FSCast # 254

January, 2025

 

·       Michal Tkáčik  tells us about the Bicentennial Celebration of Braille as well as the Braille 200 initiative.

·       With Elizabeth Whitaker, we explore enhanced accessibility of Zoom calls, including presentations and shared screens.

·       And we follow a YouTube video as JAWS provides the subtitles.

 

Introduction

OLEG SHEVKUN:

So hello and welcome to FSCast for January 2025, the first episode in a fantastic and totally exciting year.

This is a year of two anniversaries. It's the 200th anniversary of braille and the 30th anniversary of JAWS. Now, with braille there is a bit of a problem, because we don't exactly know when Louis Braille first introduced his system. Was it in 1824 or in 1825? So some organizations started celebrating last year, but the main celebration in Europe is now, in 2025. And in the United States, January is the Braille Literacy Month. So a bulk of this episode will be devoted to braille.

but 2025 is also the 30th anniversary of JAWS, and that one we're really sure of, because JAWS 1.0 was released in 1995, and this year we would like to feature your JAWS stories on FSCast.

·       How has JAWS helped you to achieve your personal and professional goals?

·       Which JAWS technologies and features have been most helpful to you?

·       And probably some of you might have some funny JAWS stories. Are you having fun with your screen reader?

If so, please let us know. Just send us an email to fscast@vispero.com. If you would like to submit an audio recording, that would be most welcome as well.

 

JAWS Tip of the Month

And talking about exciting things, it's been a long time since we last shared a tip of the month, and this month our JAWS tip comes from none other but Glen Gordon.

We're all familiar with the UAC, or user account control. This feature is basically a protection mechanism in Windows. When UAC is turned on, Windows will ask you for your permission and for your administrator credentials before performing a number of actions. We've all seen those UAC dialogs, and all you do is you press the Yes or No button and, if needed, you supply your credentials, right?

Well, in most cases yes, but under some circumstances, with some Windows installations, specifically under Parallels on the Mac, this dialogue will not speak. And this applies actually to all screen readers, not just JAWS, and you may be wondering, "What's going on? Why is this dialogue not speaking for me?"

The thing is that there are several settings for the user account control level. If that level is at 33%, the dialog will not speak. If the level is at 66%, which is the default for most installations, then you get the familiar UAC dialog.

So how do you change that level? You go to start menu and in the search field you type "change user account control settings", and then the dialog will open with one important element. That's notification level up/down slider. And most likely, if that dialog was not spoken for you, this notification level is set to 33%. What you need to do is to press up arrow to get it to 66%, and then you press tab to get to the okay button and enter to confirm your changes, and at that point the non-speaking UAC dialog will be displayed again. What you need to do here is to press alt + Y to get through this dialog, provided you are using an admin account to make that change, and the setting will be applied. And the next time user account control is invoked, you will be greeted with the familiar accessible dialog.

We thank Glen Gordon for supplying this power tip. Now, normally when someone sends in a JAWS power tip and we choose it for FSCast, that person receives an update to their personal JAWS annual license. I don't think Glen Gordon needs that update, so we'll have to skip on this one. But just a reminder, if you send us your power tip and we share that power tip on FSCast, then your personal JAWS license will be upgraded for free for one year.

 

Braille 200: An Interview With Michal Tkáčik 

Braille is turning 200. Celebrations are underway around the world, and in Europe they're spearheaded by the European Blind Union and its working group and task force on braille. And today in our virtual studio we have Michal Tkáčik from Slovakia. He's a member of the work group and task force and the webmaster of livingbraille.eu. Michal, welcome to FSCast.

MICHAL TKÁCIK

Hello. I would like to greet all listeners of the podcast. I greet you, Oleg. Thank you for inviting me.

OLEG:

It's my pleasure. Now let's start by talking about you and hearing about you. When did you start reading and writing braille?

MICHAL:

I'm actually blind since two years of age, so I started to read braille as a child. I visited elementary school for blind in Levoča, actually the city where I work now, and braille was the basis of my knowledge of my studies. It was the cornerstone of my school, so it's my only alphabet.

