[NFB-Science] Jaws and Status Cells in PowerPoint

[Louis Maher]

Hi John,

You could ask the Vispero assistant (capslock + spacebar, f1).
You can also ask copilot by voice to save all the writing.

Regards
Louis Maher
Phone: 713-444-7838
Email: ljmaher03 at outlook.com

-----Original Message-----
From: NFB-Science <nfb-science-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of John Miller via NFB-Science
Sent: Wednesday, May 20, 2026 6:03 PM
To: NFB in Computer Science Mailing List <nfbcs at nfbnet.org>; nfb-science at nfbnet.org
Cc: John Miller <johnmillerphd at hotmail.com>
Subject: [NFB-Science] Jaws and Status Cells in PowerPoint

Hello,
Recently I have been authoring and presenting PowerPoint presentations in the workplace.

For a screen reader I use JAWS for Windows 2026 and I use the Brailliant BI 40X refreshable braille display from HumanWare.

I am interested in hearing from others about how to present efficiently from a PowerPoint while using a refreshable braille display and a screen reader.

One of my slides contained a 2-D image.My sighted colleagues found it helpful that I drew a red box focusing the reader's attention on a particular region of the image that I was talking about.
By the way I used sighted assistance to draw the red box.
The screen reader JAWS provides information in the status cells but I cannot find a detailed description of the status cell information.
Below I am going to describe what I see in the status cells of the braille display when I am in slideshow mode.
The information in the status cells can help with skimming forward rapidly to an area of the screen where you wish to read and speak the braille.
As you know, to get into slideshow for a PowerPoint you can navigate to the file in Windows explorer, verify that the file is selected with control space, make sure that braille highlighting is indicated under the file name, and press enter.
Once PowerPoint opens press F5 to start the slideshow.
I observe that the status cells often show 3 digits followed by 'v'.
Some information I might see in status cells include h1, GRDC, img, and "cj v".
I built my PowerPoint from a company template that includes several lines of disclaimer at the top of the slide.
The "cj v" appears in status cells on lines of the company disclaimer.
The digits in the status cells are 001 for the top line of the slide.
The top line of the slide shown in braille looks like "Slide slideNumber - myTitle".
Here slideNumber increments as I arrow down through the information on the slide.
I can press control-home and move the braille to the top line.
It is helpful to know slideNumber if I am asking someone else to click through the slides or to move focus to a particular slide in their copy of the presentation.
For this particular PowerPoint template the slideNumber value appears at the bottom left on the computer screen.
One of the lines on the braille display begins with a 3 digit number followed by 'v', then it says "table with 2 columns and 5 rows."
If I arrow down from this line the next 10 lines all contain "GRDC".
Each of these lines corresponds to one cell of the embedded table on the slide.
If I so choose, I can go to the table layer to navigate the table with insert-space t.
As a reminder you can exit table layer mode with escape.
I wonder if "GRDC" refers to computer braille or some other braille setting associated with the entries of the table.
Just after the lines corresponding to the table the status cells contain 3 digits followed by a v and then the line says "table end".

The slide contains an image pasted from another application, the status cells on the line corresponding to the image contain "img".
One line that has "img" in the status cells says "picture 3".
One line that has "img" in the status cells says "rectangle: rounded corners 5".
If I listen carefully to the output speech from JAWS the first of these two lines speaks graphic graphic after speaking what is shown on the braille display.
The second of these two lines speaks graphic after speaking what is shown on the braille display.
The second of these two lines, the one that mentions rectangle with rounded corners is making a reference to the red box drawn over a section of the image.
It can be helpful to create a heading level 1 for the slide title.
With JAWS you can then navigate to the title section with the keystroke "h".
This allows you to move quickly past the company disclaimer and to the information that you wish to read outloud.
The line that contains "h1" in the status cells corresponds to the title of the slide

Very Best,
John Miller

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