[Electronics-Talk] reminders, alarms, and other productivity tools on windows pcs

Tue Aug 6 05:31:26 UTC 2024

Sorry to hear about the brain injury Ashley. 🙍

Let me answer some of your questions.

The To Do app pops up a dialog with your reminders. It's the same dialog Outlook uses for things like calendar reminders. I also keep it open on my PC and check it every day. Yes you can schedule recurring items. I use it for weekly, monthly and more recurring tasks. That dialog is a bit tricky, but I can walk you threw it if you need that.

As much as I use the To Do app, I don't take advantage of many hot keys. I mostly just tab around and then use the space bar to act on something. For example, I'll tab around until I get into the list of lists. I'll select all tasks and hit the space bar or the enter key. I usually just stick with the all tasks list but sometimes I'll focus in on something like the emails I flagged in Outlook. I'll tab over to the list of tasks and then arrow up and down through the tasks. Pressing enter will open up the details view and then you can tab through actions like adding steps, adding notes, setting a reminder and a due date and so on. If you need more help, just send me a use case and I can walk you through it.

Yes, as long as you're using the same Microsoft account, you could access your One Note notebooks from multiple Windows machines and platforms.

I don't do much sharing of my notebooks in One Note, but as long as the other person has a Microsoft account then it looks like sharing a notebook is pretty straight forward. I think you can only share notebooks and not just sections or pages.

Freedom Scientific does have a webinar on Outlook. Check out https://www.freedomscientific.com/training/freewebinars/archivedwebinars/ There's also some good information on Outlook in the JAWS help. Basically you want to get into single day view and then use tab to jump from meeting to meeting and the left and right arrow keys to move from day to day.

Finally, a Windows or JAWS list might get you more help. I'd suggest the JFW users group which you can subscribe to by sending an email to jfw-users+subscribe at groups.io

Let me know how else I can help, like if you want some specific steps to perform a specific task. I think after a few of these you'll get the hang of it.

--
Christopher (AKA CJ) =>÷
Chaltain at Outlook, USA

-----Original Message-----
From: Electronics-Talk <electronics-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Ashley Bramlett via Electronics-Talk
Sent: Monday, August 5, 2024 11:17 PM
To: 'Discussion of accessible home electronics and appliances' <electronics-talk at nfbnet.org>
Cc: bookwormahb at earthlink.net
Subject: Re: [Electronics-Talk] reminders, alarms, and other productivity tools on windows pcs

Hello,
I sent just to Chris but am resending in case anyone wants to chime  in with more thoughts or answers about using software for reminders or organizing to do tasks.

Hi Chris,

Thanks for responding about this with many software ideas.
It gave me some ideas of what to do and learn.

I am working with a technology specialist who is an OT; she mostly works with brain injuries and I'm working with her too because I have a sort of new brain injury.

She recommended the To do app which is now installed on my Windows  laptop.

When you say To Do gives you  reminders, how does it do that? Via notifications or email?
Maybe you have to open the app and look at it daily to see your lists of To Do tasks?
Can you schedule reoccurring reminders in it such as reminding you to do something on a Wednesday  6:00 of each week?

Also, I did not find it very easy to use so far and I consider my self an intermediate Jaws user.
Are there shortcut keystrokes to get to the various places in To Do? It is set up in a grid and as I recall the left hand side has a list of the types of tasks.
I tried using the f 6 key with some success.
For users able to use the mouse, they can drag items over to places and there is some color coding to guide a user in what to do. I use a screen reader primarily although have seen the layout a little.
I'm glad you can flag emails for follow up which should show up in both to do and Outlook Tasks.

From what my OT described, it sounds like a good app because it organizes your tasks and you even can set dates to have tasks completed by or write when the task occurs kind of like a calendar.

OneNote is a neat app free on the Windows platform.
I'm glad you brought that up.
I think One Note  sounds like a useful reminder app to use and learn. I like the idea of it syncing across devices.
You used it on windows and  the IOS platform to see notes on devices. I would imagine you could use from various Windows devices too such as accessing it on a desktop laptop and Surface tablet provided you had the OneNote app on each device.

Can you explain what you can share in OneNote? Can you share a Section or whole notebook with another user? I would assume the other person has to download and run the OneNote app too, but other than that, I hope it would be easy for the other person to access the notes you wrote.

Thanks for any advice on these apps.

Its nice to know another person is successfully using OneNote, To Do and the Outlook desktop app calendar with a screen reader.
I use Outlook but have not figured out its calendar yet. I'm hoping to find some self teaching resources to learn it.
I did not see a general webinar on the Outlook Calendar from Freedom Scientific and wish there was one.

I have seen the description of the OneNote webinar though and will watch it soon.

Thanks,

Ashley

-----Original Message-----
From: Christopher Chaltain <chaltain at outlook.com>
Sent: Friday, May 17, 2024 7:28 PM
To: Discussion of accessible home electronics and appliances <electronics-talk at nfbnet.org>
Cc: Ashley Bramlett <bookwormahb at earthlink.net>
Subject: RE: [Electronics-Talk] reminders, alarms, and other productivity tools on windows pcs

I would strongly recommend Microsoft To Do for action items and reminders.
It's accessible and intuitive. It also interacts with the tasks in Microsoft Outlook.

You also have tasks in Outlook, which are accessible and don't require much of a learning curve, but I find the To Do application more intuitive. You can flag an email for follow up and this will show up in Outlook Tasks and To Do.

The calendar in Outlook let's you set up appointments with notifications.
It's pretty easy and accessible once you get the hang of it but it is a bit of a learning curve. There might be tutorials or webinars for JAWS and NVDA.
If  you have any questions, people on the list will be more than happy to help.

I also am a big user of One Note. It's a way to jot down a quick note, organize them into notebooks and sections and have them synced across devices. I frequently use it to access a note on my PC that I jotted down on my iPhone and vice versa. You can also tag items as to do's in One Note and then run queries to find all of your to do's across all of your notes.
Again, One Note is easy to use and accessible, but it's not terribly intuitive and works a bit differently than other similar applications. It does have a bit of a learning curve, but IMHO, it's worth it. There is a webinar from Freedom Scientific on using One Note with JAWS that will also apply to NVDA.

--
Christopher (AKA CJ) =>÷
Chaltain at Outlook, USA

-----Original Message-----
From: Electronics-Talk <electronics-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Ashley Bramlett via Electronics-Talk
Sent: Friday, May 17, 2024 3:17 PM
To: 'Discussion of accessible home electronics and appliances'
<electronics-talk at nfbnet.org>
Cc: Ashley Bramlett <bookwormahb at earthlink.net>
Subject: [Electronics-Talk] reminders, alarms, and other productivity tools on windows pcs

Hi all,

Hope everyone had a nice spring so far.

I am aware that smart phones and tablets such as the Apple IPhone and IPad have productivity apps to help you organize your life and remind you of things.

The IPad has a notes app as well as a reminders app. It also has the voice memos app for short notes.

I use my pc, either desktop or laptop, much more often though and want ways to do similar things on here.

Does Windows PCS and tablets have ways to set alarms, reminders and appointments?

Is this accessible to screen readers?

Please tell me which app or software you use if you do this.

I know on the IPad you can set reminders and they pop up at certain times and its there till you dismiss them.

I'm hoping something similar is there for the pc.

I also have the Microsoft desktop suite  of applications including Microsoft Outlook. I thought learning to set appointments in it might be helpful.

Is Outlook's calendar and tasks feature a big learning curve?

Thanks.

Ashley

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