OLEG:

When you were in school, did you have computers? Did you have speech synthesis and all that?

MICHAL:

I was born in 1985, so my school years are somewhere around 1991, 2, 3, and so on. Computers were actually not so usual in Slovakia in general in that time and in schools for blind and visually impaired children not at all. We were using those electronic devices, notetakers or how we would call them now, Eureka A4, from Australia. And I really liked that braille was absolutely integrated part of these notetakers.

OLEG:

In your country, has that changed now? Is there less of an interest for braille in schools for the blind along with development of other technologies?

MICHAL:

We are actually right now trying to educate blind and visually impaired people in a inclusive environment, so it means that blind and visually impaired children are educated in mainstream elementary schools, and it's quite difficult to get braille and tactile graphics to those pupils because these schools are not equipped enough and they don't have enough materials, they don't have enough knowledge and practice to really include braille and tactile graphics to the education system and really effectively work with pupils with these materials. So braille and tactile graphics are really in a need of promotion, in a need of speaking about its importance because these children are coming from the schools without proper grammar and spelling and all the skills braille is providing.

OLEG:

Can you talk from personal experience? Do you really see the difference in the way these young people have been prepared or not prepared? Do you really see where the knowledge of braille might have been helpful for them if it was there?

MICHAL:

Absolutely. I think it's really such a basic skill to achieve in elementary school. It's as obvious as reading for sighted person or sighted pupil. Braille is text and text is actually part of life of sighted child from the beginning, I don't know, from the box of cereals to the books and education books and publications and so on, and I don't see a reason why a blind child should be stripped of this important channel of knowledge. I think it's really important to use all the channels to get information. As we are blind... Or our blind pupils, our blind children are not able to use one of senses, and to still cut off another of those senses, I mean tactile reading, tactile recognition, it's again one sense less to use and in 21st century we really need to use all the senses we can because information are really bombarding us every day from all sides.

OLEG:

One striking thing to me is that sometimes even organizations for the blind and some organizations of the blind are not as aware of the importance of braille as they should be. I've heard representatives of blindness organizations basically say, "Well, braille is good for some, but let's not make it compulsory for all." Now in your part of the world, have you ever seen or heard that statement or that sentiment? And if so, how do you respond? Is braille really now for some? Should it be taught or introduced to all? Where do you stand on that?

MICHAL:

Yes, I hear this sentence or statement quite often, and it's really making me, well, I can say sad because when I talk to some people who studied in special schools let's say 20, 30 years ago, there are people who actually can use some sight, but in these special schools they were taught to use braille anyway, regardless of if they are blind or not. And I talked to some people here in Slovakia who actually right now are skilled braille readers and skilled print readers. They can use sight to read larger print and hands to read braille. And I talked to one lady and she told me like, "It's fantastic for me because, for example, in a store I can read the tags and price tags and so on or I can read quickly something in my household, but if I really want to read something larger, some book or something, for me it's really easier to read it with hands because then I have no headache." Because if she's reading with her eyes for longer time, it's simply too stressful and she's getting too fatigued very quickly, but she can use hands read braille and she reads our magazines and our books just using braille.

So my response to this statement is that either we say it's compulsory or not, I think it's really important to introduce braille and tactile graphicc and bring these skills to really highest possible level of their potential in individual use. Every child should be introduced to braille and tactile graphics. Every child should have a possibility to train and really start to use it effectively as much as he or she's possible to reach.

OLEG:

All of this is good and nice, but how do you motivate those kids, especially the younger generation? I mean, they're not likely to go ahead and read a book of fiction in braille. It's much easier in many respects just to listen, and actually the narration that you can find on Audible and other sources adds an artistic element, so how do you motivate?

MICHAL:

I think the question is very difficult to answer, because how do you motivate sighted children to read? When I speak with teachers in general, reading as a skill, as something what we were taking for granted in the past, now it's really difficult to motivate any children to somehow start reading longer texts and so on, but still it can be done. Of course it depends on material the child is reading. It has to be very interesting and appealing and so on, and I think it really is the same with blind children. They really need to get so many materials that one of them is going to be the icebreaker. We are trying to, for example, combine braille with tactile graphics, and I heard about the project of tactile comics in Poland, very close to Slovakia, and of course these projects are running around the world.

