RACHEL BUCHANAN: Hello, everyone, and thank you so much for joining us for FSOpenLine, Freedom Scientific’s global Q&A. This is our show for February of 2022. And before we dig right in, we are going to get started with just a basic few housekeeping things to make sure you know how to get connected with us during this show because we definitely want to hear from you.
So if you’re joining us on Windows using JAWS, and you would like to ask a question, please make sure you joined via Zoom. The best way to do that is to go to freedomscientific.com, find the FSOpen link, and you can find all the join info right there. That way you can raise your hand with ALT+Y, and you can ask a question. The other way you could ask a question is if you’re on a mobile device, and you’re able to join via Clubhouse. So those are the only two ways that we can interact and take your questions.
You can also listen via YouTube Live or Facebook Live, and I think either Twitter or LinkedIn. But those places do not allow you to ask any questions. So make sure you’re here in the right platform, either on Zoom or Clubhouse, if you want to ask a question. And I’m so excited for today. And of course my colleagues are joining me – Glen Gordon, Eric Damery, and Matt Ater – along with several others who are here. But those are our primary hosts, co-hosts. How are you all doing?
GLEN GORDON: Great.
MATT ATER: Doing very good, thank you. And welcome, everybody.
GLEN: Are you excited, Rachel, in particular because you’re going to ask us all embarrassing questions?
RACHEL: So I like to let the customers ask you embarrassing questions.
GLEN: Oh, excellent.
RACHEL: And then I just mute. No. No, no, no. This is always good. They always – there’s always good things brought to the table. So I’m just excited because it’s always fun.
GLEN: I want to mention something that’s come up a couple of times. But since it was discussed on the last FSOpenLine, there was a problem in Microsoft Word where we weren’t properly reading everything from the status bar. And this is one of those situations where we were about to release an update, and because of the feedback from FSOpenLine, we were able to get it into that December update and were able to turn around the fix really quickly. So thank you all for joining us with your ideas. They really do pay off. That’s not the only one we fixed, but that’s probably the most visible one from the last FSOpenLine.
ERIC DAMERY: So February update came out this week. We posted on Tuesday. So far thousands of downloads, and sounds like things are going well. We’re very excited about that and look forward to hearing any feedback. Anything in particular in the February update, Glen, you think we ought to mention?
MATT: Well, I’d like to mention the Zoom change. And I think because there are so many people on the Zoom platform, it’s probably a good one for those who haven’t done their update to hear what was changed. And I don’t know if Eric or Glen want to cover that.
ERIC: Yeah. So in Zoom, when you’re in a Zoom call, you can use the keystroke to silence the notifications that come in. I believe it’s INSERT+ALT+S.
MATT: It’s WINDOWS+ALT+S.
ERIC: WINDOWS+ALT+S, yes. Then that toggles your notifications of things like people coming in and out and hand-raising and things like that. If you’ve toggled them off with that keystroke, the next time you start JAWS and go back into Zoom, the notifications will be back on automatically. So you’re not going to be turning them off forever.
MATT: Because it could be of value to you.
GLEN: And that’s a great thing because if anybody else is like me, I turn things off. I go off. I do other things. And I completely forget that I turn them off. And when I come back next time to my Zoom call, I’m annoyed that nothing is being announced when it comes to notifications. So hopefully this will resolve that.
ERIC: We also have added some voices, 29 new voices with Vocalizer Expressive. Six of those voices are coming in languages that we had previously not included in a voice. So we’re very excited about that, to get some new languages added. The full list of voices including two U.S. English voices are on the What’s New page. So be sure you read through that. You can receive and get to these new voices by going into the Add/Remove Voices dialog box of either JAWS, ZoomText, or Fusion. And you can look up and select the new voices right from there. Once you’ve put it in for one product, it will be available for all others. So if you are running JAWS, and you happened to put them in, and later tried ZoomText or Fusion, they would be available there, as well.
GLEN: I propose we start taking some calls. What do you think?
ERIC: I agree. In Clubhouse you can raise your hands. I have turned on hand-raising, and we’ll try and get you invited up onstage. I think we’ll stagger it as we normally do, one from Zoom, one from Clubhouse. We’ll see how that goes.
RACHEL: Right.
ERIC: And if you’ve got anybody in Zoom, please step right up and take them.
RACHEL: I think Michael. Go ahead. What’s your question?
MICHAEL: These new voices, are they available for JAWS 2021, too?
ERIC: Unfortunately not. You must have 2022. Now, if you have other voices installed that you had installed for 2021, those will continue to be available, of course. But the new voices would not show up.
MICHAEL: Thank you.
RACHEL: And you want to take someone on Clubhouse?
