FSCast #224 FSOpenLine

November, 2022

RACHEL BUCHANAN:  Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining FSOpenLine.  This is Freedom Scientifics Global Q&A.  This is our show for November of 2022, and we have a lot of exciting content, including the Fusion Suite 2023 update.

Before we get started, just a few items so you know how you can engage with us.  The only way we can take questions is on the Zoom platform or the Clubhouse platform.  And the way that you can have your question put in the queue to answer is to double-tap the Raise Hand button, if you’re on Clubhouse.  If you’re on Zoom, you’ll use ALT+Y on Windows.  Double-tap the Raise Hand button on a mobile device.  If you’re on a phone, and you’ve dialed in, you’ll use star nine to raise your hand.  And then, finally, yeah, I think that’s all the methods we need to cover.  So with all of that out of the way, my colleagues Ryan Jones, Glen Gordon.

GLEN GORDON:  I was trying to figure out who was waiting in the wings.  Hi, Rachel.

RACHEL:  Here you go.

RYAN JONES:  It just may be us for now, and that’s it.

GLEN:  It’s great to be here.

RYAN:  Yes, it is.

RACHEL:  Yes.  Well, how are you all?

GLEN:  I’m much better now that I’ve connected.  I had this terrible fear that I wouldn’t be able to get everything worked out technically.  So I’m very relieved and very eager to talk to everybody today.

RYAN:  Yeah, it’s a fun time, mid-November, for us.  We got through the release, Glen.  We can all take a deep breath; right?  At least for...

GLEN:  We can.  And we’re working on the December update as we speak.

RYAN:  I was going to say, there’s actually really no rest because we go straight into updates.  So there’s a group working on a December update that will be out in mid-December.  And actually some have already to the next update, which will probably be in February.  So it’s – we get through one thing, and then we just move straight to the next.

GLEN:  Well, and that’s how it should be because issues come up, and the important thing is to get the issues resolved and get new features introduced.  And that’s a never-ending task.

I do want to mention something, or at least ask about it.  We talked and worked with Microsoft on the Scheduling Assistant in Outlook.  And when last I tried it, it actually worked.  Have the two of you given that a spin since we put the fix in?

RYAN:  Yeah, I’ve actually been using it now to schedule meetings.  So before I would always go into Teams and schedule meetings through the calendar of Teams.

RACHEL:  Same.

RYAN:  But I have been doing it now in Outlook, and it’s been working very well.

RACHEL:  Yup.  Very same.  I used to exclusively use Teams if I needed to see others’ availability.  And now I’ve been using Outlook.

GLEN:  The person who pointed that out to us was Doug Joffrey, who many people know from his Window-Eyes days.  But he’s now at Microsoft.  And he said, you know, “I think JAWS had some workarounds when the Outlook Scheduling Assistant didn’t work very well.  And you might want to remove those.”  And it was great because as a blind person I never would have expected that this control actually would say different things as you arrowed around because JAWS was saying it was a read-only edit control, which it wasn’t.

RYAN:  It used to be, I guess, and it just kind of shows you the fast pace of changes in software right now, especially in Office, that things that we had to do in JAWS maybe some years ago, we don’t have to do them that way anymore.

GLEN:  Exactly.  So, nice to hear that everyone’s working well with that.

RYAN:  Yeah.  And before we get too far in, I do want to mention one thing.  We love to hear feedback.  And not only in this show, and I know people provide feedback when we do different Clubhouse events and webinars and others.  And so continue to let us know in those avenues.  But we also set up a new mailbox that I wanted to share, an email address called softwaresuggestions@vispero.com.  So all one word, softwaresuggestions@vispero.com.  If you email us there and let us know an idea you have about something you’d like us to do differently in one of the software products, or a feature you’d like to see, feedback on using a particular feature, it’s our mailbox where myself and our product manager Roxana Fischer, we have access to that.  And so we will monitor that mailbox and look for ideas and suggestions.  And certainly can’t promise that we can do all of them, but we will definitely look at them and provide feedback as needed.  So just wanted to through that out there to everyone.

RACHEL:  And we have a webinar coming up on Thursday at noon Eastern.  And we’re going to be hearing from Roxana Fischer.  She’s out of our Netherlands office, but is just brilliant.  And I know a lot of people may have not heard from her.  She is just one of the brains behind the scenes.  But she’s going to be on our webinar on Thursday and is willing to stay up late with us, even though she’s, you know, in the Netherlands.  So were going to be talking about all of the features in the Fusion Suite, including, you know, the tether feature in ZoomText.  So register for that, if you haven’t.