So I think this is the key to motivate blind children to read more, to present them with interesting materials and really not just like here in Slovakia, we have really one piece of material which is very much celebrated and yeah, perfect, we are going to give them one book or one, I don't know, some nice magazine or something, and then financing of these materials is so high that we can't afford more than one, let's say, in some period of time. But if it increases to two, three, four, five a month, then the child can really choose between those materials. If the child is interested in animals, he can choose animals. If the child is interested in cars... Different topics, different levels of braille and tactile graphics, I think this is the key, to give them what they would like to have.

OLEG:

So Michal, you're not just talking and thinking about the present and future of braille. You along with other people are trying to change the present and future of braille not just in your country, but all across Europe and even worldwide. Talk about those initiatives that you're part of.

MICHAL:

I'm a member of the Braille Working Group of European Blind Union, actually right now a member of the steering committee of this group. Our first motivation was to get together a lot of information about braille which is running around Europe because many of EBU members are doing some interesting work, they are using braille in some level, so the first thought was that we need to create some kind of place or some information channel where we can get this information. For this we created a website, LivingBraille.eu, which is for now, let's say, braille beehive for Europe. We are concentrating a lot of information about braille, braille events, braille materials, braille devices, and the website is slowly filling up. So this is one of the things that this working group is doing. Of course we are trying to also promote braille in Europe and of course in the world. One of the promoting activity is the video on the importance of Braille, which is available also on EBU website, and it's a video which is very short and it's presenting many of the possible uses of braille. This was also a part of our way to promote braille and tell people to really consider it as a firm part of the life of blind people.

OLEG:

Well, what if I'm a braillist with many years of experience and I don't need to be convinced about the usefulness of braille? Is there anything I'm going to find interesting on the livingbraille.eu website?

MICHAL:

I encourage people to come to Livingbraille even in this case. There is a huge survey we did last year about braille displays, how people use them, what they consider as strengths or weaknesses of braille displays, and results of this survey are available on the website and you can read it, you can see how many types of braille displays people reported they use. There are, I don't know, maybe 15 tables of different analyses and interesting information. So this is a technical thing to see and read, and also there are interesting materials. For example, last year we published an article about reading fluency in braille. This article brings a lot of information, method reviews, and so on, which you can really find very interesting, and also myself, I really saw it very helpful and I really took some information and methods to my heart and I started to try to read a bit differently and it's really already showing the results. I'm just slightly faster reader right now.

OLEG:

Am I correct in saying that the materials for that article were gathered by our colleagues in Germany?

MICHAL:

Yes, exactly. It was. So the Braille Working Group of European Blind Union got this task to prepare such a study. We really wanted to bring something very robust, very useful for publishing, and we asked people from DBSV to help us with this, and there were two colleagues who did really wonderful job. We told them what we want this article to be, but they were those who really got deeply to different materials from many important authors, and the article is really robust.

OLEG:

And for reference, DBSV is the German Association of Blind and Visually Impaired People. Now if I go to livingbraille.eu, one of the sections I see there is Braille 200.

MICHAL:

Bicentenary of braille. That's the topic of 2025, and we are very live part of the celebration of 200 years of braille. We created this Braille 200 initiative on livingbraille.eu, so every day you can find interesting article about braille or some statement from some private point of view of some European or even all over the world. You can also watch some interesting videos or see pictures and so on. We consider this important to let people know that braille is living. So people can contribute. There is a website where you can check what you need to do to contribute and there is also a possibility to enroll to a newsletter. We are daily sending an email with news from this initiative, so you are getting it all to your mailbox, and of course there is a website on the Livingbraille and Facebook page also.

OLEG:

And actually there's plenty of fun stuff there from braille cookies to a music clip on dancing in braille. If you have no idea how that could be, I didn't have any idea either until I watched that. So livingbraille.eu, Braille 200, you can get all the information there.