ERIC: I would love to take someone on Clubhouse, but I still don’t see anybody putting their hand up. So come on, you guys on Clubhouse. Don’t let me down here.
RACHEL: I have so many hands up here. So if you need me to just go, we’re going to go. I’m going to ask Nolan to unmute.
NOLAN: My question I think is quick. And I apologize for even having to ask it. I’ve apparently misread the New Features portion of the document that you release every time you do an update. I had thought that when I was about to download a file – so Microsoft Edge, and envision it with me, I have the filename on the screen, whatever dot zip, for example. I thought that the documentation you put out said if I did an INSERT+TAB, I’d be able to read the place to which that file was about to be downloaded. Did I misunderstand that as a feature, or mishear the keystroke?
ERIC: So there’s a new feature, but it isn’t quite what you’re thinking. This has got to do with the Save As dialog.
NOLAN: Right.
ERIC: So for instance, if you were in Notepad and typed in a text file, and then you chose to save it, when you do the Save As dialog, when you’re in the Save As dialog, you’re sitting on the filename edit field. You can press INSERT+TAB, and it will tell you the directory to which you’re about to save.
NOLAN: Oh, okay. I apologize. So that’s not the same thing as a download from the Internet.
ERIC: It’s not the same as a download. It’s also going to work in Office, but you have to save a particular way; right? It’s F12, I believe?
MATT: Yeah, because Office added their more, as they call it, the Simple Save dialog, which doesn’t have the more expanded version.
GLEN: Now...
NOLAN: Okay, well, that clarifies it. I’m sorry I misread the file. That’s helpful, thank you.
GLEN: I don’t know that you did because I think we may have another feature. I thought that we had added to INSERT+F1 the source of a file you’re downloading. Did we not add that?
MATT: Yeah, we did. And it’s also, if you’re in the links list, it actually shows it in the – if you do it in INSERT+PAGE DOWN, it would read the source, as well.
NOLAN: I’d like to know where it’s going, not where it’s coming from.
MATT: Yeah, okay. So you want where it’s going; right. So that would default to Downloads unless you go modify it.
NOLAN: Yeah. Unless you’re running my machine, and you have me on the keyboard, and nothing’s ever going to be the same. But yeah, okay. All right. Well, I appreciate the help with that. That’s good clarification. Thank you.
GLEN: And is it INSERT+F1 for hearing where the file’s coming from?
MATT: Yeah, it’s INSERT+F1. You also have CTRL+INSERT+F7 will do the same. So it’s like it’s basically – and it’s good for emails, as well as in the browser, to announce the link location or where it’s coming from. And the idea is to protect people against phishing attacks. You know, you want to know that you’re going to a good place, or downloading a good file.
ERIC: And Matt, I would appreciate it if you can help keep an eye on hands because Clubdeck is not showing them.
MATT: I’m just going to be honest. I don’t know that I can because...
RACHEL: So I think I could do both.
MATT: If you can do it on your phone. Because the problem is that if I do it, I have to turn speech back on.
RACHEL: So I am going to go ahead and get set up so I can take hands on both Clubhouse and Zoom. But first I’m going to unmute Tedros. So you can go ahead and ask.
TEDROS: I have two questions. The first question is about sentence-to-sentence navigation. This is in the latest February update. I think it’s in the laptop layout mode. It used to be that ALT+UP ARROW and ALT+DOWN ARROW would take you to the prior and next sentence. It’s not the case anymore. And I think the reason is Microsoft Teams. So I would appreciate it if Freedom Scientific could keep the older way of sentence navigation, like in Microsoft Word or in browsers. I’m just wondering whether that’s a possibility, or whether there is a feature that we can turn on.
MATT: This is Matt. I have a couple of thoughts. Teams is one example. It’s also a keystroke used throughout web browsers for opening dropdowns. ALT+DOWN ARROW opens the combo boxes and list boxes. And so that’s part of the reason we did it. It was conflicting too many places. I think we have a CAPS LOCK plus a letter command to do sentence navigation, as well.
MOHAMMED: Yes, Matt. This is Mohammed. CAPS LOCK+Y for up; CAPS LOCK+N, I believe, for down.
MATT: Okay. So you could go in and keymap, if you wanted to do this. I think, correct me if I’m wrong, Glen, you could go in and reassign the keys that we’ve changed back to ALT+DOWN ARROW and ALT+UP ARROW, if you wanted to do that, with the knowledge that, you know, it’s not a supported change.
GLEN: And you’re going to be unhappy somewhere because then your combo boxes may not always open.
ERIC: And in the event they won’t open, you could do a key pass through, INSERT+3, and then ALT+DOWN ARROW should open.
GLEN: So you can go into Keyboard Manager and change it.
MATT: And they’d be named like Next Sentence and Prior Sentence, or something to that effect. And you could go change those there.
