[blindlaw] Outlook and Word 2013

[Susan Kelly]

My office has "upgraded" me to Outlook and Word 2013 at the end of last week, along with changing my magnification software from MAGic to ZoomText.  JAWS remains my main access to the computer (ZoomText is for those many court and agency websites that are not truly accessible, so that I have at least a semi-fighting chance at being able to mouse at huge magnification).  I remain on JAWS 16/Professional, and we are still using Windows 7.

I am noticing many strange things, and am not sure if anyone else has run into them - for starters, JAWS does not uniformly work with Outlook, at least not the way it was working with 2010 and previous versions.  It will reade the top part of the e-mail (ti, from, subject), but will not continue down to the message body, and often resists any keyboard command to jump to that section.  Also, the listed shortcuts to disable/enable ZoomText do not work, despite JAWS narrating that they are.  IT worked on this for nearly an hour on Friday before I suggested that I will simply reduce / enlarge the magnification with the keyboard commands (which DO work, unly the other) instead.  More strangeness seems to be cropping up as I work this morning.

I am never sure if it is the program or our network.  Has anyone else run into these types of oddities when using Outlook and Word 2013?