GLEN:  Or, if you’re listening to the replay of FSOpenLine, you can go to our freedomscientific.com/training page.

RACHEL:  Webinars.

GLEN:  What is the proper...

RACHEL:  So the archives are all at freedomscientific.com/webinars.

GLEN:  Ah, okay.  And so this will be there.

RACHEL:  Yes.  Shall we get to some questions?

GLEN:  Let’s do it.

RYAN:  Yeah.  Sounds great.

GLEN:  Right.  I guess we’re going to go back and forth.  We have people on Clubhouse and people on Zoom.  I forgot to mention there are people also listening on YouTube Live and Facebook Live.  But they can’t ask questions, sadly.  So go ahead and pop up your hand on Zoom with that ALT+Y if you’re on Windows, star nine if you’re on the phone.  And also you can put your hand up on Clubhouse.  And we’ll start going through them.  Let’s start with Clubhouse.  Definitely have some hands up here, someone making their way to the stage.  And it is Vaughn.  Hey, Vaughn.  How are you?

VAUGHN:  Oh, I’ve managed to get off mute now, if that’s helpful to you.

RACHEL:  There you are, Vaughn.  Go ahead.

RYAN:  There, yes.

VAUGHN:  My sincerest apologies.  I listened to the show on formatting about three or four weeks ago, but time moves quickly.  And I thought to myself, I wonder how I can go and find the list of those formatting commands that you gave on how to make text consistent with JAWS.  And I tried going to the JAWS Help in Word and couldn’t find it.  Is there any way you can quickly find command lists and the like?

RACHEL:  So for all of our webinars that we offer, our software webinars that have those archives that we just mentioned at freedomscientific.com/webinars, those webinars do have downloadable handouts with them.  So you should be able to go there, and you’ll see the links that say stream or download the MP3 and the MP4.  And then they have resource documents.  And so you should be able to download those.  If you’re looking for a list of handouts for another specific training that we did, go ahead and email us at training@vispero.com because we can send you a list of what we covered.  Because even though we may not have a corresponding document because we just did a quick lesson on it, we definitely took it from somewhere, and so we can send you the resource document related to that lesson.

VAUGHN:  Thank you for that.  But as a general rule, if you’re working in Word, for example, and you want to learn, like I know that we can highlight all the text.  But if you then think, okay, what’s the command to make all the fonts, for example, consistent, are those sort of commands searchable within JAWS?  Or are you just looking at standard Windows commands for that type of thing?

GLEN:  You can try using the JAWS Command Search.  And I realize I don’t remember the command to get to it right away.  But I know...

RACHEL:  INSERT+SPACE+J.

RYAN:  That’s right.

GLEN:  I’m glad I’m not being quizzed.  So once you get in there, doing a search searches both the names and in many cases aliases that we’ve tried to introduce, and it’ll also search much of the description of the commands.  So that may be a way to get to them.  And then of course it describes the command plus gives you the keystrokes.

RYAN:  And it’s based on the program that you’re in.  So if you launch this from within Word and you search, it’s going to be contextually giving you things related to JAWS commands for Word versus if you’re in Outlook or Excel or the browser when you do this.

MOHAMMED:  This is Mohammed.  Do keep in mind, though, and Glen, correct me if I’m wrong here, but I think Command Search only gives you JAWS commands.  And so something that you just talked about, which is giving things consistent fonts, is probably a Word command, and those will not be findable in Command Search, I don’t think.

GLEN:  This is true.  But there are a couple of JAWS commands for like finding next inconsistency.  And so depending upon which you’re looking for, it may or may not be there.  But yes, Mohammed’s point is a good one.

LIZ WHITAKER:  Hi.  This is Liz.  I also wanted to point out ALT+Q in Word and Outlook.  So if you want to look something up by keyboard command, just press ALT+Q, and you can search for a feature or a command right there, and it’ll take you to that feature.

RYAN:  Yeah, and that will be for Word or Outlook or Excel.  That’s one I use quite a lot.  So it’s a way to search through kind of the ribbon and the functionality of the program.  So it won’t give you JAWS commands, but it’ll give you specific commands for Word or Outlook or Excel or whatever Office application you’re in.  That’s definitely a good one.

GLEN:  And will that give you keystrokes, too?  Or will it just let you invoke the command from there?