ERIC: I’d just go and find the keystroke and then just add that keystroke to it.
MATT: Yeah. And then delete the other one?
GLEN: Yeah.
ERIC: Well, you can leave the other one, too. It wouldn’t matter.
TEDROS: Okay. Well, I will give it a try. So another question is, probably you guys are aware of this, but about the Say All feature in Microsoft. I tried this in Microsoft Word, so when I am reading long chapters, or chapters of a book. So I usually use the Eloquence synthesizer. And let’s say I turn the volume down to 60% or 50%. And all of a sudden it goes up to 100%.
GLEN: I know this problem.
TEDROS: And this happens in the middle of a paragraph. It doesn’t happen in the beginning of a paragraph. In the middle of a paragraph and the beginning of a new sentence.
GLEN: Is this new, or has this just been plaguing you, and this is the first time we’re talking about it?
TEDROS: It’s been there for a while, actually. So I’ve been using JAWS 2021, and now I have 2022, the latest update. So it’s still happening.
ERIC: So Glen, the only time people will see this is, as he described, he goes in and turns his JAWS volume down.
GLEN: Yes.
ERIC: With Eloquence. Which is what...
GLEN: That’s absolutely right. And you...
ERIC: And that’s bringing it on.
GLEN: And you said, I think last week you sent email saying you have an example for making it happen.
ERIC: I had an example. I could make it happen. Mohammed, who is here, couldn’t, or didn’t see it. But I did get it reproduced on multiple machines. Mine happened to be in a nested list where I could see it. As I would read through the document, fast-forwarding through the items, the sample that I have, Glen, that I could see it in, I could make it happen within 15, 20 seconds.
GLEN: Okay.
ERIC: And I’ll resend you that one.
GLEN: Okay. Perfect.
RACHEL: I’m going to invite Theresa to the stage.
THERESA: Hey, guys. Are you ready for my question?
MATT: It’s all yours.
THERESA: Thanks. So I just called yesterday and got a new version of JAWS because I was doing an update and needed more licensing on my SMA. So I was told that I need to take – because I had Fusion before, and now I’m just going to JAWS completely. So I was told I needed to take Fusion off of my system and then reinstall JAWS. Do I need to take off all shared components, as well?
GLEN: Uninstalling shared components and starting from scratch probably makes the most sense. It’s probably not 100% required. It likely would work without it.
THERESA: That’s what I thought, but that’s what they suggested I did. So whatever you think is best.
GLEN: Well, I live on the bleeding edge and love living dangerously. So I wouldn’t install shared components. I’d take the risk. And I think it’s a calculated risk. So go for it.
THERESA: Okay, Glen. So at 2:00 in the morning, when I can’t get my JAWS to work, I need your personal phone number so I can call you.
MATT: Something says she’s going to call me.
GLEN: I’m sure Rachel will provide it to you, willingly and happily.
RACHEL: Yeah, I’ll give you Glen’s phone number.
THERESA: All right. So if I don’t do that, then it should just ask me for a new serial number at some point?
GLEN: You’re going to get asked to update your authorization because you’re not currently authorized for JAWS 2022. It’s going to bring up a dialog. And most likely your old authorization code is going to be automatically filled in. You want to simply replace the old code with the new code.
ERIC: This is when you’ve put in the new JAWS, and it’s going to ask you to activate. It is going to remember your old Fusion code. Even if you remove shared components, doesn’t matter. The code’s still there.
THERESA: Ah, okay.
ERIC: So it will bring that code into the dialog box as you’re trying to activate JAWS. And as Glen said, just delete that code, put in the new JAWS code, and proceed. And everything will be fine.
THERESA: Okay. I’m going to try it.
GLEN: All right.
THERESA: I know where each one of you live.
ERIC: And Glen’s number is 555...
THERESA: Oh, I thought you were going to give me Jenny’s number.
GLEN: I’m going to give you the first three digits. That means you only have 9,999,999 digits to guess.
THERESA: Maybe there’s someone at Freedom Scientific I could pay off really well to get the rest. No.
GLEN: I think you’ll be amazed by how low that payoff number is.
THERESA: Oh, good. Thanks, guys.
GLEN: Thanks.
RACHEL: Thanks, Theresa.
THERESA: No problem.
RACHEL: I’m going to ask Daniel to unmute on Zoom. And we have a lot of hands up, so thank you guys for being patient. We’re going to go on to Curtis. Daniel, I’m sorry. Sounds like my problem.
CURTIS: Good afternoon, everybody. My question has to do with JAWS Tandem. And for years in JAWS Tandem, whenever a – and I use Tandem quite a bit. Thank you very much, first of all, let me say kudos to you guys for having this wonderful feature. I cannot praise it enough.
