[nfbcs] A useful trick

[Doug Lee]

A thing to watch out for when using one screen reader to recover
another:  Any time you shut a screen reader down, you stand a chance
of inadvertently telling Windows that no screen reader is running
anymore.  Example:  At least on XP, not sure about later Windows
incarnations, if you start Narrator, then start or restart JAWS, and
finally stop Narrator, I believe Windows "forgets" that JAWS is
running.  Some applications, such as Skype, will then stop providing
accessibility information in order to save system resources and
improve performance.

The airtight solution to all this is to restart your preferred screen
reader when no other reader is still running.

On Fri, Jan 14, 2011 at 12:00:51PM -0600, Steve Jacobson wrote:
Jim,

In my experience it doesn't generally cause a problem to run two screen readers, especially if you are running as one of them Narrator or NVDA which are 
less invasive.  In fact, I have run narrator before to see what was going on when I lost speach with Window-Eyes to see the error that was generated.  I 
have even accidentally run both Window-Eyes and Narrator together and they both worked fine, except of course that I had two different voices telling me 
the same thing in slightly different ways.  Of course if one looses speech because of a sound card issue, this won't work.  This was less possible before the 
display chaining implementation that most screen readers use now with their display drivers under Windows XP.  I don't think that NVDA or Narrator use 
display or mirror drivers at all, though, which makes them good candidates to get one out of a jam.  Obviously, if one can shut down and restart their screen 
reader, that's going to be the best solution.  In my mind, though, bringing up a second screen reader and thereby doing a normal shutdown is a far better 
approach than forcing a shutdown.  There probably could be problems running two screen readers before Windows XP, I'm not sure of that, and there might 
also be a problem if both screen readers used the same synthesizer, so there are probably cases when one could run into problems.  Still, it is a strategy that 
works sometimes.

On Fri, 14 Jan 2011 07:00:07 -0800, Jim Barbour wrote:

>Hey Steve,

>I suspect it causes much unhappiness if two screen readers
>are running at the same time, so either way you'd need to make sure
>that JAWS was shut down before trying to bring up either NVDA or
>another JAWS session.

>Take Care,

>Jim

>On Fri, Jan 14, 2011 at 08:46:47AM -0600, Steve Jacobson wrote:
>> The difference I see is that if you have lost speech on a screen reader such as JFW, you don't know if it is still running or not.  The shortcut key 
generally 
>> won't do a thing if JFW has gone silent but is still running.  I'm not sure, though, if there is an advantage to this over putting NVDA on the computer and 
>> assigning a shortcut to it.
>> 
>> Best regards,
>> 
>> Steve Jacobson
>> 
>> On Fri, 14 Jan 2011 05:31:04 -0800, Jim Barbour wrote:
>> 
>> >Hey Tracy,
>> 
>> >How is this different than simply assigning a shortcut key to JAWS so
>> >you can restart JAWS from the keyboard when it craps out?
>> 
>> >Thanks,
>> 
>> >Jim
>> 
>> >On Fri, Jan 14, 2011 at 08:24:39AM -0500, Tracy Carcione wrote:
>> >> Lately, Jaws has been getting stuck or shutting down unexpectedly, leaving
>> >> me with no idea what's happening.  But, following instructions on the NVDA
>> >> website, I put NVDA on a flash drive with autolauncher.  When Jaws craps
>> >> out, I plug in my NVDA drive, and in a few seconds I have speech again and
>> >> can figure out what the problem is.  I'm finding it very handy, and
>> >> thought I'd share.
>> >> Tracy


-- 
Doug Lee                 dgl at dlee.org                http://www.dlee.org
SSB BART Group           doug.lee at ssbbartgroup.com   http://www.ssbbartgroup.com
"It's not easy to be crafty and winsome at the same time, and few accomplish
it after the age of six." --John W. Gardner and Francesca Gardner Reese