RYAN:  Believe most of the time I’ve only seen it just let you invoke the command.  And many of the commands don’t even have a corresponding keystroke.  But it will, if you press ALT+Q, start typing something in that you’re looking for and then down arrow, you’ll start to get a list.  And some of those lists may have submenus and sort of branch off from there.  But it’ll be based on whatever you start typing in in that search box.

VAUGHN:  Thank you all very much.

RYAN:  Great, thank you, Vaughn.

RACHEL:  Thanks, Vaughn.  I’m going to now switch to Zoom and Mr. Hunt, Paul Hunt.  I’m going to ask you to unmute.  You should be able to unmute with ALT+A.

PAUL:  Can you hear me?  Oh, there we go.

RACHEL:  There you are.  Hi.

RYAN:  Hey, Paul.

PAUL:  I’m always in the wrong window when I need to be in the right one.  So, couple things.  First of all, guys, I just love, love, love, love the Notification History.  I actually invoke the regular expression exercises that you put in, Glen, and it’s working great.

GLEN:  I am so happy.

PAUL:  I also have another – I have a question, an issue I’m having.  And I also have a feature we ought to actually remove.  And that’s the virtual ribbons.  I’m an assistive technology trainer, and I’ve never taught with them, never used them, and find them to be more clunky than actually using the ribbons themselves.  And in fact Dan Clark never used them when he did all the training, all of the initial training and work.  He never used the virtual ribbons.  He always defaulted to the regular ribbon.  So I’d encourage you to consider removing that.  I think it’s a long time past people should be able to start using ribbons correctly.

GLEN:  You know, I recommended that a while ago, and I almost got completely, you know, thrown out.  I was told there are a lot of people who really use and rely on it, and it would be disruptive.  And so it’s interesting to hear your perspective on this.

PAUL:  The other issue is I’m having trouble with the Find command in Chrome and in Edge.  It doesn’t behave as it’s supposed to.  And it doesn’t matter what version of JAWS these days.  I’m in 2023, and what happens is we do a CTRL+JAWS KEY+F, type something in, press the ENTER key, it just sort of hangs there.  And then you have to – and then you kind of have to ALT+TAB out and back into the web page.  Then if you do an F3, a lot of times it won’t find what you’re looking for.  Works fine in Word.

GLEN:  See, I use that multiple times every day and have never seen this problem.  And so I’m trying to think.  Have the rest of you seen this?

RYAN:  You’re seeing it in both browsers.

PAUL:  Both browsers, but not in Word.  Word is fine.

RYAN:  I think I saw somewhere on Facebook maybe someone having some issue with this.  So I don’t think you’re the first person to describe it.  But I’ve not experienced that either, as Glen said.  But I made a note of this, that we’ll try to do a little bit more investigation.

PAUL:  I’m the most unoriginal person in the world.  If it’s happened to me, it’s already happened to somebody else.

GLEN:  I have no doubt.

RYAN:  Yes, I don’t disagree a bit with that.

PAUL:  But thank you guys, you’re doing a great job.  Thanks.

RYAN:  Thank you, Paul.

RACHEL:  Let’s go ahead and have Curtis unmute.  I’m going to ask you to unmute.  Oh, Curtis, you’re already unmuted.

CURTIS:  Good afternoon.  Yes.

RACHEL:  Hi.

CURTIS:  I am quick on the draw.

RYAN:  Hi, Curtis.

RACHEL:  You are.

CURTIS:  So I have two things.  In all the support calls I get, I had one person who came to me and said they were running Windows 10 with a 32-bit computer.  Yes, I don’t understand how that could be.  But that’s what I did.  And so I went searching on the Freedom Scientific website, and I observed that there was no 32-bit installer for JAWS.  And when I checked with support, I was told that there isn’t one, starting with 2023.  I found nowhere that I could find that would tell me when or what different features were going to go away in JAWS.  And I just raise that as an issue that those of us who get the calls would welcome finding out a place to go or whom to ask when we come across stuff like this.

RYAN:  Yeah, and that is correct.  That 32-bit support is not available now for 2023.  This is a good – I’m going to make a note that you’ve got someone using it because I think in our understanding there’s very few 32-bit Windows 10 anymore.

GLEN:  I agree.

RYAN:  And so this is the first one that I’ve heard of where someone was actually trying to use it.