But there are two things. And the first problem has been one that I’ve lived with for years, which is on people’s computers who I am working to configure, the User Account Control apparently cannot be accepted by the Tandem person. You have to ask your user to press ALT+Y every time. But that doesn’t bother me as much as what happened to me today, which was I went onto a person’s computer to help them get their braille display working, and I went into the braille thing in JAWS, and you cannot add a braille display through JAWS Tandem, and you cannot see the braille displays that are available, you know, defined by the user on the other end, so that you can verify that all that stuff is there and present. So I want to bring that up and see if there’s any thoughts, or maybe there’s an architectural reason why you guys can’t make...
ERIC: I didn’t know about that one.
GLEN: Yeah, me, too. How many years did it take you to discover this, Curtis?
CURTIS: Well, the braille thing I discovered today. The User Account Control thing has been with us ever since the beginning.
GLEN: Yeah.
CURTIS: And I’ve been just living with it.
GLEN: And that’s not one we can do much about.
CURTIS: I sort of figured that. That’s why I never bothered to call you guys on the User Account Control thing. But yeah, the braille one is a huge problem.
GLEN: So there is another possibility. I’ve not tested it with the UAC dialog. It’s possible that if you slide the slider down to 33%, you know, in UAC settings there’s something that says how secure do you want to be? If you take it down to 33%, that changes how you’re prompted, and it’s possible that that might work. It’s also possible it makes it worse.
CURTIS: Well, and may I say, because I know people think I’m kind of a curmudgeon, but I really appreciate the Recycle JAWS function that was just added yesterday. So thank you very much.
ERIC: The INSERT+SPACE+F4 is a very quick command. And it was actually TVIs, Curtis, that asked for it.
CURTIS: Oh, well, I’m glad you guys put it in because I was going to ask for it. I think it’s very...
ERIC: Good, and it works. If you’re running Fusion, you can also do it, and it will restart Fusion.
CURTIS: And Favorites, that’s another thing. I keep getting these things about can’t do Favorites, can’t do Favorites. And of course I’ve been putting out on a variety of lists how to use File Explorer instead of Favorites, you know, for that.
MATT: So what you’re doing is you’re creating shortcuts inside of a folder.
CURTIS: Yes. Yup.
MATT: And depending on what your default browser is, it’s just going to launch that browser’s window.
CURTIS: Correct.
MATT: Got it.
ERIC: We should put that one in our tips.
CURTIS: I’d be glad to submit a JAWS Tip. Then I get a year of [crosstalk].
ERIC: There you go.
MATT: You’d better hurry up. There’s other people writing that up as you speak.
ERIC: There’s about a hundred other people typing it right now.
GLEN: Thanks, Curtis.
RACHEL: Yup. And I’ve invited Kala to the stage in Clubhouse.
KALA: I have questions regarding the last two updates of JAWS. In the December update there was mention of initial improvement in Windows Terminal support. Then in February there is no mention of any additional support. So I would like, I’m interested to know what additional support there will be. And the way that I can read the lines, I press B plus I think plus or minus twice to go to visible cursor or invisible cursor to read it. Is there a better way or a shortcut to read line by line?
GLEN: So let me answer a couple of parts of your question. We essentially put support in for Windows Terminal in December, and there was a really bad bug. And so although you could type text and review it, JAWS would not automatically speak the new text that was written. At least it wouldn’t do it reliably. So for the February update we’ve improved that and fixed that issue. And although we didn’t specifically mention it, Windows Terminal is much more usable in the February update than in the December update.
There are two ways to review, and I actually cover this on FSCast 211. But essentially what I’m going to say here is pretty much the summary of that. As you thought, the dash key, you don’t actually even need to hit it twice, you can hit the NUMPAD- to turn on the JAWS cursor, and then INSERT+NUMPAD- to route JAWS to PC. So you’re always starting at the bottom of the window. And you can arrow up and review that. The other option is JAWS has a feature called Virtualized Window, which essentially takes the current content of whatever’s in the window and puts it into our virtual buffer, where it’s really easy to cut-and-paste information from it. And that is what keystroke?
MATT: INSERT+ALT+W, I think.
GLEN: And you can do INSERT+ALT+W while you’re in Windows Terminal. It’ll bring up the contents of the Terminal Window at that point. You’re in the virtual buffer. You can copy. You can paste. You can arrow through it. And then hit ESCAPE, and you’re back at the Terminal prompt. So that may be a more palatable approach.
