Jessica Dail-My home on the web

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  • “Marking the Spot: Navigating the Digital World with JAWS Place markers”

    For readers who may be unfamiliar, JAWS is a screenreader, which has existed since the early 1990’s. JAWS stands for “Job Access With Speech.”

    A screen-reader speaks the contents of the computer screen for users like myself, who are blind or visually impaired.

    In Jaws version 5, a brand-new feature was introduced.

    This feature is called”Place markers.”

    You can use this feature in applications such as Microsoft Word & Outlook, as well as on the web.

    You can set both temporary & permanent place-markers.

    Temporary place markers are only available while you’re viewing the document, email message or webpage where the place marker was set. Once you shutdown or restart your computer, all temporary place-markers will disappear.

    Permanent place-markers, on the other hand, are always available.

    I use this feature a lot, especially, on websites such as Facebook, where it is often difficult for me to find the beginning of my newsfeed.

    To create a Temporary place marker, press Control+Windows+k.

    You can set a permanent place marker with Control+Shift+K. This same keystroke also allows you to add new place-markers as well as remove old ones you may no longer need.

    Jaws can speak a list of place markers on a given page. To try this out, press Alt+Windows+k.

    As always, if you have any questions or feedback, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment. Also, feel free to subscribe for future content updates.

  • An easy way to navigate through messages in Outlook

    Recently, I was going through my email, when I discovered that there is a much easier way to quickly navigate between messages rather than pressing escape to exit your current message and using arrow keys to move up and down through the list.

    That much easier way is to simply press control+, to move back through messages and control+. to move forward.

    I’ve been using these commands daily for about a month now and they’re definitely a huge timesaver!

    As always, if you need assistance with anything I’ve posted or you have questions, please leave a comment and I’d be more than happy to assist you.

  • An easy way to change the volume of running apps

    Have you ever ben listening to music or a podcast, while you work on your computer using either JAWS or NVDA & wished you could change the volume quickly?

    Well now, you can, thanks to this handy tip I saw on Mastodon last night, which comes from @ivanjc@tweesecake.social

    He wrote, “

    “I just found a cool command in windows 11.
    Control+windows+V will bring up a quick settings screen, in which you can change volumes for running apps!
    Kind of like running the old-style mixer, but with a modern twist.”

    I tested this command myself, shortly after seeing it, and it works brilliantly.

  • A super easy way to restart jaws

    Here’s a quick tip for those of you who use the Jaws screen-reader.

    To quickly restart jaws from anywhere, simply press Alt+Windows

    +F9. (This does require Leasey from Hartgen Consultancy.)

    As always, if you have any questions or need assistance, feel free to leave a comment & I’d be more than happy to assist you.

  • If Jaws won’t increase speech rate while reading, what do I do?

    Recently, while working on this Lenovo Yoga laptop, I was reading something & wanted to increase the speaking rate of jaws permanently.

    I remember being taught that the command to do this is control+Alt+page up, which is a tricky command, since my computer doesn’t have the “6-pack.”

    So, what do I do?

    Well, I could use Control+alt+fn+up arrow, but that didn’t work either.

    What’s weird, is that doing control+alt+function+down arrow, to decrease works just fine.

    The workaround for anyone else in this situation, which actually works consistently, is to disable numlock & press control+alt+fn+either numpad 9 to increase or numpad 3 to decrease.

    If you have any questions, or need assistance with this, please leave a comment & I’d be more than happy to assist you.

  • How do I send a tab from one device to another?

    Recently, I was working in my web browser on my computer & needed to leave to go somewhere.

    But, I didn’t want to lose what I was looking at.

    So, I sent the tab from my computer to my iPhone.

    To perform the following steps, you’ll need Edge installed on all the devices you plan to use. It even works on Linux!

    To send a tab to another device:

    1. Press either alt+d or control+L to bring focus to the address bar.

    2. Tab once. If your screen-reader says something about previous searches, remove them all, by tabbing then pressing enter until they’re all gone. (THE “send page” option & toolbar in general, won’t show up, until you do.)

    3. Find the “send page” option & click it.

    4. Choose the device you’d like to send the page to & there you go!

    If you have any questions/issues, please comment & I’d be more than happy to assist you.

  • If Voiceover refuses to say the word “search”

    If you’re a Voiceover user & your device is running ios 17.1.1 or newer, you may have run into an issue, where Voiceover loses its label for this button.

    When I had this issue, voiceover would just say, “button” when encountering the search tab of the following applications. Mona, Which is a third-party mastodon app, the App Store and Apple podcasts.

    To work around this, I labeled the button by doing the following. Note: you only need to do this once and it will work everywhere, this bug has appeared.

    1. Triple tap one of the applications listed above.

    2. 2. Activate the search button and perform a two finger triple tap and hold. This is the label element command.

    3. 3. In the field that comes up, type the word search and press return.

  • Access the context menu in the new file Explorer under Windows 11

    1. Root your jaws cursor to the PC cursor by pressing insert+numb pad minus.

    2. Emulate a right mouse click by pressing numb pad/once. This is the key just to the left of numb pad minus.

    You can now navigate the resulting menu as you normally would, using your arrow keys.

  • IOS web browsing tip

    For those of us who like to browse the web from our iDevices, I was doing that recently & came across this feature.

    From my experimentation, I can tell you that this tip works with #Brave & #MicrosoftEdge.

    Below, is a very easy way to close specific tabs, assuming you don’t want to close them all.

    To test this for yourself, try the following :

    1. Open either Brave or Edge.

    2. Put Voiceover focus on the item in the bottom right-hand corner of your iPhonescreen. (On iPad, it’s at the top.) Voiceover will say, “open tabs, immediately followed by a number. this number is the number of tabs you currently have open.

    3. double tap this.

    4. now, put Voiceover focus on an item you’d like to close and swipe three fingers to the left.

  • Screen-reader Productivity Tip

    The following is for those of you who use a Screen-reader with a Lenovo Yoga laptop.

    I was under the impression that changing the volume quickly was not possible, boy, was I wrong!

    After tinkering around with various keyboard shortcuts, I discovered that there is in fact a quick and easy way to do this.

    To adjust the volume of your screen-reader’s speech, press f2 to decrease and f3 to increase.

    Depending on if your function keys are enabled, you may need to add the function key, which on my particular model, is located just to the right of the control key.

    There you have it, a quick and easy way to adjust your volume on the fly! If you have any questions or need assistance with this process, sound off in the comments & I’d be more than happy to assist you.