Do you see any dynamics in the last five to 10 years, either positive or negative or mixed dynamics, in the development of braille in the world today?

MICHAL:

I can feel some movement in this direction, and I think the movement is really positive, because more and more I hear from people around that braille is really the way which has to be taught for blind and visually impaired children, and for me this is the most important, that we speak about children and training them to have braille, to have tactile graphics in their lives because, well, and we can say that people who are convinced braillists, they know what to do with it, how to use it, what they need it for, and so on, but children are the group which is actually right now in a position that if they don't get it, they will not use it. So I really feel that once we speak about this, let's say, here in Slovakia in a ministry of education, if they give me a place and spots in a symposium of the ministry to speak about it and importance of it, I feel that it's really moving in a right way. And of course I am also following a lot of events and activities from USA, from UK, from many, many countries, and there are a lot of people investing their time to make braille really living, a part of education and entertainment and all areas of life, and here in Slovakia actually just this small institute of the Braille Authority of Slovakia where I work is the leader of this initiative and this movement. So I'm trying to get inspiration from other people who are working with this, but I feel it even in my small country. So if I feel it here, it has to be in bigger countries.

OLEG:

20 years ago I remember talking to a friend across the ocean. That was a time when we thought that screen readers and speech synthesizers would put an end to braille, and I remember saying, "Hey, I feel like a lonely braillist." And the person across the Atlantic said, "You're a braillist. I'm a braillist. There are plenty of braille users around the world, and none of us are lonely." So wherever you might be right now and in your environment you feel like a lonely braillist, that's just not true. There are people and there are organizations that are investing into the future of braille, and by investing into the future of braille we're also investing into the present and the future of blind and visually impaired people across the world, and Michal Tkáčik and this task force or the steering committee of the European Blind Union are among those groups that are working on promoting braille. If you feel like joining in that, livingbraille.eu would be the website to go to for information but also for your chance to contribute. And no, there are no lonely braillists in the world today. Michal, thank you for being with us and thank you for sharing with us. Is there anything I should have asked you or you wanted me to ask you but I didn't?

MICHAL:

No. Well, I think we went through all we are doing in our braille group, so just come to visit Livingbraille, make yourself at home there, contribute to our braille initiative, and let's together just not forget that 2025 is not the only year for us to live with braille. Thank you for inviting me and let me talk to FSCast listeners. It was an honor for me.

OLEG:

Thank you, Michal. And you know what? My braille display is already connected for the next segment because in a few seconds, we're going to a Zoom conference. And some might say, "Why do I need a braille display in a Zoom conference?" We'll find out here on FSCast.

 

Expanding Zoom Accessibility

And so now we are in our Zoom conference with Elizabeth Whitaker. And Elizabeth, Welcome to FSCast.

ELIZABETH WHITAKER:

Hi, Oleg, and thank you for having me back.

OLEG:

We're talking about braille today. So Elizabeth, what's your own life experience about using braille?

ELIZABETH:

I have been reading braille since I was in kindergarten, and it's something that is very important to me, just having that content available in braille. Anytime there's braille access, access to anything in braille, I prefer using that over audio, and then also with computers and in my work, and even for leisure activities and things of that nature, I use braille and speech, and I find them to complement each other very, very well, so braille is just… Whether you're using it to surf the web or to write a document, it gives you privacy, it gives you access to a lot of information, and yeah. Braille is something that I use every day.

OLEG:

Elizabeth, excuse my ignorance, but how do they start teaching braille in a kindergarten? Do you just get this Grade II stuff or contracted braille? Or how does it look?

ELIZABETH:

When I was at school, we started out... It was very interesting and I know there are a lot of methods for learning braille, but we started out learning Grade I, just the letters and the numbers, and after a while we would read and write that and then we would go on to Grade II, and then we were using a Perkins-style brailler at the time and we learned slate and stylus. And so between those things plus a refreshable braille display, I feel like I have a lot of tools at my disposal that I can use whenever I need them. And I still use a slate and stylus. I still use a Perkins brailler, but I also use refreshable braille every day.