MOHAMMED: Actually, Glen, there’s a third way. And that way will actually allow you, provided you stay in the Terminal, so you don’t take focus off the terminal, it will allow you to read even things that are no longer in a Terminal Window, provided they have just been spoken by JAWS. So let’s say you put in a command, and a whole bunch of output comes out, so much that the Terminal Window scrolls. INSERT+ALT+W will no longer work, but you can use INSERT+SPACE followed by H for speech history. And even if you silence JAWS, even if you use CTRL to silence it, speech does go to the speech history, even if it’s not spoken. So you can read up through the speech history and read even past where the Terminal Window ends. So that’s a third way.
GLEN: All right.
ERIC: That’s excellent.
KALA: If I use the history, I’ve never thought of using the virtualized windows. I always use it for dialogs. I have no idea why it never came to mind to use it for the Terminal. That’s a good tip.
GLEN: Sounds good. Thank you very much.
RACHEL: Daniel, I am about to ask you to unmute.
DANIEL: Just before getting to my question, I would like to add something that you were talking about, about the bookmarks feature, Favorites. And one good thing about this feature is that you actually, if you pin or if you put a web page onto the desktop, or I think it even fits into the apps folder, in that way then you get rid of all the menus and things. So if there’s an app, if there is a web page you use a lot, this might save you some clutter.
Now onto my question, which really has been bugging me for several months now. It has to do with reading, and this is with a Danish Vocalizer voice in JAWS. And also it happens even with yesterday’s update, as well. So that has to do with arrowing through a document in Microsoft Word. If you – and this is a very, very particular issue here. I’ve been able to pin it down to, if you make a heading – Heading 1, Heading 2, Heading 3, at least I have tested it with Heading 1, Heading 2 – and you put a number before, for example, if you put a heading saying something like “Minutes From the Meeting” or something like that, and you put a number before which is more than two digits, then it skips the entire number. So if you put we have a meeting, so we number the meeting, so we are at, I don’t know, 474 or something like that right now, and we put in “474 space Minutes From the Meeting,” it just reads “Minutes From the Meeting” and does not read the number when you arrow through the document up and down.
GLEN: If you do the same thing outside of the heading, the number is read properly?
DANIEL: Yes. And if you mark it as with a normal style, it reads properly, as well.
MATT: So are you saying that if you wrote it in English with a Danish voice, it does it? Or only when you write in Danish in – I was trying to understand that part.
DANIEL: If I read it in Danish and use an English voice, it reads the number. And it, you know, it pronounces the Danish of course with the Danish voice.
MATT: Got it.
ERIC: Yeah, I’ve made some notes on this one.
DANIEL: Do you want me to send a Word document to training or something? Or should we just...
ERIC: Write the document that you see the problem in. Send it in. You can send it directly to me, edamery, D A M E R Y.
DANIEL: All right.
ERIC: Or if you’re not sure, if you get that wrong, just send it to training and say, “Pass this on to Eric from FSOpenLine.” And I’ll get this one entered, and we’ll try and reproduce it.
DANIEL: Oh, sure. Great. Thanks so much.
ERIC: Good. Thank you.
DANIEL: Thanks. I have another quick question.
ERIC: Yeah.
DANIEL: I think it’s a bug or something. I just came across it yesterday, and just wanted to ask while I’m through. It has to do with the feature we were talking about before with INSERT+TAB to read the address of where you were saving the file to. I haven’t been able to make it work in Edge. I tried with the open dialog, CTRL+O. I just did a quick test just to make sure that – and I couldn’t. Is it supposed to work in Edge?
GLEN: Well, obviously not. You just proved that. No, I’m kidding.
DANIEL: Well, you never know. Maybe they’re saying you are using a Danish system or something. I just don’t...
GLEN: I think logically speaking it should work in Edge, if it’s working other places.
DANIEL: Okay. The most important thing is this voice thing because that’s really bugging us over here, and we are getting nowhere with this. So thanks a lot for taking me serious. I’ll be sending a document to training or to edamery.
ERIC: Perfect.
DANIEL: Thanks so much.
RACHEL: Thank you, Daniel.
MATT: Eric, I’ll add a bug to the INSERT+TAB. I would expect it to work when you’re in Speech on Demand. And it doesn’t. So that may be something we can have fixed.
ERIC: Yup.
DANIEL: I haven’t tried Speech on Demand. Okay. Thanks.
RACHEL: I’ve invited Gary to the stage. And Gary, I bet you have had a very long day today. Gary works for the BBC.
GARY: Hi, guys. Happily, well, happily for someone, I’m not working. So someone else can deal with that. My question is about the braille clock, which Matt mentioned earlier, which is a great feature. And thanks, guys, for doing that. One observation and one question about it. The observation, I think I might have mentioned this to Matt, but I can’t now remember if I did or not. One thing I think might improve it is if we remove dots 7 and 8 from the bottom of the status cell, which I think are there because that’s the bit of the status cell that tells you how far along the line you’ve panned. So I think if you thought...
ERIC: Yeah, I think we just removed them in the February update.
