noticeable on laptops.

Launching items directly with voice commands. This very welcome feature is back. You will be able to launch folders, files and web pages again directly with voice commands of your choosing. For a description of this feature, please refer to Chapter 21 of the Learning Module.

Attachments in Outlook. The most frequent technical support query we receive at the moment relates to managing attachments, either opening them and especially saving them in the correct folder. So an interface has been designed to make this process far easier and works with all releases of Office from 2010 onwards. You can not only open attachments more easily, but also save them into specific folders. Note that this new functionality overrides the “Get Attachments” command, which people have worked with for many years. So before you start working with attachments in Microsoft Outlook, you should refer to Chapter 11 of the Learning Module, specifically the section on working with Email attachments. If you still need help after that, you may like to purchase a small block of remote assistance training from ourselves to assist you with using it.
Note that Chapter 11 also explains how to work with attachments using the older method as provided by Microsoft Outlook if you still wish to work with it.

Spell Mode. The commands, Spell Mode On and Spell Mode Off, now provide spoken feedback to indicate the status.

Implementation of Microphone Status Sounds. We have changed the way microphone status sounds have been implemented. This ensures that whether you are using your voice or the keyboard to engage or disengage the microphone, you should hear the appropriate sounds being played.

J-Say News. Our News app now contains many more news sources for you to browse the latest headlines.

Vocabulary Editor. If you select to see Custom Words only, these are now announced by JAWS as you move through the list.

PDF Files. Moving by units such as paragraphs in PDF documents is now more reliable.

Enhanced Accessibility for Dragon Search Commands. Say, "Search Computer for Timesheets" for example, or, "Search Favourites for BBC Radio". In summary, you can search your Favourites, documents or computer files under key words, and a list of these will be brought back to you. Naturally, J-Say makes the interaction with this interface user friendly, supported by our documentation and the modifications made to JAWS to keep it simple.
Please refer to Chapter 30 of the Learning Module.

Store Shortcut and List of Shortcuts. These can now be accessed directly rather than through the Shortcuts Manager by pressing the J-Say Key then ALT+S for Store Shortcut and ALT+L for List of Shortcuts.

J-Say Shortcuts on the Web. If you create a J-Say Shortcut to a website, the browser of choice is stored along with the location. There are times when people wish to use specific browsers for individual sites they visit, and this will help in that regard.
Internet Explorer is still highly recommended with Google Chrome as a close second.

Support for Google Chrome. This web browser is now a good option to use with J-Say alongside Internet Explorer.

Improved Support for Moving by Heading and Tabbed Pages. Say “Tab 1” through to “Tab 9” to access Tabs directly, or “Next Tab” and “Previous Tab” to move through them sequentially.

The commands to move to the first, next, last and previous headings at specific levels have been enhanced so as to provide a greater level of verbal feedback, for example if a requested heading is unavailable, or the current line which has been reached. Commands also exist to move to individual Tabs which may be open.
A good example of such a command would be “First Heading 1” to move to the first level 1 Heading.

Get the Weather and News. Specifically designed applications have been included to obtain local weather for anywhere in the world, together with local time zone information, and sunrise, sunset, moon rise and moon set. Simply ask your computer to bring back the weather for your town. Additionally, browse over 30 news sources for the latest headlines, including BBC and CNN.

Please refer to Chapter 30 of the Learning Module.

Support for JAWS 2018 Features. Scan a document with a voice command directly from within JAWS without using an external scanning program. This can be done using a camera or flatbed scanner with the command “Scan Document”. You can also operate the new screen-shading feature in JAWS, allowing you to work without displaying your computer generated text to sighted people who may be with you. Say “Toggle Screen Shade”.

Listen to the Radio. The radio directory has been increased to include thousands of online radio stations, thanks to support from the Shoutcast radio directory. Browse categories by voice or request a specific station.
Please refer to Chapter 26 of the Learning Module.

Enhanced Support for Excel and Word tables. The commands for moving through cells in an Excel Workbook have been significantly improved upon. The behaviour in respect of some voice commands to move by rows in tables has also been made more consistent.

Compatibility Considerations

J-Say 16.0 coexists with:

• Microsoft Windows7,
• Microsoft Windows8 and 8.1,
• Microsoft Windows10,
• Microsoft Office 2010 through to 2016 (Microsoft Office 2013 and 2016 are highly

recommended);

• JAWS for Windows versions 14 through to 2018,
• Zoomtext Fusion with JAWS for Windows,
• Dragon NaturallySpeaking Professional version 13, 14 and 15. If you are still running Dragon NaturallySpeaking Professional version 12.5, we can make an installer of J-Say available for you. However, particularly with updates to Microsoft Office and Windows versions, this is not recommended. Indeed, if you are using Microsoft Office 2016/365, Dragon Professional Individual V15 is very strongly recommended.

