[blindlaw] Update on Track Changes in Microsoft 365

Thu May 2 12:51:42 UTC 2019

Dear Laura,
Thank you for this great advocacy. Your time and attention to these issues
has helped not only lawyers, but other blind people using advanced word
features.

Denise R. Avant, Esq.
President,
National Federation of the Blind of Illinois
773-991-8050
Live the life you want.

For more information about NFBI,
Go to www.nfbofillinois.org

-----Original Message-----
From: BlindLaw <blindlaw-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Laura Wolk via
BlindLaw
Sent: Wednesday, May 1, 2019 3:12 PM
To: Blind Law Mailing List <blindlaw at nfbnet.org>
Cc: Laura Wolk <laura.wolk at gmail.com>
Subject: [blindlaw] Update on Track Changes in Microsoft 365

Dear all,

I am very happy to report some extremely positive changes on the Track
Change front.  I just met with members of Vispero and Microsoft for two
hours to review many of the changes that we have proposed.  Almost all of
them are implemented in the latest version of Jaws that was just released
today.  As I expected, these are only being implemented
in Microsoft Office 365.   I highly encourage everyone who is
experiencing difficulties with track Changes to work with their employers to
obtain Office 365 as a reasonable accommodation, and folks at the Microsoft
Enterprise answer Desk should be available to field any questions and to
verify that in fact Office 365 is the most fully functionable, accessible
version of Office with Jaws.  Anyway, here are the changes I verified.

1. Jaws now displays the **correct!** number of revisions in a document in a
mere matter of seconds. We tested this with a document with 406 revisions.
Jaws almost immediately announced the number, and I had to wait about four
seconds for the full list to load.  Game changer.
2. Jaws now announces the revisions in-line exactly where they occur,
instead of just stating "revision" or "insertion" at the beginning of the
line.  Jaws also now announces font change attributes immediately following
the change.  A few notes on this:
a. In the virtual viewer list, Jaws still just says "revised property."  But
they know how to fix this and aim to have it addressed in the June release.
But to reiterate, the precise font changes are announced in-line as you
scroll with Jaws using the arrow keys.
b.  Currently, the font attribute change is also displayed in words on the
Braille display.  This is cumbersome, especially in legal documents.  They
are going to try to figure out a way to toggle whether that information is
displayed in Braille.  Again to be clear, this only occurs when you're
looking at font attribute revisions, not every time you make a font change
when track changes aren't on.
3. And now the moment we've all been waiting for... Footnotes are no longer
sluggish!  **and** you can actually select text!  Same goes for comment
bubbles!  Notes.
a.  This currently only works in all markup.  It does not work in simple
markup.  They are aware of this and know how to change it, and aim to have
it addressed in the June release.
b. To change mark up modes, hit alt, r, t, d, then arrow down to select the
mark up mode you desire.
4. cursor routing buttons work in footnotes, dots 7-8 no longer display
throughout the entire footnote, and Braille marking properly works in
footnotes.
5. You can now access revisions in the footnotes.  You have to have all
markup selected, and you have to be in the footnote pane when you call up
the virtual viewer.  They are working on a way to have them accessible from
above the line as well.
6. Jaws announcing revisions even when track changes are off:
Currently, this is occurring because control+shift+e is a Microsoft
keystroke that tells the program to stop tracking changes, but even when
it's off, the underlying "code" is still there so that the revisions will
display again once you turn the feature back on.  Jaws still has acces to
that code, even if you toggle track changes off, and sometimes this causes
confusion.  If this happens, change markup to no markup by hitting alt, r,
t, d and arrowing down to no mark up.
That should solve it.

The teams are also aware of the issue regarding pasting large amounts of
text into comments causing the programs to crash.  They aim to address that
as well.

Again, I am sorry that we will not be seeing changes in 2016 or 2013, but
this honestly is a quicker and more robust solution than I ever expected,
and i am very pleased.

Thanks,

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