GARY: Oh. Oh, you did? Oh.
ERIC: Yeah, get that installed and check it out.
GARY: Well, that’s great because it was just a slight kind of legibility issue with having those. My question was about other displays than Freedom’s own displays. Because I’ve tried, it works great on my Focus, but I have another braille display which does support status cells, but it doesn’t work on that.
GLEN: JAWS has this concept of custom layout which essentially allows a user of a braille display to decide if there should be status cells and, if so, where. And if a display supports that feature, that’s sort of loosely tied into this one, in part. So that may be part of the problem, but may be something else.
GARY: Yeah, because this, I mean, this BAUM one does allow all that customization of status cells, you know, from the left to the right, so that kind of thing. But it just doesn’t display the time when you switch it on.
GLEN: That is fascinating.
GARY: So actually it may be a quirk. It may be a quirk in their firmware or their driver. Anyway, but it’s a great, great feature, though, guys. Thank you so much.
ERIC: Thanks.
RACHEL: And on Zoom I am going to ask Michael to unmute. This is a different Michael. This is Michael Mote.
MICHAEL: Two questions. One has to do with a security thing. We do a lot of security training, or at least we have been. And one of the questions I had was how to – what is a good keystroke to use to inspect the legitimacy of a link that you’re clicking on? I know you can read it, but sometimes if it’s got words instead of the actual URL, is there a JAWS keystroke that I forgot that you can actually use to see that the link is actually a legitimate place before you actually click on it in your email?
MATT: So there’s INSERT+F1. There’s INSERT+CTRL+F7. But also, if you’re in the list of links, you can just press INSERT+PAGE DOWN and it will say whatever link you’re highlighted on.
MICHAEL: Okay. And just for – we were talking about using JAWS in Terminal Windows. But it reminded me of a question that I had about using JAWS in a virtual desktop environment. And we’ve utilized Citrix very successfully, and also VMware to a lot of success. But the question that I had was with respect to VMware. The CTRL+ALT+BREAK key does not necessarily minimize the VDI and give you back your desktop and switch back, like you can do with Citrix. Is there a different keystroke that you can use within VMware to do that, execute that plan?
MOHAMMED: So I think in VMware, if you want to jump out of your VM, just using CTRL+ALT will work. At least it works for me.
GLEN: Well, but that’s VMware Workstation.
MOHAMMED: That’s true, yes.
GLEN: And I think this is where you’re making a remote connection similar to a Citrix connection.
MICHAEL: Right. And he is correct. That does work also in the Citrix virtual connections. That’s correct. That does it. But then getting back into it you can’t press CTRL+ALT to do that again.
MATT: When the window’s in focus, I mean, and I’m speaking workstation again, which is what Glen just mentioned, CTRL+G does it. So it grabs focus to that window. So you may want to check to see if it’s not a hidden key. I mean, it’s possible they do it across platforms. I’m not saying they do, but it’s at least worth looking at.
MICHAEL: Now, is that controlled by the distributors of the desktop?
MATT: Yeah, it’s part of VMware.
MOHAMMED: Yes.
MICHAEL: Yeah. So that means they would – the administrator that we’re connecting to would actually have to enable the shortcut keys for that to work. Correct?
MATT: The one they have to do is the one that gets control away, the ALT and the CTRL. I think there is a checkbox in there that says do this or not do this. But the CTRL+G I think is a default in the menus. For them to turn that off would be weird. You could email us, I mean, we do have some connections at VMware, if we need to get you connected there; okay?
MICHAEL: Okay. I really appreciate that because we do need to look at that in case we have to do it. We’re not doing it currently, but I sure would like to know how because it could happen very soon because we have some stuff in the works, and I don’t want to get caught again trying to figure that out. By the way, I know we have one of the trainers on here. You training stuff is absolutely phenomenal. Thank you guys for all you do.
RACHEL: Thank you so much. I’ve also invited Ibrahim to the stage in Clubhouse.
IBRAHIM: So I was looking at what’s new in JAWS the other day, 2022. And I saw that you guys added a couple new Vocalizer Expressive voices. And I’m just wondering, are there any samples of those up on the website? Because my license expired recently, and I haven’t renewed it yet.
ERIC: So there are not any samples yet. We are working on getting them. But if you install 2022 and run it in 40-minute mode, you can go into the add/remove dialog, add/remove voices, and you can download them and try them.
IBRAHIM: Okay.
ERIC: So it’s just a little bit of space and a little bit of time to download them and give them a shot.
IBRAHIM: All right. Thanks for that now, and keep up good work. Thanks.
ERIC: Thank you, yeah.
RACHEL: All right. We’re back to Zoom participants, excuse me. And I’m going to unmute Chris. I’m going to ask you to unmute. That’s the name.