Instructions for Upgrading

At the time of writing, we are releasing the J-Say update for Dragon version 15 only. This contains significant changes to some of J-Say’s core functions, and we would like to ensure that everything is working correctly before we update the installers for versions 14 and 13. If all goes well, these will be updated fully by the end of July 2018. While beta testing has been carried out, because of these new changes we are preceeding with some caution. To that end, if there is a need to go back to the previous J-Say release, please let us know and we can advise you how to do this or assist you if necessary.
As a point of reference, now we have the new functionality enabled in Sleep Mode, unless finances do not allow for upgrading we would encourage anyone to upgrade to Dragon version 15.

If you are already using J-Say 16, you will have an Email containing a link for the product. Simply download it again using the same link and install it. There is no need to uninstall the previous version of J-Say. Just install over the top.

Because there are so many different builds of the Windows operating systems, and particularly where some folders do not have appropriate permissions for security reasons, we have found situations where the Dragon commands are not being overwritten. For example, if you have installed Dragon 16 before, it is possible that the new commands we have placed into this version may not take effect. In most cases they do, but we want to be thorough and cover all possible scenarios.

How do you know if the commands have taken effect or not?

If you put the microphone to sleep, and you hear the “close door” sound played twice, this is a good indicator. In addition, if from within Microsoft Outlook you use the command “Get Attachments”, and the new Attachments list is not displayed, then the commands have not been updated correctly. You can correct this issue in the following way. Note that you will need to be able to work with the keyboard to undertake this process. If you are struggling to do this in any way, someone may like to work through this procedure for you. Alternatively, please contact us for a remote access session so it can be carried out. The process should not take more than a minute or two.

1. Press Control+Shift+F12 to enter Dragon’s menu system.
2. Press letter “T” then “B” to enter Dragon’s Command Browser. The Command Browser will take some time to load. It could be as much as 30 seconds. You will know when it has loaded because you should hear a term such as, “Command Browser, List Box”.
3. Press ALT+3 and the “Manage” Dialog Box is displayed.
4. Press Control+I and the “Import Commands” Dialog Box is displayed.
5. You now need to browse to the folder where the J-Say commands are located. You will find this file in the folder on Drive “C”, in the folder entitled “J-Say”. The file is called “J-Say.dat”. Go ahead and browse to this file and press Enter.
6. Press Enter again to activate the “All My Commands” Radio Button which is selected by default.
7. On the next screen, press Tab to reach the “Yes to All” Button and press the Space Bar to activate it.
8. A confirmation Dialog Box is displayed stating that the commands have been successfully imported.

If you are upgrading from a previous installation of J-Say 16, you can stop reading these instructions now. You should only continue to read if you are upgrading from a previous release, such as version 15.

When you purchased J-Say 16.0, you will have received an Email containing details of how to download and install the product.

If you think you may be entitled to a free upgrade, (either because you purchased the product after October 2017 or because you hold a current Software Maintenance Agreement), you will need to send your JAWS serial number to jaws@hartgen.org, whereupon we will get you up and running.

If you need remote assistance with the installation or configuration, again, please send this request to us so as to book an appointment.

If you would like to submit a bug report, again please let us know by email. We will aim to respond to such requests as early as possible, however given we have extensive commitments in January and February, do bare in mind that what we consider to be the most urgent bug reports will be treated as higher priority.

The documentation is available to you when you install the product by saying
“Get Help”
Or by locating it from the J-Say Configuration Wizard.

You do not need to uninstall the previous version of J-Say, 15.1, before installing the new version. Please just follow these instructions.

1. Be sure that the computer to host J-Say technology has an active connection to the internet.
2. Log onto the Windows account of the person to be using J-Say. Be sure that the user’s account contains “Administrator Privileges”. Please note that logging onto the Windows account of the person using the technology is a critical step. Many people are not doing this.
3. Download the J-Say 16.0 program, a link for which will have been provided within an Email message following the purchase of a licence. If you have not received such an Email, please send your JAWS serial number to jaws@hartgen.org. Be sure to choose to download the program pertaining to your version of Dragon NaturallySpeaking.
4. Run the J-Say 16.0 installer program, restarting the computer when prompted. This is a new installer to take account of JAWS 2018 and the new VFO naming conventions for JAWS, but we’re pretty confident it works well.
5. Wait for approximately one minute after Microsoft Windows has fully loaded. If an activation file is found, it will be downloaded to the computer and you will be prompted to restart JAWS. Please select the “Yes” Button to comply with this request.