CURTIS:  My last question has to do with PDF and Adobe, which I’m a big user of.  And I prefer to have my PDFs come up with the prompt that says how do you want to read this file?  Do you want to load the whole thing, or do you want to go one page at a time?  And I noticed that what happens, even for small PDF documents, is that you get stuck in what JAWS thinks of as a blank screen with the virtual cursor available, but there’s nothing there.  And you can’t TAB+F6 or do anything to get to the prompt that is there without pressing CTRL+K and then ESCAPE.

GLEN:  And what’s CTRL+K?

CURTIS:  That gets you to the Preferences menu for Adobe.

GLEN:  Oh, I see.  And then when you leave that, then this dialog is foreground.

CURTIS:  Yes.  Then it’s visible.

RYAN:  I made a note of that, Curtis, because I have myself seen a little bit of – kind of what you just described I’ve seen happen a couple times before.  It brings up the Acrobat dialog to let you change the reading order and things like that.  I have seen it hang at that point.  And I think even there’s an issue already in for that, but we need to check on the status of it.

CURTIS:  Well, thank you very much.  I think you guys are going great work.  And the fact that I can talk to somebody about these things is very helpful.  So, much appreciated, and I’m glad you’re having this particular program all the time.

GLEN:  Well, thank you.  Thank you very much.  I mean, it’s folks like you who are on the front lines and helping people out.  So the appreciation goes both ways.

CURTIS:  Definitely.

RACHEL:  Thanks, Curtis.  Charlie, can you unmute?  You’re next on Zoom, Charlie on Zoom.

CHARLIE:  Hello, everybody.  Good afternoon.  How’s everybody today?

RYAN:  Hi.  Doing well.

CHARLIE:  I tried Outlook for a little bit, but the only thing that I don’t like too much from it, when I get like emails I would like to know why it appears in the junk folder.

GLEN:  This isn’t really a JAWS problem.  This is the email showing up in the wrong spot; right?

CHARLIE:  Yes.  Yes.

RYAN:  One thing that I’ve done is when I go to the junk folder, I’m actually going to do this right now because I’ve got emails in my junk.  So when I am on a message, and if I right-click or press the applications key on that message, in the context menu there’s a submenu that says Junk Submenu.  And in that submenu I see Block Sender, Never Block Sender, Never Block Sender’s Domain.  So, for example, if I get an email from somebody, and I don’t ever want them to be marked as junk again, I would choose Never Block Sender.  And then that person’s email should not go to junk anymore.  And then there’s also an item there that just says Not Junk in that menu, and then Junk Email Options.  So there are several ways here to tell Outlook either this message or messages from this sender or similar type of message, to not mark it as junk anymore.

CHARLIE:  Okay, okay, that’s cool.  And then a second thing I would like to know, if you guys have like any page that I can subscribe to your newsletters.

RYAN:  Yeah, we do have a blog.  And so is that what you’re talking about, where we put...

CHARLIE:  Yes.

RYAN:  Yup.  Rachel, do you want to talk about how to subscribe to the blog?

RACHEL:  So if you go to blog.freedomscientific.com, and you just subscribe there, put in your email to subscribe.  And you’ll just get an email when there’s a new post, which, you know, we post about good stuff.

CHARLIE:  Yup, yup, thank you.  Thank you so much, guys.

RACHEL:  Uh-huh.

RYAN:  Thank you, Charlie.  Rachel, we usually post, what, once a week or something usually?  Sometimes twice a week, depending on what’s going on.

RACHEL:  Yeah.  Usually twice.

MATT ATER:  Hey, Ryan, this is Matt.  I wanted to mention one other thing about the inbox.  In Office 365 there’s something called the Focus Inbox.

RACHEL:  Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

MATT:  You know, I noticed in my Office Outlook 365 I see “Focused” and “Other.”  And Other is kind of like, hey, everything it doesn’t think it’s relative to me.  So sometimes you have to turn off the Focused Inbox, so just be aware of that, as well.

RYAN:  Yeah, and one way that I get to it is when I’m in the main inbox, the message list, when I press SHIFT+TAB, if there’s messages there, it’ll say “Unread.”  And if I hit SPACE on that button, it will take me to that, I don’t know what you call it, “unfocused inbox” or the “secondary inbox.”

GLEN:  And you can turn it off if you go to File > Tools > Options > Mail.

RYAN:  Perfect.  Thanks, Matt.

RACHEL:  Avas has joined us onstage in Clubhouse.