CHRIS: From time to time I get people sitting down at my PC, and they say, “Hey, your screen is sideways,” or “Your screen is upside down.” And I’ve come to find out that on some PCs the same keystrokes that are used to read in tables, you know, your CTRL+ALT+ARROW keys will rotate the screen, the display. And I’m just wondering if there’s a way to turn that off in Windows so that it doesn’t happen. Have you guys seen that?
ERIC: I haven’t found a way of turning it off. But you’re absolutely right. That is something that causes problems.
GLEN: I actually thought it’s a security feature for people who are blind and want to leave the screen on, but don’t want anyone else to be able to read it.
CHRIS: I had a guy tell me one time, he said, “Your screen’s upside down.” I said, “No, it’s not. It’s sitting on the base on the desk the way it’s supposed to.” He said, “No, no, everything’s upside down.” And I come to find out, okay, so if I press CTRL+ALT+RIGHT ARROW a few times, it turns right-side-up again. It’s specific to certain video adapters or display adapters.
ERIC: Yeah, it doesn’t happen on all.
CHRIS: It happens on Dell a lot, I know.
ERIC: Yeah.
MOHAMMED: I had a similar problem.
MATT: Yeah, I would think the best option is to probably contact Dell technical support.
CHRIS: Thank you.
MOHAMMED: I had a similar problem with AMD. So it would intercept keystrokes, and no matter what I did the keystrokes would be intercepted. They weren’t ALT+CTRL+UP/DOWN ARROW, but they were other keystrokes. And what I ended up doing was finding the software that did this and turning off all the shortcuts. So you could also do that. That way the software is still running, and you might be able to make changes if you want to. But just turn off the keystrokes, if the software even allows you to do that because not all will.
ERIC: I will say that this particular problem has nothing to do with JAWS. And I’ve actually, I recall years ago walking into a sighted colleague’s office, and his monitor was laying on its side because he was trying to get work done, and he couldn’t figure out how to make it go back.
GLEN: It was Eric.
RACHEL: All right. Thank you, guys. Thank you, Chris. And we’re back to Clubhouse with Trey Bradley on the stage with the next question.
TREY: Entering, guys. Hello. I set my keyboard layout to the laptop layout. And when I go to execute a command, it still gives me – it’ll say “CAPS LOCK ON,” “CAPS LOCK OFF,” even though I set the layout to laptop mode. Like just now I was trying to dump JAWS. And when I tried to do that, it still won’t let me use the dump command.
GLEN: I’m still hung up on the fact that the CAPS LOCK is not working as the JAWS Key. Is that what you were saying, that the CAPS LOCK, one time, you press it just once, and it turns CAPS LOCK ON and OFF?
TREY: Yes, that’s correct.
ERIC: And if you go back into your options basics dialog box, it definitely says it’s laptop.
TREY: Yes, it does.
ERIC: Hmm.
GLEN: I would call Support.
ERIC: I would call Support on this one because I am stumped.
TREY: Okay. That’s what I will do. Thank you guys for that. I appreciate that.
RACHEL: Sometimes that is just the best answer. Thank you, Trey.
ERIC: It’s amazing what the tech support guys and gals run into, and what they know, and how they get around some of these problems. And their goal is to get you off the phone as quickly as possible and get you on your way. So they find ways of doing it.
MATT: In a positive way. In a positive way.
ERIC: Yup, in a positive way. Absolutely.
RACHEL: All right. We’re back to Zoom. And Mathis, I’m going to unmute you, or ask you to unmute.
MATHIS: Good day, everybody, and thank you for a very nice, can almost call it “the show.” I have one question. The company that I’m working for, right, introduced FortiClient a couple of months ago to let us connect through the VPN to the work network. So that introduced, also introduced double verification. Everything works fine.
But if your computer gets locked because of maybe five or 10 minutes inactivity, when you place ALT+CTRL+DELETE to unlock it. You can logon. You put in your user and your password. And then after that another screen pops up where you have to select, for example, your cell phone. And that screen is not accessible. So then it sends a recent list to your cell phone, and then you put in your phone, and your computer is unlocked. So the only way I can get past that is, if it happens I go to, what is it, PowerShell or Power something. And then I just ask to restart.
GLEN: Is JAWS completely silent, or it announces that you’re in the window, but it’s inaccessible in terms of what’s in the window?
MATHIS: At logon it’s not completely silent. But it’s not reading anything. So what I do now – yeah. Anyway, so what I – I just put something big enough on the CTRL key to keep it down, and then it doesn’t lock. But obviously I’m in a place, in an environment where it’s safe to do that. That not recommended to do.