OLEG:

So I understand you read and write literary braille, but I guess you must also be able to write and read music braille since you are a musician. Is that correct?

ELIZABETH:

Yes. So when I was in school, I was very fortunate to have a band director who could also read and write braille music and so he taught that. So I learned it in band and I also learned for piano as well, so yes.

OLEG:

Now in our training department, braille takes a very prominent place, and January is a special month for braille. Did you have something related to braille this January as well?

ELIZABETH:

Absolutely. So we have several things this month. We have already had our webinar on 10 power tips for using braille with JAWS, and we actually gave you 11 tips just because we like to give people bonuses. We have videos that are going up all month on different tips, and these are different things than what we covered in the webinar. So we have some videos that Ron Miller has made. We are actually going to have a couple more events, and so anyone who wants to know about those can go to our Training Schedule page.

OLEG:

Now one thing that's a bit unusual is that we're recording this in a Zoom call. Normally we would use another service for audio-only recording, but there are features in JAWS which totally transform our experience in a Zoom call, and along with talking with Elizabeth we'd like to demonstrate some of those features.

Most likely, you are already familiar with the JAWS Face In View feature. Before going into a video call, just press INS+F O, and JAWS will help you to orient yourself in front of the camera. However, you can do better than that with the new Picture Smart functionality. So, normally, before joining a Zoom call, I like to go into a call with just myself. Then, I make sure my Zoom screen is maximized, and I press INS+P W. This will do Picture Smart on the current window, and this will give me the description of my own camera output. Of course, I can also ask follow-up questions if needed. Just a couple of months ago, before going into a very important Zoom call, I asked a follow-up question, wanting to know if my face is looking OK. And Picture Smart told me I have some tooth paste on my right check. Well, this was a very helpful hint indeed.

Now, on a Zoom call, you can press the same command, INSERT+SPACE P W, and Picture Smart will describe whatever is displayed on the screen. For example, you can find out some visual information about the meeting participants. However, right now, in this Zoom call with Elizabeth, I see this is not going to work, because Elizabeth’s video is turned off. Elizabeth, why is your video off?

ELIZABETH:

So we don't actually show our faces in our training webinars, and the reason for that is because when we create videos from these, it's just a lot easier if we have more of what we're showing on the screen and what we're demonstrating. And so typically in addition to demonstrating various tasks, we also have slides that we show, PowerPoint slides, during the webinar.

OLEG:

And in the past, slides on Zoom have been a major problem. I remember trying to take a language lesson or actually a series of language lessons on Zoom, but it turned out to be only one lesson because then I quit because the instructor was showing those endless slides, and they changed every minute or so and I simply was unable to follow. Do you think JAWS is going to help me with that now?

ELIZABETH:

Sure. How about I share my screen and we try that?

JAWS Voice:

Viewing Elizabeth Whitaker's screen.

OLEG:

So JAWS is telling me that I'm viewing Elizabeth Whitaker's screen.

JAWS:

Elizabeth Whitaker has started screen share.

OLEG:

There is a feature in JAWS which is called Background OCR. You enable it with INSERT+SPACE O, followed by B. But there's also an all-in-one command, which would work for Picture Smart and it would also work for Background OCR. Now let me explain the difference. Picture Smart will just give you a quick description or detailed description of the screen that's obtained from AI, but you have to start it again  whenever something on the slides changes, and you don't normally know when something on the slides changes. Background OCR, on the other hand, will just get the text on the slides and it will be recognizing it. It will be performing the OCR periodically so that whenever the text changes, you would be able to review it either with speech or with a braille display. Now let me let me show you how this works. So hopefully we have a slide there, and for the quick review we start with Picture Smart.

JAWS:

The image is of presentation slide with a blue background. It features the text "welcome to our training" and "Freedom Scientific Training Resources" in white. Below it says "presented by Elizabeth Whitaker and Rachel Buchanan". There are small icons depicting a monitor with people in a light bulb within a square frame, symbolizing online learning or training. At the top a virtual meeting interface is displayed, indicating the meeting is being recorded, with a list of participants visible. Link ask questions.

