Re: Jaws & XP

  • From: "Jon C. Pierson" <jpierson@xxxxxxxx>
  • To: jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Tue, 18 Oct 2005 14:32:07 -0700

Hi Jerry,

Here are a few I got off a jaws list a while back, mostly for Jaws55 I believe.

Jon C. Pierson


XP Performance Tweaks

On the Advanced tab of My Computer properties, the Performance Settings button reveals a dialog box where the following adjustments can be made.

1. Use the radio button group to select best performance (? will get exact text later). This selection will disable most visual effects -- not needed by most blind users. The improvements here are easily noticed.

2. On the advanced tab, set the processing and memory groups to favor background processes rather than applications. To me, this seems to have a noticeable impact on Jaws. Do others believe that this setting makes a difference?

Office Performance Tweaks

Office, especially Office XP, installs some components that can detract from the performance of Jaws. Anyone, for example, who has opened messages in Outlook, not heard anything from Jaws, and used CTRL+Insert+F1 to determine that their currently focused on a WND_TF_LanguageBar or similar, can benefit from these.

1. Uninstall Alternative Interface components. These components run all the time, and are there to provide handwriting input, speech recognition input, etc. They also result in unexpected floating toolbars, that can confuse Jaws. Go to add/remove programs, select the entry for Office, and click change. Select to modify the current installation. Arrow down the tree view until you get to Office Shared Components, expand it, locate Alternative Input, press space on this, and select "never"." Now click Update to remove Alternative Input.

2. Unregister the Alternative Interface components. From a command prompt, type in these commands...

regsvr32 /u msimtf.dll

(A dialog should pop up stating that the DLL was unregistered.  Click OK.)

regsvr32 /u mcstf.dll

(Another "success" dialog should appear...click OK.)

General Cleanup
<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
Remove any items in the Startup group of the start menu, including the MS Office loader. Remember to check your own start menu under Documents and Settings\your_account, as well as the one in the All Users directory.


Jaws Performance Tweaks

Here is a big one for accelerating IE. In configuration manager, under Settings|HTML Options, disable the track virtual focus function. You'll really notice a boost when scrolling through IE documents with this one -- and we all know how lots of scrolling is required to dig through web clutter.

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