AVAS:  I’m from Germany, and I’m a student.  And sometimes I receive documents from my professors at the university.  And some of these documents are just in tables.  And these tables are not standard tables.  Is there any features to change these tables into standard tables to read with JAWS?

RYAN:  What type of documents are these?  Are they PDF files?

AVAS:  Just normal documents, not PDF.

RYAN:  So like Word?

AVAS:  Word, yes.

RYAN:  And does JAWS see it as a table at all?  Or JAWS doesn’t say it?

AVAS:  Yes.

RYAN:  So it does see it as a table.  And then when you navigate through, through that table, if you’re tabbing or using CTRL+SHIFT and arrow keys.

AVAS:  I can’t navigate with these with key commands.  And JAWS said “not a standard table” at the beginning.  If I just navigate.

RYAN:  Yes.  I know the message you’re hearing.  So it’s seeing that some of the cells span multiple columns or multiple rows.  So it’s saying it’s a nonstandard table, yeah.

AVAS:  And sometimes I’ve missed some important information with these in key combination because these tables are not standard tables.  And I would just think if there is any feature to change these tables to standard tables.

GLEN:  We should be able to read a nonstandard table such that you’re not missing any data.

RYAN:  Especially if you press TAB.  That would be probably the – that should be the most likely way to get through everything, even if CTRL+ALT and the arrows isn’t moving quite properly.  But TAB is just a Word function to move through table cells.  So that should be the most reliable.

GLEN:  Is there one of these documents that you could send us?  Or are they private to the professor, and it wouldn’t be good to send it off? 

AVAS:  I have to ask first.  And if it is allowed, I’ll just share with you.

GLEN:  And maybe send it to training@vispero.com.

AVAS:  Okay.  And second question, I’m going to just work with in government in institution, and they are just in have software called a voice, also V-O-I-S.  And I have no idea if this software in navigate with JAWS.  Do you have an idea, or have you ever had this software?

GLEN:  Did you say V-O-I-S?

AVAS:  Yes.

RYAN:  What I would do is can you email us the name of that program?  Email training@vispero.com.  And we can actually check with one of our dealers that’s in Germany because they have a lot more info on what things that they’ve seen people using with JAWS.  So we might be able to ask them and find out some better information.

RACHEL:  All right.  On Zoom, Jack Mendes.  I’m going to ask you to unmute.

JACK:  Hey, there.  Just a quick question.  I just wonder if it would be possible at some point to manage site licenses via the software portal.

RYAN:  Ah, good question.  Jack, can I – so the shorter answer is that is something that we’re looking at and working on.  But I’d like to hear more about what the type of environment you’re talking about.  So are you saying a site license at a school or a business?  Or maybe give me a little more info.

JACK:  Yeah, just we have several JAWS licenses that are distributed among different buildings.  And right now we have it on an Azure instance.  And I’m finding that to be somewhat unreliable, I guess.  So I want you to manage all of that.  So I’ve got a couple of different serial numbers that I manage for a training center, and I’m just trying to make life easier.

RYAN:  That makes sense.  Email me, Jack, and let’s talk offline because I want to get your – I want to make sure I understand what your – exactly what the scenario is, and maybe there are some short-term things we could do to help.  But in a longer term picture we are working on ways to manage licenses through the portal in a more distributed way than just one-on-one.

JACK:  Thank you so much.

RYAN:  And my email is rjones@vispero.com.

RACHEL:  All right.  Thank you.  Now, Jasmin on Zoom.

JASMIN:  Hello, everyone.

RYAN:  Hi.

JASMIN:  So my question, I sent an email last week, and I never got a response back from anyone.  My question is mostly with statistical applications like Tableau or Google Analytics.  I’m trying to see if they are – I don’t think they are – JAWS is able to read those.

RACHEL:  I’m sorry you didn’t get an email back.  I will check into that, by that way.

JASMIN:  Okay.

RACHEL:  But we do look at Google Analytics, and some aspects of it you can read.  But there’s definitely charts and things that are provided that are not described.  And so you’re right about that.  You are able to get some things from Google Analytics.  But I don’t know about Tableau.

JASMIN:  Yeah, there was some information, some data on the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission which was in Tableau.  And that was I tried, I went there, and I tabbed over, and it would not move anything.  I went up and down.  It would not do anything.  It was just stuck at the title.

RYAN:  Is that a web page where you found all that?

JASMIN:  Yes.  It’s on the EEOC web page.

RYAN:  Is there any chance you could send us the link to that exact page you were looking at so we can check it out ourselves?