OLEG:

So it kind of gave me a bird's eye overview of what's on the screen. Now I want to drill deeper, and I want to be able to actually read the text and be updated when the text changes. So, the  other tool we have at our disposal is Background OCR. And again, we can do the all-in-one command. I'm pressing INS+SPACE O, followed by  ENTER. And now I can review the text on the screen with my arrow keys, or I can use the braille keyboard, or I can do the usual commands to go to top of document or bottom of document. As I navigate, the text will be announced by JAWS, and it will also be shown on the Braille display. It takes some getting used to but when you master it, it becomes second nature.

 Elizabeth, did we actually get the text of the slide?

ELIZABETH:

You did. This is our welcome slide, and it's the slide that we typically use at the beginning of our webinars and has our names and the information there that you read.

OLEG:

What happens then when you change the slides when you go to the next one?

ELIZABETH:

Let's find out.

OLEG:

So we've switched to another slide, and under my fingers on the braille display I see that the text has changed. It's telling me, "Skills they need for education, employment, and daily life." So the nice thing here is that there was no feedback in speech at this point. I could have gotten feedback and speech, I'll tell you how in a moment, but the braille display has updated immediately. So with braille connected, I know right there that something has changed and there's a new slide. Let me go to top of document. I'm using my Focus braille display. I'm going to press the spacebar with dots 1, 2, 3, and then I will navigate through the slide by line.

So see the point? Whenever there's a slide on the screen, that screen is being recognized. Whenever something changes, you know this immediately. You know it right there and you don't have to guess. Now there is something else that I need to show you. If you press INS+S, and JAWS is now set to echo all text as it's written to the screen, you're going to get more speech feedback, but that might come up a bit disturbing because when you do that and something changes, JAWS is going to be rereading the entire screen. However, with some practice, you can distill exactly the information you need. There is a bit of chattering, and therefore a braille display would be cool for this so if you're a braille user, you do have an advantage already.

And finally, just a quick reminder: if you want other system sounds, including Zoom sounds to be ducked, other audio to be ducked while JAWS is speaking, you can press INSERT+SPACE, followed by D. That will duck other audio. Press the same key combination again to return things to normal, so that  other audio will not be ducked, or you can actually even direct JAWS sound into one ear, like your left ear, and your meeting sound into the right ear. All of these are JAWS features that are explained in our documentation, or you can find out more by asking FS Companion.  And I guess there must be some training events on those features as well. Is that correct, Elizabeth?

ELIZABETH:

Yes, and we are adding some training on these features this month. In fact we're working on some additional training, so there will be more to come.

OLEG:

So do you see the changes in how we do Zoom meetings these days opposed to what it was even six months ago?

ELIZABETH:

Absolutely. Everything between Picture Smart and Convenient OCR, we now have access to the screen share, what's going on on the screen, you can learn, as you pointed out, some information about the people in the meeting, and it just gives you an overall idea of what the meeting screen looks like. And I think that's really important when you're in a meeting because someone who can see the screen can just look at it and get all of that information at once, and now we have several tools at our disposal to really drill down in there and get that information.

OLEG:

Yes, and I'm going to demonstrate another use case that has to do with Background OCR in just a couple of seconds, so please stay with us.

 

Accessing Subtitles On YouTube

So I have another demonstration for you today, and we're out of our Zoom conference for a few minutes. We're going to go to YouTube and we're going to see how Background OCR will help us to recognize subtitles.

Sometimes subtitles on YouTube videos can be read properly because they are properly formatted as such, but very frequently subtitles on YouTube are actually graphical characters that are displayed along with the video on the screen. They would normally appear at the bottom of the screen, but that may vary. So now JAWS has the tools for you to read those subtitles. Your results and your mileage may vary. That depends on the subtitles and the video, but here's a quick demonstration of how it works.

