NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #18/NN_1992_18.iso/spool/misc/handicap/5829

Internet Message Format | 1992-08-12 | 3.4 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!sun-barr!olivea!isc-br!bunker!hcap!hnews!129!168!David.Tanner
From: [e-mail] (David Tanner)
Newsgroups: misc.handicap
Subject: Re: jaws stuff
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Date: 12 Aug 92 21:15:09 GMT
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X-Fidonet: Blink Talk Conference

Index Number: 23828

[This is from the Blink Talk Conference]

I am tempted to respond to your saying that Jaws would read nothing
on one of your programs when you first brought it up by saying that
if Jaws wouldn't talk with that software that it probably would
have been the same with any other speech software that you would
have tried.  The fact is that there is no perfect speech software
and when you find one that is going to automaticly speak just what
you want with every software package you throw at it then I
wouldn't think you would want it because it will talk far too much
with a majority of the software you use with it.

As far as macros goes with Jaws; I would suggest that you get to
know the menu system of Jaws well before starting with macros.  You
will find that your macros can get much more sophisticated in terms
of use of macros to do really advanced speech things with Jaws if
you know your menus well enough to incorperate things like color
searches etc. within macros.

I found learning to use the macro editor was a lot easier when I
started out by doing some simple things with it first.  Simple
things like setting up a macro to start a couple of software
packages that I use on a regular basis, a macro to turn off
punctuation when I am doing scanning of materials I simply want to
read, but have no interest in checking punctuation - like memos
from the boss - etc. After you are confortable with the editor for
doing those kinds of things then you can start experiminting with
more wild and crazy types of things.  The language is powerful and
relatively easy to use once you understand the speech functions
within the speech package.  The real problem for a lot of new
speech users who try to start using macros in Jaws is that they
really don't understand the different speech functions well enough
to know what to do manually so there is no way they can begin to
write a macro to automate the function

Again, while macro languages etc.  are great and provide tons of
flexability to a speech software; they are built upon an assumption
that the user understands the functions of their speech package
well enough to use them effectively.  Unfortunantly, I think you
will find that the majority of speech users really don't totally
understand a lot of the real power of the speech package they are
using and thus can't really put the package to work for them like
they should be able to.  And, a person using a different speech in
a work situation than at home usually doesn't have the time on the
job to learn the software well.  So, the person muttles through
using the speech commands they understand and that don't require
writing a lot of macros etc.  Then the typical response is that the
speech package is OK, but would be a lot better if it would do this
or that thing that it really would do, but the user hasn't had the
time or taken the time to learn to use.

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