JASMIN:  Okay.  Okay.  Because we, I mean, I’m working with two Ph.D. students at University of Maryland.  And they are trying to make this accessible, but they wanted to know what JAWS says.  If JAWS is able to do that, then they don’t need to, or they need to do something with it so, you know, it can work with JAWS as well as whatever they are thinking of.

GLEN:  Yeah, we’re very eager to understand this and help out however we can, especially if they’re working to improve the situation.

RYAN:  Definitely.

JASMIN:  Yes.  No, they are trying to do sonification.

GLEN:  Ah, okay.

RYAN:  Oh, okay.

GLEN:  If they’re able to do sonification, then presumably they can get at the raw data.  Have they proven they can see the raw data?

JASMIN:  That is what they are trying to work on.  So means I can definitely get them in touch with you guys; and, you know, we can see what – they are trying to make it be accessible to the blind, so we are working on it.  They are working on it, and I am one of their advisors.

RYAN:  Okay.  Well, definitely send us the link to where this page is for EEO.

JASMIN:  Okay.

RYAN:  And we’ll look and see if there’s something we need to do, or if it’s something inherently inaccessible about the way the content is being presented.

JASMIN:  Okay.  I will do that.  Thank you so much.

RACHEL:  Thank you.  Appreciate it.

GLEN:  Before we take our next call, I just wanted to make a follow-on comment about sonification of graphical data.  There are several browser add-ins.  And the only one that I can think of offhand is the SAS Graphics Accelerator now.  But I know there are a couple of others that basically can get installed as an extension in Chromium and other browsers that in some cases, depending upon what the structure of the page is, will actually look at tabular data and give you a sonified representation of it.  So I don’t think it’s a direct answer to this question, but it might be a tool that people are interested in trying.

RYAN:  So Glen, this would work if there’s a table on the page that’s coded or styled as a table, and it would provide some sonification for that potentially?

GLEN:  Yeah, the example that Ed Summers demonstrated a year and a half ago probably, right at the beginning of the COVID thing, was COVID stats.  I actually think he used an accessible tabular COVID stats from Tyler Littlefield that he then sonified and showed how you could hear the graph sonically.

RYAN:  Excellent.  No, that’s a great tip for everyone, thank you.

RACHEL:  Next we have Kline on Zoom, and I do apologize earlier for inadvertently lowering your hand.

KIM:  Hi.  This is Kim Kline.  Are you hearing me okay?

RACHEL:  Yes, yes.

RYAN:  Yes.

KIM:  Okay.  I had a thought a few weeks back that it would be really nifty if we could have a JAWS layer created that is just a set of keys that are set aside for users to assign because can’t tell you how many times I’ve written scripts and assigned keys to them and then have a new feature come out that uses the same keystroke, and then I have to reassign mine.  And I was just wondering if, you know, kind of like the same ideas like you have that myextensions.jss where you can write things that won’t get overwritten.  Maybe if you could do something similar with keystrokes.

RYAN:  Yeah, I think, Kim, I saw your email or I remember hearing this from you before.

KIM:  Yeah.

RYAN:  It’s actually something that I’ve kept in the back of my mind for some things that we’re working on in this upcoming year.  That is a very legitimate idea to have a place set aside for that that you can depend on that we’re not going to override them.  So that feedback is well taken.

KIM:  Okay, thanks.

RACHEL:  Ted, your hand is up on Zoom.  Thank you for being so patient.  Can you unmute yourself now?

TED:  I have certainly unmuted.  Can you hear me?

RACHEL:  Yes.

TED:  Excellent.  I am using Windows 10 with a desktop.  JAWS, I have both JAWS 2022 and 2023.  I’m using 2022 now.  What’s happening is when I use 2023, when I go into Google using the latest version of Firefox ESR, and I set Google up for 100 results, and then I do a search, and when I click on the result answer on 2023, the computer locks up.  On 2022 there is no issue whatsoever.  I turned off the Glance feature on 2023, and I still have the problem.  Any suggestions, or should I just hold onto 2022 until some sort of bug fix comes out?

GLEN:  I think we first have to identify what the bug is.  Is there a particular reason you’re running Firefox ESR, and/or have you tried the latest version?  Is there any difference with 2023?