MATT: This is not a solution to solving the problem, which is the unlocking. You’re using a method to try to keep it from locking. I’ve seen people use programs that basically wiggle the mouse every five minutes or whatever it is. So it’s just a program that just kind of moves the mouse a tiny little bit.
MATHIS: All right. Thanks, everyone.
ERIC: Thanks.
MOHAMMED: What about Narrator, by the way? Just a quick question? Does Narrator work?
MATT: I don’t know if he’s still here, if he heard you.
ERIC: He may have...
MOHAMMED: Yeah, I think he’s gone.
ERIC: Yeah, he may have jumped away. That’s a good idea, though, is to launch it and see.
MOHAMMED: Yeah, Narrator with a JAWS cursor.
ERIC: Yeah.
RACHEL: All right. Well, we still have a few more. So make sure if you actually want to try to ask a question, we may not get to you this time. You can always email to training@vispero.com. But on Clubhouse we do have Richard onstage. How are you, Richard?
RICHARD: Hi, guys. How are you? This is my first time in here, and this is really neat. So I’ll be real quick because I know you’re backed up. So I’ve just got a quick question. Is there any way that either I or you guys can put an icon on the desktop to open JAWS Tandem where the person can put in the code? I’m having so much trouble with these people, with them getting into the Tandem to put in the code. It’s just driving me bonkers.
MATT: Have you tried using the Voice Assistant command?
RICHARD: I have. It works for the people that have the microphone. Some people don’t. Or don’t know, I hate to say don’t know what they’re doing, but it’s – yeah.
MATT: I mean, it’s funny, Eric, I think Tandem would be a perfect thing in layered commands. Because what is the keystroke for it?
ERIC: Yeah, it’s like INSERT+ALT+T.
MATT: A hard keystroke to do, probably. Maybe? No? It’s two‑handed.
ERIC: So Richard, if you can get them, obviously you know all of this, but I would think you trying to get to the JAWS window, you know, INSERT+J, then you, then...
RICHARD: Right. Now, here’s one issue I have with one person. She goes to go – she does the ALT+TAB to what says “JAWS Professional.” Does ALT to get up into the menu.
ERIC: Menu, yeah.
RICHARD: Is locked in the Options menu. It keeps going around between Options and Exit, if she does LEFT and RIGHT. It’s the most silliest thing. And I don’t know if it’s something we’re doing or something’s not set up right or what.
MATT: I think she needs to reinstall.
ERIC: Well, there is no Exit in the Main Menu.
MATT: There are...
RICHARD: She does the ALT+F for File. And then I have her RIGHT ARROW over to Options, and then down to Tandem.
MOHAMMED: She might want to try ALT+U.
ERIC: Yeah.
GLEN: Or just use the letter ALT.
ERIC: Or just press ALT and then the RIGHT ARROW, and you’ll be on Utility. And then open it.
RICHARD: Okay, yeah, try that. Okay. Sounds good. Okay. All right. Thanks a lot. I’ll let you go. Take care.
RACHEL: Thank you, Richard. I have Mitchell here in Zoom with his hand up. I’m going to ask you to unmute.
MITCHELL: I found a bug with your Tandem in the Vocalizer Expressive. I was trying to connect to a friend’s computer. We were both using Vocalizer Expressive. And it asked us to go to Eloquence.
ERIC: Were you both using different voices?
MITCHELL: Yup.
ERIC: In Vocalizer Expressive.
MITCHELL: I had Evan, and he was using Alice.
ERIC: Yeah. And that’s why it wants to send you back to a synthesizer voice that you both have installed. So it’s trying to send you back to Eloquence.
GLEN: So does this mean, Eric, that if one of them installs a voice of the other person, and they both switch to that, they can continue with Vocalizer Expressive with Tandem?
ERIC: They should be able to. They should be able to do that, yeah. If you’ve both got the voices installed, I think it’ll even switch you to the – it’ll switch the client side. The controller side person will get switched over to the one to match what the client has.
GLEN: Yeah. Makes sense. Thank you, Mitchell.
RACHEL: All right. And I think that is where we will wrap FSOpenLine for this show. Do we want to close out with anything? Any final thoughts? Announcements?
ERIC: Well, don’t forget that CSUN is just around the corner. If you’re in and around the Anaheim, California area the week of the...
MATT: 14th.
ERIC: ...14th of March, there’ll be a crew out there from Freedom Scientific. We’ll all be there. Glen, you will not.
GLEN: But I will be there in spirit.
ERIC: Yes. But a lot of us will be. And we were talking about even trying to do a Clubhouse event, if we can all get together one afternoon and do a Clubhouse while we’re at CSUN.
RACHEL: Excellent. And we had a great turnout today, so thank you for everyone who showed up and had such good questions.
GLEN: Thank you all.
ERIC: We’ll see you in Q2.