[blindlaw] Update on Jaws and Track Changes

Thu Apr 11 21:27:25 UTC 2019

Dear all,

I just wanted to provide a quick update on this thread.

A few of us have been speaking with folks from both Microsoft and
Vispero regarding the issues identified with Track Changes a few
months back.  I do sincerely believe that things are moving, and will
continue to move, in the right direction.  In the short-term, I wanted
to pass along a tip that was hsared with me today during our call that
I think will make a real difference in how efficiently we can use
track changes until a more permanent fix is found.

Microsoft Word has a Quick Access Toolbar where one can customize up
to ten quick access keys that involve hitting alt+a numeral from 1 to
0.  By default, "next change" is set to alt+9.  That's cumbersome for
me.  But I changed it to alt+1, and made the next four shortcuts
accept/go to next, reject/go to next, next comment, and delete
comment.  When using these keystrokes, at least in the 15 minutes of
testing I've done so far, Jaws is far, far more responsive than the
lagginess I've experienced with hitting the quick keystrokes to get
into the review menu.  I already foresee this method significantly
cutting down on the time it takes me to review larger documents with
multiple revisions.  Here's a link with instructions about how to
program the Quick Access Toolbar.
https://support.office.com/en-us/article/customize-the-quick-access-toolbar-43fff1c9-ebc4-4963-bdbd-c2b6b0739e52

I hope to have more good news to report soon!