TED:  I haven’t tried the latest version of Firefox.  I’ve used the ESR because I’ve noticed when I’ve used their standard, what happens is when Firefox updates, no matter what version of JAWS I’m using, what I find is that the updates sometimes interfere with my ability to use Firefox.  So I went back to the ESR versions because they tend to be a little more stable.

GLEN:  So you said all you need to do is go to Google.com, and in the search field search for something?  Or are you searching from the address bar?

TED:  I am searching from Google.com.

GLEN:  Okay.

TED:  That’s where I do all of my searching.  And I set it up for 100 results.

GLEN:  What is the default?

TED:  The default is 10.

GLEN:  Oh, okay.

TED:  And what happens is I actually have an account with Google so that’s how I do it is I set it inside my account.

RYAN:  And remind me.  You change it to 100 results, and...

TED:  And then do search for whatever I’m looking to search for.

GLEN:  And does it happen occasionally, or it happens every time?

TED:  It happens every time I’ve used 2023 with Google with the 100 set.

GLEN:  Is there any particular search term, or it doesn’t matter?

TED:  It doesn’t matter.  The search terms that I’ve been using  is “wax museum,” “air check,” and “site:archive.org.”

GLEN:  We will investigate.

TED:  Thank you.

RYAN:  Thank you, Ted.

RACHEL:  Now we have Adam on the stage in Clubhouse.  You can unmute, Adam.

ADAM:  Well, good day, Visperos.  Is that a bird, by the way, a Vispero?  So thanks for taking my call.  And my question has to do with budding developers.  So us old-fashioned folks, we kind of blind programmers hack code out of Notepad and run it through an interpreter compiler, run it and hope it works, and have to hack around if it doesn’t.  And I’ve been working with a sighted friend.  We’ve been studying some JavaScript and Python together.

I was a bit jealous of some of the things he said that he could do with some of his IDEs such as Visual Studio and Visual Studio code where color syntaxing could show him like keywords and functions that were commented out.  And I just thought, is there a way that JAWS could be set up to look at that color syntaxing somehow and either by a keystroke or something like text, you know, the text analyzer could actually tell you what those things mean and tell you what a keyword is, et cetera, et cetera, so that a blind person could visually or get the same thing auditorily that a visual person sees with color syntaxing.

GLEN:  Theoretically it’s possible.  And theoretically it could be done with Speech and Sounds Manager.  The problem is that I’m not sure that there is a canonical set of colors and color X means Y.  It would make certainly hearing a line of text with Speech and Sounds Manager pretty complicated.  Did you have any thoughts in terms of how you would want that conveyed?

ADAM:  Well, you’re right, it would be too verbose if it just spoke it.  But perhaps if you were sitting on a function name or a keyword, you could press a keystroke, and it would tell you what that is.  And for the other point I think that since the IDE can actually highlight the stuff, there’s got to be somewhere internally that it associates a type of either a keyword or whatever the syntax it’s highlighting with a particular color that could probably be configured.  So I wonder if that could be exposed somehow to a screen reader.

GLEN:  Yeah.  I don’t think we could do it independently.  I mean, a lot of our successes have been, you know, we do things despite others.  And I think this is probably one where we’d need some cooperation.

MOHAMMED:  You might be able to do a little trick, and it’s by far not ideal.  But it is a little trick that probably does work, at least in Visual Studio.  And that is INSERT+5.  INSERT+5 will tell you which color a letter is and on which background it sits.  And typically, because I have been able to see once, I can’t anymore, but I have been, typically a keyword is highlighted in blue for most editors, and there are some where it’s highlighted in pink, as well, for Eclipse, for example, when you’re coding in Java.  So if you press INSERT+5, JAWS will tell you blue on a white background or something like that.  And by that you know that this current letter is blue, meaning that the current letter that you are sitting at is part of a keyword.  So you could do that trick, if you wanted to.  It’s not ideal, but it works.

ADAM:  Great.  Well, thanks a lot for the time today.  Appreciate this opportunity.

RACHEL:  All right.  Now we have Rick on Zoom.  Rick, you can go ahead and unmute.

RICK:  I appreciate you guys so much.  I listen to the OpenLine.  A lot of times I’m just sitting and lurking and listening.  And I always learn.  But seems like trying to remember all that I learn, you know, is a challenge.  But the program 2023 is working great for me.  I have a couple of questions, if I can remember them.  One Curtis had brought up about the PDF files.  I do radio, and I get sent a lot of materials downloaded with PDF instead of a booklet, you know, for the CD booklets.  But boy, a lot of times they are not created in a way that works.  And so thankfully we now have this OCR, and that often is what the result is.  But what I wondered if you all could tell me, is there a link I could send them to say, “Hey, thanks for sending me the PDF.  Here’s how to prepare an accessible PDF,” just for their general information?

