SWB was definately ahead in that area. It surprises me that, to my knowledge, none of the leading Windows screen readers at present include a keyboard macro recorder. This capability is common in text editors--I've looked at several, so I'm puzzled why it seems to be such a technical feat for the screen reader companies. It clearly seems to be a good, intermediate option between code scripting and menu-driven configuration. Jamal -----Original Message----- From: ossrp-control-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ossrp-control-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of David Lant Sent: Saturday, May 07, 2005 3:34 AM To: ossrp-control@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [ossrp-control] Re: What Is A Screen Reader? Hi Jamal, You just described the macro feature of SWB to a T! <grin> That's precisely what it did. I can't count the number of times I was able to radically speed up my productivity, not just by telling SWB how I preferred to have a screen spoken, but also telling it to automatically perform actions in the application that I regularly undertook. The simplest being in programming, I could get it to generate boilerplate code for common routines, just like many IDEs do today. But, as you said, you weren't restricted to recording keystrokes. You could automate anything that you could do via your interaction with the application you were using. E.g. if a download icon appeared in an emulator, you could route the mouse pointer to it and right-click, so you were automatically prompted to enter the filename and location, instead of having to hunt for it every time. Naturally, the teach and learn facility would still be more useful to experienced users than complete computer novices. Someone who doesn't know what the features of Microsoft Word are, isn't going to be in a position for a while to tell the screen reader what they want to do and how. So there will always be a need for good presentation and interpretation by the screen reader out of the box. What this means is that the learning capability of a screen reader is an efficiency tool, rather than the fundamental accessibility one. All the best, David -----Original Message----- From: ossrp-control-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ossrp-control-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Jamal Mazrui Sent: 06 May 2005 09:54 To: ossrp-control@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [ossrp-control] Re: What Is A Screen Reader? It seems that a lot of customization capability, short of script coding, could be provided by a keyboard macro recorder that captures both application and screen reader keys, and has the ability to turn automatic verbalizations on and off, e.g., via a toggle key. The macro could silently perform desired navigation using application keys with speech off, and read desired information using screen reader keys with speech on. Jamal -----Original Message----- From: ossrp-control-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ossrp-control-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of David Lant Sent: Friday, May 06, 2005 3:14 PM To: ossrp-control@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [ossrp-control] Re: What Is A Screen Reader? Hi, This is also my preferred approach. I've spoken on other lists about my favourite screen reader at the time, which provided macro driven customisation, instead of scripted configuration. Thus, in order to change the way the screen reader behaved, you simply started the macro recording mode, showed the screen reader what you wanted it to do, and then assigned that to either a keystroke or a portion of the screen to be monitored for changes etc. Thus, in the case of the pay claim screen I mentioned before, you could have the screen reader provide a Teach key which, when pressed, would put the screen reader into a mode where it will give information about what's on the screen, and how it is grouped and attributed. The user could then go through this, and effectively point out to the screen reader what items they want to be told about, and which ones they want to ignore. They could assign groups of items to keystrokes for reading, or assign them to be spoken automatically when certain screen changes occur. By the end of this process, or through an iterative process over time, the user would thus teach the screen reader how to present and manage the information being portrayed. Once completed, the next time the user enters the pay claim screen, the screen reader would simply announce the name of the employee, and then read the information in the claimed hours box, while placing the insertion pointer in the charge codes pane ready for input. Since sighted people often flick visually back and forth between information displayed and data they are inputting, the screen reader could also be trained to read information from another part of the screen, even though your focus is in the input area. The result is much faster operation of a screen which would otherwise require either manual browsing for the read-only data, or scripting in a fairly human-unfriendly language to provide what is otherwise pretty basic instruction. All the best, David -----Original Message----- From: ossrp-control-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ossrp-control-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Peter Parente Sent: 06 May 2005 04:03 To: ossrp-control@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [ossrp-control] Re: What Is A Screen Reader? Yes, Bryan. This is exactly what I was talking about as being the middle-ground between a screen reader that tries to analyze what's on the screen all on its own and on that requires very low level scripts to improve usability. I'm not a JAWS user, but it's my understanding that it has some very basic support for this now in that you can assign labels to object on web pages or in GUIs. I've also heard it doesn't work too well yet. Can anyone confirm or deny? 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