I'm now on YouTube, and I'm on the search field, and in my search field I've typed: Easy German slow German. There is a YouTube channel called Easy German and they have a bunch of videos in slow German, so that's what I wanted to use for demonstration. These videos are indeed in slow German. There are also subtitles at the bottom of the screen. The subtitles normally have two or four lines, and the first one or two lines would be in German and the second one or two lines are the English translation of what has just been said. Let us see how this can be read with JAWS, and I do have my braille display connected as well. So I'm going to press enter and we'll get to the search results.

JAWS:

Slow German videos heading level three link. Latest posts from Easy German heading level two. A Day in My Life in Slow German, Super Easy German 269.

OLEG:

So I like this one, A Day in My Life in Slow German. I want to watch this video and work with the subtitles, so I'm going to press enter and when I do, the video will start playing immediately. So what I'll do at that point is get out of virtual cursor by pressing JAWSKEY with Z, and then K, which is the YouTube key to stop the playback.

At this point, the video is on my screen, and I want to switch this to full-screen by pressing F. Actually, I don't necessarily need to make it full screen, but it may be helpful because the font will then get larger and it will be easier for JAWS to work with.

And I know I have some subtitles on my screen because the video has already started, so something should have already been displayed, at least something was already spoken. So I'm going to press INSERT+SPACE O, and then I could press either the letter B, which would get me to Background OCR, and I could activate JAWS cursor and explore the screen with JAWS cursor, but I can do better. We can use the all-in-one command. I'm going to press INSERT+SPACE O, followed by ENTER.

And then, I can explore the screen with the arrow keys. As I do so, JAWS reads the subtitles and shows them on the Braille display.

You remember that right now the video is paused, and I am going to press K to start playing it again.

As soon as the subtitles change on the screen, they also change on the Braille display, and I can review them both in speech and Braille.

If I now press J, which is the YouTube keyboard command to rewind the video, I can easily go back to any previously displayed subtitles.

Moreover, if I just let the video play, I can still follow the subtitles in real time.

And so basically this is how it works. You find a video with subtitles, you start Background OCR with INSERT+SPACE  O, followed by ENTER, that would be the all-in-one command that will work on YouTube, or INSERT+SPACE O, followed by B, which is the regular Background OCR, and JAWS will display the titles in braille every time they change, and you can also review them with arrow keys using speech.

Now, there may be issues with this. You may notice that for some videos it will not work exactly as intended. We are working on improving this feature. If you discover any videos where it's not working for you, please send them our way to fscast@vispero.com. Just send us the links and that will help us to make this feature even better. And now it's time to go back into our Zoom call with Elizabeth.

 

Conclusion

So now we are in our Zoom call with Elizabeth Whitaker, and we're about to wrap up for today, but we couldn't wrap up without talking about what's happening in training department and some of the trainings for y'all to look forward to. And Elizabeth, I'm getting more and more people asking questions about the new Outlook.

ELIZABETH:

Well, actually, that's a very hot topic. We get a lot of questions about it as well. We are going to host our very first webinar on the new Outlook and JAWS in February. It's going to take place on February 20th at noon Eastern, and this is an introductory webinar so it's going to cover things like how to create an email message, how to read your email, any settings that you need to know about, and some very basic calendar navigation, because a lot of people are using this for meetings and email, both things. And so we're going to start out by having an introductory webinar, and then we will go from there and create additional training on the new Outlook and JAWS.

OLEG:

And one other item I wanted to bring up is our student of the month feature that's going on. If you're subscribed to our blog, you would be getting information about that as well as many other things that are worth noting, worth reading, worth finding out, so blog.freedomscientific.com is the address to go to. And for our contact information, of course it's fscast@vispero.com and training@vispero.com. By the way, thanks to those who have written in. Thanks for your kind words. It's nice to be doing those podcasts and those trainings, but it's also great to hear from you.

ELIZABETH:

I just want to reiterate what you said about feedback. It's extremely important, and in Training we do create training events based on your feedback, so please send those ideas to us and keep sending us your feedback.

OLEG:

And for now, we do wrap up. This is Elizabeth Whitaker and OLEG Shevkun on FSCast for January 2025. Goodbye.

ELIZABETH:

Goodbye.