RACHEL:  We can definitely send you resources.  We have some compiled on this.  If you send an email to training@vispero.com, because we’ve compiled, we’ve, you know, taught a couple webinars and handed out some PDFs on this.

RICK:  Sure.

RACHEL:  So we can provide you information to give you some guidance.

RICK:  Sure.  Thank you, Rachel.  I will do that.  When I’m using the Fusion at a 3, 4 magnification, sometimes what I’ll get is a period of time where the video screen will just freeze up.  And maybe after an hour, an hour or two, it just depends.  And thankfully now we’ve got that INSERT+SPACE and the F4 to just restart Fusion, and a lot of times that’ll take care of it, and I’m starting up fresh.  But I just wanted to report that to you that it happens a lot.  And those, what do they call it, the cursor focus things, you know, that’s either like a different setting.  So I’ve been using lately the green underlining and other ones like the red rectangle and different things.  But a lot of times those don’t stay, on my machines, or I’ve got three, but especially on the two desktops, they don’t seem to stay there, you know, they’ll sort of be popping up and staying wherever they were a couple of commands ago.  So I just give you that.

The third question, and it really is a question, is that – I think you call it a Quick Navigation Bar on the far right-hand side of the screen with Fusion.  Sometimes that’s covering up workspace.  And I wondered, is there a keyboard stroke to close that?  I know I think there’s something you can see to X it out.  But I’m looking for a keyboard shortcut.

RYAN:  I don’t believe that there’s a keyboard command to close it permanently right now.  You’d have to change it in Preferences.  You can X it out and close it temporarily, but when you restart Fusion it’ll be back.  If you want to close it permanently, you do have to do that through Preferences.  That is something we’re looking into is making a way to more easily close it permanently, if you don’t want to use it.  But certainly you can close it temporarily with the X at this point.

RICK:  It might be a pretty handy thing, but I’ve just never really used it that much.  And I looked in Preferences, but I didn’t find it.  But I’ll look again and see about that.  And then I could just save as default my settings, and then maybe it won’t pop up next time?

RYAN:  That’s right.  That will keep it from popping up.  The reason that closing it with the X is temporary is because the quick access bar does have some of the most common things that people do with magnification.

RICK:  Sure.

RYAN:  And so the idea was to quickly close it because you don’t want it right now, but then when you restart it’ll come back.  And then permanently closing it was done through the Preferences.  But we’ll be trying to make that a little bit easier to do for people who want to permanently turn it off.

RICK:  Yeah, I’ve been using keyboard shortcuts to increase and, you know, decrease the magnification and stuff like that.  But okay.  Thanks, Ryan.

GLEN:  Thank you very much.

RYAN:  Thank you, Rick.

RACHEL:  And those are our questions for today.

GLEN:  Interesting.

RYAN:  Excellent.

GLEN:  The reason I say “interesting” is one of the reasons we did this earlier this time was thinking that we would get some European and people from outside the U.S.  And I think this was probably the most U.S.-focused callers we’ve had in a while.

RYAN:  Yeah, I saw a couple of names that I know are in Europe.  And of course Mohammed, one of our engineers, is on.  He’s up late for him.  But yeah, we were definitely looking to see if we could grab some people that can’t normally participate if we do this at 8:00 Eastern.

GLEN:  But it was a good group of folks, and everybody had really good microphones.

RYAN:  Yeah, and I took a lot of good notes.  I think we...

RICK:  The Blue Yeti.

GLEN:  Who was that?

RICK:  That was Rick James, sorry.

GLEN:  You’re going to be a co-host starting next month, as long as you have a good microphone.

RICK:  Boy, look out for that.

RYAN:  Well, Glen, any last comments you want to bring up?

GLEN:  This podcast will hit the Freedom Scientific FSCast feed probably mid-December.  And it will be our episode for December.  We’re not going to do a separate December episode.  So be looking for the replay.  And if you’re listening to the replay, thanks for listening, and we hope you all enjoy your holiday season.

RYAN:  Perfect.  Thanks, Rachel.  Thank you, Liz, the other Vispero team that’s on in the background.  Mohammed, thanks for staying up late, joining in, and thanks for your feedback.  And we’ll do this again in a few months.