Happy editing,
Laura

On 12/23/18, Deepa Goraya via BlindLaw <blindlaw at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> Angie,
>
> I'd also like to know what you use for comparison software. Thanks.
>
> Deepinder K. Goraya, ESQ.
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: BlindLaw [mailto:blindlaw-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Angela
> Matney via BlindLaw
> Sent: Wednesday, December 19, 2018 11:20 AM
> To: Laura Wolk <laura.wolk at gmail.com>
> Cc: Angela Matney <amatney at loeb.com>; Blind Law Mailing List
> <blindlaw at nfbnet.org>; tim at timeldermusic.com
> Subject: Re: [blindlaw] Update on Jaws and Track Changes
>
> Laura, I'm happy to send an explanation of what I do to help navigate this
> issue. It's not ideal, and sometimes it results in multiple versions of a
> document being open at the same time, but it is workable, and it's the best
> system I've used so far. I'll try to get to that later this evening.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Angie
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Laura Wolk <laura.wolk at gmail.com>
> Sent: Wednesday, December 19, 2018 10:44 AM
> To: Angela Matney <amatney at loeb.com>
> Cc: Blind Law Mailing List <blindlaw at nfbnet.org>; slabarre at labarrelaw.com;
> tim at timeldermusic.com
> Subject: Re: [blindlaw] Update on Jaws and Track Changes
>
>
>
> OK, this is great.
>
> Scott, let me know if you have trouble following all of this if you are
> planning to outline in the letter our various issues with Jaws.
> As I see it, the problem is that Jaws ostensibly provides two ways of
> obtaining track change info.  Both are woefully inaccurate and inadequate.
> It'd be fine with me if they scrapped one or the other method, so long as
> **one**  of them worked reliably.
>
> Rahul, I'd love it if you could generate a document, as I have a very busy
> few weeks coming up (which, incidentally, will involve many, many
> trackchanges. Ha!). If you are done with finals, perhaps you could generate
> a doc and then angie and I could test it as well to see what we come up
> with.  It'd be great if someone with Office 365 could hop on this as well,
> so that FS can't respond by saying "we're putting all our efforts into
> making Office 365 work properly, and it's too bad for the rest of you."
>
> Angie, perhaps under a different thread heading, you could let us know how
> you use comparison software as a work-around to some of this.  I have
> access
> to workshare compare, for instance, and if you have ways of using that to
> alleviate some of this headache, I'd love to hear them.  And perhaps in the
> short-term, we could ask for that program as an accommodation (yes, yes, I
> know this isn't ideal, but we also must get our work done).
>
> Lastly, Rahul, I'll write you off-list about your PDF issues so that I can
> be in touch with FS.
>
> Thanks, everyone! This is the teamwork I love so much that the NFB
> provides.
> Anyone else with input, please voice your opinions.
>
> Laura
>
>
>
> On 12/19/18, Angela Matney <amatney at loeb.com> wrote:
>> Laura,
>>
>> I have had similar experiences. JAWS often reads both the original and
>> revised text and fails to announce some revisions. I have problems
>> with it reliably announcing comments as well. I'm able to use our
>> document comparison software as a work-around some of the time, but
>> there are many situations where being able to use track-changes would
>> be helpful, and our software doesn't help with the comments issue.
>>
>> Frankly, I wish that JAWS would not try to "interpret" track-changes
>> to the extent it does. I think I could be more efficient if it would
>> just read changes in the font, attribute and color and let me figure
>> things out. We can produce documents like this with our document
>> management software. When JAWS tells me that something is blue and
>> double-underlined, for example, I recognize it as an insertion.
>>
>> If you would like some help generating a file with lots of revisions,
>> or if you'd like me to test something you generate, let me know.
>>
>> Angie
>>
>>
>> Angela Matney, CIPP/US
>> Attorney at Law
>> Admitted only in Virginia
>>
>> 901 New York Avenue NW, Suite 300 East | Washington, DC 20001 Direct
>> Dial: 202.618.5038 | Fax: 202.403.3407 | E-mail: amatney at loeb.com Los
>> Angeles | New York | Chicago | Nashville | Washington, DC | San
>> Francisco | Beijing | Hong Kong | www.loeb.com
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: BlindLaw <blindlaw-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Laura Wolk
>> via BlindLaw
>> Sent: Wednesday, December 19, 2018 8:13 AM
>> To: slabarre at labarrelaw.com
>> Cc: Laura Wolk <laura.wolk at gmail.com>; tim at timeldermusic.com; Blind
>> Law Mailing List <blindlaw at nfbnet.org>
>> Subject: Re: [blindlaw] Update on Jaws and Track Changes
>>
>>
>>
>> Scott,
>>
>> I appreciate this so much.  Please let me know if you'd like any
>> assistance.  Regarding what to put in the letter, do other people also
>> have the experience, as I do, that Jaws will read both the original
>> and edited text when you're reading through a document?  This didn't
>> used to happen to me, but now it does.  I'm using Office 2016, Windows
>> 10, and hte latest version of Jaws.  Additionally, I find that Jaws
>> doesn't always announce "revision" when it detects track changes.  Can
>> others confirm?  This has the end result that relying on the file's
>> contents rather than the generated list also does not give the user
>> accurate information unless he engages in rather cumbersome
>> character-by-character analysis.
>>
>> For the record, I did a bit more poking around on my file.  I tried
>> hitting ctrl+end as Rahul suggested, and that actually turned out
>> fewer revisions.  The list also only went to page 9 of a 25-page
>> document.  It gave me 154 revisions, when there were probably closer
>> to 400, and of course, as always, absolutely no info from footnotes.
>>
>> If no one else is able to assist, I will attempt to generate a file
>> with a few hundred track changes for FS to work with.  Perhaps this
>> could accompany the NABL letter.
>>
>> Laura
>>
>> On 12/18/18, Scott C. LaBarre <slabarre at labarrelaw.com> wrote:
>>> Hello everyone, I've been following this thread with great interest
>>> and I am going to work on a letter from the National Association of
>>> Blind Lawyers to VFO about this issue and will likely also write
>>> MicroSoft.  Let me also take this moment to wish all of you the very
>>> best  of this holiday season.
>>>
>>> Best,
>>> Scott
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: BlindLaw <blindlaw-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Tim Elder
>>> via BlindLaw
>>> Sent: Tuesday, December 18, 2018 5:01 PM
>>> To: 'Laura Wolk' <laura.wolk at gmail.com>
>>> Cc: tim at timeldermusic.com; 'Blind Law Mailing List'
>>> <blindlaw at nfbnet.org>
>>> Subject: Re: [blindlaw] Update on Jaws and Track Changes
>>>
>>> Understood.  I forwarded this to a contact at Microsoft to see if
>>> they could do anything while we wait on whatever the developer of
>>> JAWS is calling itself these days.  I've also been slowly learning
>>> NVDA to diversify my technology tools.
>>>
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: Laura Wolk <laura.wolk at gmail.com>
>>> Sent: Monday, December 17, 2018 6:25 PM
>>> To: tim at timeldermusic.com
>>> Cc: Blind Law Mailing List <blindlaw at nfbnet.org>
>>> Subject: Re: [blindlaw] Update on Jaws and Track Changes
>>>
>>> Nope. Not an option. And though 2010 didn't crash nearly as much as
>>> the newer versions, it still couldn't handle documents with more than
>>> a hundred or so revisions. Which, you know, is basically every round
>>> of editing a brief or large filing of any kind. Using 2010 was my
>>> work-around for 6 years. But I'm really getting fed up. It'd be great
>>> if we all colectively could put pressure on Jaws to actually give us
>>> the tools we need to succeed and be on equal footing with our peers.
>>>
>>> Sent from my iPhone
>>>
>>>> On Dec 17, 2018, at 8:05 PM, <tim at timeldermusic.com>
>>> <tim at timeldermusic.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Track changes in newly created Word documents still work reliably in
>>> Office 2010 if using an older machine for this kind of task is an
>>> option.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: Laura Wolk <laura.wolk at gmail.com>
>>>> Sent: Saturday, December 15, 2018 11:22 AM
>>>> To: Blind Law Mailing List <blindlaw at nfbnet.org>
>>>> Subject: [blindlaw] Update on Jaws and Track Changes
>>>>
>>>> I'm providing an update to this topic, as it generated a lot of
>>>> traffic
>>> and I'd love to spare another lawyer the risk of relying on this
>>> $1,000 disappointment to his professional detriment.
>>>>
>>>> Jaws still does not announce the correct number of revisions.
>>>> Instead, after taking up to 30 or 45 seconds sometimes, it will
>>>> announce a
>>> much larger number that still isn't always accurate.  This is
>>> actually worse than when it simply said there were no revisions to
>>> display, since we all knew that was incorrect.  now it gives the
>>> false sense of security that you have, in fact, looked at every
>>> revision when there could be a hundred more that are not displaying
>>> that you haven't reviewed.  note that though this isn't a terrible
>>> inconvenience when you are integrating all changes into one draft
>>> from only one document, it is a huge problem if you are receiving
>>> multiple streams of edits from multiple sources that you are trying
>>> to accept/reject and then compile into one final draft.  So be
>>> forewarned, Jaws is sstill failing abysmally at providing us with the
>>> elementary tools needed in 2018 to maintain "Job access."
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>> com
>>>
>>>
>>
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>>
>>
>
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