Our Christmas Gift to Leasey Users. Version 4.02 Build 5 is Available!

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.